In effect, I think that Ford probably feels that they are getting a bad name (or could get a bad name) for something they didn't do. Sooner or later some idiot will start forwarding an emails that say "HEY, LOOK AT THIS. FORD POINTS FUCKGENERALMOTORS.COM TO THEIR WEBSITE". Then Ford would have to spend money on a PR campain to correct that misconception.
Interesting argument there. Some idiots might take it the wrong way, so therefore it should be banned?
Besides which, you are missing two important points here. In the first place, Ford has two easy solutions to the "problem" the first is a technological fix, they can simply refuse connections requesting "fuckgeneralmotors.com", and the second is that they could have asked 2600 to point the domain name somewhere else. The fuckgeneralmotors.com domain name once pointed to a lemon car site until the owner of the site sent them an email asking them not to point to him any more, they complied promptly and politely.
This isn't about Ford not wanting to be associated with a certain domain name, this is about Ford seeking control of the net. If they win this one they will have set a new and deadly precident. What next, people being forbidden to link to certain websites? People being *charged* for the "privilage" of linking to certain websites?
If Ford just wanted to avoid people thinking that they're registered the domain name (which is a totally silly argument, I doubt that anyone would think they had), they could have solved the problem quickly and easily, and without a lawsuit. It is amusing (in a sick sort of way) to note that Ford is part of many "Tort Reform" groups, and theoretically is opposed to frivilous lawsuits....
On a different note (and I don't remember if I read this in a book, or a newspaper) don't some of the government agencies use minutely different wording for documents they hand out, so they can try to track leaks?
So it is rumored. They run the documents through a paraphraser program, and give everyone a document that says the same thing, but says it differently. The theory is that leaks can be detected in this manner.
The problem with the theory is that an intelligent mole will run his own document through a paraphraser in order to avoid that sort of thing. Given that the security system isn't that secure, and that it has such an obvious workaround, I'd guess that the rumor is something of a red herring.
As a geek, I've got to say that I like Prof Bloomingfield's approach to the problem. Too many papers to manually sort to look for cheaters, employ a computer to do the grunt work. That is, after all, what computers are for.
That's probably my biggest gripe with so many of the poorly written programs (like, say, Windows) in the universe today: rather than making life easier through technology, they often make life harder...
In any event, I'm glad that they've spotted the cheaters. What is the point of cheating like that anyway, you're in the class to learn and cheating isn't going to give you the information.
It does make me a bit nervous though, back when I was still in college people would sometimes ask how I had done something (often from the semester before), so I often mailed people copies of my programs so they could see how I'd handled a problem. Will this come back to haunt me if they turned in my program as if it were their own?
I think that a large part of the problem is that the WIPO is ignoring the fact that much of the abuse comes from corporate entities who think that they own all domain names that include their trademark name. See the "www.veronica.com" issue for an example, or 2600's fight against Verizon for the verizonREALLYsucks.com domain name.
While it is true that some individuals are buying up corporate domain names with the intent of selling them for a big profit, I have to ask what is wrong with that? If a corporation isn't bright enough, or savy enough, to buy the domain name they want, then they should suffer the economic consiquences.
Still, one possible way to eleminate much of the problem would be to localize the internet. Implement a change that a) eleminates the requirement that the.us TLD include state and county data, and b) alter all domain names to reflect the nationality of their owners, and c) add a localization to browsers.
The purpose of this is so that the US corporation "Nike" would then own the domain "nike.co.us", a person who's browser is localized for the US could type "nike.com" and be automagically redirected to "nike.co.us". A person in Greece, where a religious group has grabbed the "nike.co.gr" domain name could type "nike.com" and get "nike.gr.co", or, if he wanted the US corporation he could enter the fully qualified domain "nike.co.us" and get the Nike corporate website.
This is similar to the way telephone dialing works, if I simply dial a number, the telephone system assumes that I am intending to dial a number in my own area code.
The ".com" delima seems to have at its root the problem that internationally there are several corporations with the same name, by eleminating the.com domain entirely (and teaching browsers how to sub.co.[country of user] for.com) we can sidestep a lot of problems. Same thing ought to go for the rest of the traditional TLD's. A university named "Rice" in the US gets "rice.ed.us", while a university name Rice in Russia gets "rice.ed.ru", etc...
