I've written about this before but the gist is you are making one HUGE assumption and that is that you have the same protection under the DMCA as the large companies.
You don't. In fact, you probably have next to none at all. The government can't be *forced* to prosecute anyone for criminal acts, and if you think that a network of geeks with MP3 libraries could, even as a collective, fund a civil challenge against Vivendi... (hint: ain't gonna happen).
That's a hole you could sail a battleship through.
Simply put, if you swap MP3s that you don't have the right to, you're violating copyright. The RIAA, et al have a legitimate point. Now, their tactics suck, and there are far superior ways to solve this problem than hacking/DoSing boxes, but saying we have the right to violate copyright and the law is on our side is foolish.
I have to agree with you mostly, but I can suggest a real-life computing situation where a "queen" is necessary for operation of the collective.
Windows 2000 domains.
Any flaming aside, Windows 2k has something called FSMO ("fizzmo") roles. Short for "Flexible Single Master Operation", the roles correspond to tasks that only one machine in the entire enterprise can do. This is to avoid any sort of duplication/collision of effort for certain important roles. Now, unless you actively do anything, the first box you bring up handles all the tasks (Schema Master, Domain Naming Master, PDC Emulator, RID Master, and Infrastructure Master if you're curious). Any machine can take over any or all of the roles, but there must be only one box handling a role. However, aside from the FSMO roles, all domain controllers are logically equivalent in terms of importance to the domain.
So, how does this correlate to the Borg? Well, assuming that there are a number of roles to play that are essential to the operation of the collective and that destruction of the master would cause a disruption in the collective mind until regeneration (think of a lost token in tokenring) so you'd choose a protected unit. This would be the "queen". Ideally, however, the system would be such that any unit could take over any or all of the roles quickly in case of danger.
Of course, why she'd be all slinky and with a removable head is beyond me.
As my mother said (speaking about activism):
"You have your tree shakers and your jelly makers."
Translation:
You have your people who make a whole lot of noise and get everything all shaken up. These people are often zealots who are viewed by most rational people as being partially out of their gourds.
Then you have the people who "gather the fruit," so to speak, of the zealots efforts and make something constructive out of them.
You need both types. The tree-shakers are often willing to push boundaries and to take risks that might seem insane, but that in the end serve to advance the cause as a whole. But people rarely listen to nut-jobs, it's up to the level-headed people to transform the work of maniacs into something suitable for everyone (and to filter out the psychotic ideas).
So pay no heed to RMS. He's nuts, and most people recognise that, but thanks to his extremeism, lots of good things have come about (only due to the people who know when to listen to him and when to tune him out).
AFAIK, Cygwin != Linux (exactly). Code that compiles cleanly on a stock Linux (be it Debian, Mandrake, etc) is not guaranteed to do the same under Cygwin. While Cygwin provides a Unix-like environment, it has its idiosyncracies which may require some hand-hacking, be it in Makefiles, or in the code itself.
So I'd say that while some of the code may not require any modifications, there is probably enough tweaking involved that I would count it as porting.
You've (and others) have told us that StarOffice is to OpenOffice as Netscape is to Mozilla. But that tells us very little other than the fact that one is a derivative of the other.
The question is, what does StarOffice provide that is different? What licensed software has been included and how does it affect the suite?
The work that you do in class should be a solo effort. It's job is not so much to teach you how to be a good coder, but to teach you the fundamentals. It goes without saying that while a good coder can write code to solve a problem, a great coder knows how to reuse other good code and save time and effort. But, of course, you have to pass through the initial stage of becoming a good coder. So classes are better for you to develop your internal skills.
Conversely, joining a (slightly large) research team (for credit) is the opposite of being in a class in that you are taught to borrow and reuse what you can and to work and learn from others. Whereas a professor and a few TAs in a large class may only have a cursory time to go over your work, if you're in a research project you can bet that all involved will see (and critique) on what you've done.
I did that and one of the first things I learned is how hard things can really be in the (pseudo)real world of a research project. Though I do reccomend arranging some sort of "Sempai-Kohai" relationship between graduate and undergraduate students. Often the Professor is so occupied with teaching and getting funding that they can't spare much time with the student except when things go wrong.
