I completely disagree with this system - it forces fans to find flaws in otherwise decent odd-numbered movies. Insurrection is by far my favorite of all the films, followed very closely by VI, and then, dare I say it, by V. It's actually really good until they go to that planet where they meet God. But, in any case, I like Insurrection because it is a 2 hour TNG episode. I liked TNG. I watched it for many many hours. That's why I pay to go see the movies. Therefore Berman et al should make movies like episodes to please me, the loyal fan. Or they can do what seems to have been done here with X and make a kick-ass action flick. I'll take that too.
I'm sick of the technolgy community clinging onto fair use principles and exceptions to copyright law for what I think are the wrong reasons. Piracy is not fair use. I've said it before, and I will continue to say it.
The problem is that as long as our community pretends to want fair use protected for principled reasons but really just wants to go on pirating forever, we're not fooling anyone, and the lawmakers are going to push all the harder for controls. This makes legitimate fair use an innocent victim of the campaign against piracy.
I suggest that we drop the pretense and help to get the legislators focused in the right area. It is one thing to enforce laws against piracy, and entirely another to order that all computer equipment be rendered unable to make unauthorized copies. This is like outlawing machine tools because they could be used to produce Ford automobiles without the permission of Ford. Legislators the world over need to be shown how absurd this is, but we can't show them if we can't be trusted. If we're going to convince the world that the digital revolution means an end to high-valued content, we are going to have to clean up our act and become credible.
I find it very interesting that only comments critical of Raskin's view have been modded up. I actually tend to agree with him, and I am disappointed to see that the controlling sentiment on/. is so one-sided.
It's not just a matter of preventing a malicious foreign host from starting a session on your wireless LAN, it's a matter of protecting the data that traverses the WLAN. See my comment above. It's also true that a "man-in-the-middle" type attack as described in the article could rip the mac address from a client and use that.
This article mentions "inherrent problems" quite a bit, but doesn't really enumerate them. Let me try and do that. In a wireless network, every piece of data being sent between any two nodes is available to anyone in the area with the right kind of radio receiver. It's that simple. Some of the more advanced authentication protocols make it harder for someone to set up a session on a wireless network, and from there get access to an entire LAN, but regardless of that, there is still data being sent over the airwaves.
Because of this, a security administrator, or even a home user, has to assume that every packet sent over a wireless connection is intercepted. Until there is reliable encryption that takes prohibitively long periods to break (remember, WEP is broken, and the break is a relatively quick one), this technology is simply unsecure, particularly for corporate use.
They would chuck up MacOS and start shipping with Intel-based systems running Windows. And what would be the sense of that? Is Mac struggling? I get the sense that they are just where they want to be with their business model - they want to appeal to the very people that are buying their products. They know they can't get the kind of market share that MS does, but they continue manufacturing superior products. And I think that we should look upon Apple as an ally in the fight to maintain our rights to listen to, view, and manipulate information. Who else puts ads on TV that actually show someone using MP3s? I think Mac has a niche market, and they play to it, and they succeed.
I agree with several other posters - use conduit, it'll make your life much easier. Keep it away from high voltage runs, and use CAT5E for your phone and data lines, all going to a patch panel in the basement/wherever.
Rather than fibre, you might try running Cat6 - it would be cheaper.
Make sure if you're not using conduit that you use plenum rated cable - it's more expensive, but then having your house burn down would suck more. Also, make sure you don't kink the cable in any of the wallspaces.
Last piece of advice - contractors these days are hip to this stuff, so talk to your GC about this. Tell him about your upgrade and management concerns, and see what he thinks. I'm sure the electrical contractor can do your runs for you, and you'll probably be happier in the long run (no pun intended).
Insurrection is definitely one of the better movies, because it is an extended TNG episode. I liked the movie because I liked the show. Funny how that works. I would prefer if they made more movies like that rather than trying to make them appeal to people who didn't watch the show.
Also, Star Trek V was excellent for the first hour, maybe even 2/3 of the film. It's just the last bit that sucks, and that's all people seem to remember.
