But most content distributors depend heavily on popularity and social network effects to gain and retain their audience. For ad supported distribution, the vast majority who ignore the ads (either using technical means or by simply just not paying attention).
In the case of TV (the parent post), those "leeches" who didn't watch or pay attention to a single commercial, yet engage in a lively discussion about the show at their workplace or among friends are certainly contributing to the shows popularity, which directly impacts the network's ad revenue.
In the case of Livejournal, the hoards of free users create the bulk of the user community, which forms the appeal of using Livejournal (rather than any of the other identical sites using the same sofware, much like slashdot, cause LJ publishes their code as open source).
Even this post is contributing to slashdot (perhaps positively, perhaps negatively). The site's popularity is of critical importance to its ability to generate revenue, from ads or other means. So call me a leech, cause I've blocked the ads.
People who block ads need to be prepared for subscription fees.
Why?
This falacy is called "false dichotomy". Either view ads, or pay subscription. The falacy is the exclusion of other options, such as more sophisticated ad blocking software that tricks the site into believing the ad is shown. Or the site moving to a different revenue model. Or advertising adapting (eg, product placements). Or lowering the cost of producing and delivering the content.
Any content provider that relies on advertising for revenue will have to resort to subscriptions if viewers block or skip over their ads.
I would beg to differ.
Witness the repeated failure of micropayments. I tend to agree with O'Reilly, that anymore more than "free", no matter how little, requires spending decision making effort. It's just too high a barrier for many types of content.
I believe there will always be a vast "market" for free content. Perhaps ads will continue to finance content production? Perhaps not. But the market will remain (unless O'Reilly turns out to be dead wrong and someone does figure out the utopia of micropayments), and content producers will adapt. Perhaps not the existing ones, but someone will. There's simply so much demand, and I'm confident there are smart people out there who will find ways to meet that demand, and make a profit in the process.
In my opinion, if you choose to block ads, that is your choice. It's your hardware and you should be able to decide what your computer downloads and displays. But once you've made the choice to block ads, don't complain when you have to fork up a couple bucks a month for everything you once got for free.
Why not complain? Certainly, most people will "complain" by simply not paying, and going elsewhere to find what they want.
And I'm confident there will be an "elsewhere", at least for anything mainstream. I don't claim to know if ads will continue to play a role in the future, or if other models will dominate, and certainly not what those models may be.
But already, a free/premium model is emerging, which has worked on slashdot and for years for Livejournal (and now, a free(no ads)/ad-supported/paid model is being tried). They've already been quite successful, and if this new approach works... it could mean the way of the future might be a combination of free WITHOUT ads, enhanced service with ads, and premium service with payment. That sounds quite different from dichotomy of "free with ads or pay up for no ads", doesn't it?
But whatever happens, I believe the disappearance of free content is very, very unlikely, regardless of the viability of ads. There's simply too big a "market" and too many smart and creative people.
Wow, this generalized how-the-world-oughta-be post (moderated to +5) demonstrates a complete lack of awareness of the specifics of Livejournal.
Its parent post is better, but equates this TOS change with "What if they suddenly insert a term that forces all their users to pay $100 a day or leave without even a change of retaining their data."
Crazy!
This is SO far off base from the reality of Livejournal.
If they want to start charging you for the service, I imagine they would at minimum have to provide you with a reasonable amount of time to become aware of the change and accept/consent. More likely, they'd have to get a positive indication of your acceptance in order to begin billing you.
Livejournal has offered both free and paid accounts for years.
Livejournal has a long history of giving advanced notice about planned changes, and inviting discussion, and keeping things compatible
On top of all that, the addition of ads is on an entirely new class of account. Yes, that's the truth. Rather than force ads onto everyone who has traditionally had ad-free accounts, they're leaving all those free accounts as they were, and adding a new class of account with a level of service above the free acct but below the paid acct, which is "paid" by the ads.
That is the real truth here, which is easily verified by reading the news over on Livejournal.
They're not suddenly forcing people to pay. They're not even changing the free accounts. And they DID talk about this for some time, in public, and invited discussion.
My point is, the Livejournal folks are pretty good people, trying to do their best. You wouldn't know if from all this ranting here, but it's pretty easy to see if you go check out the site and read what they're doing.
However, unless they'd made an explicit commitment to allow you access to get your files off their servers, I don't see any reason why they couldn't just cut off your access entirely until you agree to pay for the service. Unless you're paying for the service already, it's unlikely they have any contractual obligations toward you.
What if, what if, what if, and so on.
Livejournal has a very long history of great service. They have a great reputation, and it's a well deserved one.
Back here in the real world, what matters is not so much what theoretically would or wouldn't matter in a court. Livejournal is one of many free/inexpensive services, which are almost universally used by individuals for personal communication. This just isn't the sort of thing that goes to court over a dispute. Any "mission critical" blog is going to be hosted using its own domain name.
In reality, what matters is Livejournal's reputation, and that reputation depends mostly on how they treat their users, both free and paid. All this ranting is just nit picking about the TOS. What truly matters is what they actually DO. And I highly doubt it will be evil, given their very long history.
There's just one last bit of profound-lack-of-perspective to comment on,
Of course, IANAL... but I always assume any free service I use on the web (or anywhere else) is a fleeting thing that may vanish without notice. It generally seems fair to me, given that I'm getting something for nothing.
Certainly a business would want to use its own domain name.
But for individuals looking for a free service, Lifejournal has been operating for 7 years, and they have a successful business model based on maintaining free and paid accounts.
Yeah, in theory they could vanish tomorrow. But that's about an unlikely as slashdot, yahoo, google, and every other MAJOR successful website offering free services suddenly doing dark.
Great, you let people download the movie, but then they can't burn it to a DVD?
