As some other readers have pointed out, one of the biggest reasons that poor technology regulations get passed is that our Congress-critters don't understand the technology. However, the real issue behind this is one of priorities; if the Congressmen thought it was important to know what was going on with the technology, they'd at least take the time to learn the very basics.
Our world shapes itself around the technology that we develop. Ten or twenty years ago, you could not have even begun to imagine the shape of the world today, and it will continue to change at a rapid pace in the years to come. It's vitally important that those who lead have an understanding of some of the basic concepts of modern technology, even if they don't understand the nitty-gritty details.
How can we convince them of this? And is it worth spending the effort to convince our leaders that technology should be a priority issue, rather than fighting individual battles for every issue that comes up?
When I got on the subway this morning, there was some mumbling on the intercom, but I couldn't hear what it was, and paid no attention. At the next station, the intercom was clearer, and the doors were open long enough to hear "This train will not continue past Chambers St. An airplane has struck the World Trade Center."
At first we thought it was an accident, but a woman in the subway car had a walkman, and by the time I got out at Times Square, we knew that there had been a second crash, and it was probably no accident. I got into my office, and joined the group huddled around a TV in the conference room. A minute or two later, WTC Two collapsed.
We were all in shock. To think that this was happening a mere two or three miles from our office, to the tallest, greatest buildings in the City, was unbelievable. The guy who handles our hardware resale started crying, realizing that the people from Sun that he had worked with for so long had been in those buildings. Other people stared at the screen, or cried, or tried to call friends and family members.
I stayed around the office for another hour or so, and then wanted to get back home (uptown). By then the subways were out of commission, so I had to walk.
For perhaps the first time, I was pleasantly astounded by the people of New York. I had expected the worst: A terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, you might expect chaos in the City. I had been worried about chaos in the streets, riots, looting, violence... With all the City's forces occupied in combatting this threat downtown, people could take advantage to further their own purposes. But there was none of that. People were calm, rational, and helpful. People who had radios shared them with others. People walked steadily uptown, no panic, no hysteria. I wanted to give blood, but there were too many donors already lined up, so I have to wait until tomorrow.
The people of NYC have actually responded well to a challenge to their safety and their peace of mind. What happened here today was a tragedy of epic proportions, and will never be forgotten, but we will always remember as well that New York City did not collapse when the Twin Towers did.
-Joe
Correction: 89 minutes
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Reviews:Shrek
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· Score: 1
According to MovieFone, the running time is 89 minutes, not 70. But that was still a lovely rant.:-)
Define "supposed to" as used in that context. The internet of tomorrow is not necessarily the same as the internet of today, and the internet of today certainly isn't the internet of yesterday. It's no longer one big educational playground, funded by the government and the military. The internet has a commercial presence, and where there's a commercial presence, money is going to be involved.
A lot of the excellent content sites out there aren't there just because they feel like providing information to the world; they're there to make money. They have employees who need paychecks in order to get by. They have obligations to stockholders to maximize profits. They can't just give it away for free. What they've tried doing 'til now is to make money on ads, but that isn't sufficient to sustain them.
Furthermore, as the author of this article pointed out, advertising doesn't make content free, it only disguises the cost by integrating the fees into the cost of the product. Every time you buy shoes, soda, cars, movies, beer, or any other advertised product, you're paying for your TV shows, your magazines, your web sites, etc. If a company advertises on a site, then it pays for those ads out of the money it makes selling its product.
Right now, you have no control over the ad costs for the products you use. If you buy Product X, and Product X advertises on Site Y, and you don't read Site Y, you're paying for someone else to read Site Y. With a micropayment system, instead of paying for an ad on some random site, you directly pay for the sites you like, and not the ones you don't.
The internet already isn't free. Micropayments are merely allowing you to direct those costs to those that you feel deserve it.
I've been working at a consulting company in NYC for the last two years. We've had several dot.com clients, several of whom no longer exist, despite having some very good consultants working for them.:-)
Lucky for us, once we finish a client site, our job is done. We've been consistently profitable since the company was founded five years ago, and we were ranked among the fastest growing companies this year by Inc. magazine.
The moral of the story is that while the dot.coms may be dwindling, there's still good money (and good learning experiences!) to be gained from them. Just don't be in a position to get dragged down with them when they go.
The difference is largely in how the information is obtained. The case of the G4 Cube and the case of Coke are two very different situations.
