It's not that Ticketmaster is bitching about people not buying from them. Ticketmaster is bitching because people using Ticket.com don't hit the pages with banner advertisements, and as a result Ticketmaster gets lowered revenues from click-throughs and impressions.
Lest we want to start an all-out war here, I think you're both right and wrong.
You're right - there is some amount of people that would not buy software because there is a free, pirated version available.
The flip side, however, does exist - there are some amount of people that would not buy software even if they were unable to obtain a pirated version.
When the software associations release their figures, they automatically assume that every pirated release constitutes a lost sale. You've demonstrated that in some cases, that is true. In others, however, it's not. That means that some subset of the figures that the piracy associations use are incorrect - at best, exaggerated, and at worst, purposefully misleading in order to make the problem seem worse than it is.
In summary, while I don't think you're completely wrong (in fact, I think you're mostly right), I also think that saying the blanket equation of:
monetary loss = (copies pirated) * (price)
is not entirely accurate. Unauthorized software duplication is certainly something that shouldn't be done; on the other hand, saying that everyone who steals would've bought a copy is untrue as well.
Correction: Be was not too greedy. The real story, if you had been paying attention, was that in buying NeXT Apple also wound up with Steve Jobs again - their "only hope" for a miraculous cure to their disastrous financial/market condition.
Be didn't price themselves out of the market; Apple simply wanted something that Be couldn't give them: Steve Jobs.
Saying "light bends in a gravity field" is different from saying "light has mass."
The bending effect is a distortion of space-time by the mass of whatever is causing it. For instance, our local star (yes, the bright glowing thing outside) is so massive that it actually warps the space-time surrounding it. When light passes through that altered space-time, it follows the contours of it. It's like threading a small wire through an uncooked elbow noodle - it's going to follow the curve. Whether the photons have mass or not is irrelevant to the issue; the photons will "curve" because the path they follow is curved.
Smaller objects (planets, humans, cats, the new Massachusetts quarter) also warp space-time due to their masses. However, the latter three objects provided as an example have such a small mass that the space-time warping is negligable. You'll never notice it, nor will anybody else. It's so small it is irrelevant.
As a result, the issue of whether photons having gravitational mass would now become: do photons warp space-time in their vicinity (even on infinitesimal scales)?
I, personally, would say no. Then again, I'm not a theoretical physicist, so many answer may be akin to saying, "Yes, of course the Earth is flat."
No, you don't understand why I was excited (and I'm a BeOS user, too).
The reason I'm excited is because somebody can take the source and make it work with X-Windows. This would be a pretty awesome hacking opportunity for an enterprising individual(s). It's not that this thing will compile straight out of the box, but with some hacking and pounding, who knows what you might be able to do with it?:)
The license is the Open Tracker license, but it looks to be almost a version of the BSD license (not familiar with the intimates of the latter, I can't say for sure).
DAMN! Maybe we'll finally get a decent GUI for Linux!;)
The reason nobody's mentioned the author is because it doesn't matter.
No matter how good the author is, he's still working within the limits of the D&D system. As a result, those people who like the D&D system are probably going to like the revised D&D system, becuase it can't stray that far from the original.
Those who *don't* like the D&D system are probably not going to like the revised system much, because it can't stray that far from the original.
What HazWizTSR (as somebody else wrote) fails to grasp is that people have differing needs that not *every* single system can address. I would truly hate to see a system as complex, intricate, and still quite useable and playable as FASA's "Earthdawn" mechanics - mechanics which really allowed one to get a feel for the world which they governed get replaced by something as generic as AD&D.
>This, if anything, makes the prospect of buying 3e even more tantalizing, since not only would I be purchasing an incredibly cool product, I'd be rewarding a company for its openness and fair competitive spirit.
Fair competitive spirit?
Can I sell an improved version of the Player's Handbook under their D20 license? No. Can I compete with their core rules while still leveraging the available third-party source material as a result? No.
The D20 license is akin to SCSL: you get to look at the source, and if you make complementary products, great. If you want to make and distribute core changes, though, HOW DARE YOU!
