Why does something have to be a money machine to be considered a success?
Napster is a company which has been given millions of dollars in venture capital in the hopes that it will reap profits for its investors. If Napster fails to give the investors a return on their investment then it has failed as a business, whether lots of people use it is immaterial, just ask the investors in CDNow, DrKoop.com, Pets.com, etc.
Whatever happened to allowing communities to determine what is morally permissible in their respective areas. There are cities/counties where strip clubs are banned, alcoholic beverages are not served, movie theaters refuse to show certain films, etc. and this have been upheld by supreme court decisions as the rights of the communities to set their moral standards.
My question to jamie is this, "If a community/country can decide that people have to be a certain age to passively view violent behavior on a television screen, why shouldn't they be allowed to make the same decision for when the violence on screen is interactive with the user and not merely passive?"
Is anybody else tired of all these Three Letter Acronym buzzward fads that for the past year or two come long every few months and are proclaimed to be the greatest invention since blah and will become a market worth billions of dollars only for a few companies to IPO successfully just to tank a few months later.
Frankly I can't see how P2P is any less a meaningless buzzward filled, destined to fool a lot of investors, make a bunch of young CEOs rich, unproven, hype filled technology. Every time I open an issue of Fortune or Forbes I see some fool going on about how P2P is the next big thing and how Napster being so successful confirms this. Now unless I have been living in an alternate universe for the past year, Napster is not successful. They've spent millions of dollars obtaining lots of eyeballs, but the one thing the dot-comm massacre has shown us is that eyeballs do not necessarily transform into revenue. This reminds me of all the dotcomm evangelists who used to claim that B2C was the way to go because Amazon was so successful (even though they are yet to turn a profit and spend $150 million a year just to service their debts).
I am a mental health professional, and the research I am aware of shows the above statement to be false. There have been many, many studies on modeling of behavior that absolutely shows an increase in violent behavior when exposed to media with violent content. The simplest and most well known of these was an experiment exposing children to movies of other children hitting life-sized dolls with a control group of children doing regular play without violent content.
This is an example of the kind of boneheaded research that makes me wonder how the experimenters managed to pass their undergrad classes let alone get a Ph.D or M.D.
Firstly I'll comment on ivaldes3's misdirected ire. Repeat after me, "RPGs do not increase violent behavior". A Role Playing Game is a group activity played by a close circle of friends who exercise their imagination pretending to be wizards, warriors, gods, superheroes, etc. Several studies have shown that the one thing that links violent/suicidal teenagers is the fact that they are usually loners who feel isolated from their peers and family and are the victims of abuse either by their peers or their family.
Secondly, the boneheaded experiment you described is the most contrived piece of garbage I have ever heard of. Children imitate/mimic what they see around them, after all that's how they learn to talk. If you show children images of other children performing actions, it is extremely likely that they will imitate this behavior. The fact that they mimic the behavior of the children in the movie only shows that they are healthy and observant kids. To leap from the results of that experiment to then claim that RPGs cause violence is not only unreasonable
but extremely illogical.
Singer sold point-of-sale systems that it obtained from purchasing a company called Friden in 1963. The computer branch of Singer was sold in 1976 to ICL.
Here's a German page with a listing for an old Singer computer, as well as another listing in English. This article on Computer Weekly describes Singer and NCR as being the kings of the point-of-sale terminal market in the mid-seventies.
Maybe you should have paid more attention in Chemistry class. From the MSDS hyper-glossary.
Definition
In the context of chemistry and materials,
organic refers to a materials based on carbon (an element abbreviated as C). Additional elements that are commonly found in organic materials are hydrogen (H), nitrogen (N), oxygen (O), phosphorus (P) and sulfur (S).
An unrelated and confusing definition of organic is used most often in reference to "natural" foods. For example, a simple definition of "organic produce" is fruits or vegetables that have been raised without the use of pesticides or herbicides. Of course, many pesticides and herbicides are actually themselves organic (using either or both definitions of "organic")!
Materials that are not organic are usually referred to as inorganic.
Additional Info
Organic chemicals are not necessarily harmful or toxic. Much or the human body consists of organic chemicals such as proteins, DNA, lipids and cell membranes. The food you eat, trees, grass, and every other living object contains organic compounds. The term "carbon-based life forms" is redundant (at least on this planet).
However, this does not necessarily mean that organic chemicals are good for you. For example, hydrogen cyanide (HCN) is a deadly toxin, benzene (C6H6) is a carcinogen and thalidomide is a potent teratogen.
When it comes to considering the toxicity of any material, remember that the dose makes the poison. Some chemicals (organic or not) present no or minimal hazard even at very high concentrations, while others can be deadly in minute amounts.
Some organic compounds are highly reactive and are incompatible with other chemicals such as strong oxidizing agents. Be sure to read your MSDS!
