My grandfather was at the battle of Dunkirk. If it hadn’t been for the floppy disk containing a copy of Doom in his inner pocket, that sniper would definitely have got him.
No wait! The disk contained Wolfenstein! Sorry, I don't have any Doom stories.
Can data protection laws be used to stop the emails? If this happened in the UK, an argument could be made that they're actively breaching legislation by providing subscriber information to non-authorised users. I assume there's an equivalent to the Information Commissioner's Office which can be contacted.
Most computing/games magazines in the UK are expensive nowadays.
5.99 UK Pounds is a lot of money for a 116 page magazine, but it gives a higher per-page value than Linux Magazine (100 pages for 5.99) and Linux Format (100 pages for 6.49).
Linux Voice is a good magazine, though it has distribution issues. You can only find it in the town/city WH Smiths, rather than the railway stations where I buy most of my magazines. It's also difficult to find a copy with an attached coverdisc, since the glue they use is a bit rubbish.
Neat, though I wonder about the privacy issues of its widespread use. If you can scan for a doppler frequency shift in the next room and record change over time, you could capture your neighbours position over time and render their movements on-screen.
Obligatory sci-fi reference: Continuum did something like this last year.
Maybe it's not generational at all, but rather people who have had to relocate many times in their life. The more stuff you have to carry around, the harder (and more expensive) it is to move. Many bookcases full of books is a lot more hassle to move than a hard drive full of ebooks.
This. I was in the same situation as the grandparent post - I couldn't think of a time when I could do without analogue media. However, I can see the advantage now that I've moved to London. I have to pay a fortune to rent a tiny flat and don't have the space for a large number of objects. Any CDs or DVDs I buy are transferred to disc and I take the physical media to my parents' house for storage. For books that I want to keep for the long-term, I've started to go for the paperback to reduce storage space, and regularly clear out those that I don't want anymore. It's impractical to drive in the city, so I have to think about how I will transfer items to a new place. I would love to own a 32-inch TV, but went for a 22-inch TV because it is easier to carry.
As the population grows and housing costs increase, it's likely we'll be forced to live in accommodation that is smaller than that held by our parents. I suspect we'll see more people moving to digital storage for many types of personal item to free up some space.
Interesting exhibition, though the article's reference to the UK's "first digital archive" is unclear. I'm guessing that they are referring to the UK Web Archive, which has been accessible for a number of years, but only officially launched at the start of 2010.
You're words are truthy enough, but your assuming that synergistic words like irregardless don't have impacts on english as we know it. The facts is that people will use words like that wether we like it or not. This is truely, the case when it comes to American's use of language. Sadly, theirs very little we, as people far more litterate than the average people, can really do about that. If people used grammer checkers, then you and me would not see so many people authoring bad words and having a negative affect on english as it is known and practised today but should be editted and spokened tomorrow.
Er... Why is this insightful? It's full of (intentional) errors. It should be +5 funny.
Censorship is more indecent than any use of profanity ever can be.
Someone has to make a reality check.
I have no idea how the parent post was rated insightful. It sounds great in theory - information wants to be free, and all that - but it's an incredible simplistic argument to make. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with restricting information access. Do you want your home address, bank details and medical records to be published? What? You don't? Well done, you support censorship!
The question we should ask is who Apple believe they can protect by censoring specific content. It's possible to hear similar language down your local pub, so it's unlikely that they're trying to protect an adult who is accessing the service. Instead, it's likely that Apple are following the recommendations of a Slashdot meme - they're thinking of the children.
At this stage in a Slashdot thread it's common for someone to chime-in by suggesting that it's the parents responsibility to prevent a child from viewing questionable content. I've noticed that Slashdotters like to blame parents for most of the ills of the world. The parent made the decision to bring a child into the world so they should shoulder the blame when a child does something bad, right? It isn't the job of a web site admin or business to baby-sit the child, etc. There's just one little snag - a parent can't place their child in a giant bubble, nor can they monitor everything that the child views on ther internet. They do their best, but there are always moments of unsupervised use - the parent has fallen asleep for 20 minutes after a long shift at work, they're cooking an evening meal, they've gone to the toilet, maybe they're trying to learn a new programming language for their job. Alternatively, maybe the parent is trying to encourage the child's interest in technology by allowing them to play with the new iPhone they just bought. Who would object to a parent trying to create the next generation of geek? Apple is a professional company and there's no harm in allowing them to scroll through the app store and pick up a few apps, is there?
Then the kid notices an unassuming RSS reader...
I know that the Slashdot collective are a clever bunch of people who can put their mind to any scenario. Imagine you're Apple (don't worry about the lack of eyes, ears, arms and legs - you're a business, not a fruit). As Apple, you know that your user community is diverse in its appeal, from young children to old people who smell of mothballs. You also know that the Internet has some seriously dodgy stuff on it and that, by providing access to third-party services through an RSS reader you are potentially allowing the aforementioned children to access the aforementioned dodgy stuff. More importantly, you have 50 more apps to review today and you know that you can be sued for making the wrong decision.
