I remember this problem from about 15 or 20 years ago. I had an old computer and either IT ONLY HAD CAPITAL LETTERs, as was the tradition at that time.
Every time I was on a BBS some yokel would feel the need to tell me to turn off my caps lock. I had to send at least one note a day telling people I was not stupid, I knew that all my letters were upper case, and it was the machine. All the while I was thinking how stupid can these people be not to know some computers only type in upper case. Not so important now, but I was amazed at how aggressive people used to get about this. Like they didn't have a life or something.
This is so silly. It is like when MS threatened to leave the US for Canada if it fines in the antitrust suite were too high. I mean give me a break, MS doesn't even like to pay the meager US taxes. Did anyone really think they would be willing to pay Canadian taxes?
That is not to say that companies would not contract with off shore spammers, but nothing is stopping them from doing that now, and it appears most don't,
In further news, Intel states the chip also targets the excess energy stores of the earth. A high official states "No one really needs this much speed, and we could have designed a more efficient chip, but we want to be in sync with the current world economy. We hope that as we approach 100 watts of generated heat, people will appreciate the effort we put into making a chip that can truly utilize the excess energy stores we have in the U.S. We absolutely feel that the synergies between the various excesses will combine to spark phenomenal sales."
This official describes the marketing for this chip as similar to the automaker's model for an SUV. The chip is overly complicated for the job, bulky, has few application, yet consumes large amounts of energy and space. In short, Intel will market this as a status symbol among geeks. Sublimate your fear of your inadequacies into the fact that you can afford the TCO for this chip. Sublimate your lack of dates into the knowledge that no one will be as fast as you are. To compensate for the fact that the chip hides in computer, a hologram poster will be supplied, complete with a sufficiently clad female, that the child may hang on the bedroom door or locker without parental or school complaint.
Under the assumption that much spam is loaded with web bugs and cookies, the best thing Mozilla could do it turn off images and cookies in mail by default. As implied in the WSJ Spam article, the spammer can count and get paid for the number of messages that get through. They forge the 'from', 'reply to', and 'subject' headers to fool people into opening the spam. Once open, the web bug is loaded, the cookie and set, and your email address can be marked as good for future spam. If Mozilla was set by default to not load the bugs unless the user specifically requests it, it would allow the user to check the mail without being a target. These options should be moved to the 'mail' section of the prefs.
It seems that this is where the closed source, closed standard, only our stuff can talk to out stuff model breaks down. MS has been very good about suppling relatively inexpensive baseline software, tools to interact with that software, and added functionality, that there has until recently been no problem.
But it is time to face facts. MS software is convoluted, hacked, integrated for the sake of marketing, and hidden by paranoid executives. We have internet explorer that is so integrated it can be removed, yet separate enough that updates must happen separately from the normal system updates. It is nearly impossible to write code for Windows without Visual Studio due to the closed standards. They have always done this, and it is just getting worse.
I hope more governments move to open source projects. The first step would be to create grants to organizations such as openoffice.org and Mozilla. MS has had ample opportunity to reform in the spirit of democracy, and has laughed at us all the way to the bank. They create web pages that can only be read using their browser, and documents that can only be read by their office suite, and demand that the government use this elitists products. Old capitalistic arguments cannot be used to subvert the importance of open communication within the democratic state.
Of course, in this article Tiwain probably wants to force everyone to use a special version of windows that can be bugged, monitored, and logged by goverment agencies, but that would even be bette with open source. We don't know that Windowss is not logging information to governments. At least with open source we could check.
First, I wonder where this programmer who understands all this technology is going to come from. For as long as I can remember, or maybe the mid-80's, programmers were treated as semi-skilled labor. They are only occasionally highly paid. Programmers are largely considered a replaceable commodity. Anyone with an understanding of a computer from the Silicon to the GUI is smart enough to find a job anywhere and does not have to deal with being a cog. Not only that, a person with such a level of understanding is not going to be able to get a computer job because they do not know the third parameter of a cryptic VB command, nor do they know how to manage a Linux box. It is no wonder that many shops are left with only VB script kiddies.
Second, high level tools and encapsulation is a matter of control and use. Encapsulation helped solve the very large problem of unmanageable code due to unnecessarily sloppy dependencies. This problem, and a solution, was eloquently described in Composite/Structured Design by Myers(1978). Encapsulation allows the creation of hard, self documenting, interfaces. Likewise, high level languages allows the use of reusable code. This could be the consistent look and feel of a GUI, the reliable implementation of a security algorithm, or a portable set of I/O functions. I doubt the modern computer would exist without these technologies. Alll languages are, by definition, high level. And while encapsulation could be implemented in any language, few programmers are disciplined enough to do so.
Final point. Having written much code in C, Fortran, Basic, Assembly, Pascal, etc and maintained legacy code in C and other languages, I shudder when I head 'low level C' and 'legacy methodologies'. I also shudder when I hear 'speed' as the primary qualification. Both of these lead to unnecessary complicated code, often without adequate separation of data or functionality, and usually without any compassion for the programmer to follow.