That's the *point* of this plan - they make the most money on the Player's Handbook, so they'll become an exclusive producer. Somebody sees this cool RPG supplement in the shops, realizes it uses the D20 system, and buys the Players Handbook as well.
Frankly, I don't quite see the point of this. For novelty's sake, it's interesting, but there are far better truly-generic systems than D&D/D20 - GURPS, for one.
The problem is that there are two licenses on the site, the one you linked to and the D20 license, the latter which seems more likely to apply to the system rules. The thrust of the D20 license is that you can't reproduce things like character generation and experience tables - if you make adjustments, you have to post your changes.
In other words, it's a lot like saying that you can't distribute a modified Linux kernel - you simply have to distribute the diffs. While this suffices in most instances, occasionally it's a good thing to be able to distribute the whole damn thing.
My understanding is that most "buy it at Walmart!" DVD recordable disks have the CCA key area already burned out, so that while you'll get the content you won't get the unscrambling keys.
As a result, while all of the content on the disk is still there and reproduced perfectly, the DVD player can't descramble the content.
The DVD encryption function is designed to restrict the user from being able to view it on an unlicensed machine. An unlicensed machine is one that has not paid the DVD-CCA for the algorithm that descrambles the DVD content.
Draw your own conclusion as to what the DVD-CCA is protecting: content piracy, or their wallets.
Not only do some DVDs have copyright warnings, but they have copyright warnings in multiple languages (my copy of Star Trek: First Contact has a "copying is prohibited" message in both English *and* French). Further, some DVDs also toss up one or more studio banners (the pegasus comes flying in, we get the WB seal, etc.) that can't be skipped past either.
Frankly, I just want to watch the goddamn movie. If I really have a desire to find out what studio made the movie, I'll look on the packaging.
Visually, I mostly agree. The desktop is much more visually customizable than, say, Windows. I can configure window bars, toolbars, buttons, text, etc.
However, there are still gaps. Perhaps I want my GNOME or KDE "bar" to look less like the Windows Start bar and more like, say, BeOS' Deskbar. Can I do that? Nope. So it's not quite reached the point of true customizability.
Why is that? Because neither KDE nor GNOME support the ability to customize *behaviour,* which would be required for me to have something resembling a BeOS Deskbar. Looks are one thing, but when it comes down to it neither KDE nor GNOME really provide for action customization.
For instance, having used BeOS at home for a while, I find that the ability to right-click on a window tab and have that window go to the bottom of the z-order is an *invaluable* behaviour. When I have several different windows open, that ability becomes incredibly useful to toggle between them without resorting to pull-down or context menus. However, not only do KDE nor GNOME provide that, but they don't offer a mechanism for me to specify that action.
Further, one of the other nice features is that I can drag the window tab around in BeOS to organize my windows logically. Many of the themes for E, KDE, and GNOME feature similar window "tabs" (as opposed to a straight bar, like Windows or the Mac). I would like to be able to program that dragging behaviour for a theme that has a tabbed window - but again, neither KDE or GNOME provide that.
Granted, neither BeOS nor Windows provide much in the way of user customization for either visual or behavioural aspects, but the point is that the Linux GUIs still have a long way to go before you can honestly say that they are "COMPLETELY *customize*"-able.
I don't see quite how the factors in your post prevent manned interplanetary missions.
Essentially, when it comes to sending things between planets, it all boils down to propulsion. What you take with you is largely irrelevant. In other words, the real problem is getting things moving at a desired rate. Everything else is relative child's play.
Since a Mars Direct mission utilizes generic forms of propulsion in the launch for Mars, what the astronauts can bring with them is really only limited by the type of rocket(s) that fires them into space. The more powerful the rocket engine, the more mass that the astronauts can tote. It doesn't matter whether that mass is in the form of food, air, water, fuel, biological material, or porno mags. The rocket doesn't care. It's just going to push it.
Once they're in space, again, it's simply mass to push for their engines. All you need is an engine that can accelerate the spacecraft's mass to the desired speed.
Using a Mars Direct plan, only the air, food, water, and other materials that the astronauts need to get *to* Mars is actually carried with them. Prior to the launch of the human beings, the necessary raw materials and machines - including atmospheric chemical processors that will create air, water, and rocket fuel on the planet's surface - will be launched and landed on Mars. As a result, the amount of weight and machinery carried on the trip there is drastically reduced.
