It's not that the execs haven't seen it before, it's that they're jealous...
You're never going to get moderated up for a sentiment like that on Slashdot. Don't you know that everyone around here KNOWS that all of the MPAA are massive dicks?!
It doesn't bother me: being English but living in America, they've already kindly attached my biometic info to my greencard.
I guess no one remembered to pay attention when they went for the immigrants as an easy first target. What's that poem about, "When they came for the Jews, I didn't stand up because I wasn't a Jew..... And when they came for me, there was no one left to stand up."?
On the positive side, it shouldn't bother you either: The INS has spent millions putting funky holographic strips on to greencards, border passes, etc..... and then ran out of money to buy the actual readers. Government spending being as intelligent as it is, you probably don't need to worry about them ever being able to actually use the information they spent so much gaining.
From the article: "When someone provides a link without my permission, which grants a user access to a part of my website without going first to my site's home page, the user may experience something different from what I intended when I established my website," Bruce Sunstein, an intellectual property law attorney, said.
It always strikes me as insane that this argument keeps getting trotted out. They're attempting to misuse a law that's not suited to their purpose when there's one that was so kindly gifted to them...
If it's really such an issue, check the HTTP_REFERRER. If it's not your site, bounce them back to the front page. You can do it in a couple of lines and then you get to sue anyone who goes around it under the security circumvention clause of the DMCA. Great, now you can stop wasting everyone's time with nonsensical positions.
Actually, thinking about it, will someone go and patent that suggestion so the media conglomerates can't use it? I won't claim prior art if you use it sensibly.:)
You could always sue for $800,000 in damages for emotional distress ($400 card x the 2000 or so screwed people) and just buy everyone the cards.:) </humor>
Re:From the article...
on
Time Travel
·
· Score: 3, Funny
>> While Mallett acknowledges that sending a person through time may require more energy than physicists today know how to harness, he sees it merely as "an engineering problem."
> Oh, just an engineering problem. That's great. Maybe after Mallett perfects time travel, he can get to work on cold fusion and a perpetual motion machine.
Actually, I solved cold fusion last Tuesday. Unfortunately it involves "more energy than physicists today know how to harness, [but it's] merely an engineering problem." So that's alright then. Where do I collect my Nobel Prize?
Crashing computers are nothing. Put Celine's CD in to your car while you're driving and it'll make you crash that too, just to end the god awful experience. </all too obvious crashing joke>
That's right, folks, a college radio station with just over a hundred listeners could reasonably pay over $500 per day just for the privilege of putting their broadcast on the web.
Actually, the price is 0.02c not $0.02 That makes a factor of 100 difference. So the college radio would really only be paying about five bucks a day for such a small audience. Sell about a thousand dollars of advertising to your local Pizza Hut and to Nike and you've got a full year's coverage.
(I may be wrong, I'm English but I just got my American wife to check and she tells me I'm reading US currency correctly.)
The problem with IT is there are two completely distinct types of manager.
Type 1 are the people who are trained to be managers. The problem with them is that they have no clue what they are talking about when it comes to the technology.
Type 2 are the techies who have been promoted up. They may have been forced, kicking and screaming, to go to an afternoon management seminar or two, but they ignored it anyway. The problem with them is that they have no clue what they are talking about when it comes to the management.
The Type 1s get employed because the Type 2s are so bad at managing. The Type 2s get employed because the Type 1s are so bad at understanding the issues.
In most other careers it is accepted that while you work your way up the ranks, you also go and get MBAs, take management classes, are judged on your demonstrated managerial abilities, etc. In IT it is accepted that you are one or the other and that's just the way the world is.
Fortunately there are a few Type 1s who at least try to learn and can also accept that there are some things that they don't understand and they ask the opinions of those who do. There are also a few Type 2s that realize IT management is screwed up and want to make it better so actually buy and, more amazingly, read books like the One Minute Manager, talk to other people from other industries about improving their abilities, etc. Unfortunately there aren't that many of either sub-group. Fortunately, that does seem to be changing.
Don't get me wrong, I largely agree with the comments that say, "You don't understand - management is a whole lot more complicated than you realize, you just don't see it all." But, while that is also true, it doesn't make the two "Types" issue any less real.
"While Be, Inc had the information for over 3 years [..snip..] they filed a suit against Microsoft only today."
If you read the press statement, it's for "for the destruction of Be's business". It would have been fairly hard for Be to sue Microsoft for destruction of their business three years before Microsoft had finally destroyed their business.
When you're trying desperately to stay afloat and keep your shareholders on board, the last thing you do is publicly sue someone for having irreparably harmed you. Admitting that you're sunk simply guarantees you'll lose whatever remaining chances you have.