This is absolutely the case. When consumers can buy a flexible device that just works, they will. It is not that we can't understand how to make a computer work, it is that there are other things we would rather do
For instance, I have a store bought firewall. I have an extra box that I could have made into a linux firewall, but i just didn't feel like it. There was a time when I might have done it for the educational benefits, but there are other things I want to do and people I want to those thing with.
This was also what was great about the original Mac. I don't know if anyone remembers the morass of the pc world 20 years ago. Hacked up cables, printer codes in word processor documents, device drivers for each program, networks that were hand configured, if not coded. The original Mac ushered in a world of microcomputers and component that just worked. Cables would work, layers were abstracted so one printer driver, or set of menus, or modem drivers, would work for all applications. It was a box on the table that let the user compute. It was, in fact, an appliance. Like a TV things could be plugged into it. MS ran with part of this idea, but for the most part never fully implemented the 'appliance' part.
A big reason we do not have such a device is that MS sucks at embedded software and lives at the teat of yearly upgrade cycles, and has convinced consumers that MS is the only solution. For instance, I tried to give one relative a old mac that did exactly what she wanted, did not need to be upgraded every month(it was very stable software that had not been upgraded in two years). The problem was she was so indoctrinated into the MS world and did not believe that this machine could do what she wanted. She basically was so branded by MS that anything else would not do. So now she has a machine that does not consistently work, and will have this machine until MS and companies like Dell develop machine that just works. I am not holding my breath.
So yes I do expect to see many computing devices being made into appliances. I know my life would be much easier if I could just give my relatives a secure box that they can plug into the wall and use. It would dial, download mail and surf the web. It would not be so flexible that it could run spyware, download webbugs in email, or become owned.
By your definition there is very little 'regular' spam. Almost every spam I get has a forged 'from'. Even if the return address is valid, it often has an obvious misleading name. As the earlier WSJ article suggested, spammers put in random names to confuse recipients, while still claiming not to forge headers.
Also, many states require ADV: in the title. Any commercial email that does not have ADV: should be considered fraudulent.
of course this is why confirmed opt-in is the only ethical means of gathering addresses. This, along with completely genuine headers, is going to be the only way to stop spam. The spammers, unlik physical bulk mailers, have no incentive to insure lists are accurate.
BTW, I thought it very funny that the WSJ, in an article mentioned earlier, allowed the spammer to say they never forged headers while, at the same time, they admitted they did forge the 'from' field.
This is not a broad enough statement. By some statistics, only 4 movies have made more than Spider Man, and no movie has made more in the 3 years. It is also in line to become the top video rental.
For a movie to make so much money and still not make a profit is beyond gross incompetence. No profits indicates massive overspending, corruption, and maybe even embezzlement. If anyone needs to be sued, it is the executive management and the board.
Of course, much like sporting teams and music, it is critical to cook the books so no profit appears. In this way one can underpay the talent, cheat the fans, and steal tax revenue.
BTW, Spider Man reportedly cost $130 million to make. Figure that much again in advertisement and distrubution, which would mean $260 million in up front costs. We know that it took $400 million at the box office. We do not know how much was made on marketing deals(i.e. Spider man cereal).
Like any industry, the amount of money that one can make depends on the perceived 'value added' to the product. The movie industry 'adds value' to the books and expects to make a profit on that addition. The question is how. If the theaters can 'add value' to the viewing experience, then the cinemas and the movie makers make a profit. If the cinemas do not, then perhaps the movie companies can make a profit through video rental and sales, at the expense of ticket sales. Or, perhaps the movie is such a dud that no one wants to pay for the movie and will just watch the grainy pirated copy, shadow heads and all. Or, perhaps, the movie is so bad that the leaked copy, which should be a prime advertising tool, so sickens people that they swear never to see the movie. We all have wasted money on movies that made us sick.
The fact is that the entertainment industry does not take 'value added' seriously enough. They put two good songs on an album (blues traveler 'four' comes to mind) and expect the populous to pay $20. Why should they, just download the two songs from the net(or, for those who can remember, record it from the radio, anyone got albums from the late night full play?). The same is true for movie theaters. They have 30 screens, 5 movies, only of which one are worth seeing at the theater, and the staff antagonizes you the whole time. How much money do they expect make. And yet I do not see the movie industry, those great champions of legislating profit from intellectual property, doing a thing to help the poor suffering movie theaters. Rather the studios leave movie theaters to fend for themselves and legislate for copy protection in hope of making money on the DVD release.
Harry potter has buzz, is probably a good movie, and is squarely directed at the annoying child demographic. The leak will certainly affect ticket sales in some minuscule manner, but isn't going to make anyone homeless. It is too effective of a method to keep generally undisciplined children quite for an hour or so.
Sometimes you have to do something not because it is profitable, but because it is right. For example, a company may lose money on handicap access, and I am sure that all patriotic Americans are with me in the waning hours of veterans day, but it is wrong to deny people service just because they are differently abled. I am not saying the issue is equivalent, just that some things are more important than profit.