I can't believe this, a friend of mine sent me an email a while ago about working on this and I thought it was cool but would never work.
------------------------------------------------
i am now in [deleted] which is the most boring town/city in the
world. i
have been here since the beginning of june (apart from 2 trips back to
[deleted],
the most interesting town in the world). i'm on a research internship
at the
[deleted], a big time,34 grand a year tuition private
college
with billions in research grant money a year.
i am researching oleds, organic light emitting diodes, which in the
future
will be used to make paper thin, paper flexible tvs and monitor
displays (
kind of like the mediatrons in 'diamond age' if you've read that. the
research is sponsored by kodak and xerox ( the principle behind leds is
similar to photography and photocopying that is why these two companies
are
at the cutting edge of this field. i am working with a big time
professor
who owns numerous patents jointly with kodak and xerox, ' a unique,
joint
intellectual property agreement ' is what it's called.
the work is interesting. i am analyzing the polymer to be used for
these
displays with lasers and creating small devices for analysis. in
solution
the polymer emits light perfectly but when a film is formed its
efficincy
goes down, due to polymer chain interactions when the solid forms.
i suggested freezing the solution and then vacuum pumping the frozen
solvent
out by sublimation as a means of creating solid films with solution
morphology for better analysis and the professor called me a genius
gave me
free run of the place. so its not so bad.
designed the apparatus necessary for the job and i'm giving the process
a
trial run.
(sent to both hotmail and yahoo, don't know which one you frequent)
see you in a bit.
I just want to ask all the people who think the politicians are stupid for not knowing that 602P is not a real bill to please inform me off the top of their heads what the titles of the following RFCs are: 1999, 2012, 3002, and 6521. If you can't tell what they are or even better can't figure out which ones are fake and which are real then what business do you have expecting politicians to know about all the bills being proposed to congress, especially since most bills are handled by specialized committees and rarely are heard by all of congress unless they have massive support.
I have seen some clueless posts on Slashdot but this takes the cake. My response to this article is a resounding "Duh". The entire article can be summarized by this quote
The information is essentially being sent back and forth via text as long a wire. Anyone along that wire, inside or outside of your company, has the ability to intercept, read and change the text," said David Kennedy, director of research services for ICSA.net in Reston, Va. "Is it technically possible? Yes, and it's fairly easy to do."
For Slashdot to sensationalize what is basic knowledge to anyone with a smidgeon of technical know-how (my girlfriend's an English major and she knows this) and make it seem like there is some sinister plot underway by AOL, Yahoo, MSN, etc to cooperate with employers to steal employee rights is irresponsible.
Read the actual patent, it is ridiculously obvious to anyone who has ever done any web prgramming before whether ASP, CGI, servlets, Cold Fusion, etc. It is the kind of stupid idea that PHB's come up with all the time and techies decry because it is fucking insecure. The surprise isn't that Amazon discovered this innovation but that they actually implemented it. Retrieving a customer's credit card information based on the contents of a cookie is not just insecure but incredibly stupid due to the fact that
there is an Internet Explorer exploit that allows any website to
Frankly, this patent isn't just for an obvious idea, but for an idea that is obviously stupid to anyone who gives more than a passing thought to security. This patent is no different from MSFT patenting automatically executing email attachments (another obvious and stupid idea) .
The problem is not moderation in any shape or form but instead human nature. It doesn't matter if there are a few moderators a la slashdot or a lot a la kuro5hin, people will generally appreciate an opinion that reflects theirs and be hostile to an opinion that is in conflict with theirs. If there was an open way of holding people accountable for their moderations, just as we can read vote histories in article submissions on kuro5hin, then maybe people would be more careful with their moderations (or it could become like slashdot where the many tyrannize the few via meta-moderation).
In my opinion all moderation is flawed because it relies on human nature which is inherrently flawed. I personally suggest reading without scores, after all USENET has no scores and this did not alter the quality of the discussions in several groups.
I have been using Visual C++ for years and have never needed to use MFC for anything. Granted I don't code user interface stuff... but please.
With STL there to help out I see no need at all for MFC.
Obviously you have no idea what you are talking about, MFC is a UI library while the STL is a collection of data structures, iterators and algorithms. They are practically unrelated.
PS: I saw this story earlier at the GNOME site, check it out for more insight into porting issues by GNOME hackers.
If the recording companies don't deserve money for promoting and selling recording than who does.?
The music studios don't deserve royalties in the my.mp3.com case. In case you didn't know Mp3.com debuted a free service called Beam-It at my.mp3.com. This service enabled people to play CDs from an online collection if they had previously proved that they own the CDs by having the CD in the CD-ROM drive and registering it.
