The fact that this supprises me so, in spite of my clear awareness of how imperfect humans and human organizations can be, tells me that even I need to be continually reminded of our capability for corruption.
Sure you can. You can have it dismantled/examined by an independent party, and have them confirm that it is working as described. You can take the testimony of the people that set up the system, and acquired/retrieved the film/data.
Evidence is evidence. If you commit a crime while someone's not watching and we've got evidence, your ass is still going to jail.
If you know of a place that's got rules saying otherwise, then something's wrong.
> The laws on the books say you can record public places on videotape, but you can not retain copies of audio.
What's the purpose behind laws like that? If I can retain a "memory" of something observed in public, why the hell shouldn't I be allowed to retain a recording, video *or* audio?
Sounds like a choice between black and white because no-one's got the balls to try and sort out the fine grey lines seperating everything. I hate that type of human stupidity.
You should realize that there are something like 7 (metric) tons of air over every square meter between you and the stratosphere!
Hmmm, sounds impressive, but we all know that statistics can be used for evil, right? So I thought I'd do a bit of digging.
Turns out Liquid Nitrogen at it's boiling point is.8kg/litre, which means that the thickness of the atmosphere between you and the stratosphere is equivalent to 8.7 meters of liquid nitrogen.
Ok, that's pretty good. Of course being a perfectionist what I'd really like is if it were translated to a lead equivalent. How thick of a layer of lead would equal the stopping power of 8.7 meters of liquid nitrogen/oxygen? (And give me multiple answers, for each type of radiation of interest:)
I always wondered about this "stick it in a remote place it can't escape from" philosophy.
Personally I'd like to see it placed in a highly visible (yet perfectly secure) location, so humanity always has to continuously see that the enclosing structure remains safe, secure, and maintained.
Sure, who knows what's going to happen to that rock or salt formation under the earth after we've burrowed into it, "sealed" something in, and gone away.
But if I build a pyrimid of iron, rebar, concrete, and multiple walls of thick thick stainless steel, ala "Fort Knox"....
I propose that for such a structure it might be much more likely that we can be certain that we'll KNOW what it will do for 100,000 years. Therefore, it's the safer option. (Might not be as cheap though, but hey, gotta pay the piper somehow.)
It's very similar to what that idiot Steve Gibson is doing. Cnet, ZDnet, whatever-pc-magazine prints his half-baked theories about UNIX sockets in XP. Just having UNIX sockets isn't necessarily a bad thing, its in how they're used obviously
Huh? You got some references? That sounds like an "interesting" read. Did I miss a Slashdot article?
I'm getting sick and tired of this "government = evil" delusion that affects so many people, just like some people are getting tired of the "corporations = evil" assumption.
AFAIK - The government is an extension of me (us). As long as I (we) give it due dilligence, I have no fear.
If you want to live in a cave, fine. I'm sure there's room in this world for you and your cave dwelling countrymen. Just not in Canada, eh?
> Just happened to met couple of Canadians while waiting for my MRI scan
My Dad died of cancer here in Saskatchewan a few years ago. They told us he had 6 months. He actually lived 1 1/2 years, and not for one instant did we have to worry about bills, insurance, or anything. A rich farmer (one of my Dad's highschool friends no less) got the exact same thing a short time later. Same prognosis from the canuck medical system. He went down to the US to all the high priced clinics and hospitals for second opinions and MRI's and what not. No change in prognosis. Died the same as my Dad died. I have no concerns what so ever about the competency of our medical system. After a certain point, there's nothing extra that modern medicine can do, not for all the money in the world.
Now the waiting times in emergency rooms in Ontario, that's a different matter, and it's the Conservatives who are causing it, damn money grubbing cheap-ass lazzie-fair "tax-cuts-all-the-way" bastards.
Your general facts are all correct, however it's been under research for ages. The optoelectronics used at the ends of fiber optics is nearly all strained or strain-compensated quaternary (mix of four seperate types of atoms) semiconductor compounds grown using the epitaxial methods you metion.
What I presume that this announcement really means is that IBM has now solved all the very problems you describe, to the point where they are now planning on putting it into production.
> He has this whole long review with "scientific" pictures...
