A bunch of judges decide take a stand against some bureaucrats who wanted to monitor their computer usage. Like I said: Oo-o-oh! What bravery. If you and I were to do that in our workplaces, we'd soon find that we'd be providing our professional services elsewhere. I'm not sure about New York but a lot of the judges here in Illinois are elected and it's pretty hard to get rid of them. Pretty easy to take such a stand when there are, essentially, no consequences. I wouldn't count on seeing these guys written about if Profiles in Courage II ever comes out.
Try siding with employees the next time a case involving workplace monitoring is brought to trial in your courtrooms. Then maybe this'll mean something.
``...they're going to try to roll out set top boxes that can decide whether or not we can tape a television broadcast, e-book readers that won't let friends share novels or libraries lend books, movies that we have to pay for each time we watch 'em, etc.''
It's already starting. If I use the optical output of my LD/DVD/CD player into the A/V receiver I get no analog output at the tape outputs. Now perhaps I've got more studying of the manuals to do but this wasn't a problem until I installed the optical cables. If dubbing to my cassette deck is, indeed, possible -- without having to get behind the equipment and recable -- they're sure as hell making it difficult. The audio electronics industry seems to be rolling over on command to whatever the music distribution industry want them to do. The video electronics manufacturers aren't quite so compliant (even some broadcasters seem to be balking at the pressure) but my guess is that they'll soon become trained lapdogs just like their audio brethren.
Why do I suspect that if the current procedures at the USPTO had been in effect at the close of the 19th century things many things that we taken for granted today would never had become invented or improved? The courts would have been clogged with inventors suing each other over who invented the automobile, light bulb, etc. and demanding royalties rather than competing with one another to make better products.
Gotta love their attitude that Amazon's and others' patents were all wrong but ``our's is different''. (Please explain how patenting the obvious is wrong in their case but not yours. This sort of reminds me of most citizen's views that most ``politicians are worthless... except the one's I voted for''.) That, in particular, cracked me up until I remembered that remark about ``you wanna do ASP, you gotta go through us''. Is this the sort thing that the USPTO is supposed to be supporting?
The subject sortof sums up how I buy motherboard/processors/etc. for my home systems. When Intel (or whoever) brings out their latest chip, I find great deals on the previous generation chips. I buy those chips at the higher clock speeds and then, lately, I'll use them in an SMP configuration. By the time I feel a need to upgrade again my systems are about 4-5 years old. However, I might just break with tradition soon and jump into a dual-Athlon board. Even doing that, it looks like I'd still save money over the latest Intel offering.
And since Windows only gets used for (infrequent) games, why would I want or need to have the latest and greatest Intel space heater sitting under my desk?
``The point is that music labels are very set in their ways, and changing those ways would be a big leap into the unknown, with certain disadvantages and only marginal possible benefits (for the labels, of course).''
\begin{sarcasm}
Yes. The music industry would be the first industry in the history of Capitalism that's had to take a chance.
\end{sarcasm}
The music labels seem to think that unless there are laws in place to prevent them from losing money like your average internet-based business (hell, any business) might experience, they can't possibly enter the arena of competition. Wah! I'm not gonna play if I can't win! After having used their pet law to sue their competition to death, only now do their supporters see just what the music industry's real plan was: eliminate the competition, then create the only game in town. It's so handy to be able to get Congress to make the competition illegal!
And what's with the $750K for the privilege of entering into negotiations? For an industry that's complaining about having had to defend itself numerous times over the years against claims of non-competitiveness, payola, etc., they sure aren't being terribly smart about that requiring fee. There's a parallel to the marketplace entrance barrier discussed in the Microsoft antitrust case if there ever was one.
``The "left brain/right brain" theorists will tell you that the in the "with music" group, the creative side of the brain was tied up listening to the music and wasn't available to make the jump of realizing the math reduced to an identity function.''
Seems to me I read something similar to this, oh about twenty years ago, in an article that attempted to explain why it was that more ``aha!'' kinds of discoveries seemed to come from scientists who were working in seclusion late at night. I used to work in the wee hours back then (we were working on early DGPS and SV coverage was sometimes limited to odd hours) and could understand how this could work. Few, if any, distractions from coworkers conversations, silly phone calls, working in a pretty rural setting where the radio stations tended to go off the air at night and, well, you had lot's of quiet time to work without interruptions. One could be very productive but it could be hell on anyone with a family. The problem was convincing my boss (and wife) that this was a good time to be in the office. Most of the time the boss wanted you in the office from 8-5 in addition to the times when you had SV visibility.:-( Even now, when I'm working on something at home, I often want to minimize the distractions. I find that they tend to reduce my focus on solving a problem. It's a courtesy to the rest of the family (who might actually want to sleep) to keep the music volume down or off altogether and I really don't like listening to music over headphones that much (although I sometimes do at work to reduce having to listen to some folks going on and on about their weekend golf outing).
``Benchmarks show that programs compiled with intels compiler using P4 optimisations, beat the crap out of the competition - including T-birds.''
What goes through the mind of vendors who assume that customers will, of course, run out and replace all their software to take advantage of a new chip.
Intel:
Buy systems with our new processor. It'll perform better than everything else!
Customer:
OK! (later) Hey this isn't so great! In fact, some things seem to run slower.
Intel:
Oh, that's your fault. You didn't replace all your existing software.
This sounds all too much like the music industry who thinks we'll run out and buy new copies of stuff we already own in order to enjoy some new technological advance.
I'm sure the P4 will be great... in a couple of years.
``This was a month ago on an entry-level Dimension L. Here's the link that *didn't* offer Linux.''
