In my day we didn't have digital computers. We had analog computing! That's right, we used resistors, capacitors, inductors, op amps, and other discrete components, hand wired on a plug board to solve each of our differential equations. No lost precision to this "sampling" bullshit. Our circuits had INFINITE PRECISION! Apply power, wait for the system to stabilize, and read the answer at the output terminals on the multimeter needle (no digital multimeters either, you pansys). Digital? Bah! Saturation and cutoff were considered improper operation modes of transistors and was something we worked hard to avoid happening. It is only now that you digital punks are realizing the benefits of analog and how we had it right all along. Your early 110 and 300 baud modems were fully digital. You could HEAR each bit go by. And you were so pleased with yourselves until you discovered that that was as about fast as you could go with digital, right? With 1200 bps you introduced FOUR signal levels (sounds like analog to me) representing 2 bits each at your maximum 600 baud digital signaling rate to make 1200 bps. Note I use baud and bps correctly, unlike you digital wusses. How many signal levels does a 56K modem have? It's a fucking analog spectrum and yet you still won't admit that our generation figured out the good shit long before you were born! Ah for the good ol days. And the Doors LP spinning on the turntable in the lab. That's probably another device you've never used. Now you're cramming silicon into your cars like cattle lining up to die. Well, when the EMP comes, my generation will still be on the road in our 55 Chevy pickups that have this wierd carbeurrated engine and mechanical points vibrator system. Maybe I'll stop to give you a lift. Maybe. Note. No paragraph breaks. In my day, keeping messages as short as posible was of paramount importance. No one wanted to pay line charges to read blank lines, you wasteful digital fruitcakes.
Look at the letterhead. I didn't see so much as one name there. Not even the name of a law firm to contact. Lots of snarling and noise from an anonymous coward. Yawn. I mean how much credence to you put in the words of a whiny demanding AC on SlashDot?
Remember folks, it's ILLEGAL TO RECORD COPS WHEN THEY PULL YOU OVER... at least in Massachusetts. See this story for more details. Only YOU have no privacy when you're on the job.
Moreover, why should the people of Taiwan be punished for doing something that locally, is perfectly legal? It's the people sitting in foreign lands FTPing into their servers and downloading that are committing (where the foreigner resides) a crime. And it's not the job of Taiwanese locals to see that other people in other lands obey the other land's local laws.
A reversed example: Porn is illegal in most Islamic nations. What if OPEC said "Stop making your porn web sites accessible from our nations or we cut off your supply of oil?".
We expect everyone to obey our laws, but don't give a crap about local legal stuff in the USA violating laws is some foreign nation (see also Ebay selling nazi artifacts; illegal in France, Austria, Germany).
Pot.
Kettle.
Black.
What to do? COUNTERSUE FOR WRONGFUL ARREST!
on
Adobe Backs Down
·
· Score: 4
Adobe can't just have you busted for no reason, say "oops" and be done with it.
Dimitry should countersue to "make an example of Adobe" to other corporations. The message being "wrongfully fucking with people will cost you bigtime dollars".
Face it, when Saddan Hussein, dying of cancer, thinks that nuking the US or Israel will make him one with Allah... this is a person who is not going to fear any reprucussions from the USA. Such a person is likely to have a very few missiles, and quite likely only one or two. An ABM system would be of immense benefit here, yes? Now if Russia launches 1500 missiles at the US, we're pretty much fucked no matter what.
What's with this ability for a GROUP of people to all gather around a TV or stereo and all watch movie or listen to a CD without the IP holder receiving additional per seat revenue?
More than one person using an IP playback device of any kind == theft.
We need a law to force manufacturers to make it so their devices can be used by ONLY ONE PERSON AT A TIME. That way, access and our IP can be protected.
In the beginning, things were flat rate because there was no non-burdensone technology to measure use. Phone usage, listening to records, viewing art, reading the newspaper, software, car ownership, land ownership. And people have come to consider this kind of use a "right". Today, it seems that the dream of every IP holder is pay per use. phone usage, the RIAA's $3.50 pay per track, Divx players, "On demand" gaming, Microsoft's new XP licensing scheme, automobile "registration" fees, property taxes. Quit paying on any of these and you are deprived use of items you thought you "bought".
