All sorts of situations where someone in an unfamiliar situation wants to CONSULT with someone at a remote location...
And you can't imagine this happening in the non-proefessional domain?
"Okay, I'm in the cookies aisle, but I don't see the cookies you were talking about. Where are they again?"
"Show me where you are...okay...no...they're further down...near the Oreas...that's it."
But, as the article implies, I think the "killer app" is people checking to see if the person they're talking to is lying about his or her whereabouts. Parents checking on children, jealous boyfriends checking on girlfriends, bosses checking on employees, and the biggie is...drum roll...wives checking up on their husbands.
It seems to me this subject has had a tremendous number of posts with scores of 4 and 5. Case in point, the parent and grandparent of this post are both scored as 5 even though they are repeats of other posts up-thread.
Not that I'm complaining. But I'm wondering now if anybody has ever done a study of the/. topics that have the highest average scoring posts?
I'm thinking this topic would certainly be in the top ten -- if for no other reason than that it is way too damned easy to hit a "5,Funny" by poking fun at what must be the nerdliest act of the past 25 years. I did know a guy in 1980 who was the president of the chess club in HS, a D&D dungeon master, had invented his own language a la Tolkien, and who wore thick black glasses held together with tape. And he never washed his hair. But yet I can't even imagine him parting with his collection of Tron cels to raise the cash to put together this project. Oliver Ardai, where are you?
I think this will eventually happen on its own due to the labels' own self-sabotage.
Already MdDrewbie's noticed that Sony's disks don't seem to play right on his CD player. What happens when the next Sony album comes out? If he's going to get inferior quality, why pay for it? Instead of buying the CD, he might simply download the mp3s from someone else who was able to successfully rip the tracks. Another law-abiding citizen may have been turned into a pirate. As the word spreads that certain CDs from certain companies are not properly playable, more people will desist from buying those products. And eventually they'll stop buying CDs altogether.
Unfortunately, the artists will be caught in the crossfire.
The latter, I suppose. But I boldly and fearlessly predict that within 10 years the CMS will bow to good sense and popular usage and come around to my position. Honestly, who'd write, "I went to various ATM's in the area?" That doesn't look right a'tall, no indeed. Not that I'd expect you to agree.
Since the subject is of passing interest to you, I'll briefly mention the following three factoids:
1) I'm a New Yorker, and as such I defer to the NY Times Style Guide over the Chicago Manual. And I notice that the NY Times' website uses DVDs, which is enough to convince me.
2) If you google the phrase "DVD's", you'll get a message that says, "Did you mean: Dvds" The latter phrase also vastly outnumbers the former.
3) Here's the Chicago Manual Of Style's own FAQ page. I can't imagine you didn't at least peruse their online resource first, only to find that DVDs weren't mentioned. So I'm guessing you missed the subtle yet quite conclusive rebuttal to your argumentum ad verecundiam which is prominently displayed on the "New FAQs" page. Well, in fact, there it is.
It says to add an apostrophe s to capital letters that would be confusing if s alone were added for the plural.
SOSs could be considered confusing because of the two Ss's, ergo an apostrophe is indicated.
There's no confusion with DVDs, hence no apostrophe is mandated. Unless you happen to be one of those wacky "DVD is an acronym" people, then go ahead and add it.
Okay, I'll come clean and admit the whole purpose of this post was to write "Ss's".;-)
So the question is, why didn't Sun long ago make a bundling deal with AOL to include the latest JVM with those ubiquitous coasters? Frankly the two would be a perfect match. AOL gets to claim their disk comes with a free bonus OS upgrade, and through AOL Sun reaches exactly those clueless users who can't figure out how to get their hands on an up-to-date version of Java if they want it.
