Sure money's important, but to a politician money is only useful in order for them to vote, and to remain in power. Votes are their ultimate goal, and activism is the only way to make votes change. Sure it requires money, but you can start today. Talk to your best friend, and explain the situation.
I doubt any citizen with a brain supports corporations, its just important to let them know what they're voting for.
I'm tired of being reactive. All the letter writing in the world isn't going to make the DMCA any less of a bad law, so why try? Be proactive - vote for a congressman who doesn't support big business and its want to walk over the wants of the citizenry in the name of control. Write your congressman. Inform your neighbors that the officials they elected are rapidly signing away their rights.
If we keep be reactive, the opposition will always be a step ahead of us, because they will continue to control congress and write the laws.
Re:Why are we helping him build his business?
on
Ask Kevin Mitnick
·
· Score: 1
Kudos!
I never understood the sympathy for Mitnick. He did something which he knew was against the law, and proceed to get busted. Why should I be sympathetic?
If I'm consciously breaking the law (say, speeding), and I get busted, I don't expect anyone to be sympathetic towards me; I knew what I was doing was illegal and I understood the consequences. Why should cracking be any different then speeding, or burglary?
Sounds and looks like designers having fun with themselves. Lines like 'we wanted to make something which would make people know that we mean business' lead me to believe that this is not a deployable vehicle. Even if it was, why use a commercial pick-up platform? The military has several wheeled, all-terrain platforms that are suitable to this job (armored personel carriers spring to mind).
So, I at least think that its just more standard auto-show fluff.
I'm an avid fan of the StarTAC form factor (I'm on my third). The 'classic' way they're broken is to leave them open and face down on a table, and then put something down on them. No flip will withstand the pressure of a text book on top of it.
On that note, out of three phones, I've never broken a flip. Worn out an RF section or two, but the flips have always been solid.
Not to join the ranks of the whining/. denizens, but you just announced thate a release candidate is almost ready? Granted its important, but almost doesn't really count, and its not a final release, it just might be.
"Something that might some day be a final release is almost ready!"
"Say what?"
Sounds like a project about to go down the tubes. Principles are nice, but when they get in the way of being an effective entity, it rapidly becomes prodigious to get rid of them rather than to cling to them. Any belief held too tightly can be harmful.
O(n) is linear time, O(1) is constant time. So, no, it can't take longer as the number of processes increases. An O(1) implementation must have exactly the same complexity regardless of how much data is presented. Thats why this is the holy grail of algorithm design.
The IM networks are never going to be merged. Eventually, one dominant player (*cough*AOL) will open up their protocol and servers a bit and allow others to use it. The other networks will slowly die.
Merging IM networks would be a monumental task. The namespace conflicts alone would awful to deal with.
Regardless of the actions of the music industry, Napster was never going to be profitable enough to survive. It wouldn't have made it as a subscription service, and bandwidth isn't free as we all known. Centralization is dead as a P2P concept, as there's no way to support the hardware & bandwidth costs.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Gary Oglesby thought it was odd that his wireless network at WorldCom Inc. got unusually congested early each morning and again just after quitting time.
Turns out a security gate at a parking lot just outside his group's offices shared the network's frequency. To reduce interference, Oglesby had to move an antenna away from the window.
As more people go wireless to access the Internet, it is only a matter of time before these kinds of conflicts abound.
"The frequency is getting a lot more crowded," said Oglesby, a managing engineer with WorldCom's Internet architecture and technology group near Washington, D.C.
In a high-tech community in Cary, North Carolina, Chuck Musciano wasn't getting the promised high Internet speeds with his wireless devices. He soon realized that half his neighbors had wireless networks as well -- all using Wi-Fi, or 802.11b, the most popular wireless protocol.
"Because of the houses being close enough together, all of the wireless networks were overlapping with each other," Musciano said.
His solution: Get his neighbors to space out frequencies they use. Because Wi-Fi transmissions use only a third of the allotted frequencies, adjacent antennas can be adjusted to minimize conflicts.
So far, such coordination is more the exception than the rule, as new wireless networks sprout up across the nation without any congestion.