Until StarOffice is a viable replacement for Office (which it's not, although I have very high hopes for 6.0), Linux must be relagated to the realm of engineers and backoffice work. Still, that's a pretty good place to *start* if you ask me. But there's a problem: you want to have Linux (or *BSD; I'm no zealot) in the server room and slowly migrate it out to the desktops. But you might wind up breaking some things that people want. Like Exchange and Active Directory.
AFAIK, there is no "one-stop" replacement for Exchange like Apache is for IIS. If you're doing the whole "shared calendar and contacts" thing, I've yet to hear about something that can beat it. I've heard people say "Oh, just hack something together using LDAP" but that's not good enough. Corporate types want a "stable and proven solution", not something their geeks cranked out in the course of a month.
And while Netscape does have a Directory Service it isn't as "User Friendly" as AD is. As companies discover how useful a Directory service can be there will be more of a demand for them, but (again, AFAIK) only MS makes the service available to the Desktop user in a clean and consistent fashion.
So we need to both fix the desktop and the back office in order to beat MS. It's a hard task, and a lot to ask for, but I can't wait to see it done.
I have a Gateway Solo 3150 with a Mobile Pentium II @ 366. That was the maximum processor speed available at the time of purchase. What I'm trying to discover is what processors are compatible with my system? (I'm not yet sure if it's the mini-cartridge or BGA package).
My question: does anyone know of some sort of guide that will allow for processor comparisons? I'd love to be able to swap out for a ultra-low voltage 600Mhz celeron, but how can I tell if the board will support it?
Now check and turn the signal to the left/
Now chack and turn the signal to the right/
When I say "Boom boom boom" you say "Bam bam bam"/
No pause in between, come on let's jam!
Put in perspective; if the government won't regulate (and we hope they don't get involved) then the industry participants will. Just as ISPs can exchange (or refuse) mail from anyone they want, so can they refuse to do business with anyone they want. And if a reporting agency is formed to track problem users, is that in itself a bad thing? (Not that I'm arguing for this; read on).
Last I checked, the majority of Slashdot users approved of the actions of MAPS and ORBS because they help reduce the deluge of spam that would otherwise clog our mailboxes.
Having some sort of rating agency is not the horror that we think it is. The problem would be what is the motivation for having said agency, and how would they handle disputes. As far as I recall, MAPS/ORBS are pretty straightforward in their processes of notification and dispute resolution, preciscely because it is a closed system: ISPs are rating other ISP only out of their own need and not due to any external pressure save that of their users. But if the service was closed ("What, I have to pay to see if I'm bad?") or established due to external forces ("What, if we don't check someone's rating, we can be sued?") then you can almost guarantee abuses and failures. It's kind of like (my personal take on) Communism; not a bad idea in theory, but horrible in practice.
Of course, then the whole privacy issue comes into play, and given that I love my privacy, I'd prefer not to have to give it up and be registered. But I have no privacy with my CC company, so it's kind of a slippery slope.
Final note: I don't actually see this happening, but it's just something to ponder when you're bored at work (as I am)...
"Foolish Windows user! Nevermind that you may be at work and given only a single choice of browser. Or that you might actually like IE better than Netscape. Or that you may be at someone else's computer. Or a whole host or reasons that one might be using IE rather than Netscape, et al. You are forbidden to post here because you are a Microsoft Lover! Yes, you betray your lust for the vile software maker via your choice of browser! You obviously hate Linux and all free software and thus we expell thee from our midst!"
I can only imagine what kind of uproar would be generated if Microsoft were to block all non-MS browsers from www.microsoft.com...
The easiest way to ensure that Java is supported in Windowx XP is to have the military require it. Problem solved.
Look and how Microsoft responded to the DoD's over the issue of POSIX. The DoD said that any OS they bought had to be Posix compatible. So Microsoft built Windows NT a (crappy, vestigal) POSIX subsystem.
Given that the military uses Java (one example, pdf file), they could easily put the kibosh on any plans to remove Java support from XP. And, being that the DoD is one of Microsoft's best customers (I can't find numbers, but that is a quote), Microsoft will listen to them. Given that Sun and (I believe) HP have JVM's ready for use, they have little room to back out.