Adding a bit of localization to the net would have problems, true, but I think that the advantages might outweigh them.
I'm pretty pro union, but I'll admit that I don't see much need for a tech union, right now. Tomorrow? Who knows
I do notice a lot of anti-union sentiment here, and I don't think is really well thought out. Many people seem to object to the entire idea of unions based on one bad experience. This isn't really a good way to judge an entire issue, the first time I tried to install Linux it crashed and ate three hours of my time, should I decide that Linux sucks based on this alone?
While, admittedly, unions can sometimes do bad things, look at the way it was before we had unions. Go back and read about the working conditions under Rockerfeller or any of the other tycoons, it sucked much worse than any of the problems you've had with unions. Also, unions have a positive affect even in industries that aren't unionized, the fear of unionization sometimes keeps a corporation from doing anything really nasty.
I think some of the rest of the problem is that mostly people only hear about unions when they go on strike, the times when the union negotiates with a company and they come to an agreement are usually left out of the news. Any union worker has better pay, better benefits, and more job security than a non-union worker. In our era of increasing corporate power I can't help but think that any check on that power can't be bad.
Here in the UK they are about to pass a law that the details of all financial donations to political parties have to be made publically available. Doesn't such a law exist in the US? If so, you should already know whos bought your country.
Are you kidding? We don't even know what companies own what other companies, much less which companies own which politicians. Most work through front orginizations called PACs which usually have misleading names. Worse, when so many companies are nothing but subsidiaries, but not listed as such, of larger companies we really don't know what the score is.
As a trivial example Kraft Foods is owned by Phillip Morris (one of the tobacco companies), no Kraft product mentions this, and discovering this takes quite a bit of digging through long documents written in legalease. Less trivial examples are every other company in the US. Is Coke and owner, or one of the owned? How about Pepsi? Who, if anyone, owns Phillip Morris? These questions aren't exactly unanswerable, but each one would take several hours, and probably a bit of cash, to answer.
So if a politician lists a contribution as coming from a PAC called "Citizens for a sane energy policy" then you don't know without spending lots of time checking that the PAC is a front for the biggest oil corporations in the US, even then you don't know which of those oil corporations gave the money to the PAC that the PAC gave to the politician.
It isn't capitalism, it's oligarchism, where the old kings and lords are replaced by CEOs and VPs
Donald E Westlake said much the same thing back in 1985. In his novel "Good Behavior" one of the characters is a CEO who says that the new economy is nothing less than a return to fudalism. Starting on page 128 of the Tor paperback. He's right, and you're right. The big corporations are doing their best to become the new liege lords of us peasents.
The thing that so many of us don't remember is that capitalism is based on the idea of companies *competing*, not cooperating. The modern "merge and be friendly" attitude among the biggest players is leading us to higher prices and worse service.
While some people point out the provisions within the merger allowance requiring access for "non-premium" service (who decides what is "premium" and what is not?) the simple fact is that we now have content and provider being the same entity, a vertical monopoly. This is bad from any standpoint. Those who say "well, it isn't that bad, they'll be watched closely for five years" are ignoring the fact that this merger will still exist after five years have passed. Some corporations and managers know the value of patience; they can wait five years before they get nasty.
One of the functions of government in a capitalistic society must be to preserve competition, a function that our government cannot fulfill if it is owned by the big corporations. The AOL/TW merger is just a symptom of the larger problem of campaign financing. We must acknowledge that a "campaign contribution" is nothing more or less than a bribe. Our "elected representitives" appoint the FTC and the FCC, is it any surprise that they have appointed people who have weakened our watchdog orginizations when they owe their very elections to the corporations the FTC is supposed to be watching? The system of legalized bribery in politics must end or we will be seeing more and more mergers of this sort.
Also, why do we only hear about this stuff with online companies...do people think just because they are "seen" more to the world that they should be more restrictive? Many video store companies and others have "bargain pre-viewed" sections and everything, but we don't hear any complaints about that stuff do we?
Actually there have been attempts to squash offline resellers. Back when CD's were new the RIAA attempted to outlaw the sale of used CD's, and also attempted blackmail against stores that sold both new and used CD's. Basically they told the new and used sellers that if they sold used CD's the RIAA would not allow them to sell new CD's. I don't know if it went to court and the RIAA lost, or if their legal experts told them to drop it, but somehow the RIAA let up.