When there is interference, a plant or a concrete wall may be the culprit. Often, users won't even realize they aren't getting the promised speeds.
"They are just happy to surf the Web," said Rick Doten, wireless product manager for the network security company Netsec.
Congestion is likely to become more noticeable, however, as devices proliferate. Cahners In-Stat Group projects that Wi-Fi sales will hit $5.2 billion by 2005, up from $2.4 billion this year and $660 million in 2000.
Companies and universities use wireless to avoid having to drill holes and lay wires in existing buildings. Airports and Starbucks coffee shops offer it for travelers. Apple Computer Inc. and other companies market devices for home wireless networks.
"Prices have come down to the point where people set them up for novelty purposes more than necessity," said Gary Schober, chairman of Berkeley Varitronics Systems Inc., whose devices help scan for conflicting wireless traffic.
Adjusting settings Meanwhile, digital activists in several cities are trying to build public wireless networks that link homes, schools and businesses so someone with a laptop could log on from anywhere -- indoors or out.
While such networks can be beneficial, "it will be very interesting to see if (they) actually increase interference," said Bennett Kobb, consultant and author of "Wireless Spectrum Finder."
Headsets and other gadgets using the Bluetooth standard, newer cordless phones and microwave-powered, energy-saving light bulbs share the 2.4 to 2.483.5 gigahertz frequency range used by Wi-Fi. Household microwave ovens use radio waves in that range to heat leftovers.
Conflicts sometimes occur also at 902 to 928 megahertz, used by older cordless phones and some military radar. Ricochet Networks Inc. plans to launch a wireless service in major cities using that range as well.
These frequencies are appealing because the government does not require licenses to use them. But no licenses also mean no entity to coordinate.
Already, there are occasional problems at trade shows, office parks or high-tech neighborhoods like Musciano's.
For now, such problems can usually be resolved by coordinating and adjusting settings, said Matthew Gast, author of "802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide." But coordination can be difficult, he notes, when competing networks aren't centrally run by the same company.
Anticipating the proliferation of these devices, Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio have asked the government to require that devices reduce their signal strength to prevent potential interference with the nearby frequencies used by satellite radio.
"We want them to take care of the problem now before it becomes a major problem," said Sirius spokesman Jim Collins.
Signal intensity Dennis Eaton, chairman of the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance that coordinates Wi-Fi devices, denies that existing products interfere with satellite radio and said any other interference is now minimal.
Only some cordless phones conflict with Wi-Fi, and only older, leaky microwave ovens tend to have problems, he said.
Regulatory and technical changes are being implemented to let Wi-Fi better coexist with Bluetooth, a competing standard.
And companies like Symbol Technologies are making it possible for devices to sense how crowded the airwaves are before sending more data.
Engineers, meanwhile, are eyeing newly available frequencies between 5 and 6 gigahertz. Companies like Atheros Communications Inc. are developing equipment using the emerging 802.11a standard at those frequencies.
The newer standards are being designed to help reduce interference -- such as by automatically adjusting signal intensity.
"We could try to get it right in the next generation," said Jon Peha, associate director at Carnegie Mellon University's Center for Wireless and Broadband Networks.
But he notes that the new techniques won't relieve any overcrowding caused by devices using the current standards.
Said Peha: "It would have been much easier to deal with the problem five years ago."
It'd be really cool to see mandatory micropayments for UBE - I would be willing to accept the extra load on my mailservers if I know I was making a tenth of a penny per message.
Hell, running an open relay would rapidly go from moronic to profitable:).
Ok, here's how I understand it. NetBSD for the Dreamcast falls under the NetBSD sh3/4 port, which is shortened to just sh3 (I'm guessing the procs are binary compatible, or close to it.) On the other hand, every site I've seen lists it as an SH4.
For instance, if you look at Marcus Cestedt's DC Hardware page (which is rather definitive, imho) it lists the SH4.
I don't (personally) think that RPI's primary goal with the laptop program is to lure wealthy freshman here. Hell, wealthy freshman are likely to already own such cute toys themselves anyway.
