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That's Sony for you: All marketing, no brains.

Seriously, does Sony really think we can take pronouncements like this as gospel when their top lawyers can't even listen and answer properly?

Could this anomaly possibly be explained by dark matter?

I'm sorry for that, I guess I'm not used to subtleties on slashdot :-$ Good thing you can still get modded up for missing jokes here...

I was aware that that was his blog; I thought you were telling him that since he has a blog over there he should stop harassing us with his frequent posts and stories. Anyway...

NYCL: keep up the good work :-)
Others: go forth and multiply the HTTP GET requests

Wow you missed the sarcasm and the joke.

http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/ IS run by Ray Beckerman. I'm a big fan of his, and his contributions to Slashdot. That post my subtle way of directing people to another source of information.

Unfortunately, due to the prominence and infamy of Slashdot, it is in fact very appealing as a public forum and soapbox. Plus, it'd take ages to drum up enough publicity for http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/

Just saying...

Come on, NewYorkCountryLawyer, Slashdot isn't your personal outlet! Get your own blog.

Maybe something like http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/?

I disagree. The customers WANT shoddy, buggy software, because it costs less.

But it doesn't. Crappy software costs a little less in the short term, and much more in the long term.

If you don't offer it to them as an option, they'll find someone who will.

Some will. Some won't. The smart ones eventually learn.

Take a look at Google, for example. They make rock-solid stuff, they are very focused on cost efficiency, and they devote so much effort to testing that the have an internal testing conference and a guerilla campaign to promote testing. They know that quality pays off heavily in the long run.

They may pay lip service to it, but they won't pay for it.

I think we have done a terrible job of selling it. These days, I just tell the clients I'll use "best practices", and I don't even offer them the option of doing dumb stuff. Instead, when they want to make things come out faster, I show them how to be radical about cutting scope. Train them properly in that, and they'll forget about the (false) choice of adding bugs.

I disagree. The customers WANT shoddy, buggy software, because it costs less.

But it doesn't. Crappy software costs a little less in the short term, and much more in the long term.

If you don't offer it to them as an option, they'll find someone who will.

Some will. Some won't. The smart ones eventually learn.

Take a look at Google, for example. They make rock-solid stuff, they are very focused on cost efficiency, and they devote so much effort to testing that the have an internal testing conference and a guerilla campaign to promote testing. They know that quality pays off heavily in the long run.

They may pay lip service to it, but they won't pay for it.

I think we have done a terrible job of selling it. These days, I just tell the clients I'll use "best practices", and I don't even offer them the option of doing dumb stuff. Instead, when they want to make things come out faster, I show them how to be radical about cutting scope. Train them properly in that, and they'll forget about the (false) choice of adding bugs.

In fact most people think Javscript is bad because they have to use it inside browsers which tend to ignore the specification (OK, the one with 75% market share). In most cases Javascript is not the reason for frustration but the lack of DOM-compliant behaviour of the browsers (Ok, the one with 75% market share).

You may read some articles about Javascript, which indeed has some cool features. And with Adobes open sourced VM (Tamarin) it has a rather fast implementation too.

The Next Big Language
ECMAScript: The Switzerland of development environments?
JavaScript Speed Tests

For obvious reasons i don't want to google the link from work

But there recently was a case of an adult man (twenty something i think),
who was pretending to be a 13yrd old school boy ( the teachers thought there was something strange about him, but couldn't quite work out what..)
and who was in a relationship with a couple of 40 year old guys who also thought he was 13...

the older guys apparently felt cheated and deceived when the discovered that their 13yr old was in fact 20 something and just shaved a lot...

the link was from news of the weird, which is a great verified source of strangeness like this


p.s. and also no it doesn't "beg the question", but i'll leave it up to a philosophy nazi to slap your knuckles for that :)

"Maybe you could actually supply some facts to back your claims up? or are you just trolling. BTW according to the Reporters sans frontieres Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2007 (http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=24025) almost every EU country ranks in front of the US. Ah but right it rather believe some slashdot troll then one of the most respected freedom of the press monitoring groups in the world."

http://englandexpects.blogspot.com/2008/02/eu-journalist-or-propagandist.html
That must be why the IFJ is having to write letters to head off EU efforts to control the press.
Did the www.rsf.org people place the illegal arrest of Hans Martin Tillack under Belgium where there is not even source privilage or under the EU who sanctioned it.