With the Cube, this was an unreleased product. Therefore, no information about it at all was (or at least, should have been) available to the public. Obviously, once they release it, people can see that it's a cube, and can tear it apart to see how it was put together. The "trade secret" protection applies in this case to the product before it's released, and afterwards, the patent protects it in that people can't just tear it apart, figure out how it works, and make their own identical machine. Trade secret status provides no protection from reverse engineering of any kind.
So look at the Coke case. Their product is very well known. Everyone knows what it takes like, and it's available on every street corner. If you can make a beverage that's exactly the same, go for it. You can sell it, and Coke can't do anything to stop you, because the "trade secret" status of its formula doesn't prevent someone who discovers it by legal means from using it.
So what's Apple's basis here? The information about the Cube must have been obtained illegally. There was no legal means of getting that information, since it was disclosed only to people who signed NDAs. And even if AppleInsider didn't sign an NDA, they're still guilty. Even if the person they got the info from didn't sign an NDA, they're still guilty. Somewhere along the line, someone violated an NDA, and that means that the information was obtained illegally, which means that they could not legally disclose it.
Of course, if they can show that they didn't know it was illegally obtained, then their guilt may be lessened or gone altogether. But that'll be hard to do, since it was an unreleased product, and they have to have realized that someone had violated an NDA to get this info out.
(As always, IANAL, so take this with a grain of salt.)
Proposing.gnu to be a TLD for open source projects doesn't seem particularly reasonable to me. After all, GNU is hardly the be-all end-all of open source software. There are a lot of people who work on a lot of good OS projects that have nothing to do with GNU. In fact, there are quite a few people who would probably resent being associated with GNU just because they're an OS project.
To make an analogy that I think people here might appreciate better, imagine if a certain company were to suggest that we should use.ms as the TLD for all software development sites. That's not really all that different from this suggestion... Would people want to go along with that?
Why shouldn't they, though? I'm sorry that there isn't a Linux player available for QT movies yet, but if that's the only format available, and it's news that's worthy of being on Slashdot, that shouldn't stop them from posting it.
Moderator: You've made a mistake. This poster is exactly right, and isn't out trolling.
All they've got now is a big map of (A|G|C|T)*. This isn't useful by itself; we need to understand it to use it.
Consider as an example the hieroglyphics in the tombs of the Egyptian pharaohs. Sure, they contained information about those cultures, but until we found the Rosetta stone and could translate these writings, they were just a bunch of pretty pictures.
I sincerely hope that this achievement will be able to be exploited for the benefit of humanity, wiping out nasty, painful diseases, and so on, but we're not there yet. This is just one step. (A giant step, but still a step.)
What I'd really like to see is at least one TLD that commercial entities may not purchase. There's no point in creating a new TLD if all the names that already exist in.com are going to be snatched up by the same companies ten minutes later.
As an example, when this topic has come up before, one of the ones I really liked was the.fam TLD, for family sites. Something like this should be off-limits to corporations, so that, for example, someone name McDonald would be able to have mcdonald.fam. (Ideally, it would even require having that actually be your name, but that would get hairy. I might want to register a domain for my mother's family, which would use her maiden name, which is not my own last name. This would probably not be feasible...)
I'm sure there are other possible TLDs that would be inappropriate for commercial entities. Let's restrict those so that there will actually be some domains left for the rest of us.
In my experience, both of them tend to conflict with other applications/snap up the rights to play certain files without consent.
This is changing, thank heavens. A quote from the article about this on MacCentral:
"Also, Apple and RealNetworks have agreed to support the principles of the "Ask, Tell, Help" initiative. The "Ask, Tell, Help" initiative is designed to promote good "Internet manner" by ensuring that each company's player applications will inform and ask the user before changing the user's default player selection for common media formats."
Not only was this anime the basis for Buffy the Vampire Slayer (more or less...), but it also features the funniest song ever over the closing credits:
"Why is it that every time I fall in love everyone turns out to be a terrorist? They hide their big guns where they think I won't see them, but only one will ever be my true love."
Your point w.r.t. Deep Throat, etc., is well taken. There are certainly times when anonymity is not only beneficial, but necessary. However, there are also times when anonymity serves no useful purpose, and causes significant harm.
I believe in the merits of anonymous speech, but not anonymous action. In a society that recognizes the value of "free speech" above all, the source is not as important as the message. Furthermore, because there is no crime associated with speaking, there is no need to know who has said something. If you want to speak out anonymously against the government, or Microsoft, or Scientology, or Cher, or whatever, I respect your right to do so.
On the other hand, actions do not carry the same liberties as speech. While speech can be a powerful tool, it does not have the same sort of direct effect as action. It is clearly illegal to provide stolen code, for example, or to distribute bootleg copies of music or movies. Now, you may want to challenge that law, but you can't do so anonymously. The only thing that the anonymity provides is the ability to circumvent the law.
