Sorry, but most of the winning entries (at least of previous years) consist of a whole heap of #defines and numbers formatted as ASCII art. That does not take skills that are useful in real life, just a whole lot of time on your hands.
Well, maybe. I don't know. Point of this ruling is that XS4ALL has the right to block spam (as in "not distribute"). I guess you are right that this will not help US users in the short term. But, spammers use all the relays they have access to, and the more blocks, the better. (My reply could have been a little friendlier, sorry;-)
Unfortunately, most of the actual case documents are in dutch, some of which are still being translated.
Well, I read the 8 page verdict, and there's not a whole lot there that's not in the English abstract. So don't worry, I don't think you're missing a lot. (Sorry, I'm not going to translate 8 pages of Dutch legalese into English).
Gotta win one of these in the US to make it a reality though.
That's right, the Netherlands are situated in 'unreality'. Hello? I think you mean that a similar case has to be won in the US to affect the amount of spam you get when you live in the US.
I'm sorry to be complaining here, but I get so tired of Americans who think the world ends north of Minnesota and south of Texas.
One little ruling in an insignificant country like the Netherlands does not change the world, but it's a start.
So (for example) you can plug your audio cable from your CD player into your PC and sample the CD. However, your PC then refuses to play the audio, because it contains a watermark identifying it as needing a keyed source to play from and it doesn't have one.
Huh? I don't get that. How can a watermark survive a D/A->A/D conversion process? Must be an analog watermark then?
Your post does bring up an interesting point: if the DCMA protects effective copy protection, isn't it self-defeating then? What I mean is that as soon as someone finds a circumvention method for a protection scheme, the protection isn't effective any more, right? So, it's not protected by the DCMA anymore, since it has just been cracked. Or is the process of making it ineffective punishable by law?
There are some subtle differences here. Aside from a desire to produce back-up copies of your software, there are very few other legitimate reasons for wanting to copy a software cd.
For me, this is actually a big thing. Some time ago, a game CD actually cracked when inside the drive! (Heat, I guess). Maybe the CD drive was to blame, but the point of it was that I had to buy this game again because customer service at the publisher would not believe that it had cracked inside the drive. They offered to send me a replacement CD for $10 (great, I paid $8.95 in the first place). So, I bought another copy, since this was the favorite game of my 4-year old son. Anyway, since then I have been making copies of all the software CDs I have, except the one that is SafeDisc protected. Guess what, the other day another one cracked while inside the drive. Fortunately, this was the backup copy (all the originals are locked away), so all I had to do was burn another copy. Suffice it to say that I will not be buying anything anymore that is SafeDisc protected, since I cannot make a backup.
Um, yes, but consider what mountaineers climbing Mt. Everest do for 8 hours a day: melting snow, so they have enough drinking water. You see, the low atmospheric pressure makes you lose water like crazy (through your breathing). Getting enough oxygen is only part of the story.
Also, I think the oxygen partial pressure is related to the overall pressure, i.e., the lower the outside pressure, the harder it will be to get sufficient oxygen partial pressure, right?
Besides, getting a 20% O2 atmosphere sounds challenging enough to me, seems things won't get easier if you need a 40% or 60% O2 atmosphere.
Interesting. I'm not familiar wityh Titan's atmosphere. How does it replenish? Is there some kind of volcanic process that emits gases?
And what is the temperature on Titan? The temperature obviously play a big role. Unfortunately, the atmosphere on Mars will have to be heated up from -85 F to +60 F. That should make it harder to keep the atmosphere from boiling off. Consider that Mars has an atmospheric pressure of about 0.01 bar right now.
As you correctly point out, the average velocity is not the complete story. The distribution of velocities will probably obey the Maxwell-Boltzmann laws of statistical mechanics (too long ago since I took it in college, but it is understood rather well). The problem is that the molecules with the highest velocity may escape. If the temperature is in balance, a new equilibrium will establish itself, and again, the molecules with the highest velocities will escape. As someone else pointed out, there will need to be a replenishment mechanism. I'm not saying it can't be done, but consider that it's hard enough to establish a breathable atmosphere in the first place. A self-replenishing one is probably even trickier.