Oddly enough, seeing how many people here regard the EU as a state, its fun that its not even listed here. Which means its not being monitored.

"BTW I'm getting fcking fingerprinted every time I enter the US, so don't give me those stupid finger printing examples."

We are not talking about the butt of all Slashdot hatred here are we Mister Wizard, we are talking about the supposedly democratic, morally superior, open, transparent, better than the US EU, truth hurts. What exactly is it you deem the children have done to have the state finger printing them? They are not entering the United States, they only left their parents for a few hours.

That is not correct, maybe you are thinking of Thread Local Storage. All threads share the same address space and memory allocations (memory management techniques used inside the application aside). Perhaps this page (found with a quick Google search) should clear up the confusion: http://virtualthreads.blogspot.com/2006/02/understanding-memory-usage-on-linux.html

It is more a matter that tools such as ps report the VSZ (Virtual Set size) and RSS (Resident Set Size) -- basically this is the amount of memory mapped in the virtual address space, and the size of the physical memory pages currently assigned to the process (this can grow or shrink with the operating system's page replacement -- moving pages into swap).

The memory in the virtual address space is not necessarily 'memory' that was allocated by the program for storage: memory-mapped file access, shared libraries and shared memory all counts into this address space, and this memory is managed by the operating system kernel or application. For mmap files, you can access a file like an array in memory and the operating system will deal with loading and saving the appropriate pages of data.

Firefox is actually using FreeBSD's new malloc (jemalloc; PDF) internally, instead of the default OS allocater on all platforms. It's quite fast and has less fragmentation than other implementations.

"Nuclear plant: Every single ounce of fuel that plant has ever used is still in that picture (in holding tanks)."

apparently you've yet to hear of atomic rod recycling http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2006/02/president-bush-weekly-radio-address-18.html

see, they take 'spent' fuel rods, then process them like they would mined uranium, to make 'new' fuel rods, taking away part of the atomic waste (although nowhere near all of it)

with water cooled rods you loose a significant portion of the uranium to corrosion however with sodium and liquid metal cooled reactors, you get much more of the original material...

so not every ounce of material is kept at the plants, since we can recycle the spent fuel rods.

"The reason we are integrating our own allocator is that we've found jemalloc to be better than all the default allocators of our three main platforms (Windows, Mac OS X and Linux). Not only is it faster (and it shows in Javascript tests!) but it causes less fragmentation, so you should see a significant memory reduction after using Firefox for a lengthy period of time." http://ventnorsblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/beta-3.html

The owners of robots will be subject to the rule of law, just as owners of guns and airplanes are. Contracts will be one tool for regulating robot bad behavior or unwanted spying and for allocating liability when someone gets hurt.

