I checked with one of the trademark attorneys (am I the only one that wants to spell that 'attourneys' and has to force himself not to?) at work, and he actually feels that AOL may well have a very weak case on their hands. The courts will consider the following (among other things):
1. The sound comparison - Gaim does not likely sound enough like AIM to merit confusion. First-letter issues are often the breakers, and the opening sounds are clearly not the same.
2. Usage - While both tie into the same network, Gaim is not available on Windows.
3. Consumer confusion - This is often the real killer point. How likely is someone to confuse Gaim for AIM, and vice versa? This is often handled by a marketing survey (one or more done by each side), asking something like, "Have you ever heard of the instant messaging program Gaim?" or, "What do you think of when asked about the instant messaging program Gaim?" or something to that effect. Different companies, different sides, different methodologies. What it comes down to, though, is how much confusion will come out of the usage of the two names. How much business is diverted from AIM to Gaim? Compare thirty million AIM/AOL users to forty thousand Gaim users, and AOL may well not have much of a case on this point.
Trademarks are really tricky things. Descriptions cannot be trademarked. If you own a deli in New York and call your storefront New York Deli, that's descriptive and cannot be trademarked except under exceptional circumstances. Sounds cannot generally be trademarked, although NBC's three-note jingle and Intel's four-note diddy have been. Harley-Davidson was at one point trying to trademark the sound of their engines to protect against a wave of heavy cruising bikes from Japan. I don't know what the result of that was, but I do remember that the official court documents described it as a repetition of the word 'potato'. It sounds weird until you actually use a low voice and say "potato-potato-potato-potato-potato", and then realize that it does sound like a Harley.
I'm getting a little OT here, but as it stands, AOL does not have a clear-cut case. Besides the three items I mentioned above, AIM is short for AOL Instant Messenger. The program sends instant messages over AOL's network, so it's descriptive of the program's function, making it that much harder to trademark. You can file a trademark, but that doesn't mean it's defensible. Sort of like the line, "No law is unconstitutional until it is challenged and struck down", no trademark is defensible until it is upheld by the courts, and this looks like an uphill battle for AOL.
If my numbers bear out, that's about 733KB per customer, and I can think of an awful lot that can fit in that amount of data.
What is important to ask is, can one opt out of this data collection? This is becoming a bigger and bigger issue, and privacy is important. I've been running the IE6 previews at work (familiarity with upcoming technology, or so I tell my boss), and I've let it notify me about third-party cookies. I had *no* idea it was this bad. Sites that don't even have banner ads have third-party cookies trying to plant themselves on my system. I don't mind first-party cookies, but the tracking issues on third-party....
In the same vein, I don't mind a hotel greeting me by name, but having them ask, "Will you be spending your normal $352.65 on the casino floor tonight?" would be downright spooky, not to mention who might be buying tapes of this data. Imagine a casino chain knowing you in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and on the gambling cruises!
Phone numbers are memorable because people can associate simple patterns to them. They remember that a number has a repeating sequence, except for one number. One friend remembers my phone number because part of it is like a cross, only one of the numbers is off the cross. My passwords are memorable because I know the patterns that my fingers cover on the keyboard, and I know from the simple feeling of the placement of my fingers that I mistyped something.
One of my users was an amateur astronomer, and used *1t in her password. She remembered it as "starlight". Phoneticization is an old trick, but I was impressed that she (a simple secretary and not very good with computers) used it.
Could be worse. I went to help a user a few months ago, and asked her to put her password in to log into the network. (I have a personal policy of not asking for user passwords. I don't know them, I don't WANT to know them. Security starts with me.) She simply said, "It's right there." I looked to where she pointed, and there was her logon and password. Underneath it was listed the name of three banks with whom we have accounts, account numbers for them, as well as access IDs and passwords, with little notes like "Payroll account" and "Capital account" next to each one. Now, I work for a Fortune 500 company.
It strikes me as slightly dangerous that someone has this information in OPEN FREAKING VIEW. I asked her to put the information in a safe place, and she argued, saying she referenced it too many times each day. I told her that it was a massive security problem. She finally backed down when I got her boss's boss involved (her boss didn't see a problem with it, either).
It's a wonder support people don't go on murderous rampages more often...
I forget who had it (I think maybe the Los Angeles Times), but someone ran an article recently about the fast food industry being a hidden source of wealth for those willing to stick around. People who started at entry-level positions and could deal with it for a couple of years were very likely to make management, since the turnover rate keeps most people at the bottom. They profiled one person who took the job because he had no marketable skills, and less than two years later was running three restaurants (using the term loosely) as a regional manager and making $60K a year, plus performance bonuses, and probably will have his responsibilities grow in the very near term. Not a bad turn from starting on night shift at $6 an hour.
