Hey, even a broken clock is right twice a day. As long as it is not digital of course, or displaying military time, in which case it would be right once a day. Of course, you have to take into account daylight savings time and whether the clock is moving across time zones. Time, of course, exists on a continuum that is ultimately undefined and our attempts to quantify it are ultimately subject to forces beyond our meager understanding of the universe. Oh wait, what were we talking about? Oh yes, Bush wants to make the budget searchable online. That sounds great, but he'll probably fsck that up too, or more likely it will trail off into meaningless promises ultimately signifying nothing, just like Social Security Reform, Immigration Reform and the Houston Astros.
If anyone was humiliatingly defeated, then it was the ATM installation company, not the ATM manufacturer/owner/store clerk. And that defeat was not by Google, but likely by a trained installer with a grudge/questionable morals. If it were me, given the exorbitant rewards offered on many of these ATMs for information leading to arrest of offenders, I'd put more effort into catching exploiters than risking a theft charge. In my opinion, we should put $100 dollar bills behind thin glass on every corner with an alarm and a camera. In the meantime, this might be the next best thing to catch stupid criminals.
If they did that then they would be violating the GPL's copyright. Yes, I'm joking, but sadly it's probably still true. The real issue of course is that writing your own license means that other developers who would like to extend your work have to scrutinize that license for compatibility with their choice of license. If everyone's working under a common license then it's less work for the lawyers and easier for commercial participation in open source. Stay at home amateur keyboard bangers could probably care less, of course.
Just because an act is illegal, doesn't mean that it's impossible. So, yeah, he does get to decide how they share their music. So, we've got FAIR vs. LEGAL vs. POSSIBLE. Personally, I'm rooting for FAIR, but I always did root for the underdog.
Do your 3000 users leave the office every day and travel to unfamiliar neighborhoods where they fan out to canvas every house? Do they do this after 3 weeks training for a temporary job lasting 3-9 months? If you lost 3 laptops with classified data from a secured DoD facility, then YOU have the unacceptable loss percentage, and should avoid tossing stones at an agency with an entirely different and uniquely challenging set of circumstances, hey or not! Live and let bitch, as I always say.
Philosophical Joke of the Day: I used to feel sorry for myself because I had no shoes, then I met a man with no feet, and took his shoes.
Obligatory Futuramitization: Forget Bigelow. I'll build my own space station, with Blackjack and Hookers. On second thought, forget about the space station!
Ah, remember the good old days with patent and copyright law was crafted to ENCOURAGE innovation and PROTECT creative work, rather than STIFLE competition and REWARD petty lawsuits? No? Well, me neither, but I've seen the footprints in the woods.
Why in the world would they add (CNGI) to the end of Chinese Next Generation Internet? This isn't some uber new technology. It's not any different from what every other country in the world is claiming they will do in the next 5 years. Oh, and if they can stretch DSL service out to my house on the lake, they can block access to articles about Tianneman Square and Falun Gong all they like. "Give me Liberty, or Give Me Bandwidth!"
Here I was thinking that the problems with voting machines had to be intentional, since ATM's were so much better secured. Now that I find out that a keystroke combination on the interface of an ATM will bring up a GUI to reprogram the machine, protected only by a default password, I can rest assured that the world is not as shrouded in conspiracy as I feared. It's just full of very very very (very very very very very) stupid people. Now, watch as one of these aforementioned idiots elected to public office blames this on Google.
Oh please spare us the elitist "higher range" of sound nonsense. On a vinyl album, you hear artifacts and noise introduced in the recording and by the player. If you're really fond of noise overlayed over your music you should be able to find some suitable sound mixing software to add it in with your digital audio. Alternatively, you can capture directly from Vinyl at maximum bitrate without any noise filtering and all your "higher range" enhancements will automagically appear in your digital music (assuming you have a decent setup to record from analog). If artifacts enhance your listening experience, more power to you, but "beyond the range of human hearing" means "beyond the range of human hearing". The sample rate of a high bitrate encoding is not flattening any sounds that a vinyl album is carrying to your ear. Now, if you are comparing vinyl to MP3's that you are downloading, then you're comparing musty old apples to scratch and sniff oranges.
