Good point. Someone had pointed this out to me in the past. My naive inclination has been to emphasize protecting the clear side of a CD from scratches, but that's not actually the most vulnerable part.
Indeed. As manure goes, horse manure is relatively pleasant. It's basically mulch, and smells like plant matter, and I find the smell much less irritating than that of gasoline fumes. It does tend to stain your clothes, though.
True. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of a newly emergent industry for IT workers to move into.
Also, it'd be kind of nice if increased productivity, at some point, improved lives, through rising wages and reduced working hours, meaning more leisure time at the same income levels.
I'm inclined to get frustrated with the paranoia, the fantasies of achieving total privacy, and the additional complication that adds to realistic assessment of security.
On the other hand, the NSA is very busy doing *something*.
It's not about learning that there are different bases. It's about drilling kids on an arbitrary mathematical technique that no one would ever need to bother with.
There's an opportunity cost to teaching useless material: that's time you're not spending on useful material. Moreover, it's demoralizing: kids aren't going to be interested in learning mathematics, either for practical applications or for the love of pure mathematics, if their experience of mathematics is of meaningless drudgery.
I've never understood the point of the "city gate" explanation, anyway, as either way, the point is that the rich are damned unless they abandon their wealth.
From what I got from a quick search, it looks like someone speculated that the CIA may have a backdoor to Truecrypt.
However, even if that's true, it doesn't follow that your local police department, or your employers, or your employers' competitors, has full access to that backdoor. Apparently, the police in this court case didn't have such access.
How can we make institutions publicly accountable, and yet protect individual privacy? Institutions accumulate detailed information about individuals, and institutions can use individuals as catspaws, so it is not easy to create separate rules for institutions and individuals. We have two contradictory ethical priorities, and no clear way to resolve the problem.
Rick Santorum is racist, sexist, and homophobic; he is in favor of teaching religious dogmatism in public schools. He should be exposed and publicly humiliated.
What I find disgusting is that the mainstream media talks about his poll results but never criticizes his political views.
I keep thinking that. But I keep discovering that they don't actually have in stock what they claim online to have in stock, and that for what they do have, their prices are 20% or more higher than the Office Depot downstairs.
Granted, yes, it's a god who created the mechanical servants. However, there are several occasions in which the gods are described as doing something basically magical: suddenly appearing, transforming someone, and so forth. But the interesting bit is that the mechanical servants are described as the products of cleverness, not of inexplicable powers.
What I find amazing is that in an era in which, as far as I know, the most sophisticated machines around were pulleys, someone could imagine something like a clockwork automaton.
There is an underlying problem: our model of intellectual property simply doesn't make sense for the real world, and more importantly, this is obvious to nearly everyone, and is at odds with how we actually use digital information. The deeper issue is that this starts to bring into question models of property. We have always had artificial scarcity layered on actual scarcity, as a sort of exaggeration. That works when the disparity between actual and apparent scarcity is not too great. But it's obvious to most people that scarcity in copying digital media is wholly artificial. Pushing too hard may lead to people asking questions the WSJ would rather they didn't ask.
I don't think there's much point in drawing a sharp distinction between science fiction and fantasy. Similar themes, similar tropes, often the same authors and almost identical audiences. There are some conventions about what elements go in which stories, but those are transgressed very frequently.
In the original Yiddish folk story that is the source of the word "golem", the golem is created by a rabbi. A rabbi is a learned man; he has knowledge that others do not possess, but are capable of possessing. "Wizard" is, etymologically, derived from "wise". The classic all-purpose scientist from 1950s B-movie science fiction is pretty much a wizard.
I referred to the robots in the Iliad as "science fiction" because that made it clearer that I was trying to point out that Hephaestus created these things because he was a superb craftsman, not because he had supernatural powers.
The original trilogy had excellent pacing, great actors, plots that generally made sense, fight scenes that made less sense, and terrible dialogue that the actors strained to make work.
The prequel trilogy had out-of-control pacing, mostly mediocre actors who were totally subordinate to Lucas, plots that didn't make sense, fight scenes reminiscent of Dragonball Z absurdity, and terrible dialogue.
There was a review of Phantom Menace that got a lot of attention on YouTube, years after the fact, in which the reviewer shows a clip of Lucas meeting with some of his staff, and his staff are obviously terrified of Lucas and desperate to please him. There's also a clip with Lucas and some of the senior members of the team, just having watched a screening of the full movie for the first time, and they're all obviously dismayed at what they've just seen, even Lucas -- they all look like they're thinking about damage control.
I've come to believe that there was a plot outline for the prequel trilogy, in which the overall story made sense, but that Lucas literally forgot what the plot was supposed to be. In particular, I think a lot of plot elements seem to assume that the Jedi Order were not unambiguously "good guys", and by treating them as such, the plot was broken.
They aren't mutually exclusive you know. I'd love to see you tell the story of Harry Potter without "fancy effects" and I doubt you can say that story isn't character based.
It's a bunch of kids in a school waving wands around. If Ealing Studios had made it in the 50s it would have cost less than a million dollars in today's money even with Alec Guinness playing one of the leads.
