I listen to a few rather small bands, and while it hasn't happened to me that any of their CDs has been "copy-protected", but if I would get any of those, this is what I would do:
I would send them all the CDs I had of that band with a letter telling them that I am deeply disappointed that they would use technology that turns them against me.
Explain that I don't care about the money, and I do not expect them to pay me back the cost of those CDs.
Go on to explain everything: The need for independents to be able to publish, the possible threat against freedom of expression, the negative impact on cultural diversity, fair use rights, the threat to further technological development, that copy-protection is ultimately a stupid idea that can't work, even in principle and finally that the enforced-scarcity model of copyright is not sustainable in the long term.
The point is just to get somebody you really care about to understand.
For the big ones that are not going to listen to their fans anyway, you might as well return the CD to the shop as defective (because that is really what it is!).
Software isn't mathematical proof. This is my biggest problem with software. It's so hard to guarantee certain behavior.
True, and this is why it is so important to publish the code. It really doesn't help you anything if the math is correct but the implementation of it is flawed. And even less if the math is correct when dealing with usual arithmetic, but wrong when you're dealing with the almost always approximate answers you get from a computer due to the discrete nature of computer arithmetics.
While I, in the long run, would like to see all code free, the really important thing for science is that the analysis is open to scrutiny. The code contains the details of this analysis, so it must be available to scrutiny. If the analysis isn't open to scrutiny, it isn't science.
However, this does not necessarily imply that it has to be Free Software or Open Source Software in the sense used by FSF or OSI. It only means that you get to see, but not touch.
While a lot of proprietary scientific software does follow this model, there is usually some code that you can't see, and I find that hard to live with. My own thesis is based entirely on free software.
If you publish all code, then the scientific requirements are taken care of, but there are other arguments that needs addressing as well, namely what serves the public and scientific advancement best. In the long run, I think Free Software does, but it'll take some time.
Americans feel safer because we are actively pursuing our enemies.
But does it have any effect? Do you really think what you do has any effect on their abilities? I seriously doubt it.
Also, just think about the numbers: Salon had an article about a twelve year-old kid who had his entire family killed. Now, the only thing he wants to do with his life is kill as many americans as he possibly can. One thing you've got to ask yourself: Do you blame him? You killed his family, do you blame him for wanting to kill you? There is a lot of wisdom in "If we hate them, we will become them."
While his ability to do so is small, there are thousands like him. If any of them can succeed in their life project, this is not the only time you're going to get hit. Yeah, and it doesn't really take that much to set off a nuclear bomb.
Actually, what I find most discomforting about this whole matter is how surprised everyone seems to be. That the US would be attacked with a Hollywood-style terrorist attack is hardly surprising, terrorists have always wanted to do things like that. There was a really good cartoon about that in Ernie, I guess about 1993-1994, where terrorists wanted to buy Sid's vacuum cleaner to suck up NYC.
That they would use planes to crash into buildings, well, novels have been written on the topic. That the US would move to attack somebody is not surprising at all, we all knew that would happen. I've been predicting for years that the US would eventually move to complete what the Russians didn't do in Afghanistan, namely insert the regime they wanted in Kabul. But I must admit that I am slightly surprised it went that fast.
Nor is it surprising to note that civil liberties are attacked, there are strong forces who always wanted that, and they only needed the public's attention.
Finally, the public opinion engineering that has been going on, wow, it's just like in Wag The Dog... What a prescient movie.
You know, most people haven't cared about cryptography at all, so policy has been a tradeoff between the wishes of the hawks and the rational arguments of cryptologists. Of course crypotologists knew perfectly well that crypto can be used by terrorists, but the argument remains: Crypto is making society stronger against attacks, not weaker.
Now, the hawks pretend that something fundamental changed, and so they are getting the public up against crypto. There are no new arguments, there has not been any surprises, it is just that the hawks has got the uninformed public behind them, whereas previously, the public didn't care.
I agree with you both here. Especially, I find your argument that everyone has somebody who loves them appealing. It's like when you hear that a palestinian man is killed, four days after he was happily married, and all the grief of his wife. Three days later, an isreali man is killed, the day after his wife gave birth to their first child. Yet, they are alol screaming for revenge. All this should lead to one conclusion, you can't kill to forward your goals.
