A news-based web site "investigates" WPVI. On discovering that they don't broadcast all the stories they receive in a given day, but only some of them, they manufacture a story about the evils of unsupervised censorship happening every day in the privately-owned broadcast media, and nothing being done about it by the police. Then the web site speculates about the hidden agendas of the editors in the media, and why they hide all these stories.
Then a selection of the culled stories is shown, all featuring children and the elderly.
Why weren't we told about these stories? Oh the horrors! Please think of the children and elderly!
Honourable though his intentions may be, he also demonstrates a lack of knowledge on how corporate politics works. He gave true reasons for his actions.
In the chat log, he gives a reason for an investigation thus: "To satiate my curiousity." This is the wrong thing to say. If you are up to anything that is remotely dubious, never give the exact *real* reason you are doing anything. Instead, make up another reason that is plausible and legitimate and always give that reason instead. Never divulge the real reason to anyone you don't trust. If you cannot think up a plausible reason then you may need to rethink your actions.
In the example given, he should have said that he was gathering information in the public interest. (This reason is even true and therefore irrefutable: he's a member of the public and he's interested, therefore it must be in the public interest.) Another thing one could say is anything using corporate doublespeak. The eyes of thine listener shall glazeth over: and thou shalt be as slippery as an eel in thy escape from unwelcome scrutiny.
Concealing real reasons is commonplace. The leaders of the MPAA and RIAA do this. Politicians do this. Corporate CEO's do this. And we know what fine, upstanding citizens these people are. *cough*. So if it's okay for them to do it, why can't the masses?
Microsoft often use the 'embrace, extend, extingush' strategy when using open standards. A simple way to make their products less attractive is to intentionally break them. Microsoft intentionally break competitor's products. Why can't we do the same?
So we should fight back. If Microsoft extend a standard with their own proprietory extensions, then we make their life more difficult. Are Microsoft using 'unused' or 'reserved' bits for their own use? Reject the connection, or make it run s-l-o-w-l-y. Are they adding extra data? Quietly strip it out to 'guard against viruses'. Does Microsoft use a nonstandard IP packet? What a shame, it can't get through my firewall. If Microsoft want to mess around with standards to further their own ends, what's to stop us from messing around with Microsoft's unwelcome 'extensions' to further ours?
JV: How many people in the United States build their own sets?
TT: Well, I'm talking about engineers.
The interviewer blew it right there in his last response.
The CORRECT response should have been "Why does that matter? Do I not have the right to build stuff for myself?"
I would say that the correct response would be to pretend that JV actually said something like "Why should people in the United States have the right to build their own sets?" and proceed along those lines. Pretending to mishear a question is a common interview technique for JV, politicians and the like, and there's no reason why interviewers cannot do the same to press a point when needed.
Shouldn't they provide me with a free replacement in the case my property, the copy, is stolen, broken, or lost?
That is unlikely. A part of their business model that is never explicitly stated - MPAA and RIAA alike - is the regular replacement of media on a cycle about 20 years in length. Wax cylinders went out of style. 78 RPM went out of style. Vinyl went out of style. Cassettes are just about out of style. VHS is on the way out.
Then there is the physical media, which always wears out in one way or another. Records wear out because the stylus wears down the sound impressions in the grooves. Cassette tape players consume a steady diet of tapes. Compact discs and DVD's can be easily scratched. Sure, you can take good care of the media but one mistake can be fatal.
No matter what new medium is released for sound or movies, you can be sure that it is going to be obsolete in 20 to 30 years. The media will also be designed to wear out through normal usage, or at least will not have any special protection. It is unlikely that they will ever sanction the mainstream usage of a medium like a compact disc that is optically read encased in a hard, protective plastic cover like a 3+1/2" floppy disc.
I believe one reason why the MPAA and RIAA fear the accurate digital reproduction of their recordings is that once you can make flawless digital copies, you can do that in perpetuity. If that happens, the MPAA and RIAA will never again be able to resell you that same product when the media becomes obsolete. Witness how desperate they were to kill off digital audiotape (DAT) in the early 1980's. I believe this is why they are more than willing to trample all over your fair-use right of reproduction for personal use. Perhaps it is this reason we see so many products marketed as "special edition", "digitally remastered" and the like.
