Re:Sounds remarkably like a LASER
on
Stop, Light.
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· Score: 1
Well my first thought on that one was if they have to flash a second light though the gas to 'revive' the first one....where does the second light go? How do they know that the light they think is the 'revived' light is not a variant of the second flash? I'm not a physicist, but I wish there were a BIT more details for the layman.
Go to freshmeat.net and do a search on 'xarchon'. Its a nice clone that works on linux.
Re:Irrelevant to most of us
on
Death March
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· Score: 1
As was stated by others, that kind of attitude neither contributes to a good working environment nor does it contribute to good results either. I find that kind of thinking an epidemic among those "programmer-analysts" who got into the business with a quickie-course, thinking about the money they could make. Programmers who love what they do (if not the company they work for) tend not to think that way IMHO.
I've done some consulting/contracting, and while its true that most times you can manage/negotiate your own deadlines, that doesn't mean that contracting is free of deathmarches...if through inexperience you underestimate the effort involved that could be a killer. Or if you run into a serious bug that just won't die or changing specifications (the proverbial moving target).
As for them "stealing" the ISPs bandwidth, the telemarketers "steal" phone bandwidth from the telephone company and the mail ads "steal" bandwidth from the post office, both of which they end up charging back to me
Actually, telemarketers PAY phone bills for the "bandwidth" they use, and mail marketting companies PAY the post office for the bulk mail they send out. HOWEVER, spammers rarely pay ANYONE for the bandwidth they steal...and even if my ISP doesn't pay per byte, the thousands of emails they send through the pipe slows down MY service, loads their servers and costs ME and the ISP time and money through delays, maintenance, whatnot.
I get ads from some companies 3 or 4 times a week. Does that mean all ads are bad? No, spam can be used or abused just like any other form of advertising.
I don't know about you, but to me, responsible advertising means that its paid for (not stolen from the customers you are trying to attract) and ASKED for, not pushed on the customers you are trying to attract. Basically, if I see a commercial on TV, that company paid for that spot and that money underwrites the show I am watching, if I get an advertisment in the mail, it didn't cost ME anything but the time it took to throw it away because that company PAID the post office to mail it to me, email advertisement that I REQUESTED is something that I ASKED FOR and is of interest TO ME...spam email on the other hand, I didn't ask for, wasn't paid for and is USUALLY (lamely) disguised as something else to make it harder to filter out and the fact that I got it means that my bandwidth is busier and less responsive than it could have been without it
If history (remember that kiddies) has taught us anything it's that the big companies that once roared tend to get the smack-down after fscking the public over many years.
Lets just hope that in THIS case, history repeats itself rather than having a corporation learn from it and parlay that knowledge into a foolproof way to avoid getting "the smack-down" while fscking the public.
Now, I'm not a M$ fan myself...but reading this story makes me wonder...
I think the allegations MAY be true of course and its not that surprising...however, could it POSSIBLY be that the reason the *nix flavors are still in use is the slow change/upgrade rate of monolithic organizations.
I myself work for an organization that is a fair size and I can't tell you how far behind we are in upgrading departments we get under our control. The mentality is "if it ain't broke don't fix it" and any alteration to "better" software is left alone until the very last minute...much to the screams of frustrated programmers who have to deal with diverse fossil software packages.
Copyright law are built around the concept of preventing other people from creating. If you create something, you copyright it, and therefore prevent other people from creating that as well...
How do you get that? From what I can see, copyright law (the spirit of it that is) allows a creator (whether music, literature etc) a fair amount of time to profit from his own creation. In other words, if I put a lot of work into a song or a novel, the idea of copyrighting assures me that someone won't turn around, take MY work and make a ton of money by stealing the revenue that would normally come to me.
The problem that a lot of people on here seem to have, that they use to justify things like Napster, is that musicians don't see a whole lot from CD sales. The article did go into that fact a lot. I don't agree with a "middleman" screwing over content creators and I don't buy their sob stories that they are losing SO much money from "pirating". That said, I also don't think that free trading of copyrighted works is a moral thing to do. Its a grey area to me.
I'd love to see a new business model evolve from here, one that CUTS OUT the middleman (Record labels) and puts the rewards where they SHOULD go, to the musicians...but should that happen, I think that the RIAA would go after THAT model just as fiercely as they are going after Napster, because as much as they shout "pirating" (and like I said before, they aren't completely wrong), their efforts are about ONE thing: Retaining control over a lucrative resource. End of story.
I may wrong, but I think you misunderstood what was said. In the example you used, in both situation, different IDEAS are visualised. HOWEVER, the "mentalese" that was refered to wasn't refering to specific ideas, but to the GRAMMAR in which the ideas were expressed in the mind. In other words, while your american and japanese persons might get different ideas, the method of expression in the mind would have the same structure.