Does it bother anyone else that the ability to purchase a Dell system with Linux appears to have been limited to people who already have a PC and an internet connection? OK, or maybe those who go down to the local library and use their PC and 'net connection? The printed catalogs that I used to receive in the mail never had Linux as an option except for servers.
Of course Dell never sold many Linux desktop systems. Their advertising campaign was so low key that it'd make an NSA security officer jealous.
``Linux is still far from being mainstream capable. Installing that, for the common folk, is NOT easy.''
I have to wonder whether that's really true any more? Unless you're setting a system up for dual/multi-boot or manually selecting what packages to load, the installation process for most of the latest distributions hardly asks any questions that Joe Sixpack couldn't answer. Unless that timezone question is too tough for Joe.:-) Even partitioning can be fairly automatic. (Not that I'd like the way things get laid out using the automatic method.)
``some bash is very necessary in Linux''
IMHO... not really. Remember, all Joe wants to do is pound out a letter or connect to the internet so he can check out the sports scores (or his stock prices). How much shell programming is required to do that? Sometimes people in the tech realm forget that not everyone is using their PC to write code and tweak Makefiles with vi.
``compact and lightwieght rubiduim atomic clocks are commonly available on the commercial market''
And have been for quite a while. The rubidium frequency standards that Stanford Telecommunications (hmm, are they still around?) used in their rack-mounted time transfer receivers back in the mid-'80s weren't any bigger than about 3x3x4 inches. (Maybe a little bigger. I'm going from memory here.) I suspect the original poster probably had seen pictures of the atomic clocks at the USNO or something and thought that atomic clocks were all room-sized. Efratom was working on a 19-inch rack mounted hydrogen maser back in the early '80s but even that might have come down in size. Now, whether it'd fit in an ICBM...
``I have now recieved (sic) 1.1 gigabytes of sircam virus email attachments.''
And that's probably just from a half dozen attached MSWord interoffice memoes that could have conveyed the same information in, oh, about 20KB of plain text per document, right?
Can't anyone write a simple memo or office communication without using four different fonts and imbedded graphics any more? Some of the impact of things like SirCam are because of the feeling that many office workers have that their memoes won't be taken seriously unless they demonstrate their prowess in MSWord. Apparently they feel that, by not taking advantage of most of the available word processor options, their memo won't have the pizazz necessary to get their coworkers to stop leaving the empty coffee pot on the burner.
Anyway... Does anyone know whether SirCam is pulling documents out of the default document location or is it scanning the entire hard disk for `*.doc'? If it's the former -- and without having read details on how SirCam works, I'm betting this is the case -- companies can limit their exposure by making sure that employees do not keep company confidential material in the default document directory. Or better yet, prohibit those documents from being stored anywhere but on a central file server and never on someone's unsecured desktop and definitely never on a laptop. Unless the company's management doesn't care if their strategic plans were on a stolen laptop, that is.
``You want these companies (sprint, etc.) to continue running the backbone of the Internet? You want them to maintain it? Fine, but don't expect them to do it for the love of mankind. They do it for money''
Right. People do pay Sprint, et. al., monthly fees. If this isn't enough to keep them in the business of providing internet access then there's obviously a problem. But I haven't seen too many posts demanding that they wanted free internet access.
As for:
``You don't like what Big Business is doing to the internet? Well, I don't like all of it either, neccessarily, but it's not illegal, or even unethical.''
I happen to think that it is unethical for Big Business to raise false alarms about how the internet is unreliable, inefficient, etc., etc., and then claim that it'll take Big Business to make everything better. It's a lie. I find those unethical.
We have something rather similar here in Chicago. Lot's of major businesses making public statements about how O'Hare Field needs major new runway expansion projects. ``The airport's broken! It's unreliable! Blah blah blah.'' Sound familiar? The prevailing attitude from Big Business is: ``Who cares what those people think is best; we in the business community knows what's best''. Guess who most of these business leaders are? Heads of companies that'll see major financial benefits if runway construction proceeds: construction companies, the airlines (does anyone seriously think that more runways is going to relieve congestion? Has adding more lanes to a highway ever provided more than a very short term relief from traffic jams before they got worse? No, but you can be sure that a similar argument for additional lanes was made by people whose interests were very well served by pouring more concrete), other companies whose products will be used for infrastructure, etc., not to mention trade union leaders looking for a quick means of justifying the dues that they take from each member's paycheck. Do I think this is unethical behaviour on the part of Big Business? Damn right! Is it any different from what's Big Business would propose for the internet? No.
This whole ``concern'' on the reliability of the internet on the part of Big Business is just a means of hyping some imaginary problem that they can later make tons of money from.
``People tend to forget that the entity that is the net is ultimately paid for by the consumer of the net.''
It sure seems that business people forget that. Those are the folks who happily send me junk mail that is most likely largely subsidized by the poor schmucks standing in line buying first class postage stamps to mail in their gas/water/electric bills or the occasional greeting card for someone's birthday through the regular mail. Then Mr. Businessman still complains about how expensive it is to use the mail. As long as it costs them anything at all, they'll bitch and moan about it.
``...adding "intelligent" switches and other devices, they believe, the system could work faster, avoid traffic jams, distinguish between high-priority data and other material that can wait, and generally live up to its promise...''
Let me guess... That would be Cisco's belief, right?
``generally live up to its promise as a worldwide communications
and entertainment medium.''
Who promised that it was going to be an enterainment medium? Please, we all
want to know who made that promise.
``because it is configured as a huge web of interconnecting
pipelines, the Internet is almost universally accessible and resistant to local
damage, political censorship or the designs of corporate landlords.''