The bottom line is that persistence and a willingness to wait for one's fortune pays off. Those same middle- and high-level managers that many of us condemn got on the fast track somehow because they got impatient, knew they were destined for greatness, and are now our clueless leaders. Find a job with a career path, explore the role, and find the good managers at the company to understand what it takes to be a good manager. At least in my life, I've found that the great managers are those who want to be good ones and can remember from whence they came.
Actually, finding the master password on the documents may not be too difficult. According to Acrobat Reader 5, the encryption level is only 40-bit RC4, at least on a few of the documents. I had expected something a little better (at least 56-bit)!
Amen. One of the biggest issues I run into in tech support at my company is outside legal offices using ancient (or even not-so-ancient) versions of WordPerfect.
Since my company is standardized on Word, we actually have a couple of secretaries whose sole duty is to convert WP to Word, and then correct all the mistakes from the conversion. WP can't import Word properly, and Word can't import WP worth the dead snail on my porch, so the whole company ends up pissed at both. (Rumor has it that we paid for one of our primary outside counsels to convert to Word because of the sheer volume of documentation involved.)
The Zeroth Law is not a true law. It was an extrapolation of the scales of the original Three Laws made by one robot in particular. IIRC, it was after the robot took the actions that Asimov's robot psychologist (it's been a few years and I forget her name) figured out what happened and defined the law.
I think another cheap, single engine, throwaway jet like the F-16 is a mistake waiting to happen. We should skip the JSF & build more F-22s.
Those inexpensive planes are incredibly useful in a combat zone. They tend to be low maintenance, require fewer parts per plane, and are much faster to get off the production lines. In addition, the Harrier concept is nearly 40 years old (going back to the pre-Harrier prototypes), and really needs to be replaced.
The F-22 is an interceptor and air-superiority fighter first, and anything else second. The JSF will perform all the dirty close air support and rapid response for the Marines that the Air Force doesn't like to do. Add to that the economic incentive (hundreds of billions of dollars in sales to allies like Spain, Portugal, Greece, the United Kingdom, and Australia), and you have strong reasons for keeping the program going.
Forgive me if this rambles a bit, as this is coming somewhat stream of thought....
Computer code is, at its very core, a description of how something ought to work. Some of it is very well thought out, and some of it is error-laden; most of it falls somewhere in between. These intentions of how it is to work are translated into usable form by the compiler that converts the code to executable form and the results made available to the outside world by the computer on which it runs.
The process, in its abstract form, is little different from any other descriptive process, whether it's how to run a business or how to run a government. The code is analagous to the idea that is formed and written down (coding or concept), made available in a usable form (compiling, business plan, legislation, or constitution), and put into use (code execution, opening the business, or installing a government).
The inherent beauty of something may be seen in different ways. Many people can see a chromed motorcycle or muscle car as beautiful, while others see the elegance in an equation or piece of computer code as the height of beauty. Science is often described as beautiful or elegant, but many people don't see it, and that's usually because their perception does not cover that particular use of the concept.
Computer code falls under the genre of science and mathematics, and so is, in a way, a pursuit of truth. Numerous precedents have allowed this same pursuit to continue, regardless of what gets out. IIRC, encryption code was deemed free speech not long ago despite the government's best efforts. This is a similar code structure, and should fall at least partially under that umbrella.
The main difference in this case, of course, is that it allows material encrypted by the copyright holder to be decrypted. The vast majority of these people are doing so to allow them to watch their DVD movies on operating systems which do not allow DVD playback, because of a refusal by the various copyright holders to produce such software. This is analagous to the civil disobedience so common in the United Stated in the '50s, '60s, and '70s, and practiced around the world for decades. People are peacefully protesting by breaking a law in a way which draws attention to their plight but which does not hurt anyone along the way. I am one of those who has joined in this; while I am a Windows user, I have downloaded the DeCSS source code from numerous locations, as well as getting the paper describing the breaking of SDMI. I believe that this information should be freely available. It is science; the users, for the most part, do own the very same DVDs that they decode; and it gets the attention that the situation deserves.
The full extent of the unconstitutionality of the DMCA is up for debate. I haven't read the entire Act, so I can't comment much on that. I do believe that it is overkill, though, and designed mostly to maintain (what I see as) an unacceptably high level of control over the copyrighted material. I do believe in copyright; I don't believe in oppressive ways of controlling it.
I'm more curious about the possibilities of this working for things like structures of nanobots. If these can be grown into sensors and processors, and then perhaps into a casing for them using small organic motors for thrust, would this be the answer for how to house these? Before this, what I had read indicated few problems figuring out how to do sensors, but the body and any manipulative portions were a huge question mark.