So what do you do? Do you: [1] accept the app and hope that no one gets upset about it and sue you or complain to the press? [2] Classify an RSS reader in an 'adult only' mode, as QuantumG suggests? [3] Reject the app, minimising the risk that you are sued and/or receive bad press. [4] Er... Open Box 4, phone a friend, consult the wheel of morality?
I know that you're joking, but there is the cost of your time to consider. If you are using it in a work environment the time required to install the base installation, followed by updates every few weeks can add up to a significant amount.
I'll accept your final sentence - no one is force to patronize a private business. However, I'm astounded that the post has been rated insightful. As I can't mod it down myself, I'll highlight some of the major errors in the argument for others:
You could, however, eat in the non-smoking section.
You do realise that the smoking and non-smoking sections are often in the same room? Smoke circulates throughout the room and often ignores signs telling it to stay in a certain area.
No one forces you to work or spend time there. Let the market win on that one...if a place can make more money or just chooses to be smoke free, that should be their choice.
Your argument is that large and small businesses should be allowed to do what they want if they make money from it? You also suggest that staff should accept that they have to breathe cigarette smoke for several hours at a time, irrespective of the long-term health concerns b/c they are being paid?
Do you really think any major game development companies are worried about competition from a bunch of geeks writing their own games that people have to jump through hoops to play?
Great. I have to buy a hoop add-on now? My house is already overflowing with wii boards, light guns, controllers, steering wheels, mini tennis rackets and other bits of plastic.
Slightly tangential, but I never did understand why we primarily evaluated the life supporting capability of a planet based on whether water could be present.
Pah! Forget water, there's no life on a planet if it doesn't have alcohol.
You keep saying "store the codecs" which means you're not thinking about this problem in a sane fashion. You don't compress. At all. That's the point of archival. It's not a matter of some geek boy lossfully reencoding his porn collection to fit on CD. It's a matter of keeping the original source material forever.
Codec is commonly used as a combination of COder-DECoder, not simply COmpressor-DECompressor. All digital files are encoded in a specific manner, as defined by the type and version of the software used in its creation. There are many different types of formats available - proprietary, defacto, and open. It's preferable to use open formats, as they are well documented and can be recreated on GoogleOS 2120 or whatever, with little difficulty. The problem is the digital masters are created in software applications that use proprietary formats, which often require reverse engineering, in order to understand the method that they use to store information.
Every comment I've read in this thread has mentioned duplication. Data backup is the easy part. However, it doesn't help you to access the files in 5 years time. There needs to be some method of decoding the bits into an understandable information stream. If you intend to store the original files, you often need the original software to access the content. In addition to backup, you need to periodically check your files and convert the information to other formats that can be read by modern software. This is the difficult part - there's a possibility that something that you consider important will change during the conversion and you won't realise it. I can convert my MS Word files to OpenText and break loads of things - the navigation has messed up, the automatic numbering has stopped working, etc. Movie objects - 3D objects, scripts, audiovisual data, etc. - are much, much more complex, presenting an increasing likelihood that something will go wrong. It's expensive to develop curation methods that are reliable and maintain everything.
It's easy to create PDFs, but I have yet to find a piece of software that can import PDF and export it to another format without significant changes or random information loss. Has anyone had positive experience in this area?
New Star Trek movie title revealed
on
Scotty Scooped Up
·
· Score: 2, Funny
... The Search for Scotty.
A leaked script claims Kirk's final words of the film are:
"... Of my friend, I can only say this: of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most... scottish."
I've downloaded and installed it. However, anyone wishing to use it should be aware that it only works with ebay.com at the moment. It isn't much use for those of us in the rest of the world.
I'm disappointed by the Live Science article. It dismisses the subject without considering the wider implications.
Most Slashdotters have picked up on the big brother issues of tracking your purchases, but no one has mentioned the reason why the news surprised many UK citizens - we had no idea that the tags were installed until last week. The RFID tags were installed without public consultation or political discussion. I'm grudgingly impressed that the government and contractors has been able to implement such a policy so fast, but I'm shocked that they did not bother to inform the UK public - the people to whom they are responsible - of their actions. Instead, most people only learnt of the tagging system fitted to their rubbish bins last Saturday when it appeared on the front page of a newspaper. A web version of the original article that sparked outrage can be read here. What similar projects are they funding with tax payers money without public consultation?
This seems like a variation of the old evil bit idea.
