The general purpose PC is frankly much too tempermental and difficult a beast to ever get that much penetration into non-techie households.
On the other hand, think about how many PS2s will be sold in the 12 months following this Christmas.
On another front, I just replaced my finicky NT based NAT translator with a little dedicated box from one of the NIC makers. Its works great and is a lot less hassle then keeping the NT server up was.
As computers become cheaper and cheaper it is mreo and more feasible to ship needs-tailored dvices. The general PC is indeed likely to fall back to being purely a professional and hobbiest device. (My wife, for instance, would KILL for a reliable box that woudl do fast email, word processing, and web browsing. She'd trade in her PC in a second.)
This MIGHT be GOODnews thouigh for Linux hackers as Linux seems to be findign some traction in the embedded/special purpose computer market. (That NAT firewall box I mentioned IS an embedded Linux device.)
A note, the only answer to the last part of this questions is "I am legally bound not to intefere."
Something many modern Americans don't understand is that we aren't a Kingdom and the pres. isn't king. The framers of the consitution udnerstood that too much pwoer in any one set of ahnds is abd and set up three **seperate but equal** bodies in our government. The Legislative branch (congress/senate), The Excutive branch (white house), and the Judicial branch (the Justice Dept and the courts.)
It is a high crime for the president to attempt to directly interfere with the functioning of the other two branches. The ONLY control the president has over the courts is the chance to propose justices on the federal level. Those proposals still have to be ratified by congress AND that Judge, once in position, has no responsability to the other two branches.
Keep in mind that Judge Jackson was considered "highly conservative" and was proposed for the office by Ronald Reagan. Judge's duites are to the law, NOT to politics and a great many of the supreame court Justices that have ended up handing down the most "liberal" conclusions we're considered conservative appointees.
Here I was being a good little moderator and I saw a question I really need to answer. There went my moderation of this topic:/
IANAL and this isn't legal advice.... but...
To answer your question, a resounding YES.
Credit reporting beuraues (TRW, EQUIFAX, etc) provide written reports to their customers containing supposed facts about you. Collection agencies report on paper similar supposed facts about you TO those beureaus. The merhcnat reports such facts, in writing again., to the collection agencies.
ANY written statement that claims to be true, but is not, that serves to damage your reputation is "libel". You can indeed sue any and all parties invovled in destributing such information. if that information is damaging to your economic standing (as bad credit info can be) the penalites can be quite severe.
I've actually used the threat of libel action, along with involving my state utility commision, to win a fight with a phone carrier and their collection agent. If you are going to play this game though a few thinsg are very important.
(1) Be in the right. It won't help you if you really DO owe them the money.
(2) Keep a meticulous paper trail. Never send them ANYTHING you don't keep a copy of. Do all communication in writing. (You MAY need to call them a few tiems, such as to get the name of someone to work with. Make sure to keep notes of the phonme covnersation and write and send a letter IMMEDIATELY following the phone call detaiulking your complete understanding of what was discussed. Start your letter with somethign like "As per our phone converstion of it is my understanding that...")
(3) Be reasonable. Really try to get them to understand that they are wrong. offer them copeis of any documents you have that prove they
are wrong. If they refuse to listen, you THEN have a pretty strong case.
The link you gave didn't work for me. Do you have another?
If they're really gonan put ATC on Win32, I'm gonna start riding the trains. Thats so incredibly ireesponsible I find it a touch hard to believe, but show me:)
Actually, its befasue Napster makes money that its in trouble. Theres lots of money to be amde, as i udnerstand it, off of ad space on the central site.
You don't see Gnutella under legal attack. Thsi is because of two things:
(1) No central point to attack
and equally
(2) No money chnaging hands. Where there is no money,ther eis only "amature priacy' and its a lot harder to get any recompense from the courts.
Its the for profit nature of Napster that has them in the hot seat. And IMO that's as it should be. Tehy shouldnt be allwoed to make money off of the acto of stealing someoen elses work, even if they aren't the hands doing the stealing. They ARE the monetary benenficiaries.
