That's exactly what I've been wondering for years: how to connect computer software to physics equations. For example, it seems to me like a "full" drive seems to physically weigh more than a blank one, sort of like a full battery is noticeably heavier than an empty one. I thought that's what the article was about, but instead it was just a bunch of graphics about how many libraries-of-congress can fit in the titanic.
So, your position is that anyone can use any recorded work for any purpose, whenever they want, without compensating the owner of the copyright?
Its called "fair use." If I buy something, I have certain rights of ownership of that thing. If I buy the rights to broadcast a certain set of music, then I should be able to do so as much as I want, to whomever I want. I believe that requiring these massive per-listen royalties is at best unethical, and at worst violates the rights to property outlined in the very same Constitution you're trying to use against me.
A "music performance" is the act of performing music, i.e. displaying talent by actually doing something such as playing an instrument or singing. Just hitting the play button does NOT constitute a performance.
I know that the law is not on my side with this argument, but there have been plenty of bad laws before. This is one of them.
Unbelievable. The broadcasters "negotiated" to give away a minimum of 25% of their revenue for nothing in return, and they're falling over themselves thanking the extortionists for the privilege? This is insanity.
Quiet troll. Slashdot has broken several stories over the years and most of them started as these little coincidences. Go back to reading CNN if you want your news filtered.
"We hope this vaccine is it, and hopefully this vaccine will prevent HIV infection and save millions of lives." University of Western Ontario professor Chil-Yong Kang.
Human trials are necessary to test the efficacy of the vaccine in protecting against HIV infection because the HIV virus does not cause AIDS-like symptoms in animals, says Kang. However, the immune responses in the animal trials have been promising, he says.
Sounds like if this is for real, HIV will go the way of smallpox and polio. Is this as huge as it sounds?
Do you have any idea what a nightmare it would be for a small online retailer if they had to figure out what sales tax to charge on every transaction in every locality in the country.
Sounds like a simple change requiring a couple new database tables........
Every database developer had to stop reading at that point to wipe up the milk that just came spewing out their nose. A "new database table" is ever a "simple change".
I have been developing EMR software for 3 years now. The company is small, but our software is an industry standard and is deployed in thousands of facilities across the world.
The main problem I see is one of trust. Our software runs entirely as a black box, without the client having knowledge how the software works or even how the database is structured (mostly because we don't know either *sigh*). Clients have to call our tech support to even add a new user to the system. The proprietary nature of our software ensures a) low quality, and b) 100% dependence on us for routine maintenance. New facilities, especially smaller ones, will not be willing to give up such control.
Then there's the problem of interfaces. All these proprietary systems must talk to each other in a flawless, seamless manner. HL7 goes some way to fix that, but in my experience HL7 is simply a business TLA-buzzword that really means nothing. Each interface is coded specifically for the system its talking to, because they all have their different quirks.
I believe the first EMR that is truly transparent and open source will be the turning point in Health Care IT. This industry is basically made for the software-as-service model. However, that requires a fundamental shift in our business model, and we all know how easily that happens.
What does it take to understand that not all people yearn for freedom?
False. So wrong.
The desire for freedom is a natural human instinct that cannot be rationalized away.
I join you in frustration that the more things change... the more they stay the same. Look at all the countries in East Europe after the "fall" of the USSR./ALL/ the leaders are the same, they just traded the Communist party for another one with more money and power.
However, Iran has chosen to ignore one fundamental truth: that ALL people desire freedom, especially the freedom of speech, expression, and religion. Once Iran realizes that, then we can take steps toward peace.
The value of programmer is not in the number of secrets he knows, nor is the value of software in the number of secret actions it takes (i.e. software w/o secrets is by deffinition, open source)
I pass on the whole CONCEPT of a live real-time broadcast.
It amazes me how many people take this view, when there is no current data to back it up, and certainly no historical data. The concept of live radio is not at all like newspapers -- where the legacy form provides no advantage over the Internet-based form. Live radio is a fundamental form of communication, and it will live on well after the FM/AM bands have been removed.
I go through phases of listening to various podcasts and other on-demand media, but eventually the routine just gets boring: having to choose each episode, start it from the beginning, and HOPE that something interesting happens. I'd rather flip through the channels and "see what's on." Not to mention the whole communal aspect of listening to something when you/know/ thousands of others are listening at the same time.
Live broadcast mediums will always have a place. Any attempt to discard them is foolish.
-David Dombrowsky Proud Broadcaster of a LIVE internet radio station
You've gotta be using some pretty advanced MS-specific stuff in Excell for the spreadsheets to not be portable between the two platforms. That sounds like a bug in your spreadsheets, not the application.