I suspect that they are going after the online retailers for two reasons. The first is visibility, the media seems to think that anything that happens on the net is news, so they can get headlines by going after the net sellers. Secondly I think they hope to win a few lawsuits against the online retailers and use the prescidents generated by those successful lawsuits to intemidate offline retailers. I have no doubt that the MPAA lothes the sale of used videos, that the RIAA looks forward to a ban on used CD's, and that the Author's Guild wants to put every used book store out of business. They hit the net first because they believe the net to be vulnerable.
I know it's hard for/. readers to comprehend anything that isn't free
Where in the universe did you get "free" in this? How did you make this into an anti-opensource screed? No one was talking about free books, or stolen books, we are talking about the legitamate resale of a book that someone purchased and no longer wants. This has nothing to do with free, and it certainly has nothing to do with opensource.
Actually their "compromise" was that amazon only sell out of print books used. Moreover even the moderate "compromise" that the user be forced to scroll down is a very bad idea.
They cannot be allowed to dictate terms to Amazon. I don't like Amazon and I won't buy from Amazon, but the Author's Guild is trying to do something very wrong here. The books are sold and then they are the property of the people who own them. This is the same thing Matel ran into with the people selling modified Barbies. Once you sell someone something it belongs to them. If Amazon wants to make it easier for people to buy and sell used books I say "Yay Amazon". If Amazon caves in to the Author's Guild on this what will they demand next? A kickback for every used book sold? This would set a bad prescident and encourage furthur dictates from the content providers.
This is quite typical in the business world. Scott Adams calls it the "Dilbert Principal", but earlier someone called it the "Peter Principal". Basically the theory is that people get promoted not to the position they are best suited for, but to a position they aren't suited for. If promotion is the reward for good work, then you will be promoted out of every job you do successfully. When you finally reach a position that you don't do well they stop promoting you, thus ensuring another incompetent in management.
I'd say that the guy shouldn't take the promotion if he doesn't want it. He might do well at the job, but why would any company want to put a person in a position they don't want? Answer: upper management at any company is stupid (see the above principal). I hope he doesn't get fired for not taking the bump up, but honestly I wouldn't be surprised if he did. Obviously they couldn't put "Fired for not accepting a promotion" as the official reason for firing him, but that would be the real reason. The official reason would be something plausable that would stand up in court (the judge would probably be friends with his CEO anyway, judicial impartiality is a myth).
Here's my ideal scenario: A group of opensource toolsmiths comes up with a brilliant new idea and patents it. Now, patents can be selectively enforced (unlike copywrites) they allow all opensource projects complete and free access and charge the mega-corporate patent whores crippling licensing fees. The whole world cheers, RMS strides the planet as a Titan, and Bill Gates is thrown to the dogs.
Yes, I have, and I'm not too dreadfully impressed. The graphics are good enough, though only a few games really push the limits of the system, if somewhat un-inspired.
Sonic the Hedgehog has never done it for me, and it doesn't seem to have made the transition to 3D very well at all.
I haven't seen a DC game that really made me cream my jeans yet, and I really don't expect to. Sega has never made games that impressed me.
Moreover, the controller seems to be designed for some species other than humans.
Maybe in the NES/SNES era, but the N64 has been woefully lacking any stellar games. I can count the truly great AAA N64 games on one hand. The Dreamcast already has more than that, and the PSX has several times that many.
Disagree. PSX seems to be plagued by lameo fighting games with blocky graphics, and repetitive storylines. Now, this is a personal taste issue, I don't like fighting games or first person shooters. Metal Gear Solid was fun, no argument, but it wasn't worth buying a PS just for that. The only really stellar games I can think of that came out for the PS1 were the last two Final Fantasy RPGs.
Actually, IMO we've seen a general decline in the quality of games available for the set top boxes. The really good games seem to be coming out for computers these days. Granted, both of the Zeldas for the N64 were awe inspiringly great, but I will concede that I haven't been that impressed with much else that's come out for the N64.
Still, I think Metroid and Zelda are probably the best game series to date, which puts me into the Nintendo category; I just can't get too excited about a ring chasing hedgehog, or a guy named "Solid Snake". Gimmie a chick in powered armour or a elf-dude with a cool sword any day.