Sharing ideas is always a good thing, and anonymity for such activity should be respected. Sharing stolen property, or other illegal material, is not a good thing, and anonymity should not be able to be abused for this purpose.
While this seems like yet another major delay, on reading the news (I read it at MacCentral, not the one at MacNN) I discovered that it's not so different from what I was expecting. In fact, it even seems like it might be a better idea.
The earlier plan was to release an "initial consumer release" of OS X at MacWorld this summer, but not begin shipping it on new machines until the full final release at MacWorld SF next winter. Now, instead of having an initial release and a final release, they have a public beta instead.
It seems to me like that works out well for everyone. First, since there are sure to be some issues with the initial release, it means that they don't take a hammering for releasing an imperfect product. It's a Beta Release! Only for people who know what a Beta Release is, and really want it! We know it still has bugs! Second, unless they're absolutely nuts, they won't even think of charging money for a Beta release (I'm not gonna say anything _definite_, since I can't know, but I'd be surprised), so people who want to adopt early get a nice free copy of the spiffiest OS to hit the street since the original MacOS.
And with such a large test base, if even a small fragment of users report bugs, then they'll catch a lot of problems, and when they do release the final version at MWSF, everyone will be happy _again_.
Now let's just hope that I'm right about all this. *grin*
Although I would guess that while quoting relevant parts of it in a discussion is fair use, just posting the whole thing verbatim is not.
Exactly. IANAL, but I've seen stuff about fair use before, and the rule for fair use allows you to quote portions of material in order to provide a context for your own material. Quoting the entire work is not legit, nor is quoting part of it without adding on to that material with original content of your own.
So I could take 2 or 3 lines from this spec (which I haven't actually read, so I can't post actual material here), and say: MS Spec lines 23-25 here These lines are a good indication that blah blah blah, yada yada etc. They demonstrate that Microsoft has clearly violated the prescribed standard, that they are all four feet tall, and that we should sneak into their offices and paint their toes blue.
Fair use is useful as long as the use is fair.:-) Beyond that, though, the law does (as it should) prevent blatant theft/copying of the material.
Some things that RMS said, and my thoughts on them:
(On calling it Linux vs. GNU/Linux; one small portion of his larger statement) The occasional few users that do know about the GNU Project often think we played a secondary role--for example, they say to me, "Of course I know about GNU--GNU developed some tools that are part of Linux."
I have to disagree with this assessment. I knew about GNU before I knew about Linux (though not all that long ago), and I first knew about GNU as "GNU developed a whole bunch of tools that are used on Unix systems." For a while, I thought that that was all GNU was. As I got more involved in the development world, though, I learned more about GNU, and learned that there was more than just a pile of software to GNU, there was a philosophy.
When I hear RMS insist that Linux be called GNU/Linux, it doesn't make me think that GNU is an integral part of Linux; it makes me think that RMS thinks it's more important to push his own personal philosophy than to provide a quality solution for the end users.
For many people, Linux is not a philosophical issue. They use it not because it embodies the principles of free software, but because it works well. If you attempt to turn use of Linux into a political/philosophical statement, you won't turn people on to GNU, you'll turn them off of Linux.
I like reading, music, eating delicious food, seeing natural beauty. I also like to dance, mostly Balkan folk dance, but an ankle problem means I can't do it any more. I also like sharing tenderness with someone I adore, but I only occasionally have a chance to do that
I just want to say about this that it's my favorite answer in the whole interview. When dealing with public figures, especially those known for a fervent devotion to an ideal, it's easy to forget that there's a real person there, and to judge only by the ideals represented; this answer reminded me that RMS is, in the end, another human being, something worth remembering. (Gee... I've gone all sentimental... How'd that happen?:-)
People can come to different conclusions about the implications. I don't believe in relativism; I don't believe that any conclusion is as valid as any other. If I and someone else disagree, at least one of us is wrong. Unfortunately, there's no way to place to get complete certainty about what's right and what's wrong. We can only try our best to figure it out.
While it may not be the case that any conclusion is as valid as any other, does that really mean that there is only one valid conclusion. It's possible to have some conclusions which are clearly wrong, but still have multiple conclusions which are equally right.
But even barring that for a moment, if you know that some of your conclusions are wrong (as any of us would know, since we can't be right all the time), how can you believe on every given occasion that you are right and that everyone who disagrees is wrong? After all, some of those times, you're wrong, and you need to take that into account. You can't just dismiss the views of another as wrong all the time.