Yes, MS Office is one of the better examples of well designed and well integrated software. My biggest problem is with the obvious policy of planned obsolescence that Microsoft has with this software package (the GP mentioned this with ".docx was a dick move"). This practice is at/best/ unethical.
Migration to OOo does require some changes, but in the long run, it means you won't have to re-learn the software every few years because of vendor lock-in.
Seriously... it sounds like lame British elevator music. And I listened to every track. Absolutely ZERO in common with Gnarls Barkley or Danger Doom. I wanted to throw money at this because of the ingenious method of distribution, but with music this tepid, I would just be throwing my money away.
What is this strange >2-party-system that you seem to be explaining? How can one possibly know how to vote if the candidates don't have one of only two letters next to their name?
I work for a company who's EMR software was started as exactly that: an image archiving program. It then added procedure records, report printing, patient demographics, and eventually billing and statistics. I'm trying to convince the boss right now to release the early versions of the image archiving program under a commercial-friendly open source license, so that we might be able to take advantage of some of this government hype.
Yes, the country is called the United States of America. For this year 2009, the average American will be free of their monetary obligations to the government and can begin keeping their own earned income on April 13th. That means that the tax burden for the average American is about 33%.
This is called "Tax Freedom Day" and is calculated annually by a non profit group in Washington D.C.
Arthur C. Clarke formulated the following three "laws" of prediction:
1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Here's one I leard on day 2 in Computer Science House at RIT: cd/path/to/copy/from tar cf - . | (cd/path/to/copy/to ; tar xvf -)
I somehow always end up using a derivative of that whenever I'm shoveling around massive amounts of user data. Especially if its from network to network, and the filenames might contain evil characters like (') and (:).
cut, sort and uniq are also impossible to live without: # hits per ip address from apache log cut -d" " -f 1 access_log | sort | uniq -d | sort -n
man the base unix commands line cut, sed, and awk, tr, and even join.
And find(1) will save your life. # find all files containing string "foobar" (recursive) find . -type f -exec grep -h "foobar" {} \;
(I know "grep -r" does the same thing, but I'm illustrating find, not grep.)
Kudos to microsoft for forcing people onto an upgrade path. Nearly all of my headaches in support are from clients running 10-year-old software who refuse to upgrade, and then complain that they still have bugs. I would love to tell my boss that these delinquent clients will be cut off, not only because we say so, but because our software overlords dictate that it must be done.
Brother, outside of big blue or microsoft, you ain't going to find anyplace that takes software seriously. "The interface is the program" is the mantra of the world, and it will likely remain so forever.
I believe that engineers in general -- and software engineers in particular -- are cursed to forever walk the line between getting the job done and following the rules. The best you can do is establish your own cult of personality, and watch other people follow (i.e. the open source model). If you can't do that, look for another job.
Yeah. Fighting for correct testing and quality controls in a company that does nothing BUT release software is hard enough. If your boss is convinced that they sell hardware -- or worse, "complete systems" -- good luck trying to convince them that the little daemon of software is actually the one controlling the show.
Sorry to discourage you, but if you do push for quality, and not just follow the leader, expect to get fired at least a few times before you see any benefit.
I'm speaking an engineer at a software company that has no release process, no Q/A, and releases binaries directly to clients through network back-doors every day. Its not good, but unfortunately, its not rare. Buck up.
This may be trolling, but my gut is telling me that this is a big step toward internet regulation.
A short look at the global news will show you that the power of the internet, global communication, and technological availability is a key to rebellion. Being a computer repair professional gives you intimate access to a lot of machines capable of this global communication and rebellion. Hence, it becomes regulated.
The only way I personally will trust an electronic voting machine is if it prints out my vote on pain paper and asks for my approval before the vote is dropped in the box. This is obviously not how any of these machines are designed, so unfortunately we can trust none of them.
In the absence of the ideal, the only thing that somewhat ensures a proper vote tally is a paper trail. Every vote is printed directly on some physical medium when it is cast.
But even this is sadly not the case in many districts. Without the paper trail, you have NO guarantee that the election means anything at all. You can demand open source for the software on the machine; you can demand to see statistics before, during, and after the election; you can demand a box for yourself to see if you personally can figure out how to hack it; but all those acts are moot, if you don't have the paper trail to begin with.
Slashdot Mirror
That's exactly what I've been wondering for years: how to connect computer software to physics equations. For example, it seems to me like a "full" drive seems to physically weigh more than a blank one, sort of like a full battery is noticeably heavier than an empty one. I thought that's what the article was about, but instead it was just a bunch of graphics about how many libraries-of-congress can fit in the titanic.