One of the themes we keep repeating in the gaming world is that Nintendo tends to produce technologically backwards systems (with the possible exception of the Gamecube), but stellar games. The other companies (PS especially) seem to produce killer systems, but pretty crappy games on average. The only PS game I ever really got into was FF7 and that came out for the PC a few whiles backs (even for those without Bleem).
So I don't find it all that surprising that the game lineup for the PS2 isn't all that great, they're just repeating history. Not that PS hasn't built some good games, several were; but only a small handful were truly great. Sega runs into the same problem, great systems, lousy games.
If Nintendo and PS merged maybe we'd get great games on a killer system; but given the inherant evil of corporate mergers we'd probably get PS quality games on a Nintendo quality system....
Actually, Bill's house is supposed to be pretty darn wired. However he hasn't let anyone see it. I seem to recall that he made trouble for a couple of people who snapped pictures of the outside and posted them to the Net.
On the other hand, would you trust a company like AOL to build and maintain municipal roads? ("I'm sorry sir, we only support recent-model AOL-certified vehicles. We have a deal this month on...") At least the local government is democratic and not out to profit off you.
Agree mostly. The interstate highway system in the USA works just fine, and a government owned internet infrastructure would work pretty well too.
My biggest concern is the possibility for censorship, and police state problems. Right now the FBI has to ask all of the ISPs and backbone sites to please let them put Carnivore in. In a government owned system they wouldn't need to ask, and we'd probably never hear about it.
Perhaps a non-profit monopoly would work better than the government?
The cable is there to deliver packets, and the cable company should be able to charge money for it. The cable companies ought not to be allowed to have any financial relationship to the companies which generate the packets, nor discriminate between them
I agree that this would pretty much prevent the sort of abuse I've seen. COX could charge, say, ARNet a fee to use their cable lines for broadband, but could not themselves provide internet service.
I think that COX would scream bloody murder though:)
Here in the Corporate States of America I doubt that we'd be able to get that passed. I think that a government regulatory comission for this sort of thing is a much worse idea than simply banning cable owners from being ISPs, but I think that the cable owners would prefer that plan. Unfortunately, I also think that due to the system of legalized bribery we have in the USA the corporations that own the physical network will prevent anything from loosening their chokehold.
Agree. That is the only killer argument against caching, or anothing else that can allow censorship.
Not only do we need to fear government imposed censorship (as we already see in China), but also corporate imposed censorship. I can see, say, Verzion preventing packets containing anti-Verzion content from being passed.
For me one of the questions is: how does maintenance take place? If, for example, the cable company is the only one allowed to perform maintenance (and, frankly, having only one party perform maintenance sounds like a good idea to me) than what is to prevent them from delaying maintenance, or performing shoddy maintenance for people who use a non-cable company ISP?
I ask because of the problems I've had with this. I live in Amarillo TX. I wanted to get DSL from a local ISP (ARNet). Naturally, only Southwestern Bell is allowed to work on the physical lines. Southwestern Bell also offers DSL service.
I tried for more than two months to get DSL service. ARNet would place the order, and SWB would encounter a tiny problem and cancel my order without telling either ARNet or me. Eventually, two months after it started SWB canceled my order for the third time (I only found out because I called ARNet, and they called SWB, this is they way I found out about the pervious two cancelations) saying that I could never have DSL where I live because there was an "obstructor" on the trunk line.
I have difficulty believing that I would have gotten this much hassle had I gone to SWB directly for my DSL.
Finally, I gave up and am now getting broadband through COX cable.
Is there a solution to maintenance bullying? Or will we need to forbid the physical line providers from providing service simply to insure that they don't abuse their maintenance monopoly to get customers away from everyone else?
The Iridium satelites are in what is called "low earth orbit". This means that they are actually flying through an extremely thin part of the Earth's athmosphere. Eventually the orbit decays (over a period of many years)
Actually, I do know that. I don't have enough math to calcualte an orbit, but I am familiar with the basics.
My point, not very well stated, is that the satelites won't begin to fall for several years. Not even Motorola would build 'em with an orbit the enters serious decay after just two years. When the time to de-orbit them comes it will take maybe two or three minutes worth of radio, and a few hours of a mathematician's time to handle the job. Hardly a couple of million dollars.