Ok, I give up. I don't understand it any more. I've followed the link, read the NASA article, and I still have this question:
I assume terraforming implies creating an atmosphere that humans can breathe. So, around 20% O2, and 80% of something inert, presumably N2, but I guess something else could do as well. But, don't we need an atmospheric pressure similar to earth's? Then, how are you going to maintain that pressure? The fact that Mars' gravity is about 1/3 of earth's is the big spoiler here, right? Assuming you can get all these greenhouse gases and heat up the atmosphere, wouldn't the atmosphere just boil away into outer space? I mean, given earth-like temperatures and pressures, a substantial fraction of the gas molecules would just reach escape velocity and be lost forever? What am I missing here???
This is actually an exaggeration from hollywood -- the meteors left in our solar system are not large enough to cause a global extinction of a race as tenacious as humans.
Well, that's a relief! Unfortunately, it's complete and utter nonsense. A hit by a somewhat sizeable asteroid or comet would not only wipe out the human race, but probably most lifeforms on earth. Oh, and it's not size that matters, it's kinetic energy, which is 0.5*m*v^2. Dependent on mass (~size), but more on velocity, since that gets squared.
Hypothetical but realistic example: take a (spherical) piece of rock with a radius of 10 km, hitting the earth at 50 km/s. Assuming a density of 4000 kg/m^3, that gives us a mass of 1.68*10^16 kg. The kinetic energy is roughly 2.1*10^25 Joules. That's the equivalent of 4.67 billion megatons of TNT. Or 467,000,000,000 Hiroshima bombs all set off at the same moment.
Can someone do a sanity check on this? It seems shockingly high.
But this is precisely the kind of thing Raskin was speaking against - making judgements on UI components based simply one person's opinion - I happen to really like the new-style menus, but until we actually do some tests to measure it, who can say who is right?
I agree with you. I was actually mostly agreeing with Raskin on the issue of inconsistency:-).
I disagree. Sometimes you have to design for people who are dumber than monkeys (I'm not buying the monkey/command line claim, by the way).
The World Wide Web did not take off until there were graphical browsers. They are simply easier to use than a command line for the vast majority of users.
Same thing for installing applications. I'm not afraid of the command line (10+ years UNIX experience), but the Install Wizards that are designed for morons are a blessing in my opinion.
Redundant: It's one of the problems with Linux. Installing stuff can be a pain. It took me 2 hours of tweaking config files before I had Samba working properly. People are releasing graphical wrappers for configuring Apache and Samba and what not, and I think that's a good thing.
At the risk of being flamed, MS Windows (at least the later versions) does have the concept of different users with their own preferences. So, different people can work on the same machine without messsing up each other's stuff. At least not accidentally. (Yeah, and Linux Does It Much Better (TM), I know).
I do agree though that it's much better to keep your paws of "my" machine. They don't call it a PERSONAL Computer for nothing...
The issue of interface consistency is no different than the issue of whether or not we should all be forced to drive Nissan Sentras and paint our bedroom walls off-white.
Ah, but this already happens in some businesses. Ever slept in a Holiday Inn in another country? You will feel right at home. Been to Ikea stores in different parts of the world? They're all the same. Supermarkets, home improvement stores: they all are pretty much the same wherever you go. Where do you think American tourists in London go out to eat? It's either McDonalds, Burger King, or Pizza Hut. Apparently someone thinks this consistency stuff is good for something. Boring as it might be, most people do not like (unnecessary) change.
I'm appalled that nobody has taken issue with Raskin's stab at Linux yet.
Anyway:
You have to start with a UI and then build a system that supports it. Linux failed in that regard.