Take, for example, the question of religion. I am an atheist; I firmly believe that there is no God. However, you'll note that I don't state "There is no God," but rather "I believe that there is no God." It is not for me to know at this time whether there is a God, and thus it is not for me to casually dismiss anyone who believes in God as wrong. Their belief is just as valid as mine, in this case, since the actual existence of God is unknowable.
As is often said, the only absolute is that there are no absolutes. Sometimes, I know I'm right. Sometimes, I know I'm wrong. But sometimes, I think I'm right, but it is impossible to know. To say that there is only one possible right in such a situation seems to me to be either incredibly naive, or remarkably conceited. Desiring to be neither, I must concede that there is not one right answer to all questions.
Religious people often say that religion offers absolute certainty about right and wrong; "god tells them" what it is. Even supposing that the aforementioned gods exist, and that the believers really know what the gods think, that still does not provide certainty, because any being no matter how powerful can still be wrong. Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics.
This seems to just be a clear misunderstanding of the all-powerful god. If you believe in God as an omniscient being, then there is certainty. A being which actually knows **everything** would not be wrong.
(Note that I don't believe such a being exists, but if it did, then it could provide answers with absolute certainty, if it chose to do so. Note also that even the presumed gods of the major religions don't choose to do so on many matters. Much of morality is left up to the constituents to interpret as they see fit.)
Special effects a no-brainer? Uh-uh... Whatever you may have thought about the movie, the graphics FX in Star Wars were far, far better than The Matrix. I think that Star Wars probably didn't win because too many people thought something like "We shouldn't let Star Wars win, because it's Star Wars, so I'll vote against it."
For sound, film editing, yes, The Matrix was excellent, but for visual effects, I don't think it deserved it.
Jon said, "If broadcasts like the Oscars were really interactive, of course, they would give the public greater say in the production itself, perhaps by online voting about the length of speeches, the choice of hosts and presenters, and eventually, the nominees and awards themselves."
I've got to disagree with this idea. The Oscars are not intended to be a form of recognition by the general populace; they are intended to be a form of recognition by the film industry. There is a great difference in having your work judged by everyone and having it judged by your peers. Both are valuable, and they should not necessarily be intertwined.
Someone will, I hope, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the People's Choice awards granted on the basis of polling of the general populace? Let this award represent the sentiment of the public, and let the Oscars continue to represent the sentiment of the film industry.
Those are some good looking features... Makes it tempting to at least look into this.
A few more questions, though:
1) Can TiVo record more than one program at the same time on different channels? If not, can you watch one program and record another at the same time? Since it supposedly records whatever show you watch as you watch it, does that prevent you from recording something else? (I frequently use my VCR to tape a second show when I have a conflict between two programs I want to watch...)
2) Can you remove/update the hard drive? If I record a bunch of shows/movies that I want to keep forever, is there a way to keep those on disk and not limit the remaining space for the device? It'd be nice to be able to simply buy another hard drive and swap it in any time I wanted... And even to take my hard drive out, drive over to my friend's house, and stick it in his TiVo to watch... Or at least to copy episodes/movies off the drive and onto a removable medium, like DVDs or what not...
3) Are there security hazards with a TiVo? After all, it seems like it does connect to some external server, so the connection might go the other way too... Can someone crack my TiVo, screw up my settings, delete my programs, run smurf attacks through it, or any other such nonsense?
Unfortunately, Itanium doesn't seem to be improving on the power-consumption issue. According to an article on MacOS Rumors, with a link to an article at The Register, Itanium has been stuck at slow speeds (400 MHz tops so far), and has been consuming massives amounts of power (30 watts at 350 MHz). I'm sure they'll improve on that before release, but it doesn't look very promising...
-Joe
A good time, though small, is still a good time
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Tales From The Bazaar
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· Score: 1
I was at The Bazaar. It was a lot of fun.
Yes, the exhibit hall was a bit sparsely attended. I can't say that I blame the attendees, though. To be honest, I was disappointed with the exhibit hall. There were a few interesting things here and there (I loved the magician that Andover.net hired!), and some interesting conversations, but by and large, after spending an hour in the exhibit hall, I got bored.
I still think the conference was a success, though. I went to two of the tutorials, and came out of them feeling that I'd definitely learned some useful stuff. The keynotes that I saw were at least mildly interesting; they might've said some things I knew, but they definitely said some I didn't, and it was interesting to hear it from the source. The Andover.net party was faboo (thanks, guys!), and the FAO Schwarz party was cool. It was fun to hang out with Roblimo and Hemos and Trae McCombs for a while; I don't think I can call it networking, because I doubt they'd have remembered me half an hour later, much less any time in the future.