However, the original comment, about all the fuzz for five lives is still relevant. The reason why it is important is that people tend to be scared about things they have no reason to fear, but pay no attention to things that are really dangerous. Things that are spectacular, things that go boom and go on the news are generally considered more dangerous than deaths that go unnoticed.
This leads to a bizarre situation: Big resources are invested in something that has very little effect, not because it makes people safer, only because it makes people feel safer.
Spending something like $40 billion on war on terror, is it going to make you safer? It is certainly not making the number of people who may want to attack the US smaller. And, does it really affect their abilities? Really?
Resources are finite, so if you really love somebody, anybody then you should make sure that they are used wisely.
That they are indeed used to promote safety, not used to promote a feeling of safety. For example, bringing armed guards on planes sounds like an idea that makes people feel safer, but to me, it sounds like what hijackers need to do is get the guards gun, making it even easier.
Well, while radiation may be bad to computer chips, being a physicist, I'm not really that concerned about radiation anymore. It's rarely a health issue.
I'm Norwegian too, and I think actually the law is pretty clear, and I really can't understand how they can indict him after this wording.
The encryption isn't protected, the movie is. So, if he hadn't bought the movie but grabbed without having bought it, he would have broken the law. But he didn't do that. The movie was his. He bought it. He has the right to access it, according to the law.
Even Jon Bing, a law professor and a huge authority in Norway, and well, I guess I should refrain from any characterizations of him, even said that he thought JLJ didn't break the law.
These Farm Hall transcripts are extremely interesting. Especially in this context. There is an excerpt where these researchers are arguing whether or not they could have done it.
I find it particulary interesting what Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker exclaimated in this conversation:
I don't think we ought to make excuses now because we did
not succeed, but we must admit that we did not want to succeed.
OK, there are many ways to interprete this, but it is a very interesting statement.
Actually, I asked Joseph Rotblat what he thought happened in Copenhagen that day. He didn't answer, really, he just pointed out the many different possibilities, but he did put some emphasis on the possibility that the group did block the development.
I'm Norwegian, and I have never heard of any such structure. However, there were lots and lots of sabotage going on with the heavy-water, that is correct. Also, there have been made several movies on the subject, one starring Kirk Douglas.
Basically, there were production of heavy-water at a place called Rjukan, and for fear of nazis being able to use this, it was bombed, ships were bombed and sabotaged, and the factory was sabotaged.
It is particulary the factory sabotage that has made a few great heroes in Norway. It was done without any casualities on either side, the Germans knew nothing before the next day (the factory always made a lot of noise, so the guards didn't hear it blow up).
However, while the story around here is that these heroes prevented Germany from getting the bomb, I am quite sure that if they did, these actions would delay them by a few months at most. The factory was reopened after a few months of repairs, and there wasn't a whole lot of heavy-water on those ships.
The story is that the Germans could have found that when you "burn" Uranium, you get a portion of Plutonium, which is good for nuclear bombs, and since they didn't get a reactor working, they didn't find that. However, this is demonstrateably false, as this was proved theoretically by a German physicist in Berlin in 1941 (i don't have the reference).
I think that when the Germans closed the bomb project they knew how to make a bomb. I don't think there can be any question about that. However, what they may not have known is what kind of resources that would be required to do it. That's the calculation Heisenberg never committed, however easy it seems.
But even that can't answer all the questions.
As for the original post, well, what matters here is what this story means to the "if I don't do it, somebody else will"-attitude. If there were indeed german scientists who blocked the project, with this in mind...
Hehe, well, I've been posting that link a few times lately here on/. Haven't seen it posted by anybody else, I learnt about this long ago on an R mailing list (I post that link too as often as I can).
I think you correctly identify the strengths of NR, and if I do remember correctly (it's a long time since I read the whole anti-NR page), they give them some credit for it too.
The main problem with NR is that as long as you understand the methods there fully, and realize their limitations, you're on safe grounds. Sometimes you can appreciate them fully from NR itself, and sometimes you can't, and a few of the methods are just flawed. So, you can use the stuff in NR when you fully understand it, but once you've reached that level, you've probably allready outgrown it...:-)
With every/. story, there has to be someone not answering the question, but go off along a tangent ranting on something, so here goes:
They've completely lost the point with this dolphin! Dolphins are supposed to be cute, you can't do that well with a stupid line drawing. They have to re-draw that dolphin, so that you get a cute, cuddly dolphin.