Even with downloaded music, you just gotta allow burning it to a CD so it can be enjoyed on all devices. Hard to imagine how movie downloads are going to sell if they can't be burned onto a DVD.
Anyone else got a favorite way of producing misleading bug scores?
How about claiming the counts massively inflate Linux bugs by duplicating distributions, when in fact the actual list does nothing of the sort. Scroll down to the Linux section, and notice how nearly all have "multiple vendors", when the bug impacts mulitple distributions.
As someone pointed out earlier, the updates were counted though, and which does inflate the linux sum quite a bit.
But sorry, here's the wording from from the DMCA that qualifies a circumvention device.
(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;
(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or
(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
So while it may be funny to think of scotch tape being outlawed, it just ain't gonna happen. Scotch tape is primarily designed and produced for another purpose, and a rather commercially significant one at that, so even if 3M becomes aware that it can be used this way, it still fails (A) and (B). To be a circumvention device, it has to be designed for that purpose, and (B) serves to exclude ordinary products like scotch tape, while also closing flimsey excuses (eg, this tv descrambler is any an attractive paperweight, so it has a legal use).
I'm not saying the DMCA doesn't suck. There's plenty wrong with it. But any notion it's not going to make common and useful products illegal is just humor. Or a myth. Or if taken seriously, maybe even FUD.
I'm perfectly fine with people being legally forbidden from bypassing digital locks without any argument as to why they have a valid reason to do so.
Wait for the next 3-year cycle to make such an arguement
Your arguement can only be valid if considerable harm has already been done
Your arguement must fit a certain set of rules, which are difficult
Your arguement's "valid reason" can not simply be that consumers are prohibited from doing something legal in a way they want. Being unable to play music on your ipod (even though it's a legal fair use) would not be a "valid reason" if some other player is available on the market, no matter how expensive and inconvienent it may be for you.
The people who review your arguement have a history of finding any excuse they can to reject such arguements. Even a perfectly good arguement may be rejected if they do not feel enough harm has been done year. You can try again in 3 years, maybe by then there will have been enough damage.
It is very unlikely that they included the text "LAME3.95" intentionally.
The much more likely explaination is that they used the LAME code, which happens to include this string, and didn't realize that is was still embedded in their final binary product.
It is easy to detect strings like "LAME3.95" (use the unix "strings" program). Further analysis, which is much more difficult, can show whether the binary code appears to be similar in structure to LAME. But because "LAME3.95" appears, it's a pretty good bet that such analysis is very likely to confirm that they used the LGPL licensed Lame code.
There just isn't much other plausible explaination for that string to appear in the binary code.
If they did in fact use Lame, not only would they be in violation of the copyright, but it's sure make they hypocrits, by infringing upon someone else's copyrighted work.
As well, the use of the mp3 encoding algorithm is covered by patents in the US. It's pretty unlikely they obtained the required license.
Many years ago, almost everybody was affraid to use Linux because you couldn't get support for it. Or at least so the common risk-adverse wisdom went. On-line community didn't count, "couldn't get support" meant someone you paid who would answer the phone for tech support.
There also wasn't anyone to sue if something went wrong. And there wasn't documentation. And there wasn't a 5 year road map so nobody was in control of its future. And more recently, you could be exposed to legal uncertainty.
Well, people aren't buying that old FUD anymore. So now we've got the new and improved FUD.
Now you can't get support if you've modified the code.
Next thing you know, there won't be documentation available for your own modification.
And then there won't be anyone to blame/sue if your own modifications don't work.
Your whole company will have an uncertain future because your modifications don't have a 5 year roadmap from an industry leader in the software biz (that consistently misses its own goals, but nevermind that detail). No 5 year roadmap = uncertain future.
Worst of all, your own modifications might have legal uncertainties, possibly infringing upon someone else's patents or other so-called intellectual property. You could be exposed to lawsuits or other frightening uncertain legal woes.
Be affraid. Very affraid. And also uncertain and filled with doubt!
I believe you have seriously misunderstood what science really is. Talk about proving science using science, providing "The Truth" and such, comparisons to proving the existance of God and "the truth" of science just doesn't communicate an understand of what "science" is.
A common definition for "science" (from the dictionary) is:
The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.
Such activities restricted to explaining a limitied class of natural phenomena.
Such activities applied to an object of inquiry or study.
There are other definitions pertaining to the everyday use of the word "science" (eg, "got something down to a science"), but ceraintly the field of study called "science" is what these 3 definitions describe.
Talk of "proving" god exists and "proving" science (presumably is "The Truth") is rather silly. First, it equates "theoretical explanation of phenomena" with "The Truth".
I believe it's quite safe to say that scientists do persue theoretical explanations of phenomena. The process is not infallible, and in fact quite often new data or finding come to light which cause these theories to be rethought, modified, or discarded and rewritten. Absent these definitions are some finer points about how science deals with error and adjusts theoretical explanations as necessary when new, credible observations must be taken into account. The most important aspect there is peer review and community consensus/acceptance.
I suppose one could "use science" to study wether scientists actually do persue theoretical explanations of phenomena, by doing observation, identification, description, experimental investigation. In fact, there are been recent studies into wether science is being influenced by political interests.
But your rant is really "that science is becoming anti-anything-else", and an implication that supporters of science "are proclaiming science is God/The Truth, and anything else is blasphemy".
Well, that's a load of crap.
If science were "anti-anything-else", where is all the rage against schools teaching gymnastics, english and other language, music and arts, history and other subjects that aren't science? Even study of theology. Perhaps there are some people who mistake science for a religion, but they are very, very few.
The current contversy is not about science versues something else. It's about science that is "good science" (peer reviewed, near 100% agreement from all scientists) and "bad science" (little or no peer review, rejected by virtually all scientists, no consensus... has not gone through the well established process that rejects theoretical explanation of phenomena that aren't well supported by observations).