I think the the institute's real goal is to cut maintenance costs on computer labs. Its a hell of a lot easier to outfit a room with ethernet drops and power outlets and just tell students to bring their laptops to class than to spec and maintain halfway-decent machines.
I agree heavily on the variance of experiences. I just don't think enough of the positive/middle ones come out.
I'm quite lucky; I live in whats a generally healthy community. I have grown up in relatively afluent, suburban community. In comparisons to the stories my father tells about highschool (he went to school in inner city New Haven, CT, USA). Things like shop teachers being attacked with 2x4s have not and most likely will not ever happen at my school.
So yes, people can't always change their situation by pure force of will, but I remember thinking my freshman year that the only way I'd be happy was to conform. My sophomore year, a little bit wiser, I decided that the only way to be happy was to be happy with oneself, and I immediately set upon that task. Be it through Boy Scouting (see url), theatre, computers, friendship, or any other of my hobbies/interests, I respect who I am and what I do.
So do most people I think.
I don't know, its quite late, and I have to get up tomorrow - but I think my point was that too many of these stories give the impression of hopelessness. When you are without hope, you are truly without recourse, and thats a scary thing.
This confuses me utterly. I had awful experiences in Junior High and even previous to that because I was different/smart... But they haven't continued. (for informational purposes, I'm in the first semester of my senior year)
I ignore those who are/were indignant to me, and have accumulated enough of a vocabulary to respond in kind if need be. So be it; those who choose not to respect me do not deserve my respect or attention. And, I've found not all the jocks are the evil people we make them out to be. I've found friends who are both extremely intelligent and play 3 sports. I've also found idiots who play one, but they can present valid opinions too when they set their minds to it.
The same way another commenter has said that the most geeky-looking of the geeks were some of the nicest, kindest people he/she had ever met, it goes the same for the jocks. Someone I probably never would've talked to on my own is now someone I am proud to consider a friend. And I don't have an "in" - I don't play any sports myself, nor am I "popular." I'm just nice to people who are nice to me, and treat about everyone else in kind. I don't assume that anyone won't talk to me because they're a jock and I'm a nerd; but then again, I'm not big on class distinctions in general.
Is it any better for nerds to assume that all jocks are assholes than it is for the media to assume that all nerds are killers?
Is it good to assume you have to live your life in a shell because you're not "popular"?
To qualify my statements, I will admit I have some advantages. I am physically imposing, so no one has ever physically messed with me. I also do not suffer fools well - if you seem to be looking for a piece of my mind, you'll get it. Also, one of the most important people in my life (my girlfriend of 10 months) plays three sports. But I have friends who are "nerds," so to speak, and acquaintances who are jocks. I don't really draw class distinctions like that, though. I tend to rate people on who they are, not what category they fall into.
Isn't that what everyone is complaining about? The media generalizing about a "class" of people. And haven't most of our replies been just a wee bit hypocritical in that we draw upon the same class distinctions to make our complaints? I know some people who have had awful experiences (see: nickd.org), but I, for one, have not.
Mainly, if not purely, because I have chosen not to.
... if someone were to release an official, commercial, closed-source DVD player for Linux, if there would be such an uproar. It seems that one of our primary arguments is "We just wanted to watch movies" in this case. If we had that ability, I wonder if the complaints would be any less vocal.
--
Phil
Is there any information about the power requirements of this technology? It seems to me that something based on CD-RW film would be rather high; although I admit I haven't done much reading on it.
Also, I know that most flash devices have a limited number of writes they can perform before failure (a large number, I'll admit). Is this a worry with this technology or not?
Most of the small devices that would be using this technology would require both of these things.
Slashdot Mirror
And why is this any better (or even interesting) compared to Shorten (.shn) which has existed for years?
I don't find lossless audio / video compression terribly impressive... lossless compression has been studied and worked on for decades.
Sure money's important, but to a politician money is only useful in order for them to vote, and to remain in power. Votes are their ultimate goal, and activism is the only way to make votes change. Sure it requires money, but you can start today. Talk to your best friend, and explain the situation.