I'm afraid Fanning makes it clear that his vision was the sharing of Copyrighted materials (in other words-- piracy). He basicly admits, multiple times, that he wanted to assist people in sharing their MP3 files with others.
Now a question.. he claims napster is peer-to-peer. Why then is there a central site? he makes it sound like Gnutella but I've heard its quite different. Can someone whose looked into both explain?
This article on MSNBC talks about how a City law restricting access to graphically violent or sexually explicit video games to those who are at least 18 or accompanied by a parent or guardian has been upheld by a federal judge." A ban on violent video games, more or less.
I respond.
A whole lot less then a ban. A ban would make it unavailable to anyone, and probably a crime to own. The book "Satanic verses", for instance, is banned in Iran.
Our society has a logn standing precedent of restricting access by minors to certain forms of entertianment produced for (at least in theory) adults. When was the last time you saw a 12 year old buying a playboy? Minros enjoy special privledges and special restrictiosn udner our laws-- thats the way it is.
I have to follow on with this comment...
People tend to use loaded terms loosely (or totally incorrectly) on slashdot to try to convince others of their point. This makes our arguments sometimes look an awful lot like the Xtian right, folks. If you dont believe me, try a side by side comaprison. Different loaded terms, different assumptions, same propaganda style.
Um. I certainly never want to read in slashdot
"RHS releases patch for ATC crash bug in only 3 weeks!"
Guys, lets get "down to earth" if you will excuse the pun. Non life-critical sofwtare development is a very different beast from life-critical software development. There HAS to be a clear chain of responsability and a tightly controlled development process.
For the record, and to pre-empt comments, no one would DREAM of building an ATC system on a flaky OS like Win32 so that's a straw-man argument.
I had a job where, for 2 years, whiel i was working franticly to digt he company out of messes, the president was making new ones at the same time.
After two years that incldued a 2 week mandetory rest on order from my doctor (I staretd talkign seriously abt putting a bullet in my head and my wife, bless her, dragged me to the Dr), I realized it was never goign to egt better and I left.
I obecjt though to how your post might make people feel bad though for having a sense of duty and obligation to their work and a strong work ethic. Those are all GOOD things. The key is, the comapny has a duty and responsability to YOU too to treat you reasonably.
If they can't do that, you need to work for someone else.
*** Okay, a warning. This is an opinion some may find distateful. I respect that. Its my opinion. You are free to differ with it ***
Some still call it programming...
Others learned the lesson.. and went away to write less obfuscated languages.
The problem was never the coders... the best coders write clean and readbale code in anything up to and including assembler.
The problem was that C made it WORK to write such code (much as assembler does) and so the lazier or less disciplined coders didn't write their code that way.
I understand the cocnept of bone conduction, its been used for a long time for ear-piece only mic/earphone sets and unobtrusive (collarbone placed) mics.
But who is honestly going to buy a product where you have to walk around with your finger in your ear to use it? Was marketing on an offsite when engineering came up with thsi idea?
Since there is (suppsoedly at least) the potential of cash payment, anyone breaking copyrights goes from being an amature pirate to a professional one.
You can be liable for up to 3 times the amount you collect in damages to anyone whose works you illegally make available.
I personally don't think this is a bad thing, but you might want to be careful of others' Copyrights when using this service.
At the end fo the day, this is just a more compact version of the spinning paddle display tank MIT showed better then 15 years ago.
I'd have to argue that it IS true three-D, though soem other posters are correct that the viewing angles are limited.
Their misue of "volumetric" though is annoying. Volumetirc rendiring and the term 'voxel' both refer to a tchnique for representing 3D data and rasterizing the 3D data so represented. It says nothing about the display device.
I honestly find myself wondering if we read the same findigs of fact and judgement.
You DID read them page for page, right? I did. and as a highly accomplished professional engineer who has watched the whole MS tyhing develop since the first PC I was frankly ASTOUNDED at how clearly the court understood the cogent issues.
