That's a variant of "rubber hose cryptography". When someone REALLY wants to get through security, it's usually much easier to figure out who has access and, er, persuade them to let you in. Witness the frequency (nigh unto mundanity) of bank robberies: ultimate in physical security of real valuables, yet the slightest hint of "rubber hose cryptography" provides immediate assisted access to the desired goods (only reason they're recovered is invariable sheer stupidity after every instance).
Anyone actually bother to read the specs on this thing?
This is a write-once media (a fact they avoid making).
Comparing it to flash memory is comparing apples & oranges. While DataPlay certainly has higher capacity, flash is completely reuseable. They solve different problems.
Comparing DataPlay to CDs tends to ignore the 20x difference in price, ubiquitousness of CD-ROM drives & CD players, upcoming CD-MP3 players/standards, and the convenient size of CDs (compact yet not easily lost).
The financial brilliance for DataPlay is that it is a consumable, which will make someone a lot of money if it catches on.
This quarter-sized write-once media certainly will have its place in the gap between flash & CD-R. The content-control aspects are moot, as the control bit WILL be squelched by some creative hacker.
In case you haven't noticed, Microsoft IS the largest software company with the largest user base, 3rd-party software library, and makes tools used by more developers than any other company. YES WE ACTUALLY VISIT MICROSOFT.COM.
Anti-Microsoft bigotry is cute up to a point. You're way past that point.
When is someone going to wake up and start an up-front "legit" business to get around all this content control stuff? There's a LOT OF MONEY TO BE MADE from makind region-free DVD players, content-control-free HDTV stuff, and so on./.ers keep whining about the legitimate applications being oppressed - serve them! Make a buck! If Napster can openly make a fortune helping people steal music, then surely someone can make a fortune getting past all this oppressive tech by serving legitimate uses!
Some high school kid was collecting smoke detectors in his back yard and scraping out the Americium for some project. Turned into a royal mess for Hazmat/ABC personnel to clean up.
Interesting point (speed = 0.014 x c). Time & mass dialation could be measureable, but it's still not enough for serious issues to occur. The wierd/cool stuff doesn't appreciably happen (IIRC) until about 90% of c.
Compact Disc (CD) and Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) use single and dual
magnetic layers, respectively, to store data in pits and grooves, similar
to the way grooves store music on vinyl records.
CD & DVD magnetic? Grooves? The reporter is obviously clueless. No point in reading any further.
(BTW: This storage medium was announced two years ago.)
How have I opted out of parental responsibility by choosing how my daughter
will be cared for?
How? By letting a stranger teach and instill values for half the child's waking hours!
Just because I am not
personally around her every moment of every day? I've got news for you - that kind of hovering is smothering. You get
children that can't decide anything for themselves.
They can't decide anything if you haven't taught them the decision making process! Remember - kids don't start out knowing how to decide. How about you teaching them what you've learned in ~30 years, rather than letting them figure things out with ~30 _months_ of experience?
Exposing a child to new environments is letting the child learn.
They need a stable base to begin from BEFORE moving on to "new environments". Children naturally CRAVE stability, as everything is new and they need a solid place to start before exploring - and you wish to deny them even the comfort of mommy & daddy for half of each day!
I don't think that there is a problem with using daycare and it doesn't mean that others will raise your kids.
For ~8 hours a day, someone you don't really know is teaching, instilling values, and acts as substitute parent when the kid wants mommy or daddy - all during the most formative years of the kid's life. That stranger may not be raising your kid 100%, but s/he is doing so up to 50% of the child's waking hours, and that half strongly influences the other half.
My wife and I need to both work
If the government wasn't confiscating half your income, that wouldn't be necessary.
daycare (ranging from $150-$300
Weekly, I assume. That would nicely pay for some serious telecommuting tools and services.
They love the kids
and with all the background checks they use to hire day care providers, it is safe and healthy on the stress levels.