It should be more like Tux. Really. Learn from Tux!
I seriously doubt that this was organized by anyone high level at MS..
Yeah, and I would say this isn't really about rigging. Hey, how many geeks here would hack up a perl script to vote for something cool (say a project you worked on), if somebody passed along an e-mail about it?
Come on! Everybody does this! It's the reason why/. polls are the way they are. Nobody should ever trust a web poll for anything, it's as simple as that.
I remember when a bunch of guys here at the IT department (the guys who sit around with root access for all campus computers) threw in tens if not hundreds of computers in voting for their favorite beer a hot summer night. It was a big newspaper that ran the vote, and their script prevented one IP from voting more than once every ten minutes, but they could vote efficiently enough with hundreds of computers voting... After they got their own favorite beer on top, they voted a non-alcoholic beer up to 2nd place just to make a point....:-) The newspaper never checked the logs or realized what had happened, they only noted a few surprising results...
I bet there are geeks at M$ who are behind this. OK, we know that you sold your soul to M$, but hey, step forward and tell us about it, I'm sure we will understand...!:-)
Yes it is spam (BTW, moderators, don't mod the parent as Troll, please, it is an issue that needs adressing). Everyone has to exercise some caution in who they send e-mail to or else e-mail will be completely useless for everyone.
I have lots of different interests. I have a life. Really, even if it doesn't feel that way now and then.;-)
There are hundreds of organizations and corporations that I have some interest in, that I may buy products from, and who may entitled to assume if they are not doing further checks, that I'll be interested in hearing from.
If only those who have something I might be interested in e-mailed me a couple of times a year, there would be thousands of messages a year. There would be tens of messages every day, that would demand my attention.
Most of the time, I'm not interested, and my attention is the most precious thing I have. They can't just come in here and take it.
If I would have to devote attention to tens of messages from companies that I might have an interest in a day, I would stop using e-mail (nowadays, well, I get tens of spams every day, but they are deleted without giving them much attention. I deeply despise spammers nevertheless for the resources they steal). That's why the only way is opt-in.
If I am interested, I can go and search for the information. I'm pretty good at that.
This spammer obviously did no research at all when he spammed people. If he even looked at Steve's website, I think he would go away.
Instead of spamming lots of people, those who are interested in giving someone employment would search a database of resumes. It's much more effective for everyone.
OTH I *hate* buisnesses who demand all sorts of information they don't even need. How does knowing my birthday and income level let them give me better service?
AOL. When I signed up for cell phone subscription years ago with the Norwegian telecom Netcom, one of the nice features of the provider I chose was that they provided an e-mail address for each number, and also the ability to send SMS to e-mail. Obviously, this may serve as an SMSInternet gateway, and I soon hacked up a few scripts that allowed me to check e-mail from my ordinary phone, even surf the web, but that didn't work too well.
No day, the provider decided that this was too dangerous for me, because people could spam me, and people could harass me by sending me anonymous e-mail that was hard to trace, so they decided to close the service. I flamingly told them that thanks, I can look after myself, but I didn't quit simply because I don't have time to check for a new provider. I will soon.
Anyway, they kept it open for some time, but then they shut it down. Now, they just reopened it, but you had to register specifically for this to use it. However, they required you to write up a very detailed form with lots of personal information. Also, they required that you allowed them to do a credit check.
I don't know what that's like elsewhere, or what information you can obtain, but a credit check in Norway is something you do against a central database, and they can only perform a credit check with your written consent, and the registry has to send exactly the same information back to you as they send to the people requesting the check.
Normally, this is only done by banks if you apply for a big loan, or something. I have never seen anything like this before: They actually wanted me to allow them to do a credit check on me to use a service that costs about nothing to run.
I told them to get lost, but it doesn't seem to have made any impression. Too bad, because I really liked the service they provided. I guess it has to be some marketdroid with a really tight strangulation device around his neck.
But we don't need a better system for watching the stars. Nope. Obviously not.
Being an astronomer I probably shouldn't say this, because a pile of cash would rain down on me if somebody decided we needed to monitor the skies 24/7, but what the heck:
The risk isn't that high. Really.
