I enjoyed the movie... saw it at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, TX about a month ago. The show sold out and there was a long line of people waiting to get in in case some ticket holders were no-shows. ^_^ Much of the show was filmed in or around Austin (the filmmaker was at the University of Texas). Steve Jackson was in attendance, and there was a funny exchange at the show- apparently, he had been invited to be in the documentary, but he said that it sounded horribly boring and wanted nothing to do with it. The crew of the movie kept that email around for angry inspiration, and they also mentioned it in the credits. ^_^ (SJ was in the bathroom at the time, so missed those, though...)
It takes an interesting look at miniature gamers, roleplayers, and LARPers, how they feel about each other, how random people on Sixth Street (Austin party/bar street) feel about D&D... One of the funnier bits was that they were filming on 6th between midnight and 2AM, getting people's thoughts. One of the questions they asked passer-bys was, "Which would you prefer, a basketball player, a something-I-forget, or a D&D playing girl?" The guys chose the D&D player , "because she would be freaky." ^_^
There's a specific reason that buying something secondhand isn't theft. With physical objects, the doctrine of first sale applies. http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/scc/tutorial/bas ics2a.html
Theft is generall the taking of property with the intent of depriving the owner of that property. With Intellectual Property, the law changes a bit. The argument the IP holders make is that the distribution of this software is theft because the legal definition of theft can include the loss of "potential profit." Proving that is difficult, of course.
Interesting article. ^_^ I don't quite buy the open source "as Linux is to Windows" comparison, though... it's really apples and oranges IMHO.
I've been interested in anime for many years- I helped found an anime club and am currently serving a local anime club (where I met my wife). We both enjoy both anime and manga. She lived in Japan for a year through the JET program (and I got to visit her ^_^), and she has developed a fair-sized (Japanese) manga collection. While I can't read Japanese, she often translates for me. I am just floored by the proliferation of available titles in English, though. The article was even more eye-opening in that respect.
I haven't looked into the manga side (scanlations) so much, but I have been quite interested in the fansub legalities and ethics. I tend to view them in a similar light. Technically, they are illegal- but take a look at the flourishing doujinshi market and other fan-led efforts in Japan. They are very different types of copyright violation, but are technically just as illegal (debatable, but generally thought of as illegal through copyright and trade law)... That's an aside, though, I guess... ^^;
At any rate, I view open source as very different for a number of reasons- open source is a legal response to a proprietary mindset via the GPL. The publishing industry is a different beast than the software industry. Scanlations, and fansubs, serve the purpose of the sharing of the culture/art, but are likely illegal, while open source promotes the legal sharing of software under a certain set of circumstances. Open source is "bought into" by all of the participants in the development from the creator on (barring silly SCO arguments)- that's one of the big differences right there. The author and/or copyright holder of the scanlation is not usually a participant in "the community." Are scanlations bad? I don't always think so, provided they hold to some general ethics, but I don't think they have the legitimacy that open source does. I don't know if the comparison is fair to open source. ^^
The guidelines quoted are intended as guidelines for students who wish to use copyrighted material, so doesn't quite apply. The guidelines also mention that non-educational use should get permission before using. The problem is that the ones who use the material can still be sued. Those sued can claim fair use, but it is up to the courts to decide if it is fair use or not. Fair use is often described as an affirmative defense. I think it shold be a right, but a lot of people don't treat it that way, which is why we have non fair use friendly copyright protection schemes. There are no hard and fast percentage/amount rules about what constitutes fair use. I honestly can't say if this is fair use or not. I'm betting that the litigious companies won't share that view. ^_^ They'll have similar problems as they have with P2P, but I think we'll see something happening there.
Mythbusters did a fun episode on this very subject. They, at least, came to the conclusion after quite a bit of testing and consultation with persons (vague, huh? I just don't remember who specifically the people were, other than a university professor) that there was no way that a cell phone would ignite the gas. In most cases it ended up being static generated when people went into and out of the car while pumping gas.