And piracy is the boogeyman used to justify most of this. Unlimited use software, and infinitely reviewable movies will someday be redefined as "theft". Its about taking control away from you. Patented+homesteaded land cannot be taken away by gov't for any reason, so they don't allow this anymore. Europeans already scoff at "lucky bastards with flat rate phone service" in the US." while phone companies move towards eliminating this ancient practice.
It must pain the IP holders no end that their media must, in its final form, be presented unencrypted and in good quality to the eyes and ears.
Ultimately, it'll be pay-per-thought. We'll have cybernetic devices inplanted into the bas of our skulls to meter incoming content. Video/audio can then be sent encrypted all the way to our brains where final and untappable decryption takes place. Even think "Exit light... Enter night! Taaaake my hand! Off to never never land!" and ka-CHING, your credit account is charged a small fee.
1984 almost had it right, but misses profit as the basis of Big Brother.
MS fears US will mandate "OSS only" like Brazil.
on
Microsoft and the GPL
·
· Score: 3
See this Slashdot story about the Brazillian gov't REQUIRING that it and its sub governmental agancies be required to use ONLY open sourced software. The reason is security. How can some closed black box ever be trusted? If the US gov't follows this lead, MS will be out billions. Projects like the US's own NSA Linux seem to hint that what happened in Brazil is under serious consideration here.
When you voluntarily post to a PUBLIC forum, you are then and there decreeing your words to be in the public domain, yes?
I suspect the radio and television networks would disagree with you here...
Only the private broadcasters. Giving up copyright has nothing to do with the medium being a boradcast one. I never said that. It all comes down to the charter of the forum you are posting in.
The newsgroups were CREATED AS PUBLIC FORUMS. Accepting this is a precondition of participating.
Fox was created as a PRIVATE BROADCASTER.
When the newspaper editorial section states that "all your submission are belong to us" and you write something to them, you have no copyright protection because you knew you were waiving them before you sent them in. Ditto your words on RADIO AND TV call-in programs.
Ditto USENET.
It's the same thing.
Voy at least needs a "wrap up" episode.
on
Voyager Eulogy
·
· Score: 1
What about all the Maquis crew? Aren't they still Federation criminals? Will they keep their rank? Will they keep their freedom? How will the other Maquis still in the alpha quadrant react to them?
Will Seven get to life a life and not be the Borg lab rat for eternity?
Will the Doctor get the same rights afforded Data and other artificial life forms? Will he be erased/reprogrammed? Will he get to keep his 26th century mobile holo emitter (that's temporal contraband, yes?)?
What about Janeway's now remarried (after he thought she was dead) ex husband?
If the Borg transwarp conduit opens up right in from of freaking Earth, why haven't the Borg yet sent fleets of cubes to Earth? It took all starfleet had to defeat one borg ship. A fleet would have been unstoppable.
The Queen dies twice? To quote Barclay... "I hate temporal mechanics."
From the clause, I can see no change of copyright or any other IP, but Google is granted non-exclusive rights to the post. (Non-exclusive meaning the copyright holder can still do whatever he likes with it, even sell it on).
Not quite. ANYONE can do anything with the post. Not just the "copyright holder". Why is that in quotes? Because there is no copyright on USENET posts!
It's the nature of the beast. When you voluntarily post to a PUBLIC forum, you are then and there decreeing your words to be in the public domain, yes? Thus, copyright no longer applies. And neither does "default" copyright apply because you physically placed your words into a PUBLIC forum. You knew what you were doing. You clearly chose to relinquish eternally all copyright to your article.
Wanna stay copyrighted and propietary? Post your words on your own web page and put a link in the newsgroup. Note that the link will be public domain, so don't whine about "deep linking" violations. Of course few to none may read your words then. Want a wide audience? Pay the price. Give up the (C). And welcome to real life.