To get the issue at hand, this service is not excluding 1% of the customers, it is excluding 11%. The service requires Windows 98 or higher. Not even the p0rn sites are brave enough to turn away 11% of their potential customers.
As I stated in an earlier post. The RIAA likes the fact that MS has fully embraced DRM. I feel it is likely that this can be used to blackmail others to follow suite.
The EFF certainly deserves our wrath for supporting Gator. Gator is software with no discernible legitimate purpose, and is guilty with excessively dishonest marketing. Likewise, OSS is a threat to capitalism, as it actively aims to promote piracy of intellectual property through hacking of legitimate security protocols, and the widespread distributions of thos hacks. And don't get me started on the ruffians of/. All they ever do is to criticize the Patriot Act,the only thing standing between us and the terrorists. It seems/. is perfectly willing to allow the destruction of the USA so they may have uninterrupted access to p0rn and stolen music.
Or perhaps there are more complex reasons why we take certain positions.
Frankly, for those who take the time to look the availability of indie music is not a problem. For instance, for many people events like the Kerrville Folk Festival provides a steady stream of excellent indie folk talent. It is easy enough to hit the local clubs and the few remaining local radio stations to hear music and decide for yourself what you like. Then it is just a matter of giving money to indie talent instead of the RIAA.
The mistake I see with setting up a website as an alternative to the RIAA, is that the RIAA is very good at what it does. Listening to RIAA music removes the risk of listening to music that is unacceptable to your peer group. It provides the safety of knowing you will have something to talk about to a new acquaintances. There is no way for anyone to compete with this, because the standards and rules are completely arbitrary and depend on the de-facto acceptance by millions of people.
So while it would be technically and financially feasible(the money can come from indie bands and venues, come on, it is not that much money), it really doesn't solve the problem. People who want indie music already buy it. People who don't are probably happy with the current situation. It is really just a matter of which herd one wants to be part. There is honestly little difference between RIAA and non-RIAA music, so the decision pretty much has to be based on ideology, not talent.
I suspect that the windows only thing is a reward to MS by the movie industry for MS support of DRM. As such, I suspect that this is one of those sites that is unlikely to ever go beyond MS and IE. I think this is also a signal from the future with no legal options other than MS and IE. All the Palladium apologist take note.
Look at this way. There are only three reasons for a site to be IE and Windows only, or even IE only. The first is lack of resources for development. Houston ISD fits this category. The second is incompetent web development. Companies like Cingular and some credit services fit this category. The third is an explicit decision that certain customers are not important, or to keep certain customers out.
The movie industry had resources. The project should make enough money to justify competent programmers. Everyone watches movies, and success depends on popular appeal, so there is no basis to say a certain group of customers is unimportant. That leaves explicitly keeping certain customers out.
Who is being punished? The Linux and BSD users, who broke and published DVD encryption, and are a major thorn in the sides of the movie industry. Apple Mac users, who buy their computers to 'Edit, Rip, Burn,' or, in the eyes of the movie industry, pirates who wish to steal content and force the movie industry into starvation.
As such, I think we take this as an attack on the npn-MS systems. The movie industry does not like non-MS, and they will not play with them, at least until a time when the movie industry can set all the rules. It is the movie industries right to do this, but it is blackmail.
1) If the industry is losing so much money to so-called pirates(estimates up to 50%), and this format is meant to stop pirates, then why doesn't the industry price these discs, and other copy protected discs, for less in an effort to encourage sales. If the industry truly loses 50% of it's sales to pirates, the price of a disc could drop 25% and, even including increased cost of the copy protection, the industry would still be making more than it is now.
2)Is the sound quality, without digital outputs, really substantially different from a CD or vinyl record played over analog equipment. Does the lack of digital outputs in fact make these units glorified cd players for the terminally self-deluded.
3) Is the industry going to give free replacement for damaged or lost discs. A long time ago, we customers were fed the myth of durable CD. Pretty soon we realized that although the CD was tough, it was foolish to carry original media with us where it was more easily damaged or stolen, especially as the quality decreased and the reflective layer had a tendency to peel off. So we made tapes and wondered why we paid all that money for CD in the first place when we would have just bought vinyl or tape(which could be dubbed in 10 minutes). Then, one glorious day, the technology allowed us to make a copy CD, thus justifying the price of the original media. With the new formats, we are back to the tape backup, and still have to pay the full amount for the original media. I think we deserve lifetime replacement rights, even if we do not have the original media.
I agree with you, there is absolutely no chance of winning, and a proper book aimed at the general public might be useful.
The problem, as it has always been, is communicating the subtle differences between the believers of truth and the seekers of truth. I use the former instead of 'skeptics' or 'conspiracy theories' because both these groups are useful and good if they are not just trying to push a personal belief on everyone else. The same goes for the latter term.
