I bought my first CD in 1981, and guess what, it still works. That is close to 40 years old. I've got records that still play from the 70's, albeit with some scratches now. Do you really believe your streaming service will be around in 2060?
Same here. The first CD I bought was Dark Side of the Moon. I still have it and cdparanoia still thinks the disk is fine.
The downside of some of those old CDs is that the manufacturers didn't really know how to take advantage of the dynamic range of CDs. On a few of my older disks, I have had to rip them as WAVs, then bump up the volume a bit in Audacity before converting them to mp3.
That minor inconvenience aside, I much prefer having physical copies that I can re-rip if necessary (as I've done over the years to go from lower bitrates, to the much higher bitrates I use today. I'll admit to living in fear of a fire that would (among other things) destroy the physical collection. I'd still have my backups in that case, but at that point would have less flexibility.
For someone my age (old fogey) I'm buying CDs pretty consistently. My collection is about 80gb and still growing.
There's nothing I can do about juries. They seem inclined to just let the cops kill anybody they want to if they say they were scared.
The only thing you can do about juries is to serve on them. If called, do not attempt to get out of jury duty. Try to be presentable and get selected to serve. This is the only way you can be sure that your point of view will be represented on the jury.
I always seem to get struck during selection. However, if I were on a jury for any case, I'd give no more weight to police (or any other government representative) than I would for any other citizen. If it's the defendant's word against a cop's word, the cop loses due to the presumption of innocence as far as I'm concerned. As for cops involved in shootings, I would look at it exactly the same way I would for any ordinary citizen in the same situation. Actually, given the powers given to police, and the fact that they are allegedly trained for these situations, a cop would have a harder time than Joe Sixpack if I were judging the facts of the case.
Serving in a jury is one of the most important things you can do as a citizen. We should treat the opportunity to serve appropriately.
Bullshit. The standard library is sufficient for anything the machine can deliver in performance. If they claim need more, then they have some severe design defects in their system.
Indeed. Network latency is going to swamp any file access performance issues
I have one address that I have paid for, not too much a year, which forwards all the email to my ISP account. I can't change it easilly because it's been my address for 25 years.
Same here. I just checked, and it would appear I've had my Pobox for 22 years. Until I changed it to point to my personal domain email, I didn't even know what my "real" email address was most of the time. If I changed ISPs, I'd go to Pobox, change the forwarder, then change my email client, and I was good to go. For me, the best benefit of this service is that I never have to tell anyone if the underlying email address changes.
FWIW, I've been very happy with the stock filters that Pobox uses, and their service in general.
That was a really interesting concession, because otherwise the government would've run afoul of U.S. v. Miller, which found that gun control was not a violation of rights if the weapon in question was not militarily useful.
In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a "shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length" at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense.
As you can see above, the Supreme Court hadn't been told that sawed off shotguns were regularly used in warfare. (See "trench guns" during WWI). If they had, they would have ruled it was a protected weapon because it would have had a "reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia"
That's OK though, even people who should know better get that wrong.
I agree with you. It is a well written, and interesting article. The nerdiness factor is high enough that it's definitely/. fodder. In it, I found my word of the day...
At a hip Rochester restaurant called Nosh, Viavattine held the menu up to the light to assess its "flocculation" (the degree to which its fibres had clumped infelicitously together).
Flocculation... just kinda rolls right off the tongue. Most excellent!
Is it me or does that company become more and more like some kind of cult?
Have you seen the movie The Circle? My first thought after seeing it was "Facebook". I find it to be extremely interesting that the wikipedia article linked above makes no mention whatsoever of the parallels. It was a really creepy movie.
I've seen similar behavior recommended to folks as a security precaution. Leave more than a car length between you and someone else to aid in your ability to get away if required. Doing so when there is nothing between you and the line is dumb, in my not so humble, but there really are some dumb folk out there.
Had it been a digital library, nothing would have prevented me from downloading it at once except for formality of having programmatically coding "tokens" (at ADDITIONAL cost to a digital library - "normal" way of distributing content is without any token system).
