Nasa employs some of the smartest and most experienced people in the world...
That's the same bunch who screwed up metric --> english conversion and crashed a martian lander, right?
Boeing employs some of the smartest and most experienced people in the world....
Thats the same bunch who had a hydraulic system fail and a plane crashed right?
NASA has launched more missions than anybody else, and they have had more successful missions that any body else. They have also had more failures than anyone else, but thats thanks to a little thing called the law of averages.
Face it, NASA has been sending things in the sky for 40 straight years now. In all that time, they landed on the moon, helped fly four craft to the farthest reaches of the solar system, landed 3 successful missions on Mars, and have helped run two successful space stations.
All this, with only 7 astronauts lost. How many people do you spposed died in the first 40 years of aviation? How about the first 40 years of automobiles?
So don't give me any of this "NASA can't even even get metric conversion right" crap. For the last four decades, NASA has regularly pulled off shit that other countries only dream of.
Well, ABC News doesn't cover WB movies very much, even though Disney has a large stake in it. But you can bet the next film from Mirimax will have a segment on Good Morning America. And there will be a half hour "making of" special for the next animated Disney feature on Sunday evening too.
Notice that I didn't say they wouldn't be self serving. Thats all too obvious. What I said is that it might be wrong to put too much emphasis on an AOL story from MSNBC.
You wanna talk about GE? Did you see the crap they pulled with Enron? What's the difference between Enron and every other company in America? They went head to head against General Elecric in California two years ago. What does Sony have to do with anything?
Well, I said Sony because I couldn't pull any direct GE competitors out of my ass at that point in time (I was thinking of using Pratt and Whitney, but I didn't think too many people would get the airplane engine reference).
But once again, I didn't say squat about GE, or even their corporate morals. I just pointed out that simply, if Katie Curic interviewed the CEO of competitor X, nobody would think that it is ironic. Yet, an MSNBC story about anything *not* Microsoft related is wildly attacked. Care to comment about that?
CBS sure spent alot of time with their MTV pre-game special on Super Bowl Sunday last year. Back when Westinghouse owned them, there was a competition between CBS and NBC as to who could expose the most government contract abuse/environmental abuse about their competitor. They would actually use stories to leverage the other network into not showing a story exposing each others parent company.
Well, I did say something about integrity, and it was a mistake, and you did a great job of pointing that out. But you failed to get my main point, which is that it is OK for MSNBC (or any news corporation) to print or show glowing reports of their competitors, when that is in the spirit of general interest to the viewing public.
* ABC News does a report on the new Warner Brothers movie? (ABC is owned by Disney)
* Dateline NBC interviews the president of Sony? (NBC is owned by GE)
* CBS does an piece on Fox's American Idol?
And so on.... the original poster had the right idea. Its about journalistic integrity, not pandering to the owners. Providing stories of general interest is the main mission of the MSNBC group, and as long as they are making money, I am sure that NBC and Microsoft could care less if they happen to post stories that highlight their competitors or put themselves in a lesser light. Hell, if it increases readership, they might even do it more.
Re:Another source of hacker history
on
Hacker Culture
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Or just read Hackers , which is original and best account of the Hacker culture. All others are just imitations.
So, we have an entity who is trying to go after the offenders (and primarily just the big ones), and many people here are criticizing it as some kind of evil activity. This seems pretty hypocritical.
This guy is obviously not just in the business of going after people who illegally distribute music or movies. That has nothing to do with the DCMA, its a copyright crime, and if he can make a buck off of it, thats great.
The problem with this guy is that he is going after people like Dmitry Sklyarov and others who are breaking the DCMA, and by doing so he is contributing to the indocrination of that law, which is bad for all. Basically, he's back for more cash - taking advantage of an unjust law while it lasts.
As a result, the content providers' response has been to enact the DMCA, which has been bad all around because it attempts to eliminate fair use and petty violations but does little to stop big time piracy.
The DMCA is *not* about priacy. It is about breaking security. Napster and its friends are not about encryption or security, they are about copyrighted materials. Two very different things. Like I said, if this guy wants to go after copyright pirates, he can do it, with my blessing even. I'm pissed about him going after people that do nothing more than talk about security concepts for any number of reasons: academic knowlege, improvement of security, etc..
