From the article: "Loss adjusters Gaebel, Watkins & Taylor of London, are validating a possible winning entry."
From the prev. poster: "load of plastic polygons that you have to fit into a hexagon shape. All the pieces are the same plain featureless green."
Ahh... At first I was wondering why 'validation' was more complicated than comparing allegedly complete puzzle to boxtop. I mean, I know six-year olds that can do that.
Of course, if all the pieces are the same color, and the pieces are put together, then what more is there for the 'validators' to do than look at it and say, "Yup. That thar puzzle is plumb put together." -- no need to even look at the boxtop, unless you *really* wanted to make sure that it is supposed to be solid green.
I found this section amusing, "Then, more recently, Intel scrapped its delayed low-end Timna microprocessor after customers showed little interest in a low-cost PC microprocessor that required expensive Rambus memory chips."
PHB : Ok boys, we want to sell to the skinflint consumers who only buy cheap Acers at CompUSA. I think the best option is to go with a cheap CPU and really expensive memory! How's that sound?
Lackies 1-N : That's a good idea! Let's do that!!
PHB : Good answer. Now let's have a power lunch. -----
D. Fischer
(Not a flame, nor a troll. Just some cynicism)
Despite the cachet of the phrase New Economy, I still don't know what it is. Isn't the economy still based on the same premise: providing a service or selling a product to customers at a profit, while seeking to increase market share.
Or is New Economy defined as: lose money since the profits come from VC investments.
Seriously, while not a fan (nor enemy) of the RIAA, MPAA, etc., as a professional, I would be frightened too if suddenly everyone and their brother could, and did, copy and distribute my work with compensating me for it.
Maybe that's the New Economy: Make money by distributing the non-material works of others without paying them.
Color me cynical, but I fail to see that the RIAA's behavior is profoundly worse than that of the Napster-ite companies.
(and no, I've never used Napster, et. al. Ever since programming for $$ in college, I've made an effort to not pirate. I'm not perfect, but it's easier by avoiding tempting sources like Napster.) -----
D. Fischer
Sort of like in Catch-22 where Milo Minderbinder (owner of M&M Enterprises) runs multiple companies which all sell products to one another, and to the army. Of course, in the M&M scenario, they all sell to each other at a loss, guaranteeing M&M has the lowest bid to get the contracts; but because M&M only sells to other M&M companies, it makes huge profits:)
Anyhow, sorry for butchering part of Joseph Heller's classic. back to your regularly scheduled flamewar. -----
D. Fischer
Don't know anything about OSS DNSes, but there is a public DNS Service: The Public DNS Service
Here's their intro:
The Public DNS Service is a public service provided by Granite Canyon Group, LLC. The Service offers both primary and secondary DNS free of charge to anyone who asks. The Service maintains UPS protected FreeBSD servers that satisfy DNS queries. The servers are geographically separated and all are connected to the Internet via 7x24 dedicated lines with disjoint routes to the Internet's North American backbones.
The Public DNS is useful if you:
Can't get free service from an ISP and don't want to do it yourself
Need secondary DNS servers
Need MX records for a virtual domain
Want control over your DNS records: change DNS frequently, changing ISPs soon
Are inside of a firewall and need publicly-accessible name servers outside of your firewall
Need name servers that are closer to the North American Internet backbones
I faced this same problem, so I wrote a shell script that checked WHOIS a few times a day, and would email me if a name became available.
Although I never was able to get the domain I wrote it for, I did learn a few things about UNIX scripts:) It also served as an auto emailer to send daily test messages to a friend when he was just setting up his DSL account.
In my own quest for a domain name, my first choice was listed as expired in WHOIS, but was not available. I emailed NSI asking about its status, and they responded with a standard answer that had no relevance to my question. I then contacted another registrar, and asked them about it. But they told me that can't do anything until NSI relinquishes the name.
So then I called NSI, waited on hold for 20 min, and spoke with a service rep. At this point, the expiration date was > 3 months old. But he told me, well, not much. The WHOIS database can't be considered accurate. There was no standard procedure for relinquishing names (in contradiction with the stated 100 days from the article). They could not give any information about the status of the name, whether it had been renewed or declined. He recommended I contact the registrant. I told him I'd tried that via email, but the listed email was dead. He said he would try a conference call, but the registrant didn't answer the phone.