Maybe, maybe not. The library could very well institute a policy that allows them to only lend out however many copies of the book that they've purchased. It would be easy enough to do using 'tokens' as you indicated, or merely releasing the copy to readers after it has been checked in, or the loan time expires whichever comes first.
This isn't rocket science. We understand fairly well how libraries work.
I'd be interested in what some of the SF publishing companies are saying about this lawsuit, if anything. Baen and Tor both publish DRM-free ebooks in multiple formats. Baen comes right out and says on their website that the reason they publish their books sans DRM is because they do not believe their customers are thieves. IMO, there is something to be said for treating your customers like decent human beings. They also have the 'free library' where they make the first book or two in a bunch of their series' available for free download by anyone who wants to read them. Like any good drug dealer, they understand the concept of "the first one is free".
The man command is short for manual. Back in the day, when you bought something it came with a book that explained it, known as a manual. Many young people these days don't remember this era and so the notion of a manual doesn't help them remember the command. Instead, I tell them that 'man' is short for 'mansplain'.
The first unix system I had a lot of experience with was a DEC-8810 running Ultrix. It came with a full hard-copy manual set of the man pages. I can't remember how many volumes it was.
This was both good, and bad. Good, because you could actually use the MANual to help you with syntax as you entered the command. Bad, because you can't grep a printout.
When I first discovered 'apropos' on the command line, I thought I'd gone to heaven.
If using tape, restore using different tape drives.
This. Is. Important. Granted, a lot, if not most stuff is disk-to-disk these days, but if you are using tape for anything, understand that most modern drives are probably going to be a variation of a helical scan, similar to old videotapes. The heads can be out of alignment, and you do not know about it, because the drive that wrote the tape has no problem reading the tape. On the other hand, a different drive with proper head alignment may very well not read it at all, or do so with uncorrectable errors.
Have personally experienced this, though it was many years ago. Thank God for network backups.
True. I've been a subscriber for long enough to remember their (Monty) Python special issue. This is really sad that they couldn't keep it up even in an all digital format.
As the oral arguments for this case will be heard Wednesday, you'll be able to download the Argument Transcripts on Wednesday afteroon, or Thursday Morning.
While the questions asked don't necessarily indicate how judges are leaning on the case, as they will sometimes act as devil's advocate, it's still worth checking out as a rough guide to what they think are the important elements are to the case.
Another is:
'The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.' -James Nicoll
I've seen this before. It's only funny because it is so true. Hell, we'll make up new words and phrases just for the heck of it. We have no pride whatsoever in the language. If we find a word lying around that fits better, and better describes something, it's promptly dragooned into service.
This is a full set of processors listening to everything your other processes do all the time no matter what OS you run or security you apply. And nobody knew what it was doing. And the governments have been removing it from their purchases for years by making Intel make chips without it.
This. Right here. The fact that governments have demanded hardware without it is reason enough NOT to trust that it is 'safe'.
Wish mine were prime. However, for the first time I noticed that listed as an "achievement" on my/. user page it says: Member of the 10010 Digit (binary) UID Club , which is almost as good. I really don't know how one would reasonably call this an "achievement" though.
A simple solution for now would be just to add 4 or 5 digits to the new SSNs that are issued. That would break so many systems that others would have to address the real problem.
Or simply change it to a HEX value. Instantly you get an expansion of possible 'numbers'. Personally, I'd like to see them go to a 10-digit hex number with a checksum as the last char. The main reason I'd not go beyond 10 digits is because the larger the number, the more difficult it is to remember.
Unfortunately, changing that particular field is a non-trivial exercise given how widely it is used.
There are also numerous other issues with them using the SSN as an authentication token as well. Much of this was discussed further upthread. It simply is not the authentication token that people think it is and misuse it as.
Slashdot Mirror
There is already a feature on many phones to wipe them if a certain number of attempts are made to unlock them with the wrong password.
Why not simply have another feature that wipes the phone immediately if someone enters a specific password?
This is a feature I'd be willing to upgrade for.
Yeah, that's just what we need./sarcasm
I bought my first CD in 1981, and guess what, it still works. That is close to 40 years old. I've got records that still play from the 70's, albeit with some scratches now. Do you really believe your streaming service will be around in 2060?