If The Bazaar happens again, and it's still in NYC, and I'm still in NYC, I'll go again. It has room to grow and improve, certainly, but there was also a lot of good stuff there already.
Slashdot Mirror
As some other readers have pointed out, one of the biggest reasons that poor technology regulations get passed is that our Congress-critters don't understand the technology. However, the real issue behind this is one of priorities; if the Congressmen thought it was important to know what was going on with the technology, they'd at least take the time to learn the very basics.
Our world shapes itself around the technology that we develop. Ten or twenty years ago, you could not have even begun to imagine the shape of the world today, and it will continue to change at a rapid pace in the years to come. It's vitally important that those who lead have an understanding of some of the basic concepts of modern technology, even if they don't understand the nitty-gritty details.
How can we convince them of this? And is it worth spending the effort to convince our leaders that technology should be a priority issue, rather than fighting individual battles for every issue that comes up?
When I got on the subway this morning, there was some mumbling on the intercom, but I couldn't hear what it was, and paid no attention. At the next station, the intercom was clearer, and the doors were open long enough to hear "This train will not continue past Chambers St. An airplane has struck the World Trade Center."
At first we thought it was an accident, but a woman in the subway car had a walkman, and by the time I got out at Times Square, we knew that there had been a second crash, and it was probably no accident. I got into my office, and joined the group huddled around a TV in the conference room. A minute or two later, WTC Two collapsed.
We were all in shock. To think that this was happening a mere two or three miles from our office, to the tallest, greatest buildings in the City, was unbelievable. The guy who handles our hardware resale started crying, realizing that the people from Sun that he had worked with for so long had been in those buildings. Other people stared at the screen, or cried, or tried to call friends and family members.
I stayed around the office for another hour or so, and then wanted to get back home (uptown). By then the subways were out of commission, so I had to walk.
For perhaps the first time, I was pleasantly astounded by the people of New York. I had expected the worst: A terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, you might expect chaos in the City. I had been worried about chaos in the streets, riots, looting, violence... With all the City's forces occupied in combatting this threat downtown, people could take advantage to further their own purposes. But there was none of that. People were calm, rational, and helpful. People who had radios shared them with others. People walked steadily uptown, no panic, no hysteria. I wanted to give blood, but there were too many donors already lined up, so I have to wait until tomorrow.
The people of NYC have actually responded well to a challenge to their safety and their peace of mind. What happened here today was a tragedy of epic proportions, and will never be forgotten, but we will always remember as well that New York City did not collapse when the Twin Towers did.
-Joe
According to MovieFone, the running time is 89 minutes, not 70. But that was still a lovely rant. :-)
Define "supposed to" as used in that context. The internet of tomorrow is not necessarily the same as the internet of today, and the internet of today certainly isn't the internet of yesterday. It's no longer one big educational playground, funded by the government and the military. The internet has a commercial presence, and where there's a commercial presence, money is going to be involved.
A lot of the excellent content sites out there aren't there just because they feel like providing information to the world; they're there to make money. They have employees who need paychecks in order to get by. They have obligations to stockholders to maximize profits. They can't just give it away for free. What they've tried doing 'til now is to make money on ads, but that isn't sufficient to sustain them.
Furthermore, as the author of this article pointed out, advertising doesn't make content free, it only disguises the cost by integrating the fees into the cost of the product. Every time you buy shoes, soda, cars, movies, beer, or any other advertised product, you're paying for your TV shows, your magazines, your web sites, etc. If a company advertises on a site, then it pays for those ads out of the money it makes selling its product.
Right now, you have no control over the ad costs for the products you use. If you buy Product X, and Product X advertises on Site Y, and you don't read Site Y, you're paying for someone else to read Site Y. With a micropayment system, instead of paying for an ad on some random site, you directly pay for the sites you like, and not the ones you don't.
The internet already isn't free. Micropayments are merely allowing you to direct those costs to those that you feel deserve it.
-Snibor Eoj
Everything goes slowly. It won't come down 'til almost the end of March.
2001-03-29 11:11:11
I've been working at a consulting company in NYC for the last two years. We've had several dot.com clients, several of whom no longer exist, despite having some very good consultants working for them. :-)
Lucky for us, once we finish a client site, our job is done. We've been consistently profitable since the company was founded five years ago, and we were ranked among the fastest growing companies this year by Inc. magazine.
The moral of the story is that while the dot.coms may be dwindling, there's still good money (and good learning experiences!) to be gained from them. Just don't be in a position to get dragged down with them when they go.
