We should go back to the system we had before 9/11, that served us well for many years.
We should go back to the system we had in 1965. You want to fly somewhere, you buy a ticket.
Occasionally someone tries to steal/crash the plane. Occasionally that works, occasionally the pilot or the police or someone makes a few holes in the would-be bad guy. Nobody suggests a need to violate everyone's rights to try to stop the rare crazy person.
...composers and artists maintain copyrights and are entitled to a small royalty. Sampling and modification of existing works is encouraged. It's all about the music, not the dollar.
Re:May as well be the first to say it
on
AOL Sues Spammers
·
· Score: 1
> I'm charged for trash pick-up which is where it goes.
The coaster may be worthless, but I find the CD mailers handy. You can even slip out the AOL paper label and add your own.
archen says: Personally I think RedHat is shooting themselves in the foot with the short support cycle.
There could be an opportunity here for another party to provide an alternative to the Red Hat Network -- one with a longer product support cycle than Red Hat offers. There is the price gap between the $150 top-end Red Hat 9 and the $1500 Red Hat Enterprise. There's no reason why folks who want support need to buy from Red Hat. Go for it -- pick a price small businesses can afford and show Red Hat the error of their ways.
Tivo is an example of personal computing. You don't share any part of it with anyone....
TiVo calls the Mother Ship to get upcoming program schedules and to report on your viewing choices. <cough> Strictly for statistical interest, of course. <cough>
For years my local phone company had a policy stating you could _spell_ your name any way you wanted for the phone book.
So, for years I was listed in the phone book under an alias. ...Me: "Here's how I would like my name listed." ...Phone company rep: "Um, is that a roommate, or something?" ...Me: "Um, yep." At least the "or something" part was true. This was quite a deal, since unlisted numbers cost an extra $1.25/month (something like that), but an aliased name was free. Now the phone is listed as [spouse's name] (she wants to be listed).
The alias method instantly identifies telemarketers, who can then be dealt with as you wish:
Method A) ..."Is this Mr. [alias]?" ..."Add this number to your do-not-call list." [click]
Method B) ..."May I speak to [alias]?" ..."Oh!" [adopt somber voice] "I'm so sorry, he died a week ago." ..."Um -- "
> Since the Soyuz is the only way to get the crew > off the station in an emergency, that means no > more than 3 people can be onboard,
ISS has two Soyuz docking ports, so if a replacement crew is sent up on a new Soyuz there could be... briefly... 6 on board. The old crew would take the 6-month-old Soyuz home soon after their replacements arrive.
If the the content industries are given "much of the legal backing which they are seeking for copy-protection technologies" then it does not matter if the term of copyright is shortened to 2 days.
How about: to copyright anything encrypted you are required to supply 100 unencrypted copies to the Library of Congress. After 14 years, if you want to renew the copyright, LoC checks the copies. If more than 2 are unreadable you go on probation; you must provide 100 copies per week and pay a whopping big fine. If you're on probabtion LoC checks your copies weekly and assigns additional fines as needed. After 28 years total, LoC spreads the copies out to branch libraries, where anyone may make their own dubs (possibly for a nominal charge.)
Remember when moderate-to-large companies had a PBX system... mostly automated but with operators who could do things that required judgement... like answer a call and direct you to the person who could deal with your problem... like tell you so-and-so was on vacation, would you like to talk to thus-and-such?
Then companies noticed that operators wanted to get paid.
"Welcome to tech support.
If you have forgotton your password, click here.
If there is smoke coming out of the server room, click here.
If your mouse is broken, click here."
> I recently ordered 35 Optiplex pc's from Dell, > without operating system. Just today, I got an > email from Dell, stating I must confirm by email > that I already have sufficient licenses. They are > apparently not allowed by Microsoft to sell pc's > without OS unless they get this email from me.
So email them the.isos for your favorite distribution.
> (B) does not permanently route all file or data > inquiries or searches through a designated, > central computer located in the United States..."a"... centeral computer? Did Napster have "a" computer? Many organizations have a room full of computers and some sort of load-balancing arrangement.
Conclusion: darn near any program that uses the Net is a peer-to-peer program.
When you see that your local TV stations are broadcasting in digital TV, they are more than likely broadcasting in 480p, or 480p converted to 1080i.
True
This gives NO image quality improvement over a perfect NTSC image, like what you would get from a dish, becasue those signals started out as NTSC on BetaCam, or film.