Somehow the record labels felt that MP3.com owed them money for broadcasting music on the net without paying them licence fees similar to what Radio stations pay. This ignores the fact that all the people listening to the music already own the CDs being played. Of course all the members of the RIAA filed suit and MP3.com settled with most of them for about $20 million a piece except for Universal that pressed on with a lawsuit and won over $100 million.
The my.mp3.com will return but will be a pay service to offset the damage from the lawsuits. During Napster hearings certain Senators including Orrin Hatch realized that the RIAA was abusing copyright laws in an attempt to maintain a monopoly on legitimate means of digital distribution of music. The new laws that are pending indicate that Congress feels that the RIAA did not and does not deserve payment when people are accessing music they already own from an online site.
Bruce Eckel's Thinking In Java is free as in speech and as in beer for the online version. The entire book is free to download and the author has consented to allowing people to print copies of the book from the online version (which is traditionally against copyright law).
He accepts corrections and updates from most people as well as sample code. In this sense it is free as in speech. Read what people have had to say about the book.
What's really cool is that the book has turned out to be so good that many people I know still ; buy the dead tree version. Best of all it doesn't use any proprietary formats but instead good old HTML.
This is probably one of the stupidest things I have ever read on slashdot.
I am African, lived there most of my life and was a geek there and am a geek here and will be a geek when I go back. I know 9 programming/scripting languages, I'm familiar with 4 RDBMS systems (Oracle, SQL server, DB2, Interbase), I'm into distributed computing (Java-RMI and CORBA), if I was graduating from college today I'd do so with highest honors, I am an avid Chinese history buff, I played D and D as a kid (in Africa), I owned an Amiga as a kid, I TA two different programming classes(C and Java), and have already turned down several employment opportunities from Fortune 500 companies because they didn't feel right. In all honesty, I almost flunked out of high school in Africa and most of my friends were a lot more geeky than I was, IMHO I'm nowhere near as smart or geeky as a lot of the people I went to school with, who I am in constant contact with via email and instant messenger (didn't think they had that in Africa huh?).
Anyway as for the article, Linux being free as in beer doesn't mean jackshit. Copyright laws are not enforced in most third world nations. I've seen pirated CDs for Windows NT SP 4, Starcraft, Adobe Photoshop, Oracle 8, Microsoft Office, Visual Studio, etc. for $5 to $10. I also saw a lot more people using Windows than *nix, in fact very few people even knew what *nix systems were while everyone knew Windows.
Yesterday while reading the GeorgiaTech technique yesterday I noted that the school officials raised a number of valid points such as
Apart from the fact that Tech feels it is not under any legal obligation to enact a ban, attempting to ban Napster without limiting Internet access in other ways is nearly impossible from a technological standpoint.
"At a university like Georgia Tech, such a solution is impractical. Further, even if we found a temporary method, our students are bright enough to find ways around it," said Harty.
Too true, blocking Napster's default port simply means that other ports will be used.
"We will, of course, take swift action regarding any specific instances of infringement of your clients' copyrighted materials once they are brought to our attention."
Under the provisions detailed in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Tech is considered an Internet Service Provider.
So there will still be disciplinary action against those who have been shown to violate copyright materials. So what is the point of asking for a ban except as a hamfisted attempt to bully schools that have a combined legal might that dwarfs Metallica's?
The point (I believe) was that those actions are bad because they constitute a hardware upgrade treadmill that breaks compatibility and limits choice.
What's funny about this statement is that companies are constantly stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to backwards compatibility. Intel's x86 architecture is primarily flawed due to it's support of legacy crap. MSFT's operating systems were largely unstable due to supporting legacy 16-bit applications as well as shitty third party drivers.
Yet when these companies make a clean break and design a new architecture that works better, people like you start to scream about how they are gouging the consumer by not supporting all sorts of brain dead legacy crap.
I guess that goes to show that you can't please everyone.
I don't really understand why this is news or why it is even a big deal. If some emulator writer is having difficulty writing emulators on or for Macs or Wintel boxes, it isn't the fault of MSFT, Apple or Intel but instead it is his fault for basing his business on the whims of third party companies whose business decisions he has no control over.
The author goes on and on blaming other companies for assumptions that he makes, instead of correctly realizing that the basing business decisions on the behavior of others who are not under your control or whom at least you do not have direct access to is folly of the highest order. Blaming the architecture of Mac OS X and Windows Millenium is a coward's way out. The truth is Apple and MSFT are under no obligation to make their Operating System's easy for Joe Random Hacker to emulate.
Apple and MSFT have specifically rewritten their new Operating Systems to target the problems that have been leveled at them in the past (multitasking in Apple's case, instability in MSFT's case) and did not and should not have considered whether the improvements to their Operating Systems suddenly make emulation software more difficult to write.
Pardon my lack of artistical sense but there's nothing new in these snapshots
So what? Exactly why should there be any change in the basic WIMP interface of Windows or any other OS for that matter? It's not like there are leaps in interface design from successive versions of Unix, Linux or even the Macintosh instead most changes have been gradual over time.