Frankly, IMO they demonstarted a better grasp of both the market issues and the computer science then many a slash-dot-poster. (Jackson's office, among other things, clearly defined why most of Windows ISN'T OS code, something most of us knew but were hard pressed to explain.)
Seriously, none of the techies I've knwon ever needed anything more then Caffine and Glucose in order to nerd all night. (okay, I admit it, I ONCE debugged a bit stoend in college-- just as an experiment.)
The contact high of making something work is generally enough for egnineers. Intresting thin gabout this articleis, if you read the fine print, he wasn't a techie at all. He was a film major and "silicon valley executive".
As the PS2 nears release M$ is turnign up the het on the X-Box.
What this, ofcourse, really all about is that the PS2 has the guts to be a serious home computer that DOESN'T run Winfroze. By sneaking in as a game machine it has the best chance anyone has had in a LONG time of breaking the M$ lock on home computing. In addition, it has a BETTER chance of grabbing the potetnially lucrative smart set-top space then anything else that has come along.
Slashdot Mirror
here's an IMO for you...
The general purpose PC is frankly much too tempermental and difficult a beast to ever get that much penetration into non-techie households.
On the other hand, think about how many PS2s will be sold in the 12 months following this Christmas.
On another front, I just replaced my finicky NT based NAT translator with a little dedicated box from one of the NIC makers. Its works great and is a lot less hassle then keeping the NT server up was.
As computers become cheaper and cheaper it is mreo and more feasible to ship needs-tailored dvices. The general PC is indeed likely to fall back to being purely a professional and hobbiest device. (My wife, for instance, would KILL for a reliable box that woudl do fast email, word processing, and web browsing. She'd trade in her PC in a second.)
This MIGHT be GOODnews thouigh for Linux hackers as Linux seems to be findign some traction in the embedded/special purpose computer market. (That NAT firewall box I mentioned IS an embedded Linux device.)
The end of a technology company is near when they start paying mreo mney to lawyers then they do to engineers.
Something to think about, in general.
A note, the only answer to the last part of this questions is "I am legally bound not to intefere."
Something many modern Americans don't understand is that we aren't a Kingdom and the pres. isn't king. The framers of the consitution udnerstood that too much pwoer in any one set of ahnds is abd and set up three **seperate but equal** bodies in our government. The Legislative branch (congress/senate), The Excutive branch (white house), and the Judicial branch (the Justice Dept and the courts.)
It is a high crime for the president to attempt to directly interfere with the functioning of the other two branches. The ONLY control the president has over the courts is the chance to propose justices on the federal level. Those proposals still have to be ratified by congress AND that Judge, once in position, has no responsability to the other two branches.
Keep in mind that Judge Jackson was considered "highly conservative" and was proposed for the office by Ronald Reagan. Judge's duites are to the law, NOT to politics and a great many of the supreame court Justices that have ended up handing down the most "liberal" conclusions we're considered conservative appointees.
**sigh**
:/
Here I was being a good little moderator and I saw a question I really need to answer. There went my moderation of this topic
IANAL and this isn't legal advice.... but...
To answer your question, a resounding YES.
Credit reporting beuraues (TRW, EQUIFAX, etc) provide written reports to their customers containing supposed facts about you. Collection agencies report on paper similar supposed facts about you TO those beureaus. The merhcnat reports such facts, in writing again., to the collection agencies.
ANY written statement that claims to be true, but is not, that serves to damage your reputation is "libel". You can indeed sue any and all parties invovled in destributing such information. if that information is damaging to your economic standing (as bad credit info can be) the penalites can be quite severe.
I've actually used the threat of libel action, along with involving my state utility commision, to win a fight with a phone carrier and their collection agent. If you are going to play this game though a few thinsg are very important.
(1) Be in the right. It won't help you if you really DO owe them the money.