I currently live in Austin, TX, and a friend of mine works at Origins. He told me about it this past weekend. According to him, this was open, but unannounced knowledged.
Sure, but its kind of difficult to give specifics since I don't know many of the names. First, there were video games all over the place, not just arcades. My experiences in Japan were that most "malls" were completely open, with no walls separating the stores- there were kind of like very very very large department stores (but the different sections were actually run by different people, and you definitely can't take items from one place to another). Many had at least part of one floor dedicated to video games. Another gaijin and I drew a crowd when we were playing the shotgun-style House of the Dead III (which hadn't come out in the US at that time). ^^; At one such store I also saw the Taiko Drum game (http://www.the-nextlevel.com/reviews/ps2/taiko_no _tatsujin/), which was a lot of fun. (There were also lots of Print Club machines just about everywhere, with all kinds of different themes.)
The smallest I arcade I went to was a NamcoLand in the Akita prefecture. It had one story, but it was still fairly large compared to arcades I see in the US. It seemed very much like a "family" place- well-lit, vending machines with ice cream and drinks, and so on. Unlike in the US, most arcade machines in this game didn't have custom frames- for the most part, they looked like eggshells, rounded on the top. I assume that's so that the games can be changed out fairly easily (think of the Neo-Geo systems we have here), but I couldn't ask anyone. There were stools available for people to sit or stand, if they wish. I did play HoD III, Guilty Gear XX (which wasn't then out in the US), and a few other fighting games that probably won't make it over here. They each sat one person. However, the two-player fighting games sat back-to-back and were connected, so that you could play against an opponent (whom you couldn't see while you were playing). That's how I got schooled by a twelve year old the first time I sat down to play Guilty Gear XX. ^_^;; The arcade also had a whole lot of puzzle games that seemed to be fairly popular. (There were, surprisingly to me in a family establishment, a couple of semi-ecchi ones that some school girls were playing... dunno.)
The largest arcade I went to was Sega City in Tokyo (I believe in Akihabara). It had a different feel. It was a bit darker, a lot noisier, and a lot more crowded. There were several floors, and each floor either had its own theme or had its own features (I couldn't read many of the signs, but followed the advertising pictures. ^^;) The shooting games were in one section, the fighting games were in one section, the racing games, sports games, side scrollers and puzzle games... etc. The sheer number of games available was staggering. ^^; A lot were new, but they also had older games available (and they were less expensive, too). I went through and played DarkStalkers 1, 2, and 3, and then went to play an anime-based puzzle game (Azumanga Daioh), and went to play some space side shooters that I'll probably not see elsewhere. They also had lots of link-ups for their racing games, so many people could play at once. They also had a mech game (like Virtual On, but I don't think it was actually Virtual On or a sequel) that was a lot of fun.
And don't get me started by their console selections... The Sega Building in Ginza... sigh... ^_-
I really, wish that our arcades were half as good as the arcades I saw in Japan. My (now) wife taught English in Japan through the JET program, and when I went to visit her I was blown away by the number and amount of games that they have (even in incredibly rural areas, although as you might expect Tokyo arcades were very impressive). The article mentions that one of the downsides to arcades here is that the game are targetted towards the Japanese market... but I don't know. Given the chance I'd play those games constantly. I did, and I don't speak the language at all. ^^;
Having lower prices, as others in this thread have mentioned, would be nice... but in Japan, games were 100 yen a pop. Even so, Namcoland or Sega City would be welcome... There was a Sega City in Austin for a bit, but their game selection wasn't comparable to the ones I saw in Japan.
I have an early version HP from work, and I also tested the Acer tablet and briefly tried out the Motion version... all in all, I wouldn't recommend using the tablet PC unless you a) give lots of presentations or speeches, as I've found them more portable than laptops, or b) like to draw a great deal and don't have extra money to spring for a Wacom. When I use the tablet, I often find myself needing to attach the keyboard to get things done quickly. I've all but given up using it in favor of a regular notebook, which has a longer battery life, more memory, and... well, more of just about everything, for a smaller price.