I have no choice in cable companies here in Fullerton, CA, and haven't ever. It's Comcast (actually Adelphia now) or satellite, and since I live in an apartment in which I can't get a single channel from the rabbit ears.... Well, I guess it's just Adelphia.
I find it interesting to look back at the industry as I have seen it over the past 15 years or so. Being only 26, the early years were dominated by D&D (of course), and then Robotech. Later, my first job was at a small game store in Southern California, during which I saw the first near-death experience for the RPG industry when Magic hit. Our book sales plummeted as people chose to buy more cards for various collectible card games (CCGs), and the owner and I had a couple of discussions about who would survive.
Since then, I have not played as many games as I did at that time, but a general review of the main companies is in order.
Chaosium: Always a bit of a niche company, Chaosium has amazed me for years at how they hang in there. Exemplary source material and a loyal cult following (and labeling something a cult hit in the RPG industry is something) have kept it anf their lines (mainly Cthulu) alive.
FASA: Well, we all know they are closing, but at least they're trying to do it with some grace, instead of shutting down and leaving a lot of freelancers without their payments. However, Shadowrun and Battletech managed to stay a head above most of the other games on the market with remarkable source material and a system that didn't change every three books. Anyone who played Battletech 10 years ago would easily slip into the current rule set with only a few adjustments.
Game Designer's Workshop: I don't even see them on the shelves anymore. Does anyone know what happened to them after the Gygax Disaster?
Games Workshop: OK, not an RPG company per se, but still a major force in the gaming world. They've stopped selling to most of the stores out there, preferring to go the route of web sales and opening some of their own stores, in my mind, a bold but perhaps foolhardy move.
Iron Crown Enterprises: Makers of Rolemaster (aka Rollmaster and Chartmaster), they shut down in 1999 or 2000, although I didn't catch many details of it.
Palladium: As annoying as many find their character and combat system (a bastardization of the original D&D system), you can't argue with the sheer volume of source material with a storyline in the Rifts books that is just enough to keep fans coming back for more. Last I heard, they were doing fairly well, although they do so with a tack that is rather over-protective (like threatening lawsuits against anyone who makes an unauthorized character generator).
R. Talsorian: Creators of my favorite game, Cyberpunk, as well as makers of a half dozen other games, RTG consists (technically) of one person, Mike Pondsmith, with his wife, Lisa, helping out. For those who haven't been to the website recently, Mike took a position in Redmond with the Great Satan (Microsoft). Work continues (slowly) on other books, but at least he's really working at keeping it alive. However, with RTG going from several full-time employees to a couple of part-timers (and perhaps some freelance work), I can only hope that Mike's persistence will be able to pay off.
Steve Jackson Games: Having come back after the Secret Service raid that nearly bankrupted them, SJG is probably about the most well-off company I can think of. Steve Jackson does not focus on one thing at a time, and long ago diversified into other businesses (he runs the Illuminati ISP, IIRC). SJG is probably the best-off company I can think of.
TSR: Once the pinnacle of the industry, bad press, bland game design, and real competition set in to knock the King from his throne. They were purchased by WotC a couple of years ago to escape the inevitable slide to disaster.
White Wolf: I loved Vampire, but could never get into Werewolf or Mage. In any case, WW expanded rapidly (too rapidly, I thought), and then sales growth tapered off. I still see their hardbound books everywhere, which are quite expensive to make, so I can only assume that they are making some kind of profit. Whether they can keep it going may be a different matter.
Wizards of the Coast: A few add-on books for D&D and a few other, unremarkable books for generic source material made up WotC's product line until Magic hit, and then started the explosion of the CCG industry. Years later (1999, I think), they sold out to Hasbro for $400 million. Nice turn of cash, considering where they were a mere nine years ago.
I know I'm forgetting some of them, but these are most of the major ones, and how I have seen them change in the last few years. The industry has been through slumps before, but seems to be coming out of the last one for now. It's not a pretty picture, but it never has been, really. Just a fact of some industries, I guess.
I dunno... Ay my company, they're trying to deploy SMS (BOO!!!) and there are accounts that have to be created with certain permissions that the managers (who rarely, if ever, make physical contact with the networks) are nixing for "security reasons". They don't like the idea of accounts being available with such access that aren't used by normal users. As much as I don't want SMS in, this is a perfect example of how managers can over-ride the NE's best (and usually better) judgement for various non-technical reasons.