The reason most of the moon-landing conspiracy stuff is so useless is that it hasn't really added to our knowledge. Mostly what it has done is made obvious and trivial statements in an effort to convince people that the moon landing could have been faked. Well, duh. A person must be the developmental equivalent of an average 10 year old not to be creative enough to figure out that things can be faked. However showing something can be done, or even showing motive and opportunity, is not enough. It would be like convicting someone for theft because they had means, motive, and opportunity, but nothing was missing, and no attempt was made(which is done, under conspiracy laws, but that is different). The question of whether the moon landing could have been faked, and consequently debunking these scenarios, is so far from the point as to be silly.
Didn't everyone who stayed on the planer die of some virus passed by diry telephones?
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It has been a while since I have read that book, and I don't have it in front of me, but if i recall he realized that in Applied Cryptography he implied that properly vetted and implemented algorithms would imply security. In the fullness of time he realized that the view was naive. As such, S&L was written to convey the message that algorithms alone are insufficient. A secure system must consider users, application, the nature of the security threat, and the cost of breached security, As such, in general, all security methods fall short.
In this case, IBM tends to market to sophisticated markets. They tend to, and are increasingly, trying to serve the sophisticated market in new ways so as not to lose to MS, Dell, and others. Hopefully we will not see these devices everywhere, because, as you say, once a thumbprint is compromised it is always compromised. I honestly do not know if this is a useful tool, but i can imagine some applications where it could be.
On the other hand if MS did this, your point might be valid because then the technology would be shoe-horned into general use. For instance, if the validation was in the OS and IE, and the reader were on the keyboard, thousands of merchants might use the fingerprint for sole verification. This would create a large incentive to hack the system, which, a you point out, would only require the capture of the digital signature of the fingerprint, which is not a replaceable token.
Pretty much BMG and all the other labels can do this and still make money because the culture, at least in the U.S., is to conform. We are defined by the music we listen to, the movie we watch, the tv shows we talk about at the office. So we follow the drumbeats of the mass marketer and purchase whatever they tell us we need.
With respect to music, they seem to have pushed us too far. People are offended that they cannot rip the CDs, so they download the music instead. I am not sure if this is right or wrong. The latest Eminem album, while certainly a desire, is not a necessity, and, even though the record company does not lose money, no one makes money either. Perhaps if you buy a t-shirt, the artist makes money, but why have a t-shirt when you want the music?
The alternative, of course, is to stay away from the major labels. If the artist produces a CD and sells them at concerts or whatever, the artist gets the money. The labels would say that this is an inefficient business model that will not bring the best talent to the top, but who cares. There is, quite frankly, much more excellent talent out there than can be accommodated by any business model. We, as customers, might as well try to support artist rather than business models.
I guess I don't understand your logic. At $24K and 5%, you would pay about $415 a month. At 6%, you are looking at around $425, about $10 or 3%.
If you are going to keep a car 10 years, then you might pay $3000 a year for the car, finance charges, and repairs. If we drive 10,000 a year, at 15 mpg we need around 650(910) gallon, at 20 mpg we need 500(700) gallons, and at 30mpg you need 333(466), at $1.4 a gallon. Therefore, at 15 mpg, gasoline is 25% of total cost, but at 30mpg it is only 13%. To speak directly to your example, if you increase gas consumption from 20MPG to 24MPG, you are talking comparable amounts of money. I certainly think that this is a reasonable increase.
Also, if you spend 1K a year, or 85/month, gas prices only need to 12% to match that cost. This would mean a change from $1.20 to $1.35. That is well within the variability of gas prices. For instance, between 10/95 and 6/96 the prices increased 18%. In the first half of 2000, prices rose nearly 20%. In the extreme case, gas prices were below $1 in mid 1998, but above $1.4 today.
As I have mentioned in a previous post, engaging these people is never useful. People who deny the moon landing, evolution, or the Nazi generated holocaust are asserting an opinion in an effort to save a personal belief, and are not engaging in meaningful dialog. By engaging these people directly, you invalidate the scientific process and enter an argument that cannot be won.
The problem is that science starts with an acknowledgment that we may be wrong. Nothing in science can be proven exactly. Nothing in science can be taken as truth. We have no reason to believe that the moon landing did not happen, but, scientifically, we can not say it absolutely did happen. There is nothing wrong with this bacause the level of doubt is so trivial as to have no practical effect. This doubt is then used by people who wish to disprove the moon landing. This is generally done by mangling facts to fits a predetermined reality. Because the anti-science side is fighting from a deeply held personal belief, and the pro-science side is fighting from a spirit of discovery, science loses.
The second problem is assumptions. Science assumes that a certain level of proof is good enough. Science assumes that the ultimate truth is not necessary; all we need is a theory that fits the available fact well enough and can be applied to a known domain. Science accepts the possibility that theories may be modified in the fullness of time. These assumptions not only form an achilles heal that can easily be exploited, but also form a basis to make scientist sound foolish. For example, lets take a person who believes the earth is flat. This person points to building, and notes that when the design is drawn up, the assumption is indeed made that they earth is in fact flat. The reasonable person notes that locally, over a small distance, the Earth is taken to be flat. The flat-Earth proponent then asks, is the earth flat, or is it not! This person uses the assumptions of science, that theory need only hold to a known domain, to make the scientists look like a fool.