That being said, the handwriting recognition for Windows tablet is pretty good. If I was going to purchase one for myself, I would probably try to evaluation the Motion Tablets. I was fairly impressed with them, and I wish I had more time to use it. Battery life is a KILLER on these things, and they had a nice little back attachment available (about the size of a notebook, so increasing the width) that would greatly extend the life.
I wish people would use any kind of proof with this type of article... but I suppose they can't.
"Unfortunately, the model breaks down as soon as the core group involved in a project or distribution decides to corrupt the source, because they simply won't make the corrupted version public."
And of course there just CAN'T be any guard against the actual program being implemented differing from the publicly available source...:P
"I'm not naive enough to think that proprietary commercial operating system software doesn't have the same sort of vulnerability, but the barriers to implementing them are much higher, because the source is better protected."
And when those holes are discovered, they aren't published at all. And the proprietary owner has a far more difficult time finding these existing holes themselves. And most of all, there's NOTHING STOPPING THE PROPRIETARY OWNER from implementing this same type of worst-case scenario the author of this piece describes, and an even smaller chance of discovery by outsiders. Sheesh.
Just wanted to add, CS uses a lot of open source, but several schools and departments around UT have a large Unix/Linux presense. The School of Information, the physics department, some departments in liberal arts, and several sections in the main IT group (ITS) also use open source/free software extensively. Business and Engineering primarily use MS products. One of the reasons is that MS offers their products at a gigantic discount to departments there.
It appears that Miramax is stating that their exclusive rights to movie distribution include the purchase of IMPORTS. Since when is it illegal to import a legal copy of a video from another country? There are import CD and movies available at video and music stores all the time.
From Sean K. Reynolds (Lead Designer, Fallout3) board: "Hmmm, this person's info isn't totally accurate. Yes, there were some layoffs. I was not one of them, nor are several other people in the list. They may be drawing this from the group of people who went to lunch together yesterday, which included those who have been laid off and those who haven't.
Anyway, nothing new to say. I don't know why the company is doing this or what their plans are. I'm hoping to find out today.
Thanks for your concern, though. From what I can tell, most of those who were laid have already found some leads in other companies."
I recall reading about the Darth Vader inclusion back in the 1980s. ^^ It's not something new; he was actually included by a fairly famous sculptor during that time. You can see his bio and a picture of Vader here: http://www.stoneguild.com/m_plunkett.htm
According to the newsgroup thread, ONLY Games Workshop will be allowed to sell their products over the Internet.
They are using intellectual property theft as a main reason for taking this kind of action... I find that difficult to believe without their being more specific about the matter.
It's a possible violation of the Family Educational Right to Privacy Act (FERPA), which UT is aware of. UT administration made an announcement very late last night (Wednesday, March 5) to some members of the community, and noted that the newspapers would be carrying the announcment the following morning.
I have both attended at work at UT in IT, so I can give you my observations.
For many years, UT had a non-centralized IT infrastructure. That is, the Colleges did one thing, the Administrative Computing Group did another thing, the Academic Computing Group did yet another thing, and the Libraries something else entirely. This was recently changed with the introduction of a new Office of Information Technology head by a new Vice Provost (Dan Updegrove, originally at Yale). One of the very first things I heard him address was the Social Security number problem in which every student, faculty, and staff member used their SSN as their ID. That practice had to change in order to meet both legal and privacy standards (see FERPA) , and UT has been trying for the past couple of years to make that happen. The trouble is, it was so integrated into all of the different services and departments that it is a slow process to remove it. They started to phase it out, but now UT is seeing the effects of this particular practice. I'm likely one of the ones who will be affected, so I'm waiting for them to announce where people can find that out. (It may be at the UT site, http://www.utexas.edu/datatheft/.