Yeah, but the French are saying their Maginot Firewall is completely impregnable!;-)
As any MMPORPG player will tell you - look for the gap in the polygons and slip through it. France may appeal to the UN to get you banned from the server but all their bases are belong to you still.
"Rule Nr. 1 in criminology: 95% of criminals are idiots. If they weren't, they would risk a year long jail term e.g. by robbing a liquor store for 100$."
Except for the basic problem that punishment doesn't work as a deterrant if it's not consistent.
Take speeding for example - which we can all relate to. You do ten miles an hour over and get a ticket for $75 one time in a thousand. You're still going to speed.
If you got a $1000 fine for speeding one time in a thousand, you'd still do it because you'll never be that unlucky. If you do get caught, you'll just complain about how unfair it was that the other 999 guys get away and why should you be punished so disproportionately.
With most 'criminal' actions, the belief is that you won't get caught. You need to up the frequency of the consequences, not the amount. The down side of that is that's a near impossible thing to do.
Actually, Adobe are currently hard at work on the E-Comic format.
While it's probably a flagrant breach of the DMCA for me to talk about it, the format involves putting the panels in... now here's the cunning bit... reverse order. By using Rot-Pan, the technical name for ROTating PANels, Adobe intends to use the DMCA to prosecute anyone who simply reads them backwards.
When questioned about using the DMCA to protect such a ludicrously simple encryption technique rather than actually make it genuinely secure, the Bush administration was quoted as saying, "Well, pretzels look simple the surface too but look how complex they really are."
I would discuss this further but the Feds appear to be knocking at my door with a search warrant signed by yet another large corp.
There are a lot of arguments about how a reasonably motivated terrorist can just code their own strong crypto. But that kind of misses the point.
I would imagine that most decryption is done in bulk, sifting through for the occasional terrorist tidbit. Even if some terrorists do use 128+ bit, it frees up a hell of a lot of resources if the majority of the load is still easily crackable. It also allows the authorities to montior more different sources so now they can add minor suspects rather than having to focus on the major ones.
So, yes, for the most sophisticated criminals, export laws don't make a difference. For the total bulk work that the NSA etc. do, reducing the number of people with strong crypto makes their lives easier.
Hopefully the enhanced IR actually means an enhanced IR port as opposed to just coming bundled with the software.
I own a Clie and love it for almost everything - particularly the style of a Palm (as opposed to the bugly Visors) and the more sensibly priced memory sticks - so I'm generally biased towards, not against, Clies. Even so, the Clie's IR port appears to be the worst implemented of all the variants. Running the existing remote software, you can only actually control stuff if you're facing it perfectly from a few (read less than 3-4) feet away. Unless they sort out the hardware, all the great software in the world won't make it worth using.
On the other hand, it is still amusing to record people's IR keyless car entries and screw with them.
It could be great but I hope you'll end up getting more than just higher resoultion and a branded version of a web download for that extra $90 (S320s are going for about $160 at the moment).
why, after paying this "tax" on blank media, have i not been considered to have paid for the copies i have made (or will make)?
True. We also pay taxes for the police and victim compensation schemes. So, seeing as we've already paid for the effects of commiting assaults, surely it's wrong that we're not then allowed to commit them if we want to?
While I don't support it... It's like insurance - everyone pays a fraction of the cost while only a few people are making the claims.
Buying more nerf toys at toys'r'us (at least one major company still has dotcom fun) I saw a poster in the window for "POX". No mention of what it was but it did seem kind of badly timed.
Complete the degree. As the common consensus seems to be going, you're so close now that you may as well... Then try being unemployed for a while.
I started my degree in '95 when I hoped to be making maybe $20,000 when I graduated. Part way through the course people discovered Y2K and within a year of graduating I was up over $50K and starting to look at $100K positions. While I chose CS because I loved it, it got to the point where it felt like we were owed the $100K paychecks and to take anything less was an insult to our skills.
A transcontinental move later and I moved right in to the Californian IT recession. At first I wasn't prepared to lower my sights because... well, how was I ever going to make it back. Quite a few months of unemployment later, I'd got over myself. I'd forgotten about the ridiculous money (after all, they pay us for doing our hobby) and simply wanted a chance to do what I loved again. Once that started coming across in interviews I landed literally my dream job (and for pretty much the salary I wanted in the first place).
The moral of the story is that CS is a geek hobby that got too much money thrown at it. A million idiots who should never have been involved gold-rushed in and those of us who were geeks chased the money not the love of it. Spend some time being unemployed and the money stops being the issue anymore - and the love of CS for the sake of CS comes back.
Not the most fun sounding option in the world but, honestly, I've never been happier.
Slashdot Mirror
You're never going to get moderated up for a sentiment like that on Slashdot. Don't you know that everyone around here KNOWS that all of the MPAA are massive dicks?!
It doesn't bother me: being English but living in America, they've already kindly attached my biometic info to my greencard.