I doubt any citizen with a brain supports corporations, its just important to let them know what they're voting for.
I'm tired of being reactive. All the letter writing in the world isn't going to make the DMCA any less of a bad law, so why try? Be proactive - vote for a congressman who doesn't support big business and its want to walk over the wants of the citizenry in the name of control. Write your congressman. Inform your neighbors that the officials they elected are rapidly signing away their rights.
If we keep be reactive, the opposition will always be a step ahead of us, because they will continue to control congress and write the laws.
Kudos!
I never understood the sympathy for Mitnick. He did something which he knew was against the law, and proceed to get busted. Why should I be sympathetic?
If I'm consciously breaking the law (say, speeding), and I get busted, I don't expect anyone to be sympathetic towards me; I knew what I was doing was illegal and I understood the consequences. Why should cracking be any different then speeding, or burglary?
--
Phil
Sounds and looks like designers having fun with themselves. Lines like 'we wanted to make something which would make people know that we mean business' lead me to believe that this is not a deployable vehicle. Even if it was, why use a commercial pick-up platform? The military has several wheeled, all-terrain platforms that are suitable to this job (armored personel carriers spring to mind).
So, I at least think that its just more standard auto-show fluff.
--
Phil
I'm an avid fan of the StarTAC form factor (I'm on my third). The 'classic' way they're broken is to leave them open and face down on a table, and then put something down on them. No flip will withstand the pressure of a text book on top of it.
On that note, out of three phones, I've never broken a flip. Worn out an RF section or two, but the flips have always been solid.
--
Phil
Not to join the ranks of the whining /. denizens, but you just announced thate a release candidate is almost ready? Granted its important, but almost doesn't really count, and its not a final release, it just might be.
"Something that might some day be a final release is almost ready!"
"Say what?"
--
Phil
Isn't this already happening by virtue of Echelon?
--
Phil
Sounds like a project about to go down the tubes. Principles are nice, but when they get in the way of being an effective entity, it rapidly becomes prodigious to get rid of them rather than to cling to them. Any belief held too tightly can be harmful.
--
lds
Ok, I concede there. Its still not the common usage, but that doesn't make you any less right :).
--
Phil
I have to take issue with this one...
O(n) is linear time, O(1) is constant time. So, no, it can't take longer as the number of processes increases. An O(1) implementation must have exactly the same complexity regardless of how much data is presented. Thats why this is the holy grail of algorithm design.
--
Phil
The IM networks are never going to be merged. Eventually, one dominant player (*cough*AOL) will open up their protocol and servers a bit and allow others to use it. The other networks will slowly die.
Merging IM networks would be a monumental task. The namespace conflicts alone would awful to deal with.
--
Phil
Regardless of the actions of the music industry, Napster was never going to be profitable enough to survive. It wouldn't have made it as a subscription service, and bandwidth isn't free as we all known. Centralization is dead as a P2P concept, as there's no way to support the hardware & bandwidth costs.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Gary Oglesby thought it was odd that his wireless network at WorldCom Inc. got unusually congested early each morning and again just after quitting time.
Turns out a security gate at a parking lot just outside his group's offices shared the network's frequency. To reduce interference, Oglesby had to move an antenna away from the window.
As more people go wireless to access the Internet, it is only a matter of time before these kinds of conflicts abound.
"The frequency is getting a lot more crowded," said Oglesby, a managing engineer with WorldCom's Internet architecture and technology group near Washington, D.C.
In a high-tech community in Cary, North Carolina, Chuck Musciano wasn't getting the promised high Internet speeds with his wireless devices. He soon realized that half his neighbors had wireless networks as well -- all using Wi-Fi, or 802.11b, the most popular wireless protocol.
"Because of the houses being close enough together, all of the wireless networks were overlapping with each other," Musciano said.
His solution: Get his neighbors to space out frequencies they use. Because Wi-Fi transmissions use only a third of the allotted frequencies, adjacent antennas can be adjusted to minimize conflicts.