Everyone seems to forget that copyright piracy was on the books long ago. The DCMA is the new evil that threatens to put any one of us in jail for describing how to watch our own DVDs on our own laptops.
However, though I could be in the process suing a few dozen people a day, I simply do not have the time or the desire to persue any of these. Not when Spamassain grabs about 90% of all spam, and sends it to my Spam folder, where I review the headers looking for false positives, and then they get deleted. Total time for me, 3 minutes.
Anti-spam statutes, while good for keeping honest merchants in check, will do nothing for the multitude of pr0n, Nigerian and penis enlarger spams I get every day.
What am I going to do, sue the entire nation of Nigeria? From what I hear, only one guy has all the money, and he is dead, or so it says in an e-mail I just got from Azabi Manzuna...:-)
Re:Freecell Solitaire...
on
Awari Solved
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I've heard the same thing. The next time you get what you consider to be an unsolveable game, fire up this bad boy and check it out:
It isn't really FUD. FUD stands for fear, uncertainty and doubt. The main feature of the little script is that Tux's water is free, Billy's lemonade isn't. This is true of OSS compared to MS software.
Well, its not exactly the truth of OSS - because open source isn't free as in beer, its free as in speech.
It would have been truer to form if Bill had to go into a secret tent to mix his lemonade, while Tux mixed his lemonade in the open with the help of all of his friends (one guy squeezing lemons, one guy mixing, etc...) and *then* they gave it away for free.
Debian should be dropping any MP3 decoding from a patent standpoint anyway - it violates the social contract guidelines.
In fact, I'm surprised Debian didn't take the lead on this, because they have always enforced such high standards, I'm surprised they've let this one slide thus far.
I am not fond of software patents, but a patent on MP3 is not the same as a patent on one-click or xor cursors.
But it is a patent none the less - it restricts your rights under the GPL, and it provides a very gray area as to your specific rights such as distribution, royalties, etc.. - much like the MPEG patents and other media / image patents.
The royalty is quite reasonable. If you had to pay $0.75 for your copy of WinAMP, would that really seem unfair to you? That's the price of a can of coke, for Pete's sake! It it really that unfair?
Its really not unfair, but it will put a damper on the number of people who use MP3 decoders - because that.75 drags with it a certain amount of paperwork and red tape - if you charge people 75 cents to download it off of your website, then you will need to pay for the e-commerce, and the secretary to shuffle the paper work, and then it turns out to be more like 5 or 10 bucks - which is still reasonable, but it might dampen the spirits of the typical person who, under other circumstances, may download this and use it. Especially if a free decoder is immediately available that has the same quality and size as a MP3.
I think that the biggest problem is that Thompson let the genie out of the bottle, and now they want to charge people to talk to him. THat to me seems to be a questionable business model, but since they managed to get the patent, more power to 'em, I guess.
3. Like it or not, this is not going to kill MP3, because most MP3 players are commercial, licensed products, and there are a ton of them out there, and they don't support Vorbis.
Its an eventual thing - instead of paying the royalties or one time fees, companies will start to move to free standards instead. MP3 didn't appear over night, and neither will Ogg. In fact, MP3 players didn't encourage the MP3 revolution, they simply took advnatage of the fact that millions of people were already listening to MP3s on their computer. It was the free decoders (XMMS and WinAMP) that introduced MP3, and now its the same decoders that are introducing Ogg. It just takes a little time to move.
So when faced with dealing with royalties and other issues, the users will start using alternatives, and eventually so will the commerical players. MP3 won't go away tommorrow, but don't be surprised if it disappears 5 years from now.
People get money from the government to research this kind of stuff? I want a government grant. I want to compare the internet to the growth of fungus on oranges.
My theory with both the orange fungus and the internet is this:
The more disgusting it is, the more you can charge people to watch it....:)
Offtopic? This was just as funny as the 18,000/. effect jokes. Here's a clue for all future posters - if it is obvious to you, then it is obvious to everybody. You are *not* thinking of something that just happened to slip by 300,000 other nerds. Don't post it.
Seriously, give this guy a break for trying to be original.
Wow - I feel your pain so much it isn't funny. We are currently working with the Sigma code for the 8471 mpeg decoder chip, and we have the exact same problems. It would help greatly if more attention was paid to the Sigma linux drivers.
