I have obviously not wasted money in an arcade recently:) I do not really recognize most of the titles under the court order:
3D Astro Blaster, Astro-3D, Debris, Debris 32, Intergalactic Exterminator, 3D Bug Attack, Missile Launch, Missile 2000, 3D TetriMadness, TetriMania,TetriMania Master, 3D TetriMania, XTRIS, Trix, Smart Boxes, Columns
Millennium, 3D Geo Mania, 3D Maze Man, 3D Chomper, Maniac Maze, 3D Frog Man, 3D Ms. Maze, 3D Munch Man, 3D Munch Man II, 3D Crunch Man, Tunnel Blaster, and UnderWorld.
although they are obviously similar to games that we all know and love.
It reminds me of going into an un-named store and seeing a knock off of a Sony(tm) boom-bax named Sonic. The packaging was completely identical to Sony packaging, except for the name.
now in an arcade, players are less concerned about such details, since if the games plays well, who cares? It is the owner of the game who paid out the big bucks.
Another example of "which way do you want to go in trademark/copyright law?".......
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
The following article is by Mo Nickels, and was posted on his personal website back in July 2000. The original page can be found here. It is an interesting overview of the culture and the people who ultimately make the visa situation (and many others) the way it is. Mo ultimately has left the field of technology. The article below gives his reasons.
Information Technology. I'm probably being unfair, judgmental and snotty below, but it's what I'm thinking right now and I feel the need to get it out. Comments and responses welcome, as always.
A follow-up to this article has been added to the site.
..............................................
I went back to school January 1999 after a 10-year absence to finish the bachelor's degree. In anything.
Most people assume that a 29-year-old returns to school for a retooling in order to make more money.
For me, returning to school was not a vocational activity, to learn a profitable trade. I have all the trades I can handle, backups in case this school experiment should fail, and failing all that, I can always go back to fast food. I'm not proud. Or not that proud. I just won't be drinking Mad Dog in the Wal-Mart parking lot, that's all.
Most people seem to be more prepared to accept a sudden return to school from a septuagenarian than from someone in their twenties. An old person, after all, has nothing to do with their time. The subtext is, Sure, it's a waste of resources and money to teach anything to somebody who could die any day now, but if they're happy and don't impinge on me, in fact, if they don't appear on my radar at all, then they should go for it. But a young kid, well, it's now or never, and once now is over then it must be never. Going back to undergraduate school after age 18 is like trying to climb back into the womb.
That's what I think they're thinking, anyway.
I'm not noble. You won't catch me talking about returning to school as a pure search for man's essential nature and a communion of mind and self, and then see me sending my pop culture, consumerist dirty laundry into town like Thoreau did. I don't have any higher ideals about this. I'm not returning to school for the "joy of learning", although I've lied and said that a few times. I've got that already: I buy books, I read them, I buy more. Doesn't require $800 a credit hour in tuition. Having professorial guidance is nice, but not necessary.
Here's the simple reason why I went back to school: I was in information technology and I found it boring.
Let's call it the computer business, the digital trade, consulting, whatever. I'm talking specifically about the work done by people who install, wire, upgrade, troubleshoot and fix computers, networks and software. Not programmers, not web site producers, not PowerPoint slide builders. The geeks. Like I was. Am.
I don't tell people about the information technology boredom anymore because I can't stand the responses.
The responses are usually nothing but greed, springing from a nation of people saying to each other, "I've got one word for you: Computers. A young man could make a good living in computers. You should think about the future." When I explain how I left the computer business, people look at me like I've cracked my crankcase and am dribbling fluids on the rug in the good room. How could I leave all the money?
Maybe there's a shortage of information technology people, or just good information technology people (my choice), but too many people going into information technology work have a greed-based ambition so blatant and overwhelming it makes me blush when I think about it.
I made great money. I really did. I'm not bragging, but trying to put this into perspective. You need to understand what it was I left and what is possible in the information technology field.
-- For a while, I made more money per year than each of my friends. At one time, I made more money than my father, sister and brother-in-law combined. True, I was in New York and they were in the Midwest, but if you ignore the government's bogus cost of living comparison tables, it's still a lot of money. Real money, even. No matter where you live. Books and overseas trips and digital toys cost the same or cheaper in New York as they do anywhere else. Plus, no car, no kids, no wife, company-paid insurance, great medical benefits, no mortgage, four weeks off of work a year, good holidays, company parties and free soft drinks in the office kitchen.
-- I had responsibility. Depending on the job, I had people working for me, keys to everything, access to all systems, control of my budgets and purchasing and inventory. I ran departments. I made rules and broke them at will.
-- I usually set my own hours, which usually meant working when no one else was around, evenings, weekends, holidays, those times you can shutdown networks and servers without inconvenience, the times the phone stops ringing. If I wanted, I came in late, left early, took long lunches.
-- I wore whatever I wanted. T-shirts, moleskin shorts, sandals, three-day whiskers.