All the major distros are now including openssl/openssh standard (Red Hat, Mandrake, etc.). Why not include the full crypto support for loop devices and the like? Make it an option in the setup to create secure, passphrase mounted filesystesm using blowfish, AES, IDEA, cast128, etc.?
The movie industry is different because the movies aren't launched at theatres in other countries than US until it has finished playing in the US
Oh waaaaah! Well, I can't work as a programmer for two or more jobs in different places at once either, so I want a law to prohibit other places from filling "my" programming job until I decide to come... and to not fill it even if I never come.
Why in the FUCK should the law be used to coddle emmasculated businesses that can't do their job right?
(due to the high production cost of the film rolls, and the translation/dubbing/texting involved).
(1) If they're not dubbed/translated, then it's not a problem because those people can't watch your movie anyway, right?
(2) As for costs? Pay up or shut up. No one cuts me a break on paying simultaneously on auto insurance for my 3 cars even thought I can only drive one car at a time.
You Canucks and Euros neve cease to amaze me in your ability to miss the Big Picture. You almost pride yourselfes at paying more for gas and say how we're not really paying the "true costs", when in reality, gasoline costs prety much the same everywhere on the planet.
It's the 300% tax in those countries that jacks prices up.
So instead of bitching that we have it cheap, why aren't you bitching that your own governments are extorting you blind with taxes making up well over 2/3 of the price of the item being taxed?
To SAVE MONEY on many duplicate court trials and to REDUCE COURT WORKLOAD, Congress should IMMEDIATELY create and pass a Declaration of Consumer Copying Rights or DCCR (pronounced "decker")... A consumer Bill of Rights that list what people are EXPLICITLY ALLOWED to do with copyrighted material.
(1) The Right of The People to make unlimited copies of copyrighted materials, which they own or hold a valid license to, for their own personal use shall not be infringed.
(2) The Right of The People to transfer ownership or licenses of copyrighted materials , and at their own discresion, (with all copies made therof, if any) to another party shall not be infringed.
(3) The Right of The People to make a copy, in any format, of a copyrighted work aired on a public or subscribed broadcast medium for time shift viewing purposes shall not be infringed.
(4) The Right of The People to possess the hardware and software and other tools necessary to carry out the above shall not be infringed.
(5) These rights, as a whole, shall immediately, retroactively, and for all time preempt the portions of all contracts and licenses contrary with the above.
Why does the language have to change every few years. It just makes old code harder to compile down the road because there are n version of the language. Did we learn nothing form BASIC being pulled in 50 different directions? Quit screwing with the language and work on the standard libraries.
How about creating <stdgui.h> ?
A classic case of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." And C was never broke. C++ is and remains a monstrosity of unneeded evil.
C relies on non portable characters that do not exist in all character sets. This 'hello world' program still FAILS the fully portable compliance test. May I suggest:
int main(void)
??<
int rc;
rc = printf("Hello, World!??/n");
if (rc < 0)
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
return 0;
??>
Now that's proper and portable C code! Behold it's beauty!
Remember, many characters are not portable across all character sets. The square brackets, for example, dot not exist in EBCDIC. The hash/pound character is often replaced by the British currency symbol in some ASCII variants. Reverse slants do not exist in Baudot or Morse code. And so on. So ANSI C (2nd revision) defines 'trigraphs' of the form ??x where x is a from a list of more universal characters and the preprocessor treats the whole sequence as the appropriate C character. Note that trigraphs can even be used in quoted strings (see ??/ above).
There seems to be some misconception that one credit for creating something is somehow lost when the copyright expires. This is false. Only your exclusive right to profit expires. No one is interested in striking your name from every obelisk, nor could they. Look at Beethoven's/Mozart's/Chopin's works. Copyrights have expired of all their work. Does that mean other people have "suppressed their achievement" or "taken credit" for their work? No. Wel still know who did what. And today more people enjoy that work because it has become free. That's what copyright is supposed to do. Profit for A WHILE, then it becomes free to improve all of science and art in general.