By the way, your Social Security Number isn't public information. It is required for use by some agencies of the government, but you are not required to provide your SSN to private groups unless they need to interact with certain government agencies (this includes your employers, who deal with the IRS). That being said, SSNs are so commonly used a search may pull up that information- but that doesn't mean it is legally public info.
This article brings up a number of interesting concerns, including changing views of privacy in the digital environment, the public sphere and how this sphere is affected by new technologies. One subject that I find particularly fascinating is the new interactions between groups that have never been directly concerned with on another. Taken from the text: --- [Garrett] "Do you imagine for a moment that the participants in the WEF--whether they be the CEOs of Amoco an IBM of the leaders of Amnesty International and OXFAM--waste their time with Internet chat rooms and discussions such as this? Do you actually believe, as you type your random thoughts in such Internet settings, that you are participating in Civilization? In Democracy? In changing your world?: Whereas rcade says: "The world doesn't need to wait around for professional journalists to carefully predigest the news for us any more. We're capable of collecting and analyzing information from a thousand different sources and directions, even an injudicious e-mail by a chatty Pulitzer Prize winner to at least one loose-lipped friend." To these two feuding flamers and their dueling versions of democratic discussion, it seems to me, the only sensible response is "Do we have to choose?" [...] Remember how everyone keeps saying that distance is irrelevant on the Internet? Well, this is what happens when distance disappears. You wind up right next to the damndest people. --- So, Slashdot- are you participating? Are you participating in a political or democratic process? And if so, what is it that you are participating in? The metafilter thread can be found here.
Honestly, what does this mean for the future of scientific research in these areas? The article describes this as the end of an "Age of Innocence" for science. The whole point of scientific research is that it advances upon previous discoveries. If these discoveries are obfuscated, who can say how this will impact research and future scientify study? They acknowledge that this would be a problem, but don't tell us what the actual impact will be.
Did the scientists study the effects of this move themselves?:P
Naysayer's to the contrary, it's actually an interesting event.
I attended part of the last LTG at Mojo's Daily Grind. There were many, many people there participating and watching, and you have a lot of opportunity to meet new people. The actual "hacking" was slow, but there was music and a projector screen showing what was going on, if you could follow it. One of the better features was that after their attempts each team would have a Q and A session with the audience. I'm looking forward to attending the next one at the Alamo...
Microsoft is hyping the tablet PC because it uses their Operating System (Windows XP Tablet). Several companies are coming through with the hardware, including Acer, Compaq, and Motion. My university has had demonstrations of all three, a couple of them MS sponsored.
In our demonstrations Microsoft never claimed credit for the tablet concept, and the demonstrators did acknowledge that the idea has been around for some time. They are selling the difference in that a) the new tablet PCs are now affordable and b) the OS can run anything Windows XP can run.
For approximately the price of a laptop, you get a somewhat more mobile but less powerful laptop. Acer's includes an integrated keyboard. They are nifty, but I wouldn't say that the Linux users in the audience stood up and cheered by any stretch of the imagination. Right off the bat they have their drawbacks. CD/DVD isn't integrated (which would be difficult at that size, although they have lots of ports to use), the voice recognition is still somewhat weak, and as I mentioned, they are somewhat less powerful than laptops at the same price. On the other hand, people can carry them around like they're a pad, people can annotate in any program, it makes using drawing programs a lot better, and it has the best handwriting recognition software I've ever encountered (that is what impressed me the most).
All in all, they are selling the tablet PC as "an idea that's time has come." I don't know if that's true; if my area decides to support them I will probably use one, but I wouldn't go out and purchase one myself at this point.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope. Copyright law doesn't come into play. You can't copyright ideas.
This is a case about trademark infringement.