But I quit the work. Some people's faces screw up in a disbelieving grin, like they're being had, when I tell them I quit computer work. You can see the wheels turning: "Okay, you were making a good salary. You were good at your job. You could do what you wanted. The world is dying for computer people. And you left because you were bored. Come on... That can't be right."
They think maybe I got fired, but it's pretty obvious I didn't. Too many jobs chase after me, too much work calls me up on the phone and begs.
A second factor compounded that boredom: I can't stand the many bad people in the information technology business, examples of stupidity catalyzed by greed.
To me, there is a clear distinction here between good geeks and bad geeks. The good geeks learned how to use computers by screwing them up and then cleaning up, by downloading and installing every demo, beta and bootleg they could find, by mooching time on friends' computers, by sneaking into the office after hours to fool with the high-end machines. That's how it's done. That's how the best geeks are made. All the good computer people I know started in some other job, started jerking around with computers, got good at it, and never looked back.
I was a small-time journalist. One guy I know was a PowerPoint slide builder. There's a lot of humanities majors in there, die-hard gamers, musicians, I don't know what all. Most of us made the transition because there was a hole to fill and we had the knack.
But the kind of geeks I dislike are the sharpsters who are supposedly school-trained, supposedly took a few classes, have their Apple or Novell or Microsoft certification. Maybe even have computer science degrees. But despite this and because they went into the business for the money and the job security and not for having the knack, their work sucks. It's like training to be a jockey: at some point, if you don't have the right weight, you're never gonna get on a horse, and the only way you'll get work is to starve yourself, vomit before weigh-ins or else head for rigged tracks in backwater parts of South America. I think there's a certain kind of natural, perhaps genetic, wiring that makes good information technology people and the geeks I don't like don't have it.
This is not an argument between theory and practice, books and experience. I believe in both sides equally. I really do.
This is an argument against the kind of people who seek the safety of the computer trade. They are the new civil service workers. They seek the security of the boredom I'm fleeing. I'm speculating here, but I'm thinking of a good 20 or 30 guys I know (and they're all guys) who fit this description.
These are the people you see reading computer manuals on the subway. This is an opinion of mine that friends have argued with, saying that it's unfair, that the desire to get ahead and achieve is natural, and in New York City, a necessity. I maintain that anyone reading an out-of-the-bundle Microsoft SQL manual on public transportation hasn't a clue in the world what they're doing. You've got to be at the terminal. You've got to do it right now, as you read it. The manual is a reference, a go-to source, not a tutorial. Even the tutorials aren't tutorials: they're step-by-step guides to doing exactly what you should be doing on your own: fooling with the software.
I think these types are convinced computers are their ticket to the good life, the second house, the boat. They've seen Bill Gates on the cover of Newsweek. He's rich, he's in computers, QED, they can get rich in computers. If they had half a brain, of course, they'd realize that there's a better living in coding and programming, not in pushing beige boxes around on wheeled carts all day. You can't fake coding and programming for long, though.They'd make a sight more money in pharmaceuticals or genetics start-ups, too, but then there are no how-to's for those industries at Barnes and Noble, are there?
These bad geeks creep me out because there's no magic happening when the mouse and keyboard are in their hands. Intuitive understanding is replaced by paperwork, bureaucracy and clock-watching. I once met a joker who was hired at a largish mid-size advertising agency as the second in command of information technology. In an office where the work is never done, where the computer boys often work evenings and weekends, where everything is always due now, he asked his subordinates for written progress reports.
Small thing, right? Not really. In the half-hour, hour it would take to write those reports, jobs would be stacking up like airplanes over JFK during a blizzard. He hadn't a clue.
A real Number Two would have been in the trenches, doing the work, filling in for his coworkers and subordinates, and so not require written reports. A true Number Two should be capable of doing not only his job, but the job of everyone else in the department, and should be training for the Number One job. No progress reports required: if he knows how do everything, then he knows what's working and what isn't. He is an interchangeable part.
I've been freelancing at that company doing information technology work for years and I've seen the freelancers and employees come and go and it's always the same: the worst ones don't check details. A good example, and the first detail they don't check, is putting new employee names in the half-dozen or so different systems. A simple thing done right, a hassle and time-waster when done wrong. The idiot geeks always muck it up.
Another thing about the bad geeks: they have no initiative. There are a few, key sites in the computer world that are fundamental to the computer tech trade. They have the latest bug reports, updaters, drivers, etc. They've got new product reviews, troubleshooting forums, tips on deals and bargains. But I can't tell you of the number of information technology geeks who don't check those sites. They're digital humans. It's their work. They've got the whole Internet at their disposal. They don't use it. You know what they do? They call technical support and wait on hold for eternity, getting nowhere slowly. A waste of time.
These are they guys who sit down at a computer and ask all the wrong questions. If you tell them your keyboard's not working, then they bring it up to the office rather than make sure it's plugged in first. I've seen this sort of jerk actually call a computer in for manufacturer repair when all it needed was to have the little red button reset on the power strip. It's too common. The mouse is jerky? They replace it rather than clean the fuzz out of the rollers. They don't know any better.