I presently rent a flat in Melbourne, Australia. I use dialup rather than broadband because it's far less hassle to get connected.
Dialup: One only need a phone line. Flats already have phone lines. If for some reason you actually need to get a new physical phone line installed you only need to contact the phone company. There are no extra connection costs to get online, just join the ISP.
Broadband: Many flats don't have cables installed. To get a cable installed, you need to contact not just the cable company, but you also need to get permission from the body corporate that administers the flat in which one lives. Getting permission from the body corporate can be about as pleasant as having teeth pulled, and usually takes a lot longer. When the cable is installed, there's also the cost of laying that cable and the cost of getting the broadband modem installed. Renting the cable is also an additional cost to the phone line, unless one purchases a package deal of some sort.
In short, broadband is a lot more hassle than dialup. Dialup may be a lot slower, but it is also cheaper. My 33K modem has served me well for six years now and I have no plans to retire it.
I use IE on Windows, more due to apathy than anything else. I have also not had to remove ANY spyware AT ALL from my PC (other than cookies) in the last four years.
The secret to my success is to lock down ActiveX and restrict scripting. Most of these spyware apps do drive-by installations through ActiveX applets, so if ActiveX is disabled then spyware cannot be installed.
I have included many websites in the Restricted zone, where scripting and ActiveX are both disabled. The default setting for new websites is to prompt for ActiveX, and I always say No unless I know in advance what the ActiveX control is.
I have to say No several times a day, but this is no more onerous than closing a popup, and if it annoys me I could always disable ActiveX.
I also scan with Adaware and Spybot Search and Destroy periodically, and I use a popup blocker and Zonealarm. Not much gets through all of that.
Technically, the country of Australia was never a penal colony. The colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) were penal colonies, but stopped accepting convicts well before Australia was federated in 1901.
Americans who like to mention that Australia was a penal colony seem to forget that Georgia was also a penal colony, and also don't seem to know that the number of Americans presently imprisoned in the US is far greater than the number of convicts that were ever shipped to Australia.
if you are a Australian, take the time to *physically* write your MP
Must we get black marker pens and write "your MP" all over bus shelters, park benches, toilet cubicles and any other surface that presents itself? I don't see how inciting vandalism is going to solve the problem.
Unless, of course, you mean "write to your MP", which is the correct form of this expression in Australian grammar.
Funny you should mention that. By coincidence, I just got off the phone not two minutes ago with a Telus Mobility customer service rep. You see, this afternoon I got a text message advertisement.
This was extremely disruptive! Here I'm in a meeting, and my bloody phone starts ringing as if our server was down, and it turned out to be a stupid ad.
you don't have a constitutionally mandated right to invade my privacy
That is so true, and WhenU are treading that same worn path of constitutional protection leading nowhere that has been used by spammers for years now.
What WhenU are doing is equivalent to breaking into someone's home and reading them advertisements, or erecting billboards on someone's front lawn. While the American constitution does have a right to free speech, that right only exist provided other laws are not violated. WhenU's business model steals CPU cycles and bandwidth from other people to display advertisements. Even if those people initially consented knowingly to offer WhenU those CPU cycles and that bandwidth, it must be understood by WhenU that those people have every right to revoke that consent at any time.
A big part of what keeps many users from switching is fear of being in a totally new environment that don't understand. This provides a midpoint between the two worlds: get a taste of Linux, and if you start to panic just hit the good old "Windows" key on the keyboard and you're back to familiar territory.
I see CoLinux doing the same thing for Linux that Windows 3.1 did for Windows.
People call mainframes "dinosaurs" because of their size, and presumably because they will be extinct soon. But remember, dinosaurs were around for over 100 million years, and the IBM mainframe has been around for only 40. So the IBM mainframe has only 99,999,960 years to go.
If it wasn't for unions, there would be no such things as an eight-hour work day, a five-day work week, paid annual leave, paid sick leave, the ability to take breaks other than meal and toilet breaks, and if you had to leave your workplace two hours early because your child has been in an accident at school and you had to take them to hospital you would still have your job the next day. Without unions, we would probably still be in the Dickensian world of working twelve hours a day, six days a week, no paid leave of any kind, no work breaks, and if you failed to show up for work one day for any reason you could be sacked. But you wouldn't have to worry about collecting your kid from school because they would not be in school; instead they would be slaving away right next to you.
