Agreed! I have no idea what makes this any different from previous similar releases of code. Its excellent news that HP have decided to support Open Source though - wonder how long it will be before the boys at Redmond try to come up with their own version - Visual E-Speak anyone?;-)
Echoing what most people seem to agree on - surveillance and crime prevention is a good thing, but who decides what is 'normal' or 'social' behaviour? Some might argue that the practice of monitoring peoples behaviour and then judging them and sorting them based on their actions is not normal! Who watches the watcher?!
Can you believe it? Some idiot loses all his money and tries to blame it on the credit card company - what a loser. Next he'll try to sue his ISP for allowing him to access the gambling site in the first place?!
The thing that bugs me is that at the end of the day, this guys lawyer is going to make money trying this case. What a waste of time and effort when there are other things people could spend their time doing.
Agreed - I know the fundamentals of things like VBScript and have used Visual Basic and C++ and Pascal (yes really!) to a limited extent. Anyone got any pointers for any good online resources for learning things like CGI and Perl?
This is the problem with any new technology - there is an upside and a downside. Without advances in nuclear technology we wouldn't have power stations that are capable of generating huge amounts of electricty, but we also wouldn't have the H-Bomb and regrettable incidents like Hiroshima and Chernobyl.
This project would conceivably give us the techniques needed to erradicate disease and suffering from illness, but the flip side is - "Is this a good thing or not?". Obviously preventing suffering is a good thing, but with less disease, life expectancy increases and overpopulation becomes a problem.
I think the threat of using this technology to buy 'perfect babies' is probably less of a problem. There would be strict legislation on this kind of use of research, and although like today there are bound to be a few people who abuse the sysetem, overall the pros outweigh the cons.
Overall, I think that this is 'a good thing'. If we can get closer to ending cancer and heriditary illnesses then the world will be a better place. I can't wait to hear the legislative argument though!;-)
Agreed - the problem as far as he music companies are concerned is the lack of ability to stop this kind of activity. As gooboy pointed out - stereos can duplicate cassettes. BorgDrone suggests that FTP and HTTP programmers shold also be sued for providing tools for duplicting illegal material, and what about CDRs? It's so easy to duplicate material of any type now - cassette, CD, MP3 etc etc - the music companies are just over frustrated that there's nothing they can do to prevent it, so are venting their frustrations on those people that visibly going against their wishes.
Didn't a similar case come up with Lycos' MP3 search engine? (Lycos) that never went anywhere? Same argument - they aren't breaking the law, but simply supplying tools that could be used to break the law. You can't sue for that - you'd have to sue makers of hammers, guns, and anything else used by criminals.
I think the real shame here is that the cable company haven't viewed this as an opportunity to further their broadcast technology. iCrave have come up with a cool way to broadcast to people over the web, but have unfortunately broken copyright laws in order to do it. Mr Corporate Cable guy has then jumped in with both feet and decided to sue. Surely there could be a collaboration of some sort here that would allow people to get better access to these channels?
It's a bit like the MP3 argument all over again - excellent distribution medium, excellent quality product - but unfortunately against copyright and therefore illegal.
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Agreed! I have no idea what makes this any different from previous similar releases of code. Its excellent news that HP have decided to support Open Source though - wonder how long it will be before the boys at Redmond try to come up with their own version - Visual E-Speak anyone? ;-)
Echoing what most people seem to agree on - surveillance and crime prevention is a good thing, but who decides what is 'normal' or 'social' behaviour? Some might argue that the practice of monitoring peoples behaviour and then judging them and sorting them based on their actions is not normal! Who watches the watcher?!
Can you believe it? Some idiot loses all his money and tries to blame it on the credit card company - what a loser. Next he'll try to sue his ISP for allowing him to access the gambling site in the first place?!
The thing that bugs me is that at the end of the day, this guys lawyer is going to make money trying this case. What a waste of time and effort when there are other things people could spend their time doing.
Agreed - I know the fundamentals of things like VBScript and have used Visual Basic and C++ and Pascal (yes really!) to a limited extent. Anyone got any pointers for any good online resources for learning things like CGI and Perl?
This is the problem with any new technology - there is an upside and a downside. Without advances in nuclear technology we wouldn't have power stations that are capable of generating huge amounts of electricty, but we also wouldn't have the H-Bomb and regrettable incidents like Hiroshima and Chernobyl.
;-)
This project would conceivably give us the techniques needed to erradicate disease and suffering from illness, but the flip side is - "Is this a good thing or not?". Obviously preventing suffering is a good thing, but with less disease, life expectancy increases and overpopulation becomes a problem.
I think the threat of using this technology to buy 'perfect babies' is probably less of a problem. There would be strict legislation on this kind of use of research, and although like today there are bound to be a few people who abuse the sysetem, overall the pros outweigh the cons.
Overall, I think that this is 'a good thing'. If we can get closer to ending cancer and heriditary illnesses then the world will be a better place. I can't wait to hear the legislative argument though!
Sorry - wouldn't have heard about the White House statement being based in UK! Thanks for the pointer. ;-)
Agreed - the problem as far as he music companies are concerned is the lack of ability to stop this kind of activity. As gooboy pointed out - stereos can duplicate cassettes. BorgDrone suggests that FTP and HTTP programmers shold also be sued for providing tools for duplicting illegal material, and what about CDRs? It's so easy to duplicate material of any type now - cassette, CD, MP3 etc etc - the music companies are just over frustrated that there's nothing they can do to prevent it, so are venting their frustrations on those people that visibly going against their wishes.
Didn't a similar case come up with Lycos' MP3 search engine? (Lycos) that never went anywhere? Same argument - they aren't breaking the law, but simply supplying tools that could be used to break the law. You can't sue for that - you'd have to sue makers of hammers, guns, and anything else used by criminals.
I think the real shame here is that the cable company haven't viewed this as an opportunity to further their broadcast technology. iCrave have come up with a cool way to broadcast to people over the web, but have unfortunately broken copyright laws in order to do it. Mr Corporate Cable guy has then jumped in with both feet and decided to sue. Surely there could be a collaboration of some sort here that would allow people to get better access to these channels?
It's a bit like the MP3 argument all over again - excellent distribution medium, excellent quality product - but unfortunately against copyright and therefore illegal.