The bad geeks use delay tactics, obfuscation, lies and diversion to avoid getting work done, mainly because they don't manage time well. They don't know how long tasks should take because they don't know how to do those tasks. These are the people who set up arbitrary deadlines. Any company geek who tells you they will help you with your computer in a few days or weeks instead of today or right now is the kind of loser I'm talking about, and if the whole information technology department is like that (they are legion), it's time to fire the information technology boss. If you have to make an appointment to see your information technology people, then the whole lot should be canned: somebody isn't managing budgets, personnel or time well at all.
It's as much an education-based job as it is a service-based job. You should hear some of the lies certain geeks tell the customers. They make things up or generalize to the point of stupidity: "You can't use your email because the Internet is down." No, the DHCP server is being rebooted and your computer can't get an address. "The network is really slow because the server is really full." No, the network is slow and the server are full because people have just discovered MP3s. One is not causing the other.
What I always tell trainees is this: even if your customers don't all understand you, some of them will. That's a few less people to re-explain it to later. You are not better than these people. "Just because" and "trust me" are near lies.
I remember getting a bit of a power buzz at one of my first contract IT gigs. One of the partners of this major, world-wide consulting firm was having problems with his laptop. He was frustrated. Here he was, worth millions, making millions, friends to Henry Kissinger, his kids in all the right schools, partner before 45, not able to handle a simple machine. Instead, he had to ask a 23-year-old in jeans and t-shirt for help. He asked that I explain the solution to the problem (switching network settings between the office and dial-in) and how to fix it himself. He never called about that problem again. He learned, as most customers will when given the right information. Explaining rather than just doing it for him saved us both time later. He knew it, too, and that's when I first learned it.
The bad geeks are incapable of troubleshooting over the phone, while all the best good geeks can. Most times, they can sit at their desks or on a plane, eyes closed or working on something else, and tell you step by step how to solve your problem. They've done it a million times and they know it by heart.
I knew this one bad geek who, besides insisting on face-to-face visits to every person he had to help, thought he could fool them into thinking he was actually doing something by making the mouse jump all over the screen, clicking on random menus, opening and closing windows. Up and down, side to side, as fast as possible. I hope he's been squashed by a 21-inch monitor.
The last company I worked for full-time hired a kid (23) to take the my job as information technology director when I left to go back to school. In a company of less than 60 people, he installed beta software that would allow him to see and control office computers. Why? Among other reasons, it allowed him, in an office where creative types often work until 9 or 10 in the evening, to leave as soon after 5 p.m. as possible and still have a presence. It also allowed him to avoid daytime in-person calls, the other extreme of the moron above, though you could walk to any desk in the office in four minutes. Lots of points for use of technology, minus ten thousand for bad customer service, poor responsiveness and weak common sense. In addition, the new program ran constantly in the background, consuming memory and processor cycles. Not clean. Not efficient. Not finely tuned. Not well-thought out. Not even the best tool for the job, in my opinion, if one really wanted to install that sort of software.
A setup like his was specifically designed to maintain the current situation, not plan for improvements or arrange new infrastructure for growth. It was for him, not the company or his customers. Not elegant, as a friend and former boss says. As a result, the kid wasn't putting in the hours, the face time, or pro-actively solving problems. So when he asked for a raise, they denied it, and he quit shortly thereafter. I'm sure I worked too much when I had that job, sometimes 60 or 70 hours a week, but when my time came, they handed me a fancy five-figure raise, a smaller one six months later, and then a pleasant Christmas bonus. And I didn't have to ask for it.
The losers in the business like the concepts "shrink-wrapped" and "turn-key." If it's not in the catalog, they don't buy it or use it. They don't use shareware, freeware, betas, time-limited demos or something cobbled together by a friend. I know one or two old-timers who have biases against freeware and everyone's wary about betas, but even so the good geeks will give anything a shot on a standby machine or their personal computer. I've known old-timers to wipe their office computer clean just to try out a new operating system. Bad geeks are the kind of people that never check for service packs or updates and so run everything as it came from the manufacturer.
The bad geeks are like the dork whose job I took over last summer as interim information technology director. He only knew how to manage Windows NT mail systems, so he spent $5600 on an NT mail server--in an otherwise 99% Macintosh office. There were 22 people at that ad agency, maybe 30 nodes. I'm all for hybrid vigor, but he had an old PowerMac 6100 sitting idle on the shelf. It would have taken him less than an hour and zero dollars to install the free version of the Eudora Internet Mail Server to do the exact same thing, more reliably.