If a few of them start running Linux, they'll eventually want other Linux programs that they're used to. This paves the way for more apps/games/et al in the future.
I agree in a way and disagree in another. I agree in that this can pave the way to a wider market acceptance of linux (assuming that this development goes beyong the obvious net-appliance applications) and will mean more stuff (games, apps etc...). HOWEVER, I fear that it will also lead to the "dumbing down" of the linux community/environment in general (this may be inevitable), I mean am I the only one who remembers the effect on Usenet newsgroups when the huge AOL client base was unleashed (example: THOUSANDS of messages with the complete previous texted quoted in several pages and a "ME TOO!" tagged at the end, and the tons of stupid questions from idiots who weren't interested in anything constructive as learning) ???
I don't want to fall prey to elitism, because I believe if someone who is inexperienced and wants to learn asks for help, then its a laudable thing for an experienced user to give it instead of just yelling "RTFM you loser!" etc... but I fear that the majority of AOLers do NOT fall into this category and will end up being so annoying and so clueless that if there are any diamonds in the rough so to speak, we won't see them.... this is from previous experience in the newsgroups.
Three years ago, a company wanted a domain because they were late to the party, and they paid money to get it. Now, they seem to be quite willing to sue or "arbitrate" when the deck is clearly stacked in their favor. "Not only aren't we going to pay you, we are going to make your life a living hell. Screw you for not having the foresight to know we want this domain."
Looking over news over the last few years, its increasingly the trend to sue rather than to pay. It seems that companies have learned that its easy and cheaper to use their attorney on retainers than it is to sit down and deal fairly. They do this with the little guy, because in that instance its GUARANTEED that he can't hire legal clout like they have and can't afford to deal with the hassles these people are paid to dish out 24h a day if need be. They also do this with competitors (ie: Patent cases) and smaller companies. Its a sad commmentary, makes me nervous too, but who said the world had to be fair?
"I'm not a procrastinator, I'm temporally challenged" - myself
Even more telling is their return policy which guarantees your money back if their software doesn't do what they say it will do...now I'm sure all the happy clueless little spammers will rush and get this app, misreading the return policy into a guarantee of profits when in fact all it promises is that you will reach a number of users
But then again, I wonder if ANY spamming company is stupid enough to guarantee profits? Anyone know?
The way I understand it, there are two factors at work here. First, there IS a small percentage of people who are dumb enough to buy from spammers (and there always will be until every one in the world is born as an experienced net user. Second, I'm betting that its the same phenomenon on the marketting side, companies try it, see the small (or negative) results and give it up...but for every company that does, there's five more clueless entrepeneurs who figure "What the hell, let's give it a shot" who create MORE spam.
I don't advocate illegal tactics, however, I only see one solution to the problem and that's to make it painful/annoying/costly/troublesome for people to use spam as a "legitimate marketting technique" (I actually was TOLD this from a company marketter when I called to complain about the spam). I would imagine that should this become a reality either by laws (and enforcement of those same laws) or by other means, then companies won't want to risk it. On a personal level, we can always "educate" the people around us about not buying spam products...
"I am NOT a procrastinator...I'm temporally challenged" - myself
Ownership is a "natural law". It is clear to everyone what it means to own, say, a car. It is a very basic concept. Copyright weakens the force of that natural law by removing certain rights from the purported "owner".
I understand what you are saying BUT wouldn't SOME difference have to be made between owning an artifact (ie: something solid, something constructed, like a car) as opposed to owning an IDEA (something that is necessarily intangible but still needs effort to create)?
In other words, I spend a lot of time and effort creating the (in my eyes) perfect song. Why is it wrong for me to want compensation for that? Why would it be wrong for me to tell you to either a) please not distribute this widely or b) not turn around and sell copies of YOUR instantiation of my idea.
Remember, when you buy a CD, you aren't buying the SONG per say, you are buying the physical manifestation of it (for lack of a better way to put it...if someone can say it better, please say so).
Let me ask you this: If you could get a CD (copy) for free of an artist you very much liked and admired and the artist asked for a donation, would you do it? Why or why not?
Sure I would. If I like the song, my donation (or purchase) would (Ideally) go to support the creator to allow him to be both rewarded for his creation and to continue and create MORE that I would enjoy.
Ending IP would change a lot of things, but I don't think the world would come to an end.
The world would probably NOT come to an end, true..but if there's little or no incentive for putting hard work to develop new ideas, new songs etc...will anyone still do it? (Probably, but not at the rate that people do now).