The problem here is that for DRM to work, it has to be under control by one company or consortium - like the DVD CCA
Hmm. You may be right about that. I'm not entirely convinced that there is no way to have an open-source implementation of DRM. I don't really know anything about cryptology, but I don't see why in principle DRM couldn't rely on PGP type authentication, i.e. that the implementation could be made source-code available, and the "rights" could be encoded in the sender's certificate without a third party authentication repository required. However, this PDF paper by Intertrust seems to conclude, in somewhat self-interested fashion, that a trusted 3rd party is necessary. On the other hand, in the real world we see the ongoing development of OpenPIMP, excuse me, OpenIPMP which seems to contradict your assertion. An interesting point, nonetheless, and I think you deserved to be modded up.
I think DRM/trusted computing is inherently evil.
I think you and I and about 99% of the Slashdot community are in agreement on this. The remaining 1% consisting entirely of Twirlip of the Mists and his varies friends and fans.
Linux may be able to play DRM media but my guess is that larege sectors will be locked up by MS and locked away from Linux
Except for a few things:
1)Software patents are currently not allowed in the EU, and are effectively unenforceable in the Third World. This means that regardless of whether DRM is owned by InterTrust or Microsoft in the US, competing implementations of can legally proceed in the rest of the world. American home users of Linux distros will easily be able to download DRM patches from EU servers if and when the time comes. Businesses won't be able to totally skirt the law, but nevertheless, the widespread existence of free, illegal packages will exert a downward pressure on the price of legal packages and should keep them within reason.
2)Linux isn't going away. It's being increasingly used by governments outside of the US. InterTrust can either play along and offer to license their own version of it, or they can find themselves locked out of foreign markets as the international community converges on a non-American standard.
3)MS in any case won't be able to prevent other operating systems from using DRM even within the US. This would certainly run afaul of antitrust laws.
This is an interesting issue, but it all boils down to exactly how broad InterTrust's patents are. The article mentions prior implementations of DRM which InterTrust does not claim patent rights over, in particular, IBM, which as a software provider is now firmly in the pro-Linux camp. If its version of DRM is fully featured enough to stand on its own, then perhaps Big Blue will find it advantageous to issue a royalty-free license to the Linux community.
The other option is that the pieces of GNU/Linux which currently work without DRM will continue to do so, and any parts that require DRM in the future will simply be restricted to the retail market, just as many Linux distros contain packages (e.g. SO) that are retail-only.
But sorry, I don't agree. Film is a cinematic medium and is best viewed in a cinema. Yes, a good film can withstand the transition to small screen with minimal damage, but the gigantic forms of the actors like demigods upon the screen, the sound booming in your skull, the visual effects like magic in their scope and detail, even the appreciative swoons of the crowd, all of that is part of the film as it is meant to be, and the film is inevitably diminished in its translation to video format.
That's why, in the present day, there are occasional revivals of big, outsized films like North by Northwest, The Ten Commandments, Singin' in the Rain, and even Fritz Lang's Metropolis in local movie theaters. People who have seen the films several times on television come to appreciate them anew when experienced as originally intended. Even films with few or no effects shots gain stature when viewed on the large screen.
So Jackson's films have nothing to be ashamed about for their embracing of SFX. It's all part of the magic. Can the story stand on it's own without the effects? We all know it can, that's why Tolkien's masterpiece has sold countless millions of copies to begin with.
In marked contrast, SW2 really does need all that stuff to cohere as a film. There's virtually no story at all, it's all digital effects. On the home screen it isn't exactly unendurable, but e.g. watching Yoda kick ass as a little tiny blip on my TV monitor isn't anywhere near the same as the thrill of first seeing him unsheath his saber with a three hundred other theatergoers cheering him on.
The day that these cards can realistically render the naked human body in real-time motion is fast approaching. At which point, judging by the history of cable TV, the VCR and the DVD, these $500 videocard monstrosities will go flying off the shelves.
AC, you raise a very subtle point. Slashdot limits AC's to 10 posts a day in order to prevent troublesome posters from ruining the community by posting anonymously. In other words,/., in the guise of preventing terrorism to their website, keeps track of the parties accessing their servers. As do almost all major websites. So what's the difference between this and government mandated lack of privacy? The difference is that, if you chose to spoof/. (for the sole purpose of maintaining privacy) or to sign on from a different terminal every day, or simply to not use/. as a protest to their policies, you wouldn't be committing a crime. Slashdot chooses voluntarily to behave in a certain way, and you can voluntarily choose to respond in any legal fashion. However, when the government decides to eliminate a portion of your privacy, you must accede or else be a criminal. If everyone is forced to use a "registered" IP address, switching to K5 instead of/. won't help you.