He seems to be confusing a UI with a GUI. A command line is a user interface in my humble opinion. You can argue whether it's good or bad, but it is a UI.
Apparently what he means is that Linux hasn't made Windows obsolete on the desktop yet, because of the fact that Linus did not start off with a fully designed GUI. Duh. Just for the sake of argument, let's say I want to use Linux as a server OS. Why would I need a GUI? Server machines often have monochrome screens and no sound, and for a good reason: color and sound only get in the way.
But, I do agree with a lot of the points he makes in the interview. I think inconsistency is annoying, and therefore counterproductive. Ever used one of these eval versions of WinZip where the buttons of the nagscreen on startup switched all the time? That was to make the nagscreen annoying, and boy did it work! The dynamic pull-down menu's on the 2000 versions of MS Office tools are another example: probably well-intended, but generally annoying, therefore bad.
Also, I find that I like a boring monochrome background for my desktop best. Same for websites: the best designs do not use a picture as a background.
This does not mean that tools should not be customizable. Customization is not always a matter of preference. When you learn a tool you often have different UI requirements than when you're an expert. Might like to add shortcuts for often-used commands. Another example: I may want to customize emacs so that the Java syntax highlighting is the same as in JBuilder. This actually adds to the consistency.
My main objection to Raskin's (indeed somewhat arrogant) position is that he seems to think he knows what's best for the rest of the world. My opinion is that users should be able to customize tools to their liking. If I like a different skin better, then that should reduce my annoyance, hence increase my productivity.
Having said all this, I'm currently reading Raskin's "The Humane Interface". I'm about halfway through, and I must say I like it very much. He describes some good and bad UI concepts, and explains clearly why they are good or bad. There's some human psychology concepts as well. I've gained quite some understanding from the book already (probably because I don't know the first thing about UI design), so I still recommend it, despite the somewhat dubious interview.
I have some understanding for the fact that Slashdot wants some money to cover costs.
However, it may be opening a can of worms (and remember, if you open a can of worms, you will always need a bigger can to put them back).
If you charge subscribers for a service, you may get into all kinds of thorny issues.
For example, if Slashdot goes down (granted, it rarely happens, but still), are the subscribers entitled to a refund?
How do you ban notorious trolls if they are subscribers? Is it fair to ban people from posting if they paid a subscription? Can you do it legally?
How is moderation going to work? Are subscribers always entitled to moderate? Can non-subscribers mod down subscribers? That would mean that non-payers interfere with the service of payers? Will you need to redesign the mod system completely?
Again, I sympathize, and maybe all these issues have already been addressed. If not, be careful, guys...
That's brilliant! You should go into politics! Here we are moaning all the time about how companies buy politicians and politicians buy elections, and there you are wanting to buy mod points! So, what's the next step? Slashdot Premium? 100 mod points a day for only $25 a month? You think MS would be interested in buying mod points for their employees, so all those nasty pro-Linux/anti-Windows posts can be modded down to -1?
Your idea is no different from a corporation wanting political influence in exchange for campaign contributions.
Well, the whole point of being a cable modem user is that you are connected 24/7/365.
Interesting. For me it's the speed. I don't really need to be connected all the time. I usually switch my computer off when I'm not using it. Everyone has their own requirements, I guess.
Try writing in perl. It's pretty much self-obfuscating. Even better: try APL. Five minutes after writing an APL program, the only way of figuring out what it does is to execute and reverse engineer it. But five minutes after that, you're lost again. It's the ultimate write-only language.
Slashdot Mirror
Errr, you're right. Thanks for the correction.
Sorry, but most of the winning entries (at least of previous years) consist of a whole heap of #defines and numbers formatted as ASCII art. That does not take skills that are useful in real life, just a whole lot of time on your hands.
Let's see some obfuscated Ruby programs.
Or obfuscated perl scripts. Oh, wait a minute...