I understand if they arn't willing to relase Mcrovision or CSS code (which are both expensive and NDA burdened), but I would like to see some better programmer support. I think this would be in their best interest, since the market is getting ready for a glut of MPEG capable devices, and more often than not, those devices have a *NIX kernel.
Re:Please enlighten a doofus
on
LinuXbox Boots
·
· Score: 1
Do you know what would be cool? A media server in my living room - connected to the network with an attached CD/DVD so I could rip audio, an TV out connection so that I could monitor my playlists on the TV with the click of a button, and full control via a web interface. Oh, yeah, and an infrared controller.
You know what else would be cool? Get all the parts together in one place for $199 + $30 for a mod chip.
You see the XBox as a useless desktop computer. I see it as an $199 dollar box optimized for entertainment.
The fact of the matter is that all you need is a lack of morality, a few hundred bucks for a certificate, and a shared network on which to do your dirty work. By the time anybody realizes it, its way too late.
What about all the software a government might need that doesn't have a good open-source alternative? Should we require a government to limp along using software which isn't appropriate to its needs? Should we drive out of business all the companies that make cheap, good, proprietary software for government use?
A great argument. I award you 3 VaporMod (TM) points (no cash value, void where prohibited).
It makes me happy to see that people are discussing this with an open mind. Open source is great, but it is not a cure all - there are plenty of crappy open source programs out there. I recently posted a rant about this in my journal. - I am all for considering open source, when it is the right solution. Otherwise, I don't see the citizen's best interests being served any more than mandating the use of propriatary software.
I didn't mean anything personally, and I apologize.
I'm not attacking ActiveBuddy for hiring its lawyers, or even the lawyers for going out and doing their job. They tried to get the patent, and for good or bad, they got it.
In my opinion the patent law provides for things like prior art, and the whole thing works itself out if both parties can get in the same room.
My main gripe is that the only thing preventing major corporations from blowing these guys back to the stone age is that the legal fees of such a venture are so large, that it often sours an otherwise legitimate attempt to strike down a silly patent. Once again, this isn't the lawyer's fault per say, because he is going to do everything in his power to win (and if that means filing 3 dozen motions than so be it).
So maybe instead of blaming the lawyers, we should blame a court system that gives them the leeway to delay a case for 18 months (racking up fees in the process).
Until then, when life gives you patents, make motions.
except this is a lot broader then the jpeg patent. would sony pay roayalties to someone who patented the idea of putting images on a computer? That would be will worth the risk of taking it to court.
You are preaching to the choir man.
It pisses me off to no end - companies with any mutation of the word "Windows" are changing their names as soon the lawers from Microsoft so much as fart in their general direction, despite court rulings to the opposite. Some stupid idiot is probably patenting the process of moving the fingers in a manner so as to press a button and make letters appear on the screen, and sure enough I'll bet that Logitech would rather license the technology then go to court.
Its stupid and annyoing, and it will continue happening until enough lawmakers have the balls to stand up and start making some tort law reforms. Provide a quick way to get greviences heard without 18 months of writs and objections and other time wasting documents. Provide serious restrictions and consequences for companies and individuals persuing frivoulous lawsuits with no real damages.
Then, maybe these things can be resolved fairly, without the deepest pockets having the most advantage.
Lawsuits in the United States are expensive, even when they are frivolous. A company like AOL for instance would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, and there is no sure result in a court case like this. So AOL could end up spending $500,000 dollars fighting it, and get slapped with royalties on top of it. No, its better to just give the company a couple of million dollars and get granted an exclusive license for the life of the patent.
This the same reason that Sony caved in and paid the royalties on the JPEG patent. This is why you don't see more companies standing up for what they believe is right. Its very expensive to stand by your convictions in America today.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a big proponent of making Spam illegal, and prosecuting spammers. I believe that it will cut down Spam significantly.
When spam is outlawed, only outlaws will be spammers.
but three died in Apollo 1 [nasa.gov]
Doh - forgot about that one. Thanks.
Nasa employs some of the smartest and most experienced people in the world ...
That's the same bunch who screwed up metric --> english conversion and crashed a martian lander, right?
Boeing employs some of the smartest and most experienced people in the world....
Thats the same bunch who had a hydraulic system fail and a plane crashed right?