OK, some icons are a bit bigger but I really don't understand where all that hype comes from ?
In this vein, nowhere have I seen MSFT touting their whizzbang new improved user interface but instead they have touted the improved reliability, scalability and robustness of their new systems which if making the switch from NT to Win2K is true. Maybe you are mistaking MSFT for Apple?
This may shock you, but both sites get stories from user submissions. So all this means is that the some person posted both stories to Slashdot and kuro5hin, big freaking deal.
Repeat after me, no one is ripping off these companies. If some braindead MBA believes that selling stuff below cost in order to gain mindshare is a business plan, I am not obligated to satisfy his plans for me as a consumer by paying for a marked up service or accessory to something I got for free or below cost.
It strikes me that whenever a company comes out with something where they intend to make their profits from after-sale mechanisms, the first thing that people want to do is to try and avoid this.
I seem to remember one of the first things I was taught in Economics class being that consumers should be assumed as rational beings that will try their best to maximize their utility (i.e. consumer happiness) by paying as little as possible for a service. In my opinion a company that fails to factor in the lessons of ECON 101 while designing a business plan deserves to fail.
People like you who complain because consumers are not going along with a corporation's plan to sell them a marked up service or product shock me. I cannot for the life of me figure out why I should spend more than an item costs after other payments are factored in for the illusion of being given something for free. Anyone remember all those free PC companies that made you sign 3 year ISP contracts? Guess that means the PCs weren't so free, huh.
First, the Federal government should aggressively encourage the development of open source software for high end computing. Adopting this recommendation will require a technical assessment of the software needs for high end computing as well as an innovative management plan and funding model for supporting this development.
This is the way it should always have been. Scientific endeavour has always been a group effort with advancements being made from the pool of common knowledge. It has always amazed me that large complex systems have therefore not been Open Sourced by default. In my opinion it is OK for rinky dink little programs to close their source especially since they can be written by anyone of capability (Instant Messengers, MP3 players, etc) but large complex systems (Operating Systems, large-scale distributed applications, etc) should be Open Sourced so that they can be subject to peer review and also so that they can add to the general body of knowledge instead of forcing us to constantly reinvent the wheel solving problems that have already been repeatedly solved.
I especially feel that code written with the benefit of my tax dollars should be Open Sourced so myself and others can have access to the fruits of our labor. After all, government funded research projects are open.
Second, a "level playing field" must be created within the government procurement process to facilitate open source development.
Too true, currently government requirements computer systems are usually exact specifications that can only be filled by closed source software. A loosening of the specificity in the specifications would be a boon to the adoption of Open Source software in government.
Third, an analysis of open source licensing agreements is needed, with an ultimate goal of agreeing upon a single common licensing agreement for open source software applications.
Again I have to be in agreement. After reading the recent spate of articles on who is not in compliance with the GPL(NASM, Phython, and until recently KDE) even though their projects are Open Source, I have strongly come to believe that the GPL is the worst license for any entity that expects to use software freely to use. The GPL (and RMS) is becoming a Borg-like in the way it is trying to usurp the intentions of authors of Open Source software everywhere by forcing them to assimilated. The quickest thing that will cool the government's ardor for Open Source software will be all the innumerable license incompatibilities caused by the GPL.
In my opinion, a BSD style license is the best license for governments, corporations, researchers and students. Users of BSD software can contribute to a common pool of knowledge and yet can modify the software without releasing changes when they see fit. This is true freedom. This is especially true when one realizes that Bruce Perens and RMS are currently in the process of updating the GPL so that even internally distributed software may count as software being distributed and hence should be Opened (this is from reading Bruce's comments from the past few weeks, if I have misinterpreted them, I apologize). I frankly do not believe that any entity, be it government, corporate or individual should release internally sensitive pieces of code simply to satisfy some pseudo-communistic ideal for software sharing.
If I give away software, it is with no strings attached because I want to improve the pool of general knowledge and share with my users, not to force the entire world into some college professors myopic view of what the world should be. These are my opinions
CNN Reporter: I am reporting live from the offices of [insert TLA here] where news of the devastating Denial of Services [sic] attack has just been heard. Oh my God, What can we do? What does FBI think?
FBI spokesdroid:Like I said, if only they had let us install Carnivore in every ISPs server room, we could have stopped this.
NSA spokesdroid:Shutup fool, if only Echelon funding hadn't been stopped we would have nipped this in the bud.
Right-wing spokesdroid::Liars, liars, only installing censorware which blocks out images of "hacking" and "cranking" [sic] could have stopped this...
Slashdot Mirror
The linked article is rather scanty, here's another article that explains exactly what is holding up FTC approval and how it can be resolved.