As a result, all you really need is enough air, food, and water to last for six months. Contrary to popular belief, there are ways to carry this stuff such that it serves multiple purposes. For instance, the water that the astronauts would need could be carried between the hull of the ship and the living quarters, and would provide protection against solar radiation (much like water, in various forms, provides insulation for the radioactive material in nuclear power plants). Food could be stored in much the same way. In addition to providing a valuable resource, using the water as shielding also means you don't need to carry separate shielding - reducing the weight needed if you were to carry both water and separate shielding.
Air is really the trick, but with a moderately large reserve, good recycling systems and some other tricks, you could have enough to last you the six month trip to Mars. You don't need to carry over that amount, because the chemical atmospheric processor can generate it for you while you are on the planet.
So what you have is a single mass you need to move (the habitation capsule/landing craft), without having to push all of the material they need for living on the planet's surface and leaving it (because they've already put that stuff there on previous launches). Using *current generation rockets* (most likely of Soviet origin, because they have the most powerful ones) connected together, we could send a crew of four astronauts with all of the necessary life support.
>Which is not how these projects are being funded, therefore my objection to them.
So, in other words, you must object to the whole of the United States government, both federal and state. Neither one of them really asks you to pay for anything - they forcibly take it out of you one way or another (taxes, and if you don't pay your taxes, jail time).
Government is the overhead we accept for wanting a more-or-less civilized society. If you want anarchy (and I don't mean rioting, I mean true self-governing), then the United States isn't the place to live. If you choose to live here, either voluntarily or making excuses as to why you can't leave, then you're accepting governmental overhead.
NASA spent that money to design a spacecraft that would spent several years in deep space, resist incredible amounts of radiation (the probe has already managed to go well over twice the amount of radiation it was designed for without serious glitches), computers and software on board the craft to manage all of its systems as well as do diagnostic and preventative capabilities (recongize when an overload of radiation causes the computer to reset itself and automatically correct it), and a vast amount of sensor and communication equipment. Further, it was designed to not explore just *one* world, but Jupiter and many of it's moons - a more complex logistical problem than just dropping an orbiter around, say, Mars.
Given the complexity of the task, NASA built a spacecraft that would be able to do all of the above. They really over-engineered the thing, and then put a *reasonable* cap on the lifespan of the thing (2 years). They were being conservative on the lifespan, and weren't too surprised that it was able to go for another extended mission. That it has lasted this long, though, as they've exposed it to more and more radiation, and has returned the amount and quality of data it has returned, has amazed NASA.
Galileo was one of the last of the big-money space probes, designed to last in inhospital environments and to be quite self-sufficient in case of an emergency. The newer probes, such as the various Mars probes, are much cheaper, but don't have nearly the capabilities as Galileo does - and hence we lose them when a more expensive craft, with redundant systems, diagnostic capabilities, and smarter computers would've survived.
Yes, I think what else could've been done with the money. We could've spent it on the war with drugs, which has turned out to be an exceptional failure that many question was even necessary. We could've spent it on law enforcement - and yet, with places like the LAPD, NYPD, and New Orleans, it doesn't matter how many police we have when the ones we hire are crooked in the first place. We could've built a couple of more fighter planes to add to the military - or maybe we should've just blown that money building a single B-2 bomber.
So maybe you're right - we should've spent that money hiring crooked cops, building implements of destruction, and trying to solve a non-existent drug problem.
I mean, hey, why bother *learning* anything when you can build an aircraft with the radar signature of a bumblebee?
IANAL, but I'd be inclined to say the moral of the story is if you hack a telco and gain access to illegal documents, use *very* strong cryptography to encode it.
If they track you down, they probably know you have it - but if they can't *prove* you have it, then that's enough for reasonable doubt. I believe something similar happened in Kevin Mitnick's case - the government has encrypted data that they never got a chance to use against Mitnick at trial, because they had no idea what was in it.
My statistics was about five years ago, but I think the way it works is that you have to start looking at multiple chances.