With the widespread availability of affordable HOME VIDEO PLAYBACK systems (both VHS and DVD), it's understandable that the MOVIE THEATER business might suffer a few losses. The price of valuable floor space (especially in malls) is becoming extremely expensive, as is the cost of MOVIE THEATER EQUIPMENT. Accordingly, the MOVIE TICKET prices are going up a great deal - a $5.00 is a rarity, and it's not uncommon to spend $10.00 to watch a 90 minute movie.
Simply put, this is just too much money for too little entertainment. I live somewhat near a BOWLING ALLEY (with 100 lanes and pro shop). Going to BOWL for 2-3 hours is much cheaper than spending about an hour in the MOVIE THEATER!
If one is a serious movie goer, the time spent WATCHING MOVIES every week is mind-boggling. Purchasing a cheaper VIDEO PLAYER (VHS, DVD, etc) is FAR more economical than ATTENDING ONE'S FAVORITE THEATER every night. In addition, DVDROM PLAYERS are everywhere for those with PCs, playing the old classic MOVIES. For those true geeks who like the MOVIE THEATER EXPERIENCE, there have been posts to alt.home-theater.misc about turning a DEN IN YOUR HOUSE into a dedicated MOVIE THEATER with a custom THX SETUP.
The ONLY real advantage in a real MOVIE THEATER is unusual hardware - especially THX and DTS Decoders. However, even that HOME THEATER hardware is becoming increasingly affordable.
Machine code? Geez, you wanna go part-time on us, you just say the word...
I hand-filed gears, sprockets, cogs and pistons for my own Babbage Difference Engine, arranged for shipping for thirteen metric tonnes of high-grade coal from China, and blew my own glass cooling jackets from Nova Scotia beach sand. The result is the fastest goddamned shopping cart program on the net.
Wheels and gears? Bah! I have ancient texts filled with speels and incantations to do my problems. Other answers can be found in tea leaves, wax, reading sticks tossed on the ground, or in tarot cards.
They lambasted CS types for developing complex and useless technologies.
That's because when someone comes up with a useful technology, even something as simple as LZW compression or an MP3 encoder, NO ONE ELSE CAN USE IT in their product. Writing products that use someone else's file format is called a "copyright violation". Standardising on one crypto algorithm is called patent theft. CPUs with compatible MMX instructions gets you sued by Intel. Making DVDs playable on "non-approved" systems gets you jailed, or orders from people halfway around the world.
So yeah, "CS types develop complex and useless technologies." because we have to carefully avoid reinventing someone else's wheel or we get sued into bankruptcy.
One result is millions of different wheels of different diameters, shapes and track widths that are all incompatible with one another. Sounds pretty messy, right? It also happens to resemble what we see today in the computing industry.
The other result is people getting fed up with all the incompatibilities and looking for a standard, any standard. And since the standard is proprietary, naturally this will favor the growth of monopolies, e.g., Microsoft, who thes uses their position as OS "standard" to create other standards, such as Excel and Word formats, whilst actively blocking anyone else from participating in that standard.
IMO both patent lifetime and copyright lifetime ought to be cut to 10 years tops for all things computing related, hardware or software, because stuff in this field ages faster than any other traditionally patented and coyrighted work.
And there needs to be an irrevocable expiration for abandoned patents and copyrights too. It's absolutely insane that Atari 2600 games are still locked away by copyright, while no one is prodcing them. And they'll be locked away for over a century under current IP law. Is this right?
Slashdot Mirror
In my day we didn't have digital computers. We had analog computing! That's right, we used resistors, capacitors, inductors, op amps, and other discrete components, hand wired on a plug board to solve each of our differential equations. No lost precision to this "sampling" bullshit. Our circuits had INFINITE PRECISION! Apply power, wait for the system to stabilize, and read the answer at the output terminals on the multimeter needle (no digital multimeters either, you pansys). Digital? Bah! Saturation and cutoff were considered improper operation modes of transistors and was something we worked hard to avoid happening. It is only now that you digital punks are realizing the benefits of analog and how we had it right all along. Your early 110 and 300 baud modems were fully digital. You could HEAR each bit go by. And you were so pleased with yourselves until you discovered that that was as about fast as you could go with digital, right? With 1200 bps you introduced FOUR signal levels (sounds like analog to me) representing 2 bits each at your maximum 600 baud digital signaling rate to make 1200 bps. Note I use baud and bps correctly, unlike you digital wusses. How many signal levels does a 56K modem have? It's a fucking analog spectrum and yet you still won't admit that our generation figured out the good shit long before you were born! Ah for the good ol days. And the Doors LP spinning on the turntable in the lab. That's probably another device you've never used. Now you're cramming silicon into your cars like cattle lining up to die. Well, when the EMP comes, my generation will still be on the road in our 55 Chevy pickups that have this wierd carbeurrated engine and mechanical points vibrator system. Maybe I'll stop to give you a lift. Maybe. Note. No paragraph breaks. In my day, keeping messages as short as posible was of paramount importance. No one wanted to pay line charges to read blank lines, you wasteful digital fruitcakes.