Heck, I've seen at least one TV show with a very similar plot and I guarantee you they didn't have a multi-million dollar budget for each episode.
You could do almost the entire story in the style of Shakespeare-in-the-Park, with painted backdrops, costumes, and a few props. Maybe some more elaborate theatrical machinery for some special scenes, but you could just rewrite the story so that fights with dragons happen off-stage, or we see Hermione and Ron and company in the stands, reacting to what happens in the Quidditch match and describing it.
I like special effects, but they're not the critical part of a good story. And anyway, computer graphics are reaching the point where a team of college students can produce results better than the big studios could a few decades ago.
In Book 18 of the Iliad, Thetis, the mother of Achilles, visits the god Hephaestus, to ask him to forge armor for Achilles. In passing, she sees carts that roll around on their own power and initiative, and machines in the form of golden metal women who act as assistants to Hephaestus.
So, in the 8th century BCE, you've got a major literary work featuring robots. And it should be easy to understand this as science fiction, in that the premise is that these are constructed through mastery of technology, not through inexplicable miracles.
Also, I believe best practices for penetration testing involves negotiating the parameters for the testing and documenting them in a contract. Otherwise it's risky for both sides of the transaction.
A few months ago, I was mugged. The muggers got a smartphone, my messenger bag, my wallet, a book, and some other odds and ends. It cost me about $150 to replace the phone, $50 for the bag and the wallet, and perhaps $50 for everything else: about $250. The muggers could have sold my phone, get a few dollars from my wallet, and possibly could have sold the book. I would be surprised if they got as much as $50 out of it, and a fair amount of stuff stolen would have simply been thrown away.
In short, with what we generally understand to be theft, victims lose more than thieves gain. Theft means wealth is destroyed, to the detriment of society overall.
By contrast, if someone downloads a video, they gain full access to the video. The publisher loses some small fraction of a potential sale (since, as is often argued, not every pirated copy is a lost sale, but at least some are). The digital pirates gain more than the publishers lose. In fact, the more digital piracy there is, the more the overall wealth of society is increased -- until the publishers can no longer stay in business.
However, as the article points out, and as should be obvious, given the quality of production of the big media companies, it may not be much of a loss for them to fail. The challenge is to rework the system to support smaller media companies and independent artists.
Slashdot Mirror
Good point. Someone had pointed this out to me in the past. My naive inclination has been to emphasize protecting the clear side of a CD from scratches, but that's not actually the most vulnerable part.
Indeed. As manure goes, horse manure is relatively pleasant. It's basically mulch, and smells like plant matter, and I find the smell much less irritating than that of gasoline fumes. It does tend to stain your clothes, though.
True. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of a newly emergent industry for IT workers to move into.
Also, it'd be kind of nice if increased productivity, at some point, improved lives, through rising wages and reduced working hours, meaning more leisure time at the same income levels.
My understanding is that it's better to use CDs with gold reflective layers, rather than silver, as silver is prone to tarnishing. Is that correct?
I like to keep CDs with gold reflective layers on hand anyway, in order to store my Bitcoins.
Some days, I have to wonder why I follow this site.
The jurisdictional disputes can get pretty nasty, sometimes.
I'm inclined to get frustrated with the paranoia, the fantasies of achieving total privacy, and the additional complication that adds to realistic assessment of security.
On the other hand, the NSA is very busy doing *something*.
As usual its not capitalism at fault its where capitalism and government collide that we have problems.
"Capitalism" means "rule by capital." Meaning, concentrated wealth dominates everything else, including government.
Duh.
It's not about learning that there are different bases. It's about drilling kids on an arbitrary mathematical technique that no one would ever need to bother with.
There's an opportunity cost to teaching useless material: that's time you're not spending on useful material. Moreover, it's demoralizing: kids aren't going to be interested in learning mathematics, either for practical applications or for the love of pure mathematics, if their experience of mathematics is of meaningless drudgery.
I've never understood the point of the "city gate" explanation, anyway, as either way, the point is that the rich are damned unless they abandon their wealth.
No, you're thinking of the comments on the videos.
From what I got from a quick search, it looks like someone speculated that the CIA may have a backdoor to Truecrypt.
However, even if that's true, it doesn't follow that your local police department, or your employers, or your employers' competitors, has full access to that backdoor. Apparently, the police in this court case didn't have such access.
How can we make institutions publicly accountable, and yet protect individual privacy? Institutions accumulate detailed information about individuals, and institutions can use individuals as catspaws, so it is not easy to create separate rules for institutions and individuals. We have two contradictory ethical priorities, and no clear way to resolve the problem.
Rick Santorum is racist, sexist, and homophobic; he is in favor of teaching religious dogmatism in public schools. He should be exposed and publicly humiliated.
What I find disgusting is that the mainstream media talks about his poll results but never criticizes his political views.
I keep thinking that. But I keep discovering that they don't actually have in stock what they claim online to have in stock, and that for what they do have, their prices are 20% or more higher than the Office Depot downstairs.
You sound like an economist, but I agree with you anyway.
I'm, at best, an armchair economist.