NASA has launched more missions than anybody else, and they have had more successful missions that any body else. They have also had more failures than anyone else, but thats thanks to a little thing called the law of averages.
Face it, NASA has been sending things in the sky for 40 straight years now. In all that time, they landed on the moon, helped fly four craft to the farthest reaches of the solar system, landed 3 successful missions on Mars, and have helped run two successful space stations.
All this, with only 7 astronauts lost. How many people do you spposed died in the first 40 years of aviation? How about the first 40 years of automobiles?
So don't give me any of this "NASA can't even even get metric conversion right" crap. For the last four decades, NASA has regularly pulled off shit that other countries only dream of.
Well, ABC News doesn't cover WB movies very much, even though Disney has a large stake in it. But you can bet the next film from Mirimax will have a segment on Good Morning America. And there will be a half hour "making of" special for the next animated Disney feature on Sunday evening too.
Notice that I didn't say they wouldn't be self serving. Thats all too obvious. What I said is that it might be wrong to put too much emphasis on an AOL story from MSNBC.
You wanna talk about GE? Did you see the crap they pulled with Enron? What's the difference between Enron and every other company in America? They went head to head against General Elecric in California two years ago. What does Sony have to do with anything?
Well, I said Sony because I couldn't pull any direct GE competitors out of my ass at that point in time (I was thinking of using Pratt and Whitney, but I didn't think too many people would get the airplane engine reference).
But once again, I didn't say squat about GE, or even their corporate morals. I just pointed out that simply, if Katie Curic interviewed the CEO of competitor X, nobody would think that it is ironic. Yet, an MSNBC story about anything *not* Microsoft related is wildly attacked. Care to comment about that?
CBS sure spent alot of time with their MTV pre-game special on Super Bowl Sunday last year. Back when Westinghouse owned them, there was a competition between CBS and NBC as to who could expose the most government contract abuse/environmental abuse about their competitor. They would actually use stories to leverage the other network into not showing a story exposing each others parent company.
Well, I did say something about integrity, and it was a mistake, and you did a great job of pointing that out. But you failed to get my main point, which is that it is OK for MSNBC (or any news corporation) to print or show glowing reports of their competitors, when that is in the spirit of general interest to the viewing public.
It's still pretty ironic, though.
Is it still ironic if:
* ABC News does a report on the new Warner Brothers movie? (ABC is owned by Disney)
* Dateline NBC interviews the president of Sony? (NBC is owned by GE)
* CBS does an piece on Fox's American Idol?
And so on.... the original poster had the right idea. Its about journalistic integrity, not pandering to the owners. Providing stories of general interest is the main mission of the MSNBC group, and as long as they are making money, I am sure that NBC and Microsoft could care less if they happen to post stories that highlight their competitors or put themselves in a lesser light. Hell, if it increases readership, they might even do it more.
Or just read Hackers , which is original and best account of the Hacker culture. All others are just imitations.
AThat would be the Big Blue Room, right? The one with the really bright light?
Yep - the one with the really, really good polygon shading.
So, we have an entity who is trying to go after the offenders (and primarily just the big ones), and many people here are criticizing it as some kind of evil activity. This seems pretty hypocritical.
This guy is obviously not just in the business of going after people who illegally distribute music or movies. That has nothing to do with the DCMA, its a copyright crime, and if he can make a buck off of it, thats great.
The problem with this guy is that he is going after people like Dmitry Sklyarov and others who are breaking the DCMA, and by doing so he is contributing to the indocrination of that law, which is bad for all. Basically, he's back for more cash - taking advantage of an unjust law while it lasts.
As a result, the content providers' response has been to enact the DMCA, which has been bad all around because it attempts to eliminate fair use and petty violations but does little to stop big time piracy.
The DMCA is *not* about priacy. It is about breaking security. Napster and its friends are not about encryption or security, they are about copyrighted materials. Two very different things. Like I said, if this guy wants to go after copyright pirates, he can do it, with my blessing even. I'm pissed about him going after people that do nothing more than talk about security concepts for any number of reasons: academic knowlege, improvement of security, etc..
Everyone seems to forget that copyright piracy was on the books long ago. The DCMA is the new evil that threatens to put any one of us in jail for describing how to watch our own DVDs on our own laptops.
No - its moot. The point is not without speech, it is without relevance.