Unions are good at maintaining basic working conditions, it's where they ask too much that the problems occur.
While there's a lot of speculation about transportation in the 21st century, such as hydrogen, ethanol and the like, I think the future will be more mundane. I expect diesel engines to become more commonplace because diesel is relatively easy to make. Diesel engines may also be used to power electric vehicles.
Microsoft if chasing a moving target here and they will always be behind the curve, reacting to the latest virus outbreak until they fix what is fundamentally wrong with the Windows architecture. Hopefully this will happen with Longhorn in 2006......or 2007.........or whenever.
This won't happen until Microsoft stops its grab for cash by releasing a new kernel every few years. A new kernel means new exploits to find.
I think the problem is how they are saying "dramatic" when referring to the overall speed. It's not so dramatic, but it would be dramatic if we were to look at the individual bits they've tuned. They probably changed something small so a particular portion of the code runs 20 times faster, but *overall* it is only slightly faster.
I say well done to the development team for their continued efforts. Maybe I will follow Darth Vader's lead and come back from the dark side of using IE by installing Mozilla.
This is obviously some new use of the word "dramatically" that I am not familiar with.
When compared to Mozilla 1.6, Mozilla 1.7 Beta is 7% faster at startup, is 8% faster at window open time, has 9% faster pageloading times, and is 5% smaller in binary size.
It might be just you and me, but single-digit percentage increases in performance isn't "dramatic". It's more like "scarcely noticeable".
Slashdot Mirror
I'm assuming they'll not be using this material to make golf balls...
It adds a whole new meaning to the term "bunker buster" now, doesn't it?
I would love to see the following ...
A news-based web site "investigates" WPVI. On discovering that they don't broadcast all the stories they receive in a given day, but only some of them, they manufacture a story about the evils of unsupervised censorship happening every day in the privately-owned broadcast media, and nothing being done about it by the police. Then the web site speculates about the hidden agendas of the editors in the media, and why they hide all these stories.
Then a selection of the culled stories is shown, all featuring children and the elderly.
Why weren't we told about these stories? Oh the horrors! Please think of the children and elderly!
Our breeder reactor was, indeed, last publicly seen in the back of my Ford.
When I read this, all I can think of is that "Mr Fusion" device in the "Back to the Future" trilogy.
Honourable though his intentions may be, he also demonstrates a lack of knowledge on how corporate politics works. He gave true reasons for his actions.
In the chat log, he gives a reason for an investigation thus: "To satiate my curiousity." This is the wrong thing to say. If you are up to anything that is remotely dubious, never give the exact *real* reason you are doing anything. Instead, make up another reason that is plausible and legitimate and always give that reason instead. Never divulge the real reason to anyone you don't trust. If you cannot think up a plausible reason then you may need to rethink your actions.
In the example given, he should have said that he was gathering information in the public interest. (This reason is even true and therefore irrefutable: he's a member of the public and he's interested, therefore it must be in the public interest.) Another thing one could say is anything using corporate doublespeak. The eyes of thine listener shall glazeth over: and thou shalt be as slippery as an eel in thy escape from unwelcome scrutiny.
Concealing real reasons is commonplace. The leaders of the MPAA and RIAA do this. Politicians do this. Corporate CEO's do this. And we know what fine, upstanding citizens these people are. *cough*. So if it's okay for them to do it, why can't the masses?
Microsoft often use the 'embrace, extend, extingush' strategy when using open standards. A simple way to make their products less attractive is to intentionally break them. Microsoft intentionally break competitor's products. Why can't we do the same?
So we should fight back. If Microsoft extend a standard with their own proprietory extensions, then we make their life more difficult. Are Microsoft using 'unused' or 'reserved' bits for their own use? Reject the connection, or make it run s-l-o-w-l-y. Are they adding extra data? Quietly strip it out to 'guard against viruses'. Does Microsoft use a nonstandard IP packet? What a shame, it can't get through my firewall. If Microsoft want to mess around with standards to further their own ends, what's to stop us from messing around with Microsoft's unwelcome 'extensions' to further ours?