The final response was basically, 'oh well. try back later. first come, first serve.'
What I don't understand is why the WHOIS database is so out of date (in my case, the domain name was listed as re-registered six months after the original expiration date. On my calendar 180 days > 100 days, but perhaps that's not so in Internet time).
I guess silly me for assuming their internal computer records would automatically update the WHOIS records. But I now realize NSI uses the more secure paper invoice & file-cabinet methods; it's Y2K compliant after all.
So, yes, I'd believe that NSI is effectively 'cyber-squatting' on domains. Will anything come of this? doubtful. -----
D. Fischer
"Why the (ii)? Are adults allowed to see child porn on school computers?"
Note that (i) only requires schools to have selected a technology. Without the (ii), they could merely decide which technology would be an appropriate filter and, arguably, not even bother to purchase it. While clearly not in the spirit of (i), it's within the letter of (i).
So, (ii) makes it clear that, yes, the technology selected must also be implemented and enforced. Also makes sure that the admin can't say, "Huh? We gave it to the librarians to use," and the librarians can't then respond, "Huh? admin gave us this stuff, but don't know what to do with it, " eliminating a potential wall of plausible-deniability.
And, yes, I think that adults are allowed to access "obscene" material. Remember, this is a measure targeted at preventing minors from accessing the material, not adults. Of course, if said adult accessed hypothetical pr0n while children were watching, that might be a problem.
This is all speculation, and just my attempt to translate legal-ese to normal-ese. IANAL & IANN (I am not a layer and I am not normal:) -----
D. Fischer
Wouldn't that only apply to sales within the U.S.? Our laws don't apply to markets that aren't 'ours'.
So, a company can't have artificial pricing zones within the U.S., but if the company prices things different for Japan than for Germany than for U.S., that isn't our problem.
Plus, it gets even more complicated when you consider import/export tariffs, certifications (e.g. CE), and trade agreements requiring min/max import/export levels on certain products.
More basically, as others have said, it's to protect the investment in the product. This is to prevent, say, an american film from being sold in the European market until it has been suitably modified (dubbed, re-edited for local decency laws, import regs, etc.)
Is this a good thing? I don't know. But I can see why it's done and why US anti-trust laws aren't wholly relevant. -----
D. Fischer
This is also now up on my must-see list; I stopped the trailer 5 seconds into it when I realized I didn't want any part of the movie spoiled.
Sadly, I doubt I will bother with the next Star Wars (sigh). Having spent my formative years playing star wars, I'm disappointed with the TPM, and I am not expecting any improvement with the next. Hopefully I am wrong, and we'll get another Empire Strikes Back.
What I want to see is the next X-Men movie (I've been ready since the credits began rolling on the first one:) -----
D. Fischer
I agree that most adults consider animated films 'kids' movies, but with that, the movies you mention are about the only ones capable of making people 'sit up and take notice'.
Don't get me wrong, I love animated films, and have seen most of the US released animated films. But until the recent films from Dreamworks, most of the non-Disney animation has been mediocre at best.
But now, with Chicken Run, Prince of Egypt, TS1, TS2, and the wonderful Veggie Tales, "adults" are seeing more high quality 'cartoons' causing them to pay more attention to this genre of film. -----
D. Fischer
While I concur with the majority opinion that Mr. Davis doesn't seem to understand what "give" means (someone email him http://dictionary.com), I thought there were some other amusing bits, as well:
"The Uscan project...has already made it possible to scan a book and automatically shop for the best price among 40 online booksellers." If you have the book to scan, why would you need to price it?
"Thanks to its built-in encryption, the CueCat could become a secure computer passcard reader. Instead of logging on with a username and password, a bar code is scanned before access is granted to a machine." This is worth repeating. Everyone take a moment to chuckle.
"Indeed, Davis said the company has always planned to add extra functions, such as shopping or package tracking, once a significant number of CueCats have been distributed.... 'There's a whole slew of things we're working on now,' he said. " We were planning on doing that stuff too, so you better not do it first. That's not fair! (stomps feet, goes to corner, and pouts)
"[DC plans to hand out] 50 million by the end of 2001."