Re:Try the same thing for 15000 users
on
Dorm Storm?
·
· Score: 2
I work as a contractor to the Army. I was called on the carpet by my military manager about something. In the midst of a discussion about "teamwork" (not actually applicable to my non-offense), he said (and I will never forget this):
"I would rather be all wrong together, than all right in different ways."
Ponder that statement and how it reflects the military mindset.
This type of suggestion comes up often: if we want to piss off the jerks who use the DMCA to harass scientists and programmers, we should use the DMCA against them.
Step 1) Violate the DMCA in some way to hurt the DMCA abusers
Step 2) Publish the violation in a manner such that retrieval of the information would require violation of the DMCA
AFAIK (IANAL), this appears to be a case of "in pari delicto" (see http://www.fifthdistrictcourt.com/dictionary/dict- p.htm) which basically says if both parties are committing a crime (i.e. we're both violating the DMCA), the judge may decide not to grant a remedy to either of us.
The catch is that this sort of behaviour runs squarely up against the "Unclean Hands Doctrine". In a nutshell, Unclean Hands protects the courst from assisting you in the commission of a crime. In other words, you cannot turn to the court and say "Well, I'm violating the DMCA, but if you'll agree that they're violating it to discover my violation then we can throw out their results".
BUT this then puts the onus on you to prove that Intel actually violated the DMCA, whereas there is a whole raft of ways that they can prove that you did. Intel can claim a third party provided them the document which means that they did not break the DMCA and thus you are screwed royally. As a civil suit, the evidence is admissible, even though the methods used to obtain the evidence may be in a legal grey area. Of course, you could go after the third party but at this point, you're over a barrel big time.
Of course, this takes lawyers (of which I am not one) and thus if you're even going to get into a situation where you attempt to raise this defense, you'd better have some deep pockets to hire lawyers go up against Intel. Even if you win, you're broke (a phyrric victory if I ever heard one).
While the NASA surplus facility has tons of cool stuff (rocket fuel tank anyone?) only a small fraction of it is actually available. For some reason they have a trailer truck's worth of old keyboards and yet you can't get at them (feh).
Also, while there is cool stuff, it goes FAST. Make sure you're there before it even opens and get in line.
. The puffy, activated-charcoal-filled cushion will trap both the noise AND the odor of your low-end emissions. Most office chairs are odor free until you stand up...
Well, don't know about DC Metro (where I am also) but I'm pretty sure that the Virginia people will have it made (especially the folks around Hearndon where AOL is). Given that I can't even get asymmetric DSL or cable where I am, there probably wont be as many kind hearted souls with bandwidth to spare... But give me an email and maybe we can coordinate!
I'm reminded of an intrusion team story about one such team that faked a package from a OS vendor (letterhead, box, etc) containing a "patch." The admins looked at the box, assumed the obvious, and installed the patch which, while fixing an actual problem, also backdoord'd their system.
I could see running a remote exploit to crash your box, sending you mail about it (faked, of course) and then sending you a "patch" to "fix" the exploit (while adding some of my own...).
Be careful, there are some tricky bastards around with way too much time on their hands. Check those MD5 sums...
Technically, you need to be able to distinguish group A (those willing to pay price X) and group B (those willing to pay price X + Y) in order for PD to work. The group can consist of one individual, but often in practice, it's usually a demographic.
Airline tickets are a standard example in econ for many things and they work here. As an airline, I know that business travellers are capable of paying a lot more than students. But I need to know if that grungy dude paying for a ticket is a student or a (somehow still wealthy) dot-commer.
So I have to be able to identify his demographic and I can do that based on if he has a student ID (obviously a student), or if he's traveling during the week and not staying over on a Saturday (pretty good chance he's a business person). While it would be nice to know exactly how much his travel expenses would allow, just by being able to group him into a demographic gives me sufficient information to charge him accordingly.
I imagine that the software to price to the person will actually group them into a pre-defined bucket (this bucket should be priced at X% above the list price, this bucket at Y% below, etc). (Like "Student + State School" might pay a little less than "Student + Private School" but both will pay a lot less than "Business Use + Over 500 Employees").