So by engaging these nuts directly, we teach kids that this is useful. What might be good is a curriculla that explains what science does, what it does not do, and why science must concede all arguments to religious zealots. It really does no one any good to argue with these people. Anyone hypocritical enough to deny the moon landing but use a microwave or watch tv pretty much deserves what they get. The best we can do is make sure our kids are smart enough to know the difference between science theory and personal belief.
I sometime feel the incesent update of computer books is just a ploy to sell more books. For language reference books, frequent updates make sense. The language grows and new features must be documented. OTOH, basic introductory texts, especially those dealing with teaching, are good for many years. Design patterns is fundamental knowledge. The examples may be old, but they effectively illustrate all points. It still fullfils it's mandate, and should be read by anyone writing code.
I see a problem because younger people tend to ignore books because they are old. I recently talked to a (20ish) manager who spoke like he never read The Mythical Man Month or Debugging the Development Process. It was like he really believed that a 80 hour work weeks and more programmers would bring the project in on time.
As has been viciously shown over the past couple years, fundamentals don't change just because someone rewrites a book. It is precisely those books that prove to be fundamental, those books that do not need to be updated every few years, that provide a person with a basis of knowledge.
DVDs were created to be obsolete, and within a few years, when Blu-Ray technologies are creating 30GB+ disks, a DVD burner will be one of those devices that will make someone say "You bought an expensive computer 4 years ago, and that device was overpriced crap", much like we view zip drives today.
I do not view zip drives in this way. Yes the zip drive is expensive. Zip media is also expensive. However Zip disks are very reliable. I have been using Zip disks for over 6 years and never had a problem with one. I have some rather old Zip disks that are still in perfect condition. OTOH, I have had CD burners for only a few years, and have had quite a bit of trouble with media quality and reliable writing. I have had several disks fall apart after a couple years. I am phasing out Zip Disks, but still know people who use them.
For some data, it is worthwhile to spend some money to buy reliability
Continuing lawsuits will be the only way to stop the M$ creature from consuming everything in it's path and creating a monoculture in the software and hardware market. We all see XBox and we all see where it is going. A thriving market need competition and challenge. M$, Intel, and AMD does not provide enough diversity for survival. The U.S. government has shown it will not protect the free market from terrorists.
You can talk about lack of quality from Sun, Apple, Linux, SGI all day long, but if you believe in free markets, that talk holds no water. Many people pay a lot of money for the above products when it would often be simpler and less expensive to buy an old intel machine a steal a copy of windows. Yet the above companies survive.
M$ is bringing investors and, to a larger degree, brokers a lot of profits. From that point of view the demise of Sun, probably bad for the long term, would be great for the short term as it would remove yet another thorn in M$ side.
The fact is that Sun, Apple, and everyone else makes better products because of M$. M$ makes better products because of everyone else. The same goes for the Intel, AMD, Motorola and AMD.
M$ wants the next step to a closed commodity box in which they control the hardware, software,and access. I do not think that this is a bad for certain applications. However, without competition, and without the lawsuits, this is all we will have for most applications.
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Every time I was on a BBS some yokel would feel the need to tell me to turn off my caps lock. I had to send at least one note a day telling people I was not stupid, I knew that all my letters were upper case, and it was the machine. All the while I was thinking how stupid can these people be not to know some computers only type in upper case. Not so important now, but I was amazed at how aggressive people used to get about this. Like they didn't have a life or something.
That is not to say that companies would not contract with off shore spammers, but nothing is stopping them from doing that now, and it appears most don't,
This official describes the marketing for this chip as similar to the automaker's model for an SUV. The chip is overly complicated for the job, bulky, has few application, yet consumes large amounts of energy and space. In short, Intel will market this as a status symbol among geeks. Sublimate your fear of your inadequacies into the fact that you can afford the TCO for this chip. Sublimate your lack of dates into the knowledge that no one will be as fast as you are. To compensate for the fact that the chip hides in computer, a hologram poster will be supplied, complete with a sufficiently clad female, that the child may hang on the bedroom door or locker without parental or school complaint.
Under the assumption that much spam is loaded with web bugs and cookies, the best thing Mozilla could do it turn off images and cookies in mail by default. As implied in the WSJ Spam article, the spammer can count and get paid for the number of messages that get through. They forge the 'from', 'reply to', and 'subject' headers to fool people into opening the spam. Once open, the web bug is loaded, the cookie and set, and your email address can be marked as good for future spam. If Mozilla was set by default to not load the bugs unless the user specifically requests it, it would allow the user to check the mail without being a target. These options should be moved to the 'mail' section of the prefs.
But it is time to face facts. MS software is convoluted, hacked, integrated for the sake of marketing, and hidden by paranoid executives. We have internet explorer that is so integrated it can be removed, yet separate enough that updates must happen separately from the normal system updates. It is nearly impossible to write code for Windows without Visual Studio due to the closed standards. They have always done this, and it is just getting worse.