The bad geeks are the kind who still kid themselves about the value of going to trade shows. They try to pass on the lie "If you pay the $1200 fee, I can go and learn about this very important thing we might be able to start doing here." The good geeks know trade shows are frauds. They don't lie to themselves or anyone. They go for the swag, the mini-bar, the pre-parties and ongoing parties and post-parties, ideally paid for by the company, but if not, hey, it's time off. The old ones also go to trade shows with specific tasks in mind: they bring lists of complaints and bug reports and wishes to vendors, then demand action. Good geeks use those four-day conferences like a military campaign, with constant sorties into enemy territory to spy and deliver explosives, to recruit allies and to shake the hands of the troopers who write the software they love.
The losers go to the conference and are too ashamed to admit to the boss back home that the two-hour session they sat through was actually a barely disguised pitch for a new product that won't hit the market for another year, if then.
For me, a lot of what I decide to do and not do in the world is about the company I'll be keeping. I stopped doing computer consulting for lawyers after the first experience because I couldn't stand a roomful of young people acting like old men, refusing to change, refusing to cooperate, insisting on trying the mouse wrong-handed because then they could take notes with the other hand and have the phone on a shoulder, and bill three clients at once. I'm not kidding.
Information technology work is like plumbing, well-paid but repetitive in that unrewarding blue-collar sort of way. It subsidizes some of the nicer things in life but it, itself, is not one of them. With the influx of those people with dollar-sized eyes and sweat-stained cheap collars, it is even less so. I'm glad I left.
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
For those not of us not fully up to speed on the information technology of ancient Athens, I recommend checking out the Dead Media ProjectWorking Notes, especially the series on how the technology they used to run there democracy (a 5 part series: 1,2,3,4,5)
Why do I bring this up? I do so because the Athenian Democracy had an enormous information management problem on their hands. The democracy came about by the revolution of the mob overthrowing a tyranny held in place by mercanaries hired from Sparta. Almost every citizen had a hand in this, and so had an interest in making sure that the rule of the tyrants did not return. A recent television series on PBS about the rise of the Greek culture illustrates this point with excellent clarity. As a result, one of the components of citizenship was that the required participation of every citizen. They had to manage and organized this process of the day to day workings of the democracy, selecting citizens at random from the various demes (tribes) for almost all offices and public functions.
There is a lot of data processing going on there. This was handled brilliantly by the mechanism described in the articles mentioned above. They had created a mechanical computer of sorts to handle the problems of handing out the assignments for juries, the routine bureaucratic assignments, all the rest. It is probably a work of genius, and is fundamental to really understanding how the whole place worked. It is obvious that such a system could easily be implemented on almost any database engine worth its' salt.
We now come to information societies. We can easily implement such a society using modern computing technology. The downsides of this are the modern apathy to political processes, as well as the desire for privacy. The upside is that you have a system that really reflects what the members of the community want. There is a certain conflict of interest inherent in this.
A possible solution to this is some sort of opt-in citizenship, with responsibilities attached along with the perks that go with it. This is a difficult question, because of the difficulties associated with question of rights and priveledges over others that are not earned, but are granted without cost.
In this context, I am thinking of the old problem of the haves vs the have-nots. If you win the lottery, make it big in a dot-com, or whatever, you will be surprised by how many new relatives you now have who think that they have more of a right to the money than you do, and who get insulted when you do not just hand it over. You also see this with certain culture clashes in the area of immigration.
An Information Democracy is possible, but I am still quite unclear as to how it could be implemeted. We see hints of this to some degree in the character of the various development communities, such as Microsoft Vs Open-source. Microsoft is probably closer to the old style greek tyrants, no matter how much they want to be portrayed as the philosopher kings of the computer age. The Open-Source community is far more adhoc in its organzation, and is not sufficiently organized to be a formal democracy like Athens. It might be said that Linus is probably the closest thing we have to a philosopher king in this context, although he is far more of a philosopher than king by far.
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
What we need is another unit of measure for close Earth distances, instead of Astronomical Units. AUs are fine for interplanetary distances, but confuse everyone when dealing with things that are closer.
So I am suggesting the Moon Unit, the distance from the earth to the moon. In this context, the asteroid passes about 12.19 Moon Units from Earth, and the sun is 384.6154 Moon Units away.
Point being, some people panic when you say 0.0317 AU, but would probably be more relaxed if you said 12.19 MU (Moon Units).
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
y'know, showing the evolutionary forms of Geeks. Primordial forms with slide rules and pocket protectors, later forms with their ponytails and nez pierce glasses. never mind the migration patterns of the tribes
Well it needs to be directional enough, so lasers will do. IR will penetrate fog and smoke alot easier than visual light as it is. Fire Fighters in big cities now have an IR camera they can take in with them into rooms pitch black with oily smoke, and they can search out victims and survivors just fine thank you. So IR is a distinct advantadge when it comes to smoke and fog.
Actually, the article and the summary above call it Wireless Optics, not Wireless Fiber. It uses Optical technology without using Fiber Optics. It uses lasers.
The rest is the attack of the marketroids, I suppose
actually, such frequencies are highly directional, and can also be absorded by the correct acoustical tile. quick searches bring up the following links:
one, two (with excellent scientific analysis), three, four (how to make your own).