As for the other issue you raise, is/. being hypocritical by limiting privacy while adopting a pro-privacy posture? I don't think so. Even the most ardent supporter of the American "right to bear arms" nonetheless believes that has the right to limit in his own home a guest's bearing of arms.
I've been saying this for months: if you run a wide-open AP, with the full knowledge that you are providing anonymous connectivity to others, you should not be surprised when someone uses that open AP to perform an illegal act, and the feds trace that act back to you.
It seems to me there are two methods of dealing with this sort of vulnerability. I will treat them as opposing and competing philosphies, for reasons that will become clear, but in practice both are often used.
1) You can move in the direction of giving the actor minimal power while requiring minimal accountability. Let anyone in on your network, even anonymously, they can futz around all they want, but they simply don't have the required privileges to damage your well-protected system. This is essentially the principle behind the Java sandbox, and behind the anonymous user account on a Unix system.
2) You can give the actor maximal power while requiring maximal accountability. Every move must be authenticated and recorded, however once given access the agent has the ability to manipulate and potentially damage the system from within. This is essentially the principle behind ActiveX.
Usually on a given network you will see some kind of combination of the two methodologies, encryption, permissions, access lists, antiviral programs, all working along various stages in the chain of communications to prevent damage by a hostile actor. However, despite these cooperative methods, I believe the two methods are fundamentally at odds with each other at a deep philosophical level. At their essentials, they boil down to Raymond's Cathedral and Bazaar. The Cathedral stands for maximal power for the actor. Here the Government strives to keep track of users and access points, and shuts down any unauthorized (anonymous) use. It restricting to itself the ultimate authority over who has the right to penetrate your system. (In this scenario the Government always mantains super-Superuser status for itself.) This requires you to trust your Leaders as infallible. The problem is, as we saw with that recent Active X debacle, once we have decided to "trust" someone, they now have the power to damage us, and particularly if it is a super-trusted authority, e.g. the government or Microsoft, the entire security method can be instantly rendered worthless.
The "Bazaar," or minimal power method, which builds security into the system from the outset by not allowing rogue processes any ability to compromise operation, is harder to implement, and rather unpalatable to the Government since even it can't escape the sandbox, but in the end it affords better protection for everyone because if any given user is compromised, that user can only damage him or hserself. In practice, of course, even a sandbox-type system can be vulnerable to exploits such as buffer overflows, but this is where open source shows its superiority, anyone has the ability to fix their own machine if so inclined, and indeed to pass such fixes along to be utilized and scrutinized by the community.
(Regarding the above, I tried to organize my thoughts since I had a lot of competing ideas going on in my own mental bazaar, but I fear I wasn't entirely successful in these few minutes. Sorry for any lingering incoherences, but hell, this is/., not a dissertation committee!)
The sad thing is that the terrorists are the only ones with any balls to stand up to the government.
The sad thing is that you felt compelled, and justifiably so, to post that insightful yet "Anti-Amarikin" remark as an AC. Just keep in mind that in the future, anonymous posting on Slashdot may have to be eliminated...because only Terrorists post as Anonymous Cowards.
The radio station already paid for the broadcasting of the music.
Well, it paid for the broadcast to be used in a limited, non-commercial setting, not in a commercial one. The same way that your TV station may have paid to broadcast Ben Hur to your home, but not to have the broadcast used during an intermssion at a sporting event.
I would also strongly argue that 2 people being able to hear the music is not a public performance.