(Anyone want a job?)
-Joe
The difference is largely in how the information is obtained. The case of the G4 Cube and the case of Coke are two very different situations.
With the Cube, this was an unreleased product. Therefore, no information about it at all was (or at least, should have been) available to the public. Obviously, once they release it, people can see that it's a cube, and can tear it apart to see how it was put together. The "trade secret" protection applies in this case to the product before it's released, and afterwards, the patent protects it in that people can't just tear it apart, figure out how it works, and make their own identical machine. Trade secret status provides no protection from reverse engineering of any kind.
So look at the Coke case. Their product is very well known. Everyone knows what it takes like, and it's available on every street corner. If you can make a beverage that's exactly the same, go for it. You can sell it, and Coke can't do anything to stop you, because the "trade secret" status of its formula doesn't prevent someone who discovers it by legal means from using it.
So what's Apple's basis here? The information about the Cube must have been obtained illegally. There was no legal means of getting that information, since it was disclosed only to people who signed NDAs. And even if AppleInsider didn't sign an NDA, they're still guilty. Even if the person they got the info from didn't sign an NDA, they're still guilty. Somewhere along the line, someone violated an NDA, and that means that the information was obtained illegally, which means that they could not legally disclose it.
Of course, if they can show that they didn't know it was illegally obtained, then their guilt may be lessened or gone altogether. But that'll be hard to do, since it was an unreleased product, and they have to have realized that someone had violated an NDA to get this info out.
(As always, IANAL, so take this with a grain of salt.)
-Joe
Blue?
Proposing .gnu to be a TLD for open source projects doesn't seem particularly reasonable to me. After all, GNU is hardly the be-all end-all of open source software. There are a lot of people who work on a lot of good OS projects that have nothing to do with GNU. In fact, there are quite a few people who would probably resent being associated with GNU just because they're an OS project.
.ms as the TLD for all software development sites. That's not really all that different from this suggestion... Would people want to go along with that?
To make an analogy that I think people here might appreciate better, imagine if a certain company were to suggest that we should use
Why shouldn't they, though? I'm sorry that there isn't a Linux player available for QT movies yet, but if that's the only format available, and it's news that's worthy of being on Slashdot, that shouldn't stop them from posting it.
Moderator: You've made a mistake. This poster is exactly right, and isn't out trolling.
All they've got now is a big map of (A|G|C|T)*. This isn't useful by itself; we need to understand it to use it.
Consider as an example the hieroglyphics in the tombs of the Egyptian pharaohs. Sure, they contained information about those cultures, but until we found the Rosetta stone and could translate these writings, they were just a bunch of pretty pictures.
I sincerely hope that this achievement will be able to be exploited for the benefit of humanity, wiping out nasty, painful diseases, and so on, but we're not there yet. This is just one step. (A giant step, but still a step.)
-Joe
Those who program in INTERCAL are gluttons for punishment anyway...
What I'd really like to see is at least one TLD that commercial entities may not purchase. There's no point in creating a new TLD if all the names that already exist in .com are going to be snatched up by the same companies ten minutes later.
.fam TLD, for family sites. Something like this should be off-limits to corporations, so that, for example, someone name McDonald would be able to have mcdonald.fam. (Ideally, it would even require having that actually be your name, but that would get hairy. I might want to register a domain for my mother's family, which would use her maiden name, which is not my own last name. This would probably not be feasible...)
As an example, when this topic has come up before, one of the ones I really liked was the
I'm sure there are other possible TLDs that would be inappropriate for commercial entities. Let's restrict those so that there will actually be some domains left for the rest of us.
-Joe
This is changing, thank heavens. A quote from the article about this on MacCentral:
"Also, Apple and RealNetworks have agreed to support the principles of the "Ask, Tell, Help" initiative. The "Ask, Tell, Help" initiative is designed to promote good "Internet manner" by ensuring that each company's player applications will inform and ask the user before changing the user's default player selection for common media formats."
-Joe
Not only was this anime the basis for Buffy the Vampire Slayer (more or less...), but it also features the funniest song ever over the closing credits:
"Why is it that every time I fall in love
everyone turns out to be a terrorist?
They hide their big guns where they think I won't see them,
but only one will ever be my true love."
:-)
Your point w.r.t. Deep Throat, etc., is well taken. There are certainly times when anonymity is not only beneficial, but necessary. However, there are also times when anonymity serves no useful purpose, and causes significant harm.
