One more small note to agree with just about everyone in this thread.
I went through the entire website linked to from this article. I didn't see any indication that this is the ONLY thing Mr. Surine does with his time! For all you know, this man could be spending his days raising money for Greenpeace, or EVEN programming this Linux software you think would be such a boon. Of course, even if this is how he is spending all his time, who's to say it is not of benefit to society?
Many of us have talents that we either don't use or use in an "irresponsible" fashion. In most cases, excepting talents in criminimal activity, this doesn't hurt society at all. In high school, I was pretty good at math, understood the physics I was taught, enjoyed history - heck, I enjoyed and was pretty good at just about every subject. Does that mean that I have some sort of responsibility to society to get degrees in every subject I have talent in and then work in all those fields?
The talent of people to entertain (this includes programmers of entertaining software, as well as actors, comedians, etc.), even in the most nonsensical and light-hearted ways, is something precious. The willingness to spend a lot of time to give people smiles and fun is a sign of dedication. Based on these criteria, porting Doom for use on digital cameras is not just justifiable, but it is serving the needs of those who are going to have fun playing with it.
Keep on keepin' on, entertainers. Without you, my job would rule my life, and NOBODY needs that!
Unlike telephone companies, cable companies are notorious for charging per cable outlet/cable box that is in the home. This despite the fact that the cable (television) bandwidth in use in the home is the same.
When my grandmother hooked up cable at her new house (several years ago), they wanted her to pay for both cable outlets (one in the living room and one in the basement) that were already inside the house if she wanted to use both of them. Fortunately, I was around at the time and told her not to do it. They then proceeded to cap the second outlet at the branch on the outside of the house. Once they were gone, I uncapped it and hooked up the second TV to cable.
Illegal? Possibly, but frankly I didn't care. This was not a case of using illegal means to procure cable service; it was getting service that ALREADY EXISTED! I was not going to have anyone in my family pay for something that wasn't costing the cable company anything, and I encouraged many others to do the same.
The same applies to broadband connections that are networked. In my house, we have DSL. We pay for 256/256 (up/down) service and routinely get 512/256 service, and we have a home network set up to allow two computers (at least one more on the way) to share the connection. Now, we can't get any more download speed than is currently allowed by line conditions, and we can't get any more upload speed than is allowed by the cap they have on uploads at the phone company. Were the terms of service to change and the phone company said that we were not permitted to run a home network attached to the DSL line without paying extra, I would smile, say "okey dokey" and then continue running the network.
The same thing would apply to a cable modem if I had it. The pipe coming in is the same width whether I have one computer attached or 20 computers attached, and I will NOT pay more just because I am using the system to its fullest advantage. While I encourage people to contact their cable/telephone companies to complain when these things happen, I also encourage people not to worry about it. It would be a very uphill climb for them to prosecute you for having a home network running, and if they did that or cut you off entirely they would lose that revenue; we all know that it is about the buck at the end of the day.
This term seems to be under some discussion here, so I thought it apropo to find a legal definition of the term. This is a paper that I found discussing the definition of a trade secret, how a company demonstrates that something is such, a quick history of the law and a description of the elements that have to be included in a lawsuit alleging that a secret has been stolen. Very interesting, and it seems that, yes, just about any piece of information can be classified as a trade secret provided some relatively vague standards are met.
We should be careful trying to figure out what a business model consists of by simply looking at what a consumer pays. After all, for $199 (the price of 18 months of the service), you can obtain a lifetime subscription to the service (which, by the way, brings the prices up to ReplayTV's prices which include the free subscription).
Both TiVo and ReplayTV offer placement on their 'recommendations' and 'themes' areas to media companies in order to point people toward their programs. I have ReplayTV and when you go to the "Sitcom" theme (a bad move in ANY case), you will find things weighted towards NBC. Fortunately, you don't HAVE to watch what the themes recommend and I have used the things three times in the last six months I've owned the box.
TiVo would not go out of business if people stopped paying for the subscriptions. TiVo MIGHT go out of business if the "big boys" of the industry decide that they are facilitating copyright infringement and send 100 of their beautifully attired mouthpieces to bury them in paperwork with a lawsuit.
I doubt that the TiVo management appreciates ANY of the hacking being done on their devices. Each step taken in that direction potentially costs them money, particularly the question of upgrades. $300 for a hard drive and installation? I certainly would never pay that much or let my family/friends pay that much, so TiVO probably really wants that money. Turn it into an MP3 player? That's money that Sony, Phillips and other hardware manufacturers may lose when they market their own component-grade MP3 hard-drive solutions.
I think we should wait until a more clearly "official" word comes from TiVo before we start sending the kudos flying too fast.
I'd love to see new laws for a lot of things, particularly copyright and search&seizure, in this age of technological advance. I just don't see it happening, with members of Congress only interested in chiseling out political advantages with the laws that they modify and create.
Look at campaign finance reform. This is an area that has screamed out for true reform over the past three decades, yet even those congress critters who speak out vociferously in favor of reform rarely go ahead and present a bill detailing their concepts. These people are so afraid of not being reelected that true sweeping change has become extinct in their halls.