Granted, yes, it's a god who created the mechanical servants. However, there are several occasions in which the gods are described as doing something basically magical: suddenly appearing, transforming someone, and so forth. But the interesting bit is that the mechanical servants are described as the products of cleverness, not of inexplicable powers.
What I find amazing is that in an era in which, as far as I know, the most sophisticated machines around were pulleys, someone could imagine something like a clockwork automaton.
There is an underlying problem: our model of intellectual property simply doesn't make sense for the real world, and more importantly, this is obvious to nearly everyone, and is at odds with how we actually use digital information. The deeper issue is that this starts to bring into question models of property. We have always had artificial scarcity layered on actual scarcity, as a sort of exaggeration. That works when the disparity between actual and apparent scarcity is not too great. But it's obvious to most people that scarcity in copying digital media is wholly artificial. Pushing too hard may lead to people asking questions the WSJ would rather they didn't ask.
That's the one.
I don't think there's much point in drawing a sharp distinction between science fiction and fantasy. Similar themes, similar tropes, often the same authors and almost identical audiences. There are some conventions about what elements go in which stories, but those are transgressed very frequently.
In the original Yiddish folk story that is the source of the word "golem", the golem is created by a rabbi. A rabbi is a learned man; he has knowledge that others do not possess, but are capable of possessing. "Wizard" is, etymologically, derived from "wise". The classic all-purpose scientist from 1950s B-movie science fiction is pretty much a wizard.
I referred to the robots in the Iliad as "science fiction" because that made it clearer that I was trying to point out that Hephaestus created these things because he was a superb craftsman, not because he had supernatural powers.
The original trilogy had excellent pacing, great actors, plots that generally made sense, fight scenes that made less sense, and terrible dialogue that the actors strained to make work.
The prequel trilogy had out-of-control pacing, mostly mediocre actors who were totally subordinate to Lucas, plots that didn't make sense, fight scenes reminiscent of Dragonball Z absurdity, and terrible dialogue.
There was a review of Phantom Menace that got a lot of attention on YouTube, years after the fact, in which the reviewer shows a clip of Lucas meeting with some of his staff, and his staff are obviously terrified of Lucas and desperate to please him. There's also a clip with Lucas and some of the senior members of the team, just having watched a screening of the full movie for the first time, and they're all obviously dismayed at what they've just seen, even Lucas -- they all look like they're thinking about damage control.
I've come to believe that there was a plot outline for the prequel trilogy, in which the overall story made sense, but that Lucas literally forgot what the plot was supposed to be. In particular, I think a lot of plot elements seem to assume that the Jedi Order were not unambiguously "good guys", and by treating them as such, the plot was broken.
They aren't mutually exclusive you know. I'd love to see you tell the story of Harry Potter without "fancy effects" and I doubt you can say that story isn't character based.
It's a bunch of kids in a school waving wands around. If Ealing Studios had made it in the 50s it would have cost less than a million dollars in today's money even with Alec Guinness playing one of the leads.
Heck, I've seen at least one TV show with a very similar plot and I guarantee you they didn't have a multi-million dollar budget for each episode.
You could do almost the entire story in the style of Shakespeare-in-the-Park, with painted backdrops, costumes, and a few props. Maybe some more elaborate theatrical machinery for some special scenes, but you could just rewrite the story so that fights with dragons happen off-stage, or we see Hermione and Ron and company in the stands, reacting to what happens in the Quidditch match and describing it.
I like special effects, but they're not the critical part of a good story. And anyway, computer graphics are reaching the point where a team of college students can produce results better than the big studios could a few decades ago.
In Book 18 of the Iliad, Thetis, the mother of Achilles, visits the god Hephaestus, to ask him to forge armor for Achilles. In passing, she sees carts that roll around on their own power and initiative, and machines in the form of golden metal women who act as assistants to Hephaestus.
So, in the 8th century BCE, you've got a major literary work featuring robots. And it should be easy to understand this as science fiction, in that the premise is that these are constructed through mastery of technology, not through inexplicable miracles.
Also, I believe best practices for penetration testing involves negotiating the parameters for the testing and documenting them in a contract. Otherwise it's risky for both sides of the transaction.
A few months ago, I was mugged. The muggers got a smartphone, my messenger bag, my wallet, a book, and some other odds and ends. It cost me about $150 to replace the phone, $50 for the bag and the wallet, and perhaps $50 for everything else: about $250. The muggers could have sold my phone, get a few dollars from my wallet, and possibly could have sold the book. I would be surprised if they got as much as $50 out of it, and a fair amount of stuff stolen would have simply been thrown away.
In short, with what we generally understand to be theft, victims lose more than thieves gain. Theft means wealth is destroyed, to the detriment of society overall.
By contrast, if someone downloads a video, they gain full access to the video. The publisher loses some small fraction of a potential sale (since, as is often argued, not every pirated copy is a lost sale, but at least some are). The digital pirates gain more than the publishers lose. In fact, the more digital piracy there is, the more the overall wealth of society is increased -- until the publishers can no longer stay in business.
However, as the article points out, and as should be obvious, given the quality of production of the big media companies, it may not be much of a loss for them to fail. The challenge is to rework the system to support smaller media companies and independent artists.