Forgetting continuity problems with the timeline developed in the movies and other series, we have some serious technology problems here. Even within the episode, it is suggested that Earth-Neptune takes six minutes but Earth-Klingon Empire takes 80 hours. Not feasible. I know the warp scales are supposedly different, but under Next Generation warp considerations, warp 4.5 to the Klingon Homeworld would take over a year. 80 hours at warp 4.5 wouldn't even get the ship halfway to Alpha Centauri.
Also, how the hell can they not have shields, when shields are basically the same technology as the warp drive and the anti-gravity system. I guess maybe they haven't encountered hostile forces yet, but then why would they have weapons? Very odd.
Now, it's not going to impact my enjoyment of the show, which, for a ST pilot, was quite good. But, as someone who spent a lot of hours in high school being very interested in the technical aspects of the series, this is just annoying.
The problem with your Ferrari example, and others like it, is that there is a cost to produce every single automobile that rolls out of the factory. With electronic content, there is no per-unit cost, and so there is no starting-point upon which margins can be based. If we are indeed a capitalist society, our people probably know this innately, and so they begin to smell a rat when content providers, who traditionally have means of support (from advertising or fixed-rate subscription) start charging per unit of content.
There is also the momentum of the current online environment to think about. For the last decade, content has been almost totally free. People aren't going to like to pay for something that they are used to getting for free.
I have argued this on Slashdot before, and I will say it again now: information has never before been valued in this way. Books and newspapers cost money because they are tangible things. Furthermore, habit and momentum contribute to our formulation of generic gut feelings of how much such an item should cost. The content itslef has no innate value. The medium and the cultural identity of the author are pretty much the standards that we have to go on. If we start assigning base values for any old piece of information (i.e. micropayments) we start to get into trouble.
Finally, I noticed this morning that the average price of concert tickets has gone up something like $5 in the last year. One of the reasons cited is that there are only a few major promoters left, so they can start jacking up prices. I think we should be less concerned about the fundamental worth or value of information, and much more concerned that pretty soon we will have to pay one of two or three major media congomerates for all of our content.
I can think of at least three major paradigm shifts in physics, none of which cause the least bit of stir for us today. I'll just name their chief instigators: Newton, Maxwell, Einstein. Funny how the world is still here...
As a condition of the University's provision of employment, services, facilities, equipment or materials to faculty, staff and students, the University acquires and retains title to all inventions, discoveries and improvements made as the result of University employment or research, or created through the use of time, facilities, equipment or materials owned or paid for by or through the University, except when such facilities, equipment or material are available to the general public. Each full-time faculty and staff member is bound through this policy as is each part-time faculty and staff member and student employee or student participating in research (see also III.B.6, below), and any of the foregoing may be asked to execute an assignment of such inventions, discoveries, and improvements to the University and shall do so on request.
I think Dibbell has a good take on what Tolkien's works actually are. His books are to literature what Lucas' trilogy is to film - not the height of twentieth century culture nor the epitome of style and technique, but certainly a formative part of the narrative landscape. Whether he realizes it or not, Dibbell is right to point out that Tokien, along with Lucas and a host of others who worked their way into the popular culture, has specified the architecture for the imagination-space of our culture, especially those who create and support technology. And it is exactly that, if we look back to the earliest works we consider "great," which western literature was born to do.
Does anyone know if we have yet been successful in putting antiparticles together into stable antimatter atoms?
I have often wondered if stable antimatter might be able to coexist with ordinary matter because the electric charge would be neutral, and so interactions with surrounding matter would be limited.
When I was an undergrad at the University of Chicago, I worked for the School of Social Service Administration IT department. We rocked. There were two full-timers, and about ten part-time student employees. We designed the networks, spec'ed out the equipment, worked with budgets. It worked really well, but only because our manager understood how to make it work.
The key to making a student work-force put out consistent high-quality IT work is to manage effectively. It is true that the students are among the most gifted technologists you'll find on a university campus. It is further true that the best campus IT managers are gifted technologists, preferably who did student tech work themselves. It is unfortunately also true that technologists do not, by and large, make good managers, especially when they are managing folks who are as talented if not more so then they were/are.