"The new and latest religion"
by Janer Cristaldo
~~~~~

About ten years ago, I wrote that someone who saw clearly the void of faith that would devastate the West was Italian director Nanni Moretti, in Palombella Rossa. The film came in '89, significantly the year when the Wall of Berlin fell. The story has as its main character a communist deputy that suddenly loses his memory.

The final scene is emblematic: in a highway, hundreds of youths run to greet the sun. It is inaugurated the new religion, the worship of nature. Not by chance, the privileged interlocutor of the Dalai-Lama -- word that modestly means Ocean of Wisdom -- in Brazil is Fernando Gabeira, former marxist guerilla fighter that switched his faith in History for the ecological militance. Gyatso intuited quickly this western turnabout and now preaches in defense of the environment.

I read in today's El País: "The climate change has mobilized scientists that study it, engineers that seek technological solutions, and economists that measure them. And it also starts to take a spiritual dimension that is converting it, in the opinion of some, into the new religion of the 21st century. A new ecological spirituality. The messianic language and the nearly religious instruments that are utilized break the more rational plans and silence in a public opinion more skeptic before past causes."

As well know the ornitologists who peck me. Their zeal is religious. Before the hypothesis of the extinction of the swamp streamcreeper, they brandish the apocalypse. Without intending to analyze the so called global warming -- since I do not have the instruments to do so -- I distrust it. For it is preached with the same divine wrath of John of Patmos. To bet on the apocalypse is a comfortable bet. For the apocalypse won't come right away. It's always in the future. Therefore, while it won't come, its prophets are not proven wrong.

Late the past year, the newspaper says, Al Gore arrived in Seville to speak of his movement against climate change. In his eagerness to reach his audience, Gore, who is a deeply religious man, uses phrases such as: "Noah was told to save the living species and this today is still our duty." Before preaching to the ambassadors or disciples that belong to his movement, 1700 all over the planet, he asks of them a "spiritual connection".

To biologist Miguel Delibes de Castro, "the structure that Gore organized is almost religious, with disciples that spread the good word, like Jesus Christ." To biologist Miguel Ferrer, "the radical ecological trends have much in common with religious schools. More and more one hears that man is the evil, destructive being and he must be expelled from the last of paradises."

One of Al Gore's 200 ambassadors in Spain is Juan Negrillo. Asked about the connection between his speech and religious feelings, he said: "All religions have their roots in faith, and in that sense the ecologist message and climate defense can be mistaken for as a religious message, because, as we are not able to touch, smell, weigh or see the CO2, it's almost a question of faith in the scientific community."

Who has not heard of Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, that regarded Earth as a living being? Here in Brazil, we had a loon that earned fame as ecologist, José Lutzenberger, that believed deeply in that mystical theory.

"But what we are going to do first: unveil this wonder, or will we continue as a cancer in Gaia's organism, devastating, causing mass extinctions, intoxicating to the point of no return?", Lutzenberger wrote, and continued:

"In the time of that mortal threat that was the oxygen pollution crisis, that nearly extinguished the life forms then existing, Gaia, rather than succumb, knew how to benefit. It transformed a ferocious enemy into a powerful ally, a factor of more life, of more complex life, more perfect, more diversified, more harmonic - a st

"The primary problem with tipping is that value is not proportionate the the service. Not even close."

How do you figure? A $20 meal with a 20% tip is $4. Assuming a meal length of 45 minutes, I have to ask, would you serve someone for less than $6 an hour?

But that is actually beside the point; if the general populace is willing to pay $6/hr, $30/hr or $300/hr for personal service, that is the going price. That is what the service is worth because that is what people are willing to pay for it. The removal of tipping would simply see this price go into the price of the meal - and you can't argue that it's already there. The $2.50/hr that wait staff have to be paid is there, yes, but no one takes a wait staff on the assumption that their base pay is all that they're taking home. They want to be paid a certain amount, and will often quit if the tips are insufficient to reach that nebulous amount.

Moving that cost to a mechanism that routes through the restaurant really doesn't solve anything. The cost is still there; I have to believe that wait staff would ask for more in the way of wages, but I recognize that they might accept less and be unhappier about it. Personally, I'd rather they were equitably compensated, and I find that difficult to ensure if I'm relying on the business owner.

"Waiters and topless dancers represent the largest group of tax evaders in the US."

In terms of numbers of people or dollars?

Warren buffet had the following to say recently:

"We did an informal office survey by looking at the total tax footprint versus the total income. I earned 46 million and paid a tax rate of 17.5%. My rate was the lowest, the average was 33%, and my cleaning lady paid 40%. The system is tilted towards the rich." ... "Even though the per capita GDP is $47,000, 20% of the population makes less than $20,000."