;T says Time Warner negotiated deal not likely
AT&
Second Law of Blissful Ignorance
Why does something have to be a money machine to be considered a success?
Napster is a company which has been given millions of dollars in venture capital in the hopes that it will reap profits for its investors. If Napster fails to give the investors a return on their investment then it has failed as a business, whether lots of people use it is immaterial, just ask the investors in CDNow, DrKoop.com, Pets.com, etc.
Second Law of Blissful Ignorance
Whatever happened to allowing communities to determine what is morally permissible in their respective areas. There are cities/counties where strip clubs are banned, alcoholic beverages are not served, movie theaters refuse to show certain films, etc. and this have been upheld by supreme court decisions as the rights of the communities to set their moral standards.
My question to jamie is this, "If a community/country can decide that people have to be a certain age to passively view violent behavior on a television screen, why shouldn't they be allowed to make the same decision for when the violence on screen is interactive with the user and not merely passive?"
Second Law of Blissful Ignorance
Is anybody else tired of all these Three Letter Acronym buzzward fads that for the past year or two come long every few months and are proclaimed to be the greatest invention since blah and will become a market worth billions of dollars only for a few companies to IPO successfully just to tank a few months later.
Frankly I can't see how P2P is any less a meaningless buzzward filled, destined to fool a lot of investors, make a bunch of young CEOs rich, unproven, hype filled technology. Every time I open an issue of Fortune or Forbes I see some fool going on about how P2P is the next big thing and how Napster being so successful confirms this. Now unless I have been living in an alternate universe for the past year, Napster is not successful. They've spent millions of dollars obtaining lots of eyeballs, but the one thing the dot-comm massacre has shown us is that eyeballs do not necessarily transform into revenue. This reminds me of all the dotcomm evangelists who used to claim that B2C was the way to go because Amazon was so successful (even though they are yet to turn a profit and spend $150 million a year just to service their debts).
Second Law of Blissful Ignorance
I am a mental health professional, and the research I am aware of shows the above statement to be false. There have been many, many studies on modeling of behavior that absolutely shows an increase in violent behavior when exposed to media with violent content. The simplest and most well known of these was an experiment exposing children to movies of other children hitting life-sized dolls with a control group of children doing regular play without violent content.
This is an example of the kind of boneheaded research that makes me wonder how the experimenters managed to pass their undergrad classes let alone get a Ph.D or M.D.
Firstly I'll comment on ivaldes3's misdirected ire. Repeat after me, "RPGs do not increase violent behavior". A Role Playing Game is a group activity played by a close circle of friends who exercise their imagination pretending to be wizards, warriors, gods, superheroes, etc. Several studies have shown that the one thing that links violent/suicidal teenagers is the fact that they are usually loners who feel isolated from their peers and family and are the victims of abuse either by their peers or their family.
Secondly, the boneheaded experiment you described is the most contrived piece of garbage I have ever heard of. Children imitate/mimic what they see around them, after all that's how they learn to talk. If you show children images of other children performing actions, it is extremely likely that they will imitate this behavior. The fact that they mimic the behavior of the children in the movie only shows that they are healthy and observant kids. To leap from the results of that experiment to then claim that RPGs cause violence is not only unreasonable but extremely illogical.
Second Law of Blissful Ignorance
Singer sold point-of-sale systems that it obtained from purchasing a company called Friden in 1963. The computer branch of Singer was sold in 1976 to ICL. Here's a German page with a listing for an old Singer computer, as well as another listing in English. This article on Computer Weekly describes Singer and NCR as being the kings of the point-of-sale terminal market in the mid-seventies.
Second Law of Blissful Ignorance
Definition
- In the context of chemistry and materials,
- organic refers to a materials based on carbon (an element abbreviated as C). Additional elements that are commonly found in organic materials are hydrogen (H), nitrogen (N), oxygen (O), phosphorus (P) and sulfur (S).
Additional Info- An unrelated and confusing definition of organic is used most often in reference to "natural" foods. For example, a simple definition of "organic produce" is fruits or vegetables that have been raised without the use of pesticides or herbicides. Of course, many pesticides and herbicides are actually themselves organic (using either or both definitions of "organic")!
Materials that are not organic are usually referred to as inorganic.However, this does not necessarily mean that organic chemicals are good for you. For example, hydrogen cyanide (HCN) is a deadly toxin, benzene (C6H6) is a carcinogen and thalidomide is a potent teratogen.
When it comes to considering the toxicity of any material, remember that the dose makes the poison . Some chemicals (organic or not) present no or minimal hazard even at very high concentrations, while others can be deadly in minute amounts.
Some organic compounds are highly reactive and are incompatible with other chemicals such as strong oxidizing agents. Be sure to read your MSDS!
Second Law of Blissful Ignorance
I can't believe this, a friend of mine sent me an email a while ago about working on this and I thought it was cool but would never work.