Price discrimination says that if I can learn enough information about you, I can predict what your threshold for pricing is, and thus I can charge the maximum for all customers. This is rather than having to set a price and have some customers pay less when they would have been willing to pay more, and to lose some customers where the price is over the threshold.
As the previous poster explained, this process maximizes revenue for the seller.
But in order to perform perfect price discriminiation (which every retailer would love to do), 2 conditions must be met:
1) The various groups must be clearly identifiable
2) The groups must have different elasticity of demand (econ talk for their willingness to pay higher prices for an item).
So the problem for IBM is how to associate what little informaion they can glean from your web habits to associate with your elasticity of demand and to ensure that that information is accurate. Oh, and they have to be able to prevent resale (not too difficult; just void warranties). But since there is no surefire way to identify who is on the purchasing end, and since the internet makes for an almost pure market wih nearly ideal communications, I can only see this backfiring.
You may think it looks like the Concorde, but that is just a coincidence. No espionage here; move along...
Seriously, the article mentions that after the thawing of the cold war, there was an exchange of info between the TU-144 designers and Boeing/NASA. If the Buran is so faboo, why aren't we rushing to incorporate it's technology?
If anything, this kind of mondernization would be a great crusade for Senator John Glenn. No one would argue if he had to go up against a bunch of unions, as he is the ideal poster child for such things.
What you're looking to do is called "Knowledge Management"
[Plug]
I briefly worked for a company in New Zealand called SilentOne on their eponymous KM product. Not only were those kiwis awesome to work with, their product was very cool. While it ran on Windows only, it was a very good solution when compared with some of the others out there (such as FileNet and Lotus/Domino).
Obviously, by using Linux, this product isn't useful to you, but I found it very intuitive, and it's integration into the Office toolbar very helpful (just like the CVS commands built into XEmacs). It had a web-interface which could embed Office apps into it, as well as the interface within office.
I'd reccomend it to anyone here stuck with a Windows-only shop (and boy, there are way too many of those...)
Perhaps we should be thankful that Gracenote is threatening Roxio with this moronic lawsuit. Why? Because it adds further evidence that the DMCA is easily abused and should be overturned.
It's similar to the Princeton/SDMI affair: by using the law to restrict speech, the RIAA have created a situation where it will be very easy to turn the tide of legislative and legal opinion against the DMCA.
So a few more boneheaded lawsuits like this and we stand a good chance of getting the DMCA overturned. It's a shame that in the meanwhile the people and the courts have to suffer while the lawyers get rich (note; I have no anti-lawter bias, as both my parents are lawyers).
Slashdot Mirror
No no no and no.
I've written about this before but the gist is you are making one HUGE assumption and that is that you have the same protection under the DMCA as the large companies.
You don't. In fact, you probably have next to none at all. The government can't be *forced* to prosecute anyone for criminal acts, and if you think that a network of geeks with MP3 libraries could, even as a collective, fund a civil challenge against Vivendi... (hint: ain't gonna happen).
That's a hole you could sail a battleship through.
Simply put, if you swap MP3s that you don't have the right to, you're violating copyright. The RIAA, et al have a legitimate point. Now, their tactics suck, and there are far superior ways to solve this problem than hacking/DoSing boxes, but saying we have the right to violate copyright and the law is on our side is foolish.
I have to agree with you mostly, but I can suggest a real-life computing situation where a "queen" is necessary for operation of the collective.
Windows 2000 domains.
Any flaming aside, Windows 2k has something called FSMO ("fizzmo") roles. Short for "Flexible Single Master Operation", the roles correspond to tasks that only one machine in the entire enterprise can do. This is to avoid any sort of duplication/collision of effort for certain important roles. Now, unless you actively do anything, the first box you bring up handles all the tasks (Schema Master, Domain Naming Master, PDC Emulator, RID Master, and Infrastructure Master if you're curious). Any machine can take over any or all of the roles, but there must be only one box handling a role. However, aside from the FSMO roles, all domain controllers are logically equivalent in terms of importance to the domain.
So, how does this correlate to the Borg? Well, assuming that there are a number of roles to play that are essential to the operation of the collective and that destruction of the master would cause a disruption in the collective mind until regeneration (think of a lost token in tokenring) so you'd choose a protected unit. This would be the "queen". Ideally, however, the system would be such that any unit could take over any or all of the roles quickly in case of danger.