I enjoyed the movie... saw it at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, TX about a month ago. The show sold out and there was a long line of people waiting to get in in case some ticket holders were no-shows. ^_^ Much of the show was filmed in or around Austin (the filmmaker was at the University of Texas). Steve Jackson was in attendance, and there was a funny exchange at the show- apparently, he had been invited to be in the documentary, but he said that it sounded horribly boring and wanted nothing to do with it. The crew of the movie kept that email around for angry inspiration, and they also mentioned it in the credits. ^_^ (SJ was in the bathroom at the time, so missed those, though...)
It takes an interesting look at miniature gamers, roleplayers, and LARPers, how they feel about each other, how random people on Sixth Street (Austin party/bar street) feel about D&D... One of the funnier bits was that they were filming on 6th between midnight and 2AM, getting people's thoughts. One of the questions they asked passer-bys was, "Which would you prefer, a basketball player, a something-I-forget, or a D&D playing girl?" The guys chose the D&D player , "because she would be freaky." ^_^
There's a specific reason that buying something secondhand isn't theft. With physical objects, the doctrine of first sale applies.s ics2a.html
http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/scc/tutorial/ba
Theft is generall the taking of property with the intent of depriving the owner of that property. With Intellectual Property, the law changes a bit. The argument the IP holders make is that the distribution of this software is theft because the legal definition of theft can include the loss of "potential profit." Proving that is difficult, of course.
Interesting article. ^_^ I don't quite buy the open source "as Linux is to Windows" comparison, though... it's really apples and oranges IMHO.
I've been interested in anime for many years- I helped found an anime club and am currently serving a local anime club (where I met my wife). We both enjoy both anime and manga. She lived in Japan for a year through the JET program (and I got to visit her ^_^), and she has developed a fair-sized (Japanese) manga collection. While I can't read Japanese, she often translates for me. I am just floored by the proliferation of available titles in English, though. The article was even more eye-opening in that respect.
I haven't looked into the manga side (scanlations) so much, but I have been quite interested in the fansub legalities and ethics. I tend to view them in a similar light. Technically, they are illegal- but take a look at the flourishing doujinshi market and other fan-led efforts in Japan. They are very different types of copyright violation, but are technically just as illegal (debatable, but generally thought of as illegal through copyright and trade law)... That's an aside, though, I guess... ^^;
At any rate, I view open source as very different for a number of reasons- open source is a legal response to a proprietary mindset via the GPL. The publishing industry is a different beast than the software industry. Scanlations, and fansubs, serve the purpose of the sharing of the culture/art, but are likely illegal, while open source promotes the legal sharing of software under a certain set of circumstances. Open source is "bought into" by all of the participants in the development from the creator on (barring silly SCO arguments)- that's one of the big differences right there. The author and/or copyright holder of the scanlation is not usually a participant in "the community." Are scanlations bad? I don't always think so, provided they hold to some general ethics, but I don't think they have the legitimacy that open source does. I don't know if the comparison is fair to open source. ^^
formerly of Wizards of the Coast (Forgotten Realms), freelance RPG person, one of the designers over there, gave notice... here's some of his news.s howMessage?topicID=1817.topic
http://p082.ezboard.com/fseankreynoldsboardsfrm1.
The guidelines quoted are intended as guidelines for students who wish to use copyrighted material, so doesn't quite apply. The guidelines also mention that non-educational use should get permission before using. The problem is that the ones who use the material can still be sued. Those
sued can claim fair use, but it is up to the courts to decide if it is fair use or not. Fair use is often described as an affirmative defense. I think it shold be a right, but a lot of people don't treat it that way, which is why we have non fair use friendly copyright protection schemes.
There are no hard and fast percentage/amount rules about what constitutes fair use. I honestly can't say if this is fair use or not. I'm betting that the litigious companies won't share that view. ^_^ They'll have similar problems as they have with P2P, but I think we'll see something happening there.
Mythbusters did a fun episode on this very subject. They, at least, came to the conclusion after quite a bit of testing and consultation with persons (vague, huh? I just don't remember who specifically the people were, other than a university professor) that there was no way that a cell phone would ignite the gas. In most cases it ended up being static generated when people went into and out of the car while pumping gas.