-
-----------------------------------------------
i am now in [deleted] which is the most boring town/city in the
world. i
have been here since the beginning of june (apart from 2 trips back to
[deleted],
the most interesting town in the world). i'm on a research internship
at the
[deleted], a big time,34 grand a year tuition private
college
with billions in research grant money a year.
i am researching oleds, organic light emitting diodes, which in the
future
will be used to make paper thin, paper flexible tvs and monitor
displays (
kind of like the mediatrons in 'diamond age' if you've read that. the
research is sponsored by kodak and xerox ( the principle behind leds is
similar to photography and photocopying that is why these two companies
are
at the cutting edge of this field. i am working with a big time
professor
who owns numerous patents jointly with kodak and xerox, ' a unique,
joint
intellectual property agreement ' is what it's called.
the work is interesting. i am analyzing the polymer to be used for
these
displays with lasers and creating small devices for analysis. in
solution
the polymer emits light perfectly but when a film is formed its
efficincy
goes down, due to polymer chain interactions when the solid forms.
i suggested freezing the solution and then vacuum pumping the frozen
solvent
out by sublimation as a means of creating solid films with solution
morphology for better analysis and the professor called me a genius
gave me
free run of the place. so its not so bad.
designed the apparatus necessary for the job and i'm giving the process
a
trial run.
(sent to both hotmail and yahoo, don't know which one you frequent)
see you in a bit.
Second Law of Blissful Ignorance
I just want to ask all the people who think the politicians are stupid for not knowing that 602P is not a real bill to please inform me off the top of their heads what the titles of the following RFCs are: 1999, 2012, 3002, and 6521. If you can't tell what they are or even better can't figure out which ones are fake and which are real then what business do you have expecting politicians to know about all the bills being proposed to congress, especially since most bills are handled by specialized committees and rarely are heard by all of congress unless they have massive support.
Second Law of Blissful Ignorance
Hey, we English majors are not all dumb. In fact, some of us are even BSD users, you unsophisticated prick!
Technical know-how has no relationship to how intelligent a person is, I'd expect an English major to know that.
Second Law of Blissful Ignorance
-
The information is essentially being sent back and forth via text as long a wire. Anyone along that wire, inside or outside of your company, has the ability to intercept, read and change the text," said David Kennedy, director of research services for ICSA.net in Reston, Va. "Is it technically possible? Yes, and it's fairly easy to do."
For Slashdot to sensationalize what is basic knowledge to anyone with a smidgeon of technical know-how (my girlfriend's an English major and she knows this) and make it seem like there is some sinister plot underway by AOL, Yahoo, MSN, etc to cooperate with employers to steal employee rights is irresponsible.Second Law of Blissful Ignorance
- Multiple people may use the same computer.
Frankly, this patent isn't just for an obvious idea, but for an idea that is obviously stupid to anyone who gives more than a passing thought to security. This patent is no different from MSFT patenting automatically executing email attachments (another obvious and stupid idea) .Second Law of Blissful Ignorance
The problem is not moderation in any shape or form but instead human nature. It doesn't matter if there are a few moderators a la slashdot or a lot a la kuro5hin, people will generally appreciate an opinion that reflects theirs and be hostile to an opinion that is in conflict with theirs. If there was an open way of holding people accountable for their moderations, just as we can read vote histories in article submissions on kuro5hin, then maybe people would be more careful with their moderations (or it could become like slashdot where the many tyrannize the few via meta-moderation).
In my opinion all moderation is flawed because it relies on human nature which is inherrently flawed. I personally suggest reading without scores, after all USENET has no scores and this did not alter the quality of the discussions in several groups.
Second Law of Blissful Ignorance
I have been using Visual C++ for years and have never needed to use MFC for anything. Granted I don't code user interface stuff... but please. With STL there to help out I see no need at all for MFC.
Obviously you have no idea what you are talking about, MFC is a UI library while the STL is a collection of data structures, iterators and algorithms. They are practically unrelated.
PS: I saw this story earlier at the GNOME site, check it out for more insight into porting issues by GNOME hackers.
Second Law of Blissful Ignorance
If the recording companies don't deserve money for promoting and selling recording than who does.?
The music studios don't deserve royalties in the my.mp3.com case. In case you didn't know Mp3.com debuted a free service called Beam-It at my.mp3.com. This service enabled people to play CDs from an online collection if they had previously proved that they own the CDs by having the CD in the CD-ROM drive and registering it.
Somehow the record labels felt that MP3.com owed them money for broadcasting music on the net without paying them licence fees similar to what Radio stations pay. This ignores the fact that all the people listening to the music already own the CDs being played. Of course all the members of the RIAA filed suit and MP3.com settled with most of them for about $20 million a piece except for Universal that pressed on with a lawsuit and won over $100 million.