Judging by what I am seeing in a lot of companies through my own experience and discussions with friends, the new standard coming into place for new PCs is DVD-ROM. At my company, the new standard is to be issued in about two months, but we're already ordering new desktops and laptops with DVD. We even have a server on order with a DVD-ROM, because with Microsoft's upcoming release of BackOffice on DVD (instead of something like seven CDs), we're going to start seeing a move towards that by major software houses. As many people have seen, what the corporations buy has an enormous impact on what manufacturers sell; this is why Dell refuses to do an AMD-based computer system, as there are only rare exceptions to an Intel-only mindset in the coroporate computing environment.
While an interesting idea, I'm not quite sure that proceeding with a CD-based format is a good idea. Working on the technology with something as simple as CDs is one thing, but with the (eternally) soon-to-be-released recordable DVD formats, I can't help but think that a non-DVD version of this technology is doomed from the start.
Re:CA nearly power plant free! Now wants to steal
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The Quest For Fusion
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The problem is that with the ownership of the power plants so scattered, coordinated maintenance and upkeep of the plants is virtually impossible, which is why mere Christmas lights sent us to the brink of blackouts when we were short by about 11,000MW.
As for whether Edison, et al, are paying the same prices, please note that the utility companies are under a rate freeze, and are not allowed to charge what they pay. The upcoming compromise still won't match the funds, and will likely only stave of bankruptcy for a while. Edison International may be able to keep Southern California Edison online for a while, but if something isn't fixed, the bailout for the company will cost more than we're ready to deal with. SCE is already discussing bankruptcy, and while it may be mostly tactic to get rate caps raised, when Wall Street is talking about it in view of financial records, it is a bad omen.
I'm in favor of deregulation in some form, too, but it certainly seems to me as if some form of minimal regulation and cooperation will be necessary to keep supplies in order. And if they want to build a nuclear power plant near my house, be my guest. I feel safer near a nuclear plant than near a gas, coal, or oil-fired plant.
It's an article not just about science, but about the people behind the science. I, for one, found it to be one of the best articles I have read in a long time, and a reminder that the people who work on our future world are real people, who live real lives and make real sacrifices.
I was left spellbound, and was actually getting a little ticked off that Paterniti wasn't answering the questions I kept asking, first in my head, and eventually calling out, "What the $&^* is this thing?!?!?!" And then I was mesmerized for the next twenty minutes or so. If more people wrote articles about the science in this kind of format, perhaps we could get average people excited about it once more, as they were in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and (to some extent) 70s.
Some of these new keyboards and other accessories are designed for companies to avoid RSI lawsuits. One company I was at hired a database developer who developed severe RSI problems in both wrists, and so had to buy him a chair customized to his body with split keyboard mounts and a couple of other spiffy things. The company shelled out more than $5000 for it and then had to let the employee take it with him when he left (because of the custom fitting), so in comparison, a few hundred to a thousand dollars to avoid it at the first symptoms is a real bargain.
Incidentally, I once had a temporary case of RSI. Shortly after I got my first cablemodem about three years ago, I was stuck on Quake 2 CTF, and played for as much as 18 hours in a day. After about three weeks, I noticed some pain in my wrists, and actually had to stop playing and do some exercises. The pain went away after about two weeks, and I was able to resume playing, but it did force me to move my arms around the keyboard when I need to reach instead of pivoting my wrists, and to learn to use my fingertips more for mouse control instead of, again, my wrist. The upshot of the change in mouse control is that the accuracy of my railgun snapshots increased dramatically.
Not quite... I read the government report on the incident a couple of years ago, and the engineers were quite adamant all the way through that launching was a bad idea, but since the air temperature in the immediate vicinity of the boosters (about 26 degrees F) was right on the edge of the theoretical envelope (a fact hesitently aknowledged by the engineers), MT managers passed the go-ahead on to NASA. The operations managers were apparently under severe pressure from the senior management to launch for financial reasons, and so, in fear of their jobs and possibly still in the OK zone, they called it in.
Several MT engineers resigned in protest after the explosion, and I've heard rumors that at least one person (not sure if it was a manager or an engineer) committed suicide over it.
Your sneakernet idea, while a good one, works off of the assumption that the devices will always transmit their information through the Internet. It would be trivial to create a bug (assuming they don't already exist) that would broadcast at a very low power level using the power feed from the keyboard to a car or van a hundred meters or so away. It could broadcast whenever the keyboard is used, or be scheduled for a particular time when the suspect is not likely to be using the system, depending on if the computer stays on all the time or not.
No kidding. I work in a support center at a fair-sized company as desktop support (the in-person part of tech support), and I get routed tickets from the phone people that SHOULD have been handled by the phone people. I pick up the phone, call the user, and walk them through a solution in about 45 seconds, and this is on really, REALLY basic stuff, like "I lost my Word toolbar." Solution: right-click on the menu bar and select the appropriate toolbar from the list that pops up.:: sigh:: The phone people say they couldn't handle it because then they might take too long in getting to the next call... and then brag about how they haven't taken a call in the last half hour.