So long as they are up there, they could be useful. Motorola is preventing them from being useful. Satelites have been abandoned and claimed in the past (I can only recall one instance, but it has happened). Instead they are seeking to destroy them out of what I can only assume is a sense of pure bastardry. Also, I suppose, for a tax write off.
On the subject of decaying orbits, I will add that I'm still pissed that they chose to put the ISS into a decaying orbit. Ten year lifetime, feh! We won't make any progress in space until we have a permanant station.
Yes, it would cost more to boost the components into a higher orbit, but what really is the point in spending billions building a space station that you intend to crash after just a few yars?
What I love about the entire Iridium issue is the outright example of corporate nastyness it represents.
The company that put the satelites up went bankrupt, rather than a) selling them cheap, or b) abandoning them so others can claim them it is c) planning to destroy them if it doesn't get millions.
Once you put something into a stable orbit there isn't any reason to send it back down. Any mass in orbit is eventually going to be valuable simply in that it is already there. But, corporate idiocy strickes again "If we can't get our high fees, we'll just destroy our expensive investment." I simply don't understand this attitude: the money has already been spent, crashing the satelites results in an utter loss, any payment for the satelites is at least something.
Now, now, be nice... I started out in C++, and moved to Java when I realized that a lot of the nit-picky stuff from C++ is taken care of automagically in Java. Of course, this means loosing some degree of control. When I need that controll I use C++, or even assembly if I want to get that close to the machine.
Also, I'm fairly lazy, I'd rather use a multi-platform language than recode my app for every platform its going to be run on. The "multi-platform" aspect of Java appeals to my lazy side quite a lot.
Is Java the best? Of course not. As soon as someone builds a better platform independant language that has as many "make my life easier" parts as Java does I'll switch to it in a cycle. Until then I'll continue to use Java whenever its practical to do so.
Probably because they didn't feel like it. It doesn't hurt them (Slashdot) to not use the official logo, and Sun was a dick for asking them to stop.
Mind you, I program in Java by preferance; but Sun is still a bunch of jerks.
Slashdot Mirror
Besides which, you are missing two important points here. In the first place, Ford has two easy solutions to the "problem" the first is a technological fix, they can simply refuse connections requesting "fuckgeneralmotors.com", and the second is that they could have asked 2600 to point the domain name somewhere else. The fuckgeneralmotors.com domain name once pointed to a lemon car site until the owner of the site sent them an email asking them not to point to him any more, they complied promptly and politely.
This isn't about Ford not wanting to be associated with a certain domain name, this is about Ford seeking control of the net. If they win this one they will have set a new and deadly precident. What next, people being forbidden to link to certain websites? People being *charged* for the "privilage" of linking to certain websites?
If Ford just wanted to avoid people thinking that they're registered the domain name (which is a totally silly argument, I doubt that anyone would think they had), they could have solved the problem quickly and easily, and without a lawsuit. It is amusing (in a sick sort of way) to note that Ford is part of many "Tort Reform" groups, and theoretically is opposed to frivilous lawsuits....
So it is rumored. They run the documents through a paraphraser program, and give everyone a document that says the same thing, but says it differently. The theory is that leaks can be detected in this manner.
The problem with the theory is that an intelligent mole will run his own document through a paraphraser in order to avoid that sort of thing. Given that the security system isn't that secure, and that it has such an obvious workaround, I'd guess that the rumor is something of a red herring.
That's probably my biggest gripe with so many of the poorly written programs (like, say, Windows) in the universe today: rather than making life easier through technology, they often make life harder...
In any event, I'm glad that they've spotted the cheaters. What is the point of cheating like that anyway, you're in the class to learn and cheating isn't going to give you the information.
It does make me a bit nervous though, back when I was still in college people would sometimes ask how I had done something (often from the semester before), so I often mailed people copies of my programs so they could see how I'd handled a problem. Will this come back to haunt me if they turned in my program as if it were their own?
While it is true that some individuals are buying up corporate domain names with the intent of selling them for a big profit, I have to ask what is wrong with that? If a corporation isn't bright enough, or savy enough, to buy the domain name they want, then they should suffer the economic consiquences.
Still, one possible way to eleminate much of the problem would be to localize the internet. Implement a change that a) eleminates the requirement that the .us TLD include state and county data, and b) alter all domain names to reflect the nationality of their owners, and c) add a localization to browsers.