And it's those last two items that have the status quo's underwear in such a
bunch.
``its shortcomings in service quality and reliability have lost
their charm, which is evident to anyone who has waited a seeming eternity for a
Web page to load or suffered through a weeklong outage in an e-mail account.''
Methinks that these problems are due to the servers installed at the sites
where users are experiencing such poor performance. Quit trying to blame the
poor performance of your web servers on the internet. ``Mr. businessman, you
need to upgrade your server hardware and/or your communications line(s)''. And
by ``weeklong outage in an e-mail account'', I take that was meant to refer to
the recent Passport fracas. Anybody who goes around telling reporters that this
was a fault of the overall architecture of the internet is a liar. Pure and
simple. It was an execrable architecture, software, policies, and procedures --
and almost certainly the execution of those procedures -- at a certain large
vendor of proprietary PC software that was responsible for that mess. Not the
internet.
``(IAB chairman) Klensin is equally critical of executives irked
by the difficulty of making money from the Internet the old-fashioned way by
controlling the customer's access to scarce resources and services. These
people, Klensin contends, need to look harder for novel ways to exploit the new
medium.''
Bingo! We could sure use more creative thinking and less ``but I learned how
to make money this way in business school'' lack-of-thinking. If you
cannot adapt then get out of the business of trying to make money on the
internet. There are plenty of other ways to make money in the world; find one
of those and stop trying to screw up something that you don't understand.
``The Internet service provider (Excite@Home), however, argues
that its subscribers remain free to surf the rest of the Web without
interference, and that @Home is merely improving access to material that might
prove especially popular.''
Well that material blessed with high-bandwidth accessibility is surely the
most popular with Excite@Home executives who certainly will charge whopping fees
to those providers for the privilege of getting it loaded more quickly onto the
computers of potential buyers.
``Giving Walt Disney Co. material preferential treatment, for
example, would not mean @Home would block its users' access to Disney rivals, he
said.''
Of course, Disney would never dream of offering to pay more to
Excite@Home (and @Home would never dream of offering that option;-) ) if
Warner Bros were unable to place content on that high-speed pipe. And while it
may not be blocked through some configuration on Excite@Home's network, it'll be
effectively blocked by forcing users to access it at near dial-up speeds
(or maybe a little better than that).
``Michael Roberts, former chairman of the Internet Corp. for
Assigned Names and Numbers, a public body that oversees the distribution of
Internet addresses. But he added, "It's too big, too important, too political
to be treated as something for only a band of talented engineers to preside
over."''
Should that have read ``Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, a
pseudo-public body''? And I like the overall tone of that comment:
``It's too complicated for y'all to let a bunch of geeks to care for. Heck,
most of these guys can't even get dates. Just leave it to business people.
They'll take care of you.''
And, of course, many of us have had the privilege of dealing with companies
with those highly-praised business motives who cannot seem to employ any of
those talented engineers. Hint: the internet needs those talented engineers to
keep things running smoothly far more than it needs those protectors of
Capitalism.
``"The [Internet] is in trouble because it threatens so much of
the establishment that it's provoked a backlash," (David) Isenberg
(telecommunications expert and former AT&T Laboratories network engineer) said.
''
Another Bingo! How did that fellow describe this sort of thing? Oh, yes: a
``disruptive technology''.
Oh, and you know for a fact that Schumer's receiving payments from Microsoft? Uh, OK. Anything you say. (I was unaware that the Branch Davidians were big Microsoft apologists.)
Actually if I was worried about unfair competition and made a comment like:
``he feared that without "significant changes," new technologies might never get the opportunity to compete.''
and the response from the Microsoft spokesperson (Vivek Varma) was:
``(Windows XP)... is designed to bring more choice and options to consumers, not fewer''
I'd sure be a little miffed and wanting to drag their sorry behinds in front of Congress to get an answer to my concerns. Just note how Microsoft didn't answer the question at all. Bundling more crap into XP might (perhaps) benefit some consumers but does not (in ant way) address the issue of competition. And Microsoft knows it.
Perhaps the reason some senators are now raising concerns about Microsoft is that they're afraid that they'll be seen by their constituents as having part in propping up a known and increasingly arrogant monopoly abuser by having taken all those campaign contributions from the Gang from Redmond and their cronies and making apologetic statements regarding Microsoft business activities during the past few years. Whatever the reason, if it results in more hearings, like those proposed, taking place and the public hearing more about Microsoft's shenanigans, then that's fine with me.
Actually, I'm looking forward to these Congressional hearings. It almost makes me wish I still had cable so I could tape CSPAN. Microsoft's spokespeople are such bad liars and the transcripts should make for some amusing reading. Let's just hope the press finds the hearings newsworthy enough to cover them and that a few more senators and representatives can keep their zippers up for the next few months.
``Did the box say anything about running on Windows and Macintosh? I bet it did. I bet they said right on the box what OS you could use.''
First of all, since when should HP have anything to do with telling anyone what software or hardware may be connected to one of the perpiherals that they sell? Normal people wouldn't go the the extreme of sueing HP for not fully supporting their particular configuration. Something tells me, though, that if push came to shove, HP would rely on some section of the law to defend their position. Gotta love the one-sidedness of the legal system, eh?
Second, that notice would be just fine if one is out there looking to buy some scanning software. The Cmdr wasn't. He wanted a piece of hardware and the vendor chose to limit the use of that hardware to those people running certain kinds of operating systems. Unless that scanner was some sort of ``WinScanner'' what would have been the difficulty for HP in providing information; especially since they used to do so. Those of us that have worked with HP equipment for years (even decades) came to expect high quality technical information coming with their products. For example, printers and plotters came with a programmer's guide. Now, apparently, some weenie in accounting decided that he could get a bigger bonus if he recommended that the company no longer provide such information. Even more worrisome is that someone upstream from him thought that giving the customers this information was no longer necessary. And, to boot, they wouldn't even allow you to purchase the information from HP. Who wouldn't be royally P.O.d. After long experience with HP, this attitude toward the purchasers of their products in recent years force me to no longer consider purchasing HP equipment.