I hope more governments move to open source projects. The first step would be to create grants to organizations such as openoffice.org and Mozilla. MS has had ample opportunity to reform in the spirit of democracy, and has laughed at us all the way to the bank. They create web pages that can only be read using their browser, and documents that can only be read by their office suite, and demand that the government use this elitists products. Old capitalistic arguments cannot be used to subvert the importance of open communication within the democratic state.
Of course, in this article Tiwain probably wants to force everyone to use a special version of windows that can be bugged, monitored, and logged by goverment agencies, but that would even be bette with open source. We don't know that Windowss is not logging information to governments. At least with open source we could check.
Second, high level tools and encapsulation is a matter of control and use. Encapsulation helped solve the very large problem of unmanageable code due to unnecessarily sloppy dependencies. This problem, and a solution, was eloquently described in Composite/Structured Design by Myers(1978). Encapsulation allows the creation of hard, self documenting, interfaces. Likewise, high level languages allows the use of reusable code. This could be the consistent look and feel of a GUI, the reliable implementation of a security algorithm, or a portable set of I/O functions. I doubt the modern computer would exist without these technologies. Alll languages are, by definition, high level. And while encapsulation could be implemented in any language, few programmers are disciplined enough to do so.
Final point. Having written much code in C, Fortran, Basic, Assembly, Pascal, etc and maintained legacy code in C and other languages, I shudder when I head 'low level C' and 'legacy methodologies'. I also shudder when I hear 'speed' as the primary qualification. Both of these lead to unnecessary complicated code, often without adequate separation of data or functionality, and usually without any compassion for the programmer to follow.
For instance, I have a store bought firewall. I have an extra box that I could have made into a linux firewall, but i just didn't feel like it. There was a time when I might have done it for the educational benefits, but there are other things I want to do and people I want to those thing with.
This was also what was great about the original Mac. I don't know if anyone remembers the morass of the pc world 20 years ago. Hacked up cables, printer codes in word processor documents, device drivers for each program, networks that were hand configured, if not coded. The original Mac ushered in a world of microcomputers and component that just worked. Cables would work, layers were abstracted so one printer driver, or set of menus, or modem drivers, would work for all applications. It was a box on the table that let the user compute. It was, in fact, an appliance. Like a TV things could be plugged into it. MS ran with part of this idea, but for the most part never fully implemented the 'appliance' part.
A big reason we do not have such a device is that MS sucks at embedded software and lives at the teat of yearly upgrade cycles, and has convinced consumers that MS is the only solution. For instance, I tried to give one relative a old mac that did exactly what she wanted, did not need to be upgraded every month(it was very stable software that had not been upgraded in two years). The problem was she was so indoctrinated into the MS world and did not believe that this machine could do what she wanted. She basically was so branded by MS that anything else would not do. So now she has a machine that does not consistently work, and will have this machine until MS and companies like Dell develop machine that just works. I am not holding my breath.
So yes I do expect to see many computing devices being made into appliances. I know my life would be much easier if I could just give my relatives a secure box that they can plug into the wall and use. It would dial, download mail and surf the web. It would not be so flexible that it could run spyware, download webbugs in email, or become owned.
Also, many states require ADV: in the title. Any commercial email that does not have ADV: should be considered fraudulent.
BTW, I thought it very funny that the WSJ, in an article mentioned earlier, allowed the spammer to say they never forged headers while, at the same time, they admitted they did forge the 'from' field.
For a movie to make so much money and still not make a profit is beyond gross incompetence. No profits indicates massive overspending, corruption, and maybe even embezzlement. If anyone needs to be sued, it is the executive management and the board.
Of course, much like sporting teams and music, it is critical to cook the books so no profit appears. In this way one can underpay the talent, cheat the fans, and steal tax revenue.
BTW, Spider Man reportedly cost $130 million to make. Figure that much again in advertisement and distrubution, which would mean $260 million in up front costs. We know that it took $400 million at the box office. We do not know how much was made on marketing deals(i.e. Spider man cereal).
The fact is that the entertainment industry does not take 'value added' seriously enough. They put two good songs on an album (blues traveler 'four' comes to mind) and expect the populous to pay $20. Why should they, just download the two songs from the net(or, for those who can remember, record it from the radio, anyone got albums from the late night full play?). The same is true for movie theaters. They have 30 screens, 5 movies, only of which one are worth seeing at the theater, and the staff antagonizes you the whole time. How much money do they expect make. And yet I do not see the movie industry, those great champions of legislating profit from intellectual property, doing a thing to help the poor suffering movie theaters. Rather the studios leave movie theaters to fend for themselves and legislate for copy protection in hope of making money on the DVD release.
Harry potter has buzz, is probably a good movie, and is squarely directed at the annoying child demographic. The leak will certainly affect ticket sales in some minuscule manner, but isn't going to make anyone homeless. It is too effective of a method to keep generally undisciplined children quite for an hour or so.