So far, such coordination is more the exception than the rule, as new wireless networks sprout up across the nation without any congestion.
When there is interference, a plant or a concrete wall may be the culprit. Often, users won't even realize they aren't getting the promised speeds.
"They are just happy to surf the Web," said Rick Doten, wireless product manager for the network security company Netsec.
Congestion is likely to become more noticeable, however, as devices proliferate. Cahners In-Stat Group projects that Wi-Fi sales will hit $5.2 billion by 2005, up from $2.4 billion this year and $660 million in 2000.
Companies and universities use wireless to avoid having to drill holes and lay wires in existing buildings. Airports and Starbucks coffee shops offer it for travelers. Apple Computer Inc. and other companies market devices for home wireless networks.
"Prices have come down to the point where people set them up for novelty purposes more than necessity," said Gary Schober, chairman of Berkeley Varitronics Systems Inc., whose devices help scan for conflicting wireless traffic.
Adjusting settings
Meanwhile, digital activists in several cities are trying to build public wireless networks that link homes, schools and businesses so someone with a laptop could log on from anywhere -- indoors or out.
While such networks can be beneficial, "it will be very interesting to see if (they) actually increase interference," said Bennett Kobb, consultant and author of "Wireless Spectrum Finder."
Headsets and other gadgets using the Bluetooth standard, newer cordless phones and microwave-powered, energy-saving light bulbs share the 2.4 to 2.483.5 gigahertz frequency range used by Wi-Fi. Household microwave ovens use radio waves in that range to heat leftovers.
Conflicts sometimes occur also at 902 to 928 megahertz, used by older cordless phones and some military radar. Ricochet Networks Inc. plans to launch a wireless service in major cities using that range as well.
These frequencies are appealing because the government does not require licenses to use them. But no licenses also mean no entity to coordinate.
Already, there are occasional problems at trade shows, office parks or high-tech neighborhoods like Musciano's.
For now, such problems can usually be resolved by coordinating and adjusting settings, said Matthew Gast, author of "802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide." But coordination can be difficult, he notes, when competing networks aren't centrally run by the same company.
Anticipating the proliferation of these devices, Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio have asked the government to require that devices reduce their signal strength to prevent potential interference with the nearby frequencies used by satellite radio.
"We want them to take care of the problem now before it becomes a major problem," said Sirius spokesman Jim Collins.
Signal intensity
Dennis Eaton, chairman of the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance that coordinates Wi-Fi devices, denies that existing products interfere with satellite radio and said any other interference is now minimal.
Only some cordless phones conflict with Wi-Fi, and only older, leaky microwave ovens tend to have problems, he said.
Regulatory and technical changes are being implemented to let Wi-Fi better coexist with Bluetooth, a competing standard.
And companies like Symbol Technologies are making it possible for devices to sense how crowded the airwaves are before sending more data.
Engineers, meanwhile, are eyeing newly available frequencies between 5 and 6 gigahertz. Companies like Atheros Communications Inc. are developing equipment using the emerging 802.11a standard at those frequencies.
The newer standards are being designed to help reduce interference -- such as by automatically adjusting signal intensity.
"We could try to get it right in the next generation," said Jon Peha, associate director at Carnegie Mellon University's Center for Wireless and Broadband Networks.
But he notes that the new techniques won't relieve any overcrowding caused by devices using the current standards.
Said Peha: "It would have been much easier to deal with the problem five years ago."
It'd be really cool to see mandatory micropayments for UBE - I would be willing to accept the extra load on my mailservers if I know I was making a tenth of a penny per message.
:).
Hell, running an open relay would rapidly go from moronic to profitable
--
Phil
I'm not too worried about something this moronic actually going through.
Of course, given the lawmakers current track record, I probably should be...
Ok, here's how I understand it. NetBSD for the Dreamcast falls under the NetBSD sh3/4 port, which is shortened to just sh3 (I'm guessing the procs are binary compatible, or close to it.) On the other hand, every site I've seen lists it as an SH4.
For instance, if you look at Marcus Cestedt's DC Hardware page (which is rather definitive, imho) it lists the SH4.