I had the fortune of working for one who understood what we as human beings, liberal arts majors, and geeks brought to his organization. When he left, we functioned without an IT director for three months, at or exceeding our previous levels of service. This was only possible because he trusted us to run our own show - we then had a vested interest in how things went. If he hadn't given us authority or decision power, we would have been content to get paid above campus average to surf the web and occasionally work on a cool project.
Under new management, it all fell apart. The new director took all of our power away, and soon thereafter, we graduated. They now have four full-timers, one of whom is shared with another group. From what I have heard, they canned all the open projects and are generally thought to be useless by the faculty. It makes me kind of sad, but since I'm working professionally now for my old manager, we basically shake our heads whenever we hear about the latest SSA IT disaster, and are very glad that we have a view of the lake instead of a cramped and windowless basement office.
In sum, my point is that it takes effective management and really good recruiting to make student IT work. Also, it is often good to have some liberal arts folks with tech skills in the mix, just because their perspective is often refreshingly different.
I have an idea. We can reconvene the Committee on Unamerican Activities in the U.S. Congress, and have them assume control of informants. All such persons will be immune from prosecution or civil action, unless of course they too are found to be Unamerican in some way. That way, we will have centralized control over the troubling problem of unamerican teenagers. And then we can create an America Brigade of "good kids" that will wear armbands and report on, well, most anybody that doesn't join their patriotic organization. Yes, this is the ticket. We can rekindle the American spirit and send the trouble makers to jail. Won't it be great!
Actually, as we've seen many times before in articles like this, the recording companies will probably introduce new "protected" media that won't play in your "older" players. Then, record stores will have mostly those media. CDs will be relegated to the corner in the back of the store where the casettes are now, and the casettes, well... The point is, Lanier is right, because information is being treated as property. The whole reason for copyrights is to reserve the right to publish information in forms that are valuable, like books, CDs and such. However, in our culture, information has become valuable in and of itself. The disjuntcion occurs when copyrightable information, information which has the most value when published, is confused with valuable information, which is most valuable when kept secret, like corporate intelligence. Then you get record companies who think that a stream of electrons has as much value as a compact disc, because they see information for sale elsewhere and want to jump on that bandwagon.
Miller is right - development and QA cost money. As a project manager for a software development interest, I know that all too well. But the question is who gets the money. If he is suggesting that out-of-the-box solutions from MS can spare you the costs of development and QA, he is sorely mistaken. I can pay him to do that for certain elements of my development environment, but then I still have to pay developers and QA professionals to build and test my own software. So, by using a stable development environment and open-source development tools that don't cost me anything at all, I can pay my developers and QA guys more, which means I get better quality people and probably still save money. Oddly enough, it took one of my developers less time to set up a linux box and begin loading under-development software than it took to do the same with a Win2K box. If time is money, Miller loses again...
The basic problem with this argument is that it does in fact discourage the creation of art. I will be the first to argue that art should be pursued out of passion, and for its own merit as an improvement to humanity. That's great, but the wonderful "free-market" system we have created, the same one that lets me buy things I like and live in a nice house, means that most of the time we assign value in financial terms. What is a successful artist? One whose work is appreciated for its own intrinsic value, or one who gets paid a lot for his work, or both? Sure, you might argue that if one other person looks at, listens to, or reads your artistic work, you have made a successful contribution. But without the old patronage system, an artist needs capital to keep producing, because art, like most other things in our culture, is seen as a commodity, whether it is scarce or not. Take away protection, and in principle, you take away the ability to earn income from art. Here I must apologize, because I do not have a counter-proposal. I don't know how to allow for the introduction of digital mass-ditribution and portect the free-market economic value of art in modern culture. I do know, however, that until that culture changes to include a reckoning of non-monetary value, we must continue to provide protection of authorship and artistic production.
I was a little disappointed that they seemed to go out of their way to make Paul look and act like everyone's favorite whiner in the first two episodes. The third made me wonder if Luke could have been improved with a better haircut too...