Same here. The first CD I bought was Dark Side of the Moon. I still have it and cdparanoia still thinks the disk is fine.
The downside of some of those old CDs is that the manufacturers didn't really know how to take advantage of the dynamic range of CDs. On a few of my older disks, I have had to rip them as WAVs, then bump up the volume a bit in Audacity before converting them to mp3.
That minor inconvenience aside, I much prefer having physical copies that I can re-rip if necessary (as I've done over the years to go from lower bitrates, to the much higher bitrates I use today. I'll admit to living in fear of a fire that would (among other things) destroy the physical collection. I'd still have my backups in that case, but at that point would have less flexibility.
For someone my age (old fogey) I'm buying CDs pretty consistently. My collection is about 80gb and still growing.
There's nothing I can do about juries. They seem inclined to just let the cops kill anybody they want to if they say they were scared.
The only thing you can do about juries is to serve on them. If called, do not attempt to get out of jury duty. Try to be presentable and get selected to serve. This is the only way you can be sure that your point of view will be represented on the jury.
I always seem to get struck during selection. However, if I were on a jury for any case, I'd give no more weight to police (or any other government representative) than I would for any other citizen. If it's the defendant's word against a cop's word, the cop loses due to the presumption of innocence as far as I'm concerned. As for cops involved in shootings, I would look at it exactly the same way I would for any ordinary citizen in the same situation. Actually, given the powers given to police, and the fact that they are allegedly trained for these situations, a cop would have a harder time than Joe Sixpack if I were judging the facts of the case.
Serving in a jury is one of the most important things you can do as a citizen. We should treat the opportunity to serve appropriately.
Bullshit. The standard library is sufficient for anything the machine can deliver in performance. If they claim need more, then they have some severe design defects in their system.
Indeed. Network latency is going to swamp any file access performance issues
I have one address that I have paid for, not too much a year, which forwards all the email to my ISP account. I can't change it easilly because it's been my address for 25 years.
Same here. I just checked, and it would appear I've had my Pobox for 22 years. Until I changed it to point to my personal domain email, I didn't even know what my "real" email address was most of the time. If I changed ISPs, I'd go to Pobox, change the forwarder, then change my email client, and I was good to go. For me, the best benefit of this service is that I never have to tell anyone if the underlying email address changes.
FWIW, I've been very happy with the stock filters that Pobox uses, and their service in general.
No thanks to any service that requires a special dedicated reader.
I support DRM-free publishers like baen that allow you to download your ebook in whatever format you want. Wish there were more of them.
That's the innovation I want.
Amen. Power. is my killer app. I wouldn't mind the phone being twice as thick if it meant I'd have that much more power.
Spock, is that you?
He's dead, Jim.
That was a really interesting concession, because otherwise the government would've run afoul of U.S. v. Miller, which found that gun control was not a violation of rights if the weapon in question was not militarily useful.
That is a complete misreading of U.S. vs. Miller.
As you can see above, the Supreme Court hadn't been told that sawed off shotguns were regularly used in warfare. (See "trench guns" during WWI). If they had, they would have ruled it was a protected weapon because it would have had a "reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia"
That's OK though, even people who should know better get that wrong.
Excellent... if only we could get the moderation to go to 6.
Yes! The post could then be modlier!
Woot!
I agree with you. It is a well written, and interesting article. The nerdiness factor is high enough that it's definitely /. fodder. In it, I found my word of the day...
At a hip Rochester restaurant called Nosh, Viavattine held the menu up to the light to assess its "flocculation" (the degree to which its fibres had clumped infelicitously together).
Flocculation... just kinda rolls right off the tongue. Most excellent!
Is it me or does that company become more and more like some kind of cult?
Have you seen the movie The Circle? My first thought after seeing it was "Facebook". I find it to be extremely interesting that the wikipedia article linked above makes no mention whatsoever of the parallels. It was a really creepy movie.
I've seen similar behavior recommended to folks as a security precaution. Leave more than a car length between you and someone else to aid in your ability to get away if required. Doing so when there is nothing between you and the line is dumb, in my not so humble, but there really are some dumb folk out there.