Now...all that being said, I also deplore the RIAA's tactics in this manner.
I agree with your solution and this is DEFINITELY one case where ALL or nothing makes sense, either you want your pages indexed or not.
The heart of the matter though isn't whether their pages can be metacrawled...it SEEMS that way, but its not. Its about using the court system as a legitimate tool of business, and its about misleading the customer. I mean, what does Ebay have to lose if a site displays the auctions on its site? I still have to bid there, I can't use another site. However, if BIGCOMPANY A has a mega web site with online shopping, BUT MEDIUMCOMPANY B also has one AND has significantly lower prices, BIGCOMPANY A would REALLY not want shoppers to have easy comparison...SO, they shut their site off from anything that will facilitate that and use the court's power to enforce this... Its a game where only consumers will lose.
Re:meeting people online
on
LonelyNet
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· Score: 2
I agree completely, BBSes DO offer much more social interaction...I always found them the best of both worlds. I met most of my friends on BBSes...in my "pre-internet" days. I did all the things with them on the BBSes that I do today on the net, chats, discussions/posts etc...but since it was a tighter, LOCAL community we always had face to face events and parties, which helped cement online relationships.
"USA Today reported that the techie nerd stereotype is so well entrenched that students in every grade ranked computer jobs near the bottom of their lists of career choices" All I can say is SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! Don't let the cat outta the bag...more bucks for US:)
I heartily agree with HamNRye. While PG is a laudable venture, it will never really take off unless it can appeal to a greater slice of people. For example, I am a voracious reader and the thought of free Etexts makes me drool but for two points: 1) I don't want to pay the currently high prices for a device to read Etext at my convenience, nor do I like to sit at my PC to read an Etext, free as it may be. 2) Most of the texts at PG that interest me are available for dirt cheap at many bookstores (used or otherwise, for example I just picked up a new hard cover containing all of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes writtings for 15 bucks canadian), even downloading them free and printing them out is more expensive (or close to it when you consider a nicer hard cover book). Once either market pressures, society or technical innovation eliminates the above two problems, I can see PG really taking off. Just my two cents
Slashdot Mirror
Oh DAMN! Forgot to carry the 2. BOOM.
Well my first thought on that one was if they have to flash a second light though the gas to 'revive' the first one....where does the second light go? How do they know that the light they think is the 'revived' light is not a variant of the second flash? I'm not a physicist, but I wish there were a BIT more details for the layman.
Go to freshmeat.net and do a search on 'xarchon'. Its a nice clone that works on linux.
As was stated by others, that kind of attitude neither contributes to a good working environment nor does it contribute to good results either. I find that kind of thinking an epidemic among those "programmer-analysts" who got into the business with a quickie-course, thinking about the money they could make. Programmers who love what they do (if not the company they work for) tend not to think that way IMHO.
I've done some consulting/contracting, and while its true that most times you can manage/negotiate your own deadlines, that doesn't mean that contracting is free of deathmarches...if through inexperience you underestimate the effort involved that could be a killer. Or if you run into a serious bug that just won't die or changing specifications (the proverbial moving target).
They even have an app to train people on finding land mines!
Don't they already have something like that included in Windows? Whatchamacallit Minesweeper? :)
P.s: For the humor impaired - that was a joke
As for them "stealing" the ISPs bandwidth, the telemarketers "steal" phone bandwidth from the telephone company and the mail ads "steal" bandwidth from the post office, both of which they end up charging back to me
Actually, telemarketers PAY phone bills for the "bandwidth" they use, and mail marketting companies PAY the post office for the bulk mail they send out. HOWEVER, spammers rarely pay ANYONE for the bandwidth they steal...and even if my ISP doesn't pay per byte, the thousands of emails they send through the pipe slows down MY service, loads their servers and costs ME and the ISP time and money through delays, maintenance, whatnot.
I get ads from some companies 3 or 4 times a week. Does that mean all ads are bad? No, spam can be used or abused just like any other form of advertising.
I don't know about you, but to me, responsible advertising means that its paid for (not stolen from the customers you are trying to attract) and ASKED for, not pushed on the customers you are trying to attract. Basically, if I see a commercial on TV, that company paid for that spot and that money underwrites the show I am watching, if I get an advertisment in the mail, it didn't cost ME anything but the time it took to throw it away because that company PAID the post office to mail it to me, email advertisement that I REQUESTED is something that I ASKED FOR and is of interest TO ME...spam email on the other hand, I didn't ask for, wasn't paid for and is USUALLY (lamely) disguised as something else to make it harder to filter out and the fact that I got it means that my bandwidth is busier and less responsive than it could have been without it
If history (remember that kiddies) has taught us anything it's that the big companies that once roared tend to get the smack-down after fscking the public over many years.