(2) Keep a meticulous paper trail. Never send them ANYTHING you don't keep a copy of. Do all communication in writing. (You MAY need to call them a few tiems, such as to get the name of someone to work with. Make sure to keep notes of the phonme covnersation and write and send a letter IMMEDIATELY following the phone call detaiulking your complete understanding of what was discussed. Start your letter with somethign like "As per our phone converstion of it is my understanding that...")
(3) Be reasonable. Really try to get them to understand that they are wrong. offer them copeis of any documents you have that prove they
are wrong. If they refuse to listen, you THEN have a pretty strong case.
The link you gave didn't work for me. Do you have another?
:)
If they're really gonan put ATC on Win32, I'm gonna start riding the trains. Thats so incredibly ireesponsible I find it a touch hard to believe, but show me
Sorry, my friend. I just read the rules. Since I posted here before I discovered I was a moderator, it wont count :(
or HyperG.
**sigh**
There was proof that just having the right answer doesn't mean you'll win the war. (Ofcourse, there's lots of other proof, VHS tapes for instance...)
Actually, its befasue Napster makes money that its in trouble. Theres lots of money to be amde, as i udnerstand it, off of ad space on the central site.
,ther eis only "amature priacy' and its a lot harder to get any recompense from the courts.
You don't see Gnutella under legal attack. Thsi is because of two things:
(1) No central point to attack
and equally
(2) No money chnaging hands. Where there is no money
Its the for profit nature of Napster that has them in the hot seat. And IMO that's as it should be. Tehy shouldnt be allwoed to make money off of the acto of stealing someoen elses work, even if they aren't the hands doing the stealing. They ARE the monetary benenficiaries.
I DO have moderator powers! You got my vote :)
"If people think information should be free, they should make some free information."
:)
If I had moderator powers I'd push you up
Isn't amazing how its always the OTEHR guy's stuff most people think should be free??
I liked Courtney Love's comment... now shes getting screwed by the record company AND her fans.
I'm afraid Fanning makes it clear that his vision was the sharing of Copyrighted materials (in other words-- piracy). He basicly admits, multiple times, that he wanted to assist people in sharing their MP3 files with others.
Now a question.. he claims napster is peer-to-peer. Why then is there a central site? he makes it sound like Gnutella but I've heard its quite different. Can someone whose looked into both explain?
The article said:
This article on MSNBC talks about how a City law restricting access to graphically violent or sexually explicit video games to those who are at least 18 or accompanied by a parent or guardian has been upheld by a federal judge." A ban on violent video games, more or less.
I respond.
A whole lot less then a ban. A ban would make it unavailable to anyone, and probably a crime to own. The book "Satanic verses", for instance, is banned in Iran.
Our society has a logn standing precedent of restricting access by minors to certain forms of entertianment produced for (at least in theory) adults. When was the last time you saw a 12 year old buying a playboy? Minros enjoy special privledges and special restrictiosn udner our laws-- thats the way it is.
I have to follow on with this comment...
People tend to use loaded terms loosely (or totally incorrectly) on slashdot to try to convince others of their point. This makes our arguments sometimes look an awful lot like the Xtian right, folks. If you dont believe me, try a side by side comaprison. Different loaded terms, different assumptions, same propaganda style.
Um. I certainly never want to read in slashdot
"RHS releases patch for ATC crash bug in only 3 weeks!"
Guys, lets get "down to earth" if you will excuse the pun. Non life-critical sofwtare development is a very different beast from life-critical software development. There HAS to be a clear chain of responsability and a tightly controlled development process.
For the record, and to pre-empt comments, no one would DREAM of building an ATC system on a flaky OS like Win32 so that's a straw-man argument.
Quit.
Sometimes, it IS the only answer.
I had a job where, for 2 years, whiel i was working franticly to digt he company out of messes, the president was making new ones at the same time.
After two years that incldued a 2 week mandetory rest on order from my doctor (I staretd talkign seriously abt putting a bullet in my head and my wife, bless her, dragged me to the Dr), I realized it was never goign to egt better and I left.
