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User: shiffman

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  1. Re:Set time limit on First Amendment? on Who Owns The Facts? · · Score: 1

    Nope, Congress can't do that. The whole section you quote makes no sense. Congress doesn't give the Supreme Court the right to declare a law unconstitutional; the Constitution does. And Congress can't take it away; that requires an Amendment, which has to be passed by Congress and then ratified by a super-majority of the states.

    So if what you quote is indeed in the act, it's somebody writing something that's unenforceable.

  2. Re:Petitions Are Pointless on Slashback: Princeton, Terror, Farscape · · Score: 1

    First of all, I find it difficult to take someone seriously who uses gay as a perjorative. In this context it doesn't even make sense.

    But with that said, I firmly believe that the folks who threw their energy into the Save Farscape campaign did indeed use their time wisely. They felt a connection that's rare in the world of mass entertainment, to the stories being told, to those who told the stories and to others who shared that connection. I'm pleased and more than a little bit proud to be one of them.

    Scapers are some of the brightest, most interesting and all around nicest people I know. We'd begun getting benefits from the campaign right from the beginning. And not just the unprecedented press coverage, either. But the notes of thanks from cast and crew, who aren't used to having their fans tell them how much their work means to them. And the Scaper community, which gets a little bigger every day; that's been the best part of all of this.

    If Sci Fi had been half as good at promoting Farscape as its fans have been since the cancellation, none of this would have been necessary. I'm sure the makers of the DVDs are thrilled that an obscure cancelled low-rated show is doing such good business for them.

  3. This is the same Charles Murray on Human Accomplishment · · Score: 1

    who appeared on Politically Incorrect a few years back, where he advocated the elimination of the US Department of Agriculture, or at least that part of the USDA responsible for food safety. Murray argued that there was no need for the government to intervene, since no businessman would risk his business and his customers' lives through substandard practices.

    Obviously, Mr. Murray had never heard of the Jalisco Cheese Company. Or Bon Vivant vichyssoise. Or any other case where companies have, through carelessness or malice, put their profits ahead of the safety of their customers. And just as clearly, Mr. Murry doesn't understand the law of averages any better than the punters at the slot machines in Vegas. Because the first law of averages is that, given enough time, the combination you don't want always comes up.

    I knew after that PI broadcast that Mr. Murray was a charlatan, a demagogue or a fool. More likely some combination of the three. The pap in his latest work confirms that earlier opinion.

  4. Re:Microsoft is scared on Microsoft Dismisses Apple's iTunes for Windows · · Score: 1

    If it were only about the remaining 30%, it wouldn't be worth doing.

    No, this is about growing the market. If iTMS has 70% of the legal download market today based on Mac owners in the US, that says that the market in the US is easily twenty times as big as it is now. Add Europe, Asia and the rest of the world and you can double or triple it again. At least; I'm trying to be conservative here. And all of those people are up for grabs; they're not using any legal download service today.

    Between the music service and the hardware business (iPods first, Macs next), the potential for Apple is enormous. Already half their iPod business is on Windows; with iTunes and iTMS available the ration could become 5:1 or 10:1 Windows:Mac within a year. And that's assuming there isn't a trickle of Windows users becoming Mac owners.

    Whatever happens, it's hard not to see Apple growing some solid business from their push into music.

  5. Re:Can you only download songs in AAC ? on Apple Releases iTunes for Windows · · Score: 1

    I don't think that's fair. Apple used AAC in iTMS instead of MP3 because they could support the DRM required by the record labels in AAC and couldn't do it in MP3. Which is the same reason all those other online music services use WMA instead of MP3. But at least the DRM Apple uses isn't so restrictive.

  6. Re:Talk about innocent until proven guilty... on California Tries Spam Ban · · Score: 1

    You're required to have a driver's license to prove your right to drive. It's not the police's responsibility to prove you're unlicensed, right?

    In any event, I expect this means that the sender has to be able to show where they got the recipient's name and how the recipient signed up. Given the lies most spam contains about "you signed up with us or with one of our (unnamed) partners", this just puts the shoe on the other foot.

  7. Re:Apple screwed the pooch. on Technical Glitches Plague BuyMusic.com · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't think it's stupid at all. Apple's not ignoring the larger Windows market; a Windows version of iMS has been in the plans from the moment it was announced. But which would be more foolish: debugging a high volume system with a smaller market before opening it up to the entire world? Or the BM approach: try to tackle the big market all at once and fail in a spectacular way?

    I don't think BM will affect Apple's chances with iMS for Windows. I believe that market is Apple's to lose, at least as long as the only competition is as arrogant and incompetent as Mr. Blum and his minions.

  8. Re:MIPS on Dvorak Thinks Apple Will Switch to Intel · · Score: 1

    MIPS has less future in desktops and servers than PowerPC. Most of MIPS's sales are for embedded applications, not computers. Back in 1999, SGI began plotting its move to Intel and Linux. This was in response to the lack of performance and price/performance of MIPS vs. Intel and the problems getting or even keeping third party software on a platform with a small installed base.

    Heck, I'm surprised you didn't suggest Alpha. I'm sure Digital/Compaq/HP would be glad to sell that technology for a song!

  9. Re:Let me get this straight... on All-New PowerBooks, Web Browser Featured at Macworld · · Score: 1
    The browser is integrated into the OS? I don't mean to troll, but it annoys me that this is tossed off lightly as an aside of "Oh, and the browser is integrated." How many thousands of posts have been made on this site flaming Microsoft for doing this exact same thing?