Strangely enough, info on the construction of home music studios can also be useful.
I can recall many years ago (working in a retail repair shop) dealing with customers who confused refresh rate with radiation. Typically they wanted glare screens, because they could feel "the radiation hurting their eyes", and they would wind up with a setup where the screen was inpossibly dark.
Of course, what was really happening was that the default refresh rate on the card was either 60 hz, or on many occasions it was 56hz(!)--- between that and low end monitors [shudder] ---- although some monitors had better persistance, and did not look so horrible at the low refresh rate, while others were no better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
Although the radiation angle was a legit concern, it was totally mis-understood by most everyday folks
According to this arcticle (summarizing a paper in Nature), Global Warming may lead to some events that are not completely intuitive. While there are many possiblilities, the general scenario is that the large amount of ice water melting of the glaciers of Greenland, Norway, and Iceland could mess with the flow of warm water from the Gulf Stream the gives Europe its mild climate.
People should remember that Europe is as far north as Hudson's Bay in Canada in North America, and would be much colder without the benefit of the Gulf Stream. So anything that messes with this flow could mess with European weather. This is known as "Not a Good Thing" (tm).
My own take on this is that Global warming is basically increasing the amount of energy in a basically chaotic system. Given that, this would probably increase the range of variability in that system. This means that things would not just get warmer smoothly, but that there would be periods of more extremely weather, warmer and colder, wetter and dryer, etc. all around the planet.
While I do not think that this would lead to a new iceage, there are some, especially in the crackpot community that do.
There are also some legitimate scientists who are alarmed by the possibilities. It is certainly worth investigating.
The magazine has specialized in longer reflective and analytical articles that try to go into all of the aspects of the situation in some depth. As a friend of mine used to say,"This requires mastery of the fine art of reading books that do not have pictures". In other words, people whose primary education is MTV, and other mass marketing tools need not apply.
I found the article interesting and insightful. It certainly reflects the the authors own mixed feelings about the technology. This section from part four was particularly amusing:
"When I was younger, I was briefly in a rock band. Some of its members were not completely devoid of musical talent; alas, I was not one of them. As often occurs in such situations, I was assigned to the drums. Eventually the other members decided that having no ability to keep a beat was even more of a handicap on the drums than on other instruments, and I was replaced by someone who also couldn't play drums but at least had the potential to learn.
I recently obtained a tape we made in performance. Because I wanted to learn more about digital music, I decided to make a project of converting the songs on the tape into MP3 files. After considerable fussing I was able to listen to my younger self on the tinny little speakers that flank my monitor. The experience failed to provoke regret about the road not taken. In fact, it provoked little thought of any kind until a few days later, when I loaded up Gnutella.
After the Gnutella window came up on my screen, I saw that its users were sharing about a million megabytes' worth of pictures, sounds, programs, and texts. And then, to my shock, I saw that somebody was trying to copy my band's music.
Because the last thing I wanted was to reveal this stuff to the world, I quickly slammed the program shut. After double-checking to ensure that Gnutella wasn't running, I sat in my chair, somewhat unnerved. I was safe -- should I run for public office, my opponent would not be able to use the music to ridicule me in attack ads. But who had tried to copy it, and how had they found it? A few minutes later I figured it out. I had stuck the MP3s in a directory with other MP3s. Because I couldn't remember the names of the songs we played, I had awarded whimsical names to the computer files of those songs. Some of the names were variants on the names of famous rock tunes. A Gnutella user searching for the originals had come across mine and tried to download one of them.
In this small way I walked in Lars Ulrich's shoes. The impetus for Metallica's legal attack on Napster was the circulation on the service of rough drafts of "I Disappear," a single from the soundtrack of Mission:
Impossible 2. With the volatile promiscuity of the Internet, unfinished versions had been copied hundreds of times, depriving the group of control over its own work and, possibly, of some sales. When the musicians complained, they were astounded by the angry reaction. Trying to stop what they viewed as the forced publication of private material, Metallica -- rebellious rock-and-rollers for twenty years -- suddenly found themselves accused of censorship and toadying to corporate America."
Not everyone is a network security guru, y'know. But there is alot more in the article, and at least the guy was trying to think about this.
"The other concern--that a liability based on a link to another site simply because the other site happened to contain DeCSS or some other circumvention technology in the midst of other perfectly appropriate content could be overkill--also is readily dealt with. The offense under the DMCA is offering, providing or otherwise trafficking in circumvention technology. An essential ingredient, as explained above, is a desire to bring about the dissemination. Hence, a strong requirement of that forbidden purpose is an essential prerequisite to any liability for linking.
Accordingly, there may be no injunction against, nor liability for, linking to a site containing circumvention technology, the offering of which is unlawful under the DMCA, absent clear and convincing evidence that those responsible for the link (a) know at the relevant time that the offending material is on the linked-to site, (b) know that it is circumvention technology that may not lawfully be offered, and (c) create or maintain the link for the purpose of disseminating that technology.
