while the entire US of A sat with it's thumb up it's ass and it's head under a blanket
Sorry, that should read "while the entire US of A sat with its thumb up its ass and its head under a blanket". Apologies for poor punctuation, especially when I'm dissing the USians.
Get too content with being the global big dog and the next thing you know you're not number 1 anymore.
Uh, we tell it differently in the UK - we had to mortgage the empire because we spent 3 years fighting the forces of fascism across the world on our own, while the entire US of A sat with it's thumb up it's ass and it's head under a blanket hoping the nasty goose-steppers would all turn out to be a horrible dream.
And who were our bankers, who foreclosed on us after the war? The US of A. The US current global domination is a simple combination of immense local natural resources and that they took the opportunity to restructure the world's economy to suit their purposes after WWII.
Anyway, my point is the British Empire analogy is totally bogus - the British Empire's ultimate downfall was its vigilance, not its complacency. The British Empire was willing to sacrifice its existence to oppose fascism.
I mean, in the last series it took them 20 years, and a weedy space albino, to figure out that if they run for Earth then the Cylons can just hang back and fry them and our mostly harmless selves when contact's made. What's a two decade wait to a galactic empire of robots? How's about this time we organise an online petition to tell those dumbass Galacticans to stay the hell away from Earth?
Also, there's the question of their immigration status. Now, they can't really claim to be asylum seekers 'cos they started the war with the Cylons in the first place by being a big bunch of Buttinskis and not letting the Cylons subjugate a vassal race as they saw fit (subjugation's kinda the point in being Galactic Overlords after all...) It'd be funny of they got to Earth and the Department of Homeland Security just stuck them in a camp.
Thinking about it that way, the smartest thing we could do when the Galactican's arrive is stick them in a camp. Then when the Cylons turn up we cosy up to them and point out that our most powerful nations are those with the strongest rule of law, and by the way have you thought about extraditing the Galacticans to Cylon as war criminals? Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they commit genocide when they destroyed a planet in the movie? "Oh, it was just an 'accident', was it? Well I'm very sure that if you're innocent then you'll have nothing to fear at trial. On Cylon."
Then we're well in with our new alien masters, obviously being a different, more pragmatic breed of humanity and a bright shining future awaits humanity as the Cylons' premier client race.
It's not like spam is a new problem, so why has it taken so long for ISPs to start making serious noises about getting it under control? Why isn't there a technical solution in place between at least the major ISPs to interdict the flow of spam?
Seriously, I got 56 messages yesterday, of which all but 2 were spam.
IANAML, but I thought getting your hand cut off was for a second offense under Sharia law. A good slap for a first offense and trouble opening jamjars after the second.
Anyway, in the "civilised" west we could add a few wrinkles, like instead of throwing the offender's mitt to the mutts we could stick it on ice for a few years. Then, when the bad man has behaved himself, and said he's very sorry for being naughty, and promised he's never going to be naughty again we can re-attach it with microsurgery.
I think this would be especially appropriate for teeny car thieves. Find out which hand they spank the monkey with and and then ice the paw until their majority. A couple of years having to satisfy themselves with the wrong hand (because car thieves ARE wankers) and they'll learn the error of their ways. It'd work the same for crackers too.
And if something goes wrong sticking it back on and their hand turns black and their arm has to be amputated at the shoulder, well... fuck 'em.
5 bucks, a pair of Levis and a packet of Marlboros to the right Hungarian and the guys at Xupiter are as dead as yesterday's fish.
That'd be a killer app for micropayments - community based assasinations. Everybody sticks in 20p into escrow for when the contractor delivers the goods. Nobody would ever fuck with technologists if we got this set up.
The real injustice - Thundercats
on
David Brin On LOTR
·
· Score: 2, Funny
OK, so Sauron may really have been a misrepresented progressive, and the Empire was an (albeit ruthless) meritocracy replacing an overbearing and incompetent theocracy. But these are only sideshows to the greatest story of injustice and legerdemaine in any form of media: the repression of the thriving mutant population by the aristocratic Thundercats.