Many ISPs and social networks already use similar criteria to guide subscribers on correct behaviour of the network. My ISP imposes restrictions on the bandwidth I can use every month and when I can use it during the day (a maximum of 10Gb@peak time every month). Many bit torrent communities also specify that you have to share at least the amount of data that you have downloaded, to deter leechers.
Slashdot Mirror
My grandfather was at the battle of Dunkirk. If it hadn’t been for the floppy disk containing a copy of Doom in his inner pocket, that sniper would definitely have got him.
No wait! The disk contained Wolfenstein! Sorry, I don't have any Doom stories.
Can data protection laws be used to stop the emails? If this happened in the UK, an argument could be made that they're actively breaching legislation by providing subscriber information to non-authorised users. I assume there's an equivalent to the Information Commissioner's Office which can be contacted.
Most computing/games magazines in the UK are expensive nowadays.
5.99 UK Pounds is a lot of money for a 116 page magazine, but it gives a higher per-page value than Linux Magazine (100 pages for 5.99) and Linux Format (100 pages for 6.49).
Linux Voice is a good magazine, though it has distribution issues. You can only find it in the town/city WH Smiths, rather than the railway stations where I buy most of my magazines. It's also difficult to find a copy with an attached coverdisc, since the glue they use is a bit rubbish.
Neat, though I wonder about the privacy issues of its widespread use. If you can scan for a doppler frequency shift in the next room and record change over time, you could capture your neighbours position over time and render their movements on-screen.
Obligatory sci-fi reference: Continuum did something like this last year.
Maybe it's not generational at all, but rather people who have had to relocate many times in their life. The more stuff you have to carry around, the harder (and more expensive) it is to move. Many bookcases full of books is a lot more hassle to move than a hard drive full of ebooks.
This. I was in the same situation as the grandparent post - I couldn't think of a time when I could do without analogue media. However, I can see the advantage now that I've moved to London. I have to pay a fortune to rent a tiny flat and don't have the space for a large number of objects. Any CDs or DVDs I buy are transferred to disc and I take the physical media to my parents' house for storage. For books that I want to keep for the long-term, I've started to go for the paperback to reduce storage space, and regularly clear out those that I don't want anymore. It's impractical to drive in the city, so I have to think about how I will transfer items to a new place. I would love to own a 32-inch TV, but went for a 22-inch TV because it is easier to carry.
As the population grows and housing costs increase, it's likely we'll be forced to live in accommodation that is smaller than that held by our parents. I suspect we'll see more people moving to digital storage for many types of personal item to free up some space.
I guess Zefram Cochrane was wrong - the Warp Bomb is a reality
Interesting exhibition, though the article's reference to the UK's "first digital archive" is unclear. I'm guessing that they are referring to the UK Web Archive, which has been accessible for a number of years, but only officially launched at the start of 2010.
In other news, Paul McCartney and Will Smith receive a surprising sales boost to their back catalogue.
Er... Why is this insightful? It's full of (intentional) errors. It should be +5 funny.
I can understand a car recall but a baby? What happened? Did you have to return it to the uterus and get a replacement?
ba weep gra na weep nini bon
ba weep gra na weep nini bon
Censorship is more indecent than any use of profanity ever can be.
Someone has to make a reality check.
I have no idea how the parent post was rated insightful. It sounds great in theory - information wants to be free, and all that - but it's an incredible simplistic argument to make. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with restricting information access. Do you want your home address, bank details and medical records to be published? What? You don't? Well done, you support censorship!
The question we should ask is who Apple believe they can protect by censoring specific content. It's possible to hear similar language down your local pub, so it's unlikely that they're trying to protect an adult who is accessing the service. Instead, it's likely that Apple are following the recommendations of a Slashdot meme - they're thinking of the children.
At this stage in a Slashdot thread it's common for someone to chime-in by suggesting that it's the parents responsibility to prevent a child from viewing questionable content. I've noticed that Slashdotters like to blame parents for most of the ills of the world. The parent made the decision to bring a child into the world so they should shoulder the blame when a child does something bad, right? It isn't the job of a web site admin or business to baby-sit the child, etc. There's just one little snag - a parent can't place their child in a giant bubble, nor can they monitor everything that the child views on ther internet. They do their best, but there are always moments of unsupervised use - the parent has fallen asleep for 20 minutes after a long shift at work, they're cooking an evening meal, they've gone to the toilet, maybe they're trying to learn a new programming language for their job. Alternatively, maybe the parent is trying to encourage the child's interest in technology by allowing them to play with the new iPhone they just bought. Who would object to a parent trying to create the next generation of geek? Apple is a professional company and there's no harm in allowing them to scroll through the app store and pick up a few apps, is there?
Then the kid notices an unassuming RSS reader...