The purpose of this is so that the US corporation "Nike" would then own the domain "nike.co.us", a person who's browser is localized for the US could type "nike.com" and be automagically redirected to "nike.co.us". A person in Greece, where a religious group has grabbed the "nike.co.gr" domain name could type "nike.com" and get "nike.gr.co", or, if he wanted the US corporation he could enter the fully qualified domain "nike.co.us" and get the Nike corporate website.
This is similar to the way telephone dialing works, if I simply dial a number, the telephone system assumes that I am intending to dial a number in my own area code.
The ".com" delima seems to have at its root the problem that internationally there are several corporations with the same name, by eleminating the .com domain entirely (and teaching browsers how to sub .co.[country of user] for .com) we can sidestep a lot of problems. Same thing ought to go for the rest of the traditional TLD's. A university named "Rice" in the US gets "rice.ed.us", while a university name Rice in Russia gets "rice.ed.ru", etc...
Adding a bit of localization to the net would have problems, true, but I think that the advantages might outweigh them.
I do notice a lot of anti-union sentiment here, and I don't think is really well thought out. Many people seem to object to the entire idea of unions based on one bad experience. This isn't really a good way to judge an entire issue, the first time I tried to install Linux it crashed and ate three hours of my time, should I decide that Linux sucks based on this alone?
While, admittedly, unions can sometimes do bad things, look at the way it was before we had unions. Go back and read about the working conditions under Rockerfeller or any of the other tycoons, it sucked much worse than any of the problems you've had with unions. Also, unions have a positive affect even in industries that aren't unionized, the fear of unionization sometimes keeps a corporation from doing anything really nasty.
I think some of the rest of the problem is that mostly people only hear about unions when they go on strike, the times when the union negotiates with a company and they come to an agreement are usually left out of the news. Any union worker has better pay, better benefits, and more job security than a non-union worker. In our era of increasing corporate power I can't help but think that any check on that power can't be bad.
Are you kidding? We don't even know what companies own what other companies, much less which companies own which politicians. Most work through front orginizations called PACs which usually have misleading names. Worse, when so many companies are nothing but subsidiaries, but not listed as such, of larger companies we really don't know what the score is.
As a trivial example Kraft Foods is owned by Phillip Morris (one of the tobacco companies), no Kraft product mentions this, and discovering this takes quite a bit of digging through long documents written in legalease. Less trivial examples are every other company in the US. Is Coke and owner, or one of the owned? How about Pepsi? Who, if anyone, owns Phillip Morris? These questions aren't exactly unanswerable, but each one would take several hours, and probably a bit of cash, to answer.
So if a politician lists a contribution as coming from a PAC called "Citizens for a sane energy policy" then you don't know without spending lots of time checking that the PAC is a front for the biggest oil corporations in the US, even then you don't know which of those oil corporations gave the money to the PAC that the PAC gave to the politician.
Donald E Westlake said much the same thing back in 1985. In his novel "Good Behavior" one of the characters is a CEO who says that the new economy is nothing less than a return to fudalism. Starting on page 128 of the Tor paperback. He's right, and you're right. The big corporations are doing their best to become the new liege lords of us peasents.
While some people point out the provisions within the merger allowance requiring access for "non-premium" service (who decides what is "premium" and what is not?) the simple fact is that we now have content and provider being the same entity, a vertical monopoly. This is bad from any standpoint. Those who say "well, it isn't that bad, they'll be watched closely for five years" are ignoring the fact that this merger will still exist after five years have passed. Some corporations and managers know the value of patience; they can wait five years before they get nasty.
One of the functions of government in a capitalistic society must be to preserve competition, a function that our government cannot fulfill if it is owned by the big corporations. The AOL/TW merger is just a symptom of the larger problem of campaign financing. We must acknowledge that a "campaign contribution" is nothing more or less than a bribe. Our "elected representitives" appoint the FTC and the FCC, is it any surprise that they have appointed people who have weakened our watchdog orginizations when they owe their very elections to the corporations the FTC is supposed to be watching? The system of legalized bribery in politics must end or we will be seeing more and more mergers of this sort.