You can play online games, but you won't be satisfied with the performance. Typically, you can manage a latency of 200 on Counterstrike, which was the last online game I used with satellite. Check out a wireless internet provider. It can offer a better ping, and can easily be stretched 12 miles from broadband. Good luck, and if nothing else, look at this as an opportunity to branch out into some new online activities. BTW, the new equipment wont change your PING, just the up and download speed and the size of your "bit bucket".
To be fair, Battlestar Gallactica was just as bad as Buck Rogers. I watched them both regularly, and was as excited as anyone to see the new BG series come out. I bet anyone who ever owned a poster of Farrah Fawcett in a wet t-shirt can still tell you who said "Beedy-Beedy-Beedy". I don't give up hope that a new Buck Rogers series won't happen, either. Heck, if they make the lead character gay they can use the same costumes from the original series, and explain why he hangs out with a deep throated midget named Twiki, to boot. They can play the series on LOGO. Hey man, this could work, Lance Bass can play Buck and finally make it into space, afterall.
If someone can go back and airbrush out the canteen character, though then yeah, that would be great. Thanks.
If Google didn't hire them, then there's every possibility that a competing interest would hire them instead. There's a lot of legislation bouncing around that affects Google directly and its users indirectly by weakening privacy laws. When the lynch mob is headed into town, you better hire gunslingers, not the local minister.
If this means I no longer have to submit my 12 transcripts for every educational and career application, then I'm all for it. Then again, if I were named Ahmed Bin Laden, then I might feel differently about it. (Oh, and I for one, welcome our Dept. of Education Overlords!)
Imagine a BeoWulf Cluster of these #$*&#@ drivers!
Ok, but seriously, maybe someone can answer me this. Why do we still need to construct massively parallel computing architectures at the platform level? Not saying we should toss the whole concept, but for the foreseeable future won't it make a lot more sense to stick with the Amazon model of chunking up into virtual machines? I know the FA says that this view is a mistake, but he doesn't explain why. Can anyone else?
The reason it translates to Africa is because Africa wasn't likely to be the folks getting the bill. The round number is intended for the Buffetts and Gates who have the big money to spend to invest in Africa.
Imagine all you could add for another $50! The rise in price is a terrible idea. There was a lot of symbolic significance to being the $100 laptop. Now, with that barrier broken, it will lose that cachet. If they'd simply followed through on the $100 laptop, they could have added all that and more over time.
That's a very persuasive argument you make. How could I have missed the fact that I "want shit for free", am "pissed and jealous" and should "give up". Of course! Thanks for setting me straight, and clearing up the whole issue. If only you had been available to testify before Congress, perhaps everyone could have benefitted from your keen insight, wit and obvious devotion to the public good.
First, this is not a claim as to the legality of file sharing. It's illegal. No doubt about it, and there are real penalties if you are prosecuted. That debate is over. My comment is that a reasonable and sane approach would be that we prosecute people who profit by SELLING other people intellectual property (You down with OPIP?), but that we treat unauthorized USE of OPIP as a civil affair, where the owner is free to pursue compensation from the courts for their products that were inappropriately acquired, and we treat the SHARING of OPIP as an infraction, where the perpetrator is fined on an escalating scale as they are cited for the action, but are not given a bill equal to the price of the IP owner's retirement dream home. This would make sharing OPIP akin to speeding, where we discourage it, but recognize that it will continue to happen at some scale and may actually serve some useful function in society. This principally applies to IP that functions as a tool. When it comes to movies or music, then I think that's a more complicated (and less important) issue. I advocate this approach whenever possible and try to put it out there so that people who agree with it can talk it up, as well. Consumers will never have the lobbying power that corporations have, but we do have the numbers on our side.
Slashdot Mirror
Give them a break. Super Mario issued the press release.
Houston Astros --- err, Texas Rangers... damn, oh well, wasn't even funny the first time.