The my.mp3.com will return but will be a pay service to offset the damage from the lawsuits. During Napster hearings certain Senators including Orrin Hatch realized that the RIAA was abusing copyright laws in an attempt to maintain a monopoly on legitimate means of digital distribution of music. The new laws that are pending indicate that Congress feels that the RIAA did not and does not deserve payment when people are accessing music they already own from an online site.
Second Law of Blissful Ignorance
Bruce Eckel's Thinking In Java is free as in speech and as in beer for the online version. The entire book is free to download and the author has consented to allowing people to print copies of the book from the online version (which is traditionally against copyright law).
He accepts corrections and updates from most people as well as sample code. In this sense it is free as in speech. Read what people have had to say about the book.
What's really cool is that the book has turned out to be so good that many people I know still ; buy the dead tree version. Best of all it doesn't use any proprietary formats but instead good old HTML.
Second Law of Blissful Ignorance
Maybe because there aren't any geeks in Africa?
This is probably one of the stupidest things I have ever read on slashdot.
I am African, lived there most of my life and was a geek there and am a geek here and will be a geek when I go back. I know 9 programming/scripting languages, I'm familiar with 4 RDBMS systems (Oracle, SQL server, DB2, Interbase), I'm into distributed computing (Java-RMI and CORBA), if I was graduating from college today I'd do so with highest honors, I am an avid Chinese history buff, I played D and D as a kid (in Africa), I owned an Amiga as a kid, I TA two different programming classes(C and Java), and have already turned down several employment opportunities from Fortune 500 companies because they didn't feel right. In all honesty, I almost flunked out of high school in Africa and most of my friends were a lot more geeky than I was, IMHO I'm nowhere near as smart or geeky as a lot of the people I went to school with, who I am in constant contact with via email and instant messenger (didn't think they had that in Africa huh?).
Anyway as for the article, Linux being free as in beer doesn't mean jackshit. Copyright laws are not enforced in most third world nations. I've seen pirated CDs for Windows NT SP 4, Starcraft, Adobe Photoshop, Oracle 8, Microsoft Office, Visual Studio, etc. for $5 to $10. I also saw a lot more people using Windows than *nix, in fact very few people even knew what *nix systems were while everyone knew Windows.
Yesterday while reading the GeorgiaTech technique yesterday I noted that the school officials raised a number of valid points such as
Apart from the fact that Tech feels it is not under any legal obligation to enact a ban, attempting to ban Napster without limiting Internet access in other ways is nearly impossible from a technological standpoint. "At a university like Georgia Tech, such a solution is impractical. Further, even if we found a temporary method, our students are bright enough to find ways around it," said Harty.
Too true, blocking Napster's default port simply means that other ports will be used.
"We will, of course, take swift action regarding any specific instances of infringement of your clients' copyrighted materials once they are brought to our attention."
Under the provisions detailed in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Tech is considered an Internet Service Provider.
So there will still be disciplinary action against those who have been shown to violate copyright materials. So what is the point of asking for a ban except as a hamfisted attempt to bully schools that have a combined legal might that dwarfs Metallica's?
The point (I believe) was that those actions are bad because they constitute a hardware upgrade treadmill that breaks compatibility and limits choice.
What's funny about this statement is that companies are constantly stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to backwards compatibility. Intel's x86 architecture is primarily flawed due to it's support of legacy crap. MSFT's operating systems were largely unstable due to supporting legacy 16-bit applications as well as shitty third party drivers.
Yet when these companies make a clean break and design a new architecture that works better, people like you start to scream about how they are gouging the consumer by not supporting all sorts of brain dead legacy crap.
I guess that goes to show that you can't please everyone.
I don't really understand why this is news or why it is even a big deal. If some emulator writer is having difficulty writing emulators on or for Macs or Wintel boxes, it isn't the fault of MSFT, Apple or Intel but instead it is his fault for basing his business on the whims of third party companies whose business decisions he has no control over.
The author goes on and on blaming other companies for assumptions that he makes, instead of correctly realizing that the basing business decisions on the behavior of others who are not under your control or whom at least you do not have direct access to is folly of the highest order. Blaming the architecture of Mac OS X and Windows Millenium is a coward's way out. The truth is Apple and MSFT are under no obligation to make their Operating System's easy for Joe Random Hacker to emulate.
Apple and MSFT have specifically rewritten their new Operating Systems to target the problems that have been leveled at them in the past (multitasking in Apple's case, instability in MSFT's case) and did not and should not have considered whether the improvements to their Operating Systems suddenly make emulation software more difficult to write.
Pardon my lack of artistical sense but there's nothing new in these snapshots
So what? Exactly why should there be any change in the basic WIMP interface of Windows or any other OS for that matter? It's not like there are leaps in interface design from successive versions of Unix, Linux or even the Macintosh instead most changes have been gradual over time.