Well, maybe. I don't know. Point of this ruling is that XS4ALL has the right to block spam (as in "not distribute"). I guess you are right that this will not help US users in the short term. But, spammers use all the relays they have access to, and the more blocks, the better. ;-)
(My reply could have been a little friendlier, sorry
Unfortunately, most of the actual case documents are in dutch, some of which are still being translated.
Well, I read the 8 page verdict, and there's not a whole lot there that's not in the English abstract. So don't worry, I don't think you're missing a lot.
(Sorry, I'm not going to translate 8 pages of Dutch legalese into English).
Gotta win one of these in the US to make it a reality though.
That's right, the Netherlands are situated in 'unreality'. Hello? I think you mean that a similar case has to be won in the US to affect the amount of spam you get when you live in the US.
I'm sorry to be complaining here, but I get so tired of Americans who think the world ends north of Minnesota and south of Texas.
One little ruling in an insignificant country like the Netherlands does not change the world, but it's a start.
So (for example) you can plug your audio cable from your CD player into your PC and sample the CD. However, your PC then refuses to play the audio, because it contains a watermark identifying it as needing a keyed source to play from and it doesn't have one.
Huh? I don't get that. How can a watermark survive a D/A->A/D conversion process? Must be an analog watermark then?
Your post does bring up an interesting point: if the DCMA protects effective copy protection, isn't it self-defeating then? What I mean is that as soon as someone finds a circumvention method for a protection scheme, the protection isn't effective any more, right? So, it's not protected by the DCMA anymore, since it has just been cracked. Or is the process of making it ineffective punishable by law?
The problem is that I'm not sure if it does break the standard.
Philips thinks it does.
There are some subtle differences here. Aside from a desire to produce back-up copies of your software, there are very few other legitimate reasons for wanting to copy a software cd.
For me, this is actually a big thing. Some time ago, a game CD actually cracked when inside the drive! (Heat, I guess). Maybe the CD drive was to blame, but the point of it was that I had to buy this game again because customer service at the publisher would not believe that it had cracked inside the drive. They offered to send me a replacement CD for $10 (great, I paid $8.95 in the first place). So, I bought another copy, since this was the favorite game of my 4-year old son. Anyway, since then I have been making copies of all the software CDs I have, except the one that is SafeDisc protected. Guess what, the other day another one cracked while inside the drive. Fortunately, this was the backup copy (all the originals are locked away), so all I had to do was burn another copy. Suffice it to say that I will not be buying anything anymore that is SafeDisc protected, since I cannot make a backup.
Um, yes, but consider what mountaineers climbing Mt. Everest do for 8 hours a day: melting snow, so they have enough drinking water. You see, the low atmospheric pressure makes you lose water like crazy (through your breathing). Getting enough oxygen is only part of the story.
Also, I think the oxygen partial pressure is related to the overall pressure, i.e., the lower the outside pressure, the harder it will be to get sufficient oxygen partial pressure, right?
Besides, getting a 20% O2 atmosphere sounds challenging enough to me, seems things won't get easier if you need a 40% or 60% O2 atmosphere.
Interesting. I'm not familiar wityh Titan's atmosphere. How does it replenish? Is there some kind of volcanic process that emits gases?
And what is the temperature on Titan? The temperature obviously play a big role. Unfortunately, the atmosphere on Mars will have to be heated up from -85 F to +60 F. That should make it harder to keep the atmosphere from boiling off. Consider that Mars has an atmospheric pressure of about 0.01 bar right now.
As you correctly point out, the average velocity is not the complete story. The distribution of velocities will probably obey the Maxwell-Boltzmann laws of statistical mechanics (too long ago since I took it in college, but it is understood rather well).
The problem is that the molecules with the highest velocity may escape. If the temperature is in balance, a new equilibrium will establish itself, and again, the molecules with the highest velocities will escape. As someone else pointed out, there will need to be a replenishment mechanism. I'm not saying it can't be done, but consider that it's hard enough to establish a breathable atmosphere in the first place. A self-replenishing one is probably even trickier.