What is the history of the whole practice of intercepting electronic communication? As far as I know, it is unlawful for any US government branch to intercept the mail of suspects in criminal investigations, so why is it that they are allowed to intercept phone and email? Why should service providers be forced to compromise the integrity of their dealings with their customers to allow government access to private conversations? What do you think is the correct application of Ammendment IV to conversations and correspondence?
The babelfish translation is worth it in its own right, and the story is mildly interesting. But the best part of it is the last line, as translated by the fish (which means it could be a real idiom or an artifact of machine translation):
The best filtering of publicly available material for a Christian is his or her own sense of accountability to what he or she believes. The members of the Christian right who have spoken out so loudly about filtering have done so because, on some level, they recognize that human beings are always going to be unable to resist looking at sex, violence, and sin wherever it pops up. This means that, on some level, they distrust their children, and even themselves, if left alone with a computer connected to the internet. They aren't wrong to mistrust: we all sin, as far as Christianity is concerned, and so people are going to look at these things. But they are wrong to put their faith in a piece of software rather than in God, and to trust a library custodian rather than the instruction they have lovingly provided to their children.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks, Karl. Always pushing the sales...
I completely disagree with this system - it forces fans to find flaws in otherwise decent odd-numbered movies. Insurrection is by far my favorite of all the films, followed very closely by VI, and then, dare I say it, by V. It's actually really good until they go to that planet where they meet God. But, in any case, I like Insurrection because it is a 2 hour TNG episode. I liked TNG. I watched it for many many hours. That's why I pay to go see the movies. Therefore Berman et al should make movies like episodes to please me, the loyal fan. Or they can do what seems to have been done here with X and make a kick-ass action flick. I'll take that too.
The problem is that as long as our community pretends to want fair use protected for principled reasons but really just wants to go on pirating forever, we're not fooling anyone, and the lawmakers are going to push all the harder for controls. This makes legitimate fair use an innocent victim of the campaign against piracy.
I suggest that we drop the pretense and help to get the legislators focused in the right area. It is one thing to enforce laws against piracy, and entirely another to order that all computer equipment be rendered unable to make unauthorized copies. This is like outlawing machine tools because they could be used to produce Ford automobiles without the permission of Ford. Legislators the world over need to be shown how absurd this is, but we can't show them if we can't be trusted. If we're going to convince the world that the digital revolution means an end to high-valued content, we are going to have to clean up our act and become credible.
I find it very interesting that only comments critical of Raskin's view have been modded up. I actually tend to agree with him, and I am disappointed to see that the controlling sentiment on /. is so one-sided.
It's not just a matter of preventing a malicious foreign host from starting a session on your wireless LAN, it's a matter of protecting the data that traverses the WLAN. See my comment above. It's also true that a "man-in-the-middle" type attack as described in the article could rip the mac address from a client and use that.
Because of this, a security administrator, or even a home user, has to assume that every packet sent over a wireless connection is intercepted. Until there is reliable encryption that takes prohibitively long periods to break (remember, WEP is broken, and the break is a relatively quick one), this technology is simply unsecure, particularly for corporate use.
They would chuck up MacOS and start shipping with Intel-based systems running Windows. And what would be the sense of that? Is Mac struggling? I get the sense that they are just where they want to be with their business model - they want to appeal to the very people that are buying their products. They know they can't get the kind of market share that MS does, but they continue manufacturing superior products. And I think that we should look upon Apple as an ally in the fight to maintain our rights to listen to, view, and manipulate information. Who else puts ads on TV that actually show someone using MP3s? I think Mac has a niche market, and they play to it, and they succeed.
I agree with several other posters - use conduit, it'll make your life much easier. Keep it away from high voltage runs, and use CAT5E for your phone and data lines, all going to a patch panel in the basement/wherever.
Rather than fibre, you might try running Cat6 - it would be cheaper.
Make sure if you're not using conduit that you use plenum rated cable - it's more expensive, but then having your house burn down would suck more. Also, make sure you don't kink the cable in any of the wallspaces.
Last piece of advice - contractors these days are hip to this stuff, so talk to your GC about this. Tell him about your upgrade and management concerns, and see what he thinks. I'm sure the electrical contractor can do your runs for you, and you'll probably be happier in the long run (no pun intended).