--
Phil
It uses a Hitachi SH4, not SH6, iirc. Just splitting hairs :).
--
Phil
I don't (personally) think that RPI's primary goal with the laptop program is to lure wealthy freshman here. Hell, wealthy freshman are likely to already own such cute toys themselves anyway.
:).
I think the the institute's real goal is to cut maintenance costs on computer labs. Its a hell of a lot easier to outfit a room with ethernet drops and power outlets and just tell students to bring their laptops to class than to spec and maintain halfway-decent machines.
And yes, the Sun's are quite sexy
I'm currently a student at RPI, and my Physics I course has a post-quiz taken on the net at the end of each class. We use WebAssign for this task.
Not that I particularly like the idea. It's cute, but webassign is a poor implementation if I've ever seen one.
Plus, I rather feel that if I'm going to be doing work beyond multiple-choice BS, someone should have to look at it in order to grade it.
I'm quite lucky; I live in whats a generally healthy community. I have grown up in relatively afluent, suburban community. In comparisons to the stories my father tells about highschool (he went to school in inner city New Haven, CT, USA). Things like shop teachers being attacked with 2x4s have not and most likely will not ever happen at my school.
So yes, people can't always change their situation by pure force of will, but I remember thinking my freshman year that the only way I'd be happy was to conform. My sophomore year, a little bit wiser, I decided that the only way to be happy was to be happy with oneself, and I immediately set upon that task. Be it through Boy Scouting (see url), theatre, computers, friendship, or any other of my hobbies/interests, I respect who I am and what I do.
So do most people I think.
I don't know, its quite late, and I have to get up tomorrow - but I think my point was that too many of these stories give the impression of hopelessness. When you are without hope, you are truly without recourse, and thats a scary thing.
I ignore those who are/were indignant to me, and have accumulated enough of a vocabulary to respond in kind if need be. So be it; those who choose not to respect me do not deserve my respect or attention. And, I've found not all the jocks are the evil people we make them out to be. I've found friends who are both extremely intelligent and play 3 sports. I've also found idiots who play one, but they can present valid opinions too when they set their minds to it.
The same way another commenter has said that the most geeky-looking of the geeks were some of the nicest, kindest people he/she had ever met, it goes the same for the jocks. Someone I probably never would've talked to on my own is now someone I am proud to consider a friend. And I don't have an "in" - I don't play any sports myself, nor am I "popular." I'm just nice to people who are nice to me, and treat about everyone else in kind. I don't assume that anyone won't talk to me because they're a jock and I'm a nerd; but then again, I'm not big on class distinctions in general.
Is it any better for nerds to assume that all jocks are assholes than it is for the media to assume that all nerds are killers?
Is it good to assume you have to live your life in a shell because you're not "popular"?
To qualify my statements, I will admit I have some advantages. I am physically imposing, so no one has ever physically messed with me. I also do not suffer fools well - if you seem to be looking for a piece of my mind, you'll get it. Also, one of the most important people in my life (my girlfriend of 10 months) plays three sports. But I have friends who are "nerds," so to speak, and acquaintances who are jocks. I don't really draw class distinctions like that, though. I tend to rate people on who they are, not what category they fall into.
Isn't that what everyone is complaining about? The media generalizing about a "class" of people. And haven't most of our replies been just a wee bit hypocritical in that we draw upon the same class distinctions to make our complaints? I know some people who have had awful experiences (see: nickd.org), but I, for one, have not.
Mainly, if not purely, because I have chosen not to.
... if someone were to release an official, commercial, closed-source DVD player for Linux, if there would be such an uproar. It seems that one of our primary arguments is "We just wanted to watch movies" in this case. If we had that ability, I wonder if the complaints would be any less vocal. -- Phil
Although I don't use it very often personally, does anyone have any information as to if/how this vulnerability applies to GPG? -- Phil
Also, I know that most flash devices have a limited number of writes they can perform before failure (a large number, I'll admit). Is this a worry with this technology or not?
Most of the small devices that would be using this technology would require both of these things.