"The CueCats cost about $10 apiece, Davis said, and the company will spend a significant portion of its $190 million in private financing giving the devices away. " $10 * 50e6 = $500 million dollars. Yes, I guess that would use a significant portion of their $190 million financing. Is this what they mean by "New Economy"? -----
D. Fischer
The list is not complete as one of the submitters list says "other portions of application claimed confidential"
I was wondering about that. If their business plan revolves around secret tlds--well, that's even more stupid that the cuecat nonsense.
Or perhaps it's.eviloverlord,.takeovertheworld, &.resistanceisfutile, and they don't want to spoil their "surprise" for us just yet. But they could have saved everyone the hassle and just used.microsoft:) -----
D. Fischer
I'm glad to see that the Salon staff is submitting articles directly. Hopefully they will then appear in a timely manner, as well as having accurate descriptions of the content, unlike other submissions seen from time to time.
BTW, I've enjoyed a variety of your articles since I started reading Salon sometime last year.
The whole Metallica thing is interesting; or rather the response to it is interesting.
The general anti-RIAA response to the Napster case seems to be, "Don't hold the company responsible for the users' actions."
But when Metallica did just that (going after the music pirates, not Napster), the response seems to have been, "Don't hold the users responsible, that's bad form."
Although Metallica could have gone about things more sensibly that might have reduced piracy and not antagonized fans (of course, true fans buy music, not steal it), I think their actions were reasonable and justified. -----
D. Fischer
Seems like that's a reasonable price. Typical CD has 12 tracks = $12 @ $1/track = typical retail price of CD.
The beauty is that instead of spending $120 to get 10 CDs for the 30 songs you really want, you could just spend $30 and have what you wanted. In the end, you could save a great deal of money.
I like the liner notes, lyrics, and unexpected good songs on full CDs, but there are a lot of radio songs that I would $1 for, but not buy an entire CD to get. -----
D. Fischer
I think you're close, but quite right. My understanding is that:
- Pagans (Romans) celebrated the festival of Saturnalia around the Winter Solstice Dec. 21(?).
- Other groups, like the Druids, had seasonal/religious celebrations around the same time as well.
- To make the transition easier from their pagan religion to chrisitianity, the Catholic church placed the celebration of Christ's birth at the same time as these other "new life" festivals.
- As time went on, other non-christian elements were brought into the growing christian holiday: fir trees were a symbol of life for the druids. The Christmas Tree started with a certain King of Germany (rather, he was given one, kept it, and the concept began moving from the high society down to the plebs). Similar histories exists for many other elements, like yule logs, etc.
- Gift-giving was initially just from parents to children; and charity from rich to poor
- With the mass immigration into the US in the 1800s, especially with dense, multi-cultural cities like NY City, Christmas became a way for these people to have a common custom & tradition, while still incorporating aspects of their heritage.
- The gift-giving became more common, and over time broadened to the semi-universal giving that we have now.
- The commericalism began entering strongly into it with the development of the consumer society in the US.
That's what I can remember from memory. I'm sure some details are off, but I think that's largely accurate.
As for the original poster said - I truly enjoy giving and receiving gifts (and I don't just give gifts at Christmas, like many other people). But I've become ever more tired of the disposable (landfill) gifts. The presents that are fun for a day, but aren't used after that. I now try and ask for gifts, and give gifts, that have some more lasting value; be it a quality kitchen appliance, a good book worth keeping, or something with sentimental value that will bring back good memories over the years. -----
D. Fischer
+10 : Understands "it's" and "its"
+20 : Perfect Grammar. No Spelling Errors
This would make karma whoring a pro-spelling endeavor. And while the highest-scoring posts might be irrelevant to the topic, at least they'd be intelligible. And I think that's a reasonable compromise.:) -----
D. Fischer
Slashdot Mirror
From the article: "Loss adjusters Gaebel, Watkins & Taylor of London, are validating a possible winning entry."
From the prev. poster: "load of plastic polygons that you have to fit into a hexagon shape. All the pieces are the same plain featureless green."
Ahh... At first I was wondering why 'validation' was more complicated than comparing allegedly complete puzzle to boxtop. I mean, I know six-year olds that can do that.
Of course, if all the pieces are the same color, and the pieces are put together, then what more is there for the 'validators' to do than look at it and say, "Yup. That thar puzzle is plumb put together." -- no need to even look at the boxtop, unless you *really* wanted to make sure that it is supposed to be solid green.