We should rather spend our time ending wars. You may say, we can never end wars. Actually, all the nobel peace prize winners I've talked to think we can, so!;-)
But on the other hand, I'd really like to monitor the skies 24/7, but such a system should not be designed with one application in mind, it should be designed with the goal of enabling all kinds of projects. For example, I'd like to see a global, dense network of Liquid Mirror Telescopes. That could be used to look for NEOs too.
I guess most people don't read the whole thing, and I only read the last page, but what they say there is pretty much that you'd be better of with an Athlon XP, though Northwood is a nice CPU too. That's what I get out of it anyway....:-)
This is one thing that has gone VERY wrong with academia in the past 30 years. Instead of teaching facts, and critical thinking skills, schools, colleges, universities by and large teach WHAT to think.
I agree about that. However, teaching critical thinking is all about changing the world, so I agree about the original quote as well, and I think there is no conflict at all with teaching critical thinking and being in the changing-the-world business. On the contrary, being in the changing-the-world business means teaching critical thinking.
Actually, I think you (and I, I think....:-) ) would agree very much with the basic points of the person cited.
Yeah, I've been thinking about doing a simple analysis of variance on this. I did look at some RIAA data that showed the annual CD sales the last ten years, and those data showed clearly that the last ups and downs are no more than natural variations.
However, if somebody is able to dig up solid figures for sales, metrics for the purchasing ability of consumers, number of downloads done, and possibly other relevant metrics, preferably with a time resolution of a month, it should be a very easy analysis to do.
But right now I haven't got the time to dig up the data.
Rather than analysis of variance, somebody should do real time series analysis on it, but that's not a field I've been studying, but perhaps there are some real statisticians here.
Oh, what a cute troll! You know, around here, trolls are shot, stuffed and sold to american tourists as souvenirs.
Look, some ACs gotta pull their head out of that warm but rather dark place and realize that you're being ripped off and the tech development as come to a grinding halt because of some US corporations. Hey, you haven't even got a working mobile phone system! People from here are shocked when they go to the US and see how far behind you are.
Wasn't it Interactive TV Bill talked about back in 1995 just before he discovered the web and began destroying that instead? Bill wants to get back to the dark ages of few-to-many media, because that's where the real money is.
Of course you can have a patent. The problem is not having an idea to patent. We all have every now and then.
The problem is that it is prohibitively expensive for any small guy.
Software patents would have been OK if anybody with a good idea could afford to patent it (say, it costed $100), the time it took to have it evaluated was one week, and the patent expired after one month.
That is what it would take for patents to not slow down tech development.
However, making the patent process this fast and cheap is (I presume) not possible, and that is why software patents must be dropped alltogether.
I think I have been infringing on this patent myself since 1995:-), as I started telling my friends at that time: "don't send me heavy documents in the e-mail, dump it on the web with my name on, and send me the URL". This patent quite simply covers things that the web was specifically made for. But that isn't publicly available information so...
Make sure you to go to BountyQuest every now and than to check if a bounty is posted, so that these patents can be killed once and for all.
Hm, come to think of it, there should be a similar site that organizes prior art claims and challenge patents on the basis of it... Anybody know about anything like that?
Well, I would have modded this as funny, but anyway, e-mail is not for complex documents. The only way to distribute documents that are complex is to dump it on a web page and send a (personalized) URL.
I know I started to tell people about this in early 1995, it is the most obvious use of the web I can think of. It's quite simply how the web is used by those who know how to use it.
Slashdot Mirror
I listen to a few rather small bands, and while it hasn't happened to me that any of their CDs has been "copy-protected", but if I would get any of those, this is what I would do:
I would send them all the CDs I had of that band with a letter telling them that I am deeply disappointed that they would use technology that turns them against me.
Explain that I don't care about the money, and I do not expect them to pay me back the cost of those CDs.
Go on to explain everything: The need for independents to be able to publish, the possible threat against freedom of expression, the negative impact on cultural diversity, fair use rights, the threat to further technological development, that copy-protection is ultimately a stupid idea that can't work, even in principle and finally that the enforced-scarcity model of copyright is not sustainable in the long term.
The point is just to get somebody you really care about to understand.
For the big ones that are not going to listen to their fans anyway, you might as well return the CD to the shop as defective (because that is really what it is!).
I think those points are good enough for me to subscribe to, I wasn't commenting on OpenInformatics in particular, but science in more general terms.