I know that the Slashdot collective are a clever bunch of people who can put their mind to any scenario. Imagine you're Apple (don't worry about the lack of eyes, ears, arms and legs - you're a business, not a fruit). As Apple, you know that your user community is diverse in its appeal, from young children to old people who smell of mothballs. You also know that the Internet has some seriously dodgy stuff on it and that, by providing access to third-party services through an RSS reader you are potentially allowing the aforementioned children to access the aforementioned dodgy stuff. More importantly, you have 50 more apps to review today and you know that you can be sued for making the wrong decision.
So what do you do? Do you:
[1] accept the app and hope that no one gets upset about it and sue you or complain to the press?
[2] Classify an RSS reader in an 'adult only' mode, as QuantumG suggests?
[3] Reject the app, minimising the risk that you are sued and/or receive bad press.
[4] Er... Open Box 4, phone a friend, consult the wheel of morality?
I know which choice I would make.
I know that you're joking, but there is the cost of your time to consider. If you are using it in a work environment the time required to install the base installation, followed by updates every few weeks can add up to a significant amount.
I'll accept your final sentence - no one is force to patronize a private business. However, I'm astounded that the post has been rated insightful. As I can't mod it down myself, I'll highlight some of the major errors in the argument for others:
You could, however, eat in the non-smoking section.
You do realise that the smoking and non-smoking sections are often in the same room? Smoke circulates throughout the room and often ignores signs telling it to stay in a certain area.
No one forces you to work or spend time there. Let the market win on that one...if a place can make more money or just chooses to be smoke free, that should be their choice.
Your argument is that large and small businesses should be allowed to do what they want if they make money from it? You also suggest that staff should accept that they have to breathe cigarette smoke for several hours at a time, irrespective of the long-term health concerns b/c they are being paid?
Seriously?
Great. I have to buy a hoop add-on now? My house is already overflowing with wii boards, light guns, controllers, steering wheels, mini tennis rackets and other bits of plastic.
Pah! Forget water, there's no life on a planet if it doesn't have alcohol.
Codec is commonly used as a combination of COder-DECoder, not simply COmpressor-DECompressor. All digital files are encoded in a specific manner, as defined by the type and version of the software used in its creation. There are many different types of formats available - proprietary, defacto, and open. It's preferable to use open formats, as they are well documented and can be recreated on GoogleOS 2120 or whatever, with little difficulty. The problem is the digital masters are created in software applications that use proprietary formats, which often require reverse engineering, in order to understand the method that they use to store information.
Every comment I've read in this thread has mentioned duplication. Data backup is the easy part. However, it doesn't help you to access the files in 5 years time. There needs to be some method of decoding the bits into an understandable information stream. If you intend to store the original files, you often need the original software to access the content. In addition to backup, you need to periodically check your files and convert the information to other formats that can be read by modern software. This is the difficult part - there's a possibility that something that you consider important will change during the conversion and you won't realise it. I can convert my MS Word files to OpenText and break loads of things - the navigation has messed up, the automatic numbering has stopped working, etc. Movie objects - 3D objects, scripts, audiovisual data, etc. - are much, much more complex, presenting an increasing likelihood that something will go wrong. It's expensive to develop curation methods that are reliable and maintain everything.
G
It's easy to create PDFs, but I have yet to find a piece of software that can import PDF and export it to another format without significant changes or random information loss. Has anyone had positive experience in this area?
... The Search for Scotty.
A leaked script claims Kirk's final words of the film are:
"... Of my friend, I can only say this: of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most... scottish."
Cue rousing bag pipes and last orders at the bar.
I've downloaded and installed it. However, anyone wishing to use it should be aware that it only works with ebay.com at the moment. It isn't much use for those of us in the rest of the world.
Any bets that Disney will make a kids movie called Little lost Rover?
I'm disappointed by the Live Science article. It dismisses the subject without considering the wider implications.
Most Slashdotters have picked up on the big brother issues of tracking your purchases, but no one has mentioned the reason why the news surprised many UK citizens - we had no idea that the tags were installed until last week. The RFID tags were installed without public consultation or political discussion. I'm grudgingly impressed that the government and contractors has been able to implement such a policy so fast, but I'm shocked that they did not bother to inform the UK public - the people to whom they are responsible - of their actions. Instead, most people only learnt of the tagging system fitted to their rubbish bins last Saturday when it appeared on the front page of a newspaper. A web version of the original article that sparked outrage can be read here. What similar projects are they funding with tax payers money without public consultation?
This seems like a variation of the old evil bit idea.
Many ISPs and social networks already use similar criteria to guide subscribers on correct behaviour of the network. My ISP imposes restrictions on the bandwidth I can use every month and when I can use it during the day (a maximum of 10Gb@peak time every month). Many bit torrent communities also specify that you have to share at least the amount of data that you have downloaded, to deter leechers.
Dude, forget snakes. Dell batteries are the explosives that the cool terrorists want.