The interviewer blew it right there in his last response.
The CORRECT response should have been "Why does that matter? Do I not have the right to build stuff for myself?"
I would say that the correct response would be to pretend that JV actually said something like "Why should people in the United States have the right to build their own sets?" and proceed along those lines. Pretending to mishear a question is a common interview technique for JV, politicians and the like, and there's no reason why interviewers cannot do the same to press a point when needed.
Can I videotape my son's perfomance?
You can, but you may not.
Seriously, I would say there's unlikely to be a problem provided you don't try to sell your video.
Shouldn't they provide me with a free replacement in the case my property, the copy, is stolen, broken, or lost?
That is unlikely. A part of their business model that is never explicitly stated - MPAA and RIAA alike - is the regular replacement of media on a cycle about 20 years in length. Wax cylinders went out of style. 78 RPM went out of style. Vinyl went out of style. Cassettes are just about out of style. VHS is on the way out.
Then there is the physical media, which always wears out in one way or another. Records wear out because the stylus wears down the sound impressions in the grooves. Cassette tape players consume a steady diet of tapes. Compact discs and DVD's can be easily scratched. Sure, you can take good care of the media but one mistake can be fatal.
No matter what new medium is released for sound or movies, you can be sure that it is going to be obsolete in 20 to 30 years. The media will also be designed to wear out through normal usage, or at least will not have any special protection. It is unlikely that they will ever sanction the mainstream usage of a medium like a compact disc that is optically read encased in a hard, protective plastic cover like a 3+1/2" floppy disc.
I believe one reason why the MPAA and RIAA fear the accurate digital reproduction of their recordings is that once you can make flawless digital copies, you can do that in perpetuity. If that happens, the MPAA and RIAA will never again be able to resell you that same product when the media becomes obsolete. Witness how desperate they were to kill off digital audiotape (DAT) in the early 1980's. I believe this is why they are more than willing to trample all over your fair-use right of reproduction for personal use. Perhaps it is this reason we see so many products marketed as "special edition", "digitally remastered" and the like.
All I can think of when I read this is Darth Vader breathing, and saying the words "Welcome to the Dark Side."
I presently rent a flat in Melbourne, Australia. I use dialup rather than broadband because it's far less hassle to get connected.
Dialup: One only need a phone line. Flats already have phone lines. If for some reason you actually need to get a new physical phone line installed you only need to contact the phone company. There are no extra connection costs to get online, just join the ISP.
Broadband: Many flats don't have cables installed. To get a cable installed, you need to contact not just the cable company, but you also need to get permission from the body corporate that administers the flat in which one lives. Getting permission from the body corporate can be about as pleasant as having teeth pulled, and usually takes a lot longer. When the cable is installed, there's also the cost of laying that cable and the cost of getting the broadband modem installed. Renting the cable is also an additional cost to the phone line, unless one purchases a package deal of some sort.
In short, broadband is a lot more hassle than dialup. Dialup may be a lot slower, but it is also cheaper. My 33K modem has served me well for six years now and I have no plans to retire it.
I use IE on Windows, more due to apathy than anything else. I have also not had to remove ANY spyware AT ALL from my PC (other than cookies) in the last four years.
The secret to my success is to lock down ActiveX and restrict scripting. Most of these spyware apps do drive-by installations through ActiveX applets, so if ActiveX is disabled then spyware cannot be installed.
I have included many websites in the Restricted zone, where scripting and ActiveX are both disabled. The default setting for new websites is to prompt for ActiveX, and I always say No unless I know in advance what the ActiveX control is.
I have to say No several times a day, but this is no more onerous than closing a popup, and if it annoys me I could always disable ActiveX.
I also scan with Adaware and Spybot Search and Destroy periodically, and I use a popup blocker and Zonealarm. Not much gets through all of that.
Technically, the country of Australia was never a penal colony. The colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) were penal colonies, but stopped accepting convicts well before Australia was federated in 1901.