While most day care is nice & safe, a lot of parents have found out the hard way that degree of safety isn't as high as it should be. You really accept that risk with your own kids?
A parent must
still take their part in the off time to help their kids learn and flourish so that everyone will be alright.
You've abdicated half that responsibility already. Great way to start a kid's life.
Daycare is not an alternative to parenting!
Apparently it is for you, as you've given up half of the parenting job to strangers.
Is work so important that you'd rather have strangers raise your children? People who you don't know, who will likely teach unacceptable values (whatever your value system is), who get paid some relatively low amount, who could have personalities anywhere between Mother Theresa and Jeffery Dahlmer (and you won't know), and who are likely doing the work only because they need the money (like you)?
Far better is to provide full-blown telecommutting, letting one or both parents work from home, give the kids attention as needed, and teach a work ethic by example.
H.G. Welles presented plausable representations of future technologies. Most "mind upload" or "brain reprogramming" representations are much closer to mysticism than technology; waving a few buzzwords is not science fiction.
Barnes' concept of the Memes originates with the computer viruses of our own time, combined
with the idea that ideas have an existence of their own. In Candle, Memes have jumped the
sentience gap from hardware to wetware, allowing them to run within the human brain, placing
beliefs directly and absolutely in the mind, incontrovertible except by the destruction or
replacement of the meme itself.
First, that's a perversion of the standard understanding of "memes".
Second, any story that involves running programs in human brains, or transferring minds to computers, is invariably lame as the premise is just goofy. Ok, maybe someday it might happen, but nobody's gotten it anywhere close to convincingly right yet.
Thanks for the review. Nice to know ahead of time that the premise is preposterous. It saves me the waste of reading the book.
"Farenheit 451", on the other hand, excellently depicts banning information technology.
Throwing vast amounts of computing power to something as obscure yet elegant as computing pi to a bazillion places just oozes with the essence of nerdness. To find the quadrillienth binary digit is even more so. As such, it is indeed wonderful news for nerds. Bravo!
"Offtopic"? "Flamebait"? Not at all! The question is whether it's "email" or "e-mail", which is just like asking if it's "anal retentive" or "anal-retentive"...and is just as silly.
Apparently some moderators have no sense of using satire as a perfectly valid way of making a legitimate point...
Apparently these were simply painted to look like a video game. Could have been better if he had actually made mods to "The Sims" or some other game and done real screenshots.
Any word on whether there will be any upgrades to the original Aibo? Those of us who dropped $3000 on the first one a year ago will get pissed if there isn't.
Ah, the longing desire for the past. The fond memories of good times had. All those great games...
C'mon! Do you REALLY want to go back to playing Pong? Jumpman? Atari 2600? Those were fun because they were all we had, and the concept of computer games was new. Sure, they captured elements of fun play...but if they were really that great, we'd be playing them now instead of thousands of hours of Quake.
Do you remember all the games that sucked? The multitude of games that we played only because they were the only games available?
Things haven't changed that much. Some current games are great fun; more suck. Some past games were great fun; more sucked. The technology hasn't changed things that much other than visualize and refine that which was barely doable on a 2600. Back then, we ran around mazes shooting at bad guys; today, we run around mazes shooting bad guys - the only difference is the experience is much more believable.
Why, you ask? well, not all PC's have sound cards. Especially at work - my only source of entertainment is the CD player on my PC and it
would be keen to have a mass of MP3's (er, ripped from my legitimate collection of CDs;) to listen to.
Then go buy a $15 audio card and stick it in your computer!
Products: make one, sell it once, no more income. Once a book is printed and sold, that book generates no new income; to the contrary, it may even prevent income when resold (used book stores) or lent (libraries).
Services: make one, sell it repeatedly, long-term income. Require someone to pay each time they read a book and you've got a long-term income.
Profit ultimately goes to the owner of the asset. In this book-rental service (which time-limited-textbooks essentially are), the company makes sales yet keeps the asset for repeated resales.