True, and this is why it is so important to publish the code. It really doesn't help you anything if the math is correct but the implementation of it is flawed. And even less if the math is correct when dealing with usual arithmetic, but wrong when you're dealing with the almost always approximate answers you get from a computer due to the discrete nature of computer arithmetics.
While I, in the long run, would like to see all code free, the really important thing for science is that the analysis is open to scrutiny. The code contains the details of this analysis, so it must be available to scrutiny. If the analysis isn't open to scrutiny, it isn't science.
However, this does not necessarily imply that it has to be Free Software or Open Source Software in the sense used by FSF or OSI. It only means that you get to see, but not touch.
While a lot of proprietary scientific software does follow this model, there is usually some code that you can't see, and I find that hard to live with. My own thesis is based entirely on free software.
If you publish all code, then the scientific requirements are taken care of, but there are other arguments that needs addressing as well, namely what serves the public and scientific advancement best. In the long run, I think Free Software does, but it'll take some time.
But does it have any effect? Do you really think what you do has any effect on their abilities? I seriously doubt it.
Also, just think about the numbers: Salon had an article about a twelve year-old kid who had his entire family killed. Now, the only thing he wants to do with his life is kill as many americans as he possibly can. One thing you've got to ask yourself: Do you blame him? You killed his family, do you blame him for wanting to kill you? There is a lot of wisdom in "If we hate them, we will become them."
While his ability to do so is small, there are thousands like him. If any of them can succeed in their life project, this is not the only time you're going to get hit. Yeah, and it doesn't really take that much to set off a nuclear bomb.
Actually, what I find most discomforting about this whole matter is how surprised everyone seems to be. That the US would be attacked with a Hollywood-style terrorist attack is hardly surprising, terrorists have always wanted to do things like that. There was a really good cartoon about that in Ernie, I guess about 1993-1994, where terrorists wanted to buy Sid's vacuum cleaner to suck up NYC. That they would use planes to crash into buildings, well, novels have been written on the topic. That the US would move to attack somebody is not surprising at all, we all knew that would happen. I've been predicting for years that the US would eventually move to complete what the Russians didn't do in Afghanistan, namely insert the regime they wanted in Kabul. But I must admit that I am slightly surprised it went that fast.
Nor is it surprising to note that civil liberties are attacked, there are strong forces who always wanted that, and they only needed the public's attention.
Finally, the public opinion engineering that has been going on, wow, it's just like in Wag The Dog... What a prescient movie.
You know, most people haven't cared about cryptography at all, so policy has been a tradeoff between the wishes of the hawks and the rational arguments of cryptologists. Of course crypotologists knew perfectly well that crypto can be used by terrorists, but the argument remains: Crypto is making society stronger against attacks, not weaker.
Now, the hawks pretend that something fundamental changed, and so they are getting the public up against crypto. There are no new arguments, there has not been any surprises, it is just that the hawks has got the uninformed public behind them, whereas previously, the public didn't care.
However, the original comment, about all the fuzz for five lives is still relevant. The reason why it is important is that people tend to be scared about things they have no reason to fear, but pay no attention to things that are really dangerous. Things that are spectacular, things that go boom and go on the news are generally considered more dangerous than deaths that go unnoticed.
This leads to a bizarre situation: Big resources are invested in something that has very little effect, not because it makes people safer, only because it makes people feel safer.
Spending something like $40 billion on war on terror, is it going to make you safer? It is certainly not making the number of people who may want to attack the US smaller. And, does it really affect their abilities? Really?
Resources are finite, so if you really love somebody, anybody then you should make sure that they are used wisely. That they are indeed used to promote safety, not used to promote a feeling of safety. For example, bringing armed guards on planes sounds like an idea that makes people feel safer, but to me, it sounds like what hijackers need to do is get the guards gun, making it even easier.
Well, while radiation may be bad to computer chips, being a physicist, I'm not really that concerned about radiation anymore. It's rarely a health issue.
We have... Some gets it, some don't.
The encryption isn't protected, the movie is. So, if he hadn't bought the movie but grabbed without having bought it, he would have broken the law. But he didn't do that. The movie was his. He bought it. He has the right to access it, according to the law.
Even Jon Bing, a law professor and a huge authority in Norway, and well, I guess I should refrain from any characterizations of him, even said that he thought JLJ didn't break the law.
I don't think they can win this case.
I find it particulary interesting what Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker exclaimated in this conversation:
OK, there are many ways to interprete this, but it is a very interesting statement.