On a similar note: I bought an external 56K modem that said it works with Windows and Macintosh. Huh? An external modem that requires a specific operating system? I bought it anyway after the saleperson said I could return it if there was a problem. You know what made it supported under Windows and Mac? The manuals on the accompanying CD-ROM were in proprietary format. I needed to print out the Windows-Help-formatted manual from a Windows-based system. Otherwise the hardware was perfectly compatible with non-Windows and non-Macintosh computers. Would it have killed the vendor to slap a ordinary text version of the manual on the CD-ROM in addition to the copies in the proprietary formats? Of course not.
IMNSHO, any company that decides that 10% of the market may be ignored should expect too many repeat customers from that 10%. And I have to wonder how many marketing managers would agree with anyone working for them that it just costs too much to provide simple information, like an interfacing manual in plain text format on the CD that they're already creating, in order to pull in customers from that 10%. If they're afraid that some yutz is going to call up and demand support for a problem involving a user-written driver than make it absolutely clear that this is not supported. But don't cut off the people who could use that information and wouldn't be so stupid to expect vendor support for something like that. All they'd need to say is:
``We provide drivers for Mac and Windows users. The accompanying programmer's guide contains information that could be used to write your own driver. Please note that XYZ Corporation cannot and will not provide support for problems associated with user-written software.''
Put it on the manual in a large typeface and in as many languages as possible. Reasonable people will heed the disclaimer. Of course, there are always unreasonable people who will call your 800 number and raise hell. Deal with them bluntly. (Not a blunt object, even though some could use it.)
``Kur05hin has implemented censorship and a no-Anonymous-Coward policy. Guess what, it seems to be working.
CmdrTaco brought up the linuxusb web site. If linux-usb wants to have a corperate friendly exterior, then it should censor its talkback posts to only relevant posts.''
Um... makes me wonder... What ever happened to moderated Usenet newsgroups? Are there any left? Ridiculous flamewars and blatently incendiary remarks were not allowed and it kept the SNR high. Most of the ones I remember were in the sci. groups (and similar). Can't remember any in comp.*. (Just thought of a funny thing: moderated newgroups under alt.*.) And, of course, someone had to volunteer to be moderator. Have we hit a shortage of them? (Sorry, but I'm not in a position to be stepping forward:-)
If an online forum really wants to remain useful to the participants, I can't see how you can avoid instituting moderation. It's not censorship to insist that people stay on topic and remain civil. If the immature folks avoid Kuro5hin because they can't make posts that don't use four-letter words in every other sentance and whose sole purpose seem to be to insult someone else, then great. You're not contributing anything useful to the `conversation' anyway and should go elsewhere. We'd do the same thing at a restaurant, bar, or other social gathering: ``Hey, buster! Any more of that or you're outta here!'' Maybe it doesn't work that well in a web-oriented discussion (where someone's got bills to pay and needs all the clicks they can get) but I don't think an online bouncer is such a bad idea.
I think that's on late Sunday night around here. I catch it sometimes. Mildly interesting.
Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!
If you mean Jerry Springer... I don't waste my time. Most of the people on stage remind me too much of my former neighbors when I was in grad school (S.E. Ohio).
National Geographic Channel (it's about time!)
Maybe, just maybe, you have something there. But I still find it more enjoyable to read the magazine in a comfy chair and a scotch.
History Channel
Saw some of it one night while on vacation. Better than most programming but, if memory serves, a little hung up on British royalty. But then PBS occasionally goes on those binges, too.
Discovery Channel (when they aren't the Cop Show Channel or the Shark Attack Channel)
Also OK. Neither this or the HC make me want to shell out $30/month for cable.
Nature (PBS)
OK. But too many reruns.
Nova (PBS)
I'd watch it more if they'd quit moving it around. Tuesdays at 8:00 PM is the time slot God intended it to be shown. Friday nights are stupid. Current theory around the household is that Friday night is the only night they didn't find people watching Antiques Roadshow. So little old ladies with an interest in antiques have a life but folks interested in science stay in on Friday nights? Also has too many reruns.
Louis Rukeyser (PBS)
Overpaid financial analysts spouting content-free financial advice (I suppose to stay out of trouble with the SEC). The first third is about the only part I find interesting. I normally turn it off when the quant lady ushers in the guests. And when is Rukeyser going to figure out that we laugh at him every time they come in for that close shot with the wide angle lense? It makes him look like your watching him through the security peephole in your front door.
Los Angeles Fox 11 News, because they said "fuck it, we're ratings whores after all" and now feature nothing but news chicks taunting the middle-aged anchor with bare belly buttons and tube tops for half an hour while showing the occasional footage of car chases and carrying on about celebrity gossip
I find that tuning in the game shows on the local Spanish language stations provides similar entertainment.
I haven't watched TV in nearly a week and haven't missed it. Weekends are about the only time I have time for it and if they offer up three golf tournaments shown at the same time again (like they did a week or so ago), I might give up on weekends as well.
--
But you can make it illegal by using nothing more complicated than XOR.
2. It opens the market for no-aligned TV channels to jump into to offer royalty free non-copy protected programing.
This may be twarted by having congress pass laws that to force everyone to join the alliance or protect alliance
members from "foreign" competition.