Scientists aren't saying "that's anything else". They're saying "that isn't accepted an accepted theoretical explanation of phenomena" according to the very well established rules and process that is used.
This whole contraversy is about what is taught in a science class. It's about science. It's about teaching well established science, those theoretical explanation of phenomena that have passed the difficult process of peer review. Those theories that have almost universal acceptance among the scientific community.
A similar analogy would be teaching wacky sentence structure and spelling in an "english" class, rather than the same well established rules of grammar and spelling used by everybody else. Or teaching different conventions and symbols in a math class, rather than the ones used by everybody else in the world. Or a different scale of music notes in music class. In all of these cases, perhaps some small group feels an alternate approach might be superior. But among all US english speakers, all mathematicians, all musicians, there is a widespead, nearly universal consensus. The same is true in science.
It's not about "The Truth". It's not about "proving" something. I
Actually, there is a minimum theoretical energy associated with the rate of transition from one logical state to another. It's certainly much less that the relatively large energy stored in the electrostatic field between capacitively coupled conductors, which are charged or discharged with every logic transition in all modern CMOS circuitry. But, according to quantum theory (which I personally find utterly incomprehensible), there is indeed energy associated with the raw transition of information from one state to another.
Here's an Arstechnica article that's fairly accessible, which discusses this lightly, and goes on to predict the maximum possible computational power if all the mass of a laptop were converted to energy (e=mc^2)... and how long it'll take to get there if Moore's law keeps up.
Kinda makes me wonder if Gates's law will also keep up?
But even those no mechanical work is being done, on a macroscopic mechanical engineering perspective, according to quantum theory, logical states are transitioning and there is a minimum theoretical energy associated with their rate of transition, and thus a minimum theoretical power consumption. Of course, to compute this and relate it to a computational task (even just one instuction or even one stage of a pipeline) requires knowing the number of 0 to 1 and 1 to 0 transitions, and possibly considering if those transitions are indeed the minimal approach to implement that particular higher level operation if you don't consider the processor's specific circuit design to be the same as the minimum possible to accompilish the task.
So the efficiency, specifically the ratio of this minimum possible power consumption to the actual power dissipated by today's CPUs, is likely a very, very small number. But according to quantum theory, it is not zero, even though no "mechanical" work appears to be done.
For anyone who didn't bother to read the Embattled
Linux Fights Back article, here's roughly what you missed:
Lu Shouqun, leader of a Linux advocacy group believes the Chineese govt should make more use of Linux and open source.
The CSIA (an industry group, likely funded in part by Microsoft) claims (in a "report") the govt preference for open source is harming the software business.
Lu says open source is high quality, low cost, and can coexist with Microsoft, openness is good. Lu cites (but no actual citation info is given, no link, no name, no exact quote, no date, nothing) that someone at Microsoft said Linux and Windows should co-exist.
CSIA says GPL destroys profitability. Lu says they misunderstand the GPL, admits China linux businesses are unprofitable, and claims that community and international collaboration is needed.
CSIA spews FUD... patents might destroy linux. Lu replies that proprietary software faces more patent risks.
Lu says community in China is needed.
.
The other article is pretty much the same thing rehashed and edited down a little.
Pretty much more of the same. Linux/open source/free software advocates say one thing, Microsoft shills say the opposite.
The article makes mulitple mentions of how these single-play discs will need new players?
It seems pretty unlikely the media self destructs. Maybe, but I doubt it. Why would a new player be needed if it were in the media itself?
Perhaps it's really a dvd+rw type media, where the player uses a higher power laser to erase the disc during or after playback?
Or maybe they're going to try Circuit City's DIVX approach (nothing to do with the mpeg4 coded, for those who don't remember those days), where the player will phone home.
Or maybe it's something else? Any ideas?
Maybe Microsoft's research teams have turned out something truely revolutionary? Or maybe just another lame idea, as usual?
Unless it really is media that degrades, or even if it really is in the media, if it's not compatible with existing players, then people are going to have to "upgrade" their players... for no real benefit other than being able to get a play-once disc for about the same or slightly more than simply renting a regular disc. So the players won't sell well, so they won't get the ecomony of scale that makes for a sub-$100 dvd player. It's quite an uphill battle. Witness Circuit City's failure... and that was in the early days of DVD when a few studios were releasing some movies in their lame format but not on DVD. This thing probably going to die before it even gets started.
But even in a world of perfect DRM, where movies are only distributed on these play-once discs, and no ordinary DVDs are made anymore, and movies aren't ever distributed in any other digital form.... it's still only going to take one pirate with special equipment to capture a pretty good quality "rip", and then upload to a circle of friends, who give to others, until someone makes it available on a file sharing network.
The simple reason is because many bugs where viewing a malicious web page could allow remote code execution (or something similarly nasty) are reported as "windows" bugs rather than "internet explorer" bugs.
If you actually read throught the microsoft bulletins, and consider anything where simply using IE allows an attack (which requires reading the vulunerability info rather than Microsoft's searchable fields of impacted software), you'll find a lot more bugs than Symantec is claiming.
But you don't need to do all that work... I did it, admittedly rather quickly, a few days ago. Just follow that link, and the one in that post, to my quick summary of "simply using IE" bugs.
While googling around, I also found several others mentioned on various security sites, which didn't seem to correspond to any of the bulletins. And complaints of known bugs still not fixed. And some microsoft "notices" which basically claim "that's not a bug, you just need to avoid doing XYZ".
My quick list alone almost puts IE to the raw number of bugs as firefox, and I'm sure if someone did all the digging needed to compile a list that also included other non-microsoft-bulletin sources, we'd see what is plainly known... that IE has a lot more bugs.