Look at the letterhead. I didn't see so much as one name there. Not even the name of a law firm to contact. Lots of snarling and noise from an anonymous coward. Yawn. I mean how much credence to you put in the words of a whiny demanding AC on SlashDot?
Remember folks, it's ILLEGAL TO RECORD COPS WHEN THEY PULL YOU OVER... at least in Massachusetts. See this story for more details. Only YOU have no privacy when you're on the job.
A reversed example: Porn is illegal in most Islamic nations. What if OPEC said "Stop making your porn web sites accessible from our nations or we cut off your supply of oil?".
We expect everyone to obey our laws, but don't give a crap about local legal stuff in the USA violating laws is some foreign nation (see also Ebay selling nazi artifacts; illegal in France, Austria, Germany).
Pot.
Kettle.
Black.
Dimitry should countersue to "make an example of Adobe" to other corporations. The message being "wrongfully fucking with people will cost you bigtime dollars".
The tourists are PROVING that all that "required special training" is just part of a bullshit elitist attitude by NASA if inflate their own egos.
The real experts are the ones on the ground who build the station, and the shuttle that flew it up there.
Astronauts are little more than hired manual labor, that need to radio to Houston when they need to know how to do something.
Face it, when Saddan Hussein, dying of cancer, thinks that nuking the US or Israel will make him one with Allah... this is a person who is not going to fear any reprucussions from the USA. Such a person is likely to have a very few missiles, and quite likely only one or two. An ABM system would be of immense benefit here, yes? Now if Russia launches 1500 missiles at the US, we're pretty much fucked no matter what.
What's with this ability for a GROUP of people to all gather around a TV or stereo and all watch movie or listen to a CD without the IP holder receiving additional per seat revenue?
More than one person using an IP playback device of any kind == theft.
We need a law to force manufacturers to make it so their devices can be used by ONLY ONE PERSON AT A TIME. That way, access and our IP can be protected.
And piracy is the boogeyman used to justify most of this. Unlimited use software, and infinitely reviewable movies will someday be redefined as "theft". Its about taking control away from you. Patented+homesteaded land cannot be taken away by gov't for any reason, so they don't allow this anymore. Europeans already scoff at "lucky bastards with flat rate phone service" in the US." while phone companies move towards eliminating this ancient practice.
It must pain the IP holders no end that their media must, in its final form, be presented unencrypted and in good quality to the eyes and ears.
Ultimately, it'll be pay-per-thought. We'll have cybernetic devices inplanted into the bas of our skulls to meter incoming content. Video/audio can then be sent encrypted all the way to our brains where final and untappable decryption takes place. Even think "Exit light... Enter night! Taaaake my hand! Off to never never land!" and ka-CHING, your credit account is charged a small fee.
1984 almost had it right, but misses profit as the basis of Big Brother.
Live free or DIE!
Are we doing wrong by keeping a species alive that CANNOT reproduce with the direct aid of man?
I suspect the radio and television networks would disagree with you here...
Only the private broadcasters. Giving up copyright has nothing to do with the medium being a boradcast one. I never said that. It all comes down to the charter of the forum you are posting in.
The newsgroups were CREATED AS PUBLIC FORUMS. Accepting this is a precondition of participating.
Fox was created as a PRIVATE BROADCASTER.