In the very first episode the Thundercats admit that mutant technology is superior to their own, indicating a higher degree of development and effective organisation in mutant society. What's the Thundercats' response? Trade? Cultural exchanges? Nope, genocidal war. Which the Thundercats are dumb enough to lose, and are forced to flee. It's only when Lion-o and his inbred chums manage to strand themselves on a technologically backward rock, isolating the mutants from their technology, that they begin to stand a chance of avoiding the extinction that they deserve (although 7 males and one female don't exactly constitute a breeding population).
And how exactly did the mutants get to be mutants in the first place? Where did the mutagenic chemicals that warped their bodies come from? Working in the Thundercat uranium mines no doubt, or in the Thundercats' poppy field getting sprayed by toxic pesticides. If the Thundercats have a culture old enough to recognise that the mutants are mutants then it's pretty clear that they are the ones whose industrialisation and explotation created the environment for the mutations to develop.
And what about that Sword of Omens that Lion-o wields to effect his oppression? How can that blatant penis metaphor be allowed near our childrens' delicate developing minds? It basically conditions our children to believe that an erection is the correct response to interpersonal conflict!
I respectfully submit that there are much bigger fish to fry in the arts than Sauron's democratic revolt against the anti-progressive elven gerontocracy or the Emperor's motivational techniques in a galaxy so vast that only grand gestures are visible. The injustice of the Thundercats must end!
It strikes me that another agency wouldn't be able to access your data in a usable form either: the company holding it. They'd need your permission every time they wanted to compile a management report, or research sales trends, or whatever, so the cost of this sort of activity would be so high there'd be no point in them developing IT solutions for these tasks at all. This would adversely impact on corporate efficiency and profitability (also, other projects with interdependencies on these tasks would probably find it harder to justify claims for funding with the board - i.e. no jobs for us).
Any company that implemented a solution like this for its sales data would probably be cutting it's own throat.
Or, if they had a key to unlock the database, then the spooks could just take that too. And you're right back to where you started.
Is it just me, or was the world complicated enough without having another 8 different licenses to consider when you're publishing your work? I know the idea is that you forget that GPL, BSD and whatnot ever existed and rely exclusively on Creative Commons judgement about what should be in the license but it would have been nice to have been given a 'best fit' from the existing licenses in the wild. Also a quick run-down on the differences between the Creative Commons license and the best fit, and hints as to what they might mean in a courtroom or in corporate negotiations would be nice.
There's simply not enough information regarding the strengths and weaknesses of the given licenses, and how they compare to the incumbents, to make them compelling. And if they're not compelling then they're just another 8 licenses to try and pin the tail on when you're starting up a project.
Re:If we're going round recommending authors...
on
Critics Pan Nemesis
·
· Score: 1
Great book, wrong decade. "Stand On Zanzibar" was published in 1968, and is extremely influenced by what was going on in "Swingin' London" during the writing of the book.
Doh! I checked my copy (trust no-one!). Now I feel dumb(er). But it was still a damn good book.
I'll take a look at "The Shockwave Rider" if I can find a copy. Cheers.
As Holocron says the problem is that the unit cost of managing the storage space isn't constant; it takes a step up once a certain threshold is passed or, in english, to store more costs more when there's more stuff stored.
They're taking this step to: A. increase their profitability; B. no B.
But hopefully you get the benefit of a system that has a bit more money sloshing around to pay for more development time and better customer support.
Pay your money, take your choice.
If we're going round recommending authors...
on
Critics Pan Nemesis
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I'd like to nominate Olaf Stapledon for "Star Maker" (which wasn't even meant to be scifi when he wrote it) for it's depth and vision, John Brunner for "Stand on Zanzibar" (cyberpunk in the 1950s - eat your heart out William Gibson), and James Blish for "Cities in Flight" (weak ending but the anti-humanist tone throughout is chillingly plausible).