I currently live in Austin, TX, and a friend of mine works at Origins. He told me about it this past weekend. According to him, this was open, but unannounced knowledged.
Aw, I know people who love the train games. (Densha something or another)
Sure, but its kind of difficult to give specifics since I don't know many of the names. First, there were video games all over the place, not just arcades. My experiences in Japan were that most "malls" were completely open, with no walls separating the stores- there were kind of like very very very large department stores (but the different sections were actually run by different people, and you definitely can't take items from one place to another). Many had at least part of one floor dedicated to video games. Another gaijin and I drew a crowd when we were playing the shotgun-style House of the Dead III (which hadn't come out in the US at that time). ^^; At one such store I also saw the Taiko Drum game (http://www.the-nextlevel.com/reviews/ps2/taiko_no _tatsujin/), which was a lot of fun. (There were also lots of Print Club machines just about everywhere, with all kinds of different themes.)
The smallest I arcade I went to was a NamcoLand in the Akita prefecture. It had one story, but it was still fairly large compared to arcades I see in the US. It seemed very much like a "family" place- well-lit, vending machines with ice cream and drinks, and so on. Unlike in the US, most arcade machines in this game didn't have custom frames- for the most part, they looked like eggshells, rounded on the top. I assume that's so that the games can be changed out fairly easily (think of the Neo-Geo systems we have here), but I couldn't ask anyone. There were stools available for people to sit or stand, if they wish. I did play HoD III, Guilty Gear XX (which wasn't then out in the US), and a few other fighting games that probably won't make it over here. They each sat one person. However, the two-player fighting games sat back-to-back and were connected, so that you could play against an opponent (whom you couldn't see while you were playing). That's how I got schooled by a twelve year old the first time I sat down to play Guilty Gear XX. ^_^;; The arcade also had a whole lot of puzzle games that seemed to be fairly popular. (There were, surprisingly to me in a family establishment, a couple of semi-ecchi ones that some school girls were playing... dunno.)
The largest arcade I went to was Sega City in Tokyo (I believe in Akihabara). It had a different feel. It was a bit darker, a lot noisier, and a lot more crowded. There were several floors, and each floor either had its own theme or had its own features (I couldn't read many of the signs, but followed the advertising pictures. ^^;) The shooting games were in one section, the fighting games were in one section, the racing games, sports games, side scrollers and puzzle games... etc. The sheer number of games available was staggering. ^^; A lot were new, but they also had older games available (and they were less expensive, too). I went through and played DarkStalkers 1, 2, and 3, and then went to play an anime-based puzzle game (Azumanga Daioh), and went to play some space side shooters that I'll probably not see elsewhere. They also had lots of link-ups for their racing games, so many people could play at once. They also had a mech game (like Virtual On, but I don't think it was actually Virtual On or a sequel) that was a lot of fun.
And don't get me started by their console selections... The Sega Building in Ginza... sigh... ^_-
I really, wish that our arcades were half as good as the arcades I saw in Japan. My (now) wife taught English in Japan through the JET program, and when I went to visit her I was blown away by the number and amount of games that they have (even in incredibly rural areas, although as you might expect Tokyo arcades were very impressive). The article mentions that one of the downsides to arcades here is that the game are targetted towards the Japanese market... but I don't know. Given the chance I'd play those games constantly. I did, and I don't speak the language at all. ^^;
Having lower prices, as others in this thread have mentioned, would be nice... but in Japan, games were 100 yen a pop. Even so, Namcoland or Sega City would be welcome... There was a Sega City in Austin for a bit, but their game selection wasn't comparable to the ones I saw in Japan.
I have an early version HP from work, and I also tested the Acer tablet and briefly tried out the Motion version... all in all, I wouldn't recommend using the tablet PC unless you a) give lots of presentations or speeches, as I've found them more portable than laptops, or b) like to draw a great deal and don't have extra money to spring for a Wacom. When I use the tablet, I often find myself needing to attach the keyboard to get things done quickly. I've all but given up using it in favor of a regular notebook, which has a longer battery life, more memory, and... well, more of just about everything, for a smaller price.