:)
-----
D. Fischer
I found this section amusing, "Then, more recently, Intel scrapped its delayed low-end Timna microprocessor after customers showed little interest in a low-cost PC microprocessor that required expensive Rambus memory chips."
PHB : Ok boys, we want to sell to the skinflint consumers who only buy cheap Acers at CompUSA. I think the best option is to go with a cheap CPU and really expensive memory! How's that sound?
Lackies 1-N : That's a good idea! Let's do that!!
PHB : Good answer. Now let's have a power lunch.
-----
D. Fischer
(Not a flame, nor a troll. Just some cynicism)
Despite the cachet of the phrase New Economy, I still don't know what it is. Isn't the economy still based on the same premise: providing a service or selling a product to customers at a profit, while seeking to increase market share.
Or is New Economy defined as: lose money since the profits come from VC investments.
Seriously, while not a fan (nor enemy) of the RIAA, MPAA, etc., as a professional, I would be frightened too if suddenly everyone and their brother could, and did, copy and distribute my work with compensating me for it.
Maybe that's the New Economy: Make money by distributing the non-material works of others without paying them.
Color me cynical, but I fail to see that the RIAA's behavior is profoundly worse than that of the Napster-ite companies.
(and no, I've never used Napster, et. al. Ever since programming for $$ in college, I've made an effort to not pirate. I'm not perfect, but it's easier by avoiding tempting sources like Napster.)
-----
D. Fischer
Sort of like in Catch-22 where Milo Minderbinder (owner of M&M Enterprises) runs multiple companies which all sell products to one another, and to the army. Of course, in the M&M scenario, they all sell to each other at a loss, guaranteeing M&M has the lowest bid to get the contracts; but because M&M only sells to other M&M companies, it makes huge profits :)
Anyhow, sorry for butchering part of Joseph Heller's classic. back to your regularly scheduled flamewar.
-----
D. Fischer
Here's their intro:
The Public DNS Service is a public service provided by Granite Canyon Group, LLC. The Service offers both primary and secondary DNS free of charge to anyone who asks. The Service maintains UPS protected FreeBSD servers that satisfy DNS queries. The servers are geographically separated and all are connected to the Internet via 7x24 dedicated lines with disjoint routes to the Internet's North American backbones.
The Public DNS is useful if you:
-----
D. Fischer
"And 'day to day' checking has become tiresome."
:) It also served as an auto emailer to send daily test messages to a friend when he was just setting up his DSL account.
I faced this same problem, so I wrote a shell script that checked WHOIS a few times a day, and would email me if a name became available.
Although I never was able to get the domain I wrote it for, I did learn a few things about UNIX scripts
-----
D. Fischer
"Injunction", I think is what you meant, not "injection".
At first I thought you had delved deep into conspiracy-theory where the ex-spooks were trying to drug each other in their attempts to control kam.com
Or maybe that is what you meant...
kam == "Kill And Murder" perhaps? (shudder)
-----
D. Fischer
In my own quest for a domain name, my first choice was listed as expired in WHOIS, but was not available. I emailed NSI asking about its status, and they responded with a standard answer that had no relevance to my question. I then contacted another registrar, and asked them about it. But they told me that can't do anything until NSI relinquishes the name.
So then I called NSI, waited on hold for 20 min, and spoke with a service rep. At this point, the expiration date was > 3 months old. But he told me, well, not much. The WHOIS database can't be considered accurate. There was no standard procedure for relinquishing names (in contradiction with the stated 100 days from the article). They could not give any information about the status of the name, whether it had been renewed or declined. He recommended I contact the registrant. I told him I'd tried that via email, but the listed email was dead. He said he would try a conference call, but the registrant didn't answer the phone.
The final response was basically, 'oh well. try back later. first come, first serve.'
What I don't understand is why the WHOIS database is so out of date (in my case, the domain name was listed as re-registered six months after the original expiration date. On my calendar 180 days > 100 days, but perhaps that's not so in Internet time).
I guess silly me for assuming their internal computer records would automatically update the WHOIS records. But I now realize NSI uses the more secure paper invoice & file-cabinet methods; it's Y2K compliant after all.