To get the issue at hand, this service is not excluding 1% of the customers, it is excluding 11%. The service requires Windows 98 or higher. Not even the p0rn sites are brave enough to turn away 11% of their potential customers.
As I stated in an earlier post. The RIAA likes the fact that MS has fully embraced DRM. I feel it is likely that this can be used to blackmail others to follow suite.
Or perhaps there are more complex reasons why we take certain positions.
The mistake I see with setting up a website as an alternative to the RIAA, is that the RIAA is very good at what it does. Listening to RIAA music removes the risk of listening to music that is unacceptable to your peer group. It provides the safety of knowing you will have something to talk about to a new acquaintances. There is no way for anyone to compete with this, because the standards and rules are completely arbitrary and depend on the de-facto acceptance by millions of people.
So while it would be technically and financially feasible(the money can come from indie bands and venues, come on, it is not that much money), it really doesn't solve the problem. People who want indie music already buy it. People who don't are probably happy with the current situation. It is really just a matter of which herd one wants to be part. There is honestly little difference between RIAA and non-RIAA music, so the decision pretty much has to be based on ideology, not talent.
Look at this way. There are only three reasons for a site to be IE and Windows only, or even IE only. The first is lack of resources for development. Houston ISD fits this category. The second is incompetent web development. Companies like Cingular and some credit services fit this category. The third is an explicit decision that certain customers are not important, or to keep certain customers out.
The movie industry had resources. The project should make enough money to justify competent programmers. Everyone watches movies, and success depends on popular appeal, so there is no basis to say a certain group of customers is unimportant. That leaves explicitly keeping certain customers out.
Who is being punished? The Linux and BSD users, who broke and published DVD encryption, and are a major thorn in the sides of the movie industry. Apple Mac users, who buy their computers to 'Edit, Rip, Burn,' or, in the eyes of the movie industry, pirates who wish to steal content and force the movie industry into starvation.
As such, I think we take this as an attack on the npn-MS systems. The movie industry does not like non-MS, and they will not play with them, at least until a time when the movie industry can set all the rules. It is the movie industries right to do this, but it is blackmail.
1) If the industry is losing so much money to so-called pirates(estimates up to 50%), and this format is meant to stop pirates, then why doesn't the industry price these discs, and other copy protected discs, for less in an effort to encourage sales. If the industry truly loses 50% of it's sales to pirates, the price of a disc could drop 25% and, even including increased cost of the copy protection, the industry would still be making more than it is now.
2)Is the sound quality, without digital outputs, really substantially different from a CD or vinyl record played over analog equipment. Does the lack of digital outputs in fact make these units glorified cd players for the terminally self-deluded.
3) Is the industry going to give free replacement for damaged or lost discs. A long time ago, we customers were fed the myth of durable CD. Pretty soon we realized that although the CD was tough, it was foolish to carry original media with us where it was more easily damaged or stolen, especially as the quality decreased and the reflective layer had a tendency to peel off. So we made tapes and wondered why we paid all that money for CD in the first place when we would have just bought vinyl or tape(which could be dubbed in 10 minutes). Then, one glorious day, the technology allowed us to make a copy CD, thus justifying the price of the original media. With the new formats, we are back to the tape backup, and still have to pay the full amount for the original media. I think we deserve lifetime replacement rights, even if we do not have the original media.
The problem, as it has always been, is communicating the subtle differences between the believers of truth and the seekers of truth. I use the former instead of 'skeptics' or 'conspiracy theories' because both these groups are useful and good if they are not just trying to push a personal belief on everyone else. The same goes for the latter term.
The reason most of the moon-landing conspiracy stuff is so useless is that it hasn't really added to our knowledge. Mostly what it has done is made obvious and trivial statements in an effort to convince people that the moon landing could have been faked. Well, duh. A person must be the developmental equivalent of an average 10 year old not to be creative enough to figure out that things can be faked. However showing something can be done, or even showing motive and opportunity, is not enough. It would be like convicting someone for theft because they had means, motive, and opportunity, but nothing was missing, and no attempt was made(which is done, under conspiracy laws, but that is different). The question of whether the moon landing could have been faked, and consequently debunking these scenarios, is so far from the point as to be silly.
Didn't everyone who stayed on the planer die of some virus passed by diry telephones?
In this case, IBM tends to market to sophisticated markets. They tend to, and are increasingly, trying to serve the sophisticated market in new ways so as not to lose to MS, Dell, and others. Hopefully we will not see these devices everywhere, because, as you say, once a thumbprint is compromised it is always compromised. I honestly do not know if this is a useful tool, but i can imagine some applications where it could be.
On the other hand if MS did this, your point might be valid because then the technology would be shoe-horned into general use. For instance, if the validation was in the OS and IE, and the reader were on the keyboard, thousands of merchants might use the fingerprint for sole verification. This would create a large incentive to hack the system, which, a you point out, would only require the capture of the digital signature of the fingerprint, which is not a replaceable token.