Of course, why she'd be all slinky and with a removable head is beyond me.
From my earlier posting:
...but thanks to his extremeism, lots of good things have come about
Hey, I'm a die-hard emacs user, and I know who to thank for it. But that doesn't change the fact that RMS is out there.
"You have your tree shakers and your jelly makers."
Translation:
You have your people who make a whole lot of noise and get everything all shaken up. These people are often zealots who are viewed by most rational people as being partially out of their gourds.
Then you have the people who "gather the fruit," so to speak, of the zealots efforts and make something constructive out of them.
You need both types. The tree-shakers are often willing to push boundaries and to take risks that might seem insane, but that in the end serve to advance the cause as a whole. But people rarely listen to nut-jobs, it's up to the level-headed people to transform the work of maniacs into something suitable for everyone (and to filter out the psychotic ideas).
So pay no heed to RMS. He's nuts, and most people recognise that, but thanks to his extremeism, lots of good things have come about (only due to the people who know when to listen to him and when to tune him out).
So I'd say that while some of the code may not require any modifications, there is probably enough tweaking involved that I would count it as porting.
You've (and others) have told us that StarOffice is to OpenOffice as Netscape is to Mozilla. But that tells us very little other than the fact that one is a derivative of the other.
The question is, what does StarOffice provide that is different? What licensed software has been included and how does it affect the suite?
The work that you do in class should be a solo effort. It's job is not so much to teach you how to be a good coder, but to teach you the fundamentals. It goes without saying that while a good coder can write code to solve a problem, a great coder knows how to reuse other good code and save time and effort. But, of course, you have to pass through the initial stage of becoming a good coder. So classes are better for you to develop your internal skills.
Conversely, joining a (slightly large) research team (for credit) is the opposite of being in a class in that you are taught to borrow and reuse what you can and to work and learn from others. Whereas a professor and a few TAs in a large class may only have a cursory time to go over your work, if you're in a research project you can bet that all involved will see (and critique) on what you've done.
I did that and one of the first things I learned is how hard things can really be in the (pseudo)real world of a research project. Though I do reccomend arranging some sort of "Sempai-Kohai" relationship between graduate and undergraduate students. Often the Professor is so occupied with teaching and getting funding that they can't spare much time with the student except when things go wrong.
\me Dons flame-resistant flash suit
Linux is not ready for the desktop (yet)
Until StarOffice is a viable replacement for Office (which it's not, although I have very high hopes for 6.0), Linux must be relagated to the realm of engineers and backoffice work. Still, that's a pretty good place to *start* if you ask me. But there's a problem: you want to have Linux (or *BSD; I'm no zealot) in the server room and slowly migrate it out to the desktops. But you might wind up breaking some things that people want. Like Exchange and Active Directory.
AFAIK, there is no "one-stop" replacement for Exchange like Apache is for IIS. If you're doing the whole "shared calendar and contacts" thing, I've yet to hear about something that can beat it. I've heard people say "Oh, just hack something together using LDAP" but that's not good enough. Corporate types want a "stable and proven solution", not something their geeks cranked out in the course of a month.
And while Netscape does have a Directory Service it isn't as "User Friendly" as AD is. As companies discover how useful a Directory service can be there will be more of a demand for them, but (again, AFAIK) only MS makes the service available to the Desktop user in a clean and consistent fashion.
So we need to both fix the desktop and the back office in order to beat MS. It's a hard task, and a lot to ask for, but I can't wait to see it done.
I have a Gateway Solo 3150 with a Mobile Pentium II @ 366. That was the maximum processor speed available at the time of purchase. What I'm trying to discover is what processors are compatible with my system? (I'm not yet sure if it's the mini-cartridge or BGA package).
My question: does anyone know of some sort of guide that will allow for processor comparisons? I'd love to be able to swap out for a ultra-low voltage 600Mhz celeron, but how can I tell if the board will support it?
Now check and turn the signal to the left/
Now chack and turn the signal to the right/
When I say "Boom boom boom" you say "Bam bam bam"/
No pause in between, come on let's jam!
This is very much akin to MAPS or ORBS.