So, yes, I'd believe that NSI is effectively 'cyber-squatting' on domains. Will anything come of this? doubtful.
-----
D. Fischer
"Why the (ii)? Are adults allowed to see child porn on school computers?"
:)
Note that (i) only requires schools to have selected a technology. Without the (ii), they could merely decide which technology would be an appropriate filter and, arguably, not even bother to purchase it. While clearly not in the spirit of (i), it's within the letter of (i).
So, (ii) makes it clear that, yes, the technology selected must also be implemented and enforced. Also makes sure that the admin can't say, "Huh? We gave it to the librarians to use," and the librarians can't then respond, "Huh? admin gave us this stuff, but don't know what to do with it, " eliminating a potential wall of plausible-deniability.
And, yes, I think that adults are allowed to access "obscene" material. Remember, this is a measure targeted at preventing minors from accessing the material, not adults. Of course, if said adult accessed hypothetical pr0n while children were watching, that might be a problem.
This is all speculation, and just my attempt to translate legal-ese to normal-ese. IANAL & IANN (I am not a layer and I am not normal
-----
D. Fischer
Wouldn't that only apply to sales within the U.S.? Our laws don't apply to markets that aren't 'ours'.
So, a company can't have artificial pricing zones within the U.S., but if the company prices things different for Japan than for Germany than for U.S., that isn't our problem.
Plus, it gets even more complicated when you consider import/export tariffs, certifications (e.g. CE), and trade agreements requiring min/max import/export levels on certain products.
More basically, as others have said, it's to protect the investment in the product. This is to prevent, say, an american film from being sold in the European market until it has been suitably modified (dubbed, re-edited for local decency laws, import regs, etc.)
Is this a good thing? I don't know. But I can see why it's done and why US anti-trust laws aren't wholly relevant.
-----
D. Fischer
I recommend not making random death threats; they might be taken seriously:
Aug. 31, 2000 | No one ever expected Sean Dix -- the gently gruff, hardworking New York kid turned quirky inventor -- to wind up in jail this summer, especially not for sending a death threat to one of the world's most powerful men.
-----
D. Fischer
This is also now up on my must-see list; I stopped the trailer 5 seconds into it when I realized I didn't want any part of the movie spoiled.
:)
Sadly, I doubt I will bother with the next Star Wars (sigh). Having spent my formative years playing star wars, I'm disappointed with the TPM, and I am not expecting any improvement with the next. Hopefully I am wrong, and we'll get another Empire Strikes Back.
What I want to see is the next X-Men movie (I've been ready since the credits began rolling on the first one
-----
D. Fischer
I agree that most adults consider animated films 'kids' movies, but with that, the movies you mention are about the only ones capable of making people 'sit up and take notice'.
Don't get me wrong, I love animated films, and have seen most of the US released animated films. But until the recent films from Dreamworks, most of the non-Disney animation has been mediocre at best.
But now, with Chicken Run, Prince of Egypt, TS1, TS2, and the wonderful Veggie Tales, "adults" are seeing more high quality 'cartoons' causing them to pay more attention to this genre of film.
-----
D. Fischer
CGI News Anchors are a reality. Well one is, anyway: Ananova
Neat, but weird.
-----
D. Fischer
Sadly, Bob Ross no longer rules (but he did rule!). He passed away July 4th.
-----
D. Fischer
While I concur with the majority opinion that Mr. Davis doesn't seem to understand what "give" means (someone email him http://dictionary.com), I thought there were some other amusing bits, as well:
... 'There's a whole slew of things we're working on now,' he said. "
"The Uscan project...has already made it possible to scan a book and automatically shop for the best price among 40 online booksellers."
If you have the book to scan, why would you need to price it?
"Thanks to its built-in encryption, the CueCat could become a secure computer passcard reader. Instead of logging on with a username and password, a bar code is scanned before access is granted to a machine."
This is worth repeating. Everyone take a moment to chuckle.
"Indeed, Davis said the company has always planned to add extra functions, such as shopping or package tracking, once a significant number of CueCats have been distributed.
We were planning on doing that stuff too, so you better not do it first. That's not fair! (stomps feet, goes to corner, and pouts)
"[DC plans to hand out] 50 million by the end of 2001."
