You sound like a shill for DRM, Brian. You know very well what the difference between owning and renting is, especially with respect to something as personal as a music collection.
We see lots of things that tend to loosen up MS's chokehold on the industry.
This shows up in a lot of subtle ways. As the MS/OSS war for hearts and minds rages on here on Slashdot and elsewhere, I wonder how many of the MS partisans realize how much more difficult it would be to deal with Redmond in the absence of the Open Source threat? They are benefitting hugely from OSS even if they're not using it directly themselves.
We can't seem to get our outdated shuttles off the ground safely, or keep a permanent space staion running effectively. Is now a good time to tinker with another planet's atmosphere?
I know there are a lot of SF fans here, because this is the closest that anyone's come to questioning the technical feasibility (let alone cost-effectiveness) of such a project. Before we do this, maybe we should be replacing our dwindling stocks of fossil fuels with methane from Titan!
The parent post isn't asking for solutions, though; it's about generating FUD regarding Linux not being "ready for the desktop"(!). The 10s he quotes makes my old 366 MHz laptop look like a supercomputer. Maybe I'll hold onto it for a while longer...
Using this same logic, I would guess that Solitaire, Minesweeper, etc. cost American businesses at least $200 billion per year.
So when did time stop being equal to money? I can't speak to the actual amount, but I would say that they actually do cost quite a bundle in lost productivity. If someone is paying for your time, then the things you spend that time on - productive or otherwise - are all costs. This would be crystal clear to you if you were an employer rather than an employee.
And the irony of it all is that if you were really going to commit arson, you wouldn't have used your Safeway card to buy the materials in the first place. Unless you were a complete moron, of course...
Here in Illinois, 50% of those on death row were proven by genetic analysis to be innocent of the crimes of which they had been convicted.
You would think (as I'm sure most people do) that the error rate would be less for capital crimes than for minor ones, but there are reasons to suppose that the reverse is actually true. The heinous, high-profile crimes generally come with a lot of media and political pressure on police and prosecutors. They may respond to that pressure by grabbing the first plausible suspect that comes along, especially if that suspect is unable to mount a competent legal defense. They become heroes for nabbing a "perpetrator", and at that point it becomes very difficult to turn back, even when exculpatory evidence starts popping up inconveniently. Even when intentions are honorable (and they often aren't), it's easy to force the facts to fit and simply ignore the ones that don't.
On top of all that, there's a conservative wind blowing in this country that insists on being "tough" on everybody, guilty or not. The raw need to punish somebody then overrides any concerns about guilt or innocence, as far as the body politic is concerned.
I should have known that A9, being wholly owned by Amazon, would use Amazon session cookies to identify users.
Get tougher on cookies. I clean mine out multiple times per day, and rarely allow more than 3 or 4 to overstay their sessions (and two of those are Slashdot's!). With Mozilla, you can even leave the "Manage Cookies" dialog up and watch 'em as they come in; then it's just a click to get rid of the ones you don't want.
... is people trying to figure out how they can bash Bush over this.
And whose fault is it, that he makes himself so emminently bashable?
This is just another step in the privatization parade. The rationale will be to make government smaller (at least the parts that aren't spying on us), but the effect will be to replace civil servants - who can't legally lobby congress or contribute to political campaigns - with private interests that can. The Repubs get a massive patronage system funded with tax dollars, and we will get government services that are designed to benefit the providers, not regular citizens.
It's been a while since you've met a lot of CS students, hasn't it?
Can't knock CS grads as a group, but... To be honest, the best programmers I've worked with in the past have tended to spend time in other (often unrelated) fields before getting into programming as a profession. I don't have a theory as to why that should be, however...
Strange. I would think that in an EE/CS academic environment, the availability of source code alone would be a compelling draw. That and the relative freedom from virii and spyware...
What they did was wrong, and whether or not you personally were offended isn't the point.
Surely there is a scientific way to settle the issue of whether children are harmed by this sort of thing. Perhaps we can start with two large groups of randomly selected children, and let them watch an appropriately 'G'-rated television show, featuring cute, cuddly animals engaged in completely innocent behavior. The control group would watch the show unmodified, but the other group would see a version in which a 500 millisecond flash of a female nipple was inserted. These children could then be monitored for the next 20 years or so, with respect to things like grades and attendance in school, criminal behavior, drug use, career success, suicide, etc.
I have no doubt about what the result would be. Contrary to what the liberals seem to believe, we are likely to find that the nippled children have been harmed irreparably, so much so perhaps that the ethics of the study itself will be called into question. Specifically, I would expect a high incidence of criminal sexual behavior, and perhaps even of willingness to engage in sexual activity prior to (or outside of) Holy Matrimony.
At least then we will be able to base our enforcement actions on a sound scientific footing.
Not that I like the neocons or anything, but do you serioulsy think they are competent enough to create and keep secret a conspiracy like that.
They don't have to be competent conspirators, because there's nothing "secret" about it. The "objective" Press doesn't talk about it much because to do so would exhibit "bias" and lead people to inescapable conclusions; even the past public writings of key players seem to be off-limits for the evening news.
Nothing new about this, though. Look at the 90s writings of Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et. al. and you'll see the Iraq war laid out for you, as well.
They probably outsourced all the people that could do the above effectively.
This was my thought exactly. It doesn't sound as if this organization has much on-board experience in negotiating or managing software development contracts. They would likely have gotten screwed whether the contractor was off-shore or not, but their problem is compounded in this case by the lack of an effective legal remedy.