Actually there have been attempts to squash offline resellers. Back when CD's were new the RIAA attempted to outlaw the sale of used CD's, and also attempted blackmail against stores that sold both new and used CD's. Basically they told the new and used sellers that if they sold used CD's the RIAA would not allow them to sell new CD's. I don't know if it went to court and the RIAA lost, or if their legal experts told them to drop it, but somehow the RIAA let up.
I suspect that they are going after the online retailers for two reasons. The first is visibility, the media seems to think that anything that happens on the net is news, so they can get headlines by going after the net sellers. Secondly I think they hope to win a few lawsuits against the online retailers and use the prescidents generated by those successful lawsuits to intemidate offline retailers. I have no doubt that the MPAA lothes the sale of used videos, that the RIAA looks forward to a ban on used CD's, and that the Author's Guild wants to put every used book store out of business. They hit the net first because they believe the net to be vulnerable.
Where in the universe did you get "free" in this? How did you make this into an anti-opensource screed? No one was talking about free books, or stolen books, we are talking about the legitamate resale of a book that someone purchased and no longer wants. This has nothing to do with free, and it certainly has nothing to do with opensource.
They cannot be allowed to dictate terms to Amazon. I don't like Amazon and I won't buy from Amazon, but the Author's Guild is trying to do something very wrong here. The books are sold and then they are the property of the people who own them. This is the same thing Matel ran into with the people selling modified Barbies. Once you sell someone something it belongs to them. If Amazon wants to make it easier for people to buy and sell used books I say "Yay Amazon". If Amazon caves in to the Author's Guild on this what will they demand next? A kickback for every used book sold? This would set a bad prescident and encourage furthur dictates from the content providers.
I'd say that the guy shouldn't take the promotion if he doesn't want it. He might do well at the job, but why would any company want to put a person in a position they don't want? Answer: upper management at any company is stupid (see the above principal). I hope he doesn't get fired for not taking the bump up, but honestly I wouldn't be surprised if he did. Obviously they couldn't put "Fired for not accepting a promotion" as the official reason for firing him, but that would be the real reason. The official reason would be something plausable that would stand up in court (the judge would probably be friends with his CEO anyway, judicial impartiality is a myth).
Here's my ideal scenario: A group of opensource toolsmiths comes up with a brilliant new idea and patents it. Now, patents can be selectively enforced (unlike copywrites) they allow all opensource projects complete and free access and charge the mega-corporate patent whores crippling licensing fees. The whole world cheers, RMS strides the planet as a Titan, and Bill Gates is thrown to the dogs.
Yes, I have, and I'm not too dreadfully impressed. The graphics are good enough, though only a few games really push the limits of the system, if somewhat un-inspired.
Sonic the Hedgehog has never done it for me, and it doesn't seem to have made the transition to 3D very well at all.
I haven't seen a DC game that really made me cream my jeans yet, and I really don't expect to. Sega has never made games that impressed me.
Moreover, the controller seems to be designed for some species other than humans.
Disagree. PSX seems to be plagued by lameo fighting games with blocky graphics, and repetitive storylines. Now, this is a personal taste issue, I don't like fighting games or first person shooters. Metal Gear Solid was fun, no argument, but it wasn't worth buying a PS just for that. The only really stellar games I can think of that came out for the PS1 were the last two Final Fantasy RPGs.
Actually, IMO we've seen a general decline in the quality of games available for the set top boxes. The really good games seem to be coming out for computers these days. Granted, both of the Zeldas for the N64 were awe inspiringly great, but I will concede that I haven't been that impressed with much else that's come out for the N64.
Still, I think Metroid and Zelda are probably the best game series to date, which puts me into the Nintendo category; I just can't get too excited about a ring chasing hedgehog, or a guy named "Solid Snake". Gimmie a chick in powered armour or a elf-dude with a cool sword any day.
So I don't find it all that surprising that the game lineup for the PS2 isn't all that great, they're just repeating history. Not that PS hasn't built some good games, several were; but only a small handful were truly great. Sega runs into the same problem, great systems, lousy games.
If Nintendo and PS merged maybe we'd get great games on a killer system; but given the inherant evil of corporate mergers we'd probably get PS quality games on a Nintendo quality system....
Actually, Bill's house is supposed to be pretty darn wired. However he hasn't let anyone see it. I seem to recall that he made trouble for a couple of people who snapped pictures of the outside and posted them to the Net.