So it's dependent on how many passengers there are in a cab? What if the cab has four passengers? Is that a public performance? If not, then what if it's a bus with only four passengers? What if there are five or six people on the bus? Or ten, or twenty? Can you see that if we started to let bus companies play radio stations over their loudspeakers with no additional fees paid, that copyright holders would say, "Wait a second! That wasn't part of the deal. If radio stations are going to be played at restaurants, airports, etc., we want to renegotiate our rates." Because these sorts of public performances are a major source of revenue for songwriters, and they'd need to recoup their losses somehow.
Re:i don't think you're getting the point.
on
Cringely on P2P
·
· Score: 2
so i guess we agree on the end result,
It seems like it. I also don't listen to the radio except occasionally classical or NPR and what I'm unfortunately forced to listen to by my mates at work. I also find 90% of what I like over the internet and then buy it if it sounds good and if it's still in print and if it's available in the United States. (Sample recent purchases: Sigur Ros, UTADA Hikaru.) Most of what I like, they simply don't play on Clear Channel Communicazions-dominated radio. I guess where we differ is that I think most people really aren't similarly idiosyncratic and individualistic in their music purchases. Nor would they want to be, even given the opportunity. I think most music consumers, esp. teens prefer to follow fashionble music trends, and so look to programmed commercial radio as a real resource to inform them about what's popular, what's new and yet comfortingly familiar, and what's good for dancing or for cleaning the house. The experiences of folks like you and me don't translate over to the Britley-buying public.
Hold on, there's a bit of injudicious editing in the parent. The article wasn't implying that large volume addressing was an extraordinarily difficult task, it was saying that a fast filesystem with a large address space and relational database properties was difficult. (The example given mentioned being able to swiftly locate a document by content.)
Re:In the land of Redmond where the shadows lie...
on
More on Longhorn
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Of course you have to say "Rrredmond" in that weird quasi-Transylvanian accent they used in the FOTR movie to say "Mordor."
Re:i don't think you're getting the point.
on
Cringely on P2P
·
· Score: 2
it's not that the publishers and record producers will go out of business. it's that they stand to make alot less money. i believe that is what frightens them.
When's the last time you heard a newish Prince song on commercial radio? A Greatful Dead song? A song by any artist who wasn't deepiy in the pocket of one of the majors? It's almost impossible to stay in the limelight these days without massive promotion, without making expensive videos, arranging appearances on live television and so on. Even with the full force of the record industry behind them, major artists face an uphill battle against obsolescence every time one of their new albums comes out. Consider that there's already a long existing independent label distribution network that any major artist could take advantage of if he wished. But most successful artists prefer to stay in the big arms of the majors even as they are being sqeezed dry, because they know it's a cold cruel world out there without marketing and exposure.
That's not to say the major labels don't have something to fear, of course they do. In my opinion, that mainly boils down to two things.
1) Music's general loss of entertainment priority. It used to be that when you were a teenager, your meager entertainment budget went to music and movies, and that's about it. Now the music industry has to compete with DVDs and video games, and it's losing out in a big way. Part of the reason for that is:
2) The entrenchment of the "music as free" paradigm. Unlike movies, which at this date are still too time-consuming to generally download, and which have tremendous value as a shared theatrical experience, music can be downloaded for free, or burned and swapped among friends. So even though there is a core group of (mostly older) people who perfer to pay for music, kids are deciding their dollars are already streched too thin and actually are coming to prefer file-trading, which has value as a shared experience of its own.
Nevertheless, for the previously-stated reasons, I expect the record industry to survive, just in somewhat diminished form.
I meant 8"x10" not 8'10", obviously. Although I wouldn't exactly mind getting a gargantuan glossy bimbette in the mail for 50 bucks. (Sort of like a reverse "Hand Maid May," I suppose.)
In one of the previous iterations of this discussion, someone mentioned a Prince-style fanclub as a viable method for at least the top-tier stars. You pay e.g. $49.95 for a year's membership, and with that, you get guaranteed one full Britley album, one Britley DVD, two 8'10" Britley glossies at her most glossy, demos and unreleasted tracks on secure downloadable format and a chance to receive one of a 100 personally autographed photos. Maybe even a chance to meet Britley personally on EMPTV.
Slashdot Mirror
All sorts of situations where someone in an unfamiliar situation wants to CONSULT with someone at a remote location...