Hey, even a broken clock is right twice a day. As long as it is not digital of course, or displaying military time, in which case it would be right once a day. Of course, you have to take into account daylight savings time and whether the clock is moving across time zones. Time, of course, exists on a continuum that is ultimately undefined and our attempts to quantify it are ultimately subject to forces beyond our meager understanding of the universe. Oh wait, what were we talking about? Oh yes, Bush wants to make the budget searchable online. That sounds great, but he'll probably fsck that up too, or more likely it will trail off into meaningless promises ultimately signifying nothing, just like Social Security Reform, Immigration Reform and the Houston Astros.
Not if you're endeavoring to collect rewards ;)
If anyone was humiliatingly defeated, then it was the ATM installation company, not the ATM manufacturer/owner/store clerk. And that defeat was not by Google, but likely by a trained installer with a grudge/questionable morals. If it were me, given the exorbitant rewards offered on many of these ATMs for information leading to arrest of offenders, I'd put more effort into catching exploiters than risking a theft charge. In my opinion, we should put $100 dollar bills behind thin glass on every corner with an alarm and a camera. In the meantime, this might be the next best thing to catch stupid criminals.
If they did that then they would be violating the GPL's copyright. Yes, I'm joking, but sadly it's probably still true. The real issue of course is that writing your own license means that other developers who would like to extend your work have to scrutinize that license for compatibility with their choice of license. If everyone's working under a common license then it's less work for the lawyers and easier for commercial participation in open source. Stay at home amateur keyboard bangers could probably care less, of course.
Just because an act is illegal, doesn't mean that it's impossible. So, yeah, he does get to decide how they share their music. So, we've got FAIR vs. LEGAL vs. POSSIBLE. Personally, I'm rooting for FAIR, but I always did root for the underdog.
So what you are saying is that I've criticized you without having a full grasp of the conditions that you do your job? Right, sorry about that. :)
Do your 3000 users leave the office every day and travel to unfamiliar neighborhoods where they fan out to canvas every house? Do they do this after 3 weeks training for a temporary job lasting 3-9 months? If you lost 3 laptops with classified data from a secured DoD facility, then YOU have the unacceptable loss percentage, and should avoid tossing stones at an agency with an entirely different and uniquely challenging set of circumstances, hey or not! Live and let bitch, as I always say.
Philosophical Joke of the Day: I used to feel sorry for myself because I had no shoes, then I met a man with no feet, and took his shoes.
Obligatory Futuramitization: Forget Bigelow. I'll build my own space station, with Blackjack and Hookers. On second thought, forget about the space station!
Ah, remember the good old days with patent and copyright law was crafted to ENCOURAGE innovation and PROTECT creative work, rather than STIFLE competition and REWARD petty lawsuits? No? Well, me neither, but I've seen the footprints in the woods.
Why in the world would they add (CNGI) to the end of Chinese Next Generation Internet? This isn't some uber new technology. It's not any different from what every other country in the world is claiming they will do in the next 5 years. Oh, and if they can stretch DSL service out to my house on the lake, they can block access to articles about Tianneman Square and Falun Gong all they like. "Give me Liberty, or Give Me Bandwidth!"
I don't know about flamethrowers, but I feel fairly certain about Space Balls Dolls (err, Action Figures!)
Oh, and it should really be a prequel, or they are missing a whole lot of obvious jokes from the genre!
Here I was thinking that the problems with voting machines had to be intentional, since ATM's were so much better secured. Now that I find out that a keystroke combination on the interface of an ATM will bring up a GUI to reprogram the machine, protected only by a default password, I can rest assured that the world is not as shrouded in conspiracy as I feared. It's just full of very very very (very very very very very) stupid people. Now, watch as one of these aforementioned idiots elected to public office blames this on Google.
Oh please spare us the elitist "higher range" of sound nonsense. On a vinyl album, you hear artifacts and noise introduced in the recording and by the player. If you're really fond of noise overlayed over your music you should be able to find some suitable sound mixing software to add it in with your digital audio. Alternatively, you can capture directly from Vinyl at maximum bitrate without any noise filtering and all your "higher range" enhancements will automagically appear in your digital music (assuming you have a decent setup to record from analog). If artifacts enhance your listening experience, more power to you, but "beyond the range of human hearing" means "beyond the range of human hearing". The sample rate of a high bitrate encoding is not flattening any sounds that a vinyl album is carrying to your ear. Now, if you are comparing vinyl to MP3's that you are downloading, then you're comparing musty old apples to scratch and sniff oranges.