Such a standard will limit the fear of liability on the part of web site operators just as the New York Times standard gives the press great comfort in publishing all sorts of material that would have been actionable at common law, even in the face of flat denials by the subjects of their stories. And it will not subject web site operators to liability for linking to a site containing proscribed technology where the link exists for purposes other than dissemination of that technology.
In this case, plaintiffs have established by clear and convincing evidence that these defendants linked to sites posting DeCSS, knowing that it was a circumvention device. Indeed, they initially touted it as a way to get free movies, and they later maintained the links to promote the dissemination of the program in an effort to defeat effective judicial relief. They now know that dissemination of DeCSS violates the DMCA. An anti-linking injunction on these facts does no violence to the First Amendment. Nor should it chill the activities of web site operators dealing with different materials, as they may be held liable only on a compelling showing of deliberate evasion of the statute."
So it seems that while 2600 is enjoined from linking to DeCSS, others not yet named have not been, yet. The MPAA will have to go after each one individually. This will be easier now that this decision has been made.
Obviously a first victory for the money interests. a shame that the dvd script kiddies who had to go trading these things around screwed it up for the rest of us.
We have the working infrastructure for that. - - - It's called the United Nations
which is fine until all of the have-nots vote that all of the wealth should be re-distributed.... While there are matters of injustice that certainly need to be addressed, would you be willing to live in third world standards to statisfy such a demand?
I do not know that it is such a good idea to stop technology and roll it all back to 1900 or 1920 or whatever to statisfy the implementation of the demand.
Another problem is the inherent insanity that many people have on the subject of world government. Many people are deathly afraid of losing the integrity of their culture, be it, american, latino, micro-serfdom, or whatever.
Political leaders have been using this tactics since the dawn of time. There is a tremendous fear of immigration in the USA. Alot of folks look at the standard of living south of the border, and do not want people who produced that culture living in the USA.
It echoes the situation of a person who has won the lottery. Every unknown relative, high school friend, etc. since the dawn of time wants to take advantadge of the winner's good luck. never mind the scam artists, etc. who are all to willing to spend tremendous effort in trying to rip people off, and loath putting in similar effort to actually being creative and productive, etc.
To some extent, the USA is seen as having won the lootery of history, and every one wants a hand out, their piece of the action (and yes, lootery is a deliberate ironic mispelling)
for example this one: Find Your Star Wars Twin, another one of those wacko star wars personality quizzes.
Personally, I prefered the original that was mentioned around here some place over a year ago. But this one also lets you rate your friend or sibling and the say time you do your own.
Actually, I think we should tax spam to death. Put the IRS in charge of collecting the tax.
In addition I think there should be a spammer tax id number included with every spam sent out, so that everyone can bill the spammer as appropriate for loss of bandwidth.
Only when the cost of spam is higher than the cost of doing business, then will the spam dis-appear
actually, I find your answer more insightful than the comment you are responding to. and exactly on target.
there are tools that make it easier to work with the system. but you should know what is going on, unless you want to classify your machine as the equivalent of a toaster. In which case it better be disposable, along with your data.
There are also tools that would not make things easier. I, for one, would not look forward to Edlin for Windows 2000! (or Edlin for Linux either!)
While rumor has it most geeks seem to prefer the technical challenge of learning something the hard way, akin to climbing K2 or it's gentler neighbor Mount Everest with minimum equipment, the rest of humanity probably would like a gentler gradient.
The outrage at this sidesteps you into the traps of wanting more people in the community, but at the same time playing a game of hide and seek with the goal posts. Ultimately, I do not see that game as being terribly practical.
I prefer to push people to be more competent, more expert, and to use the knowledge they have. This is more of a coaching style where you are gentle on the person, but death on the missing skill sets. Personally, I prefer some sort of learning curve vs the infamous learning cliffs, especially if you can get hurt when you fall off.
Part of this really is missing fundamentals. All those things that you know due to your expertise and experience. Someone whose knowledge of computers is limited to the most recent MS horrors might have to spread a day or two learning the basics for, and the reason why, of this thing called a command line. This is really worth doing, and doing well. but now it is skipped over as not very relevant, when instead it is merely vital.
I'll avoid the Mac comments on this for the time being....:P
If I recall correctly, the origins in color blindness are the result of a quirk in evolution.
Originally all animals who had color sight had four colors sensors, corresponding to red, green, blue, and ultraviolet. (I do not recall the exact bands) You see this to this day in animals like birds, etc.
Mammals went a long period with color sight while also being creatures of the night. This caused some to the sensors to change or be lost. We arrived at having night vision sensors, as well as red and blue, losing the ultraviolet.
Fast Forward to a point where our ancestors went back to being creatures of the daylight. Green was desirable, and this was done by the split of the red sensor into two bands, which gives us the red green confusion. This has the end result of color blindness when the conditions are right. Obviously there is a gradient scale of color blindness.