Anti-spam laws could significantly help.
:-)
I live in Utah, with a pretty good anti spam statute.
However, though I could be in the process suing a few dozen people a day, I simply do not have the time or the desire to persue any of these. Not when Spamassain grabs about 90% of all spam, and sends it to my Spam folder, where I review the headers looking for false positives, and then they get deleted. Total time for me, 3 minutes.
Anti-spam statutes, while good for keeping honest merchants in check, will do nothing for the multitude of pr0n, Nigerian and penis enlarger spams I get every day.
What am I going to do, sue the entire nation of Nigeria? From what I hear, only one guy has all the money, and he is dead, or so it says in an e-mail I just got from Azabi Manzuna...
I've heard the same thing. The next time you get what you consider to be an unsolveable game, fire up this bad boy and check it out:
freecell-solver
Funniest damn thing I've seen all day.
Good job!
It isn't really FUD. FUD stands for fear, uncertainty and doubt. The main feature of the little script is that Tux's water is free, Billy's lemonade isn't. This is true of OSS compared to MS software.
Well, its not exactly the truth of OSS - because open source isn't free as in beer, its free as in speech.
It would have been truer to form if Bill had to go into a secret tent to mix his lemonade, while Tux mixed his lemonade in the open with the help of all of his friends (one guy squeezing lemons, one guy mixing, etc...) and *then* they gave it away for free.
That is true open software in action.
Debian should be dropping any MP3 decoding from a patent standpoint anyway - it violates the
social contract guidelines.
In fact, I'm surprised Debian didn't take the lead on this, because they have always enforced such high standards,
I'm surprised they've let this one slide thus far.
I am not fond of software patents, but a patent on MP3 is not the same as a patent on one-click or xor cursors.
.75 drags with it a certain amount of paperwork and red tape - if you charge people 75 cents to download it off of your website, then you will need to pay for the e-commerce, and the secretary to shuffle the paper work, and then it turns out to be more like 5 or 10 bucks - which is still reasonable, but it might dampen the spirits of the typical person who, under other circumstances, may download this and use it. Especially if a free decoder is immediately available that has the same quality and size as a MP3.
But it is a patent none the less - it restricts your rights under the GPL, and it provides a very gray area as to your specific rights such as distribution, royalties, etc.. - much like the MPEG patents and other media / image patents.
The royalty is quite reasonable. If you had to pay $0.75 for your copy of WinAMP, would that really seem unfair to you? That's the price of a can of coke, for Pete's sake! It it really that unfair?
Its really not unfair, but it will put a damper on the number of people who use MP3 decoders - because that
I think that the biggest problem is that Thompson let the genie out of the bottle, and now they want to charge people to talk to him. THat to me seems to be a questionable business model, but since they managed to get the patent, more power to 'em, I guess.
3. Like it or not, this is not going to kill MP3, because most MP3 players are commercial, licensed products, and there are a ton of them out there, and they don't support Vorbis.
Its an eventual thing - instead of paying the royalties or one time fees, companies will start to move to free standards instead. MP3 didn't appear over night, and neither will Ogg. In fact, MP3 players didn't encourage the MP3 revolution, they simply took advnatage of the fact that millions of people were already listening to MP3s on their computer. It was the free decoders (XMMS and WinAMP) that introduced MP3, and now its the same decoders that are introducing Ogg. It just takes a little time to move.
So when faced with dealing with royalties and other issues, the users will start using alternatives, and eventually so will the commerical players. MP3 won't go away tommorrow, but don't be surprised if it disappears 5 years from now.
People get money from the government to research this kind of stuff? I want a government grant. I want to compare the internet to the growth of fungus on oranges.
:)
My theory with both the orange fungus and the internet is this:
The more disgusting it is, the more you can charge people to watch it....
Offtopic? This was just as funny as the 18,000 /. effect jokes. Here's a clue for all future posters - if it is obvious to you, then it is obvious to everybody. You are *not* thinking of something that just happened to slip by 300,000 other nerds. Don't post it.
Seriously, give this guy a break for trying to be original.
Wow - I feel your pain so much it isn't funny. We are currently working with the Sigma code for the 8471 mpeg decoder chip, and we have the exact same problems. It would help greatly if more attention was paid to the Sigma linux drivers.