Lets just hope that in THIS case, history repeats itself rather than having a corporation learn from it and parlay that knowledge into a foolproof way to avoid getting "the smack-down" while fscking the public.
I mean can you imagine FIVE hours of light elevator music?
What's the point of drinking coffee then?
I mean what's next...non-alcoholic beer?
;)
Good point.
Now, I'm not a M$ fan myself...but reading this story makes me wonder...
I think the allegations MAY be true of course and its not that surprising...however, could it POSSIBLY be that the reason the *nix flavors are still in use is the slow change/upgrade rate of monolithic organizations.
I myself work for an organization that is a fair size and I can't tell you how far behind we are in upgrading departments we get under our control. The mentality is "if it ain't broke don't fix it" and any alteration to "better" software is left alone until the very last minute...much to the screams of frustrated programmers who have to deal with diverse fossil software packages.
Copyright law are built around the concept of preventing other people from creating. If you create something, you copyright it, and therefore prevent other people from creating that as well...
How do you get that? From what I can see, copyright law (the spirit of it that is) allows a creator (whether music, literature etc) a fair amount of time to profit from his own creation. In other words, if I put a lot of work into a song or a novel, the idea of copyrighting assures me that someone won't turn around, take MY work and make a ton of money by stealing the revenue that would normally come to me.
The problem that a lot of people on here seem to have, that they use to justify things like Napster, is that musicians don't see a whole lot from CD sales. The article did go into that fact a lot. I don't agree with a "middleman" screwing over content creators and I don't buy their sob stories that they are losing SO much money from "pirating". That said, I also don't think that free trading of copyrighted works is a moral thing to do. Its a grey area to me.
I'd love to see a new business model evolve from here, one that CUTS OUT the middleman (Record labels) and puts the rewards where they SHOULD go, to the musicians...but should that happen, I think that the RIAA would go after THAT model just as fiercely as they are going after Napster, because as much as they shout "pirating" (and like I said before, they aren't completely wrong), their efforts are about ONE thing: Retaining control over a lucrative resource. End of story.
I may wrong, but I think you misunderstood what was said. In the example you used, in both situation, different IDEAS are visualised. HOWEVER, the "mentalese" that was refered to wasn't refering to specific ideas, but to the GRAMMAR in which the ideas were expressed in the mind. In other words, while your american and japanese persons might get different ideas, the method of expression in the mind would have the same structure.
If a few of them start running Linux, they'll eventually want other Linux programs that they're used to. This paves the way for more apps/games/et al in the future.
I agree in a way and disagree in another. I agree in that this can pave the way to a wider market acceptance of linux (assuming that this development goes beyong the obvious net-appliance applications) and will mean more stuff (games, apps etc...). HOWEVER, I fear that it will also lead to the "dumbing down" of the linux community/environment in general (this may be inevitable), I mean am I the only one who remembers the effect on Usenet newsgroups when the huge AOL client base was unleashed (example: THOUSANDS of messages with the complete previous texted quoted in several pages and a "ME TOO!" tagged at the end, and the tons of stupid questions from idiots who weren't interested in anything constructive as learning) ???
I don't want to fall prey to elitism, because I believe if someone who is inexperienced and wants to learn asks for help, then its a laudable thing for an experienced user to give it instead of just yelling "RTFM you loser!" etc... but I fear that the majority of AOLers do NOT fall into this category and will end up being so annoying and so clueless that if there are any diamonds in the rough so to speak, we won't see them.... this is from previous experience in the newsgroups.
Three years ago, a company wanted a domain because they were late to the party, and they paid money to get it. Now, they seem to be quite willing to sue or "arbitrate" when the deck is clearly stacked in their favor. "Not only aren't we going to pay you, we are going to make your life a living hell. Screw you for not having the foresight to know we want this domain."
Looking over news over the last few years, its increasingly the trend to sue rather than to pay. It seems that companies have learned that its easy and cheaper to use their attorney on retainers than it is to sit down and deal fairly. They do this with the little guy, because in that instance its GUARANTEED that he can't hire legal clout like they have and can't afford to deal with the hassles these people are paid to dish out 24h a day if need be. They also do this with competitors (ie: Patent cases) and smaller companies. Its a sad commmentary, makes me nervous too, but who said the world had to be fair?
"I'm not a procrastinator, I'm temporally challenged" - myself
Even more telling is their return policy which guarantees your money back if their software doesn't do what they say it will do...now I'm sure all the happy clueless little spammers will rush and get this app, misreading the return policy into a guarantee of profits when in fact all it promises is that you will reach a number of users
But then again, I wonder if ANY spamming company is stupid enough to guarantee profits? Anyone know?