And you can't imagine this happening in the non-proefessional domain?
"Okay, I'm in the cookies aisle, but I don't see the cookies you were talking about. Where are they again?"
"Show me where you are...okay...no...they're further down...near the Oreas...that's it."
But, as the article implies, I think the "killer app" is people checking to see if the person they're talking to is lying about his or her whereabouts. Parents checking on children, jealous boyfriends checking on girlfriends, bosses checking on employees, and the biggie is...drum roll...wives checking up on their husbands.
It seems to me this subject has had a tremendous number of posts with scores of 4 and 5. Case in point, the parent and grandparent of this post are both scored as 5 even though they are repeats of other posts up-thread.
/. topics that have the highest average scoring posts?
Not that I'm complaining. But I'm wondering now if anybody has ever done a study of the
I'm thinking this topic would certainly be in the top ten -- if for no other reason than that it is way too damned easy to hit a "5,Funny" by poking fun at what must be the nerdliest act of the past 25 years. I did know a guy in 1980 who was the president of the chess club in HS, a D&D dungeon master, had invented his own language a la Tolkien, and who wore thick black glasses held together with tape. And he never washed his hair. But yet I can't even imagine him parting with his collection of Tron cels to raise the cash to put together this project. Oliver Ardai, where are you?
Okay, now, reading the above, tell me how a television set is not prior art?
What will really wind up happening is that disabling the boxes will void your insurance policy.
I think this will eventually happen on its own due to the labels' own self-sabotage.
Already MdDrewbie's noticed that Sony's disks don't seem to play right on his CD player. What happens when the next Sony album comes out? If he's going to get inferior quality, why pay for it? Instead of buying the CD, he might simply download the mp3s from someone else who was able to successfully rip the tracks. Another law-abiding citizen may have been turned into a pirate. As the word spreads that certain CDs from certain companies are not properly playable, more people will desist from buying those products. And eventually they'll stop buying CDs altogether.
Unfortunately, the artists will be caught in the crossfire.
The latter, I suppose. But I boldly and fearlessly predict that within 10 years the CMS will bow to good sense and popular usage and come around to my position. Honestly, who'd write, "I went to various ATM's in the area?" That doesn't look right a'tall, no indeed. Not that I'd expect you to agree.
Since the subject is of passing interest to you, I'll briefly mention the following three factoids:
1) I'm a New Yorker, and as such I defer to the NY Times Style Guide over the Chicago Manual. And I notice that the NY Times' website uses DVDs, which is enough to convince me.
2) If you google the phrase "DVD's", you'll get a message that says, "Did you mean: Dvds" The latter phrase also vastly outnumbers the former.
3) Here's the Chicago Manual Of Style's own FAQ page. I can't imagine you didn't at least peruse their online resource first, only to find that DVDs weren't mentioned. So I'm guessing you missed the subtle yet quite conclusive rebuttal to your argumentum ad verecundiam which is prominently displayed on the "New FAQs" page. Well, in fact, there it is.
Did you read your own quote, Twirly?
;-)
It says to add an apostrophe s to capital letters that would be confusing if s alone were added for the plural.
SOSs could be considered confusing because of the two Ss's, ergo an apostrophe is indicated.
There's no confusion with DVDs, hence no apostrophe is mandated. Unless you happen to be one of those wacky "DVD is an acronym" people, then go ahead and add it.
Okay, I'll come clean and admit the whole purpose of this post was to write "Ss's".
So the question is, why didn't Sun long ago make a bundling deal with AOL to include the latest JVM with those ubiquitous coasters? Frankly the two would be a perfect match. AOL gets to claim their disk comes with a free bonus OS upgrade, and through AOL Sun reaches exactly those clueless users who can't figure out how to get their hands on an up-to-date version of Java if they want it.