If he had called it a "two dimensional InGaAs/GaAs digital light integrator" and shown proof that it's light-capture efficiency was repeatable and constant to within N%, would you have been more suitably impressed?
Say... one is roughly 14 times brighter?
Nope, apparently you didn't read the simple electronics (aka physics) that he was explaining in certain parts. If you want proof, just run a numeric analysis of the images yourself to determine the total light output. The 14 LED version is not exactly proportionally brighter than the 1, 4, or 7 LED versions.
You are aware that it's 150 CANADIAN dollars, right? And you're not being fair, you should ammortize that dish cost over 3-5 years, which (with a $1500 dish) brings it all back down to $175 CDN, or $100 USD per year. Isn't that what ADSL costs in the UK?
And 128 kbps is the normal upload cap on ADSL here in Canada anyways.
But for gamers, the half second ping would be attrocious. You'd have to keep a modem account just to play games. Oh well, guess we have to wait for Satelite service from LEO or medium earth orbit (although we'd need tracking dishes, which would be more expensive, upfront and maintenance...). Good news is that there is lots of room up there in the medium orbits so it could be cheaper that way, and it's closer so the power levels can be lower.
Think about this people. In this instance I can see why the BSD camp has gone berserk over the GPL. Personaly I think the BSD is too loose, the GPL is too restrictive in claiming all your subsequent work that is linked to your program.
How about this middle ground guys?
I had a thought along these lines earlier today. But my thoughts immediately became bogged down in *how* one would decide what proportion of "code retribution" or "attribution" is desired in all the different shades of grey circumstances. I just don't think there is a method of codifying that in a license that is at all reasonable to interpret clearly, that would satisfy even a fraction of everyone.
For example, your specific suggestion of what you think would be a middle ground (immedately after the part that I quoted) is AFAIK totally unacceptable, for numerous reasons.
Hell, at the company I work for we can't even get our lawyers to tell us that our interpretation and use of GPL code is ok. (They don't have any case law to back up any interpretation, so they hedge their bets and refuse to say anything definitive!! So we're left hanging on the end of a stick. Supposedly we've got the best IT lawyers in our country!)
And when it comes right down to it, there are lots of people who use the GPL specifically because it IS quite exclusive, and IS intended to compete directly with proprietary-code enterprises. (Just take a look at the GNU explanation as to when you should and shouldn't use the LGPL vs GPL.
Personally I think the GPL is quite acceptable for use in publicly funded probjects, and so is the BSD license. I'm not a fanatic. Hell, I'm even ok with the public-institution retaining 100% copyright and charging money, because as a public institution they ARE us.
A week ago I got another letter from my Mom, just like I do every month. She knows I'm a software developer, and so she keeps her eyes out for interesting software type news. Eventually, months to years after something happens and makes it to the main-stream and gets in the Saskatchewan daily newspapers, she hears about it.
So you can imagine my suprise to have her ask me in that latest letter: "What problem does Microsoft have with 'free' software?".
Microsoft has done such a public job of attacking Free software that even my Mom has heard about it already, even though she's never heard of "Free Software" nor did she know what 'Free' software Microsoft was talking about.
Now let's be clear. The Gates foundation bought a $2000 computer and loaded it with '$3000' of free software and gave it to my small home-town's library early this year, so now my Mom can see my homepage and browse the web.
And yet, all I had to do was say "Microsoft is just doing what big monopolistic money-grubbing corporations are always trying to do: screw us."
Something strange is already going on over there right now. I see mp3 artists pages bitching about mp3.com wanting money from them, and other artists getting tired of all the spam from other lesser artists asking them how they "made it" and hassling them for "backscratches" to move up the charts, to the point where this one good amateur who was just sharing for the fun of it is contemplating taking his stuff off mp3.com and putting it on a personal site.
However this subject reminds me of a review of a piece of software once upon a time. (I'm sorry, I don't have a link or even recall specifically what it was.) Basically it was done by a guy who knew his machine code and compilers and the like. He stripped apart the actual executable binary (which he determined was built using MS VC++), and totally lambasted the developers. You see, so many 'default' things had been left in the 'starting' project that he was able to determine that the size of the thing was 5 times what it needed to be!!!