As a side note, I recall a special series on PBS in the past few years about different aspects of the mind, written by Dr Thomas Szasz (sp?). One of the episodes was about this island in the pacific where a large portion of the population was color blind. This was due to a peculiar history of natural disasters that resulted in alot of inbreeding. The people had very sharp vision, were very sensitive to sunlight, and were totally color blind. They flipped out over sunglasses, adoring them totally.
The effect in sight was described as similar in the time of twilight when you can still see well, but the color has been leeched for your view. Although they make up for color by the attention to textures, shades, and shadows.
Interesting over-all...
One of the problems of this discussion comes up in the various color model theories. It is educational to compare the common Red-Green-Blue model vs Hue-Saturation-Luminance model. There are other models used as well, well known by graphics art specialists.
Slashdot Mirror
It reminds me of going into an un-named store and seeing a knock off of a Sony(tm) boom-bax named Sonic. The packaging was completely identical to Sony packaging, except for the name.
now in an arcade, players are less concerned about such details, since if the games plays well, who cares? It is the owner of the game who paid out the big bucks.
Another example of "which way do you want to go in trademark/copyright law?" .......
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
Why do I bring this up? I do so because the Athenian Democracy had an enormous information management problem on their hands. The democracy came about by the revolution of the mob overthrowing a tyranny held in place by mercanaries hired from Sparta. Almost every citizen had a hand in this, and so had an interest in making sure that the rule of the tyrants did not return. A recent television series on PBS about the rise of the Greek culture illustrates this point with excellent clarity. As a result, one of the components of citizenship was that the required participation of every citizen. They had to manage and organized this process of the day to day workings of the democracy, selecting citizens at random from the various demes (tribes) for almost all offices and public functions.
There is a lot of data processing going on there. This was handled brilliantly by the mechanism described in the articles mentioned above. They had created a mechanical computer of sorts to handle the problems of handing out the assignments for juries, the routine bureaucratic assignments, all the rest. It is probably a work of genius, and is fundamental to really understanding how the whole place worked. It is obvious that such a system could easily be implemented on almost any database engine worth its' salt.
We now come to information societies. We can easily implement such a society using modern computing technology. The downsides of this are the modern apathy to political processes, as well as the desire for privacy. The upside is that you have a system that really reflects what the members of the community want. There is a certain conflict of interest inherent in this.
A possible solution to this is some sort of opt-in citizenship, with responsibilities attached along with the perks that go with it. This is a difficult question, because of the difficulties associated with question of rights and priveledges over others that are not earned, but are granted without cost.
In this context, I am thinking of the old problem of the haves vs the have-nots. If you win the lottery, make it big in a dot-com, or whatever, you will be surprised by how many new relatives you now have who think that they have more of a right to the money than you do, and who get insulted when you do not just hand it over. You also see this with certain culture clashes in the area of immigration.
An Information Democracy is possible, but I am still quite unclear as to how it could be implemeted. We see hints of this to some degree in the character of the various development communities, such as Microsoft Vs Open-source. Microsoft is probably closer to the old style greek tyrants, no matter how much they want to be portrayed as the philosopher kings of the computer age. The Open-Source community is far more adhoc in its organzation, and is not sufficiently organized to be a formal democracy like Athens. It might be said that Linus is probably the closest thing we have to a philosopher king in this context, although he is far more of a philosopher than king by far.
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
Just for those of use who are not physix geeks, what is the definition of p in the equation?
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
So I am suggesting the Moon Unit, the distance from the earth to the moon. In this context, the asteroid passes about 12.19 Moon Units from Earth, and the sun is 384.6154 Moon Units away.
Point being, some people panic when you say 0.0317 AU, but would probably be more relaxed if you said 12.19 MU (Moon Units).
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
[shrug]
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
y'know, showing the evolutionary forms of Geeks. Primordial forms with slide rules and pocket protectors, later forms with their ponytails and nez pierce glasses. never mind the migration patterns of the tribes
Well it needs to be directional enough, so lasers will do. IR will penetrate fog and smoke alot easier than visual light as it is. Fire Fighters in big cities now have an IR camera they can take in with them into rooms pitch black with oily smoke, and they can search out victims and survivors just fine thank you. So IR is a distinct advantadge when it comes to smoke and fog.
Actually, the article and the summary above call it Wireless Optics, not Wireless Fiber. It uses Optical technology without using Fiber Optics. It uses lasers.
The rest is the attack of the marketroids, I suppose
oh the HORROR!
my dentist wears the lead apron.....
he doesn't give it to me....
hmmmmmmmmmm......
Strangely enough, info on the construction of home music studios can also be useful.
Of course, what was really happening was that the default refresh rate on the card was either 60 hz, or on many occasions it was 56hz(!)--- between that and low end monitors [shudder] ---- although some monitors had better persistance, and did not look so horrible at the low refresh rate, while others were no better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
Although the radiation angle was a legit concern, it was totally mis-understood by most everyday folks
People should remember that Europe is as far north as Hudson's Bay in Canada in North America, and would be much colder without the benefit of the Gulf Stream. So anything that messes with this flow could mess with European weather. This is known as "Not a Good Thing" (tm).