I guess no one remembered to pay attention when they went for the immigrants as an easy first target. What's that poem about, "When they came for the Jews, I didn't stand up because I wasn't a Jew..... And when they came for me, there was no one left to stand up."?
On the positive side, it shouldn't bother you either: The INS has spent millions putting funky holographic strips on to greencards, border passes, etc..... and then ran out of money to buy the actual readers. Government spending being as intelligent as it is, you probably don't need to worry about them ever being able to actually use the information they spent so much gaining.
It always strikes me as insane that this argument keeps getting trotted out. They're attempting to misuse a law that's not suited to their purpose when there's one that was so kindly gifted to them...
If it's really such an issue, check the HTTP_REFERRER. If it's not your site, bounce them back to the front page. You can do it in a couple of lines and then you get to sue anyone who goes around it under the security circumvention clause of the DMCA. Great, now you can stop wasting everyone's time with nonsensical positions.
Actually, thinking about it, will someone go and patent that suggestion so the media conglomerates can't use it? I won't claim prior art if you use it sensibly.
Free as in CHER-CHING! Three dollars and seventy nine cents please.
You could always sue for $800,000 in damages for emotional distress ($400 card x the 2000 or so screwed people) and just buy everyone the cards.
</humor>
>> While Mallett acknowledges that sending a person through time may require more energy than physicists today know how to harness, he sees it merely as "an engineering problem."
> Oh, just an engineering problem. That's great. Maybe after Mallett perfects time travel, he can get to work on cold fusion and a perpetual motion machine.
Actually, I solved cold fusion last Tuesday. Unfortunately it involves "more energy than physicists today know how to harness, [but it's] merely an engineering problem." So that's alright then. Where do I collect my Nobel Prize?
Crashing computers are nothing. Put Celine's CD in to your car while you're driving and it'll make you crash that too, just to end the god awful experience.
</all too obvious crashing joke>
It kind of makes want to rush out and register "Just To Make Our Lawyers Fuzzy Inside". Just picture the court room.
:)
"Yes, your honor, we are suing Just To Make Our Lawyers Fuzzy Inside"
Finally, some honesty in the legal system.
120 "listeners" * 18hr./day programming * 12 "performances"/hr. * $0.02/"performance" ==> $518.40/day.
That's right, folks, a college radio station with just over a hundred listeners could reasonably pay over $500 per day just for the privilege of putting their broadcast on the web.
Actually, the price is 0.02c not $0.02 That makes a factor of 100 difference. So the college radio would really only be paying about five bucks a day for such a small audience. Sell about a thousand dollars of advertising to your local Pizza Hut and to Nike and you've got a full year's coverage.
(I may be wrong, I'm English but I just got my American wife to check and she tells me I'm reading US currency correctly.)
The problem with IT is there are two completely distinct types of manager.
Type 1 are the people who are trained to be managers. The problem with them is that they have no clue what they are talking about when it comes to the technology.
Type 2 are the techies who have been promoted up. They may have been forced, kicking and screaming, to go to an afternoon management seminar or two, but they ignored it anyway. The problem with them is that they have no clue what they are talking about when it comes to the management.
The Type 1s get employed because the Type 2s are so bad at managing. The Type 2s get employed because the Type 1s are so bad at understanding the issues.
In most other careers it is accepted that while you work your way up the ranks, you also go and get MBAs, take management classes, are judged on your demonstrated managerial abilities, etc. In IT it is accepted that you are one or the other and that's just the way the world is.
Fortunately there are a few Type 1s who at least try to learn and can also accept that there are some things that they don't understand and they ask the opinions of those who do. There are also a few Type 2s that realize IT management is screwed up and want to make it better so actually buy and, more amazingly, read books like the One Minute Manager, talk to other people from other industries about improving their abilities, etc. Unfortunately there aren't that many of either sub-group. Fortunately, that does seem to be changing.
Don't get me wrong, I largely agree with the comments that say, "You don't understand - management is a whole lot more complicated than you realize, you just don't see it all." But, while that is also true, it doesn't make the two "Types" issue any less real.
"While Be, Inc had the information for over 3 years [..snip..] they filed a suit against Microsoft only today."
If you read the press statement, it's for "for the destruction of Be's business". It would have been fairly hard for Be to sue Microsoft for destruction of their business three years before Microsoft had finally destroyed their business.
When you're trying desperately to stay afloat and keep your shareholders on board, the last thing you do is publicly sue someone for having irreparably harmed you. Admitting that you're sunk simply guarantees you'll lose whatever remaining chances you have.
Oooh, imagine a beowulf cluster of those things. ;)
Yeah, but the French are saying their Maginot Firewall is completely impregnable! ;-)
As any MMPORPG player will tell you - look for the gap in the polygons and slip through it. France may appeal to the UN to get you banned from the server but all their bases are belong to you still.