Actually, I asked Joseph Rotblat what he thought happened in Copenhagen that day. He didn't answer, really, he just pointed out the many different possibilities, but he did put some emphasis on the possibility that the group did block the development.
Basically, there were production of heavy-water at a place called Rjukan, and for fear of nazis being able to use this, it was bombed, ships were bombed and sabotaged, and the factory was sabotaged.
It is particulary the factory sabotage that has made a few great heroes in Norway. It was done without any casualities on either side, the Germans knew nothing before the next day (the factory always made a lot of noise, so the guards didn't hear it blow up).
However, while the story around here is that these heroes prevented Germany from getting the bomb, I am quite sure that if they did, these actions would delay them by a few months at most. The factory was reopened after a few months of repairs, and there wasn't a whole lot of heavy-water on those ships.
The story is that the Germans could have found that when you "burn" Uranium, you get a portion of Plutonium, which is good for nuclear bombs, and since they didn't get a reactor working, they didn't find that. However, this is demonstrateably false, as this was proved theoretically by a German physicist in Berlin in 1941 (i don't have the reference).
I think that when the Germans closed the bomb project they knew how to make a bomb. I don't think there can be any question about that. However, what they may not have known is what kind of resources that would be required to do it. That's the calculation Heisenberg never committed, however easy it seems.
But even that can't answer all the questions.
As for the original post, well, what matters here is what this story means to the "if I don't do it, somebody else will"-attitude. If there were indeed german scientists who blocked the project, with this in mind...
I think you correctly identify the strengths of NR, and if I do remember correctly (it's a long time since I read the whole anti-NR page), they give them some credit for it too.
The main problem with NR is that as long as you understand the methods there fully, and realize their limitations, you're on safe grounds. Sometimes you can appreciate them fully from NR itself, and sometimes you can't, and a few of the methods are just flawed. So, you can use the stuff in NR when you fully understand it, but once you've reached that level, you've probably allready outgrown it... :-)
They've completely lost the point with this dolphin! Dolphins are supposed to be cute, you can't do that well with a stupid line drawing. They have to re-draw that dolphin, so that you get a cute, cuddly dolphin.
It should be more like Tux. Really. Learn from Tux!
Yeah, and I would say this isn't really about rigging. Hey, how many geeks here would hack up a perl script to vote for something cool (say a project you worked on), if somebody passed along an e-mail about it?
Come on! Everybody does this! It's the reason why /. polls are the way they are. Nobody should ever trust a web poll for anything, it's as simple as that.
I remember when a bunch of guys here at the IT department (the guys who sit around with root access for all campus computers) threw in tens if not hundreds of computers in voting for their favorite beer a hot summer night. It was a big newspaper that ran the vote, and their script prevented one IP from voting more than once every ten minutes, but they could vote efficiently enough with hundreds of computers voting... After they got their own favorite beer on top, they voted a non-alcoholic beer up to 2nd place just to make a point.... :-) The newspaper never checked the logs or realized what had happened, they only noted a few surprising results...
I bet there are geeks at M$ who are behind this. OK, we know that you sold your soul to M$, but hey, step forward and tell us about it, I'm sure we will understand...! :-)
I have lots of different interests. I have a life. Really, even if it doesn't feel that way now and then. ;-)
There are hundreds of organizations and corporations that I have some interest in, that I may buy products from, and who may entitled to assume if they are not doing further checks, that I'll be interested in hearing from.
If only those who have something I might be interested in e-mailed me a couple of times a year, there would be thousands of messages a year. There would be tens of messages every day, that would demand my attention.
Most of the time, I'm not interested, and my attention is the most precious thing I have. They can't just come in here and take it. If I would have to devote attention to tens of messages from companies that I might have an interest in a day, I would stop using e-mail (nowadays, well, I get tens of spams every day, but they are deleted without giving them much attention. I deeply despise spammers nevertheless for the resources they steal). That's why the only way is opt-in. If I am interested, I can go and search for the information. I'm pretty good at that.
This spammer obviously did no research at all when he spammed people. If he even looked at Steve's website, I think he would go away.
Instead of spamming lots of people, those who are interested in giving someone employment would search a database of resumes. It's much more effective for everyone.
It was definitly spamming that was going on.