So, your position is that anyone can use any recorded work for any purpose, whenever they want, without compensating the owner of the copyright?
Its called "fair use." If I buy something, I have certain rights of ownership of that thing. If I buy the rights to broadcast a certain set of music, then I should be able to do so as much as I want, to whomever I want. I believe that requiring these massive per-listen royalties is at best unethical, and at worst violates the rights to property outlined in the very same Constitution you're trying to use against me.
A "music performance" is the act of performing music, i.e. displaying talent by actually doing something such as playing an instrument or singing. Just hitting the play button does NOT constitute a performance.
I know that the law is not on my side with this argument, but there have been plenty of bad laws before. This is one of them.
Unbelievable. The broadcasters "negotiated" to give away a minimum of 25% of their revenue for nothing in return, and they're falling over themselves thanking the extortionists for the privilege? This is insanity.
With regard to over-the-shoulder power, I bought by first CHIMP in 98. Can't work without it.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/accessories/2940/
Quiet troll. Slashdot has broken several stories over the years and most of them started as these little coincidences. Go back to reading CNN if you want your news filtered.
From TFA:
"We hope this vaccine is it, and hopefully this vaccine will prevent HIV infection and save millions of lives." University of Western Ontario professor Chil-Yong Kang.
Human trials are necessary to test the efficacy of the vaccine in protecting against HIV infection because the HIV virus does not cause AIDS-like symptoms in animals, says Kang. However, the immune responses in the animal trials have been promising, he says.
Sounds like if this is for real, HIV will go the way of smallpox and polio. Is this as huge as it sounds?
Do you have any idea what a nightmare it would be for a small online retailer if they had to figure out what sales tax to charge on every transaction in every locality in the country.
Sounds like a simple change requiring a couple new database tables ........
Every database developer had to stop reading at that point to wipe up the milk that just came spewing out their nose. A "new database table" is ever a "simple change".
I have been developing EMR software for 3 years now. The company is small, but our software is an industry standard and is deployed in thousands of facilities across the world.
The main problem I see is one of trust. Our software runs entirely as a black box, without the client having knowledge how the software works or even how the database is structured (mostly because we don't know either *sigh*). Clients have to call our tech support to even add a new user to the system. The proprietary nature of our software ensures a) low quality, and b) 100% dependence on us for routine maintenance. New facilities, especially smaller ones, will not be willing to give up such control.
Then there's the problem of interfaces. All these proprietary systems must talk to each other in a flawless, seamless manner. HL7 goes some way to fix that, but in my experience HL7 is simply a business TLA-buzzword that really means nothing. Each interface is coded specifically for the system its talking to, because they all have their different quirks.
I believe the first EMR that is truly transparent and open source will be the turning point in Health Care IT. This industry is basically made for the software-as-service model. However, that requires a fundamental shift in our business model, and we all know how easily that happens.
Don't be all, like, "Those damned brown people."
Interesting choice of cliche. I thought Iranians thought themselves the only true "white" people? Iran = Aryan?
What does it take to understand that not all people yearn for freedom?
False. So wrong.
The desire for freedom is a natural human instinct that cannot be rationalized away.
I join you in frustration that the more things change... the more they stay the same. Look at all the countries in East Europe after the "fall" of the USSR. /ALL/ the leaders are the same, they just traded the Communist party for another one with more money and power.
However, Iran has chosen to ignore one fundamental truth: that ALL people desire freedom, especially the freedom of speech, expression, and religion. Once Iran realizes that, then we can take steps toward peace.
Absolutely correct.
The value of programmer is not in the number of secrets he knows, nor is the value of software in the number of secret actions it takes (i.e. software w/o secrets is by deffinition, open source)
I pass on the whole CONCEPT of a live real-time broadcast.
It amazes me how many people take this view, when there is no current data to back it up, and certainly no historical data. The concept of live radio is not at all like newspapers -- where the legacy form provides no advantage over the Internet-based form. Live radio is a fundamental form of communication, and it will live on well after the FM/AM bands have been removed.
I go through phases of listening to various podcasts and other on-demand media, but eventually the routine just gets boring: having to choose each episode, start it from the beginning, and HOPE that something interesting happens. I'd rather flip through the channels and "see what's on." Not to mention the whole communal aspect of listening to something when you /know/ thousands of others are listening at the same time.
Live broadcast mediums will always have a place. Any attempt to discard them is foolish.