Heck, who needs Congress to get off their duffs about this. Bring in the WTO.
3. People aren't stupid.
But the Department of Education is working hard on this one.
4. Some kid from Europe/Asia/Africa/wherever will crack this "protection" in a matter of hours and post a program that
will let you take the DVI and/or Firewire signal, pipe it into your computer and recored shows all day long.
Ditto my above comment on the WTO. You think the MPAA and RIAA will not try to have this fall under the jurisdiction of some trade agreement rather than the courts? Hell, juries sometimes find the defendant innocent. (Can you believe it?)
If we are to beleive MS about WinXP. It's copy protection is only there to stop "casual" infrigment (two copies on your two home computers). It does NOTHING to stop the "billions" of dollars lost to pirates who sell software in Asia on a CD for $2.
This was already brought up in the DeCSS court proceedings. Did you forget already?:-)
First you provide what I would call ``oxymoronic'' programming -- content-free content -- that insults everyone who's got more than a half dozen brain cells. Then you want to restrict when we can see it. Next, you'll expect us to pay for it, too.
I've noticed my (and many friends', as well) TV viewing dropping precipitously in recent years. We had cable access for nearly ten years but turned it off in '91 and haven't missed it at all. I would like to buy a new set but there's so little worth watching that I cannot justify the cost. My rented videotapes and DVDs amount to 80%-90% of the use of our current set. Broadcast TV? I'd say that most of the time I'm only watching the Sunday morning political talk shows. What else is being offered that is worth my time?
So, keep it up guys! It won't be long before one point in the Nielsen ratings will correspond to 1000 homes. Of course, you'll find some means of explaining away the drop in corporate revenues.
Slashdot Mirror
And this the company whose software that the vast majority of ISPs insist that you use if you want to connect to the internet using their lines.
I think I'll have some new ammunition the next time I get into an argument with an ISP over what software I'm allowed to run.
Well... He's only parroting what what they told him in MCSE class!
A bunch of judges decide take a stand against some bureaucrats who wanted to monitor their computer usage. Like I said: Oo-o-oh! What bravery. If you and I were to do that in our workplaces, we'd soon find that we'd be providing our professional services elsewhere. I'm not sure about New York but a lot of the judges here in Illinois are elected and it's pretty hard to get rid of them. Pretty easy to take such a stand when there are, essentially, no consequences. I wouldn't count on seeing these guys written about if Profiles in Courage II ever comes out.
Try siding with employees the next time a case involving workplace monitoring is brought to trial in your courtrooms. Then maybe this'll mean something.
It's already starting. If I use the optical output of my LD/DVD/CD player into the A/V receiver I get no analog output at the tape outputs. Now perhaps I've got more studying of the manuals to do but this wasn't a problem until I installed the optical cables. If dubbing to my cassette deck is, indeed, possible -- without having to get behind the equipment and recable -- they're sure as hell making it difficult. The audio electronics industry seems to be rolling over on command to whatever the music distribution industry want them to do. The video electronics manufacturers aren't quite so compliant (even some broadcasters seem to be balking at the pressure) but my guess is that they'll soon become trained lapdogs just like their audio brethren.
Why do I suspect that if the current procedures at the USPTO had been in effect at the close of the 19th century things many things that we taken for granted today would never had become invented or improved? The courts would have been clogged with inventors suing each other over who invented the automobile, light bulb, etc. and demanding royalties rather than competing with one another to make better products.
Gotta love their attitude that Amazon's and others' patents were all wrong but ``our's is different''. (Please explain how patenting the obvious is wrong in their case but not yours. This sort of reminds me of most citizen's views that most ``politicians are worthless... except the one's I voted for''.) That, in particular, cracked me up until I remembered that remark about ``you wanna do ASP, you gotta go through us''. Is this the sort thing that the USPTO is supposed to be supporting?
The subject sortof sums up how I buy motherboard/processors/etc. for my home systems. When Intel (or whoever) brings out their latest chip, I find great deals on the previous generation chips. I buy those chips at the higher clock speeds and then, lately, I'll use them in an SMP configuration. By the time I feel a need to upgrade again my systems are about 4-5 years old. However, I might just break with tradition soon and jump into a dual-Athlon board. Even doing that, it looks like I'd still save money over the latest Intel offering.
And since Windows only gets used for (infrequent) games, why would I want or need to have the latest and greatest Intel space heater sitting under my desk?
\begin{sarcasm}
Yes. The music industry would be the first industry in the history of Capitalism that's had to take a chance.
\end{sarcasm}
The music labels seem to think that unless there are laws in place to prevent them from losing money like your average internet-based business (hell, any business) might experience, they can't possibly enter the arena of competition. Wah! I'm not gonna play if I can't win! After having used their pet law to sue their competition to death, only now do their supporters see just what the music industry's real plan was: eliminate the competition, then create the only game in town. It's so handy to be able to get Congress to make the competition illegal!
And what's with the $750K for the privilege of entering into negotiations? For an industry that's complaining about having had to defend itself numerous times over the years against claims of non-competitiveness, payola, etc., they sure aren't being terribly smart about that requiring fee. There's a parallel to the marketplace entrance barrier discussed in the Microsoft antitrust case if there ever was one.