The way I understand it, there are two factors at work here. First, there IS a small percentage of people who are dumb enough to buy from spammers (and there always will be until every one in the world is born as an experienced net user. Second, I'm betting that its the same phenomenon on the marketting side, companies try it, see the small (or negative) results and give it up...but for every company that does, there's five more clueless entrepeneurs who figure "What the hell, let's give it a shot" who create MORE spam.
I don't advocate illegal tactics, however, I only see one solution to the problem and that's to make it painful/annoying/costly/troublesome for people to use spam as a "legitimate marketting technique" (I actually was TOLD this from a company marketter when I called to complain about the spam). I would imagine that should this become a reality either by laws (and enforcement of those same laws) or by other means, then companies won't want to risk it. On a personal level, we can always "educate" the people around us about not buying spam products...
"I am NOT a procrastinator...I'm temporally challenged" - myselfActually there ARE only 12 people who post to usenet, the rest are spammers or AOLers with "Me too" messages. :)
Ownership is a "natural law". It is clear to everyone what it means to own, say, a car. It is a very basic concept. Copyright weakens the force of that natural law by removing certain rights from the purported "owner".
I understand what you are saying BUT wouldn't SOME difference have to be made between owning an artifact (ie: something solid, something constructed, like a car) as opposed to owning an IDEA (something that is necessarily intangible but still needs effort to create)?
In other words, I spend a lot of time and effort creating the (in my eyes) perfect song. Why is it wrong for me to want compensation for that? Why would it be wrong for me to tell you to either a) please not distribute this widely or b) not turn around and sell copies of YOUR instantiation of my idea.
Remember, when you buy a CD, you aren't buying the SONG per say, you are buying the physical manifestation of it (for lack of a better way to put it...if someone can say it better, please say so).
Let me ask you this: If you could get a CD (copy) for free of an artist you very much liked and admired and the artist asked for a donation, would you do it? Why or why not?
Sure I would. If I like the song, my donation (or purchase) would (Ideally) go to support the creator to allow him to be both rewarded for his creation and to continue and create MORE that I would enjoy.
Ending IP would change a lot of things, but I don't think the world would come to an end.
The world would probably NOT come to an end, true..but if there's little or no incentive for putting hard work to develop new ideas, new songs etc...will anyone still do it? (Probably, but not at the rate that people do now).
Now...all that being said, I also deplore the RIAA's tactics in this manner.
...reasonable isn't what companies are after.
I agree with your solution and this is DEFINITELY one case where ALL or nothing makes sense, either you want your pages indexed or not.
The heart of the matter though isn't whether their pages can be metacrawled...it SEEMS that way, but its not. Its about using the court system as a legitimate tool of business, and its about misleading the customer. I mean, what does Ebay have to lose if a site displays the auctions on its site? I still have to bid there, I can't use another site. However, if BIGCOMPANY A has a mega web site with online shopping, BUT MEDIUMCOMPANY B also has one AND has significantly lower prices, BIGCOMPANY A would REALLY not want shoppers to have easy comparison...SO, they shut their site off from anything that will facilitate that and use the court's power to enforce this...
Its a game where only consumers will lose.
I agree completely, BBSes DO offer much more social interaction...I always found them the best of both worlds. I met most of my friends on BBSes...in my "pre-internet" days. I did all the things with them on the BBSes that I do today on the net, chats, discussions/posts etc...but since it was a tighter, LOCAL community we always had face to face events and parties, which helped cement online relationships.
"USA Today reported that the techie nerd stereotype is so well entrenched that students in every grade ranked computer jobs near the bottom of their lists of career choices" All I can say is SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! Don't let the cat outta the bag...more bucks for US :)
Mmmmm this day seems no different than any other one to me...how odd. HEY!!! :)
I heartily agree with HamNRye. While PG is a laudable venture, it will never really take off unless it can appeal to a greater slice of people. For example, I am a voracious reader and the thought of free Etexts makes me drool but for two points: 1) I don't want to pay the currently high prices for a device to read Etext at my convenience, nor do I like to sit at my PC to read an Etext, free as it may be. 2) Most of the texts at PG that interest me are available for dirt cheap at many bookstores (used or otherwise, for example I just picked up a new hard cover containing all of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes writtings for 15 bucks canadian), even downloading them free and printing them out is more expensive (or close to it when you consider a nicer hard cover book). Once either market pressures, society or technical innovation eliminates the above two problems, I can see PG really taking off. Just my two cents