My own take on this is that Global warming is basically increasing the amount of energy in a basically chaotic system. Given that, this would probably increase the range of variability in that system. This means that things would not just get warmer smoothly, but that there would be periods of more extremely weather, warmer and colder, wetter and dryer, etc. all around the planet.
While I do not think that this would lead to a new iceage, there are some, especially in the crackpot community that do.
There are also some legitimate scientists who are alarmed by the possibilities. It is certainly worth investigating.
I found the article interesting and insightful. It certainly reflects the the authors own mixed feelings about the technology. This section from part four was particularly amusing:
Not everyone is a network security guru, y'know. But there is alot more in the article, and at least the guy was trying to think about this.Maybe this isn't news. maybe it should be.
Obviously a first victory for the money interests. a shame that the dvd script kiddies who had to go trading these things around screwed it up for the rest of us.
I do not know that it is such a good idea to stop technology and roll it all back to 1900 or 1920 or whatever to statisfy the implementation of the demand.
Another problem is the inherent insanity that many people have on the subject of world government. Many people are deathly afraid of losing the integrity of their culture, be it, american, latino, micro-serfdom, or whatever.
Political leaders have been using this tactics since the dawn of time. There is a tremendous fear of immigration in the USA. Alot of folks look at the standard of living south of the border, and do not want people who produced that culture living in the USA.
It echoes the situation of a person who has won the lottery. Every unknown relative, high school friend, etc. since the dawn of time wants to take advantadge of the winner's good luck. never mind the scam artists, etc. who are all to willing to spend tremendous effort in trying to rip people off, and loath putting in similar effort to actually being creative and productive, etc.
To some extent, the USA is seen as having won the lootery of history, and every one wants a hand out, their piece of the action (and yes, lootery is a deliberate ironic mispelling)
the amazon link is here
I had him confused with Thomas Szasz by the similiarity of sound in the names.
the original article as found at yahoo.... if you are interested.
Personally, I prefered the original that was mentioned around here some place over a year ago. But this one also lets you rate your friend or sibling and the say time you do your own.
funky
In addition I think there should be a spammer tax id number included with every spam sent out, so that everyone can bill the spammer as appropriate for loss of bandwidth.
Only when the cost of spam is higher than the cost of doing business, then will the spam dis-appear
(gotta find a better way to say that)
there are tools that make it easier to work with the system. but you should know what is going on, unless you want to classify your machine as the equivalent of a toaster. In which case it better be disposable, along with your data.
There are also tools that would not make things easier. I, for one, would not look forward to Edlin for Windows 2000! (or Edlin for Linux either!)
The outrage at this sidesteps you into the traps of wanting more people in the community, but at the same time playing a game of hide and seek with the goal posts. Ultimately, I do not see that game as being terribly practical.
I prefer to push people to be more competent, more expert, and to use the knowledge they have. This is more of a coaching style where you are gentle on the person, but death on the missing skill sets. Personally, I prefer some sort of learning curve vs the infamous learning cliffs, especially if you can get hurt when you fall off.
Part of this really is missing fundamentals. All those things that you know due to your expertise and experience. Someone whose knowledge of computers is limited to the most recent MS horrors might have to spread a day or two learning the basics for, and the reason why, of this thing called a command line. This is really worth doing, and doing well. but now it is skipped over as not very relevant, when instead it is merely vital.
I'll avoid the Mac comments on this for the time being .... :P
Originally all animals who had color sight had four colors sensors, corresponding to red, green, blue, and ultraviolet. (I do not recall the exact bands) You see this to this day in animals like birds, etc.
Mammals went a long period with color sight while also being creatures of the night. This caused some to the sensors to change or be lost. We arrived at having night vision sensors, as well as red and blue, losing the ultraviolet.
Fast Forward to a point where our ancestors went back to being creatures of the daylight. Green was desirable, and this was done by the split of the red sensor into two bands, which gives us the red green confusion. This has the end result of color blindness when the conditions are right. Obviously there is a gradient scale of color blindness.
As a side note, I recall a special series on PBS in the past few years about different aspects of the mind, written by Dr Thomas Szasz (sp?). One of the episodes was about this island in the pacific where a large portion of the population was color blind. This was due to a peculiar history of natural disasters that resulted in alot of inbreeding. The people had very sharp vision, were very sensitive to sunlight, and were totally color blind. They flipped out over sunglasses, adoring them totally.
The effect in sight was described as similar in the time of twilight when you can still see well, but the color has been leeched for your view. Although they make up for color by the attention to textures, shades, and shadows.
Interesting over-all ...
One of the problems of this discussion comes up in the various color model theories. It is educational to compare the common Red-Green-Blue model vs Hue-Saturation-Luminance model. There are other models used as well, well known by graphics art specialists.