Given that, given that wait staff and strippers are not making a bazillion dollars, are we really so upset to give people in that classification of income more money? They're not the people who are ripping you off. Car companies, cell phone companies, HMOs; these people rip you off. They know you need the service, so they can inflate the price. On the other hand, wait staff is a luxury you're choosing to paying for. It hardly seems mannerly to resent them for it.

Roderic Page, who is involved in the Encyclopedia of Life "in an advisory capacity," has posted some fairly damning criticisms of the project in its current form. I have not spent much time poking around the site myself, but if what he says is true then it sounds like he's pretty right on. (Example: Some pages actually devote more on-screen space to contributor/sponsor logos than to content.) Here's hoping they're already taking steps to improve it.

Microsoft did try this before when they first brought out Windows NT. They provided a very minimal shell environment along with some unix emulation commands (make, ls, df, du, vi) as well as being able to get OpenGL drivers ported over. The idea was to provide these commands to get the applications ported over, and then to silently withdraw the suppport once the applications were ported.

There are still emulation libraries by Cygwin and MKS

Shell scripts are Microsofts weakness. Microsoft held off from including Monad into Vista for security fears. This was in a previous Slashdot discussion

Coal gets more subsidies than we of nuclear power do, not to mention "clean energy" initiatives.

Nuclear Subsidies "Myth"

We of nuclear power turn a profit just fine, thank you.

As for new plants - yeah, the capital costs are rather expensive but given the otherwise extremely low cost per kilowatt-hour they're still very much worth it over the 40-year-plus life of the plant (40 years is the initial license of the plant I currently work at - we've applied for an additional 20 year license extension). Capital investments, yes, put also capital returns. If this weren't true, why would so many places be applying to build new plants?

While we're on the topic of capital investments, I'll note this new solar CSP plant they want to build in Arizona. It's noted here that this will cost somewhere in the 4 billion range and generate 280 megawatts, with a ground footprint of 1900 acres. Compare this to my plants, which generates nearly 2,000 megawatts with a ground footprint of maybe 20 acres. Also, this plant (as stated in the article) depends completely on the renewal of the clean energy tax credit.

Call me prejudiced, but I'll stick to nuclear thanks.

Your other post confirmed to me that you are a troll. And this one is just icing on the cake. Maybe you're my cyberstalker.

This should do it. :-)
http://kontsevoy.blogspot.com/2008/02/why-do-programmers-make-free-software.html

so when the judge calls his testimony "borderline incompetent," the judge is signalling that it may be likely to get thrown out.

The report concluded that the Jacobson reports demonstrated "borderline incompetence" and that the "allegations of copyright violations are not proven".

"So you write your program and GPL it, don't pay the property tax."

Not necessarily. Just give an exemption of the copyright holder puts a Free, copyleft license on the work. Problem solved.

http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/2007/04/some-thoughts-on-copyright-offensive.html

all the best,

drew

"Real Estate, land-use/minerals, and sometimes cars and big-ticket items and the other property of wealthy individuals is taxed."

Fair enough.

Let the copyright holder self assess the value of the work.

Keep them honest as explained here:

http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/2007/04/some-thoughts-on-copyright-offensive.html

Then exempt low value works. Tax the high value works. Feel free to add that refinement in a comment if you like.

all the best,

drew

"It sounds great in theory. In practice, however, it would be untenable. Linus would never be able to afford the property taxes on Linux, and as a result Microsoft with its billions in cash reserves would be able to buy it for a steal (unless of course Linus let it into the public domain, a decision I'm not even sure he could make.)"

Not a real problem, give an exception to any work put under a Free Copyleft license.

See: http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/2007/04/some-thoughts-on-copyright-offensive.html

all the best,

drew

"You declare a value, you pay taxes based on that, and anybody can force you to sell it to them at that price."

Pretty much the solution I put forward here:

http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/2007/04/some-thoughts-on-copyright-offensive.html

With a few minor twists.

drew

"The bigger question would be how do you determine the value of the IP to assess it for taxation."

Let the copyright holders self assess. Make them be honest as explained here:

http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/2007/04/some-thoughts-on-copyright-offensive.html

all the best,

drew

I wish NYCL were here right now. I know he has all that stuff on his site... somewhere.

Here's what I was able to dig up:

* RIAA Lawsuits UMG v. Lindor Index
* April 12th report (this is the long one)
* Another one
* Original declaration (this was the first one, IIRC)
-----
* NYCL's index
* Deposition transcript

If NYCL shows up and contradicts me on any point, listen to him, not me. He's MUCH better than I am at keeping track of all these crazy lawsuits.

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

In a completely OT note, if someone posts this before me, it's because I have to wait an hour or more between posts. This is one of the few things I regret about submitting without an account.