Plus: Doyle? Good writing? He was a total hack. Entertaining, and inspiring, possibly. But good? No. Not a lot of human truth in Sherlock Holmes. If you want classical period detectives, try Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. Top notch scary old bag.
Pity this post is totally off-topic. But don't mod it down 'cos I'm paying for yesterday's refusal to endorse the herd view that St. DVD-Jon should be given the keys to the city of Hollywood.
innovation n.
1. The act of introducing something new.
2. Something newly introduced.
I believe DeCSS falls under this category.
No, it's unethical to steal other people's information. I fail to see how a system created to rip off DVD movies promotes innovation and benefits people. Apart from the folk leeching and entertaining themselves off the backs of others efforts (which they fully intended would be paid for).
Innovation != Ethical. The words don't even look the same. There's a reason for that - they're 2 different concepts.
We aren't talking about a system that protects a cure for cancer because the greedy drug companies want to make a fast buck selling chemotherapy. The information disclosed is not in the public interest, the only ethical defence I can think of to DVD-Jon's actions. It's Hollywood movies. It will not represent the end of the world if you never see Titanic. The sun will still rise tomorrow if not one single person sees The Two Towers.
stifle v. stifled, stifling, stifles
v. tr.
1. To interrupt or cut off (the voice, for example).
2. To keep in or hold back; repress: stifled my indignation.
3. To kill by preventing respiration; smother or suffocate.
How is CSS stifling? You can produce an unencrypted, region-free DVD movie all you want and distribute it to who you want. No-one's going to stop you. CSS doesn't prevent anyone from expressing themselves with DVD media.
Oh, you mean that if anyone anywhere does anything entertaining it's their duty to pay for the privilege of showing it to you. Sorry, I didn't get that earlier.
I'm not going to bother explaining to you how DeCSS has ethical or genuine purpose.
Won't or can't?
People commit crimes via the internet daily. Do you feel that the innovators of the internet deserve to be behind bars as well?
The inventors of the internet did not copy other peoples' stuff. They created it as a way to secure communications and to publish original research. What DVD-Jon did was the digital equivalent of manufacturing a bunch of lockpicks and instructions, and then he handed them out free on the corner of the world's biggest high-crime area. Criminal negligence.
Hey, and because everyone doesn't share my view, Norwey's giving him a perfectly fair trial where he can defend his actions. The system works and all that.
Anyway, my point was: DVD-Jon painted a big bullseye on his forehead when he published DeCSS, so hell bloody mend him.
Oh it's all very popular to support this guy and act like he's Robin Hood v2.0 but let's face facts: what he did was unethical and criminal. He didn't want to support the risks of attempting to launch a commercial linux player with it's attendant licensing fees, so he devised a system to decrypt and copy the protected information. I mean he didn't create a player, he created a way to make an unprotected copy of the information.
Now, if he'd kept that process to himself, his actions would have been ethical and he'd wouldn't incur the risk of prosecution. He gets to watch his DVDs on his equipment. Everyone is happy at this point. Him, the DVD Consortium, Linux users (who can't be worried by what they don't know about). But he has to show off how bloody clever he is and sticks the code on the net, knowing full well his code will allow hundreds of thousands of people to rip off information that was meant to be paid for.
Not so clever now, are we Mr. HaxØrsson? I hope the memory of his geek fandom, and all the chicks he managed to score with using the line "I'm the guy that decrypted CSS", sustain him through those dark times when he drops his soap in the showers from now on.
He's going down for his immature hubris, and I won't get all misty for him.
(1) To feed people, first you need to wipe out the bastards using food as a weapon -- a real problem in many conflict zones.
And if you can make their heads burst in to flames and explode from orbit (with no warning at all) you can seriously curtail their desire to nick food from the peacekeepers. Who can stay lightly armed.
Ah, that's because you haven't thrown in the internet to confuse them. How about patenting "an online system for allowing public access and review of innovative designs and business processes during, and after, the process of registering intellectual property rights." See if you can get away with that, and then sue the shit out of the USPTO website for violating the patent they were careless enough to grant.