The problem here is that for DRM to work, it has to be under control by one company or consortium - like the DVD CCA
Hmm. You may be right about that. I'm not entirely convinced that there is no way to have an open-source implementation of DRM. I don't really know anything about cryptology, but I don't see why in principle DRM couldn't rely on PGP type authentication, i.e. that the implementation could be made source-code available, and the "rights" could be encoded in the sender's certificate without a third party authentication repository required. However, this PDF paper by Intertrust seems to conclude, in somewhat self-interested fashion, that a trusted 3rd party is necessary. On the other hand, in the real world we see the ongoing development of OpenPIMP, excuse me, OpenIPMP which seems to contradict your assertion. An interesting point, nonetheless, and I think you deserved to be modded up.
I think DRM/trusted computing is inherently evil.
I think you and I and about 99% of the Slashdot community are in agreement on this. The remaining 1% consisting entirely of Twirlip of the Mists and his varies friends and fans.
Linux may be able to play DRM media but my guess is that larege sectors will be locked up by MS and locked away from Linux
Except for a few things:
1)Software patents are currently not allowed in the EU, and are effectively unenforceable in the Third World. This means that regardless of whether DRM is owned by InterTrust or Microsoft in the US, competing implementations of can legally proceed in the rest of the world. American home users of Linux distros will easily be able to download DRM patches from EU servers if and when the time comes. Businesses won't be able to totally skirt the law, but nevertheless, the widespread existence of free, illegal packages will exert a downward pressure on the price of legal packages and should keep them within reason.
2)Linux isn't going away. It's being increasingly used by governments outside of the US. InterTrust can either play along and offer to license their own version of it, or they can find themselves locked out of foreign markets as the international community converges on a non-American standard.
3)MS in any case won't be able to prevent other operating systems from using DRM even within the US. This would certainly run afaul of antitrust laws.
This is an interesting issue, but it all boils down to exactly how broad InterTrust's patents are. The article mentions prior implementations of DRM which InterTrust does not claim patent rights over, in particular, IBM, which as a software provider is now firmly in the pro-Linux camp. If its version of DRM is fully featured enough to stand on its own, then perhaps Big Blue will find it advantageous to issue a royalty-free license to the Linux community.
The other option is that the pieces of GNU/Linux which currently work without DRM will continue to do so, and any parts that require DRM in the future will simply be restricted to the retail market, just as many Linux distros contain packages (e.g. SO) that are retail-only.
I HEAR YA, DUDE!!!
But sorry, I don't agree. Film is a cinematic medium and is best viewed in a cinema. Yes, a good film can withstand the transition to small screen with minimal damage, but the gigantic forms of the actors like demigods upon the screen, the sound booming in your skull, the visual effects like magic in their scope and detail, even the appreciative swoons of the crowd, all of that is part of the film as it is meant to be, and the film is inevitably diminished in its translation to video format.
That's why, in the present day, there are occasional revivals of big, outsized films like North by Northwest, The Ten Commandments, Singin' in the Rain, and even Fritz Lang's Metropolis in local movie theaters. People who have seen the films several times on television come to appreciate them anew when experienced as originally intended. Even films with few or no effects shots gain stature when viewed on the large screen.
So Jackson's films have nothing to be ashamed about for their embracing of SFX. It's all part of the magic. Can the story stand on it's own without the effects? We all know it can, that's why Tolkien's masterpiece has sold countless millions of copies to begin with.
In marked contrast, SW2 really does need all that stuff to cohere as a film. There's virtually no story at all, it's all digital effects. On the home screen it isn't exactly unendurable, but e.g. watching Yoda kick ass as a little tiny blip on my TV monitor isn't anywhere near the same as the thrill of first seeing him unsheath his saber with a three hundred other theatergoers cheering him on.
The day that these cards can realistically render the naked human body in real-time motion is fast approaching. At which point, judging by the history of cable TV, the VCR and the DVD, these $500 videocard monstrosities will go flying off the shelves.