...the operation of such a technology that requires to-the-letter operation and maintenance. Admittedly I haven't given this opinion hours of scrutiny, so it may be a little naive, but wadya think?

Here's a blog on the nuclear industry that I consider to be largely spin-free

This is kind of old news, but we ran into it at work today. Within the past couple weeks, Firefox 3 has imported FreeBSD 7's (je)malloc for its superior multithreaded performance and non-fragmentation.

http://ventnorsblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/beta-3.html

More info on jemalloc:

http://ivoras.sharanet.org/freebsd/freebsd7.html (near the bottom, under "Userland enhancements")

http://people.freebsd.org/~jasone/jemalloc/bsdcan2006/jemalloc.pdf

If someone has Dr. Jacobson's reports and declarations or has a link to them, please feel free to send them along, and I'll take a look at them directly

Something I would never ask people to do is to go to NYCountryLawyer web page and look if any of the advertisements served by google in that page interest you...

That would make NYCountryLawyer get some cash from the ads clicks...

I'm one of those people who suffer from "real severe depression". From my personal experience, those drugs *DO NOT* work for me.

I was severely abused by my father and I was bullied throughout school. Halfway through grade 9 I tried to kill myself. I was forcibly put on paxil when I was in the hospital recovering. My life has been shit ever since then. I'm now 25 and I've been mentally ill for the past 12 years and physically ill for the past 8 years. I haven't been able to work or go to school in the last 8 years. I can't even leave the house most of the time because of my chronic nausea and my emetophobia (fear of vomitting).

I can't take anti-depressants anymore because they make my stomach even sicker than it already is. I've been on paxil, effexor, celexa, wellbutrin and a bunch of other anti-depressants over the past 12 years, none of them help. I fucking hate anti-depressants to be honest, I rather be miserable and depressed than sick as hell from all the side effects.

I lost hope in getting better several years ago. I stopped seeing psychologists because all they wanted to do was give me more and more drugs. I was once on 60mg of paxil and 150mg of wellbutrin at the same time, and that wasn't working, so my psychologist wanted to put me on a third one ontop of the paxil and wellbutrin. That's when I said enough was enough and I've never seen a psychologist since then. I hate the state of health care in Canada, I have to see naturopaths to get the care that I need.

I can live with my depression, it's the anxiety, stomach issues and isolation from the outside world that bothers me.

See my sig or my blog for more info.

Verizon's guide

My guide:
1. Find your dns servers settings (71.252.0.12 and 68.237.161.12 for me). They should end in .12
2. Set them to the exact same ips with .14 on the end instead of .12

We've seen forest fires and other major fires caused by lit cigarettes as recently as six months ago. From a quick Google search:

• http://www.tobacco.org/news/214045.htmlJanuary 2006
• http://belairnewsandviews.blogspot.com/2007/06/cigarette-butt-in-trash-caused-forest.html, June 2007
• http://www.goskagit.com/index.php/news/article/cigarette_causes_forest_fire_at_heart_lake/, December 2007

In fact, in Oregon alone, Cigarette-induced fires have killed 29 people and injured 129 since 2001, and have been responsible for 1500 residential fires, 70 forest fires, and $28 million in damage in that same time period. (Source: http://www.blueoregon.com/2007/01/firesafe_cigare.html) Of course, that's a year old, so the numbers today would be higher, but that should give you a good picture of the problem, anyway.

Various states are passing laws to require fire-safe cigarettes (though don't kid yourself, these are not truly safe, just safer), but AFAIK, they haven't taken effect anywhere.

A secret that GreenPeace doesn't want you to know about:

Mac's are designed to be more energy efficient. See some comparisons.

Just posted this on my blog: http://lunaticthought.blogspot.com/ (You can find more info here on the economics of submarine fibre and nice pictures of the Tyco Responder Cable laying vessel)

Gigaom is reporting on Google buying a share into the Unity submarine cable. Many people will read into this an attempt by Google to become a telco or do anything out of its current layer 7 service and application business. I don't belief it is, it's just simple economics. Google now buys wholesale capacity instead of retail. My reaction on Gigaom was:

One of the main drivers for wanting your own fibre on certain submarine routes is the pricing strategy of the owners of the submarine fiber. Traditionally these fibres have been owned by incumbent national monopolists. Their pricing was set at a fixed price per Mbit/s. If your banndwidth utilisation grew, their income grew too, though their costs didn't, leading to excess profits. On the Transatlantic route this problem has been solved by having an oversupply of commercial competitive fiber. The oversupply resulted in a situation I call mutually assured destruction, where everybody went bankrupt and whole networks were sold for pennies.

On the Pacific route it's mostly incumbent national monopolists owning fibre and they probably have learned from the Atlantic disaster. This means prices don't drop (or not as quickly as traffic growth) and that means that some parties see an increase in their traffic costs. Google now has solved this by joining a club of submarine fiber owners and not having to worry anymore about the cost of a megabit/s. Google just has to worry about when they will fill up their terabit chunk and when someone will slice through the fibre.

BTW I'm willing to bet Google will join another club on this route to add some much needed redundancy.