Seems to me I read something similar to this, oh about twenty years ago, in an article that attempted to explain why it was that more ``aha!'' kinds of discoveries seemed to come from scientists who were working in seclusion late at night. I used to work in the wee hours back then (we were working on early DGPS and SV coverage was sometimes limited to odd hours) and could understand how this could work. Few, if any, distractions from coworkers conversations, silly phone calls, working in a pretty rural setting where the radio stations tended to go off the air at night and, well, you had lot's of quiet time to work without interruptions. One could be very productive but it could be hell on anyone with a family. The problem was convincing my boss (and wife) that this was a good time to be in the office. Most of the time the boss wanted you in the office from 8-5 in addition to the times when you had SV visibility. :-( Even now, when I'm working on something at home, I often want to minimize the distractions. I find that they tend to reduce my focus on solving a problem. It's a courtesy to the rest of the family (who might actually want to sleep) to keep the music volume down or off altogether and I really don't like listening to music over headphones that much (although I sometimes do at work to reduce having to listen to some folks going on and on about their weekend golf outing).
What goes through the mind of vendors who assume that customers will, of course, run out and replace all their software to take advantage of a new chip.
This sounds all too much like the music industry who thinks we'll run out and buy new copies of stuff we already own in order to enjoy some new technological advance.
I'm sure the P4 will be great... in a couple of years.
Does it bother anyone else that the ability to purchase a Dell system with Linux appears to have been limited to people who already have a PC and an internet connection? OK, or maybe those who go down to the local library and use their PC and 'net connection? The printed catalogs that I used to receive in the mail never had Linux as an option except for servers.
Of course Dell never sold many Linux desktop systems. Their advertising campaign was so low key that it'd make an NSA security officer jealous.
--
I have to wonder whether that's really true any more? Unless you're setting a system up for dual/multi-boot or manually selecting what packages to load, the installation process for most of the latest distributions hardly asks any questions that Joe Sixpack couldn't answer. Unless that timezone question is too tough for Joe. :-) Even partitioning can be fairly automatic. (Not that I'd like the way things get laid out using the automatic method.)
IMHO... not really. Remember, all Joe wants to do is pound out a letter or connect to the internet so he can check out the sports scores (or his stock prices). How much shell programming is required to do that? Sometimes people in the tech realm forget that not everyone is using their PC to write code and tweak Makefiles with vi.
--
And have been for quite a while. The rubidium frequency standards that Stanford Telecommunications (hmm, are they still around?) used in their rack-mounted time transfer receivers back in the mid-'80s weren't any bigger than about 3x3x4 inches. (Maybe a little bigger. I'm going from memory here.) I suspect the original poster probably had seen pictures of the atomic clocks at the USNO or something and thought that atomic clocks were all room-sized. Efratom was working on a 19-inch rack mounted hydrogen maser back in the early '80s but even that might have come down in size. Now, whether it'd fit in an ICBM...
And that's probably just from a half dozen attached MSWord interoffice memoes that could have conveyed the same information in, oh, about 20KB of plain text per document, right?
Can't anyone write a simple memo or office communication without using four different fonts and imbedded graphics any more? Some of the impact of things like SirCam are because of the feeling that many office workers have that their memoes won't be taken seriously unless they demonstrate their prowess in MSWord. Apparently they feel that, by not taking advantage of most of the available word processor options, their memo won't have the pizazz necessary to get their coworkers to stop leaving the empty coffee pot on the burner.
Anyway... Does anyone know whether SirCam is pulling documents out of the default document location or is it scanning the entire hard disk for `*.doc'? If it's the former -- and without having read details on how SirCam works, I'm betting this is the case -- companies can limit their exposure by making sure that employees do not keep company confidential material in the default document directory. Or better yet, prohibit those documents from being stored anywhere but on a central file server and never on someone's unsecured desktop and definitely never on a laptop. Unless the company's management doesn't care if their strategic plans were on a stolen laptop, that is.
--
I think I remember seeing pictures of some of the guys at BBN who were involved in the earliest days. Some of them had BEARDS! Just like Lenin!
--
Right. People do pay Sprint, et. al., monthly fees. If this isn't enough to keep them in the business of providing internet access then there's obviously a problem. But I haven't seen too many posts demanding that they wanted free internet access.
As for:
I happen to think that it is unethical for Big Business to raise false alarms about how the internet is unreliable, inefficient, etc., etc., and then claim that it'll take Big Business to make everything better. It's a lie. I find those unethical.
We have something rather similar here in Chicago. Lot's of major businesses making public statements about how O'Hare Field needs major new runway expansion projects. ``The airport's broken! It's unreliable! Blah blah blah.'' Sound familiar? The prevailing attitude from Big Business is: ``Who cares what those people think is best; we in the business community knows what's best''. Guess who most of these business leaders are? Heads of companies that'll see major financial benefits if runway construction proceeds: construction companies, the airlines (does anyone seriously think that more runways is going to relieve congestion? Has adding more lanes to a highway ever provided more than a very short term relief from traffic jams before they got worse? No, but you can be sure that a similar argument for additional lanes was made by people whose interests were very well served by pouring more concrete), other companies whose products will be used for infrastructure, etc., not to mention trade union leaders looking for a quick means of justifying the dues that they take from each member's paycheck. Do I think this is unethical behaviour on the part of Big Business? Damn right! Is it any different from what's Big Business would propose for the internet? No.
This whole ``concern'' on the reliability of the internet on the part of Big Business is just a means of hyping some imaginary problem that they can later make tons of money from.
--
It sure seems that business people forget that. Those are the folks who happily send me junk mail that is most likely largely subsidized by the poor schmucks standing in line buying first class postage stamps to mail in their gas/water/electric bills or the occasional greeting card for someone's birthday through the regular mail. Then Mr. Businessman still complains about how expensive it is to use the mail. As long as it costs them anything at all, they'll bitch and moan about it.
--
Let me guess... That would be Cisco's belief, right?
--
Who promised that it was going to be an enterainment medium? Please, we all want to know who made that promise.