That being said, the handwriting recognition for Windows tablet is pretty good. If I was going to purchase one for myself, I would probably try to evaluation the Motion Tablets. I was fairly impressed with them, and I wish I had more time to use it. Battery life is a KILLER on these things, and they had a nice little back attachment available (about the size of a notebook, so increasing the width) that would greatly extend the life.
I wish people would use any kind of proof with this type of article... but I suppose they can't.
:P
"Unfortunately, the model breaks down as soon as the core group involved in a project or distribution decides to corrupt the source, because they simply won't make the corrupted version public."
And of course there just CAN'T be any guard against the actual program being implemented differing from the publicly available source...
"I'm not naive enough to think that proprietary commercial operating system software doesn't have the same sort of vulnerability, but the barriers to implementing them are much higher, because the source is better protected."
And when those holes are discovered, they aren't published at all. And the proprietary owner has a far more difficult time finding these existing holes themselves. And most of all, there's NOTHING STOPPING THE PROPRIETARY OWNER from implementing this same type of worst-case scenario the author of this piece describes, and an even smaller chance of discovery by outsiders. Sheesh.
http://www.austinwireless.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi
T hey've got several low-cost setups all around the Austin area.
Just wanted to add, CS uses a lot of open source, but several schools and departments around UT have a large Unix/Linux presense. The School of Information, the physics department, some departments in liberal arts, and several sections in the main IT group (ITS) also use open source/free software extensively. Business and Engineering primarily use MS products. One of the reasons is that MS offers their products at a gigantic discount to departments there.
It appears that Miramax is stating that their exclusive rights to movie distribution include the purchase of IMPORTS. Since when is it illegal to import a legal copy of a video from another country? There are import CD and movies available at video and music stores all the time.
http://pub17.ezboard.com/fseankreynoldsboardsfrm1. showMessage?topicID=1458.topic
From Sean K. Reynolds (Lead Designer, Fallout3) board:
"Hmmm, this person's info isn't totally accurate. Yes, there were some layoffs. I was not one of them, nor are several other people in the list. They may be drawing this from the group of people who went to lunch together yesterday, which included those who have been laid off and those who haven't.
Anyway, nothing new to say. I don't know why the company is doing this or what their plans are. I'm hoping to find out today.
Thanks for your concern, though. From what I can tell, most of those who were laid have already found some leads in other companies."
I recall reading about the Darth Vader inclusion back in the 1980s. ^^ It's not something new; he was actually included by a fairly famous sculptor during that time. You can see his bio and a picture of Vader here:
http://www.stoneguild.com/m_plunkett.htm
According to the newsgroup thread, ONLY Games Workshop will be allowed to sell their products over the Internet.
They are using intellectual property theft as a main reason for taking this kind of action... I find that difficult to believe without their being more specific about the matter.
It's a possible violation of the Family Educational Right to Privacy Act (FERPA), which UT is aware of. UT administration made an announcement very late last night (Wednesday, March 5) to some members of the community, and noted that the newspapers would be carrying the announcment the following morning.
I have both attended at work at UT in IT, so I can give you my observations.
For many years, UT had a non-centralized IT infrastructure. That is, the Colleges did one thing, the Administrative Computing Group did another thing, the Academic Computing Group did yet another thing, and the Libraries something else entirely. This was recently changed with the introduction of a new Office of Information Technology head by a new Vice Provost (Dan Updegrove, originally at Yale). One of the very first things I heard him address was the Social Security number problem in which every student, faculty, and staff member used their SSN as their ID. That practice had to change in order to meet both legal and privacy standards (see FERPA) , and UT has been trying for the past couple of years to make that happen. The trouble is, it was so integrated into all of the different services and departments that it is a slow process to remove it. They started to phase it out, but now UT is seeing the effects of this particular practice. I'm likely one of the ones who will be affected, so I'm waiting for them to announce where people can find that out. (It may be at the UT site, http://www.utexas.edu/datatheft/.