Re:Easiest way to find porn
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Scour is Dead
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· Score: 1
Microplanet's Gravity (http:/www.microplanet.com/) makes a far superior newsgroup reader to either version of Agent. Better rules, mass decoding, and very stable. I snagged about 700 megs of miscellaneous binaries in a test of my cablemodem one night with but a few clicks.
Slashdot Mirror
Gnilla wafers = open source cookies?
I checked with one of the trademark attorneys (am I the only one that wants to spell that 'attourneys' and has to force himself not to?) at work, and he actually feels that AOL may well have a very weak case on their hands. The courts will consider the following (among other things):
1. The sound comparison - Gaim does not likely sound enough like AIM to merit confusion. First-letter issues are often the breakers, and the opening sounds are clearly not the same.
2. Usage - While both tie into the same network, Gaim is not available on Windows.
3. Consumer confusion - This is often the real killer point. How likely is someone to confuse Gaim for AIM, and vice versa? This is often handled by a marketing survey (one or more done by each side), asking something like, "Have you ever heard of the instant messaging program Gaim?" or, "What do you think of when asked about the instant messaging program Gaim?" or something to that effect. Different companies, different sides, different methodologies. What it comes down to, though, is how much confusion will come out of the usage of the two names. How much business is diverted from AIM to Gaim? Compare thirty million AIM/AOL users to forty thousand Gaim users, and AOL may well not have much of a case on this point.
Trademarks are really tricky things. Descriptions cannot be trademarked. If you own a deli in New York and call your storefront New York Deli, that's descriptive and cannot be trademarked except under exceptional circumstances. Sounds cannot generally be trademarked, although NBC's three-note jingle and Intel's four-note diddy have been. Harley-Davidson was at one point trying to trademark the sound of their engines to protect against a wave of heavy cruising bikes from Japan. I don't know what the result of that was, but I do remember that the official court documents described it as a repetition of the word 'potato'. It sounds weird until you actually use a low voice and say "potato-potato-potato-potato-potato", and then realize that it does sound like a Harley.
I'm getting a little OT here, but as it stands, AOL does not have a clear-cut case. Besides the three items I mentioned above, AIM is short for AOL Instant Messenger. The program sends instant messages over AOL's network, so it's descriptive of the program's function, making it that much harder to trademark. You can file a trademark, but that doesn't mean it's defensible. Sort of like the line, "No law is unconstitutional until it is challenged and struck down", no trademark is defensible until it is upheld by the courts, and this looks like an uphill battle for AOL.
If my numbers bear out, that's about 733KB per customer, and I can think of an awful lot that can fit in that amount of data.
What is important to ask is, can one opt out of this data collection? This is becoming a bigger and bigger issue, and privacy is important. I've been running the IE6 previews at work (familiarity with upcoming technology, or so I tell my boss), and I've let it notify me about third-party cookies. I had *no* idea it was this bad. Sites that don't even have banner ads have third-party cookies trying to plant themselves on my system. I don't mind first-party cookies, but the tracking issues on third-party....
In the same vein, I don't mind a hotel greeting me by name, but having them ask, "Will you be spending your normal $352.65 on the casino floor tonight?" would be downright spooky, not to mention who might be buying tapes of this data. Imagine a casino chain knowing you in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and on the gambling cruises!
Phone numbers are memorable because people can associate simple patterns to them. They remember that a number has a repeating sequence, except for one number. One friend remembers my phone number because part of it is like a cross, only one of the numbers is off the cross. My passwords are memorable because I know the patterns that my fingers cover on the keyboard, and I know from the simple feeling of the placement of my fingers that I mistyped something.
One of my users was an amateur astronomer, and used *1t in her password. She remembered it as "starlight". Phoneticization is an old trick, but I was impressed that she (a simple secretary and not very good with computers) used it.
Could be worse. I went to help a user a few months ago, and asked her to put her password in to log into the network. (I have a personal policy of not asking for user passwords. I don't know them, I don't WANT to know them. Security starts with me.) She simply said, "It's right there." I looked to where she pointed, and there was her logon and password. Underneath it was listed the name of three banks with whom we have accounts, account numbers for them, as well as access IDs and passwords, with little notes like "Payroll account" and "Capital account" next to each one. Now, I work for a Fortune 500 company.
It strikes me as slightly dangerous that someone has this information in OPEN FREAKING VIEW. I asked her to put the information in a safe place, and she argued, saying she referenced it too many times each day. I told her that it was a massive security problem. She finally backed down when I got her boss's boss involved (her boss didn't see a problem with it, either).
It's a wonder support people don't go on murderous rampages more often...