I obecjt though to how your post might make people feel bad though for having a sense of duty and obligation to their work and a strong work ethic. Those are all GOOD things. The key is, the comapny has a duty and responsability to YOU too to treat you reasonably.
If they can't do that, you need to work for someone else.
*** Okay, a warning. This is an opinion some may find distateful. I respect that. Its my opinion. You are free to differ with it ***
Some still call it programming...
Others learned the lesson.. and went away to write less obfuscated languages.
The problem was never the coders... the best coders write clean and readbale code in anything up to and including assembler.
The problem was that C made it WORK to write such code (much as assembler does) and so the lazier or less disciplined coders didn't write their code that way.
PC driven sewing machines have been around for a long time. Im sure the hardware is the same.
I understand the cocnept of bone conduction, its been used for a long time for ear-piece only mic/earphone sets and unobtrusive (collarbone placed) mics.
But who is honestly going to buy a product where you have to walk around with your finger in your ear to use it? Was marketing on an offsite when engineering came up with thsi idea?
Xybernaut has been around for a few years...
And I hardly call 5k for a sealed unit you'll have to throw away in a few years thanks to Moore's law as being terribly afordable.
Wake me when there's a $1,000 model.
IANAL, ofcourse...
Since there is (suppsoedly at least) the potential of cash payment, anyone breaking copyrights goes from being an amature pirate to a professional one.
You can be liable for up to 3 times the amount you collect in damages to anyone whose works you illegally make available.
I personally don't think this is a bad thing, but you might want to be careful of others' Copyrights when using this service.
At the end fo the day, this is just a more compact version of the spinning paddle display tank MIT showed better then 15 years ago.
I'd have to argue that it IS true three-D, though soem other posters are correct that the viewing angles are limited.
Their misue of "volumetric" though is annoying. Volumetirc rendiring and the term 'voxel' both refer to a tchnique for representing 3D data and rasterizing the 3D data so represented. It says nothing about the display device.
I honestly find myself wondering if we read the same findigs of fact and judgement.
You DID read them page for page, right? I did. and as a highly accomplished professional engineer who has watched the whole MS tyhing develop since the first PC I was frankly ASTOUNDED at how clearly the court understood the cogent issues.
Frankly, IMO they demonstarted a better grasp of both the market issues and the computer science then many a slash-dot-poster. (Jackson's office, among other things, clearly defined why most of Windows ISN'T OS code, something most of us knew but were hard pressed to explain.)
"why did Sony have to spend $500 million to develop something that took $10000 to steal?"
This is not a valid argument. In fact, it cuts to the core of why IP protection is so improtant.
It takes a LOT of money to develop a new piece of IP and always takes a tiny fraction to reporduce it ocne created.
By that argument there shouldn't be any book publishers because it costys so much mroe to pay an author then to run off illegitimate copies.
As I read it, MS wants 5 months just for the preperation of briefs.
Oh and they want yhose briefs to be three tiems teh size normally allowed i na hearing like this.
Can you say Staaaaallll?
Thought you could.
... is having all the fun?
Seriously, none of the techies I've knwon ever needed anything more then Caffine and Glucose in order to nerd all night. (okay, I admit it, I ONCE debugged a bit stoend in college-- just as an experiment.)
The contact high of making something work is generally enough for egnineers. Intresting thin gabout this articleis, if you read the fine print, he wasn't a techie at all. He was a film major and "silicon valley executive".
As the PS2 nears release M$ is turnign up the het on the X-Box.
What this, ofcourse, really all about is that the PS2 has the guts to be a serious home computer that DOESN'T run Winfroze. By sneaking in as a game machine it has the best chance anyone has had in a LONG time of breaking the M$ lock on home computing. In addition, it has a BETTER chance of grabbing the potetnially lucrative smart set-top space then anything else that has come along.
X-Box is clearly a defensive move.