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  1. AOL post merger agenda on Slashback: Nods, Lamentations, Nudity · · Score: 1

    1. Integrate all Time Warner sites into AOL network. 2. Convert Time Warner sites to exclusive AOL sites. IE: you must belong to AOL to access and Time Warner site. 3. Increase monthly dial up rates to $30 to pay for all these new exclusive sites. 4. Lower monthly AOL/Time Warner cable modem rates to $35. Results, massive migration from dial up accounts, to AOL owned cable modem accounts, effectively cutting out the phone companies. 5. Release exclusive AOL cable modem computers. IE: you must own an AOL computer to connect to AOL. Note: AOL recently acquired a computer company on the QT. End result, an AOL owned internet, a monopoly the Bill Gates only dreams of. On the plus side for your religious right, no more porn sites. And of course, since AOL will own the media, there will be no negative press to push congress into reacting to it.

  2. Balderdash on Techies Rampant on Drugs · · Score: 1

    Notice the total and absolute lack of facts in the article. Yes there are techies who use drugs, just like there are in every other profession and walk of life. There are two primary types of drug abusers, the wealthy and the poor. The wealthy feel that money makes them invunerable, and that laws don't apply to them, and the poor have nothing to lose, but the pain of day to day life.

  3. Once again you got it backwards on The Return Of The Luddites · · Score: 1

    By your own account, the Luddites weren't anti technology, they were anti industrialization. By this definition, the true Neo-Luddites would be Jon Katz and a large portion of slashdotters in genral. Crackers and Napsterites are the militant Neo-Luddites, think about it

  4. What we need is a really good war. on X-33 Shuttle Problems · · Score: 2

    Preferably with an extra terrestrial government. Nothing spurs rocket technology like a really good war. Since the end of the "cold war" we've had no real impetus to improve our rocket technology, so all the funds get diverted to more visible projects. Of course, the "cold war" was fine, but there's nothing like a really good "hot war", to put the fire to congress to fund research.

  5. Baby roasters and BIC building lighters. on King Will Not Sue Schools Over Napster -- Yet · · Score: 1

    If chicken roasters were call baby roasters and marketed strictly for that purpose, regardless of the fact that they could also be used to roast chickens, they would be outlawed.

    That said, I'm of two minds on this issue. I applaud the colleges who are willing to stand up to the RIAA, and refuse to buckle under presure in the name of free speach and privacy. On the other hand, students have no business tying up the school networks downloading MP3's, copyrighted or not. The purpose of the networks are to assist students in their studies, not for entertainment.

  6. reasons to be an isolate on Disconnected · · Score: 1

    1. anti fraternization rules: most companies have some sort of anti fraternization policy (IE: don't date coworkers). Due to our equal opportunity laws, a large number of your coworkers are of the opposite sex, socializing with your coworkers puts you in danger of meeting someone you click with leaving you with the dilemma of violating company policy or suffering in silence.

    2. sexual harassment: in this day and age, simply talking to the opposite sex can be considered sexual harassment, best not to.

    3. why make enemies: if you socialize with your coworkers, you are bound to find at least one person who doesn't like you, and given the nature of the universe, they will immediately be promoted to be your boss.

    4. nothing in common: face it, everyone outside your department is a complete loser, what would you talk about.

  7. Re:Finding the 'trojan' mp3 on Barenaked Ladies Battle Napster (But Not In Court) · · Score: 1

    Nobody listens to Yoko Ono, you endure Yoko Ono.

  8. selling to the sold on Barenaked Ladies Battle Napster (But Not In Court) · · Score: 1

    Why limit yourself to your own fans, make trojans of bands that are similar, this way you may hit a few people who haven't heard your music.

