Wow, these guys never get tired of trying to maintain the status quo...
I remember someone telling me about how easy it was to rip people off when buying the first electronic goods in North America (way back!). Basically, the public's knowledge level was very low. No-one knew how well these things SHOULD work so they just accepted the low level of usability and the fact that they broke easily.
A few years go by and suddenly people are tinkering and learning about the internals of thier devices (not everyone but a few). Electronic hobbyist magazines became popular and suddenly the quality of manufactured goods started increasing to meet consumer demand. There wasn't much of a monopoly back then (maybe GE? I don't know) so the market really was driven by consumer choice.
As an aside, the same thing seems to be happening in operating systems and software, etc, today...
Anyway, I think it is obvious that when people know how things work they want them to work better, or more efficiently, or they want to change them. Companies normally HATE that! One reason they might is because there may be plans to incorporate "direct buying" into printed material soon (or maybe just consumer tracking) by printing codes in catalogs that are subtly different for different geographic areas or whatever. I don't know, I am just speculating....
It's easy to see how a couple of intelligent, inquisitive people could ruin any chance for these companies to pull things like that on the sly. Thanks guys, we owe you one!
I was interested in this user group thing so I went an dug up the link: http://ug.oreilly.com/
Some notes from that page:
20% discount on all O'Reilly books and software when your members order directly from us (800-998-9938)
...
Special discounts and promotions
Sounds good! It's nice to see a company whose principles and practice seem really respectable... I haven't really seen any "dirt" on O'reilly, is it out there? I hope not!
This could be accomplished by embedding an
"image tag" that uses a script as it's image source, I expect? This is really no different than embedding one in a web page and is not really something I would worry about (any more than I worry about this happening with HTML).
I haven't used Word in a really long time... Is it trivial to see where images are coming from or is there some way to prevent people from seeing thier origin?
It is easy to make a webbug visible by examining the info for the HTML page (or the source) but by then you have downloaded the HTML and it's too late:) so how is this MS thing any worse, or different?
Salty water! Sounds like millions of Europans are prime risks for heart disease and high blood pressure!!! But all the readily available electricity will make it easier to revive them. Mother Nature always seeks balance...
I agree with a lot of your points but would quibble on one point... I think the mouse may have been conceived and (later) invented by Doug Englebart in '68... or thereabouts.
There is an interesting article about him [1] and also a slashdot discussion[2] on this that I dug up while verifying my info. Just wanted to say that the mouse (and especially the keyboard) have been with us for a long time. I don't expect we'll see joystick-controlled cars anytime soon, nor will these input devices we use
be going anywhere fast...
I haven't been to a convention even REMOTELY like this since I was a teenager and went to a local gaming/comic convention. It was great to be in a huge place full of people who were into stuff that I was but at the same time I couldn't help wondering just how dangerous this was considering how wierd they all must (also) be!:)
I, for one, am SO relieved that this announcement/admission has occurred. If there is anything that has had my friends and I closer to fist-fights while drinking our way through the long winter nights, I don't know of it... Now, at long last, I can say "Look, Deckard was a replicant! I READ it on SLASHDOT!"... There's no way that won't settle an argument between a bunch of beer-soaked Canadians!
It's time to implemant changes so that people can be traced and logged, encryption all has back doors that can be used against cyber terrorists, and we'll need to levy a tax on it to pay for this law enforcement.
How about having a security certification for operating system configurations and networked applications?
I don't think a manufacturer of widgets that resulted in 1 out of 3 people being injured (or say, hypnotized against their will) would be allowed to be sell their products for very long. Probably a government standard would prevent this? Or at least "flag" the product somehow to allow consumers to make an informed decision. Exceptions include: tobacco, guns, software... Why?
200 million miles precludes seeing any network television at all!!
In fact (insert tounge in cheek) we could probably watch all kinds of TV... Even my relatives on another planet (it seems that way sometimes, anyway!) could watch the superbowl:
Television signals are some of the more powerful signals and could be received by other civilizations. They would not, however, be watching the latest episode of the Simpsons.
Robert Dixon, a SETI authority from OSU, illustrated how far our televisions signals have traveled. "Super Bowl I, which was broadcast about 30 years ago, reached the closest star in 1974, and it has now reached about 1000 stars," said Dixon.
That quoted from http://www.lehigh.edu/~injrl/scop e/vol1_2txt.html (I am not a regular reader of this site, in fact I never saw it before, I just searched for SETI and television... suprisingly, no pornography turned up in the search results!)
I just want to point out that the "last modified" date at the end of this page is "Wed Dec 11 09:55:15 1996"... Now I don't always update my last-modifieds (well, yes, I do) but this seems like a while ago to me... The executive summary, etc. also has a similar date ("Last updated: 1996 September 15").