Except for the basic problem that punishment doesn't work as a deterrant if it's not consistent.
Take speeding for example - which we can all relate to. You do ten miles an hour over and get a ticket for $75 one time in a thousand. You're still going to speed.
If you got a $1000 fine for speeding one time in a thousand, you'd still do it because you'll never be that unlucky. If you do get caught, you'll just complain about how unfair it was that the other 999 guys get away and why should you be punished so disproportionately.
With most 'criminal' actions, the belief is that you won't get caught. You need to up the frequency of the consequences, not the amount. The down side of that is that's a near impossible thing to do.
Actually, Adobe are currently hard at work on the E-Comic format.
While it's probably a flagrant breach of the DMCA for me to talk about it, the format involves putting the panels in... now here's the cunning bit... reverse order. By using Rot-Pan, the technical name for ROTating PANels, Adobe intends to use the DMCA to prosecute anyone who simply reads them backwards.
When questioned about using the DMCA to protect such a ludicrously simple encryption technique rather than actually make it genuinely secure, the Bush administration was quoted as saying, "Well, pretzels look simple the surface too but look how complex they really are."
I would discuss this further but the Feds appear to be knocking at my door with a search warrant signed by yet another large corp.
There are a lot of arguments about how a reasonably motivated terrorist can just code their own strong crypto. But that kind of misses the point.
I would imagine that most decryption is done in bulk, sifting through for the occasional terrorist tidbit. Even if some terrorists do use 128+ bit, it frees up a hell of a lot of resources if the majority of the load is still easily crackable. It also allows the authorities to montior more different sources so now they can add minor suspects rather than having to focus on the major ones.
So, yes, for the most sophisticated criminals, export laws don't make a difference. For the total bulk work that the NSA etc. do, reducing the number of people with strong crypto makes their lives easier.
Hopefully the enhanced IR actually means an enhanced IR port as opposed to just coming bundled with the software.
I own a Clie and love it for almost everything - particularly the style of a Palm (as opposed to the bugly Visors) and the more sensibly priced memory sticks - so I'm generally biased towards, not against, Clies. Even so, the Clie's IR port appears to be the worst implemented of all the variants. Running the existing remote software, you can only actually control stuff if you're facing it perfectly from a few (read less than 3-4) feet away. Unless they sort out the hardware, all the great software in the world won't make it worth using.
On the other hand, it is still amusing to record people's IR keyless car entries and screw with them.
It could be great but I hope you'll end up getting more than just higher resoultion and a branded version of a web download for that extra $90 (S320s are going for about $160 at the moment).
"a German company called "Crayon" that claims that the KDE app Krayon violates their trademark."
If only Seymor was still around to first claim prior art and then sue for them violating the trademarks on the power buttons for his super computers.
why, after paying this "tax" on blank media, have i not been considered to have paid for the copies i have made (or will make)?
True. We also pay taxes for the police and victim compensation schemes. So, seeing as we've already paid for the effects of commiting assaults, surely it's wrong that we're not then allowed to commit them if we want to?
While I don't support it... It's like insurance - everyone pays a fraction of the cost while only a few people are making the claims.
"In fact, as you approach a 1-pixel font it should look quite nice. Add color and you're there."
Approximate with just a constant brown font. This is Quake after all, no one'll know.
"99.8 percent accuracy"
"Yikes, I've got the blue gunk of death!"
Buying more nerf toys at toys'r'us (at least one major company still has dotcom fun) I saw a poster in the window for "POX". No mention of what it was but it did seem kind of badly timed.
I started my degree in '95 when I hoped to be making maybe $20,000 when I graduated. Part way through the course people discovered Y2K and within a year of graduating I was up over $50K and starting to look at $100K positions. While I chose CS because I loved it, it got to the point where it felt like we were owed the $100K paychecks and to take anything less was an insult to our skills.
A transcontinental move later and I moved right in to the Californian IT recession. At first I wasn't prepared to lower my sights because... well, how was I ever going to make it back. Quite a few months of unemployment later, I'd got over myself. I'd forgotten about the ridiculous money (after all, they pay us for doing our hobby) and simply wanted a chance to do what I loved again. Once that started coming across in interviews I landed literally my dream job (and for pretty much the salary I wanted in the first place).
The moral of the story is that CS is a geek hobby that got too much money thrown at it. A million idiots who should never have been involved gold-rushed in and those of us who were geeks chased the money not the love of it. Spend some time being unemployed and the money stops being the issue anymore - and the love of CS for the sake of CS comes back.
Not the most fun sounding option in the world but, honestly, I've never been happier.
Curiously, this also fits children going trick or treating. ("Give me candy or I'll flour bomb your house.")
If you make terroism illegal, only the criminals will be able to commit terrorism.
Or something like that.