  9. On the cutting edge again on Me-Commerce · · Score: 1

    For those like Jon who don't know, temp agencies have been around since the turn of the century (twentieth, not twenty-first), mostly dealing in secretarial and clerical services. The bulk of the film industry has been independent contractors, and temp employees since the sixties. Design engineers have been working on a consultant basis since the time of Edison. The boon of computer consultants began in the eighties as more and more businesses switched their accounting systems over to computers, as there was little off the shelf software that fit their specific needs, but permanent full time programmers could not be economically justified.

    The sudden growth of Corporate use of temp services in the 90's, is simply the 90's version of the gutting of middle management in the 80's, and has very little to do with the influence of the IT community. There are a lot of economic advantages in using temp services. Temp agencies can provide large numbers of prescreened, skilled workers in a short period time, so it is very easy to scale up to a new project, or react to a sudden market demand. There are none of the usual problems associated with early termination, so it is very to scale back from a project. In the overall scheme of things, temps can be less expensive than perms, no benefits, no vacations, no sick leave, no maternity leave, no raises, no reviews, little or no training, less accounting head aches (the temp agency deals with taxes, SDI, unemployment insurance). I'm not saying it's right, but it's good business.

  10. Cool!!! on New iBooks And OSX Beta Released · · Score: 1

    Only $29.95 to be a lab rat, sign me up now!

  11. Re:Probably a prelude to biometrics on US Government Computer Security Evaluated · · Score: 1

    What would it cost to have a fingerprint scanner on each goverment computer.

    About a billion dollars or 1000 times the budget for the National Endowment for the Arts. Exactly what information does the department of health have that they need to keep secret? What are these sensitive files? How about the department of education? Library of Congress? Disease control? Though the DOD definitely needs to be protected against espionage, many of the other gov. agencies do not, and should not. Greater security means lower efficiency, which means greater costs. As to DOS attacks, these are IT, software and hardware issues, not user access issues, and should be addressed, but the report appears to be a knee jerk reaction to the recent DOS attacks, and the Los Alamos leaks, and miss addresses the problems.

  12. Re:A friendly reminder... on A (Suprising?) Viewpoint On RIAA Lawsuits · · Score: 1

    Actually, the judge's refusal to recuse himself is a point in favor of the defense. In order to be granted an appeal to a higher court, the defense needs legal grounds for an appeal. The judge's obvious and demonstrable bias in the case is almost equal to a free appeal.

  13. Re:Bigger backbone on Are We Ready For Broadband Internet Access? · · Score: 1

    I have been saying for some time that the internet is quickly becoming obsolete. I would be willing to say that little more than 20% of the servers on the internet have the resources to update their hardware regularly. Of those that do, the updates are done piece meal, and at an extremely slower rate than on the user end. For a user to upgrade to the latest fastest hardware cost less than $20,000. For an IP to do a complete upgrade would cost close to $100,000,000. To upgrade the infrastructure, you're talking trillions. On the other hand, the only real problem here is user frustration and a slow internet. With internet connectivity growing at the current rate, in ten years we may look back with great longing to 28.8k connect speeds, the same way commuters look back at when you could drive 80 mph on the freeway as opposed to 10 mph.

  14. models of thought on How Much Do Models Influence Our Thinking? · · Score: 1

    Models are necessary to deal with concepts that go beyond our normal capacity to deal with or phenomena that are unobservable. They can also be useful in observing trends, and creating projections of possible events. The danger of models is fact that the layman takes the model to be real. This danger is amplified, when the creator of the model takes it to be real. In this way models do effect our thought processes. Our belief in models make it much harder to deal with events that don't conform to those models.

  15. distributing and maintaining subversive software on Developing Subversive Software? · · Score: 1

    The key is marketing, and subtlety is the method. Market the legal uses of your software, word of mouth will spread the true uses. If DeCSS had been called "Linex DVD driver", the MPAA would never have figured it out, and 2600 would have been able to argue the legal uses of the software with impunity. If Napster had been set up as a music lovers community, rather than a free download site, their arguments of non culpability would have been much more credible. Picture this, what if when you logged onto Napster, you posted the type of music you like IE: the bands you listen to, rather than the songs available for download, then you have a anonymous mail client that allows the users to communicate with each other about their music preferences IE: the songs available for download, and then have the file transfer software available for the downloads. Now you have a Napster that is only providing a forum for communication, (a clear case of free speech) rather than promoting the sharing of copyrighted materials.