In other words, the chance of one box going down today is 10%. However, the chances of two boxes going down is 10% of that original 10%. The chances of three boxes going down is 10% of the chance of two boxes going down which in turn is 10% the chance of one box going down, and so on.
So that's why the 99.999999% availability is most likely the correct answer. The probability of all eight machines doing down in one day from "natural" causes is statistically unlikely.
On the other hand, if the electrical workers in the street accidentally disconnect power to the building where the web servers are located, you're screwed.
I doubt it (although I did get a chuckle out of the McDonalds bit).
Assuming the future archaeologists uncover/engineer a way of reading our digital formats (and that assumes, of course, our digital formats - like CDs - exist in any number in several thousand years), they'll easily uncover evidence of how we communicated. Think about it - how many references are there to "printing," paper, books, television, movies, etc., in common use today? In my email archives, I probably have hundreds of referencings to printing things out or watching TV.
Further, there will be documents inevitably left around. Look at such thing as the Dead Sea scrolls, which survived many thousands of years. If anything, they'll simply have a misunderstood idea of what we committed to paper (since "important" historical documents like the Constitution were written, and everyday crap like the specs on my desk will no doubt be destroyed, they may simply consider that paper was reserved only for important things).
If my understanding of copyright law is correct (IANAL!), DeCSS is copyrighted by the author(s), even if the function of the program may be illegal.
If the MPAA/whoever ignores the license agreement and decides to crack the encryption on the self-extracting archive anyways, you can simply turn around and file a countersuit against them under the auspices of the DMCA for unauthorized circumvention of a technological means for controlling access to a copyrighted work.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not that Ticketmaster is bitching about people not buying from them. Ticketmaster is bitching because people using Ticket.com don't hit the pages with banner advertisements, and as a result Ticketmaster gets lowered revenues from click-throughs and impressions.
Lest we want to start an all-out war here, I think you're both right and wrong.
You're right - there is some amount of people that would not buy software because there is a free, pirated version available.
The flip side, however, does exist - there are some amount of people that would not buy software even if they were unable to obtain a pirated version.
When the software associations release their figures, they automatically assume that every pirated release constitutes a lost sale. You've demonstrated that in some cases, that is true. In others, however, it's not. That means that some subset of the figures that the piracy associations use are incorrect - at best, exaggerated, and at worst, purposefully misleading in order to make the problem seem worse than it is.
In summary, while I don't think you're completely wrong (in fact, I think you're mostly right), I also think that saying the blanket equation of:
monetary loss = (copies pirated) * (price)
is not entirely accurate. Unauthorized software duplication is certainly something that shouldn't be done; on the other hand, saying that everyone who steals would've bought a copy is untrue as well.
>Be was too greedy
Correction: Be was not too greedy. The real story, if you had been paying attention, was that in buying NeXT Apple also wound up with Steve Jobs again - their "only hope" for a miraculous cure to their disastrous financial/market condition.
Be didn't price themselves out of the market; Apple simply wanted something that Be couldn't give them: Steve Jobs.
Saying "light bends in a gravity field" is different from saying "light has mass."
The bending effect is a distortion of space-time by the mass of whatever is causing it. For instance, our local star (yes, the bright glowing thing outside) is so massive that it actually warps the space-time surrounding it. When light passes through that altered space-time, it follows the contours of it. It's like threading a small wire through an uncooked elbow noodle - it's going to follow the curve. Whether the photons have mass or not is irrelevant to the issue; the photons will "curve" because the path they follow is curved.
Smaller objects (planets, humans, cats, the new Massachusetts quarter) also warp space-time due to their masses. However, the latter three objects provided as an example have such a small mass that the space-time warping is negligable. You'll never notice it, nor will anybody else. It's so small it is irrelevant.
As a result, the issue of whether photons having gravitational mass would now become: do photons warp space-time in their vicinity (even on infinitesimal scales)?
I, personally, would say no. Then again, I'm not a theoretical physicist, so many answer may be akin to saying, "Yes, of course the Earth is flat."
No, you don't understand why I was excited (and I'm a BeOS user, too).