How likely is it that this document is still relevant? I am thinking it probably still reflects what the AF is thinking about the future, but is this the most current document they have on-line? Just asking....
Hi, I'm a 3rd year CS student. I think an OS class (especially an intro class) should focus more on IPC, mutual exclusion, and exploring different models for partitioning user and kernel space, etc. While Linux rocks, there doesn't seem to be any reason to focus on it specifically. All OS designs should be looked at, contrasted, and critiqued. CS students need to learn general principles (that is one reason why you take CS instead of attending a "career college").
Also, when it comes to programming assignments, it might be good to encourage slightly portable code. Maybe making sure your application compiles on both Linux AND Solaris (or whatever you are using). This can be a good experience. I can think of a few times where execvp or whatever behaved differently on these two systems and kept me up late learning why (I looked everywhere but that function to figure out why my program was hanging on Solaris and running fine on Linux).
Oh yeah! I rememeber Parsec for the TI! That machine had some wierd games! A friend of mine had a TI-99 before I had a computer. It plugged into the TV and used cartridges for input of games...
There was Munchman, a strange Pacman-like game that blew the original game away. There was also a game whose name I can never remember. It was a Pacman-maze type game which had cows and cattle rustlers. I think you were trying to herd a bunch of cows across Texas or something.
When you fired your weapon a solid beam lanced out across the screen until it hit something... Wow does anyone remember this? It was hilarious!:) I seem to remember a map of Texas showing progress as you cleared each level... I'd love to know the name!
I've checked a few TI-99 "fan pages" but can't find this games' name anywhere...
I was going to post this quote but thought I'd read through the earlier posts first. It reminded me of the way people argue with children when the kid says something correct that makes the adult look like a moron. The adult in the situation ussually laughs the child off for the benefit of on-lookers and tries to ignore the truth (this goes out to anyone who spent high school wondering why his teachers couldn't answer any questions).
Anyway, it seems like the MPAA et. al. are like the adults who've been shown up by a child (or in this case an intelligent and resourceful young man, and the "collective intelligence of the Internet"). Their feelings are hurt, they dignity is bruised, and they happen to be rich and powerful. What do powerful people do? They lash out.
This will all seem like just another growing pain of the Information Age eventually, it's the interim that will suck. Yes, there are important issues at stake, and there are no easy answers, but issues as important as these shouldn't be decided by media-baron thugs and self-serving lawmakers (who should solve them though? Any volunteers?)
Just a quick note... When I was in Junior High in the mid-80s (yes, I need therapy now) I had a history teacher who was a tireless champion of the fact that the "Smith" had inappropriately refused to return to Canada a navigational implement used by one our first explorers... There was a historical society that had been trying to get it returned permanently to Canada since the 60's (1960s that is). I have no idea what the current status of this attempt is...
Just some quick food for thought. Maybe he BECAME skilled by USING Linux. My brother-in-law partitioned, installed, and within a month recompiled (with the odd e-mailed question) on his own (he lives an hour away so don't think I was driving over every night to fix stuff). Sure it took a while to get a dial-up connection working but that was the MAIN stumbling block for him.
People who are intelligent and resourceful pick up stuff like this quickly.
I was just reading the yahoo article and I took a look at the Red Hat Store where you can buy the Professional Edition, which includes some e-commerce stuff (among other things) that isn't in the standard freely available edition... or is it? I guess this means no free e-commerce APIs?
Just wondering...
BTW, what would be more difficult: doing an open-source e-commerce API (which would undoubtedly increase e-comm revenues by sheer volume) or to convince the banks, etc., to support this development (replace NDAs with sane, well-designed protocols, etc.)? The trick would be convincing the big players that letting "anyone" do e-commerce would increase revenues more than charging for the privilege---it's all about transaction volume (you have to think of the spin-off benefits).
For example, I don't need to pay a bank to use cash (thier current "open" protocol) but they make money from the side-effects of that cash transaction (banking, investment, loans, everything really).
Well said...! I agree with your sentiment but would like to point out that it should be tempered with the qualification that there shouldn't really be an attempt to EXCLUDE less advanced users... I think the people that use and rely on GNU/Linux stuff will naturally make applications more useable and user-friendly for their own convenience or that of their targeted user-base... But his can be a natural thing.
It's great to imagine a world running free software, and if this happens it will happen naturally. Having said that, I don't think forced development (making _everything_ user-friendly and ID10-t proof, for instance) is a good model for Linux. If someone needs a user-friendly installer (say, Corel) they will build it. There is no reason EVERY linux intallation needs to be a walk-in-the-park... especially if that means a loss of functionality.