I believe in the merits of anonymous speech, but not anonymous action. In a society that recognizes the value of "free speech" above all, the source is not as important as the message. Furthermore, because there is no crime associated with speaking, there is no need to know who has said something. If you want to speak out anonymously against the government, or Microsoft, or Scientology, or Cher, or whatever, I respect your right to do so.
On the other hand, actions do not carry the same liberties as speech. While speech can be a powerful tool, it does not have the same sort of direct effect as action. It is clearly illegal to provide stolen code, for example, or to distribute bootleg copies of music or movies. Now, you may want to challenge that law, but you can't do so anonymously. The only thing that the anonymity provides is the ability to circumvent the law.
Sharing ideas is always a good thing, and anonymity for such activity should be respected. Sharing stolen property, or other illegal material, is not a good thing, and anonymity should not be able to be abused for this purpose.
While this seems like yet another major delay, on reading the news (I read it at MacCentral, not the one at MacNN) I discovered that it's not so different from what I was expecting. In fact, it even seems like it might be a better idea.
The earlier plan was to release an "initial consumer release" of OS X at MacWorld this summer, but not begin shipping it on new machines until the full final release at MacWorld SF next winter. Now, instead of having an initial release and a final release, they have a public beta instead.
It seems to me like that works out well for everyone. First, since there are sure to be some issues with the initial release, it means that they don't take a hammering for releasing an imperfect product. It's a Beta Release! Only for people who know what a Beta Release is, and really want it! We know it still has bugs! Second, unless they're absolutely nuts, they won't even think of charging money for a Beta release (I'm not gonna say anything _definite_, since I can't know, but I'd be surprised), so people who want to adopt early get a nice free copy of the spiffiest OS to hit the street since the original MacOS.
And with such a large test base, if even a small fragment of users report bugs, then they'll catch a lot of problems, and when they do release the final version at MWSF, everyone will be happy _again_.
Now let's just hope that I'm right about all this. *grin*
Exactly. IANAL, but I've seen stuff about fair use before, and the rule for fair use allows you to quote portions of material in order to provide a context for your own material. Quoting the entire work is not legit, nor is quoting part of it without adding on to that material with original content of your own.
So I could take 2 or 3 lines from this spec (which I haven't actually read, so I can't post actual material here), and say:
MS Spec lines 23-25 here
These lines are a good indication that blah blah blah, yada yada etc. They demonstrate that Microsoft has clearly violated the prescribed standard, that they are all four feet tall, and that we should sneak into their offices and paint their toes blue.
Fair use is useful as long as the use is fair. :-) Beyond that, though, the law does (as it should) prevent blatant theft/copying of the material.
(On calling it Linux vs. GNU/Linux; one small portion of his larger statement)
The occasional few users that do know about the GNU Project often think we played a secondary role--for example, they say to me, "Of course I know about GNU--GNU developed some tools that are part of Linux."
I have to disagree with this assessment. I knew about GNU before I knew about Linux (though not all that long ago), and I first knew about GNU as "GNU developed a whole bunch of tools that are used on Unix systems." For a while, I thought that that was all GNU was. As I got more involved in the development world, though, I learned more about GNU, and learned that there was more than just a pile of software to GNU, there was a philosophy.
When I hear RMS insist that Linux be called GNU/Linux, it doesn't make me think that GNU is an integral part of Linux; it makes me think that RMS thinks it's more important to push his own personal philosophy than to provide a quality solution for the end users.
For many people, Linux is not a philosophical issue. They use it not because it embodies the principles of free software, but because it works well. If you attempt to turn use of Linux into a political/philosophical statement, you won't turn people on to GNU, you'll turn them off of Linux.
I like reading, music, eating delicious food, seeing natural beauty. I also like to dance, mostly Balkan folk dance, but an ankle problem means I can't do it any more. I also like sharing tenderness with someone I adore, but I only occasionally have a chance to do that
I just want to say about this that it's my favorite answer in the whole interview. When dealing with public figures, especially those known for a fervent devotion to an ideal, it's easy to forget that there's a real person there, and to judge only by the ideals represented; this answer reminded me that RMS is, in the end, another human being, something worth remembering. :-)
(Gee... I've gone all sentimental... How'd that happen?
People can come to different conclusions about the implications. I don't believe in relativism; I don't believe that any conclusion is as valid as any other. If I and someone else disagree, at least one of us is wrong. Unfortunately, there's no way to place to get complete certainty about what's right and what's wrong. We can only try our best to figure it out.
While it may not be the case that any conclusion is as valid as any other, does that really mean that there is only one valid conclusion. It's possible to have some conclusions which are clearly wrong, but still have multiple conclusions which are equally right.