"The CueCats cost about $10 apiece, Davis said, and the company will spend a significant portion of its $190 million in private financing giving the devices away. "
$10 * 50e6 = $500 million dollars. Yes, I guess that would use a significant portion of their $190 million financing. Is this what they mean by "New Economy"?
-----
D. Fischer
The list is not complete as one of the submitters list says "other portions of application claimed confidential"
.eviloverlord, .takeovertheworld, & .resistanceisfutile, and they don't want to spoil their "surprise" for us just yet. But they could have saved everyone the hassle and just used .microsoft :)
I was wondering about that. If their business plan revolves around secret tlds--well, that's even more stupid that the cuecat nonsense.
Or perhaps it's
-----
D. Fischer
What I found disturbing was that ICM Registry, Inc. proposed the pair: .kids and .xxx .
Uhmmm... What exactly does their business plan entail? (shudder) No, nevermind, I don't want to know.
-----
D. Fischer
I'm glad to see that the Salon staff is submitting articles directly. Hopefully they will then appear in a timely manner, as well as having accurate descriptions of the content, unlike other submissions seen from time to time.
BTW, I've enjoyed a variety of your articles since I started reading Salon sometime last year.
-----
D. Fischer
The whole Metallica thing is interesting; or rather the response to it is interesting.
The general anti-RIAA response to the Napster case seems to be, "Don't hold the company responsible for the users' actions."
But when Metallica did just that (going after the music pirates, not Napster), the response seems to have been, "Don't hold the users responsible, that's bad form."
Although Metallica could have gone about things more sensibly that might have reduced piracy and not antagonized fans (of course, true fans buy music, not steal it), I think their actions were reasonable and justified.
-----
D. Fischer
Seems like that's a reasonable price. Typical CD has 12 tracks = $12 @ $1/track = typical retail price of CD.
The beauty is that instead of spending $120 to get 10 CDs for the 30 songs you really want, you could just spend $30 and have what you wanted. In the end, you could save a great deal of money.
I like the liner notes, lyrics, and unexpected good songs on full CDs, but there are a lot of radio songs that I would $1 for, but not buy an entire CD to get.
-----
D. Fischer
Of coures, if you did find life on a star, I bet you could get both the star and the organism named after you :)
-----
D. Fischer
I think you're close, but quite right. My understanding is that:
- Pagans (Romans) celebrated the festival of Saturnalia around the Winter Solstice Dec. 21(?).
- Other groups, like the Druids, had seasonal/religious celebrations around the same time as well.
- To make the transition easier from their pagan religion to chrisitianity, the Catholic church placed the celebration of Christ's birth at the same time as these other "new life" festivals.
- As time went on, other non-christian elements were brought into the growing christian holiday: fir trees were a symbol of life for the druids. The Christmas Tree started with a certain King of Germany (rather, he was given one, kept it, and the concept began moving from the high society down to the plebs). Similar histories exists for many other elements, like yule logs, etc.
- Gift-giving was initially just from parents to children; and charity from rich to poor
- With the mass immigration into the US in the 1800s, especially with dense, multi-cultural cities like NY City, Christmas became a way for these people to have a common custom & tradition, while still incorporating aspects of their heritage.
- The gift-giving became more common, and over time broadened to the semi-universal giving that we have now.
- The commericalism began entering strongly into it with the development of the consumer society in the US.
That's what I can remember from memory. I'm sure some details are off, but I think that's largely accurate.
As for the original poster said - I truly enjoy giving and receiving gifts (and I don't just give gifts at Christmas, like many other people). But I've become ever more tired of the disposable (landfill) gifts. The presents that are fun for a day, but aren't used after that. I now try and ask for gifts, and give gifts, that have some more lasting value; be it a quality kitchen appliance, a good book worth keeping, or something with sentimental value that will bring back good memories over the years.
-----
D. Fischer
Good point. Add to my list:
:)
+10 : Understands "it's" and "its"
+20 : Perfect Grammar. No Spelling Errors
This would make karma whoring a pro-spelling endeavor. And while the highest-scoring posts might be irrelevant to the topic, at least they'd be intelligible. And I think that's a reasonable compromise.
-----
D. Fischer
While extremeophiles can be quite hardy, I doubt any of them can live on a star. Now perhaps, on a planet near a star...
:)
(sorry, feeling pedantic today
-----
D. Fischer