It's sad that Symantec couldn't do this. Looks like they simply using Microsoft's database, which ignores lots of bugs Microsoft doesn't "officially" consider IE bugs (even though simply viewing a page with IE is the attack vector), and all the bugs Microsoft is ignoring or denying, or has quietly fixed.
In a previous post I found 22 IE bugs by simply looking through all the 2005 Microsoft security bulletins. These don't include bugs that Microsoft hasn't even fixed. This probably isn't a complete list either (I did it in only 10 minutes or so, plus avoiding slashdot's lame lameness filters to post a nicely formatted list). There are lots of other bugs not covered by the bulletins, where they post "notices" (like the infamous "don't click on links, type them instead"). But even if I found them all, 22 is a lot more than 13. And most on that list of 22 allow remote code execution.
But within the bulletins, there are lots of bugs, like the one fixed by MS05-024
that aren't "technically" IE bugs. But the end result is that a malicious web page (or advert iframe) could do something nasty... usually execute arbritrary code (install spyware or a virus if the server is infected). If simply viewing a web page with IE allows an attack, I call that an IE bug, regardless of where the actual bug is located by Microsoft's way of thinking.
Notice how the "affected software" of MS05-024 is many versions of windows, but Internet Explorer isn't specificly mentioned. So when someone tallies IE bugs, this one probably doesn't make the list. But the "Vulnerability Details" section says:
Web View Script Injection Vulnerability - CAN-2005-1191:
A remote code execution vulnerability exists in the way that Web View in Windows Explorer handles certain HTML characters in preview fields. By persuading a user to preview a malicious file, an attacker could execute code. However, user interaction is required to exploit this vulnerability.
I can see how a journalist could do such poor research. But Symantec? Come on, I found 22 nasty IE bugs by just browsing though 40-some Microsoft bulletins. That Symantec only thinks there's 13 doesn't build much confidence in the supposed "market leader" of anti-virus products!
I went to burning man for the first time this year... been curious for some time... finally talked my girlfriend into going. Playa dust aside, it really was a lot of fun. But it's not for everyone.
This is a lot of very interesting home-made tech out there.
I resisted the urge to build any large-scale project, though I did do a couple little things. I built some custom lighting for our two bikes, using a couple handfuls of LEDs and a little microcontroller and already-present wheel sensors (from those little bike trip monitors) to switch gradually between different colors as we ride.
We stayed with a camp called Burnstream court. They had a sign that'd broken. They had a mail list, which we'd been on much of the year, and the guy who was working on repairing the sign was using little light bulbs and dreaming of someday "animating" them. Being an electrical engineer (and not being able to resist a cool project), I broght a little microcontroller board that I had solder several high current MOSFETs (and associated circuitry) into a prototype area. On the second day out there, he was working on putting all those little lights on the sign, and I gave them the board, hooked all the lights up to it, and wrote some code to sequence the lights. Everyone in the camp was really excited about the flashy sign. It was cool. It was fun.
Yeah, I'm into creating stuff. Geeky, perhaps? (as opposed to the other geeky... playing video games... or ooggling over shiney new products).
Thousands and thousands of other creative and highly inspired people (must moreso than me) so there every year. And you just can't imagine all the amazing and wacky things they create and build out there.
Well, maybe you can sit back and imagine all sorts things. Surf though the tens of thousands of pictures people post, and feel like you know. But it really is something to see in person.
There's amazing displays of technology, like the cubetron art piece, which had a 9x9x9 cube of LED-lit pingpong balls suspended on wires in a big cube shape, which lit up in mulitple colors in all sorts of interesting animated patterns. There were many, many other very interesting things people created and brought out there, and made work in such an unforgiving environment. It really is quite amazing.
So if you're the sort of person who see tech and wonders "that's really cool, how'd they do that", or "I should of thought of that", or "I'd love to make something like that"... then you'll probably really like burning man. But if you're one of those people, who I personally wouldn't call true geeks but saddly inhabit slashdot, who sees tech and thinks "I can get that cheaper at walmart", then burning man is defintely not for you.
Burning man is also about lots of other things than just building art and viewing and playing with art (much of the art is intended to be played with, unlike traditional art).
For many people, burning man is about partying all night long. There's lots of people who set up bars, which give out free drinks when they're open (pretty much when they feel like it). There's also lots of camps that set up night clubs with lights and large sound systems. Perhaps hundreds of little ones for about 20 to 80 people to party, and on the ends of the city, dozens of huge ones where hundreds of people are dancing and partying all night long.
For others, it's a more mellow social gathering. Lots of people hang out, play some musical instrument or just lounge around and be mellow. It seems like there's some pot smoking, but the cops to drive around and mionitor from the streets, so any drug usage is well out of ordinary sight.
Some people, mostly those who've never been and will never go, just can't seem to see past nudity. Yes, some people go around with little or no clothing during the day, others wearing something provocative. And some are even "hotties" by conventional mass-media standards. But it really isn't that big a deal.
From March 2005 to September 2005 10 vulnerabilities were published for Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Only ten?? Guess it depends on where Internet Explorer ends and where the "operating system" begins. Many of the worst bugs haven't "officially" been MSIE bugs, but the result is that a malicious web page can take control of your system or do other things you'd never imagine it ought to be able to.
I did a quick search of the microsoft bulletins and found 13. And these aren't even exactly the same ones Secunia lists (two of which they say Microsoft hasn't even fixed).
And why from March? Look at what an ugly month February was for MSIE.