:)
The reason I'm excited is because somebody can take the source and make it work with X-Windows. This would be a pretty awesome hacking opportunity for an enterprising individual(s). It's not that this thing will compile straight out of the box, but with some hacking and pounding, who knows what you might be able to do with it?
The site is at http://opentracker.org.
;)
The license is the Open Tracker license, but it looks to be almost a version of the BSD license (not familiar with the intimates of the latter, I can't say for sure).
DAMN! Maybe we'll finally get a decent GUI for Linux!
Apparently, the connection from their offices to their servers has been cut.
New release time is marked for 9 AM EST (6 AM PST).
The reason nobody's mentioned the author is because it doesn't matter.
No matter how good the author is, he's still working within the limits of the D&D system. As a result, those people who like the D&D system are probably going to like the revised D&D system, becuase it can't stray that far from the original.
Those who *don't* like the D&D system are probably not going to like the revised system much, because it can't stray that far from the original.
What HazWizTSR (as somebody else wrote) fails to grasp is that people have differing needs that not *every* single system can address. I would truly hate to see a system as complex, intricate, and still quite useable and playable as FASA's "Earthdawn" mechanics - mechanics which really allowed one to get a feel for the world which they governed get replaced by something as generic as AD&D.
>This, if anything, makes the prospect of buying 3e even more tantalizing, since not only would I be purchasing an incredibly cool product, I'd be rewarding a company for its openness and fair competitive spirit.
Fair competitive spirit?
Can I sell an improved version of the Player's Handbook under their D20 license? No. Can I compete with their core rules while still leveraging the available third-party source material as a result? No.
The D20 license is akin to SCSL: you get to look at the source, and if you make complementary products, great. If you want to make and distribute core changes, though, HOW DARE YOU!
*sigh*
That's the *point* of this plan - they make the most money on the Player's Handbook, so they'll become an exclusive producer. Somebody sees this cool RPG supplement in the shops, realizes it uses the D20 system, and buys the Players Handbook as well.
Frankly, I don't quite see the point of this. For novelty's sake, it's interesting, but there are far better truly-generic systems than D&D/D20 - GURPS, for one.
Which license?
The problem is that there are two licenses on the site, the one you linked to and the D20 license, the latter which seems more likely to apply to the system rules. The thrust of the D20 license is that you can't reproduce things like character generation and experience tables - if you make adjustments, you have to post your changes.
In other words, it's a lot like saying that you can't distribute a modified Linux kernel - you simply have to distribute the diffs. While this suffices in most instances, occasionally it's a good thing to be able to distribute the whole damn thing.
>SBLIVE! SMP drivers: While Creative has promised them, I still haven't seen them.
Try compiling one of the daily tarballs. I did that a few months ago, and my SB Live! worked fine (on an dual PII/400 system).
My understanding is that most "buy it at Walmart!" DVD recordable disks have the CCA key area already burned out, so that while you'll get the content you won't get the unscrambling keys.
As a result, while all of the content on the disk is still there and reproduced perfectly, the DVD player can't descramble the content.
The DVD encryption function is designed to restrict the user from being able to view it on an unlicensed machine. An unlicensed machine is one that has not paid the DVD-CCA for the algorithm that descrambles the DVD content.
Draw your own conclusion as to what the DVD-CCA is protecting: content piracy, or their wallets.
Not only do some DVDs have copyright warnings, but they have copyright warnings in multiple languages (my copy of Star Trek: First Contact has a "copying is prohibited" message in both English *and* French). Further, some DVDs also toss up one or more studio banners (the pegasus comes flying in, we get the WB seal, etc.) that can't be skipped past either.
Frankly, I just want to watch the goddamn movie. If I really have a desire to find out what studio made the movie, I'll look on the packaging.
*grumble*
I'm going to take issues with (b).
Visually, I mostly agree. The desktop is much more visually customizable than, say, Windows. I can configure window bars, toolbars, buttons, text, etc.
However, there are still gaps. Perhaps I want my GNOME or KDE "bar" to look less like the Windows Start bar and more like, say, BeOS' Deskbar. Can I do that? Nope. So it's not quite reached the point of true customizability.