Put in perspective; if the government won't regulate (and we hope they don't get involved) then the industry participants will. Just as ISPs can exchange (or refuse) mail from anyone they want, so can they refuse to do business with anyone they want. And if a reporting agency is formed to track problem users, is that in itself a bad thing? (Not that I'm arguing for this; read on).
Last I checked, the majority of Slashdot users approved of the actions of MAPS and ORBS because they help reduce the deluge of spam that would otherwise clog our mailboxes.
Having some sort of rating agency is not the horror that we think it is. The problem would be what is the motivation for having said agency, and how would they handle disputes. As far as I recall, MAPS/ORBS are pretty straightforward in their processes of notification and dispute resolution, preciscely because it is a closed system: ISPs are rating other ISP only out of their own need and not due to any external pressure save that of their users. But if the service was closed ("What, I have to pay to see if I'm bad?") or established due to external forces ("What, if we don't check someone's rating, we can be sued?") then you can almost guarantee abuses and failures. It's kind of like (my personal take on) Communism; not a bad idea in theory, but horrible in practice.
Of course, then the whole privacy issue comes into play, and given that I love my privacy, I'd prefer not to have to give it up and be registered. But I have no privacy with my CC company, so it's kind of a slippery slope.
Final note: I don't actually see this happening, but it's just something to ponder when you're bored at work (as I am)...
"Foolish Windows user! Nevermind that you may be at work and given only a single choice of browser. Or that you might actually like IE better than Netscape. Or that you may be at someone else's computer. Or a whole host or reasons that one might be using IE rather than Netscape, et al. You are forbidden to post here because you are a Microsoft Lover! Yes, you betray your lust for the vile software maker via your choice of browser! You obviously hate Linux and all free software and thus we expell thee from our midst!"
I can only imagine what kind of uproar would be generated if Microsoft were to block all non-MS browsers from www.microsoft.com...
If you couldn't tell I thought so, it's a pretty dumb idea, Nicky. (Research project: Kant's Categorical Imperative)
PS: HIBT?
Look and how Microsoft responded to the DoD's over the issue of POSIX. The DoD said that any OS they bought had to be Posix compatible. So Microsoft built Windows NT a (crappy, vestigal) POSIX subsystem.
Given that the military uses Java (one example, pdf file), they could easily put the kibosh on any plans to remove Java support from XP. And, being that the DoD is one of Microsoft's best customers (I can't find numbers, but that is a quote), Microsoft will listen to them. Given that Sun and (I believe) HP have JVM's ready for use, they have little room to back out.
"I would rather be all wrong together, than all right in different ways."
Ponder that statement and how it reflects the military mindset.
Step 1) Violate the DMCA in some way to hurt the DMCA abusers
Step 2) Publish the violation in a manner such that retrieval of the information would require violation of the DMCA
AFAIK (IANAL), this appears to be a case of "in pari delicto" (see http://www.fifthdistrictcourt.com/dictionary/dict- p.htm) which basically says if both parties are committing a crime (i.e. we're both violating the DMCA), the judge may decide not to grant a remedy to either of us.
The catch is that this sort of behaviour runs squarely up against the "Unclean Hands Doctrine". In a nutshell, Unclean Hands protects the courst from assisting you in the commission of a crime. In other words, you cannot turn to the court and say "Well, I'm violating the DMCA, but if you'll agree that they're violating it to discover my violation then we can throw out their results".
BUT this then puts the onus on you to prove that Intel actually violated the DMCA, whereas there is a whole raft of ways that they can prove that you did. Intel can claim a third party provided them the document which means that they did not break the DMCA and thus you are screwed royally. As a civil suit, the evidence is admissible, even though the methods used to obtain the evidence may be in a legal grey area. Of course, you could go after the third party but at this point, you're over a barrel big time.
Of course, this takes lawyers (of which I am not one) and thus if you're even going to get into a situation where you attempt to raise this defense, you'd better have some deep pockets to hire lawyers go up against Intel. Even if you win, you're broke (a phyrric victory if I ever heard one).
Any real lawyers have a comment on this?
While the NASA surplus facility has tons of cool stuff (rocket fuel tank anyone?) only a small fraction of it is actually available. For some reason they have a trailer truck's worth of old keyboards and yet you can't get at them (feh).