The bottom line is that persistence and a willingness to wait for one's fortune pays off. Those same middle- and high-level managers that many of us condemn got on the fast track somehow because they got impatient, knew they were destined for greatness, and are now our clueless leaders. Find a job with a career path, explore the role, and find the good managers at the company to understand what it takes to be a good manager. At least in my life, I've found that the great managers are those who want to be good ones and can remember from whence they came.
Actually, finding the master password on the documents may not be too difficult. According to Acrobat Reader 5, the encryption level is only 40-bit RC4, at least on a few of the documents. I had expected something a little better (at least 56-bit)!
The oldest versions aren't so bad, but once you hit the Windows versions and have things like tables and columns.... Ugh...
This issue is why I look forward to XML as a single standard for saving documents.
Amen. One of the biggest issues I run into in tech support at my company is outside legal offices using ancient (or even not-so-ancient) versions of WordPerfect.
Since my company is standardized on Word, we actually have a couple of secretaries whose sole duty is to convert WP to Word, and then correct all the mistakes from the conversion. WP can't import Word properly, and Word can't import WP worth the dead snail on my porch, so the whole company ends up pissed at both. (Rumor has it that we paid for one of our primary outside counsels to convert to Word because of the sheer volume of documentation involved.)
The Zeroth Law is not a true law. It was an extrapolation of the scales of the original Three Laws made by one robot in particular. IIRC, it was after the robot took the actions that Asimov's robot psychologist (it's been a few years and I forget her name) figured out what happened and defined the law.
Those inexpensive planes are incredibly useful in a combat zone. They tend to be low maintenance, require fewer parts per plane, and are much faster to get off the production lines. In addition, the Harrier concept is nearly 40 years old (going back to the pre-Harrier prototypes), and really needs to be replaced. The F-22 is an interceptor and air-superiority fighter first, and anything else second. The JSF will perform all the dirty close air support and rapid response for the Marines that the Air Force doesn't like to do. Add to that the economic incentive (hundreds of billions of dollars in sales to allies like Spain, Portugal, Greece, the United Kingdom, and Australia), and you have strong reasons for keeping the program going.
Forgive me if this rambles a bit, as this is coming somewhat stream of thought....
Computer code is, at its very core, a description of how something ought to work. Some of it is very well thought out, and some of it is error-laden; most of it falls somewhere in between. These intentions of how it is to work are translated into usable form by the compiler that converts the code to executable form and the results made available to the outside world by the computer on which it runs.
The process, in its abstract form, is little different from any other descriptive process, whether it's how to run a business or how to run a government. The code is analagous to the idea that is formed and written down (coding or concept), made available in a usable form (compiling, business plan, legislation, or constitution), and put into use (code execution, opening the business, or installing a government).
The inherent beauty of something may be seen in different ways. Many people can see a chromed motorcycle or muscle car as beautiful, while others see the elegance in an equation or piece of computer code as the height of beauty. Science is often described as beautiful or elegant, but many people don't see it, and that's usually because their perception does not cover that particular use of the concept.
Computer code falls under the genre of science and mathematics, and so is, in a way, a pursuit of truth. Numerous precedents have allowed this same pursuit to continue, regardless of what gets out. IIRC, encryption code was deemed free speech not long ago despite the government's best efforts. This is a similar code structure, and should fall at least partially under that umbrella.
The main difference in this case, of course, is that it allows material encrypted by the copyright holder to be decrypted. The vast majority of these people are doing so to allow them to watch their DVD movies on operating systems which do not allow DVD playback, because of a refusal by the various copyright holders to produce such software. This is analagous to the civil disobedience so common in the United Stated in the '50s, '60s, and '70s, and practiced around the world for decades. People are peacefully protesting by breaking a law in a way which draws attention to their plight but which does not hurt anyone along the way. I am one of those who has joined in this; while I am a Windows user, I have downloaded the DeCSS source code from numerous locations, as well as getting the paper describing the breaking of SDMI. I believe that this information should be freely available. It is science; the users, for the most part, do own the very same DVDs that they decode; and it gets the attention that the situation deserves.
The full extent of the unconstitutionality of the DMCA is up for debate. I haven't read the entire Act, so I can't comment much on that. I do believe that it is overkill, though, and designed mostly to maintain (what I see as) an unacceptably high level of control over the copyrighted material. I do believe in copyright; I don't believe in oppressive ways of controlling it.
I'm more curious about the possibilities of this working for things like structures of nanobots. If these can be grown into sensors and processors, and then perhaps into a casing for them using small organic motors for thrust, would this be the answer for how to house these? Before this, what I had read indicated few problems figuring out how to do sensors, but the body and any manipulative portions were a huge question mark.