Wrong. 480 p can look lots better than NTSC. In NTSC, the color information is wedged into hypothetical holes in the black-and-white information. In practice, fine brightness details show up on the screen with added false colors (the proverbial sportscaster's jacket), strong color contrast shows up on the screen with jaggley edges. See demo images at
http://www.tpt.org/innertube/inside/hdtv.html
Stuff shot and edited on Betacam or one of the cheapish (~$5000) pro-sumer digital formats can give you a 480p image that runs rings around NTSC, provided the signal is never dropped down to NTSC anywhere in the shooting / editing / transmission process. Once you own Betacam-class hardware, doing it right only adds a tiny bit to the cost.
Depressingly, most of those high-end large screen consumer monitors won't have a long lifetime -- in projection TVs and plasma screens the manufacturers are driving the light generating elements hard and they will start degrading in ~hundreds of hours. LCD projectors and micromirror projectors could -- in theory -- run a good long time, but they aren't showing up much in the consumer market.
Microsoft is offering 200,000 used (a.k.a. "reconditioned") computers over the next 5 years. We know the software will cost them next to nothing; how much is the hardware worth?
This Microsoft page suggests there are at least 40,000 computers on the main Microsoft campus (search for the first "40,000" on the page). Since they want employees to use their latest and greatest version of Windows, Microsoft needs to replace computers frequently. Old boxes are just too slow. Replace each of 40K computers once a year for 5 years -- how many old boxes do you need to dispose of?
At least this way the state has to come to you to demand your password -- you'll know you're being watched.
It'll be too late, of course. Your key will be used to decrypt all your old messages. (Is there a statute saying how long you need to remember your passphrase after you change keys?)
Those machines must have a lot of probe threads running -- I got hit by a site at 8:47 and again at 10:25. (Or else the random number generator in the worm is bad.)
My DSL to home is completely swamped... I can't even get a ping through.
You can have a machine gun if you pay the tax (~$500? -- it was roughly the cost of a good get-away car in Capone's time, but is now a trivial addition to the cost of the wepon.)
Slashdot Mirror
Terrorists don't have "careers" anymore.
Particularly suicide terrorists.
We should go back to the system we had before 9/11, that served us well for many years.
We should go back to the system we had in 1965. You want to fly somewhere, you buy a ticket.
Occasionally someone tries to steal/crash the plane. Occasionally that works, occasionally the pilot or the police or someone makes a few holes in the would-be bad guy. Nobody suggests a need to violate everyone's rights to try to stop the rare crazy person.
There's no substitue for seeing a movie like the matrix on a big screen.
Too bad so many of the multiplex theaters don't have a big screen any more. Just 10 or 12 small to mid-sized ones.
If I have to watch on a small screen I'll watch at home.
I believe I prefer the model presented at http://penguinsong.net/net/intro
> I'm charged for trash pick-up which is where it goes.
The coaster may be worthless, but I find the CD mailers handy. You can even slip out the AOL paper label and add your own.
archen says: Personally I think RedHat is shooting themselves in the foot with the short support cycle.
There could be an opportunity here for another party to provide an alternative to the Red Hat Network -- one with a longer product support cycle than Red Hat offers. There is the price gap between the $150 top-end Red Hat 9 and the $1500 Red Hat Enterprise. There's no reason why folks who want support need to buy from Red Hat. Go for it -- pick a price small businesses can afford and show Red Hat the error of their ways.
Tivo is an example of personal computing. You don't share any part of it with anyone....
TiVo calls the Mother Ship to get upcoming program schedules and to report on your viewing choices. <cough> Strictly for statistical interest, of course. <cough>
I don't call that personal at all.
For years my local phone company had a policy stating you could _spell_ your name any way you wanted for the phone book.
So, for years I was listed in the phone book under an alias.
...Me: "Here's how I would like my name listed."
...Phone company rep: "Um, is that a roommate, or something?"
...Me: "Um, yep."
At least the "or something" part was true. This was quite a deal, since unlisted numbers cost an extra $1.25/month (something like that), but an aliased name was free. Now the phone is listed as [spouse's name] (she wants to be listed).
The alias method instantly identifies telemarketers, who can then be dealt with as you wish:
..."Is this Mr. [alias]?"
..."Add this number to your do-not-call list." [click]
..."May I speak to [alias]?"
..."Oh!" [adopt somber voice] "I'm so sorry, he died a week ago."
..."Um -- "
Method A)
Method B)
Swarm intelligence (or any other kind)? Not in the business world.
Are they going to outlaw transporting autos also?
A late model car has quite a bit of pyrotechnics: multiple air bags, seat belt pre-tensioners (anything else?)