This is a quote from the "Everybuddy" homepage: As of right now, Everybuddy has support for AIM, ICQ, and Yahoo! chat programs. It also has file transfer between other Everybuddy users, and planned support for file transfer to other users. You can find this at http://www.everybuddy.com/ I've tried the ICQ aspect but I suspect it's still in beat (current stable release is 0.0.6).
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, these guys never get tired of trying to maintain the status quo...
I remember someone telling me about how easy it was to rip people off when buying the first electronic goods in North America (way back!). Basically, the public's knowledge level was very low. No-one knew how well these things SHOULD work so they just accepted the low level of usability and the fact that they broke easily.
A few years go by and suddenly people are tinkering and learning about the internals of thier devices (not everyone but a few). Electronic hobbyist magazines became popular and suddenly the quality of manufactured goods started increasing to meet consumer demand. There wasn't much of a monopoly back then (maybe GE? I don't know) so the market really was driven by consumer choice.
As an aside, the same thing seems to be happening in operating systems and software, etc, today...
Anyway, I think it is obvious that when people know how things work they want them to work better, or more efficiently, or they want to change them. Companies normally HATE that! One reason they might is because there may be plans to incorporate "direct buying" into printed material soon (or maybe just consumer tracking) by printing codes in catalogs that are subtly different for different geographic areas or whatever. I don't know, I am just speculating....
It's easy to see how a couple of intelligent, inquisitive people could ruin any chance for these companies to pull things like that on the sly. Thanks guys, we owe you one!
--8<--
I was interested in this user group thing so I went an dug up the link: http://ug.oreilly.com/
Some notes from that page:
Sounds good! It's nice to see a company whose principles and practice seem really respectable... I haven't really seen any "dirt" on O'reilly, is it out there? I hope not!
--8<--
This could be accomplished by embedding an "image tag" that uses a script as it's image source, I expect? This is really no different than embedding one in a web page and is not really something I would worry about (any more than I worry about this happening with HTML).
I haven't used Word in a really long time... Is it trivial to see where images are coming from or is there some way to prevent people from seeing thier origin?
It is easy to make a webbug visible by examining the info for the HTML page (or the source) but by then you have downloaded the HTML and it's too late :) so how is this MS thing any worse, or different?
Just curious...
--8<--
Salty water! Sounds like millions of Europans are prime risks for heart disease and high blood pressure!!! But all the readily available electricity will make it easier to revive them. Mother Nature always seeks balance...
--8<--
I agree with a lot of your points but would quibble on one point... I think the mouse may have been conceived and (later) invented by Doug Englebart in '68... or thereabouts.
There is an interesting article about him [1] and also a slashdot discussion[2] on this that I dug up while verifying my info. Just wanted to say that the mouse (and especially the keyboard) have been with us for a long time. I don't expect we'll see joystick-controlled cars anytime soon, nor will these input devices we use
be going anywhere fast...
--8<--
I haven't been to a convention even REMOTELY like this since I was a teenager and went to a local gaming/comic convention. It was great to be in a huge place full of people who were into stuff that I was but at the same time I couldn't help wondering just how dangerous this was considering how wierd they all must (also) be! :)
--8<--
I, for one, am SO relieved that this announcement/admission has occurred. If there is anything that has had my friends and I closer to fist-fights while drinking our way through the long winter nights, I don't know of it... Now, at long last, I can say "Look, Deckard was a replicant! I READ it on SLASHDOT!"... There's no way that won't settle an argument between a bunch of beer-soaked Canadians!
Who's missing the sarcasm now? :)
Software: Like guns, can be used for good or evil. However, I doubt that 1 on in three suffer any kind of injury (including financial) from their OS.
But we do need immeadiate "government intervention into the Internet" right?
doors that can be used against cyber terrorists, and we'll need to levy a tax on it to pay for this law enforcement.
How about having a security certification for operating system configurations and networked applications?
I don't think a manufacturer of widgets that resulted in 1 out of 3 people being injured (or say, hypnotized against their will) would be allowed to be sell their products for very long. Probably a government standard would prevent this? Or at least "flag" the product somehow to allow consumers to make an informed decision. Exceptions include: tobacco, guns, software... Why?
You IMPLEMENT algorithms with code.... :)
In fact (insert tounge in cheek) we could probably watch all kinds of TV... Even my relatives on another planet (it seems that way sometimes, anyway!) could watch the superbowl:
That quoted from http://www.lehigh.edu/~injrl/scop e/vol1_2txt.html (I am not a regular reader of this site, in fact I never saw it before, I just searched for SETI and television... suprisingly, no pornography turned up in the search results!)