I have no choice in cable companies here in Fullerton, CA, and haven't ever. It's Comcast (actually Adelphia now) or satellite, and since I live in an apartment in which I can't get a single channel from the rabbit ears.... Well, I guess it's just Adelphia.
OK, so it's nitpicking, but I think hitting an unmovable object at 110 is twice as bad as two objects colliding at 55mph.
Since then, I have not played as many games as I did at that time, but a general review of the main companies is in order.
Chaosium: Always a bit of a niche company, Chaosium has amazed me for years at how they hang in there. Exemplary source material and a loyal cult following (and labeling something a cult hit in the RPG industry is something) have kept it anf their lines (mainly Cthulu) alive.
FASA: Well, we all know they are closing, but at least they're trying to do it with some grace, instead of shutting down and leaving a lot of freelancers without their payments. However, Shadowrun and Battletech managed to stay a head above most of the other games on the market with remarkable source material and a system that didn't change every three books. Anyone who played Battletech 10 years ago would easily slip into the current rule set with only a few adjustments.
Game Designer's Workshop: I don't even see them on the shelves anymore. Does anyone know what happened to them after the Gygax Disaster?
Games Workshop: OK, not an RPG company per se, but still a major force in the gaming world. They've stopped selling to most of the stores out there, preferring to go the route of web sales and opening some of their own stores, in my mind, a bold but perhaps foolhardy move.
Iron Crown Enterprises: Makers of Rolemaster (aka Rollmaster and Chartmaster), they shut down in 1999 or 2000, although I didn't catch many details of it.
Palladium: As annoying as many find their character and combat system (a bastardization of the original D&D system), you can't argue with the sheer volume of source material with a storyline in the Rifts books that is just enough to keep fans coming back for more. Last I heard, they were doing fairly well, although they do so with a tack that is rather over-protective (like threatening lawsuits against anyone who makes an unauthorized character generator).
R. Talsorian: Creators of my favorite game, Cyberpunk, as well as makers of a half dozen other games, RTG consists (technically) of one person, Mike Pondsmith, with his wife, Lisa, helping out. For those who haven't been to the website recently, Mike took a position in Redmond with the Great Satan (Microsoft). Work continues (slowly) on other books, but at least he's really working at keeping it alive. However, with RTG going from several full-time employees to a couple of part-timers (and perhaps some freelance work), I can only hope that Mike's persistence will be able to pay off.
Steve Jackson Games: Having come back after the Secret Service raid that nearly bankrupted them, SJG is probably about the most well-off company I can think of. Steve Jackson does not focus on one thing at a time, and long ago diversified into other businesses (he runs the Illuminati ISP, IIRC). SJG is probably the best-off company I can think of.
TSR: Once the pinnacle of the industry, bad press, bland game design, and real competition set in to knock the King from his throne. They were purchased by WotC a couple of years ago to escape the inevitable slide to disaster.
White Wolf: I loved Vampire, but could never get into Werewolf or Mage. In any case, WW expanded rapidly (too rapidly, I thought), and then sales growth tapered off. I still see their hardbound books everywhere, which are quite expensive to make, so I can only assume that they are making some kind of profit. Whether they can keep it going may be a different matter.
Wizards of the Coast: A few add-on books for D&D and a few other, unremarkable books for generic source material made up WotC's product line until Magic hit, and then started the explosion of the CCG industry. Years later (1999, I think), they sold out to Hasbro for $400 million. Nice turn of cash, considering where they were a mere nine years ago.
I know I'm forgetting some of them, but these are most of the major ones, and how I have seen them change in the last few years. The industry has been through slumps before, but seems to be coming out of the last one for now. It's not a pretty picture, but it never has been, really. Just a fact of some industries, I guess.
I dunno... Ay my company, they're trying to deploy SMS (BOO!!!) and there are accounts that have to be created with certain permissions that the managers (who rarely, if ever, make physical contact with the networks) are nixing for "security reasons". They don't like the idea of accounts being available with such access that aren't used by normal users. As much as I don't want SMS in, this is a perfect example of how managers can over-ride the NE's best (and usually better) judgement for various non-technical reasons.
Judging by what I am seeing in a lot of companies through my own experience and discussions with friends, the new standard coming into place for new PCs is DVD-ROM. At my company, the new standard is to be issued in about two months, but we're already ordering new desktops and laptops with DVD. We even have a server on order with a DVD-ROM, because with Microsoft's upcoming release of BackOffice on DVD (instead of something like seven CDs), we're going to start seeing a move towards that by major software houses. As many people have seen, what the corporations buy has an enormous impact on what manufacturers sell; this is why Dell refuses to do an AMD-based computer system, as there are only rare exceptions to an Intel-only mindset in the coroporate computing environment.