    As to maintaining subversive software, Open Source, Open Source, Open Source, it will maintain itself.

  16. It's soo amazing on Mage The Ascension · · Score: 1

    If you think the parallels of our society in "Mage" are so amazing, you should watch the "Power Puff Girls".

  17. I want one now!!! on You Think Your Current Laptop Runs Hot? · · Score: 1

    The bummer is that it only comes with a 56k modem

  18. No big deal on California's Internet Tax Bill Slithers Forward · · Score: 1

    This law would just put the internet in line with all other mail order, in fact the law is superfluous, as internet sales already fall under the same rules as mail order.

  19. two points on Similarities Between DeCSS And The Connectix VGS Case? · · Score: 1

    The first is, the appeal can only consider evidence brought forward in the original case.

    The second is slightly off topic, but had the same standards been applied to hardware, we wouldn't have a PC dominated world. On a level playing ground, (without the proliferation of inexpensive PC clones)the apple Macintosh would easily dominated the personal computer market over IBM. On the other hand, the higher cost of computers would have slowed greatly the distribution and expansion of the personal computer market, which in turn would have slowed the development of faster and better hardware, software, storage density, and of course the internet. Then again, we wouldn't have all these entertaining law suits to deal with either.

  20. what about library access? on The Right To Read: Time Limited Textbooks · · Score: 3

    The Library of Congress keeps a copy of every book published in the United States, and is open to the public. Will a copy of these e-textbooks be provided to the Library of Congress and other libraries? Will they be denied legal copyright if they refuse to provide a copy? Will they even be considered books, or are they in fact just software? A lot of questions, I look forward, with a great deal of trepidation, to the answers.

  21. Yawn, another non contraversial article on The New Mediascape · · Score: 1

    Preach to the converted. Actually I don't believe that different forms of media compete with each other. Actually, I think you will find that the numbers of people listening to radio news has gone up also. Most people are information junkies, and it has become more cool to be able to talk current events. The reason that TV news is dying, is TV news. They have taken too many lessons from infomercials, and the national enquirer. 90% of your average news broadcast is product placement, teasers (why do you have to here every story 8 times), sensationalism and lame prescripted banter. The other 10% is the weather and traffic report. The days of Ed Morrow and Walter Cronkite are gone. I personally find it painful to try and watch the news. I have heard of a mid west station that has returned to a hard news format and their viewership is steadily increasing, hopefully they will start a trend.

  22. resolution vs viewing space on Dell Offering 1600x1200 Laptops · · Score: 1

    you can run 800x600 on a 1600x1200 monitor, and it will still look better than on a 800x600 monitor. I use 800x600 quite a bit on the internet for viewing pages where the pictures are microscopic. Viewing size does not equal native resolution. Of course it will still look best at 1600x1200 with a larger font setting.

  23. Now the bad news. on Sony VP On Stopping Napster · · Score: 1

    In the end, Sony will win, they have the money. I can forsee the government charging ISPs a tax on data transfers and awarding it to the RIAA, much like they do on recordable cds. That's why a recordable cd blank costs $10, and a cdrom blank cost $1. It can happen, it will happen, and there's not a lot we can do about it. Money always wins.

  24. I'm sooo confused on Slashback: Suffrage, Product, Broadcasting · · Score: 1

    So what your saying is, in New York, I can buy a politician, but I can't sell my vote?

  25. Re:Mother McRee.. on A Look At the Fastest IDE Drive Yet · · Score: 1

    Great, now what do I do with my 1 meg tandy drive?