And it's those last two items that have the status quo's underwear in such a bunch.
Methinks that these problems are due to the servers installed at the sites where users are experiencing such poor performance. Quit trying to blame the poor performance of your web servers on the internet. ``Mr. businessman, you need to upgrade your server hardware and/or your communications line(s)''. And by ``weeklong outage in an e-mail account'', I take that was meant to refer to the recent Passport fracas. Anybody who goes around telling reporters that this was a fault of the overall architecture of the internet is a liar. Pure and simple. It was an execrable architecture, software, policies, and procedures -- and almost certainly the execution of those procedures -- at a certain large vendor of proprietary PC software that was responsible for that mess. Not the internet.
Bingo! We could sure use more creative thinking and less ``but I learned how to make money this way in business school'' lack-of-thinking. If you cannot adapt then get out of the business of trying to make money on the internet. There are plenty of other ways to make money in the world; find one of those and stop trying to screw up something that you don't understand.
Well that material blessed with high-bandwidth accessibility is surely the most popular with Excite@Home executives who certainly will charge whopping fees to those providers for the privilege of getting it loaded more quickly onto the computers of potential buyers.
Of course, Disney would never dream of offering to pay more to Excite@Home (and @Home would never dream of offering that option ;-) ) if
Warner Bros were unable to place content on that high-speed pipe. And while it
may not be blocked through some configuration on Excite@Home's network, it'll be
effectively blocked by forcing users to access it at near dial-up speeds
(or maybe a little better than that).
Should that have read ``Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, a pseudo-public body''? And I like the overall tone of that comment: ``It's too complicated for y'all to let a bunch of geeks to care for. Heck, most of these guys can't even get dates. Just leave it to business people. They'll take care of you.''
And, of course, many of us have had the privilege of dealing with companies with those highly-praised business motives who cannot seem to employ any of those talented engineers. Hint: the internet needs those talented engineers to keep things running smoothly far more than it needs those protectors of Capitalism.
Another Bingo! How did that fellow describe this sort of thing? Oh, yes: a ``disruptive technology''.
Have a good one...
--
Oh, and you know for a fact that Schumer's receiving payments from Microsoft? Uh, OK. Anything you say. (I was unaware that the Branch Davidians were big Microsoft apologists.)
Actually if I was worried about unfair competition and made a comment like:
and the response from the Microsoft spokesperson (Vivek Varma) was:
I'd sure be a little miffed and wanting to drag their sorry behinds in front of Congress to get an answer to my concerns. Just note how Microsoft didn't answer the question at all. Bundling more crap into XP might (perhaps) benefit some consumers but does not (in ant way) address the issue of competition. And Microsoft knows it.
Perhaps the reason some senators are now raising concerns about Microsoft is that they're afraid that they'll be seen by their constituents as having part in propping up a known and increasingly arrogant monopoly abuser by having taken all those campaign contributions from the Gang from Redmond and their cronies and making apologetic statements regarding Microsoft business activities during the past few years. Whatever the reason, if it results in more hearings, like those proposed, taking place and the public hearing more about Microsoft's shenanigans, then that's fine with me.
Actually, I'm looking forward to these Congressional hearings. It almost makes me wish I still had cable so I could tape CSPAN. Microsoft's spokespeople are such bad liars and the transcripts should make for some amusing reading. Let's just hope the press finds the hearings newsworthy enough to cover them and that a few more senators and representatives can keep their zippers up for the next few months.
Cheers...
--
Um, unless I'm mistaken, isn't today also the anniversary of the first landing on the moon?
--
First of all, since when should HP have anything to do with telling anyone what software or hardware may be connected to one of the perpiherals that they sell? Normal people wouldn't go the the extreme of sueing HP for not fully supporting their particular configuration. Something tells me, though, that if push came to shove, HP would rely on some section of the law to defend their position. Gotta love the one-sidedness of the legal system, eh?
Second, that notice would be just fine if one is out there looking to buy some scanning software. The Cmdr wasn't. He wanted a piece of hardware and the vendor chose to limit the use of that hardware to those people running certain kinds of operating systems. Unless that scanner was some sort of ``WinScanner'' what would have been the difficulty for HP in providing information; especially since they used to do so. Those of us that have worked with HP equipment for years (even decades) came to expect high quality technical information coming with their products. For example, printers and plotters came with a programmer's guide. Now, apparently, some weenie in accounting decided that he could get a bigger bonus if he recommended that the company no longer provide such information. Even more worrisome is that someone upstream from him thought that giving the customers this information was no longer necessary. And, to boot, they wouldn't even allow you to purchase the information from HP. Who wouldn't be royally P.O.d. After long experience with HP, this attitude toward the purchasers of their products in recent years force me to no longer consider purchasing HP equipment.
On a similar note: I bought an external 56K modem that said it works with Windows and Macintosh. Huh? An external modem that requires a specific operating system? I bought it anyway after the saleperson said I could return it if there was a problem. You know what made it supported under Windows and Mac? The manuals on the accompanying CD-ROM were in proprietary format. I needed to print out the Windows-Help-formatted manual from a Windows-based system. Otherwise the hardware was perfectly compatible with non-Windows and non-Macintosh computers. Would it have killed the vendor to slap a ordinary text version of the manual on the CD-ROM in addition to the copies in the proprietary formats? Of course not.