While an interesting idea, I'm not quite sure that proceeding with a CD-based format is a good idea. Working on the technology with something as simple as CDs is one thing, but with the (eternally) soon-to-be-released recordable DVD formats, I can't help but think that a non-DVD version of this technology is doomed from the start.
The problem is that with the ownership of the power plants so scattered, coordinated maintenance and upkeep of the plants is virtually impossible, which is why mere Christmas lights sent us to the brink of blackouts when we were short by about 11,000MW.
As for whether Edison, et al, are paying the same prices, please note that the utility companies are under a rate freeze, and are not allowed to charge what they pay. The upcoming compromise still won't match the funds, and will likely only stave of bankruptcy for a while. Edison International may be able to keep Southern California Edison online for a while, but if something isn't fixed, the bailout for the company will cost more than we're ready to deal with. SCE is already discussing bankruptcy, and while it may be mostly tactic to get rate caps raised, when Wall Street is talking about it in view of financial records, it is a bad omen.
I'm in favor of deregulation in some form, too, but it certainly seems to me as if some form of minimal regulation and cooperation will be necessary to keep supplies in order. And if they want to build a nuclear power plant near my house, be my guest. I feel safer near a nuclear plant than near a gas, coal, or oil-fired plant.
It's an article not just about science, but about the people behind the science. I, for one, found it to be one of the best articles I have read in a long time, and a reminder that the people who work on our future world are real people, who live real lives and make real sacrifices.
I was left spellbound, and was actually getting a little ticked off that Paterniti wasn't answering the questions I kept asking, first in my head, and eventually calling out, "What the $&^* is this thing?!?!?!" And then I was mesmerized for the next twenty minutes or so. If more people wrote articles about the science in this kind of format, perhaps we could get average people excited about it once more, as they were in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and (to some extent) 70s.
Some of these new keyboards and other accessories are designed for companies to avoid RSI lawsuits. One company I was at hired a database developer who developed severe RSI problems in both wrists, and so had to buy him a chair customized to his body with split keyboard mounts and a couple of other spiffy things. The company shelled out more than $5000 for it and then had to let the employee take it with him when he left (because of the custom fitting), so in comparison, a few hundred to a thousand dollars to avoid it at the first symptoms is a real bargain.
Incidentally, I once had a temporary case of RSI. Shortly after I got my first cablemodem about three years ago, I was stuck on Quake 2 CTF, and played for as much as 18 hours in a day. After about three weeks, I noticed some pain in my wrists, and actually had to stop playing and do some exercises. The pain went away after about two weeks, and I was able to resume playing, but it did force me to move my arms around the keyboard when I need to reach instead of pivoting my wrists, and to learn to use my fingertips more for mouse control instead of, again, my wrist. The upshot of the change in mouse control is that the accuracy of my railgun snapshots increased dramatically.
Not quite... I read the government report on the incident a couple of years ago, and the engineers were quite adamant all the way through that launching was a bad idea, but since the air temperature in the immediate vicinity of the boosters (about 26 degrees F) was right on the edge of the theoretical envelope (a fact hesitently aknowledged by the engineers), MT managers passed the go-ahead on to NASA. The operations managers were apparently under severe pressure from the senior management to launch for financial reasons, and so, in fear of their jobs and possibly still in the OK zone, they called it in.
Several MT engineers resigned in protest after the explosion, and I've heard rumors that at least one person (not sure if it was a manager or an engineer) committed suicide over it.
Your sneakernet idea, while a good one, works off of the assumption that the devices will always transmit their information through the Internet. It would be trivial to create a bug (assuming they don't already exist) that would broadcast at a very low power level using the power feed from the keyboard to a car or van a hundred meters or so away. It could broadcast whenever the keyboard is used, or be scheduled for a particular time when the suspect is not likely to be using the system, depending on if the computer stays on all the time or not.
No kidding. I work in a support center at a fair-sized company as desktop support (the in-person part of tech support), and I get routed tickets from the phone people that SHOULD have been handled by the phone people. I pick up the phone, call the user, and walk them through a solution in about 45 seconds, and this is on really, REALLY basic stuff, like "I lost my Word toolbar." Solution: right-click on the menu bar and select the appropriate toolbar from the list that pops up. :: sigh :: The phone people say they couldn't handle it because then they might take too long in getting to the next call... and then brag about how they haven't taken a call in the last half hour.
Microplanet's Gravity (http:/www.microplanet.com/) makes a far superior newsgroup reader to either version of Agent. Better rules, mass decoding, and very stable. I snagged about 700 megs of miscellaneous binaries in a test of my cablemodem one night with but a few clicks.