Maybe when your public accounts committee (or whoever you USians have to check the government's departmental spending) starts asking questions like "what happened to all the money we gave you just last week to pay everyone's salaries?" you'll start getting a bit of accountablility in the system.
Starting with Rene Descartes, all focus on consciousness and being in the scientific world has shifted over to our brain. And yet, clearly that is not the only part of our consciousness. All you need to do is get a cold, and you'll discover just how much your physical body effects your emotional and mental condition.
This just shows that conciousness is a function of organised matter - you make the assumption that cold virii don't infect and affect neural tissues in the brain.
You wanna see how brains and conciousness are linked then try having a migraine. I had one once that completely robbed me of the ability to put together a coherent sentence. I couldn't even think the sentence, never mind articulate it. I basically had a mini Tourette's episode (funny how the sweary words don't go away...)
"We will beat Linux on clusters. We can't beat them on price, but we have to add value." - Ballmer
If I were a Microsoft employee I'd be a bit worried that the #2 man in the company has such an appalling grasp of economics. Open source/free solutions are nothing but added value. You start with a box of electronics which is worth nothing on it's own (unless making irritating noises is worth something to you), you install linux off a CD you downloaded for free, and presto, you have a system that can be used for work and recreation. Value value value.
The only way Microsoft products will have any value compared to open source/free is if they can do something that open source/free products can't do (crashing twice a day, taking 15mins to boot up, and having more security holes than my underpants aren't exactly unique selling points). Microsoft would have to start innovating to sell their bloatware (today, pretty coloured GUIs != innovation). How likely is that?
Personally, I reckon open source/free software could clean Microsoft's clock in about a decade if more work was put into educational software and entry-level programming tools. Get linux in schools! Schools'd rather be spending their money on library books and heating than licenses. They are the softest targets in the world for increasing the mindshare for open source/free software, but the effort going into office productivity apps (a market Microsoft has got sewn up tighter than a gnat's chuff) dwarfs that spent on educational gubbins.
Microsoft only exist because of kiddie hackers who could transform Windows 3.x into a working system and install hardware for nothing as a favour. Otherwise all the refunds to users forced to return that unusable heap of shit would have killed the company like the MSX fiasco should have. If all the kids who keep PCs running around the world for nada were brought up on linux, rather than windows, they'd be selling those solutions to the grown-ups and bringing them into the workplace as they grew up themselves.
And I've got to say the only game I wasn't disappointed in was Tempest 2000. It was an absolute gem (and the only reason to buy a jag). AvP was repetitive and Iron Soldier was too sparsely detailed to allow me to feel I was in a 200-foot killer robot.
The problem was, at the time the PC had just raised the bar for computer games, with Doom and Ultima Underworld the year before. If you had any money to throw around it was thrown in the direction of the system with the best games (plus it was way easier to get my parents to provide a PC for 'studying' - I had to pay for my jag myself).
It was basically a choice between a console and a PC at the time of the PCs greatest inroads into peoples' mindshare. Office applications, a usable windowing system, hardware like CDROMs, and the best games made PCs unbeatable as a games platform at that time. The only reason the PS wasn't stillborn was the 3D hardware was better than anything the PC had at consumer level (for about 6 months).
And don't go on about Marathon on the Mac. Duke kicked that cyborg's ass square.
I flew down to London last week for the first time since last September. It never occurred to me that the penknife and pen (in the shape of a rifle cartridge - a friend got it for me from a touring James Bond exhibition) would be classed as hazardous until I reached the metal detectors. Possibly, I'm just not that bright.
Now here's the funny thing: although I removed the penknife from the keyring at Glasgow (and posted it home) the cartridge/pen went right through the security checks after a quick look at it. Only in Stanstead, coming back, did the cartridge/pen get flagged as dodgy. I was asked about it, I dismantled it and showed it to them carefully (it was really just a pen) but they still didn't allow it on board and I had to buy a new padded envelope and find a post box with a gap wider than 5mm to post it back home again.