Have you ever seen this guy's programs? He writes them in machine language. It never ceases to amaze me, but people who write in raw ML end up with TINY executables!!!
I enjoyed Napster hugely, and it's loss (and the loss of services like them) is a massive step backwards in time (as the RIAA would like I'm sure).
So I should be concerned, but I'm not. Why? Well, I've found myself exclusively using mp3.com for my music needs. Tons and tons of free music. I have not had any trouble finding good stuff (except when I purposely delve into the bottoms of the categories to do my part in 'discovering' new talent).
It makes sense. If information should be free, it will be free. Not because we force *all* information to be free, but because if information isn't free, there is always other information that delivers the same value that *is* free. Capiche?
Let me restate that: I don't have to buy Jennifer Lopez music at $20 a pop, or MS Office at $300 a pop, or MS Win2K at $400 a pop (CDN $), because I can easily find 10 artists who sound like and are as good as Jennifer Lopez who give their 'information' away free, and because I can always use GPL office software (and use open standard documents like HTML), or use GPL/free operating systems.
In a world with a billion digital citizens, all it takes is one person to make an entire class of information free, by creating something and giving it away for free! And we can all help out!
Everyone here realizes that giving money directly to the artists would be most efficient, what with the distribution of information costing nearly nothing. "Cut out the greedy fat cat middlemen!!" is the cry. Now with mp3.com's "BackTheBand", I can put my money directly where my mouth is!
In not too long a time all other media will follow in the same path. First came free software, then free textual entertainment, then free music, eventually free video must follow.
(You've heard about the project to make a free fully rendered movie using POVRay, right?)
It's pretty hard to compete with free. If these bastards want to commit financial suicide, what the hell do I care!
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, that's amazing.
The fact that this supprises me so, in spite of my clear awareness of how imperfect humans and human organizations can be, tells me that even I need to be continually reminded of our capability for corruption.
Thanks for giving me the booster shot.
Thanks rpbird and tentacle. Those were great answers.
> Can't subpoena the camera and have it testify.
Sure you can. You can have it dismantled/examined by an independent party, and have them confirm that it is working as described. You can take the testimony of the people that set up the system, and acquired/retrieved the film/data.
Evidence is evidence. If you commit a crime while someone's not watching and we've got evidence, your ass is still going to jail.
If you know of a place that's got rules saying otherwise, then something's wrong.
All right, I'll bite:
> The laws on the books say you can record public places on videotape, but you can not retain copies of audio.
What's the purpose behind laws like that? If I can retain a "memory" of something observed in public, why the hell shouldn't I be allowed to retain a recording, video *or* audio?
Sounds like a choice between black and white because no-one's got the balls to try and sort out the fine grey lines seperating everything. I hate that type of human stupidity.
> can you recommend any good books?
I second that request.
("no +1" already used, thankyou)
You should realize that there are something like 7 (metric) tons of air over every square meter between you and the stratosphere!
Hmmm, sounds impressive, but we all know that statistics can be used for evil, right? So I thought I'd do a bit of digging.
Turns out Liquid Nitrogen at it's boiling point is .8kg/litre, which means that the thickness of the atmosphere between you and the stratosphere is equivalent to 8.7 meters of liquid nitrogen.
Ok, that's pretty good. Of course being a perfectionist what I'd really like is if it were translated to a lead equivalent. How thick of a layer of lead would equal the stopping power of 8.7 meters of liquid nitrogen/oxygen? (And give me multiple answers, for each type of radiation of interest :)
I always wondered about this "stick it in a remote place it can't escape from" philosophy.
Personally I'd like to see it placed in a highly visible (yet perfectly secure) location, so humanity always has to continuously see that the enclosing structure remains safe, secure, and maintained.
Sure, who knows what's going to happen to that rock or salt formation under the earth after we've burrowed into it, "sealed" something in, and gone away.
But if I build a pyrimid of iron, rebar, concrete, and multiple walls of thick thick stainless steel, ala "Fort Knox"....
I propose that for such a structure it might be much more likely that we can be certain that we'll KNOW what it will do for 100,000 years. Therefore, it's the safer option. (Might not be as cheap though, but hey, gotta pay the piper somehow.)