Why is that? Because neither KDE nor GNOME support the ability to customize *behaviour,* which would be required for me to have something resembling a BeOS Deskbar. Looks are one thing, but when it comes down to it neither KDE nor GNOME really provide for action customization.
For instance, having used BeOS at home for a while, I find that the ability to right-click on a window tab and have that window go to the bottom of the z-order is an *invaluable* behaviour. When I have several different windows open, that ability becomes incredibly useful to toggle between them without resorting to pull-down or context menus. However, not only do KDE nor GNOME provide that, but they don't offer a mechanism for me to specify that action.
Further, one of the other nice features is that I can drag the window tab around in BeOS to organize my windows logically. Many of the themes for E, KDE, and GNOME feature similar window "tabs" (as opposed to a straight bar, like Windows or the Mac). I would like to be able to program that dragging behaviour for a theme that has a tabbed window - but again, neither KDE or GNOME provide that.
Granted, neither BeOS nor Windows provide much in the way of user customization for either visual or behavioural aspects, but the point is that the Linux GUIs still have a long way to go before you can honestly say that they are "COMPLETELY *customize*"-able.
I don't see quite how the factors in your post prevent manned interplanetary missions.
Essentially, when it comes to sending things between planets, it all boils down to propulsion. What you take with you is largely irrelevant. In other words, the real problem is getting things moving at a desired rate. Everything else is relative child's play.
Since a Mars Direct mission utilizes generic forms of propulsion in the launch for Mars, what the astronauts can bring with them is really only limited by the type of rocket(s) that fires them into space. The more powerful the rocket engine, the more mass that the astronauts can tote. It doesn't matter whether that mass is in the form of food, air, water, fuel, biological material, or porno mags. The rocket doesn't care. It's just going to push it.
Once they're in space, again, it's simply mass to push for their engines. All you need is an engine that can accelerate the spacecraft's mass to the desired speed.
Using a Mars Direct plan, only the air, food, water, and other materials that the astronauts need to get *to* Mars is actually carried with them. Prior to the launch of the human beings, the necessary raw materials and machines - including atmospheric chemical processors that will create air, water, and rocket fuel on the planet's surface - will be launched and landed on Mars. As a result, the amount of weight and machinery carried on the trip there is drastically reduced.
As a result, all you really need is enough air, food, and water to last for six months. Contrary to popular belief, there are ways to carry this stuff such that it serves multiple purposes. For instance, the water that the astronauts would need could be carried between the hull of the ship and the living quarters, and would provide protection against solar radiation (much like water, in various forms, provides insulation for the radioactive material in nuclear power plants). Food could be stored in much the same way. In addition to providing a valuable resource, using the water as shielding also means you don't need to carry separate shielding - reducing the weight needed if you were to carry both water and separate shielding.
Air is really the trick, but with a moderately large reserve, good recycling systems and some other tricks, you could have enough to last you the six month trip to Mars. You don't need to carry over that amount, because the chemical atmospheric processor can generate it for you while you are on the planet.
So what you have is a single mass you need to move (the habitation capsule/landing craft), without having to push all of the material they need for living on the planet's surface and leaving it (because they've already put that stuff there on previous launches). Using *current generation rockets* (most likely of Soviet origin, because they have the most powerful ones) connected together, we could send a crew of four astronauts with all of the necessary life support.
>Which is not how these projects are being funded, therefore my objection to them.
So, in other words, you must object to the whole of the United States government, both federal and state. Neither one of them really asks you to pay for anything - they forcibly take it out of you one way or another (taxes, and if you don't pay your taxes, jail time).
Government is the overhead we accept for wanting a more-or-less civilized society. If you want anarchy (and I don't mean rioting, I mean true self-governing), then the United States isn't the place to live. If you choose to live here, either voluntarily or making excuses as to why you can't leave, then you're accepting governmental overhead.
How much is science worth to you?
NASA spent that money to design a spacecraft that would spent several years in deep space, resist incredible amounts of radiation (the probe has already managed to go well over twice the amount of radiation it was designed for without serious glitches), computers and software on board the craft to manage all of its systems as well as do diagnostic and preventative capabilities (recongize when an overload of radiation causes the computer to reset itself and automatically correct it), and a vast amount of sensor and communication equipment. Further, it was designed to not explore just *one* world, but Jupiter and many of it's moons - a more complex logistical problem than just dropping an orbiter around, say, Mars.