    Don't sweat it. As far as I can tell from the keynote and from playing with the beta, Safari is not integrated into the OS any more than any other browser that runs on OSX. I think what was meant is that the browser is well integrated with the OS, i.e. it takes advantage of all the wonderful features of the OS. Since Safari is a standalone download, it's clearly not part of the OS the way Microsoft's browser is in Windows.

    What appear to be cool about Safari are its speed and its compatibility with web standards, with a less important bullet being its feature set. (At least in comparison to Chimera, my browser of choice.)

  10. Re:What I want to know about Peter Jackson on LOTR: The Two Towers · · Score: 2, Interesting

    On the contrary, listening to his commentary on the extended edition of FotR and the supplementary material makes it clear (to me, anyway) that he knows, understands and respects the material very well. I was stunned to discover just how well.

    In the commentary, he discusses in detail the reasons for most of the alterations he made. And most of these can be described as "the pacing just wouldn't work in a film", a point of view with which I agree.

    What comes across on the DVDs is that this was a labor of love by everyone involved and that they were determined to translate the story to film in a way that does it justice.

    Accuse Jackson of anything you like. But ignorance or disinterest? Not a chance.

  11. Re:Donate.. on Slashback: Drivers, Bodycomputing, Farscape · · Score: 1

    Apology accepted and appreciated. I think it's extreme to see something like this as an either/or situation. I think we should support both those in need and activities we believe in on a more personal level. I just get bothered by a knee jerk response to fans willing to put up money for something they want. In the end, is it really any different than all those $10 tickets to Lord Of The Rings?

  12. Re:Donate.. on Slashback: Drivers, Bodycomputing, Farscape · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And what makes you think we don't already donate a few bucks, or more than a few, to deserving charities?

    Or do you think museums and symphonies should be plowed under to make way for soup kitchens? Supporting the arts, and I do consider Farscape to be art, shouldn't have to apologize for not being about subsistance.

  13. Re:Other Issues on Worst Buy · · Score: 1

    IANAL. But this has come up many times in regard to Fry's Electronics, where the employees at the door checking receipts are referred to as The Final Indignity.

    Anyway, according to the Answer Line column in the San Jose Mercury News, stores like Fry's have no legal right to stop you unless they have reasonable suspicion of theft. And all the times I've walked right by, often bypassing a line of sheep waiting to surrender their dignity, I've only had an employee try to stop me once. Verbally.

    By the way, again according to the Merc, membership stores like Costco do have the right to stop you. It's one of the rights you sign away when you become a member.

  14. Think from a customer standpoint on New Microsoft Feature: Planned Obsolescence · · Score: 2
    One aspect of software rental that I haven't seen discussed (or maybe I've missed the discussion) relates to a major reason customers don't upgrade: incompatibility with their existing data, documents, other applications or whatever. The assumption behind subscriptions to software is that new versions are the same as old ones, only with additional features, support for new hardware and/or bug fixes. But the reality is that every upgrade involves a significant risk. Customers delay upgrades as long as they can, knowing that they'll end up having to upgrade a lot more than the one package. And worse, they may have to replace packages that work fine but aren't compatible with the newly upgraded package and are no longer being maintained.

    So imagine this scenario: three years from now your license to Win2k expires. And Microsoft don't want to give you a key to unlock it for a further three years; they want you to move to Win2k+3 so they can reduce their support burdens, lock you into a new set of ABIs or whatever. So you're forced to upgrade. And now you're faced with a hard deadline to upgrade everything, convert data from formats they or other software vendors have decided are passe and find replacements for apps that Microsoft has put out of business either intentionally or accidentally.

    Software rental is a bad idea for the same reason ASPs are a bad idea: you're giving up control of something fundamental to someone who has interests other than yours.

  15. I'm unimpressed on A New Tack In Search Engine Formulation · · Score: 2
    Being the egotist I am, I decided to try them out by looking for my own pages. My home page was there, sort of. What's interesting, and indicative to me of just how badly their approach works, is that the one link I found is a good five years out of date. It found a bookmark to the site when it resided on my former employer's server. (I acquired my domain almost four years ago.) Worse, it includes an intermediate directory that was made unnecessary almost a year before that.

    All of which suggests to me that their attempt to eliminate human effort will produce a lot of old garbage (I don't clean up my bookmarks; do you?) and the obvious set of well known corporate sites.

  16. Re:Not sure I understand. on Dave McAllister (SGI) on Linux and Chilli · · Score: 1
    In the case of SGI (where I worked until a couple of months ago), the problem has been and continues to be applications. Getting essential commercial software ported to your platform is obscenely expensive. And that's if the vendor will do the port at all. SGI's reliance on MIPS and its own UNIX has limited software availability. And that places severe limits on the customers it can attract, no matter how neat its technology.

    Once SGI decided to move to IA64 (and IA32) the decision to embrace Linux became obvious. For SGI the greatest virtue of Linux is as a shrinkwrap platform for Intel software. They can save themselves a huge expense by not having to attract all that undifferentiated software to their systems. (A moment of silence for all my friends who used to work in the Developer Program.)

    But this means that binary compatibility is essential. Anything that breaks compatibility destroys the value of Linux to SGI. (And, I assume, to the other vendors.) Binary compatibility wasn't an issue when every UNIX vendor had their own processor. But now it's the most important point.

    (There are other attractions to Linux, of course. But without that huge binary compatible software base it wouldn't be nearly so compelling for SGI.)