Then again, what do I know?
Ok, I give up. I don't understand it any more. I've followed the link, read the NASA article, and I still have this question:
I assume terraforming implies creating an atmosphere that humans can breathe. So, around 20% O2, and 80% of something inert, presumably N2, but I guess something else could do as well. But, don't we need an atmospheric pressure similar to earth's? Then, how are you going to maintain that pressure? The fact that Mars' gravity is about 1/3 of earth's is the big spoiler here, right? Assuming you can get all these greenhouse gases and heat up the atmosphere, wouldn't the atmosphere just boil away into outer space? I mean, given earth-like temperatures and pressures, a substantial fraction of the gas molecules would just reach escape velocity and be lost forever? What am I missing here???
This is actually an exaggeration from hollywood -- the meteors left in our solar system are not large enough to cause a global extinction of a race as tenacious as humans.
Well, that's a relief! Unfortunately, it's complete and utter nonsense. A hit by a somewhat sizeable asteroid or comet would not only wipe out the human race, but probably most lifeforms on earth. Oh, and it's not size that matters, it's kinetic energy, which is 0.5*m*v^2. Dependent on mass (~size), but more on velocity, since that gets squared.
Hypothetical but realistic example: take a (spherical) piece of rock with a radius of 10 km, hitting the earth at 50 km/s. Assuming a density of 4000 kg/m^3, that gives us a mass of 1.68*10^16 kg. The kinetic energy is roughly
2.1*10^25 Joules. That's the equivalent of 4.67 billion megatons of TNT. Or 467,000,000,000 Hiroshima bombs all set off at the same moment.
Can someone do a sanity check on this? It seems shockingly high.
Assumptions:
1 Megaton TNT ~ 4.5*10^15 J
Hiroshima bomb ~ 10 kilotons of TNT
Fact: volume of a sphere is (4/3)*pi*r^3.
But this is precisely the kind of thing Raskin was speaking against - making judgements on UI components based simply one person's opinion - I happen to really like the new-style menus, but until we actually do some tests to measure it, who can say who is right?
:-).
I agree with you. I was actually mostly agreeing with Raskin on the issue of inconsistency
I disagree. Sometimes you have to design for people who are dumber than monkeys (I'm not buying the monkey/command line claim, by the way).
The World Wide Web did not take off until there were graphical browsers. They are simply easier to use than a command line for the vast majority of users.
Same thing for installing applications. I'm not afraid of the command line (10+ years UNIX experience), but the Install Wizards that are designed for morons are a blessing in my opinion.
Redundant: It's one of the problems with Linux. Installing stuff can be a pain. It took me 2 hours of tweaking config files before I had Samba working properly. People are releasing graphical wrappers for configuring Apache and Samba and what not, and I think that's a good thing.
At the risk of being flamed, MS Windows (at least the later versions) does have the concept of different users with their own preferences. So, different people can work on the same machine without messsing up each other's stuff. At least not accidentally. (Yeah, and Linux Does It Much Better (TM), I know).
I do agree though that it's much better to keep your paws of "my" machine. They don't call it a PERSONAL Computer for nothing...
The issue of interface consistency is no different than the issue of whether or not we should all be forced to drive Nissan Sentras and paint our bedroom walls off-white.
Ah, but this already happens in some businesses. Ever slept in a Holiday Inn in another country? You will feel right at home. Been to Ikea stores in different parts of the world? They're all the same. Supermarkets, home improvement stores: they all are pretty much the same wherever you go. Where do you think American tourists in London go out to eat? It's either McDonalds, Burger King, or Pizza Hut.
Apparently someone thinks this consistency stuff is good for something. Boring as it might be, most people do not like (unnecessary) change.
I'm appalled that nobody has taken issue with Raskin's stab at Linux yet.