AC, you raise a very subtle point. Slashdot limits AC's to 10 posts a day in order to prevent troublesome posters from ruining the community by posting anonymously. In other words, /., in the guise of preventing terrorism to their website, keeps track of the parties accessing their servers. As do almost all major websites. So what's the difference between this and government mandated lack of privacy? The difference is that, if you chose to spoof /. (for the sole purpose of maintaining privacy) or to sign on from a different terminal every day, or simply to not use /. as a protest to their policies, you wouldn't be committing a crime. Slashdot chooses voluntarily to behave in a certain way, and you can voluntarily choose to respond in any legal fashion. However, when the government decides to eliminate a portion of your privacy, you must accede or else be a criminal. If everyone is forced to use a "registered" IP address, switching to K5 instead of /. won't help you.
/. being hypocritical by limiting privacy while adopting a pro-privacy posture? I don't think so. Even the most ardent supporter of the American "right to bear arms" nonetheless believes that has the right to limit in his own home a guest's bearing of arms.
As for the other issue you raise, is
I've been saying this for months: if you run a wide-open AP, with the full knowledge that you are providing anonymous connectivity to others, you should not be surprised when someone uses that open AP to perform an illegal act, and the feds trace that act back to you.
/., not a dissertation committee!)
It seems to me there are two methods of dealing with this sort of vulnerability. I will treat them as opposing and competing philosphies, for reasons that will become clear, but in practice both are often used.
1) You can move in the direction of giving the actor minimal power while requiring minimal accountability. Let anyone in on your network, even anonymously, they can futz around all they want, but they simply don't have the required privileges to damage your well-protected system. This is essentially the principle behind the Java sandbox, and behind the anonymous user account on a Unix system.
2) You can give the actor maximal power while requiring maximal accountability. Every move must be authenticated and recorded, however once given access the agent has the ability to manipulate and potentially damage the system from within. This is essentially the principle behind ActiveX.
Usually on a given network you will see some kind of combination of the two methodologies, encryption, permissions, access lists, antiviral programs, all working along various stages in the chain of communications to prevent damage by a hostile actor. However, despite these cooperative methods, I believe the two methods are fundamentally at odds with each other at a deep philosophical level. At their essentials, they boil down to Raymond's Cathedral and Bazaar. The Cathedral stands for maximal power for the actor. Here the Government strives to keep track of users and access points, and shuts down any unauthorized (anonymous) use. It restricting to itself the ultimate authority over who has the right to penetrate your system. (In this scenario the Government always mantains super-Superuser status for itself.) This requires you to trust your Leaders as infallible. The problem is, as we saw with that recent Active X debacle, once we have decided to "trust" someone, they now have the power to damage us, and particularly if it is a super-trusted authority, e.g. the government or Microsoft, the entire security method can be instantly rendered worthless.
The "Bazaar," or minimal power method, which builds security into the system from the outset by not allowing rogue processes any ability to compromise operation, is harder to implement, and rather unpalatable to the Government since even it can't escape the sandbox, but in the end it affords better protection for everyone because if any given user is compromised, that user can only damage him or hserself. In practice, of course, even a sandbox-type system can be vulnerable to exploits such as buffer overflows, but this is where open source shows its superiority, anyone has the ability to fix their own machine if so inclined, and indeed to pass such fixes along to be utilized and scrutinized by the community.
(Regarding the above, I tried to organize my thoughts since I had a lot of competing ideas going on in my own mental bazaar, but I fear I wasn't entirely successful in these few minutes. Sorry for any lingering incoherences, but hell, this is
The sad thing is that the terrorists are the only ones with any balls to stand up to the government.
The sad thing is that you felt compelled, and justifiably so, to post that insightful yet "Anti-Amarikin" remark as an AC. Just keep in mind that in the future, anonymous posting on Slashdot may have to be eliminated...because only Terrorists post as Anonymous Cowards.
telemarketing is a major part of the economy. It employs some six million people and generates more than 12 billion dollars per year.
That would mean a gross revenue of $2000 per employee. Either your stats are way off or telemarketing sucks major ass as a business. Or both.
The radio station already paid for the broadcasting of the music.
Well, it paid for the broadcast to be used in a limited, non-commercial setting, not in a commercial one. The same way that your TV station may have paid to broadcast Ben Hur to your home, but not to have the broadcast used during an intermssion at a sporting event.