I believe that the only way real change will come is through some form of national initiative system where voters can put forth their own bills and then, at some point, vote on them directly. They would still be subject to review for form by the government, and then will be subject to upholding or overturning by the court system in terms of their constitutionality, but I think this is the only shot we have left in the current political climate.
Of course, for this to happen we have to get past problem number one (Congress critters) in order to take the first step towards this kind of change toward "real" democracy. How likely do you think THAT is?
This would be a great idea...If we trusted our elected officials any more than the appointed/hired ones that control the FBI, CIA, NSA, ad infitum. The same has been said about copyright, which is becoming an antiquated set of laws in addition to being unclear and foolish in the first place; yet, I have seen nobody in our government step up and say, "Here is my plan for changing copyright laws to deal with the technology and ideas of the next millenium." The chance that our beloved legislature(s) will step up to the plate and rewrite laws regarding wire-tapping, search and seizure, etc. is very small (and if they do, they'll F it up anyway).
The devil you know is better than the devil you don't. Take the precautions you can; they'll only get better.
Stupid office politics involved in the gonerment? Sheer inefficiency? I've worked in many offices, and nearly all have had those. The only one that left out the "sheer inefficiency" was one where I wrote half the SOPs. Laziness is another thing that is rampant *throughout* our society, and as consumers we pay for all of it.
If government ineptitude were the only issue, I would have no problem with simple requiring probable cause for wire-tapping, cable-tapping, etc. After all, how much do you have to fear from someone who is just lazy and incompetent (if you are at work, look to your right and then to your left to see at least one of those people)? The people in government you have to worry about are the malignant power graspers; those are the ones who are going to manufacture excuses to tap phones and the like.
Someone mentioned Martin Luther King, Jr. and it's useful to keep in mind that good ole J. Edgar was in charge of that operation. Since then, the FBI has been kept under pretty tight control in terms of what it is permitted to do. While it's true that they can probably find a reason to tap anyone's phone, I still haven't heard any strange clicks or tones and I haven't been brought before a judge...
Recent tumble probably *should* be Slashdot fodder
on
Tech Stocks Tumble
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· Score: 1
Considering that one of the biggest factors contributing to the recent fall in stock prices is related to technology stocks, there's some merit to the idea that there should be some information here on Slashdot. The facts that Internet stocks have become the "in" place for people to invest and that the majority of these companies have yet to make dollar one should be of concern to techies as well as to the computer illiterates. This is particularly true of businesses that are currently posting large sales because of heavy discounting (loss-leader) that they are not going to be able to maintain indefinitely. At some point, either the market as a whole is going to realize that these stocks are overvalued or Internet companies are going to start going bankrupt. Either occurrence is going to precipitate falls in stock prices that are going to make the crashes of 1929 and 1989 look like amusing jokes. Oddly enough, this DOES worry be a bit.
Slashdot Mirror
I went through the entire website linked to from this article. I didn't see any indication that this is the ONLY thing Mr. Surine does with his time! For all you know, this man could be spending his days raising money for Greenpeace, or EVEN programming this Linux software you think would be such a boon. Of course, even if this is how he is spending all his time, who's to say it is not of benefit to society?
Many of us have talents that we either don't use or use in an "irresponsible" fashion. In most cases, excepting talents in criminimal activity, this doesn't hurt society at all. In high school, I was pretty good at math, understood the physics I was taught, enjoyed history - heck, I enjoyed and was pretty good at just about every subject. Does that mean that I have some sort of responsibility to society to get degrees in every subject I have talent in and then work in all those fields?
The talent of people to entertain (this includes programmers of entertaining software, as well as actors, comedians, etc.), even in the most nonsensical and light-hearted ways, is something precious. The willingness to spend a lot of time to give people smiles and fun is a sign of dedication. Based on these criteria, porting Doom for use on digital cameras is not just justifiable, but it is serving the needs of those who are going to have fun playing with it.
Keep on keepin' on, entertainers. Without you, my job would rule my life, and NOBODY needs that!
When my grandmother hooked up cable at her new house (several years ago), they wanted her to pay for both cable outlets (one in the living room and one in the basement) that were already inside the house if she wanted to use both of them. Fortunately, I was around at the time and told her not to do it. They then proceeded to cap the second outlet at the branch on the outside of the house. Once they were gone, I uncapped it and hooked up the second TV to cable.
Illegal? Possibly, but frankly I didn't care. This was not a case of using illegal means to procure cable service; it was getting service that ALREADY EXISTED! I was not going to have anyone in my family pay for something that wasn't costing the cable company anything, and I encouraged many others to do the same.
The same applies to broadband connections that are networked. In my house, we have DSL. We pay for 256/256 (up/down) service and routinely get 512/256 service, and we have a home network set up to allow two computers (at least one more on the way) to share the connection. Now, we can't get any more download speed than is currently allowed by line conditions, and we can't get any more upload speed than is allowed by the cap they have on uploads at the phone company. Were the terms of service to change and the phone company said that we were not permitted to run a home network attached to the DSL line without paying extra, I would smile, say "okey dokey" and then continue running the network.