But even barring that for a moment, if you know that some of your conclusions are wrong (as any of us would know, since we can't be right all the time), how can you believe on every given occasion that you are right and that everyone who disagrees is wrong? After all, some of those times, you're wrong, and you need to take that into account. You can't just dismiss the views of another as wrong all the time.
Take, for example, the question of religion. I am an atheist; I firmly believe that there is no God. However, you'll note that I don't state "There is no God," but rather "I believe that there is no God." It is not for me to know at this time whether there is a God, and thus it is not for me to casually dismiss anyone who believes in God as wrong. Their belief is just as valid as mine, in this case, since the actual existence of God is unknowable.
As is often said, the only absolute is that there are no absolutes. Sometimes, I know I'm right. Sometimes, I know I'm wrong. But sometimes, I think I'm right, but it is impossible to know. To say that there is only one possible right in such a situation seems to me to be either incredibly naive, or remarkably conceited. Desiring to be neither, I must concede that there is not one right answer to all questions.
Religious people often say that religion offers absolute certainty about right and wrong; "god tells them" what it is. Even supposing that the aforementioned gods exist, and that the believers really know what the gods think, that still does not provide certainty, because any being no matter how powerful can still be wrong. Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics.
This seems to just be a clear misunderstanding of the all-powerful god. If you believe in God as an omniscient being, then there is certainty. A being which actually knows **everything** would not be wrong.
(Note that I don't believe such a being exists, but if it did, then it could provide answers with absolute certainty, if it chose to do so. Note also that even the presumed gods of the major religions don't choose to do so on many matters. Much of morality is left up to the constituents to interpret as they see fit.)
-Joe
Special effects a no-brainer? Uh-uh... Whatever you may have thought about the movie, the graphics FX in Star Wars were far, far better than The Matrix. I think that Star Wars probably didn't win because too many people thought something like "We shouldn't let Star Wars win, because it's Star Wars, so I'll vote against it."
For sound, film editing, yes, The Matrix was excellent, but for visual effects, I don't think it deserved it.
I've got to disagree with this idea. The Oscars are not intended to be a form of recognition by the general populace; they are intended to be a form of recognition by the film industry. There is a great difference in having your work judged by everyone and having it judged by your peers. Both are valuable, and they should not necessarily be intertwined.
Someone will, I hope, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the People's Choice awards granted on the basis of polling of the general populace? Let this award represent the sentiment of the public, and let the Oscars continue to represent the sentiment of the film industry.
Those are some good looking features... Makes it tempting to at least look into this.
A few more questions, though:
1) Can TiVo record more than one program at the same time on different channels? If not, can you watch one program and record another at the same time? Since it supposedly records whatever show you watch as you watch it, does that prevent you from recording something else? (I frequently use my VCR to tape a second show when I have a conflict between two programs I want to watch...)
2) Can you remove/update the hard drive? If I record a bunch of shows/movies that I want to keep forever, is there a way to keep those on disk and not limit the remaining space for the device? It'd be nice to be able to simply buy another hard drive and swap it in any time I wanted... And even to take my hard drive out, drive over to my friend's house, and stick it in his TiVo to watch... Or at least to copy episodes/movies off the drive and onto a removable medium, like DVDs or what not...
3) Are there security hazards with a TiVo? After all, it seems like it does connect to some external server, so the connection might go the other way too... Can someone crack my TiVo, screw up my settings, delete my programs, run smurf attacks through it, or any other such nonsense?
-Joe
-Joe
I was at The Bazaar. It was a lot of fun.
Yes, the exhibit hall was a bit sparsely attended. I can't say that I blame the attendees, though. To be honest, I was disappointed with the exhibit hall. There were a few interesting things here and there (I loved the magician that Andover.net hired!), and some interesting conversations, but by and large, after spending an hour in the exhibit hall, I got bored.
I still think the conference was a success, though. I went to two of the tutorials, and came out of them feeling that I'd definitely learned some useful stuff. The keynotes that I saw were at least mildly interesting; they might've said some things I knew, but they definitely said some I didn't, and it was interesting to hear it from the source. The Andover.net party was faboo (thanks, guys!), and the FAO Schwarz party was cool. It was fun to hang out with Roblimo and Hemos and Trae McCombs for a while; I don't think I can call it networking, because I doubt they'd have remembered me half an hour later, much less any time in the future.
If The Bazaar happens again, and it's still in NYC, and I'm still in NYC, I'll go again. It has room to grow and improve, certainly, but there was also a lot of good stuff there already.
-Joe
Perhaps the 0 denotes the beginning of a word, rather than capitalization?
-Joe