MS05-038 - aug 17
JPEG Image Rendering Memory Corruption Vulnerability - CAN-2005-1988
Web Folder Behaviors Cross-Domain Vulnerability - CAN-2005-1989
COM Object Instantiation Memory Corruption Vulnerability - CAN-2005-1990
Slashdot Mirror
In other news, every time you masturbate, god kills a kitten. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:God-kills-kitte n.jpg
But most content distributors depend heavily on popularity and social network effects to gain and retain their audience. For ad supported distribution, the vast majority who ignore the ads (either using technical means or by simply just not paying attention).
In the case of TV (the parent post), those "leeches" who didn't watch or pay attention to a single commercial, yet engage in a lively discussion about the show at their workplace or among friends are certainly contributing to the shows popularity, which directly impacts the network's ad revenue.
In the case of Livejournal, the hoards of free users create the bulk of the user community, which forms the appeal of using Livejournal (rather than any of the other identical sites using the same sofware, much like slashdot, cause LJ publishes their code as open source).
Even this post is contributing to slashdot (perhaps positively, perhaps negatively). The site's popularity is of critical importance to its ability to generate revenue, from ads or other means. So call me a leech, cause I've blocked the ads.
Why?
This falacy is called "false dichotomy". Either view ads, or pay subscription. The falacy is the exclusion of other options, such as more sophisticated ad blocking software that tricks the site into believing the ad is shown. Or the site moving to a different revenue model. Or advertising adapting (eg, product placements). Or lowering the cost of producing and delivering the content.
Any content provider that relies on advertising for revenue will have to resort to subscriptions if viewers block or skip over their ads.
I would beg to differ.
Witness the repeated failure of micropayments. I tend to agree with O'Reilly, that anymore more than "free", no matter how little, requires spending decision making effort. It's just too high a barrier for many types of content.
I believe there will always be a vast "market" for free content. Perhaps ads will continue to finance content production? Perhaps not. But the market will remain (unless O'Reilly turns out to be dead wrong and someone does figure out the utopia of micropayments), and content producers will adapt. Perhaps not the existing ones, but someone will. There's simply so much demand, and I'm confident there are smart people out there who will find ways to meet that demand, and make a profit in the process.
In my opinion, if you choose to block ads, that is your choice. It's your hardware and you should be able to decide what your computer downloads and displays. But once you've made the choice to block ads, don't complain when you have to fork up a couple bucks a month for everything you once got for free.
Why not complain? Certainly, most people will "complain" by simply not paying, and going elsewhere to find what they want.
And I'm confident there will be an "elsewhere", at least for anything mainstream. I don't claim to know if ads will continue to play a role in the future, or if other models will dominate, and certainly not what those models may be.
But already, a free/premium model is emerging, which has worked on slashdot and for years for Livejournal (and now, a free(no ads)/ad-supported/paid model is being tried). They've already been quite successful, and if this new approach works... it could mean the way of the future might be a combination of free WITHOUT ads, enhanced service with ads, and premium service with payment. That sounds quite different from dichotomy of "free with ads or pay up for no ads", doesn't it?
But whatever happens, I believe the disappearance of free content is very, very unlikely, regardless of the viability of ads. There's simply too big a "market" and too many smart and creative people.
Its parent post is better, but equates this TOS change with "What if they suddenly insert a term that forces all their users to pay $100 a day or leave without even a change of retaining their data."
Crazy!
This is SO far off base from the reality of Livejournal.
If they want to start charging you for the service, I imagine they would at minimum have to provide you with a reasonable amount of time to become aware of the change and accept/consent. More likely, they'd have to get a positive indication of your acceptance in order to begin billing you.
Livejournal has offered both free and paid accounts for years.
Livejournal has a long history of giving advanced notice about planned changes, and inviting discussion, and keeping things compatible
On top of all that, the addition of ads is on an entirely new class of account. Yes, that's the truth. Rather than force ads onto everyone who has traditionally had ad-free accounts, they're leaving all those free accounts as they were, and adding a new class of account with a level of service above the free acct but below the paid acct, which is "paid" by the ads.
That is the real truth here, which is easily verified by reading the news over on Livejournal.
They're not suddenly forcing people to pay. They're not even changing the free accounts. And they DID talk about this for some time, in public, and invited discussion.
My point is, the Livejournal folks are pretty good people, trying to do their best. You wouldn't know if from all this ranting here, but it's pretty easy to see if you go check out the site and read what they're doing.
However, unless they'd made an explicit commitment to allow you access to get your files off their servers, I don't see any reason why they couldn't just cut off your access entirely until you agree to pay for the service. Unless you're paying for the service already, it's unlikely they have any contractual obligations toward you.
What if, what if, what if, and so on.
Livejournal has a very long history of great service. They have a great reputation, and it's a well deserved one.
Back here in the real world, what matters is not so much what theoretically would or wouldn't matter in a court. Livejournal is one of many free/inexpensive services, which are almost universally used by individuals for personal communication. This just isn't the sort of thing that goes to court over a dispute. Any "mission critical" blog is going to be hosted using its own domain name.
In reality, what matters is Livejournal's reputation, and that reputation depends mostly on how they treat their users, both free and paid. All this ranting is just nit picking about the TOS. What truly matters is what they actually DO. And I highly doubt it will be evil, given their very long history.
There's just one last bit of profound-lack-of-perspective to comment on,
Of course, IANAL... but I always assume any free service I use on the web (or anywhere else) is a fleeting thing that may vanish without notice. It generally seems fair to me, given that I'm getting something for nothing.
Certainly a business would want to use its own domain name.
But for individuals looking for a free service, Lifejournal has been operating for 7 years, and they have a successful business model based on maintaining free and paid accounts.
Yeah, in theory they could vanish tomorrow. But that's about an unlikely as slashdot, yahoo, google, and every other MAJOR successful website offering free services suddenly doing dark.
Great, you let people download the movie, but then they can't burn it to a DVD?
Even with downloaded music, you just gotta allow burning it to a CD so it can be enjoyed on all devices. Hard to imagine how movie downloads are going to sell if they can't be burned onto a DVD.