Also, while there is cool stuff, it goes FAST. Make sure you're there before it even opens and get in line.
But they do take credit cards! (IIRC)
Flatulence Filter
. The puffy, activated-charcoal-filled cushion will trap both the noise AND the odor of your low-end emissions. Most office chairs are odor free until you stand up...
Well, don't know about DC Metro (where I am also) but I'm pretty sure that the Virginia people will have it made (especially the folks around Hearndon where AOL is). Given that I can't even get asymmetric DSL or cable where I am, there probably wont be as many kind hearted souls with bandwidth to spare... But give me an email and maybe we can coordinate!
I'm reminded of an intrusion team story about one such team that faked a package from a OS vendor (letterhead, box, etc) containing a "patch." The admins looked at the box, assumed the obvious, and installed the patch which, while fixing an actual problem, also backdoord'd their system.
I could see running a remote exploit to crash your box, sending you mail about it (faked, of course) and then sending you a "patch" to "fix" the exploit (while adding some of my own...).
Be careful, there are some tricky bastards around with way too much time on their hands. Check those MD5 sums...
A smaller version will be made available for use in restaurants.
Cluster-bomb variants will be designed for use over LA.
Airline tickets are a standard example in econ for many things and they work here. As an airline, I know that business travellers are capable of paying a lot more than students. But I need to know if that grungy dude paying for a ticket is a student or a (somehow still wealthy) dot-commer.
So I have to be able to identify his demographic and I can do that based on if he has a student ID (obviously a student), or if he's traveling during the week and not staying over on a Saturday (pretty good chance he's a business person). While it would be nice to know exactly how much his travel expenses would allow, just by being able to group him into a demographic gives me sufficient information to charge him accordingly.
I imagine that the software to price to the person will actually group them into a pre-defined bucket (this bucket should be priced at X% above the list price, this bucket at Y% below, etc). (Like "Student + State School" might pay a little less than "Student + Private School" but both will pay a lot less than "Business Use + Over 500 Employees").
As the previous poster explained, this process maximizes revenue for the seller.
But in order to perform perfect price discriminiation (which every retailer would love to do), 2 conditions must be met:
1) The various groups must be clearly identifiable
2) The groups must have different elasticity of demand (econ talk for their willingness to pay higher prices for an item).
So the problem for IBM is how to associate what little informaion they can glean from your web habits to associate with your elasticity of demand and to ensure that that information is accurate. Oh, and they have to be able to prevent resale (not too difficult; just void warranties). But since there is no surefire way to identify who is on the purchasing end, and since the internet makes for an almost pure market wih nearly ideal communications, I can only see this backfiring.
You may think it looks like the Concorde, but that is just a coincidence. No espionage here; move along...
Seriously, the article mentions that after the thawing of the cold war, there was an exchange of info between the TU-144 designers and Boeing/NASA. If the Buran is so faboo, why aren't we rushing to incorporate it's technology?
If anything, this kind of mondernization would be a great crusade for Senator John Glenn. No one would argue if he had to go up against a bunch of unions, as he is the ideal poster child for such things.
[Plug]
I briefly worked for a company in New Zealand called SilentOne on their eponymous KM product. Not only were those kiwis awesome to work with, their product was very cool. While it ran on Windows only, it was a very good solution when compared with some of the others out there (such as FileNet and Lotus/Domino).
Obviously, by using Linux, this product isn't useful to you, but I found it very intuitive, and it's integration into the Office toolbar very helpful (just like the CVS commands built into XEmacs). It had a web-interface which could embed Office apps into it, as well as the interface within office.
I'd reccomend it to anyone here stuck with a Windows-only shop (and boy, there are way too many of those...)
[end plug]
It's similar to the Princeton/SDMI affair: by using the law to restrict speech, the RIAA have created a situation where it will be very easy to turn the tide of legislative and legal opinion against the DMCA.
So a few more boneheaded lawsuits like this and we stand a good chance of getting the DMCA overturned. It's a shame that in the meanwhile the people and the courts have to suffer while the lawyers get rich (note; I have no anti-lawter bias, as both my parents are lawyers).