Anyway:
You have to start with a UI and then build a system that supports it. Linux failed in that regard.
He seems to be confusing a UI with a GUI. A command line is a user interface in my humble opinion. You can argue whether it's good or bad, but it is a UI.
Apparently what he means is that Linux hasn't made Windows obsolete on the desktop yet, because of the fact that Linus did not start off with a fully designed GUI. Duh. Just for the sake of argument, let's say I want to use Linux as a server OS. Why would I need a GUI? Server machines often have monochrome screens and no sound, and for a good reason: color and sound only get in the way.
But, I do agree with a lot of the points he makes in the interview. I think inconsistency is annoying, and therefore counterproductive. Ever used one of these eval versions of WinZip where the buttons of the nagscreen on startup switched all the time? That was to make the nagscreen annoying, and boy did it work! The dynamic pull-down menu's on the 2000 versions of MS Office tools are another example: probably well-intended, but generally annoying, therefore bad.
Also, I find that I like a boring monochrome background for my desktop best. Same for websites: the best designs do not use a picture as a background.
This does not mean that tools should not be customizable. Customization is not always a matter of preference. When you learn a tool you often have different UI requirements than when you're an expert. Might like to add shortcuts for often-used commands. Another example: I may want to customize emacs so that the Java syntax highlighting is the same as in JBuilder. This actually adds to the consistency.
My main objection to Raskin's (indeed somewhat arrogant) position is that he seems to think he knows what's best for the rest of the world. My opinion is that users should be able to customize tools to their liking. If I like a different skin better, then that should reduce my annoyance, hence increase my productivity.
Having said all this, I'm currently reading Raskin's "The Humane Interface". I'm about halfway through, and I must say I like it very much. He describes some good and bad UI concepts, and explains clearly why they are good or bad. There's some human psychology concepts as well. I've gained quite some understanding from the book already (probably because I don't know the first thing about UI design), so I still recommend it, despite the somewhat dubious interview.
Even Micro$oft hasn't figured that one out...
Yes, they have. Don't know if they still do it, but in the past they have charged beta-testers for debugging their products.
Isn't that circumvention? If it ain't illegal under the DCMA, it will be under the SSSCA or under Son Of SSSCA.
I'm joking...
I have some understanding for the fact that Slashdot wants some money to cover costs.
However, it may be opening a can of worms (and remember, if you open a can of worms, you will always need a bigger can to put them back).
If you charge subscribers for a service, you may get into all kinds of thorny issues.
For example, if Slashdot goes down (granted, it rarely happens, but still), are the subscribers entitled to a refund?
How do you ban notorious trolls if they are subscribers? Is it fair to ban people from posting if they paid a subscription? Can you do it legally?
How is moderation going to work? Are subscribers always entitled to moderate? Can non-subscribers mod down subscribers? That would mean that non-payers interfere with the service of payers? Will you need to redesign the mod system completely?
Again, I sympathize, and maybe all these issues have already been addressed. If not, be careful, guys...
That's brilliant! You should go into politics! Here we are moaning all the time about how companies buy politicians and politicians buy elections, and there you are wanting to buy mod points!
So, what's the next step? Slashdot Premium? 100 mod points a day for only $25 a month? You think MS would be interested in buying mod points for their employees, so all those nasty pro-Linux/anti-Windows posts can be modded down to -1?
Your idea is no different from a corporation wanting political influence in exchange for campaign contributions.
Yes, I object.
Well, the whole point of being a cable modem user is that you are connected 24/7/365.
Interesting. For me it's the speed. I don't really need to be connected all the time. I usually switch my computer off when I'm not using it. Everyone has their own requirements, I guess.
Try writing in perl. It's pretty much self-obfuscating. Even better: try APL. Five minutes after writing an APL program, the only way of figuring out what it does is to execute and reverse engineer it. But five minutes after that, you're lost again. It's the ultimate write-only language.