I understand if they arn't willing to relase Mcrovision or CSS code (which are both expensive and NDA burdened), but I would like to see some better programmer support. I think this would be in their best interest, since the market is getting ready for a glut of MPEG capable devices, and more often than not, those devices have a *NIX kernel.
Do you know what would be cool? A media server in my living room - connected to the network with an attached CD/DVD so I could rip audio, an TV out connection so that I could monitor my playlists on the TV with the click of a button, and full control via a web interface. Oh, yeah, and an infrared controller.
You know what else would be cool? Get all the parts together in one place for $199 + $30 for a mod chip.
You see the XBox as a useless desktop computer. I see it as an $199 dollar box optimized for entertainment.
And I think it's ironic that some /.'ers think this exploit is such a trivial one to pull off that it makes https:// worthless.
h oughtcrime.org/ie.html
Gee, thats funny. These guys seem to think its pretty easy:
http://arch.ipsec.pl/inteligo.var
http://www.t
The fact of the matter is that all you need is a lack of morality, a few hundred bucks for a certificate, and a shared network on which to do your dirty work. By the time anybody realizes it, its way too late.
Sorry I almost wet my pants on that one.
Which would be a good reason to sue the pants off Microsoft - you could use a new pair of pants.
"Your honor, we are asking for $50 million dollars and the chief defense counsel's Hagar slacks."
What about all the software a government might need that doesn't have a good open-source alternative? Should we require a government to limp along using software which isn't appropriate to its needs? Should we drive out of business all the companies that make cheap, good, proprietary software for government use?
A great argument. I award you 3 VaporMod (TM) points (no cash value, void where prohibited).
It makes me happy to see that people are discussing this with an open mind. Open source is great, but it is not a cure all - there are plenty of crappy open source programs out there. I recently posted a rant about this in my journal. - I am all for considering open source, when it is the right solution. Otherwise, I don't see the citizen's best interests being served any more than mandating the use of propriatary software.
I'm a lawyer and I resent that.
I didn't mean anything personally, and I apologize.
I'm not attacking ActiveBuddy for hiring its lawyers, or even the lawyers for going out and doing their job. They tried to get the patent, and for good or bad, they got it.
In my opinion the patent law provides for things like prior art, and the whole thing works itself out if both parties can get in the same room.
My main gripe is that the only thing preventing major corporations from blowing these guys back to the stone age is that the legal fees of such a venture are so large, that it often sours an otherwise legitimate attempt to strike down a silly patent. Once again, this isn't the lawyer's fault per say, because he is going to do everything in his power to win (and if that means filing 3 dozen motions than so be it).
So maybe instead of blaming the lawyers, we should blame a court system that gives them the leeway to delay a case for 18 months (racking up fees in the process).
Until then, when life gives you patents, make motions.
except this is a lot broader then the jpeg patent. would sony pay roayalties to someone who patented the idea of putting images on a computer?
That would be will worth the risk of taking it to court.
You are preaching to the choir man.
It pisses me off to no end - companies with any mutation of the word "Windows" are changing their names as soon the lawers from Microsoft so much as fart in their general direction, despite court rulings to the opposite. Some stupid idiot is probably patenting the process of moving the fingers in a manner so as to press a button and make letters appear on the screen, and sure enough I'll bet that Logitech would rather license the technology then go to court.
Its stupid and annyoing, and it will continue happening until enough lawmakers have the balls to stand up and start making some tort law reforms. Provide a quick way to get greviences heard without 18 months of writs and objections and other time wasting documents. Provide serious restrictions and consequences for companies and individuals persuing frivoulous lawsuits with no real damages.
Then, maybe these things can be resolved fairly, without the deepest pockets having the most advantage.
Unfortunately - this is the problem -
:)
Lawsuits in the United States are expensive, even when they are frivolous. A company like AOL for instance would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, and there is no sure result in a court case like this. So AOL could end up spending $500,000 dollars fighting it, and get slapped with royalties on top of it. No, its better to just give the company a couple of million dollars and get granted an exclusive license for the life of the patent.
This the same reason that Sony caved in and paid the royalties on the JPEG patent. This is why you don't see more companies standing up for what they believe is right. Its very expensive to stand by your convictions in America today.
Bottom line - lets blame the lawyers...