> Since the Soyuz is the only way to get the crew
... briefly ... 6 on board. The old crew would take the 6-month-old Soyuz home soon after their replacements arrive.
> off the station in an emergency, that means no
> more than 3 people can be onboard,
ISS has two Soyuz docking ports, so if a replacement crew is sent up on a new Soyuz there could be
If the the content industries are given "much of the legal backing which they are seeking for copy-protection technologies" then it does not matter if the term of copyright is shortened to 2 days.
How about: to copyright anything encrypted you are required to supply 100 unencrypted copies to the Library of Congress. After 14 years, if you want to renew the copyright, LoC checks the copies. If more than 2 are unreadable you go on probation; you must provide 100 copies per week and pay a whopping big fine. If you're on probabtion LoC checks your copies weekly and assigns additional fines as needed. After 28 years total, LoC spreads the copies out to branch libraries, where anyone may make their own dubs (possibly for a nominal charge.)
Then companies noticed that operators wanted to get paid.
"Welcome to tech support.
If you have forgotton your password, click here.
If there is smoke coming out of the server room, click here.
If your mouse is broken, click here."
This is what we want?
> I recently ordered 35 Optiplex pc's from Dell,
.isos for your favorite distribution.
> without operating system. Just today, I got an
> email from Dell, stating I must confirm by email
> that I already have sufficient licenses. They are
> apparently not allowed by Microsoft to sell pc's
> without OS unless they get this email from me.
So email them the
35 times.
---
> (B) does not permanently route all file or data ..."a"... centeral computer? Did Napster have "a" computer? Many organizations have a room full of computers and some sort of load-balancing arrangement.
> inquiries or searches through a designated,
> central computer located in the United States
Conclusion: darn near any program that uses the Net is a peer-to-peer program.
Unfortunately, the black box at your local PBS station is based on a PC motherboard. It uses the standard not-very-accurate PC clock.
Oh, and there is no modem on board, so it can't call the USNO to get the correct time.
Does anyone live near a superstore which sells Macs and non-CDs?
> A jury would be filled with people who all
> have 'unlicensed' software on their home PCs.
This would be a civil case, so you don't get a jury, only a judge.
When you see that your local TV stations are broadcasting in digital TV, they are more than likely broadcasting in 480p, or 480p converted to 1080i.
True
This gives NO image quality improvement over a perfect NTSC image, like what you would get from a dish, becasue those signals started out as NTSC on BetaCam, or film.
Wrong. 480 p can look lots better than NTSC. In NTSC, the color information is wedged into hypothetical holes in the black-and-white information. In practice, fine brightness details show up on the screen with added false colors (the proverbial sportscaster's jacket), strong color contrast shows up on the screen with jaggley edges. See demo images at http://www.tpt.org/innertube/inside/hdtv.html
Stuff shot and edited on Betacam or one of the cheapish (~$5000) pro-sumer digital formats can give you a 480p image that runs rings around NTSC, provided the signal is never dropped down to NTSC anywhere in the shooting / editing / transmission process. Once you own Betacam-class hardware, doing it right only adds a tiny bit to the cost.
Depressingly, most of those high-end large screen consumer monitors won't have a long lifetime -- in projection TVs and plasma screens the manufacturers are driving the light generating elements hard and they will start degrading in ~hundreds of hours. LCD projectors and micromirror projectors could -- in theory -- run a good long time, but they aren't showing up much in the consumer market.
This Microsoft page suggests there are at least 40,000 computers on the main Microsoft campus (search for the first "40,000" on the page). Since they want employees to use their latest and greatest version of Windows, Microsoft needs to replace computers frequently. Old boxes are just too slow. Replace each of 40K computers once a year for 5 years -- how many old boxes do you need to dispose of?
200,000
What a coincidence.
It'll be too late, of course. Your key will be used to decrypt all your old messages. (Is there a statute saying how long you need to remember your passphrase after you change keys?)
For what it's worth, text-only 'links' works just fine.
I see that in Microsoft's view, users are "the horse" and Microsoft is "the rider"
Those machines must have a lot of probe threads running -- I got hit by a site at 8:47 and again at 10:25. (Or else the random number generator in the worm is bad.)
... I can't even get a ping through.
My DSL to home is completely swamped
> You can't have an automatic, for example.
You can have a machine gun if you pay the tax (~$500? -- it was roughly the cost of a good get-away car in Capone's time, but is now a trivial addition to the cost of the wepon.)
You seem to be under the mistaken assumption that web sites are afforded the same protections under the law that broadcasters are. They're not.
They are. CNN is 'broadcasting', not 'the press', and has no special rights.