IMNSHO, any company that decides that 10% of the market may be ignored should expect too many repeat customers from that 10%. And I have to wonder how many marketing managers would agree with anyone working for them that it just costs too much to provide simple information, like an interfacing manual in plain text format on the CD that they're already creating, in order to pull in customers from that 10%. If they're afraid that some yutz is going to call up and demand support for a problem involving a user-written driver than make it absolutely clear that this is not supported. But don't cut off the people who could use that information and wouldn't be so stupid to expect vendor support for something like that. All they'd need to say is:
Put it on the manual in a large typeface and in as many languages as possible. Reasonable people will heed the disclaimer. Of course, there are always unreasonable people who will call your 800 number and raise hell. Deal with them bluntly. (Not a blunt object, even though some could use it.)
--
Um... makes me wonder... What ever happened to moderated Usenet newsgroups? Are there any left? Ridiculous flamewars and blatently incendiary remarks were not allowed and it kept the SNR high. Most of the ones I remember were in the sci. groups (and similar). Can't remember any in comp.*. (Just thought of a funny thing: moderated newgroups under alt.*.) And, of course, someone had to volunteer to be moderator. Have we hit a shortage of them? (Sorry, but I'm not in a position to be stepping forward :-)
If an online forum really wants to remain useful to the participants, I can't see how you can avoid instituting moderation. It's not censorship to insist that people stay on topic and remain civil. If the immature folks avoid Kuro5hin because they can't make posts that don't use four-letter words in every other sentance and whose sole purpose seem to be to insult someone else, then great. You're not contributing anything useful to the `conversation' anyway and should go elsewhere. We'd do the same thing at a restaurant, bar, or other social gathering: ``Hey, buster! Any more of that or you're outta here!'' Maybe it doesn't work that well in a web-oriented discussion (where someone's got bills to pay and needs all the clicks they can get) but I don't think an online bouncer is such a bad idea.
--
BattleBots
I think that's on late Sunday night around here. I catch it sometimes. Mildly interesting.
Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!
If you mean Jerry Springer... I don't waste my time. Most of the people on stage remind me too much of my former neighbors when I was in grad school (S.E. Ohio).
National Geographic Channel (it's about time!)
Maybe, just maybe, you have something there. But I still find it more enjoyable to read the magazine in a comfy chair and a scotch.
History Channel
Saw some of it one night while on vacation. Better than most programming but, if memory serves, a little hung up on British royalty. But then PBS occasionally goes on those binges, too.
Discovery Channel (when they aren't the Cop Show Channel or the Shark Attack Channel)
Also OK. Neither this or the HC make me want to shell out $30/month for cable.
Nature (PBS)
OK. But too many reruns.
Nova (PBS)
I'd watch it more if they'd quit moving it around. Tuesdays at 8:00 PM is the time slot God intended it to be shown. Friday nights are stupid. Current theory around the household is that Friday night is the only night they didn't find people watching Antiques Roadshow. So little old ladies with an interest in antiques have a life but folks interested in science stay in on Friday nights? Also has too many reruns.
Louis Rukeyser (PBS)
Overpaid financial analysts spouting content-free financial advice (I suppose to stay out of trouble with the SEC). The first third is about the only part I find interesting. I normally turn it off when the quant lady ushers in the guests. And when is Rukeyser going to figure out that we laugh at him every time they come in for that close shot with the wide angle lense? It makes him look like your watching him through the security peephole in your front door.
Los Angeles Fox 11 News, because they said "fuck it, we're ratings whores after all" and now feature nothing but news chicks taunting the middle-aged anchor with bare belly buttons and tube tops for half an hour while showing the occasional footage of car chases and carrying on about celebrity gossip
I find that tuning in the game shows on the local Spanish language stations provides similar entertainment.
I haven't watched TV in nearly a week and haven't missed it. Weekends are about the only time I have time for it and if they offer up three golf tournaments shown at the same time again (like they did a week or so ago), I might give up on weekends as well.
--
Problems:
1. Copy protection is impossible
But you can make it illegal by using nothing more complicated than XOR.
2. It opens the market for no-aligned TV channels to jump into to offer royalty free non-copy protected programing. This may be twarted by having congress pass laws that to force everyone to join the alliance or protect alliance members from "foreign" competition.
Heck, who needs Congress to get off their duffs about this. Bring in the WTO.
3. People aren't stupid.
But the Department of Education is working hard on this one.
4. Some kid from Europe/Asia/Africa/wherever will crack this "protection" in a matter of hours and post a program that will let you take the DVI and/or Firewire signal, pipe it into your computer and recored shows all day long.
Ditto my above comment on the WTO. You think the MPAA and RIAA will not try to have this fall under the jurisdiction of some trade agreement rather than the courts? Hell, juries sometimes find the defendant innocent. (Can you believe it?)
If we are to beleive MS about WinXP. It's copy protection is only there to stop "casual" infrigment (two copies on your two home computers). It does NOTHING to stop the "billions" of dollars lost to pirates who sell software in Asia on a CD for $2.
This was already brought up in the DeCSS court proceedings. Did you forget already? :-)
--
... You still have another foot left.
First you provide what I would call ``oxymoronic'' programming -- content-free content -- that insults everyone who's got more than a half dozen brain cells. Then you want to restrict when we can see it. Next, you'll expect us to pay for it, too.
I've noticed my (and many friends', as well) TV viewing dropping precipitously in recent years. We had cable access for nearly ten years but turned it off in '91 and haven't missed it at all. I would like to buy a new set but there's so little worth watching that I cannot justify the cost. My rented videotapes and DVDs amount to 80%-90% of the use of our current set. Broadcast TV? I'd say that most of the time I'm only watching the Sunday morning political talk shows. What else is being offered that is worth my time?
So, keep it up guys! It won't be long before one point in the Nielsen ratings will correspond to 1000 homes. Of course, you'll find some means of explaining away the drop in corporate revenues.
--