Americans who like to mention that Australia was a penal colony seem to forget that Georgia was also a penal colony, and also don't seem to know that the number of Americans presently imprisoned in the US is far greater than the number of convicts that were ever shipped to Australia.
if you are a Australian, take the time to *physically* write your MP
Must we get black marker pens and write "your MP" all over bus shelters, park benches, toilet cubicles and any other surface that presents itself? I don't see how inciting vandalism is going to solve the problem.
Unless, of course, you mean "write to your MP", which is the correct form of this expression in Australian grammar.
Funny you should mention that. By coincidence, I just got off the phone not two minutes ago with a Telus Mobility customer service rep. You see, this afternoon I got a text message advertisement.
This was extremely disruptive! Here I'm in a meeting, and my bloody phone starts ringing as if our server was down, and it turned out to be a stupid ad.
Ka-CHING! They may now owe you $500. More info here: Telephone Consumer Protection Act
you don't have a constitutionally mandated right to invade my privacy
That is so true, and WhenU are treading that same worn path of constitutional protection leading nowhere that has been used by spammers for years now.
What WhenU are doing is equivalent to breaking into someone's home and reading them advertisements, or erecting billboards on someone's front lawn. While the American constitution does have a right to free speech, that right only exist provided other laws are not violated. WhenU's business model steals CPU cycles and bandwidth from other people to display advertisements. Even if those people initially consented knowingly to offer WhenU those CPU cycles and that bandwidth, it must be understood by WhenU that those people have every right to revoke that consent at any time.
A big part of what keeps many users from switching is fear of being in a totally new environment that don't understand. This provides a midpoint between the two worlds: get a taste of Linux, and if you start to panic just hit the good old "Windows" key on the keyboard and you're back to familiar territory.
I see CoLinux doing the same thing for Linux that Windows 3.1 did for Windows.
Or, to put it another way, don't be near ground zero when the SCO stock price makes a crater.
Yes that's true - only the person speaking forgot to specify the base for that number.
People call mainframes "dinosaurs" because of their size, and presumably because they will be extinct soon. But remember, dinosaurs were around for over 100 million years, and the IBM mainframe has been around for only 40. So the IBM mainframe has only 99,999,960 years to go.
Scary.
If it wasn't for unions, there would be no such things as an eight-hour work day, a five-day work week, paid annual leave, paid sick leave, the ability to take breaks other than meal and toilet breaks, and if you had to leave your workplace two hours early because your child has been in an accident at school and you had to take them to hospital you would still have your job the next day. Without unions, we would probably still be in the Dickensian world of working twelve hours a day, six days a week, no paid leave of any kind, no work breaks, and if you failed to show up for work one day for any reason you could be sacked. But you wouldn't have to worry about collecting your kid from school because they would not be in school; instead they would be slaving away right next to you.
Unions are good at maintaining basic working conditions, it's where they ask too much that the problems occur.
While there's a lot of speculation about transportation in the 21st century, such as hydrogen, ethanol and the like, I think the future will be more mundane. I expect diesel engines to become more commonplace because diesel is relatively easy to make. Diesel engines may also be used to power electric vehicles.
We're supposed to be the strongest, so why can't we deal with our own problems?
Two words: "campaign contributions". Outside of the US, we just call them bribes.
Microsoft if chasing a moving target here and they will always be behind the curve, reacting to the latest virus outbreak until they fix what is fundamentally wrong with the Windows architecture. Hopefully this will happen with Longhorn in 2006......or 2007.........or whenever.
This won't happen until Microsoft stops its grab for cash by releasing a new kernel every few years. A new kernel means new exploits to find.
I think the problem is how they are saying "dramatic" when referring to the overall speed. It's not so dramatic, but it would be dramatic if we were to look at the individual bits they've tuned. They probably changed something small so a particular portion of the code runs 20 times faster, but *overall* it is only slightly faster.
I say well done to the development team for their continued efforts. Maybe I will follow Darth Vader's lead and come back from the dark side of using IE by installing Mozilla.
This is obviously some new use of the word "dramatically" that I am not familiar with.
When compared to Mozilla 1.6, Mozilla 1.7 Beta is 7% faster at startup, is 8% faster at window open time, has 9% faster pageloading times, and is 5% smaller in binary size.
It might be just you and me, but single-digit percentage increases in performance isn't "dramatic". It's more like "scarcely noticeable".