Thank God I live in a Republic and not a Democracy.
Had it been a digital library, nothing would have prevented me from downloading it at once except for formality of having programmatically coding "tokens" (at ADDITIONAL cost to a digital library - "normal" way of distributing content is without any token system).
Maybe, maybe not. The library could very well institute a policy that allows them to only lend out however many copies of the book that they've purchased. It would be easy enough to do using 'tokens' as you indicated, or merely releasing the copy to readers after it has been checked in, or the loan time expires whichever comes first.
This isn't rocket science. We understand fairly well how libraries work.
I'd be interested in what some of the SF publishing companies are saying about this lawsuit, if anything. Baen and Tor both publish DRM-free ebooks in multiple formats. Baen comes right out and says on their website that the reason they publish their books sans DRM is because they do not believe their customers are thieves. IMO, there is something to be said for treating your customers like decent human beings. They also have the 'free library' where they make the first book or two in a bunch of their series' available for free download by anyone who wants to read them. Like any good drug dealer, they understand the concept of "the first one is free".
The man command is short for manual. Back in the day, when you bought something it came with a book that explained it, known as a manual. Many young people these days don't remember this era and so the notion of a manual doesn't help them remember the command. Instead, I tell them that 'man' is short for 'mansplain'.
The first unix system I had a lot of experience with was a DEC-8810 running Ultrix. It came with a full hard-copy manual set of the man pages. I can't remember how many volumes it was.
This was both good, and bad. Good, because you could actually use the MANual to help you with syntax as you entered the command. Bad, because you can't grep a printout.
When I first discovered 'apropos' on the command line, I thought I'd gone to heaven.
If using tape, restore using different tape drives.
This. Is. Important. Granted, a lot, if not most stuff is disk-to-disk these days, but if you are using tape for anything, understand that most modern drives are probably going to be a variation of a helical scan, similar to old videotapes. The heads can be out of alignment, and you do not know about it, because the drive that wrote the tape has no problem reading the tape. On the other hand, a different drive with proper head alignment may very well not read it at all, or do so with uncorrectable errors.
Have personally experienced this, though it was many years ago. Thank God for network backups.
True. I've been a subscriber for long enough to remember their (Monty) Python special issue. This is really sad that they couldn't keep it up even in an all digital format.
As the oral arguments for this case will be heard Wednesday, you'll be able to download the Argument Transcripts on Wednesday afteroon, or Thursday Morning.
While the questions asked don't necessarily indicate how judges are leaning on the case, as they will sometimes act as devil's advocate, it's still worth checking out as a rough guide to what they think are the important elements are to the case.
Another is:
'The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.' -James Nicoll
I've seen this before. It's only funny because it is so true. Hell, we'll make up new words and phrases just for the heck of it. We have no pride whatsoever in the language. If we find a word lying around that fits better, and better describes something, it's promptly dragooned into service.
This is a full set of processors listening to everything your other processes do all the time no matter what OS you run or security you apply. And nobody knew what it was doing. And the governments have been removing it from their purchases for years by making Intel make chips without it.
This. Right here. The fact that governments have demanded hardware without it is reason enough NOT to trust that it is 'safe'.
Wish mine were prime. However, for the first time I noticed that listed as an "achievement" on my /. user page it says:
Member of the 10010 Digit (binary) UID Club , which is almost as good.
I really don't know how one would reasonably call this an "achievement" though.
A simple solution for now would be just to add 4 or 5 digits to the new SSNs that are issued. That would break so many systems that others would have to address the real problem.
Or simply change it to a HEX value. Instantly you get an expansion of possible 'numbers'. Personally, I'd like to see them go to a 10-digit hex number with a checksum as the last char. The main reason I'd not go beyond 10 digits is because the larger the number, the more difficult it is to remember.
Unfortunately, changing that particular field is a non-trivial exercise given how widely it is used.
There are also numerous other issues with them using the SSN as an authentication token as well. Much of this was discussed further upthread. It simply is not the authentication token that people think it is and misuse it as.
There is a reason we call it "Government Level Stupidity".