Is your camera 35 mm film?
Has anyone actually used one of these 30 inch displays with Linux, NOT using closed-source drivers?
Are you saying that Boeing has written their own JVM ?
How about claiming the counts massively inflate Linux bugs by duplicating distributions, when in fact the actual list does nothing of the sort. Scroll down to the Linux section, and notice how nearly all have "multiple vendors", when the bug impacts mulitple distributions.
As someone pointed out earlier, the updates were counted though, and which does inflate the linux sum quite a bit.
But sorry, here's the wording from from the DMCA that qualifies a circumvention device.
So while it may be funny to think of scotch tape being outlawed, it just ain't gonna happen. Scotch tape is primarily designed and produced for another purpose, and a rather commercially significant one at that, so even if 3M becomes aware that it can be used this way, it still fails (A) and (B). To be a circumvention device, it has to be designed for that purpose, and (B) serves to exclude ordinary products like scotch tape, while also closing flimsey excuses (eg, this tv descrambler is any an attractive paperweight, so it has a legal use).
I'm not saying the DMCA doesn't suck. There's plenty wrong with it. But any notion it's not going to make common and useful products illegal is just humor. Or a myth. Or if taken seriously, maybe even FUD.
Wait for the next 3-year cycle to make such an arguement
Your arguement can only be valid if considerable harm has already been done
Your arguement must fit a certain set of rules, which are difficult
Your arguement's "valid reason" can not simply be that consumers are prohibited from doing something legal in a way they want. Being unable to play music on your ipod (even though it's a legal fair use) would not be a "valid reason" if some other player is available on the market, no matter how expensive and inconvienent it may be for you.
The people who review your arguement have a history of finding any excuse they can to reject such arguements. Even a perfectly good arguement may be rejected if they do not feel enough harm has been done year. You can try again in 3 years, maybe by then there will have been enough damage.
By that logic, none of us would use a certain OS from Finland, in preference for one developed at the University of California.
It is very unlikely that they included the text "LAME3.95" intentionally. The much more likely explaination is that they used the LAME code, which happens to include this string, and didn't realize that is was still embedded in their final binary product. It is easy to detect strings like "LAME3.95" (use the unix "strings" program). Further analysis, which is much more difficult, can show whether the binary code appears to be similar in structure to LAME. But because "LAME3.95" appears, it's a pretty good bet that such analysis is very likely to confirm that they used the LGPL licensed Lame code. There just isn't much other plausible explaination for that string to appear in the binary code. If they did in fact use Lame, not only would they be in violation of the copyright, but it's sure make they hypocrits, by infringing upon someone else's copyrighted work. As well, the use of the mp3 encoding algorithm is covered by patents in the US. It's pretty unlikely they obtained the required license.
There also wasn't anyone to sue if something went wrong. And there wasn't documentation. And there wasn't a 5 year road map so nobody was in control of its future. And more recently, you could be exposed to legal uncertainty.
Well, people aren't buying that old FUD anymore. So now we've got the new and improved FUD.
Now you can't get support if you've modified the code.
Next thing you know, there won't be documentation available for your own modification.
And then there won't be anyone to blame/sue if your own modifications don't work.
Your whole company will have an uncertain future because your modifications don't have a 5 year roadmap from an industry leader in the software biz (that consistently misses its own goals, but nevermind that detail). No 5 year roadmap = uncertain future.
Worst of all, your own modifications might have legal uncertainties, possibly infringing upon someone else's patents or other so-called intellectual property. You could be exposed to lawsuits or other frightening uncertain legal woes.
Be affraid. Very affraid. And also uncertain and filled with doubt!
One might expect a somewhat "biased" result asking for the best management principles from geeks... who are spending their time reading slashdot!
A common definition for "science" (from the dictionary) is:
There are other definitions pertaining to the everyday use of the word "science" (eg, "got something down to a science"), but ceraintly the field of study called "science" is what these 3 definitions describe.
Talk of "proving" god exists and "proving" science (presumably is "The Truth") is rather silly. First, it equates "theoretical explanation of phenomena" with "The Truth".
I believe it's quite safe to say that scientists do persue theoretical explanations of phenomena. The process is not infallible, and in fact quite often new data or finding come to light which cause these theories to be rethought, modified, or discarded and rewritten. Absent these definitions are some finer points about how science deals with error and adjusts theoretical explanations as necessary when new, credible observations must be taken into account. The most important aspect there is peer review and community consensus/acceptance.
I suppose one could "use science" to study wether scientists actually do persue theoretical explanations of phenomena, by doing observation, identification, description, experimental investigation. In fact, there are been recent studies into wether science is being influenced by political interests.
But your rant is really "that science is becoming anti-anything-else", and an implication that supporters of science "are proclaiming science is God/The Truth, and anything else is blasphemy".
Well, that's a load of crap.
If science were "anti-anything-else", where is all the rage against schools teaching gymnastics, english and other language, music and arts, history and other subjects that aren't science? Even study of theology. Perhaps there are some people who mistake science for a religion, but they are very, very few.
The current contversy is not about science versues something else. It's about science that is "good science" (peer reviewed, near 100% agreement from all scientists) and "bad science" (little or no peer review, rejected by virtually all scientists, no consensus... has not gone through the well established process that rejects theoretical explanation of phenomena that aren't well supported by observations).
Scientists aren't saying "that's anything else". They're saying "that isn't accepted an accepted theoretical explanation of phenomena" according to the very well established rules and process that is used.
This whole contraversy is about what is taught in a science class. It's about science. It's about teaching well established science, those theoretical explanation of phenomena that have passed the difficult process of peer review. Those theories that have almost universal acceptance among the scientific community.