Agree mostly. The interstate highway system in the USA works just fine, and a government owned internet infrastructure would work pretty well too.
My biggest concern is the possibility for censorship, and police state problems. Right now the FBI has to ask all of the ISPs and backbone sites to please let them put Carnivore in. In a government owned system they wouldn't need to ask, and we'd probably never hear about it.
Perhaps a non-profit monopoly would work better than the government?
No easy answers, unfortunately.
I agree that this would pretty much prevent the sort of abuse I've seen. COX could charge, say, ARNet a fee to use their cable lines for broadband, but could not themselves provide internet service.
I think that COX would scream bloody murder though :)
Here in the Corporate States of America I doubt that we'd be able to get that passed. I think that a government regulatory comission for this sort of thing is a much worse idea than simply banning cable owners from being ISPs, but I think that the cable owners would prefer that plan. Unfortunately, I also think that due to the system of legalized bribery we have in the USA the corporations that own the physical network will prevent anything from loosening their chokehold.
Not only do we need to fear government imposed censorship (as we already see in China), but also corporate imposed censorship. I can see, say, Verzion preventing packets containing anti-Verzion content from being passed.
I ask because of the problems I've had with this. I live in Amarillo TX. I wanted to get DSL from a local ISP (ARNet). Naturally, only Southwestern Bell is allowed to work on the physical lines. Southwestern Bell also offers DSL service.
I tried for more than two months to get DSL service. ARNet would place the order, and SWB would encounter a tiny problem and cancel my order without telling either ARNet or me. Eventually, two months after it started SWB canceled my order for the third time (I only found out because I called ARNet, and they called SWB, this is they way I found out about the pervious two cancelations) saying that I could never have DSL where I live because there was an "obstructor" on the trunk line.
I have difficulty believing that I would have gotten this much hassle had I gone to SWB directly for my DSL.
Finally, I gave up and am now getting broadband through COX cable.
2600 had similar problems: http://www.2600.com/news/2000/1002.html
Is there a solution to maintenance bullying? Or will we need to forbid the physical line providers from providing service simply to insure that they don't abuse their maintenance monopoly to get customers away from everyone else?
Actually, I do know that. I don't have enough math to calcualte an orbit, but I am familiar with the basics.
My point, not very well stated, is that the satelites won't begin to fall for several years. Not even Motorola would build 'em with an orbit the enters serious decay after just two years. When the time to de-orbit them comes it will take maybe two or three minutes worth of radio, and a few hours of a mathematician's time to handle the job. Hardly a couple of million dollars.
So long as they are up there, they could be useful. Motorola is preventing them from being useful. Satelites have been abandoned and claimed in the past (I can only recall one instance, but it has happened). Instead they are seeking to destroy them out of what I can only assume is a sense of pure bastardry. Also, I suppose, for a tax write off.
On the subject of decaying orbits, I will add that I'm still pissed that they chose to put the ISS into a decaying orbit. Ten year lifetime, feh! We won't make any progress in space until we have a permanant station.
Yes, it would cost more to boost the components into a higher orbit, but what really is the point in spending billions building a space station that you intend to crash after just a few yars?
The company that put the satelites up went bankrupt, rather than a) selling them cheap, or b) abandoning them so others can claim them it is c) planning to destroy them if it doesn't get millions.
Once you put something into a stable orbit there isn't any reason to send it back down. Any mass in orbit is eventually going to be valuable simply in that it is already there. But, corporate idiocy strickes again "If we can't get our high fees, we'll just destroy our expensive investment." I simply don't understand this attitude: the money has already been spent, crashing the satelites results in an utter loss, any payment for the satelites is at least something.
Also, I'm fairly lazy, I'd rather use a multi-platform language than recode my app for every platform its going to be run on. The "multi-platform" aspect of Java appeals to my lazy side quite a lot.
Is Java the best? Of course not. As soon as someone builds a better platform independant language that has as many "make my life easier" parts as Java does I'll switch to it in a cycle. Until then I'll continue to use Java whenever its practical to do so.
Probably because they didn't feel like it. It doesn't hurt them (Slashdot) to not use the official logo, and Sun was a dick for asking them to stop. Mind you, I program in Java by preferance; but Sun is still a bunch of jerks.