When the newspaper editorial section states that "all your submission are belong to us" and you write something to them, you have no copyright protection because you knew you were waiving them before you sent them in. Ditto your words on RADIO AND TV call-in programs.
Ditto USENET.
It's the same thing.
Will Seven get to life a life and not be the Borg lab rat for eternity?
Will the Doctor get the same rights afforded Data and other artificial life forms? Will he be erased/reprogrammed? Will he get to keep his 26th century mobile holo emitter (that's temporal contraband, yes?)?
What about Janeway's now remarried (after he thought she was dead) ex husband?
If the Borg transwarp conduit opens up right in from of freaking Earth, why haven't the Borg yet sent fleets of cubes to Earth? It took all starfleet had to defeat one borg ship. A fleet would have been unstoppable.
The Queen dies twice? To quote Barclay... "I hate temporal mechanics."
And the umteen bazillion family reunions.
Not quite. ANYONE can do anything with the post. Not just the "copyright holder". Why is that in quotes? Because there is no copyright on USENET posts!
It's the nature of the beast. When you voluntarily post to a PUBLIC forum, you are then and there decreeing your words to be in the public domain, yes? Thus, copyright no longer applies. And neither does "default" copyright apply because you physically placed your words into a PUBLIC forum. You knew what you were doing. You clearly chose to relinquish eternally all copyright to your article.
Wanna stay copyrighted and propietary? Post your words on your own web page and put a link in the newsgroup. Note that the link will be public domain, so don't whine about "deep linking" violations. Of course few to none may read your words then. Want a wide audience? Pay the price. Give up the (C). And welcome to real life.
All the major distros are now including openssl/openssh standard (Red Hat, Mandrake, etc.). Why not include the full crypto support for loop devices and the like? Make it an option in the setup to create secure, passphrase mounted filesystesm using blowfish, AES, IDEA, cast128, etc.?
Oh waaaaah! Well, I can't work as a programmer for two or more jobs in different places at once either, so I want a law to prohibit other places from filling "my" programming job until I decide to come... and to not fill it even if I never come.
Why in the FUCK should the law be used to coddle emmasculated businesses that can't do their job right?
(due to the high production cost of the film rolls, and the translation/dubbing/texting involved).
(1) If they're not dubbed/translated, then it's not a problem because those people can't watch your movie anyway, right?
(2) As for costs? Pay up or shut up. No one cuts me a break on paying simultaneously on auto insurance for my 3 cars even thought I can only drive one car at a time.
It's the 300% tax in those countries that jacks prices up.
So instead of bitching that we have it cheap, why aren't you bitching that your own governments are extorting you blind with taxes making up well over 2/3 of the price of the item being taxed?
(1) The Right of The People to make unlimited copies of copyrighted materials, which they own or hold a valid license to, for their own personal use shall not be infringed.
(2) The Right of The People to transfer ownership or licenses of copyrighted materials , and at their own discresion, (with all copies made therof, if any) to another party shall not be infringed.
(3) The Right of The People to make a copy, in any format, of a copyrighted work aired on a public or subscribed broadcast medium for time shift viewing purposes shall not be infringed.
(4) The Right of The People to possess the hardware and software and other tools necessary to carry out the above shall not be infringed. (5) These rights, as a whole, shall immediately, retroactively, and for all time preempt the portions of all contracts and licenses contrary with the above.
Seem fair? Changes? Additions?
How about creating <stdgui.h> ?
A classic case of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." And C was never broke. C++ is and remains a monstrosity of unneeded evil.
It's the new arms race! WWIII will be a billards game played out in space!
??=include <stdio.h>
??=include <errno.h>
??=include <stdlib.h>
int main(void)
??<
int rc;
rc = printf("Hello, World!??/n");
if (rc < 0)
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
return 0;
??>
Now that's proper and portable C code! Behold it's beauty!