AOL. When I signed up for cell phone subscription years ago with the Norwegian telecom Netcom, one of the nice features of the provider I chose was that they provided an e-mail address for each number, and also the ability to send SMS to e-mail. Obviously, this may serve as an SMSInternet gateway, and I soon hacked up a few scripts that allowed me to check e-mail from my ordinary phone, even surf the web, but that didn't work too well.
No day, the provider decided that this was too dangerous for me, because people could spam me, and people could harass me by sending me anonymous e-mail that was hard to trace, so they decided to close the service. I flamingly told them that thanks, I can look after myself, but I didn't quit simply because I don't have time to check for a new provider. I will soon.
Anyway, they kept it open for some time, but then they shut it down. Now, they just reopened it, but you had to register specifically for this to use it. However, they required you to write up a very detailed form with lots of personal information. Also, they required that you allowed them to do a credit check.
I don't know what that's like elsewhere, or what information you can obtain, but a credit check in Norway is something you do against a central database, and they can only perform a credit check with your written consent, and the registry has to send exactly the same information back to you as they send to the people requesting the check.
Normally, this is only done by banks if you apply for a big loan, or something. I have never seen anything like this before: They actually wanted me to allow them to do a credit check on me to use a service that costs about nothing to run.
I told them to get lost, but it doesn't seem to have made any impression. Too bad, because I really liked the service they provided. I guess it has to be some marketdroid with a really tight strangulation device around his neck.
I can't really agree with that.
Being an astronomer I probably shouldn't say this, because a pile of cash would rain down on me if somebody decided we needed to monitor the skies 24/7, but what the heck:
The risk isn't that high. Really.
We should rather spend our time ending wars. You may say, we can never end wars. Actually, all the nobel peace prize winners I've talked to think we can, so! ;-)
But on the other hand, I'd really like to monitor the skies 24/7, but such a system should not be designed with one application in mind, it should be designed with the goal of enabling all kinds of projects. For example, I'd like to see a global, dense network of Liquid Mirror Telescopes. That could be used to look for NEOs too.
I guess most people don't read the whole thing, and I only read the last page, but what they say there is pretty much that you'd be better of with an Athlon XP, though Northwood is a nice CPU too. That's what I get out of it anyway.... :-)
I agree about that. However, teaching critical thinking is all about changing the world, so I agree about the original quote as well, and I think there is no conflict at all with teaching critical thinking and being in the changing-the-world business. On the contrary, being in the changing-the-world business means teaching critical thinking.
Actually, I think you (and I, I think.... :-) ) would agree very much with the basic points of the person cited.
However, if somebody is able to dig up solid figures for sales, metrics for the purchasing ability of consumers, number of downloads done, and possibly other relevant metrics, preferably with a time resolution of a month, it should be a very easy analysis to do. But right now I haven't got the time to dig up the data.
Rather than analysis of variance, somebody should do real time series analysis on it, but that's not a field I've been studying, but perhaps there are some real statisticians here.
Look, some ACs gotta pull their head out of that warm but rather dark place and realize that you're being ripped off and the tech development as come to a grinding halt because of some US corporations. Hey, you haven't even got a working mobile phone system! People from here are shocked when they go to the US and see how far behind you are.
Wasn't it Interactive TV Bill talked about back in 1995 just before he discovered the web and began destroying that instead? Bill wants to get back to the dark ages of few-to-many media, because that's where the real money is.
The problem is that it is prohibitively expensive for any small guy.
Software patents would have been OK if anybody with a good idea could afford to patent it (say, it costed $100), the time it took to have it evaluated was one week, and the patent expired after one month.
That is what it would take for patents to not slow down tech development.
However, making the patent process this fast and cheap is (I presume) not possible, and that is why software patents must be dropped alltogether.
I think I have been infringing on this patent myself since 1995 :-), as I started telling my friends at that time: "don't send me heavy documents in the e-mail, dump it on the web with my name on, and send me the URL". This patent quite simply covers things that the web was specifically made for. But that isn't publicly available information so...
Make sure you to go to BountyQuest every now and than to check if a bounty is posted, so that these patents can be killed once and for all.
Hm, come to think of it, there should be a similar site that organizes prior art claims and challenge patents on the basis of it... Anybody know about anything like that?
I know I started to tell people about this in early 1995, it is the most obvious use of the web I can think of. It's quite simply how the web is used by those who know how to use it.