-David Dombrowsky
Proud Broadcaster of a LIVE internet radio station
You've gotta be using some pretty advanced MS-specific stuff in Excell for the spreadsheets to not be portable between the two platforms. That sounds like a bug in your spreadsheets, not the application.
Yes, MS Office is one of the better examples of well designed and well integrated software. My biggest problem is with the obvious policy of planned obsolescence that Microsoft has with this software package (the GP mentioned this with ".docx was a dick move"). This practice is at /best/ unethical.
Migration to OOo does require some changes, but in the long run, it means you won't have to re-learn the software every few years because of vendor lock-in.
Seriously... it sounds like lame British elevator music. And I listened to every track. Absolutely ZERO in common with Gnarls Barkley or Danger Doom. I wanted to throw money at this because of the ingenious method of distribution, but with music this tepid, I would just be throwing my money away.
What is this strange >2-party-system that you seem to be explaining? How can one possibly know how to vote if the candidates don't have one of only two letters next to their name?
I work for a company who's EMR software was started as exactly that: an image archiving program. It then added procedure records, report printing, patient demographics, and eventually billing and statistics. I'm trying to convince the boss right now to release the early versions of the image archiving program under a commercial-friendly open source license, so that we might be able to take advantage of some of this government hype.
Yes, the country is called the United States of America. For this year 2009, the average American will be free of their monetary obligations to the government and can begin keeping their own earned income on April 13th. That means that the tax burden for the average American is about 33%.
This is called "Tax Freedom Day" and is calculated annually by a non profit group in Washington D.C.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxfreedomday/
Arthur C. Clarke formulated the following three "laws" of prediction:
1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws)
I assume then, a statement about superluminal travel being impossible, is actually good news.
Here's one I leard on day 2 in Computer Science House at RIT: /path/to/copy/from /path/to/copy/to ; tar xvf -)
cd
tar cf - . | (cd
I somehow always end up using a derivative of that whenever I'm shoveling around massive amounts of user data. Especially if its from network to network, and the filenames might contain evil characters like (') and (:).
cut, sort and uniq are also impossible to live without:
# hits per ip address from apache log
cut -d" " -f 1 access_log | sort | uniq -d | sort -n
man the base unix commands line cut, sed, and awk, tr, and even join.
And find(1) will save your life.
# find all files containing string "foobar" (recursive)
find . -type f -exec grep -h "foobar" {} \;
(I know "grep -r" does the same thing, but I'm illustrating find, not grep.)
enjoy.
Kudos to microsoft for forcing people onto an upgrade path. Nearly all of my headaches in support are from clients running 10-year-old software who refuse to upgrade, and then complain that they still have bugs. I would love to tell my boss that these delinquent clients will be cut off, not only because we say so, but because our software overlords dictate that it must be done.
Brother, outside of big blue or microsoft, you ain't going to find anyplace that takes software seriously. "The interface is the program" is the mantra of the world, and it will likely remain so forever.
I believe that engineers in general -- and software engineers in particular -- are cursed to forever walk the line between getting the job done and following the rules. The best you can do is establish your own cult of personality, and watch other people follow (i.e. the open source model). If you can't do that, look for another job.
My 2 rubles.
Yeah. Fighting for correct testing and quality controls in a company that does nothing BUT release software is hard enough. If your boss is convinced that they sell hardware -- or worse, "complete systems" -- good luck trying to convince them that the little daemon of software is actually the one controlling the show.
Sorry to discourage you, but if you do push for quality, and not just follow the leader, expect to get fired at least a few times before you see any benefit.
I'm speaking an engineer at a software company that has no release process, no Q/A, and releases binaries directly to clients through network back-doors every day. Its not good, but unfortunately, its not rare. Buck up.
-dave
This may be trolling, but my gut is telling me that this is a big step toward internet regulation.
A short look at the global news will show you that the power of the internet, global communication, and technological availability is a key to rebellion. Being a computer repair professional gives you intimate access to a lot of machines capable of this global communication and rebellion. Hence, it becomes regulated.
Beware the technology license.
The only way I personally will trust an electronic voting machine is if it prints out my vote on pain paper and asks for my approval before the vote is dropped in the box. This is obviously not how any of these machines are designed, so unfortunately we can trust none of them.
In the absence of the ideal, the only thing that somewhat ensures a proper vote tally is a paper trail. Every vote is printed directly on some physical medium when it is cast.
But even this is sadly not the case in many districts. Without the paper trail, you have NO guarantee that the election means anything at all. You can demand open source for the software on the machine; you can demand to see statistics before, during, and after the election; you can demand a box for yourself to see if you personally can figure out how to hack it; but all those acts are moot, if you don't have the paper trail to begin with.
-dave