Huh? You got some references? That sounds like an "interesting" read. Did I miss a Slashdot article?
I've heard that too. Please mod parent up.
I'm getting sick and tired of this "government = evil" delusion that affects so many people, just like some people are getting tired of the "corporations = evil" assumption.
AFAIK - The government is an extension of me (us). As long as I (we) give it due dilligence, I have no fear.
If you want to live in a cave, fine. I'm sure there's room in this world for you and your cave dwelling countrymen. Just not in Canada, eh?
Yes, and we know Libertarian's have it all figured out. A perfect optimal world in the making.
My Dad died of cancer here in Saskatchewan a few years ago. They told us he had 6 months. He actually lived 1 1/2 years, and not for one instant did we have to worry about bills, insurance, or anything. A rich farmer (one of my Dad's highschool friends no less) got the exact same thing a short time later. Same prognosis from the canuck medical system. He went down to the US to all the high priced clinics and hospitals for second opinions and MRI's and what not. No change in prognosis. Died the same as my Dad died. I have no concerns what so ever about the competency of our medical system. After a certain point, there's nothing extra that modern medicine can do, not for all the money in the world.
Now the waiting times in emergency rooms in Ontario, that's a different matter, and it's the Conservatives who are causing it, damn money grubbing cheap-ass lazzie-fair "tax-cuts-all-the-way" bastards.
Your general facts are all correct, however it's been under research for ages. The optoelectronics used at the ends of fiber optics is nearly all strained or strain-compensated quaternary (mix of four seperate types of atoms) semiconductor compounds grown using the epitaxial methods you metion.
What I presume that this announcement really means is that IBM has now solved all the very problems you describe, to the point where they are now planning on putting it into production.
If he had called it a "two dimensional InGaAs/GaAs digital light integrator" and shown proof that it's light-capture efficiency was repeatable and constant to within N%, would you have been more suitably impressed?
Say... one is roughly 14 times brighter?
Nope, apparently you didn't read the simple electronics (aka physics) that he was explaining in certain parts. If you want proof, just run a numeric analysis of the images yourself to determine the total light output. The 14 LED version is not exactly proportionally brighter than the 1, 4, or 7 LED versions.
It's always been like that, although usually there is a bit more from a few different pages, plus some insights.
Now the real sad thing is that his post was the most informative interesting thing I'd seen so far :)
You are aware that it's 150 CANADIAN dollars, right? And you're not being fair, you should ammortize that dish cost over 3-5 years, which (with a $1500 dish) brings it all back down to $175 CDN, or $100 USD per year. Isn't that what ADSL costs in the UK?
And 128 kbps is the normal upload cap on ADSL here in Canada anyways.
But for gamers, the half second ping would be attrocious. You'd have to keep a modem account just to play games. Oh well, guess we have to wait for Satelite service from LEO or medium earth orbit (although we'd need tracking dishes, which would be more expensive, upfront and maintenance...). Good news is that there is lots of room up there in the medium orbits so it could be cheaper that way, and it's closer so the power levels can be lower.
sophism? promulgate? verity?
You're not writing a letter to "The New Yorker". What's with the 15th century English?
Think about this people. In this instance I can see why the BSD camp has gone berserk over the GPL. Personaly I think the BSD is too loose, the GPL is too restrictive in claiming all your subsequent work that is linked to your program.
How about this middle ground guys?
I had a thought along these lines earlier today. But my thoughts immediately became bogged down in *how* one would decide what proportion of "code retribution" or "attribution" is desired in all the different shades of grey circumstances. I just don't think there is a method of codifying that in a license that is at all reasonable to interpret clearly, that would satisfy even a fraction of everyone.
For example, your specific suggestion of what you think would be a middle ground (immedately after the part that I quoted) is AFAIK totally unacceptable, for numerous reasons.
Hell, at the company I work for we can't even get our lawyers to tell us that our interpretation and use of GPL code is ok. (They don't have any case law to back up any interpretation, so they hedge their bets and refuse to say anything definitive!! So we're left hanging on the end of a stick. Supposedly we've got the best IT lawyers in our country!)