Plaintif's points:
- Defendant didn't prove that DeCSS is widely available
- Defendant didn't prove that DeCSS would become widely available
- Plaintiff will be really annoyed if defendant wins.
Defendant's points:
- DeCSS provides additional fair use of legitimately obtained copyrighted products
- Nobody has EVER challenged the right of the purchaser to reasonably use a purchased work
- Plaintiff has not shown in any way that DeCSS has affected DVD piracy
- The DeCSS program is a 1st-Amendment-protected description of a scientific process.
Come on people, we finally see a complete PC in a miniscule package, and all you people can do is gripe about it? "It's too small." "It's too expensive." "It's not powerful enough." "It was mentioned yesterday." What, if it's not on the bleeding edge of what you can imagine, it sucks? Shut up already! We've been waiting a long time for a PC to run a major OS and fit in a cigarette pack...and it's finally here! For just two grand I could get this, add a battery, microphone, audio card, & i-Glasses and have a really wearable PC that runs real applications - COOL!
Slashdot Mirror
That's a variant of "rubber hose cryptography". When someone REALLY wants to get through security, it's usually much easier to figure out who has access and, er, persuade them to let you in. Witness the frequency (nigh unto mundanity) of bank robberies: ultimate in physical security of real valuables, yet the slightest hint of "rubber hose cryptography" provides immediate assisted access to the desired goods (only reason they're recovered is invariable sheer stupidity after every instance).
This is a write-once media (a fact they avoid making).
Comparing it to flash memory is comparing apples & oranges. While DataPlay certainly has higher capacity, flash is completely reuseable. They solve different problems.
Comparing DataPlay to CDs tends to ignore the 20x difference in price, ubiquitousness of CD-ROM drives & CD players, upcoming CD-MP3 players/standards, and the convenient size of CDs (compact yet not easily lost).
The financial brilliance for DataPlay is that it is a consumable, which will make someone a lot of money if it catches on.
This quarter-sized write-once media certainly will have its place in the gap between flash & CD-R. The content-control aspects are moot, as the control bit WILL be squelched by some creative hacker.
"Strange how much human accomplishment and progress comes from contemplation of the irrelevant."
- Scott Kim
In case you haven't noticed, Microsoft IS the largest software company with the largest user base, 3rd-party software library, and makes tools used by more developers than any other company. YES WE ACTUALLY VISIT MICROSOFT.COM.
Anti-Microsoft bigotry is cute up to a point. You're way past that point.
When is someone going to wake up and start an up-front "legit" business to get around all this content control stuff? There's a LOT OF MONEY TO BE MADE from makind region-free DVD players, content-control-free HDTV stuff, and so on. /.ers keep whining about the legitimate applications being oppressed - serve them! Make a buck! If Napster can openly make a fortune helping people steal music, then surely someone can make a fortune getting past all this oppressive tech by serving legitimate uses!
Some high school kid was collecting smoke detectors in his back yard and scraping out the Americium for some project. Turned into a royal mess for Hazmat/ABC personnel to clean up.
Interesting point (speed = 0.014 x c). Time & mass dialation could be measureable, but it's still not enough for serious issues to occur. The wierd/cool stuff doesn't appreciably happen (IIRC) until about 90% of c.
Only 20 years ago I lived in an area where 4-digit dialing was enough. Now we face 10 digits just to call a neighbor. Times change...
CD & DVD magnetic? Grooves? The reporter is obviously clueless. No point in reading any further.
(BTW: This storage medium was announced two years ago.)
How? By letting a stranger teach and instill values for half the child's waking hours!
Just because I am not personally around her every moment of every day? I've got news for you - that kind of hovering is smothering. You get children that can't decide anything for themselves.
They can't decide anything if you haven't taught them the decision making process! Remember - kids don't start out knowing how to decide. How about you teaching them what you've learned in ~30 years, rather than letting them figure things out with ~30 _months_ of experience?
Exposing a child to new environments is letting the child learn.