The same thing would apply to a cable modem if I had it. The pipe coming in is the same width whether I have one computer attached or 20 computers attached, and I will NOT pay more just because I am using the system to its fullest advantage. While I encourage people to contact their cable/telephone companies to complain when these things happen, I also encourage people not to worry about it. It would be a very uphill climb for them to prosecute you for having a home network running, and if they did that or cut you off entirely they would lose that revenue; we all know that it is about the buck at the end of the day.
This term seems to be under some discussion here, so I thought it apropo to find a legal definition of the term. This is a paper that I found discussing the definition of a trade secret, how a company demonstrates that something is such, a quick history of the law and a description of the elements that have to be included in a lawsuit alleging that a secret has been stolen. Very interesting, and it seems that, yes, just about any piece of information can be classified as a trade secret provided some relatively vague standards are met.
Both TiVo and ReplayTV offer placement on their 'recommendations' and 'themes' areas to media companies in order to point people toward their programs. I have ReplayTV and when you go to the "Sitcom" theme (a bad move in ANY case), you will find things weighted towards NBC. Fortunately, you don't HAVE to watch what the themes recommend and I have used the things three times in the last six months I've owned the box.
TiVo would not go out of business if people stopped paying for the subscriptions. TiVo MIGHT go out of business if the "big boys" of the industry decide that they are facilitating copyright infringement and send 100 of their beautifully attired mouthpieces to bury them in paperwork with a lawsuit.
I doubt that the TiVo management appreciates ANY of the hacking being done on their devices. Each step taken in that direction potentially costs them money, particularly the question of upgrades. $300 for a hard drive and installation? I certainly would never pay that much or let my family/friends pay that much, so TiVO probably really wants that money. Turn it into an MP3 player? That's money that Sony, Phillips and other hardware manufacturers may lose when they market their own component-grade MP3 hard-drive solutions.
I think we should wait until a more clearly "official" word comes from TiVo before we start sending the kudos flying too fast.
Look at campaign finance reform. This is an area that has screamed out for true reform over the past three decades, yet even those congress critters who speak out vociferously in favor of reform rarely go ahead and present a bill detailing their concepts. These people are so afraid of not being reelected that true sweeping change has become extinct in their halls.
I believe that the only way real change will come is through some form of national initiative system where voters can put forth their own bills and then, at some point, vote on them directly. They would still be subject to review for form by the government, and then will be subject to upholding or overturning by the court system in terms of their constitutionality, but I think this is the only shot we have left in the current political climate.
Of course, for this to happen we have to get past problem number one (Congress critters) in order to take the first step towards this kind of change toward "real" democracy. How likely do you think THAT is?
This would be a great idea...If we trusted our elected officials any more than the appointed/hired ones that control the FBI, CIA, NSA, ad infitum. The same has been said about copyright, which is becoming an antiquated set of laws in addition to being unclear and foolish in the first place; yet, I have seen nobody in our government step up and say, "Here is my plan for changing copyright laws to deal with the technology and ideas of the next millenium." The chance that our beloved legislature(s) will step up to the plate and rewrite laws regarding wire-tapping, search and seizure, etc. is very small (and if they do, they'll F it up anyway). The devil you know is better than the devil you don't. Take the precautions you can; they'll only get better.
Stupid office politics involved in the gonerment? Sheer inefficiency? I've worked in many offices, and nearly all have had those. The only one that left out the "sheer inefficiency" was one where I wrote half the SOPs. Laziness is another thing that is rampant *throughout* our society, and as consumers we pay for all of it. If government ineptitude were the only issue, I would have no problem with simple requiring probable cause for wire-tapping, cable-tapping, etc. After all, how much do you have to fear from someone who is just lazy and incompetent (if you are at work, look to your right and then to your left to see at least one of those people)? The people in government you have to worry about are the malignant power graspers; those are the ones who are going to manufacture excuses to tap phones and the like. Someone mentioned Martin Luther King, Jr. and it's useful to keep in mind that good ole J. Edgar was in charge of that operation. Since then, the FBI has been kept under pretty tight control in terms of what it is permitted to do. While it's true that they can probably find a reason to tap anyone's phone, I still haven't heard any strange clicks or tones and I haven't been brought before a judge...
Considering that one of the biggest factors contributing to the recent fall in stock prices is related to technology stocks, there's some merit to the idea that there should be some information here on Slashdot. The facts that Internet stocks have become the "in" place for people to invest and that the majority of these companies have yet to make dollar one should be of concern to techies as well as to the computer illiterates. This is particularly true of businesses that are currently posting large sales because of heavy discounting (loss-leader) that they are not going to be able to maintain indefinitely. At some point, either the market as a whole is going to realize that these stocks are overvalued or Internet companies are going to start going bankrupt. Either occurrence is going to precipitate falls in stock prices that are going to make the crashes of 1929 and 1989 look like amusing jokes. Oddly enough, this DOES worry be a bit.