The Daily Texan (student newspaper) has an article about the theft, as does the Houston Chronicle.)
By the way, your Social Security Number isn't public information. It is required for use by some agencies of the government, but you are not required to provide your SSN to private groups unless they need to interact with certain government agencies (this includes your employers, who deal with the IRS). That being said, SSNs are so commonly used a search may pull up that information- but that doesn't mean it is legally public info.
This article brings up a number of interesting concerns, including changing views of privacy in the digital environment, the public sphere and how this sphere is affected by new technologies. One subject that I find particularly fascinating is the new interactions between groups that have never been directly concerned with on another. Taken from the text:
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[Garrett] "Do you imagine for a moment that the participants in the WEF--whether they be the CEOs of Amoco an IBM of the leaders of Amnesty International and OXFAM--waste their time with Internet chat rooms and discussions such as this? Do you actually believe, as you type your random thoughts in such Internet settings, that you are participating in Civilization? In Democracy? In changing your world?:
Whereas rcade says:
"The world doesn't need to wait around for professional journalists to carefully predigest the news for us any more. We're capable of collecting and analyzing information from a thousand different sources and directions, even an injudicious e-mail by a chatty Pulitzer Prize winner to at least one loose-lipped friend."
To these two feuding flamers and their dueling versions of democratic discussion, it seems to me, the only sensible response is "Do we have to choose?"
[...]
Remember how everyone keeps saying that distance is irrelevant on the Internet? Well, this is what happens when distance disappears. You wind up right next to the damndest people.
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So, Slashdot- are you participating? Are you participating in a political or democratic process? And if so, what is it that you are participating in?
The metafilter thread can be found here.
Honestly, what does this mean for the future of scientific research in these areas? The article describes this as the end of an "Age of Innocence" for science. The whole point of scientific research is that it advances upon previous discoveries. If these discoveries are obfuscated, who can say how this will impact research and future scientify study? They acknowledge that this would be a problem, but don't tell us what the actual impact will be.
:P
Did the scientists study the effects of this move themselves?
Naysayer's to the contrary, it's actually an interesting event.
I attended part of the last LTG at Mojo's Daily Grind. There were many, many people there participating and watching, and you have a lot of opportunity to meet new people. The actual "hacking" was slow, but there was music and a projector screen showing what was going on, if you could follow it. One of the better features was that after their attempts each team would have a Q and A session with the audience. I'm looking forward to attending the next one at the Alamo...
Microsoft is hyping the tablet PC because it uses their Operating System (Windows XP Tablet). Several companies are coming through with the hardware, including Acer, Compaq, and Motion. My university has had demonstrations of all three, a couple of them MS sponsored.
In our demonstrations Microsoft never claimed credit for the tablet concept, and the demonstrators did acknowledge that the idea has been around for some time. They are selling the difference in that a) the new tablet PCs are now affordable and b) the OS can run anything Windows XP can run.
For approximately the price of a laptop, you get a somewhat more mobile but less powerful laptop. Acer's includes an integrated keyboard. They are nifty, but I wouldn't say that the Linux users in the audience stood up and cheered by any stretch of the imagination. Right off the bat they have their drawbacks. CD/DVD isn't integrated (which would be difficult at that size, although they have lots of ports to use), the voice recognition is still somewhat weak, and as I mentioned, they are somewhat less powerful than laptops at the same price. On the other hand, people can carry them around like they're a pad, people can annotate in any program, it makes using drawing programs a lot better, and it has the best handwriting recognition software I've ever encountered (that is what impressed me the most).
All in all, they are selling the tablet PC as "an idea that's time has come." I don't know if that's true; if my area decides to support them I will probably use one, but I wouldn't go out and purchase one myself at this point.