I just want to point out that the "last modified" date at the end of this page is "Wed Dec 11 09:55:15 1996"... Now I don't always update my last-modifieds (well, yes, I do) but this seems like a while ago to me... The executive summary, etc. also has a similar date ("Last updated: 1996 September 15").
How likely is it that this document is still relevant? I am thinking it probably still reflects what the AF is thinking about the future, but is this the most current document they have on-line? Just asking....
Hi, I'm a 3rd year CS student. I think an OS class (especially an intro class) should focus more on IPC, mutual exclusion, and exploring different models for partitioning user and kernel space, etc. While Linux rocks, there doesn't seem to be any reason to focus on it specifically. All OS designs should be looked at, contrasted, and critiqued. CS students need to learn general principles (that is one reason why you take CS instead of attending a "career college").
Also, when it comes to programming assignments, it might be good to encourage slightly portable code. Maybe making sure your application compiles on both Linux AND Solaris (or whatever you are using). This can be a good experience. I can think of a few times where execvp or whatever behaved differently on these two systems and kept me up late learning why (I looked everywhere but that function to figure out why my program was hanging on Solaris and running fine on Linux).
Oh yeah! I rememeber Parsec for the TI! That machine had some wierd games! A friend of mine had a TI-99 before I had a computer. It plugged into the TV and used cartridges for input of games...
:) I seem to remember a map of Texas showing progress as you cleared each level... I'd love to know the name!
There was Munchman, a strange Pacman-like game that blew the original game away. There was also a game whose name I can never remember. It was a Pacman-maze type game which had cows and cattle rustlers. I think you were trying to herd a bunch of cows across Texas or something.
When you fired your weapon a solid beam lanced out across the screen until it hit something... Wow does anyone remember this? It was hilarious!
I've checked a few TI-99 "fan pages" but can't find this games' name anywhere...
>my point remains: DeCSS CAN BE(and indeed IS) >used for copying DVD content.
This just in... All parties are currently under court order to cease distribution of "cp" and "dd" as they can be used to copy digitized information!
I was going to post this quote but thought I'd read through the earlier posts first. It reminded me of the way people argue with children when the kid says something correct that makes the adult look like a moron. The adult in the situation ussually laughs the child off for the benefit of on-lookers and tries to ignore the truth (this goes out to anyone who spent high school wondering why his teachers couldn't answer any questions).
Anyway, it seems like the MPAA et. al. are like the adults who've been shown up by a child (or in this case an intelligent and resourceful young man, and the "collective intelligence of the Internet"). Their feelings are hurt, they dignity is bruised, and they happen to be rich and powerful. What do powerful people do? They lash out.
This will all seem like just another growing pain of the Information Age eventually, it's the interim that will suck. Yes, there are important issues at stake, and there are no easy answers, but issues as important as these shouldn't be decided by media-baron thugs and self-serving lawmakers (who should solve them though? Any volunteers?)
Just a quick note... When I was in Junior High in the mid-80s (yes, I need therapy now) I had a history teacher who was a tireless champion of the fact that the "Smith" had inappropriately refused to return to Canada a navigational implement used by one our first explorers... There was a historical society that had been trying to get it returned permanently to Canada since the 60's (1960s that is). I have no idea what the current status of this attempt is...
Just some quick food for thought. Maybe he BECAME skilled by USING Linux. My brother-in-law partitioned, installed, and within a month recompiled (with the odd e-mailed question) on his own (he lives an hour away so don't think I was driving over every night to fix stuff). Sure it took a while to get a dial-up connection working but that was the MAIN stumbling block for him.
People who are intelligent and resourceful pick up stuff like this quickly.
I was just reading the yahoo article and I took a look at the Red Hat Store where you can buy the Professional Edition, which includes some e-commerce stuff (among other things) that isn't in the standard freely available edition... or is it? I guess this means no free e-commerce APIs?
Just wondering...
BTW, what would be more difficult: doing an open-source e-commerce API (which would undoubtedly increase e-comm revenues by sheer volume) or to convince the banks, etc., to support this development (replace NDAs with sane, well-designed protocols, etc.)? The trick would be convincing the big players that letting "anyone" do e-commerce would increase revenues more than charging for the privilege---it's all about transaction volume (you have to think of the spin-off benefits).
For example, I don't need to pay a bank to use cash (thier current "open" protocol) but they make money from the side-effects of that cash transaction (banking, investment, loans, everything really).
This is a quote from the "Everybuddy" homepage: As of right now, Everybuddy has support for AIM, ICQ, and Yahoo! chat programs. It also has file transfer between other Everybuddy users, and planned support for file transfer to other users. You can find this at http://www.everybuddy.com/ I've tried the ICQ aspect but I suspect it's still in beat (current stable release is 0.0.6).