I would also strongly argue that 2 people being able to hear the music is not a public performance.
So it's dependent on how many passengers there are in a cab? What if the cab has four passengers? Is that a public performance? If not, then what if it's a bus with only four passengers? What if there are five or six people on the bus? Or ten, or twenty? Can you see that if we started to let bus companies play radio stations over their loudspeakers with no additional fees paid, that copyright holders would say, "Wait a second! That wasn't part of the deal. If radio stations are going to be played at restaurants, airports, etc., we want to renegotiate our rates." Because these sorts of public performances are a major source of revenue for songwriters, and they'd need to recoup their losses somehow.
so i guess we agree on the end result,
It seems like it. I also don't listen to the radio except occasionally classical or NPR and what I'm unfortunately forced to listen to by my mates at work. I also find 90% of what I like over the internet and then buy it if it sounds good and if it's still in print and if it's available in the United States. (Sample recent purchases: Sigur Ros, UTADA Hikaru.) Most of what I like, they simply don't play on Clear Channel Communicazions-dominated radio. I guess where we differ is that I think most people really aren't similarly idiosyncratic and individualistic in their music purchases. Nor would they want to be, even given the opportunity. I think most music consumers, esp. teens prefer to follow fashionble music trends, and so look to programmed commercial radio as a real resource to inform them about what's popular, what's new and yet comfortingly familiar, and what's good for dancing or for cleaning the house. The experiences of folks like you and me don't translate over to the Britley-buying public.
Hold on, there's a bit of injudicious editing in the parent. The article wasn't implying that large volume addressing was an extraordinarily difficult task, it was saying that a fast filesystem with a large address space and relational database properties was difficult. (The example given mentioned being able to swiftly locate a document by content.)
Of course you have to say "Rrredmond" in that weird quasi-Transylvanian accent they used in the FOTR movie to say "Mordor."
When's the last time you heard a newish Prince song on commercial radio? A Greatful Dead song? A song by any artist who wasn't deepiy in the pocket of one of the majors? It's almost impossible to stay in the limelight these days without massive promotion, without making expensive videos, arranging appearances on live television and so on. Even with the full force of the record industry behind them, major artists face an uphill battle against obsolescence every time one of their new albums comes out. Consider that there's already a long existing independent label distribution network that any major artist could take advantage of if he wished. But most successful artists prefer to stay in the big arms of the majors even as they are being sqeezed dry, because they know it's a cold cruel world out there without marketing and exposure.
That's not to say the major labels don't have something to fear, of course they do. In my opinion, that mainly boils down to two things.
1) Music's general loss of entertainment priority. It used to be that when you were a teenager, your meager entertainment budget went to music and movies, and that's about it. Now the music industry has to compete with DVDs and video games, and it's losing out in a big way. Part of the reason for that is:
2) The entrenchment of the "music as free" paradigm. Unlike movies, which at this date are still too time-consuming to generally download, and which have tremendous value as a shared theatrical experience, music can be downloaded for free, or burned and swapped among friends. So even though there is a core group of (mostly older) people who perfer to pay for music, kids are deciding their dollars are already streched too thin and actually are coming to prefer file-trading, which has value as a shared experience of its own.
Nevertheless, for the previously-stated reasons, I expect the record industry to survive, just in somewhat diminished form.
two 8'10" Britley glossies
I meant 8"x10" not 8'10", obviously. Although I wouldn't exactly mind getting a gargantuan glossy bimbette in the mail for 50 bucks. (Sort of like a reverse "Hand Maid May," I suppose.)
In one of the previous iterations of this discussion, someone mentioned a Prince-style fanclub as a viable method for at least the top-tier stars. You pay e.g. $49.95 for a year's membership, and with that, you get guaranteed one full Britley album, one Britley DVD, two 8'10" Britley glossies at her most glossy, demos and unreleasted tracks on secure downloadable format and a chance to receive one of a 100 personally autographed photos. Maybe even a chance to meet Britley personally on EMPTV.