Given the complexity of the task, NASA built a spacecraft that would be able to do all of the above. They really over-engineered the thing, and then put a *reasonable* cap on the lifespan of the thing (2 years). They were being conservative on the lifespan, and weren't too surprised that it was able to go for another extended mission. That it has lasted this long, though, as they've exposed it to more and more radiation, and has returned the amount and quality of data it has returned, has amazed NASA.
Galileo was one of the last of the big-money space probes, designed to last in inhospital environments and to be quite self-sufficient in case of an emergency. The newer probes, such as the various Mars probes, are much cheaper, but don't have nearly the capabilities as Galileo does - and hence we lose them when a more expensive craft, with redundant systems, diagnostic capabilities, and smarter computers would've survived.
Yes, I think what else could've been done with the money. We could've spent it on the war with drugs, which has turned out to be an exceptional failure that many question was even necessary. We could've spent it on law enforcement - and yet, with places like the LAPD, NYPD, and New Orleans, it doesn't matter how many police we have when the ones we hire are crooked in the first place. We could've built a couple of more fighter planes to add to the military - or maybe we should've just blown that money building a single B-2 bomber.
So maybe you're right - we should've spent that money hiring crooked cops, building implements of destruction, and trying to solve a non-existent drug problem.
I mean, hey, why bother *learning* anything when you can build an aircraft with the radar signature of a bumblebee?
>The joke is, physicists don't really know for sure what constitutes a "measurement".
A measurement is any interaction with an object that causes its probability waveform to collapse to a single value.
IANAL, but I'd be inclined to say the moral of the story is if you hack a telco and gain access to illegal documents, use *very* strong cryptography to encode it.
If they track you down, they probably know you have it - but if they can't *prove* you have it, then that's enough for reasonable doubt. I believe something similar happened in Kevin Mitnick's case - the government has encrypted data that they never got a chance to use against Mitnick at trial, because they had no idea what was in it.
Anyways... just me speaking out of my arse.
What job will pay your on-job parking tickets?
Law enforcement.
At least give credit where credit is due. Your remark is nothing but a paraphrased, plagarised Dennis Miller quote.
*grumble*
My statistics was about five years ago, but I think the way it works is that you have to start looking at multiple chances.
In other words, the chance of one box going down today is 10%. However, the chances of two boxes going down is 10% of that original 10%. The chances of three boxes going down is 10% of the chance of two boxes going down which in turn is 10% the chance of one box going down, and so on.
So that's why the 99.999999% availability is most likely the correct answer. The probability of all eight machines doing down in one day from "natural" causes is statistically unlikely.
On the other hand, if the electrical workers in the street accidentally disconnect power to the building where the web servers are located, you're screwed.
I doubt it (although I did get a chuckle out of the McDonalds bit).
Assuming the future archaeologists uncover/engineer a way of reading our digital formats (and that assumes, of course, our digital formats - like CDs - exist in any number in several thousand years), they'll easily uncover evidence of how we communicated. Think about it - how many references are there to "printing," paper, books, television, movies, etc., in common use today? In my email archives, I probably have hundreds of referencings to printing things out or watching TV.
Further, there will be documents inevitably left around. Look at such thing as the Dead Sea scrolls, which survived many thousands of years. If anything, they'll simply have a misunderstood idea of what we committed to paper (since "important" historical documents like the Constitution were written, and everyday crap like the specs on my desk will no doubt be destroyed, they may simply consider that paper was reserved only for important things).
Just an observation.
Better yet, encrypt it.
If my understanding of copyright law is correct (IANAL!), DeCSS is copyrighted by the author(s), even if the function of the program may be illegal.
If the MPAA/whoever ignores the license agreement and decides to crack the encryption on the self-extracting archive anyways, you can simply turn around and file a countersuit against them under the auspices of the DMCA for unauthorized circumvention of a technological means for controlling access to a copyrighted work.