Insurrection is definitely one of the better movies, because it is an extended TNG episode. I liked the movie because I liked the show. Funny how that works. I would prefer if they made more movies like that rather than trying to make them appeal to people who didn't watch the show.
Also, Star Trek V was excellent for the first hour, maybe even 2/3 of the film. It's just the last bit that sucks, and that's all people seem to remember.
Also, how the hell can they not have shields, when shields are basically the same technology as the warp drive and the anti-gravity system. I guess maybe they haven't encountered hostile forces yet, but then why would they have weapons? Very odd.
Now, it's not going to impact my enjoyment of the show, which, for a ST pilot, was quite good. But, as someone who spent a lot of hours in high school being very interested in the technical aspects of the series, this is just annoying.
There is also the momentum of the current online environment to think about. For the last decade, content has been almost totally free. People aren't going to like to pay for something that they are used to getting for free.
I have argued this on Slashdot before, and I will say it again now: information has never before been valued in this way. Books and newspapers cost money because they are tangible things. Furthermore, habit and momentum contribute to our formulation of generic gut feelings of how much such an item should cost. The content itslef has no innate value. The medium and the cultural identity of the author are pretty much the standards that we have to go on. If we start assigning base values for any old piece of information (i.e. micropayments) we start to get into trouble.
Finally, I noticed this morning that the average price of concert tickets has gone up something like $5 in the last year. One of the reasons cited is that there are only a few major promoters left, so they can start jacking up prices. I think we should be less concerned about the fundamental worth or value of information, and much more concerned that pretty soon we will have to pay one of two or three major media congomerates for all of our content.
I can think of at least three major paradigm shifts in physics, none of which cause the least bit of stir for us today. I'll just name their chief instigators: Newton, Maxwell, Einstein. Funny how the world is still here...
Found here:
http://www.admin.utah.edu/ppmanual/6/6-4.html
It looks like you can claim that SOS was available to the public, and that therefore the "inventions" created there are not university property.
I think Dibbell has a good take on what Tolkien's works actually are. His books are to literature what Lucas' trilogy is to film - not the height of twentieth century culture nor the epitome of style and technique, but certainly a formative part of the narrative landscape. Whether he realizes it or not, Dibbell is right to point out that Tokien, along with Lucas and a host of others who worked their way into the popular culture, has specified the architecture for the imagination-space of our culture, especially those who create and support technology. And it is exactly that, if we look back to the earliest works we consider "great," which western literature was born to do.
Does anyone know if we have yet been successful in putting antiparticles together into stable antimatter atoms?
I have often wondered if stable antimatter might be able to coexist with ordinary matter because the electric charge would be neutral, and so interactions with surrounding matter would be limited.
The key to making a student work-force put out consistent high-quality IT work is to manage effectively. It is true that the students are among the most gifted technologists you'll find on a university campus. It is further true that the best campus IT managers are gifted technologists, preferably who did student tech work themselves. It is unfortunately also true that technologists do not, by and large, make good managers, especially when they are managing folks who are as talented if not more so then they were/are.
I had the fortune of working for one who understood what we as human beings, liberal arts majors, and geeks brought to his organization. When he left, we functioned without an IT director for three months, at or exceeding our previous levels of service. This was only possible because he trusted us to run our own show - we then had a vested interest in how things went. If he hadn't given us authority or decision power, we would have been content to get paid above campus average to surf the web and occasionally work on a cool project.
Under new management, it all fell apart. The new director took all of our power away, and soon thereafter, we graduated. They now have four full-timers, one of whom is shared with another group. From what I have heard, they canned all the open projects and are generally thought to be useless by the faculty. It makes me kind of sad, but since I'm working professionally now for my old manager, we basically shake our heads whenever we hear about the latest SSA IT disaster, and are very glad that we have a view of the lake instead of a cramped and windowless basement office.
In sum, my point is that it takes effective management and really good recruiting to make student IT work. Also, it is often good to have some liberal arts folks with tech skills in the mix, just because their perspective is often refreshingly different.