A similar analogy would be teaching wacky sentence structure and spelling in an "english" class, rather than the same well established rules of grammar and spelling used by everybody else. Or teaching different conventions and symbols in a math class, rather than the ones used by everybody else in the world. Or a different scale of music notes in music class. In all of these cases, perhaps some small group feels an alternate approach might be superior. But among all US english speakers, all mathematicians, all musicians, there is a widespead, nearly universal consensus. The same is true in science.
It's not about "The Truth". It's not about "proving" something. I
Here's an Arstechnica article that's fairly accessible, which discusses this lightly, and goes on to predict the maximum possible computational power if all the mass of a laptop were converted to energy (e=mc^2)... and how long it'll take to get there if Moore's law keeps up.
Kinda makes me wonder if Gates's law will also keep up?
But even those no mechanical work is being done, on a macroscopic mechanical engineering perspective, according to quantum theory, logical states are transitioning and there is a minimum theoretical energy associated with their rate of transition, and thus a minimum theoretical power consumption. Of course, to compute this and relate it to a computational task (even just one instuction or even one stage of a pipeline) requires knowing the number of 0 to 1 and 1 to 0 transitions, and possibly considering if those transitions are indeed the minimal approach to implement that particular higher level operation if you don't consider the processor's specific circuit design to be the same as the minimum possible to accompilish the task.
So the efficiency, specifically the ratio of this minimum possible power consumption to the actual power dissipated by today's CPUs, is likely a very, very small number. But according to quantum theory, it is not zero, even though no "mechanical" work appears to be done.
Lu Shouqun, leader of a Linux advocacy group believes the Chineese govt should make more use of Linux and open source.
The CSIA (an industry group, likely funded in part by Microsoft) claims (in a "report") the govt preference for open source is harming the software business.
Lu says open source is high quality, low cost, and can coexist with Microsoft, openness is good. Lu cites (but no actual citation info is given, no link, no name, no exact quote, no date, nothing) that someone at Microsoft said Linux and Windows should co-exist.
CSIA says GPL destroys profitability. Lu says they misunderstand the GPL, admits China linux businesses are unprofitable, and claims that community and international collaboration is needed.
CSIA spews FUD... patents might destroy linux. Lu replies that proprietary software faces more patent risks.
Lu says community in China is needed.
.
The other article is pretty much the same thing rehashed and edited down a little.
Pretty much more of the same. Linux/open source/free software advocates say one thing, Microsoft shills say the opposite.
Really??
Here's the original story.
Where on that original page is the correction?
It seems pretty unlikely the media self destructs. Maybe, but I doubt it. Why would a new player be needed if it were in the media itself?
Perhaps it's really a dvd+rw type media, where the player uses a higher power laser to erase the disc during or after playback?
Or maybe they're going to try Circuit City's DIVX approach (nothing to do with the mpeg4 coded, for those who don't remember those days), where the player will phone home.
Or maybe it's something else? Any ideas?
Maybe Microsoft's research teams have turned out something truely revolutionary? Or maybe just another lame idea, as usual?
Unless it really is media that degrades, or even if it really is in the media, if it's not compatible with existing players, then people are going to have to "upgrade" their players... for no real benefit other than being able to get a play-once disc for about the same or slightly more than simply renting a regular disc. So the players won't sell well, so they won't get the ecomony of scale that makes for a sub-$100 dvd player. It's quite an uphill battle. Witness Circuit City's failure... and that was in the early days of DVD when a few studios were releasing some movies in their lame format but not on DVD. This thing probably going to die before it even gets started.
But even in a world of perfect DRM, where movies are only distributed on these play-once discs, and no ordinary DVDs are made anymore, and movies aren't ever distributed in any other digital form.... it's still only going to take one pirate with special equipment to capture a pretty good quality "rip", and then upload to a circle of friends, who give to others, until someone makes it available on a file sharing network.
As I explained in another post, I believe their numbers are wrong.
The simple reason is because many bugs where viewing a malicious web page could allow remote code execution (or something similarly nasty) are reported as "windows" bugs rather than "internet explorer" bugs.
If you actually read throught the microsoft bulletins, and consider anything where simply using IE allows an attack (which requires reading the vulunerability info rather than Microsoft's searchable fields of impacted software), you'll find a lot more bugs than Symantec is claiming.
But you don't need to do all that work... I did it, admittedly rather quickly, a few days ago. Just follow that link, and the one in that post, to my quick summary of "simply using IE" bugs.
While googling around, I also found several others mentioned on various security sites, which didn't seem to correspond to any of the bulletins. And complaints of known bugs still not fixed. And some microsoft "notices" which basically claim "that's not a bug, you just need to avoid doing XYZ".
My quick list alone almost puts IE to the raw number of bugs as firefox, and I'm sure if someone did all the digging needed to compile a list that also included other non-microsoft-bulletin sources, we'd see what is plainly known... that IE has a lot more bugs.
It's sad that Symantec couldn't do this. Looks like they simply using Microsoft's database, which ignores lots of bugs Microsoft doesn't "officially" consider IE bugs (even though simply viewing a page with IE is the attack vector), and all the bugs Microsoft is ignoring or denying, or has quietly fixed.
But within the bulletins, there are lots of bugs, like the one fixed by MS05-024 that aren't "technically" IE bugs. But the end result is that a malicious web page (or advert iframe) could do something nasty... usually execute arbritrary code (install spyware or a virus if the server is infected). If simply viewing a web page with IE allows an attack, I call that an IE bug, regardless of where the actual bug is located by Microsoft's way of thinking.