With respect to music, they seem to have pushed us too far. People are offended that they cannot rip the CDs, so they download the music instead. I am not sure if this is right or wrong. The latest Eminem album, while certainly a desire, is not a necessity, and, even though the record company does not lose money, no one makes money either. Perhaps if you buy a t-shirt, the artist makes money, but why have a t-shirt when you want the music?
The alternative, of course, is to stay away from the major labels. If the artist produces a CD and sells them at concerts or whatever, the artist gets the money. The labels would say that this is an inefficient business model that will not bring the best talent to the top, but who cares. There is, quite frankly, much more excellent talent out there than can be accommodated by any business model. We, as customers, might as well try to support artist rather than business models.
If you are going to keep a car 10 years, then you might pay $3000 a year for the car, finance charges, and repairs. If we drive 10,000 a year, at 15 mpg we need around 650(910) gallon, at 20 mpg we need 500(700) gallons, and at 30mpg you need 333(466), at $1.4 a gallon. Therefore, at 15 mpg, gasoline is 25% of total cost, but at 30mpg it is only 13%. To speak directly to your example, if you increase gas consumption from 20MPG to 24MPG, you are talking comparable amounts of money. I certainly think that this is a reasonable increase.
Also, if you spend 1K a year, or 85/month, gas prices only need to 12% to match that cost. This would mean a change from $1.20 to $1.35. That is well within the variability of gas prices. For instance, between 10/95 and 6/96 the prices increased 18%. In the first half of 2000, prices rose nearly 20%. In the extreme case, gas prices were below $1 in mid 1998, but above $1.4 today.
The problem is that science starts with an acknowledgment that we may be wrong. Nothing in science can be proven exactly. Nothing in science can be taken as truth. We have no reason to believe that the moon landing did not happen, but, scientifically, we can not say it absolutely did happen. There is nothing wrong with this bacause the level of doubt is so trivial as to have no practical effect. This doubt is then used by people who wish to disprove the moon landing. This is generally done by mangling facts to fits a predetermined reality. Because the anti-science side is fighting from a deeply held personal belief, and the pro-science side is fighting from a spirit of discovery, science loses.
The second problem is assumptions. Science assumes that a certain level of proof is good enough. Science assumes that the ultimate truth is not necessary; all we need is a theory that fits the available fact well enough and can be applied to a known domain. Science accepts the possibility that theories may be modified in the fullness of time. These assumptions not only form an achilles heal that can easily be exploited, but also form a basis to make scientist sound foolish. For example, lets take a person who believes the earth is flat. This person points to building, and notes that when the design is drawn up, the assumption is indeed made that they earth is in fact flat. The reasonable person notes that locally, over a small distance, the Earth is taken to be flat. The flat-Earth proponent then asks, is the earth flat, or is it not! This person uses the assumptions of science, that theory need only hold to a known domain, to make the scientists look like a fool.
So by engaging these nuts directly, we teach kids that this is useful. What might be good is a curriculla that explains what science does, what it does not do, and why science must concede all arguments to religious zealots. It really does no one any good to argue with these people. Anyone hypocritical enough to deny the moon landing but use a microwave or watch tv pretty much deserves what they get. The best we can do is make sure our kids are smart enough to know the difference between science theory and personal belief.
I see a problem because younger people tend to ignore books because they are old. I recently talked to a (20ish) manager who spoke like he never read The Mythical Man Month or Debugging the Development Process. It was like he really believed that a 80 hour work weeks and more programmers would bring the project in on time.
As has been viciously shown over the past couple years, fundamentals don't change just because someone rewrites a book. It is precisely those books that prove to be fundamental, those books that do not need to be updated every few years, that provide a person with a basis of knowledge.
I do not view zip drives in this way. Yes the zip drive is expensive. Zip media is also expensive. However Zip disks are very reliable. I have been using Zip disks for over 6 years and never had a problem with one. I have some rather old Zip disks that are still in perfect condition. OTOH, I have had CD burners for only a few years, and have had quite a bit of trouble with media quality and reliable writing. I have had several disks fall apart after a couple years. I am phasing out Zip Disks, but still know people who use them.
For some data, it is worthwhile to spend some money to buy reliability
You can talk about lack of quality from Sun, Apple, Linux, SGI all day long, but if you believe in free markets, that talk holds no water. Many people pay a lot of money for the above products when it would often be simpler and less expensive to buy an old intel machine a steal a copy of windows. Yet the above companies survive.
M$ is bringing investors and, to a larger degree, brokers a lot of profits. From that point of view the demise of Sun, probably bad for the long term, would be great for the short term as it would remove yet another thorn in M$ side.
The fact is that Sun, Apple, and everyone else makes better products because of M$. M$ makes better products because of everyone else. The same goes for the Intel, AMD, Motorola and AMD.
M$ wants the next step to a closed commodity box in which they control the hardware, software,and access. I do not think that this is a bad for certain applications. However, without competition, and without the lawsuits, this is all we will have for most applications.