You can play online games, but you won't be satisfied with the performance. Typically, you can manage a latency of 200 on Counterstrike, which was the last online game I used with satellite. Check out a wireless internet provider. It can offer a better ping, and can easily be stretched 12 miles from broadband. Good luck, and if nothing else, look at this as an opportunity to branch out into some new online activities. BTW, the new equipment wont change your PING, just the up and download speed and the size of your "bit bucket".
To be fair, Battlestar Gallactica was just as bad as Buck Rogers. I watched them both regularly, and was as excited as anyone to see the new BG series come out. I bet anyone who ever owned a poster of Farrah Fawcett in a wet t-shirt can still tell you who said "Beedy-Beedy-Beedy". I don't give up hope that a new Buck Rogers series won't happen, either. Heck, if they make the lead character gay they can use the same costumes from the original series, and explain why he hangs out with a deep throated midget named Twiki, to boot. They can play the series on LOGO. Hey man, this could work, Lance Bass can play Buck and finally make it into space, afterall.
If someone can go back and airbrush out the canteen character, though then yeah, that would be great. Thanks.
Spam? We've already got some.
Now GO AWAY, or we shall TAUNT YOU a SECOND TIME!
If Google didn't hire them, then there's every possibility that a competing interest would hire them instead. There's a lot of legislation bouncing around that affects Google directly and its users indirectly by weakening privacy laws. When the lynch mob is headed into town, you better hire gunslingers, not the local minister.
If this means I no longer have to submit my 12 transcripts for every educational and career application, then I'm all for it. Then again, if I were named Ahmed Bin Laden, then I might feel differently about it. (Oh, and I for one, welcome our Dept. of Education Overlords!)
Imagine a BeoWulf Cluster of these #$*&#@ drivers!
Ok, but seriously, maybe someone can answer me this. Why do we still need to construct massively parallel computing architectures at the platform level? Not saying we should toss the whole concept, but for the foreseeable future won't it make a lot more sense to stick with the Amazon model of chunking up into virtual machines? I know the FA says that this view is a mistake, but he doesn't explain why. Can anyone else?
The reason it translates to Africa is because Africa wasn't likely to be the folks getting the bill. The round number is intended for the Buffetts and Gates who have the big money to spend to invest in Africa.
Imagine all you could add for another $50! The rise in price is a terrible idea. There was a lot of symbolic significance to being the $100 laptop. Now, with that barrier broken, it will lose that cachet. If they'd simply followed through on the $100 laptop, they could have added all that and more over time.
That's a very persuasive argument you make. How could I have missed the fact that I "want shit for free", am "pissed and jealous" and should "give up". Of course! Thanks for setting me straight, and clearing up the whole issue. If only you had been available to testify before Congress, perhaps everyone could have benefitted from your keen insight, wit and obvious devotion to the public good.
First, this is not a claim as to the legality of file sharing. It's illegal. No doubt about it, and there are real penalties if you are prosecuted. That debate is over. My comment is that a reasonable and sane approach would be that we prosecute people who profit by SELLING other people intellectual property (You down with OPIP?), but that we treat unauthorized USE of OPIP as a civil affair, where the owner is free to pursue compensation from the courts for their products that were inappropriately acquired, and we treat the SHARING of OPIP as an infraction, where the perpetrator is fined on an escalating scale as they are cited for the action, but are not given a bill equal to the price of the IP owner's retirement dream home. This would make sharing OPIP akin to speeding, where we discourage it, but recognize that it will continue to happen at some scale and may actually serve some useful function in society. This principally applies to IP that functions as a tool. When it comes to movies or music, then I think that's a more complicated (and less important) issue. I advocate this approach whenever possible and try to put it out there so that people who agree with it can talk it up, as well. Consumers will never have the lobbying power that corporations have, but we do have the numbers on our side.