OK, some icons are a bit bigger but I really don't understand where all that hype comes from ?
In this vein, nowhere have I seen MSFT touting their whizzbang new improved user interface but instead they have touted the improved reliability, scalability and robustness of their new systems which if making the switch from NT to Win2K is true. Maybe you are mistaking MSFT for Apple?
This may shock you, but both sites get stories from user submissions. So all this means is that the some person posted both stories to Slashdot and kuro5hin, big freaking deal.
Repeat after me, no one is ripping off these companies. If some braindead MBA believes that selling stuff below cost in order to gain mindshare is a business plan, I am not obligated to satisfy his plans for me as a consumer by paying for a marked up service or accessory to something I got for free or below cost.
It strikes me that whenever a company comes out with something where they intend to make their profits from after-sale mechanisms, the first thing that people want to do is to try and avoid this.
I seem to remember one of the first things I was taught in Economics class being that consumers should be assumed as rational beings that will try their best to maximize their utility (i.e. consumer happiness) by paying as little as possible for a service. In my opinion a company that fails to factor in the lessons of ECON 101 while designing a business plan deserves to fail.
People like you who complain because consumers are not going along with a corporation's plan to sell them a marked up service or product shock me. I cannot for the life of me figure out why I should spend more than an item costs after other payments are factored in for the illusion of being given something for free. Anyone remember all those free PC companies that made you sign 3 year ISP contracts? Guess that means the PCs weren't so free, huh.
The report from PITAC's letter on Open Source Software makes three recommendations
First, the Federal government should aggressively encourage the development of open source software for high end computing. Adopting this recommendation will require a technical assessment of the software needs for high end computing as well as an innovative management plan and funding model for supporting this development.
This is the way it should always have been. Scientific endeavour has always been a group effort with advancements being made from the pool of common knowledge. It has always amazed me that large complex systems have therefore not been Open Sourced by default. In my opinion it is OK for rinky dink little programs to close their source especially since they can be written by anyone of capability (Instant Messengers, MP3 players, etc) but large complex systems (Operating Systems, large-scale distributed applications, etc) should be Open Sourced so that they can be subject to peer review and also so that they can add to the general body of knowledge instead of forcing us to constantly reinvent the wheel solving problems that have already been repeatedly solved.
I especially feel that code written with the benefit of my tax dollars should be Open Sourced so myself and others can have access to the fruits of our labor. After all, government funded research projects are open.
Second, a "level playing field" must be created within the government procurement process to facilitate open source development.
Too true, currently government requirements computer systems are usually exact specifications that can only be filled by closed source software. A loosening of the specificity in the specifications would be a boon to the adoption of Open Source software in government.
Third, an analysis of open source licensing agreements is needed, with an ultimate goal of agreeing upon a single common licensing agreement for open source software applications.
Again I have to be in agreement. After reading the recent spate of articles on who is not in compliance with the GPL(NASM, Phython, and until recently KDE) even though their projects are Open Source, I have strongly come to believe that the GPL is the worst license for any entity that expects to use software freely to use. The GPL (and RMS) is becoming a Borg-like in the way it is trying to usurp the intentions of authors of Open Source software everywhere by forcing them to assimilated. The quickest thing that will cool the government's ardor for Open Source software will be all the innumerable license incompatibilities caused by the GPL.
In my opinion, a BSD style license is the best license for governments, corporations, researchers and students. Users of BSD software can contribute to a common pool of knowledge and yet can modify the software without releasing changes when they see fit. This is true freedom. This is especially true when one realizes that Bruce Perens and RMS are currently in the process of updating the GPL so that even internally distributed software may count as software being distributed and hence should be Opened (this is from reading Bruce's comments from the past few weeks, if I have misinterpreted them, I apologize). I frankly do not believe that any entity, be it government, corporate or individual should release internally sensitive pieces of code simply to satisfy some pseudo-communistic ideal for software sharing.
If I give away software, it is with no strings attached because I want to improve the pool of general knowledge and share with my users, not to force the entire world into some college professors myopic view of what the world should be.
These are my opinions
CNN Reporter: I am reporting live from the offices of [insert TLA here] where news of the devastating Denial of Services [sic] attack has just been heard. Oh my God, What can we do? What does FBI think?
FBI spokesdroid:Like I said, if only they had let us install Carnivore in every ISPs server room, we could have stopped this.
NSA spokesdroid:Shutup fool, if only Echelon funding hadn't been stopped we would have nipped this in the bud.
Right-wing spokesdroid::Liars, liars, only installing censorware which blocks out images of "hacking" and "cranking" [sic] could have stopped this...
RIAA spokesfiend:Copy protection, ban Napster, steal consumer rights, kill, murder, hahahahaah.
CNN Reporter: Riiiiiiight. I guess we'll get nothing useful here. Back to the newsroom.