I have an idea. We can reconvene the Committee on Unamerican Activities in the U.S. Congress, and have them assume control of informants. All such persons will be immune from prosecution or civil action, unless of course they too are found to be Unamerican in some way. That way, we will have centralized control over the troubling problem of unamerican teenagers. And then we can create an America Brigade of "good kids" that will wear armbands and report on, well, most anybody that doesn't join their patriotic organization. Yes, this is the ticket. We can rekindle the American spirit and send the trouble makers to jail. Won't it be great!
Actually, as we've seen many times before in articles like this, the recording companies will probably introduce new "protected" media that won't play in your "older" players. Then, record stores will have mostly those media. CDs will be relegated to the corner in the back of the store where the casettes are now, and the casettes, well... The point is, Lanier is right, because information is being treated as property. The whole reason for copyrights is to reserve the right to publish information in forms that are valuable, like books, CDs and such. However, in our culture, information has become valuable in and of itself. The disjuntcion occurs when copyrightable information, information which has the most value when published, is confused with valuable information, which is most valuable when kept secret, like corporate intelligence. Then you get record companies who think that a stream of electrons has as much value as a compact disc, because they see information for sale elsewhere and want to jump on that bandwagon.
Miller is right - development and QA cost money. As a project manager for a software development interest, I know that all too well. But the question is who gets the money. If he is suggesting that out-of-the-box solutions from MS can spare you the costs of development and QA, he is sorely mistaken. I can pay him to do that for certain elements of my development environment, but then I still have to pay developers and QA professionals to build and test my own software. So, by using a stable development environment and open-source development tools that don't cost me anything at all, I can pay my developers and QA guys more, which means I get better quality people and probably still save money. Oddly enough, it took one of my developers less time to set up a linux box and begin loading under-development software than it took to do the same with a Win2K box. If time is money, Miller loses again...
The basic problem with this argument is that it does in fact discourage the creation of art. I will be the first to argue that art should be pursued out of passion, and for its own merit as an improvement to humanity. That's great, but the wonderful "free-market" system we have created, the same one that lets me buy things I like and live in a nice house, means that most of the time we assign value in financial terms. What is a successful artist? One whose work is appreciated for its own intrinsic value, or one who gets paid a lot for his work, or both? Sure, you might argue that if one other person looks at, listens to, or reads your artistic work, you have made a successful contribution. But without the old patronage system, an artist needs capital to keep producing, because art, like most other things in our culture, is seen as a commodity, whether it is scarce or not. Take away protection, and in principle, you take away the ability to earn income from art. Here I must apologize, because I do not have a counter-proposal. I don't know how to allow for the introduction of digital mass-ditribution and portect the free-market economic value of art in modern culture. I do know, however, that until that culture changes to include a reckoning of non-monetary value, we must continue to provide protection of authorship and artistic production.
I was a little disappointed that they seemed to go out of their way to make Paul look and act like everyone's favorite whiner in the first two episodes. The third made me wonder if Luke could have been improved with a better haircut too...
Anyone else get really weirded out that Sun deployed what appeared to be a nuclear pulse-weapon against a boardroom full of incompetent technologists?
What is the history of the whole practice of intercepting electronic communication? As far as I know, it is unlawful for any US government branch to intercept the mail of suspects in criminal investigations, so why is it that they are allowed to intercept phone and email? Why should service providers be forced to compromise the integrity of their dealings with their customers to allow government access to private conversations? What do you think is the correct application of Ammendment IV to conversations and correspondence?
"Trust no statistic which you did not falsify."
The best filtering of publicly available material for a Christian is his or her own sense of accountability to what he or she believes. The members of the Christian right who have spoken out so loudly about filtering have done so because, on some level, they recognize that human beings are always going to be unable to resist looking at sex, violence, and sin wherever it pops up. This means that, on some level, they distrust their children, and even themselves, if left alone with a computer connected to the internet. They aren't wrong to mistrust: we all sin, as far as Christianity is concerned, and so people are going to look at these things. But they are wrong to put their faith in a piece of software rather than in God, and to trust a library custodian rather than the instruction they have lovingly provided to their children.