They need a stable base to begin from BEFORE moving on to "new environments". Children naturally CRAVE stability, as everything is new and they need a solid place to start before exploring - and you wish to deny them even the comfort of mommy & daddy for half of each day!
For ~8 hours a day, someone you don't really know is teaching, instilling values, and acts as substitute parent when the kid wants mommy or daddy - all during the most formative years of the kid's life. That stranger may not be raising your kid 100%, but s/he is doing so up to 50% of the child's waking hours, and that half strongly influences the other half.
My wife and I need to both work
If the government wasn't confiscating half your income, that wouldn't be necessary.
daycare (ranging from $150-$300
Weekly, I assume. That would nicely pay for some serious telecommuting tools and services.
They love the kids and with all the background checks they use to hire day care providers, it is safe and healthy on the stress levels.
While most day care is nice & safe, a lot of parents have found out the hard way that degree of safety isn't as high as it should be. You really accept that risk with your own kids?
A parent must still take their part in the off time to help their kids learn and flourish so that everyone will be alright.
You've abdicated half that responsibility already. Great way to start a kid's life.
Daycare is not an alternative to parenting!
Apparently it is for you, as you've given up half of the parenting job to strangers.
Far better is to provide full-blown telecommutting, letting one or both parents work from home, give the kids attention as needed, and teach a work ethic by example.
H.G. Welles presented plausable representations of future technologies. Most "mind upload" or "brain reprogramming" representations are much closer to mysticism than technology; waving a few buzzwords is not science fiction.
First, that's a perversion of the standard understanding of "memes".
Second, any story that involves running programs in human brains, or transferring minds to computers, is invariably lame as the premise is just goofy. Ok, maybe someday it might happen, but nobody's gotten it anywhere close to convincingly right yet.
Thanks for the review. Nice to know ahead of time that the premise is preposterous. It saves me the waste of reading the book.
"Farenheit 451", on the other hand, excellently depicts banning information technology.
Throwing vast amounts of computing power to something as obscure yet elegant as computing pi to a bazillion places just oozes with the essence of nerdness. To find the quadrillienth binary digit is even more so. As such, it is indeed wonderful news for nerds. Bravo!
Apparently some moderators have no sense of using satire as a perfectly valid way of making a legitimate point...
Any word on whether there will be any upgrades to the original Aibo? Those of us who dropped $3000 on the first one a year ago will get pissed if there isn't.
But which one do you play now?
C'mon! Do you REALLY want to go back to playing Pong? Jumpman? Atari 2600? Those were fun because they were all we had, and the concept of computer games was new. Sure, they captured elements of fun play...but if they were really that great, we'd be playing them now instead of thousands of hours of Quake.
Do you remember all the games that sucked? The multitude of games that we played only because they were the only games available?
Things haven't changed that much. Some current games are great fun; more suck. Some past games were great fun; more sucked. The technology hasn't changed things that much other than visualize and refine that which was barely doable on a 2600. Back then, we ran around mazes shooting at bad guys; today, we run around mazes shooting bad guys - the only difference is the experience is much more believable.
I'll take Quake over Pac-Man any day.
Then go buy a $15 audio card and stick it in your computer!
Services: make one, sell it repeatedly, long-term income. Require someone to pay each time they read a book and you've got a long-term income.
Profit ultimately goes to the owner of the asset. In this book-rental service (which time-limited-textbooks essentially are), the company makes sales yet keeps the asset for repeated resales.
- Scott Kim
- Defendant didn't prove that DeCSS is widely available
- Defendant didn't prove that DeCSS would become widely available
- Plaintiff will be really annoyed if defendant wins.
Defendant's points:
- DeCSS provides additional fair use of legitimately obtained copyrighted products
- Nobody has EVER challenged the right of the purchaser to reasonably use a purchased work
- Plaintiff has not shown in any way that DeCSS has affected DVD piracy
- The DeCSS program is a 1st-Amendment-protected description of a scientific process.
Sounds like a slam-dunk for the defense.