Remember, many characters are not portable across all character sets. The square brackets, for example, dot not exist in EBCDIC. The hash/pound character is often replaced by the British currency symbol in some ASCII variants. Reverse slants do not exist in Baudot or Morse code. And so on. So ANSI C (2nd revision) defines 'trigraphs' of the form ??x where x is a from a list of more universal characters and the preprocessor treats the whole sequence as the appropriate C character. Note that trigraphs can even be used in quoted strings (see ??/ above).
There seems to be some misconception that one credit for creating something is somehow lost when the copyright expires. This is false. Only your exclusive right to profit expires. No one is interested in striking your name from every obelisk, nor could they. Look at Beethoven's/Mozart's/Chopin's works. Copyrights have expired of all their work. Does that mean other people have "suppressed their achievement" or "taken credit" for their work? No. Wel still know who did what. And today more people enjoy that work because it has become free. That's what copyright is supposed to do. Profit for A WHILE, then it becomes free to improve all of science and art in general.
With the widespread availability of affordable HOME VIDEO PLAYBACK systems (both VHS and DVD), it's understandable that the MOVIE THEATER business might suffer a few losses. The price of valuable floor space (especially in malls) is becoming extremely expensive, as is the cost of MOVIE THEATER EQUIPMENT. Accordingly, the MOVIE TICKET prices are going up a great deal - a $5.00 is a rarity, and it's not uncommon to spend $10.00 to watch a 90 minute movie.
Simply put, this is just too much money for too little entertainment. I live somewhat near a BOWLING ALLEY (with 100 lanes and pro shop). Going to BOWL for 2-3 hours is much cheaper than spending about an hour in the MOVIE THEATER!
If one is a serious movie goer, the time spent WATCHING MOVIES every week is mind-boggling. Purchasing a cheaper VIDEO PLAYER (VHS, DVD, etc) is FAR more economical than ATTENDING ONE'S FAVORITE THEATER every night. In addition, DVDROM PLAYERS are everywhere for those with PCs, playing the old classic MOVIES. For those true geeks who like the MOVIE THEATER EXPERIENCE, there have been posts to alt.home-theater.misc about turning a DEN IN YOUR HOUSE into a dedicated MOVIE THEATER with a custom THX SETUP.
The ONLY real advantage in a real MOVIE THEATER is unusual hardware - especially THX and DTS Decoders. However, even that HOME THEATER hardware is becoming increasingly affordable.
I hand-filed gears, sprockets, cogs and pistons for my own Babbage Difference Engine, arranged for shipping for thirteen metric tonnes of high-grade coal from China, and blew my own glass cooling jackets from Nova Scotia beach sand. The result is the fastest goddamned shopping cart program on the net.
Wheels and gears? Bah! I have ancient texts filled with speels and incantations to do my problems. Other answers can be found in tea leaves, wax, reading sticks tossed on the ground, or in tarot cards.
That's because when someone comes up with a useful technology, even something as simple as LZW compression or an MP3 encoder, NO ONE ELSE CAN USE IT in their product. Writing products that use someone else's file format is called a "copyright violation". Standardising on one crypto algorithm is called patent theft. CPUs with compatible MMX instructions gets you sued by Intel. Making DVDs playable on "non-approved" systems gets you jailed, or orders from people halfway around the world.
So yeah, "CS types develop complex and useless technologies." because we have to carefully avoid reinventing someone else's wheel or we get sued into bankruptcy.
One result is millions of different wheels of different diameters, shapes and track widths that are all incompatible with one another. Sounds pretty messy, right? It also happens to resemble what we see today in the computing industry.
The other result is people getting fed up with all the incompatibilities and looking for a standard, any standard. And since the standard is proprietary, naturally this will favor the growth of monopolies, e.g., Microsoft, who thes uses their position as OS "standard" to create other standards, such as Excel and Word formats, whilst actively blocking anyone else from participating in that standard.
IMO both patent lifetime and copyright lifetime ought to be cut to 10 years tops for all things computing related, hardware or software, because stuff in this field ages faster than any other traditionally patented and coyrighted work.
And there needs to be an irrevocable expiration for abandoned patents and copyrights too. It's absolutely insane that Atari 2600 games are still locked away by copyright, while no one is prodcing them. And they'll be locked away for over a century under current IP law. Is this right?