Notice how the "affected software" of MS05-024 is many versions of windows, but Internet Explorer isn't specificly mentioned. So when someone tallies IE bugs, this one probably doesn't make the list. But the "Vulnerability Details" section says:
I can see how a journalist could do such poor research. But Symantec? Come on, I found 22 nasty IE bugs by just browsing though 40-some Microsoft bulletins. That Symantec only thinks there's 13 doesn't build much confidence in the supposed "market leader" of anti-virus products!
have you, superdude72, actually been to burning man?
This is a lot of very interesting home-made tech out there.
I resisted the urge to build any large-scale project, though I did do a couple little things. I built some custom lighting for our two bikes, using a couple handfuls of LEDs and a little microcontroller and already-present wheel sensors (from those little bike trip monitors) to switch gradually between different colors as we ride.
We stayed with a camp called Burnstream court. They had a sign that'd broken. They had a mail list, which we'd been on much of the year, and the guy who was working on repairing the sign was using little light bulbs and dreaming of someday "animating" them. Being an electrical engineer (and not being able to resist a cool project), I broght a little microcontroller board that I had solder several high current MOSFETs (and associated circuitry) into a prototype area. On the second day out there, he was working on putting all those little lights on the sign, and I gave them the board, hooked all the lights up to it, and wrote some code to sequence the lights. Everyone in the camp was really excited about the flashy sign. It was cool. It was fun.
Yeah, I'm into creating stuff. Geeky, perhaps? (as opposed to the other geeky... playing video games... or ooggling over shiney new products).
Thousands and thousands of other creative and highly inspired people (must moreso than me) so there every year. And you just can't imagine all the amazing and wacky things they create and build out there.
Well, maybe you can sit back and imagine all sorts things. Surf though the tens of thousands of pictures people post, and feel like you know. But it really is something to see in person.
There's amazing displays of technology, like the cubetron art piece, which had a 9x9x9 cube of LED-lit pingpong balls suspended on wires in a big cube shape, which lit up in mulitple colors in all sorts of interesting animated patterns. There were many, many other very interesting things people created and brought out there, and made work in such an unforgiving environment. It really is quite amazing.
So if you're the sort of person who see tech and wonders "that's really cool, how'd they do that", or "I should of thought of that", or "I'd love to make something like that"... then you'll probably really like burning man. But if you're one of those people, who I personally wouldn't call true geeks but saddly inhabit slashdot, who sees tech and thinks "I can get that cheaper at walmart", then burning man is defintely not for you.
Burning man is also about lots of other things than just building art and viewing and playing with art (much of the art is intended to be played with, unlike traditional art).
For many people, burning man is about partying all night long. There's lots of people who set up bars, which give out free drinks when they're open (pretty much when they feel like it). There's also lots of camps that set up night clubs with lights and large sound systems. Perhaps hundreds of little ones for about 20 to 80 people to party, and on the ends of the city, dozens of huge ones where hundreds of people are dancing and partying all night long.
For others, it's a more mellow social gathering. Lots of people hang out, play some musical instrument or just lounge around and be mellow. It seems like there's some pot smoking, but the cops to drive around and mionitor from the streets, so any drug usage is well out of ordinary sight.
Some people, mostly those who've never been and will never go, just can't seem to see past nudity. Yes, some people go around with little or no clothing during the day, others wearing something provocative. And some are even "hotties" by conventional mass-media standards. But it really isn't that big a deal.
There is a hippie
Only ten?? Guess it depends on where Internet Explorer ends and where the "operating system" begins. Many of the worst bugs haven't "officially" been MSIE bugs, but the result is that a malicious web page can take control of your system or do other things you'd never imagine it ought to be able to.
I did a quick search of the microsoft bulletins and found 13. And these aren't even exactly the same ones Secunia lists (two of which they say Microsoft hasn't even fixed).
And why from March? Look at what an ugly month February was for MSIE.
MS05-038 - aug 17
JPEG Image Rendering Memory Corruption Vulnerability - CAN-2005-1988
Web Folder Behaviors Cross-Domain Vulnerability - CAN-2005-1989
COM Object Instantiation Memory Corruption Vulnerability - CAN-2005-1990
MS05-037 - jul 12
JView Profiler Vulnerability - CAN-2005-2087
MS05-032 - jun 14
Microsoft Agent Vulnerability - CAN-2005-1214
MS05-028 - jun 14
Web Client Vulnerability - CAN-2005-1207
MS05-026 - jun 14
HTML Help Vulnerability - CAN-2005-1208
MS05-025 - jun 14
PNG Image Rendering Memory Corruption Vulnerability - CAN-2005-1211
XML Redirect Information Disclosure Vulnerability - CAN-2002-0648
MS05-024 - may 10
Web View Script Injection Vulnerability - CAN-2005-1191
MS05-020 - april 12
DHTML Object Memory Corruption Vulnerability - CAN-2005-0553
URL Parsing Memory Corruption Vulnerability - CAN-2005-0554
Content Advisor Memory Corruption Vulnerability - CAN-2005-0555
MS05-015 - feb 8
Hyperlink Object Library Vulnerability - CAN-2005-0057
MS05-014 - feb 8
Drag-and-Drop Vulnerability - CAN-2005-0053
URL Decoding Zone Spoofing Vulnerability - CAN-2005-0054
DHTML Method Heap Memory Corruption Vulnerability - CAN-2005-0055
Channel Definition Format (CDF) Cross Domain Vulnerability - CAN-2005-0056
MS05-013 - feb 8
DHTML Editing Component ActiveX Control Cross Domain Vulnerability - CAN-2004-1319
MS05-009 - feb 8
(PNG buffer overflow, may not affect IE, remote code execution in MSN, WMP, etc)
MS05-008 - feb 8
Drag-and-Drop Vulnerability - CAN-2005-0053 (yes, exploitable via web page)
MS05-006 - feb 8
Cross-site Scripting and Spoofing Vulnerability - CAN-2005-0049