Slashdot Mirror
You sound like a shill for DRM, Brian. You know very well what the difference between owning and renting is, especially with respect to something as personal as a music collection.
Even the best and brightest can fail, if there are too many of them on a project...
This shows up in a lot of subtle ways. As the MS/OSS war for hearts and minds rages on here on Slashdot and elsewhere, I wonder how many of the MS partisans realize how much more difficult it would be to deal with Redmond in the absence of the Open Source threat? They are benefitting hugely from OSS even if they're not using it directly themselves.
You have to wonder whether the new militarism is as much a response to this scenario as a cause of it...
Hmmm... Are we talking about biology or religion here? They get so confused these days...
Would Jesus have relied on GPS?
I know there are a lot of SF fans here, because this is the closest that anyone's come to questioning the technical feasibility (let alone cost-effectiveness) of such a project. Before we do this, maybe we should be replacing our dwindling stocks of fossil fuels with methane from Titan!
The parent post isn't asking for solutions, though; it's about generating FUD regarding Linux not being "ready for the desktop"(!). The 10s he quotes makes my old 366 MHz laptop look like a supercomputer. Maybe I'll hold onto it for a while longer...
So when did time stop being equal to money? I can't speak to the actual amount, but I would say that they actually do cost quite a bundle in lost productivity. If someone is paying for your time, then the things you spend that time on - productive or otherwise - are all costs. This would be crystal clear to you if you were an employer rather than an employee.
And the irony of it all is that if you were really going to commit arson, you wouldn't have used your Safeway card to buy the materials in the first place. Unless you were a complete moron, of course...
You would think (as I'm sure most people do) that the error rate would be less for capital crimes than for minor ones, but there are reasons to suppose that the reverse is actually true. The heinous, high-profile crimes generally come with a lot of media and political pressure on police and prosecutors. They may respond to that pressure by grabbing the first plausible suspect that comes along, especially if that suspect is unable to mount a competent legal defense. They become heroes for nabbing a "perpetrator", and at that point it becomes very difficult to turn back, even when exculpatory evidence starts popping up inconveniently. Even when intentions are honorable (and they often aren't), it's easy to force the facts to fit and simply ignore the ones that don't.
On top of all that, there's a conservative wind blowing in this country that insists on being "tough" on everybody, guilty or not. The raw need to punish somebody then overrides any concerns about guilt or innocence, as far as the body politic is concerned.
Obviously said by someone who hasn't met my girlfriend...
Exactly.
True enough, but my first thought about this post was that is was from the other side...
Get tougher on cookies. I clean mine out multiple times per day, and rarely allow more than 3 or 4 to overstay their sessions (and two of those are Slashdot's!). With Mozilla, you can even leave the "Manage Cookies" dialog up and watch 'em as they come in; then it's just a click to get rid of the ones you don't want.
Well, there's the rub. Consent is determined by who owns the host, not by whose desk it's sitting on at any particular time.
OTOH, restrictions imposed by ISPs really do break the internet...
Funny - My "web experience" is almost always a lot nicer when I disable Flash (which is most of the time these days)...
And whose fault is it, that he makes himself so emminently bashable?
This is just another step in the privatization parade. The rationale will be to make government smaller (at least the parts that aren't spying on us), but the effect will be to replace civil servants - who can't legally lobby congress or contribute to political campaigns - with private interests that can. The Repubs get a massive patronage system funded with tax dollars, and we will get government services that are designed to benefit the providers, not regular citizens.
Can't knock CS grads as a group, but... To be honest, the best programmers I've worked with in the past have tended to spend time in other (often unrelated) fields before getting into programming as a profession. I don't have a theory as to why that should be, however...
Strange. I would think that in an EE/CS academic environment, the availability of source code alone would be a compelling draw. That and the relative freedom from virii and spyware...
Surely there is a scientific way to settle the issue of whether children are harmed by this sort of thing. Perhaps we can start with two large groups of randomly selected children, and let them watch an appropriately 'G'-rated television show, featuring cute, cuddly animals engaged in completely innocent behavior. The control group would watch the show unmodified, but the other group would see a version in which a 500 millisecond flash of a female nipple was inserted. These children could then be monitored for the next 20 years or so, with respect to things like grades and attendance in school, criminal behavior, drug use, career success, suicide, etc.
I have no doubt about what the result would be. Contrary to what the liberals seem to believe, we are likely to find that the nippled children have been harmed irreparably, so much so perhaps that the ethics of the study itself will be called into question. Specifically, I would expect a high incidence of criminal sexual behavior, and perhaps even of willingness to engage in sexual activity prior to (or outside of) Holy Matrimony.
At least then we will be able to base our enforcement actions on a sound scientific footing.
Surely the sky will fall, and the Republic with it!
They don't have to be competent conspirators, because there's nothing "secret" about it. The "objective" Press doesn't talk about it much because to do so would exhibit "bias" and lead people to inescapable conclusions; even the past public writings of key players seem to be off-limits for the evening news.
Nothing new about this, though. Look at the 90s writings of Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et. al. and you'll see the Iraq war laid out for you, as well.
This was my thought exactly. It doesn't sound as if this organization has much on-board experience in negotiating or managing software development contracts. They would likely have gotten screwed whether the contractor was off-shore or not, but their problem is compounded in this case by the lack of an effective legal remedy.
The half-century of war that it's going to take to consolidate and maintain the American Christian Empire is going to be no picnic, either.