And when it comes right down to it, there are lots of people who use the GPL specifically because it IS quite exclusive, and IS intended to compete directly with proprietary-code enterprises. (Just take a look at the GNU explanation as to when you should and shouldn't use the LGPL vs GPL.
Personally I think the GPL is quite acceptable for use in publicly funded probjects, and so is the BSD license. I'm not a fanatic. Hell, I'm even ok with the public-institution retaining 100% copyright and charging money, because as a public institution they ARE us.
A week ago I got another letter from my Mom, just like I do every month. She knows I'm a software developer, and so she keeps her eyes out for interesting software type news. Eventually, months to years after something happens and makes it to the main-stream and gets in the Saskatchewan daily newspapers, she hears about it.
So you can imagine my suprise to have her ask me in that latest letter: "What problem does Microsoft have with 'free' software?".
Microsoft has done such a public job of attacking Free software that even my Mom has heard about it already, even though she's never heard of "Free Software" nor did she know what 'Free' software Microsoft was talking about.
Now let's be clear. The Gates foundation bought a $2000 computer and loaded it with '$3000' of free software and gave it to my small home-town's library early this year, so now my Mom can see my homepage and browse the web.
And yet, all I had to do was say "Microsoft is just doing what big monopolistic money-grubbing corporations are always trying to do: screw us."
She immediately understood.
Something strange is already going on over there right now. I see mp3 artists pages bitching about mp3.com wanting money from them, and other artists getting tired of all the spam from other lesser artists asking them how they "made it" and hassling them for "backscratches" to move up the charts, to the point where this one good amateur who was just sharing for the fun of it is contemplating taking his stuff off mp3.com and putting it on a personal site.
True.
However this subject reminds me of a review of a piece of software once upon a time. (I'm sorry, I don't have a link or even recall specifically what it was.) Basically it was done by a guy who knew his machine code and compilers and the like. He stripped apart the actual executable binary (which he determined was built using MS VC++), and totally lambasted the developers. You see, so many 'default' things had been left in the 'starting' project that he was able to determine that the size of the thing was 5 times what it needed to be!!!
Have you ever seen this guy's programs? He writes them in machine language. It never ceases to amaze me, but people who write in raw ML end up with TINY executables!!!
And most stories these days aren't "broken" by reporters, they're started with press releases by the companies themselves.
Ok, I'm giving this one away:
Now you'll finally have time to listen to all 33,000 trance tracks.
(Synthr's Spiderman soundtrack remix is actually kind of nice :)
That indirectly tells me that they block e-mail from abusers. It does not tell me that they drop http access!
I enjoyed Napster hugely, and it's loss (and the loss of services like them) is a massive step backwards in time (as the RIAA would like I'm sure).
So I should be concerned, but I'm not. Why? Well, I've found myself exclusively using mp3.com for my music needs. Tons and tons of free music. I have not had any trouble finding good stuff (except when I purposely delve into the bottoms of the categories to do my part in 'discovering' new talent).
It makes sense. If information should be free, it will be free. Not because we force *all* information to be free, but because if information isn't free, there is always other information that delivers the same value that *is* free. Capiche?
Let me restate that: I don't have to buy Jennifer Lopez music at $20 a pop, or MS Office at $300 a pop, or MS Win2K at $400 a pop (CDN $), because I can easily find 10 artists who sound like and are as good as Jennifer Lopez who give their 'information' away free, and because I can always use GPL office software (and use open standard documents like HTML), or use GPL/free operating systems.
In a world with a billion digital citizens, all it takes is one person to make an entire class of information free, by creating something and giving it away for free! And we can all help out!
Everyone here realizes that giving money directly to the artists would be most efficient, what with the distribution of information costing nearly nothing. "Cut out the greedy fat cat middlemen!!" is the cry. Now with mp3.com's "BackTheBand", I can put my money directly where my mouth is!
In not too long a time all other media will follow in the same path. First came free software, then free textual entertainment, then free music, eventually free video must follow. (You've heard about the project to make a free fully rendered movie using POVRay, right?)
It's pretty hard to compete with free. If these bastards want to commit financial suicide, what the hell do I care!