I can understand them being cautious if something like my cartridge/pen turns up (believe me, i really can), but if they are so clueless when it comes to firearms that they can't even identify cartridges when they disassmemble them, then what use are the checks? It's slightly idiotic that someone who has never, ever seen a real weapon in their lives is asked to provide life-critical security cover.
So NASA are facing a budget crunch, huh? Well here's a thought: good. That should shake management out of their complacency. They could have been taking paying astronauts up at $20m a pop, but they aren't. How many software upgrades would a single self-financed crewman (or crewwoman - no need to be sexist) have paid for?
When the Shuttle was still just a concept they claimed that the crew wouldn't be super-fit fighter pilots, just ordinarily fit men and women. But they never made the cultural conversion to allow that to happen - it's still fighter pilots and PhDs on the shuttle (check out the crew for STS-112, if proof is required).
What about the dumb, fat gimps that cough up their taxes every year? Don't they get a ride-along if they want one? What are they? Too stupid to go, but dumb enough to pay? How long's that going to last for? You could ask for a ride-along in a cop car, but I guess it's too much to expect that NASA would realise that it's a publicly-funded instution and beholden to the people in exactly the same way.
Now, I'm not saying that they have to give a lift to every spud with $20m in their back pocket, but a flat refusal to even entertain the idea of self-financed crewmen is nothing but profound institutional arrogance. Take their money and give them the groundside training. If they don't make the grade then can their ass and keep the bucks. If they do make the grade then NASA still makes a tidy profit and has another trained astronaut on their books. Win-win.
Maybe, when a few more engineers get pink-slipped, the ones that are left will start pulling out their calculators and pointing out to management that NASA really needs that money.
Or, hey, how about a patent on claiming prior use exemptions on a patent?
Why not just go the whole hog and patent delaying patent issuance, and allowing a patented technolgy to come to widespread use by not defending the patent, in order to bilk everyone using your patentable technology as a business process. Then every time some nimrod tries this tactic this you can sue the bastard into the ground...
In all this ruction, what gets me is that broadcasters don't use the p2p distribution network to sell their ads. All they have to do is produce a mid-quality version (lower than broadcast quality so folks watch the local version and local ads too) of their show, convince some transnat like, say, tobacco companies (how can you legislate against people choosing to download tobacco related advertising?) to sponsor and pay for advertising space (spliced into the show at super-duper quality levels) and distribute that. Keep the ads not too long and intrusive (more entertaining too might be an idea) and folks will think it's too much bother to cut them out, and anyway the ad-enabled version will be the one most prevelant on the network, because its the original.
The broadcasters will be doing exactly what they want to do: make money by broadcasting. Punters will be happy because this gives them what they want: more better stuff for free. Also, bonuses for broadcasters they don't need to maintain a big cable network, or pay for RF bandwidth for this revenue stream. Shit, we pay for the internet. This way they co-opt us into paying for the distribution.
And if you really want to be tricksy you can do a deal with Microsoft to check hashes on the files over the internet and, for amended (or unrecognised) files, flag up a warning that says: "Possible corruption or malicious content in video file. This video file may contain content which would render the possessor liable to prosecution in their jurisdiction and attempted playback may cause damage to your computer. Proceed? (Yes/No/Delete the Smelly Bastard)". Hard-core anti-fudmeisters will laugh heartily and disregard this (and probably won't be using Microsoft Media Player anyway), but Joe Pubic on his wintel will be hitting the Panic button and ridding the world of one more ad-disabled version of the video.
It's not a perfect model (and with tobacco ads and FUD thrown in, possibly Satanically unholy) but it's still a damn-sight less costly and more profitable than pitting your wits against every cracker in the world.
This is not rocket science. A bit of compromise and only a smidgen of innovation could have serious benefits for all parties. And it's not being helped by people that reckon they should get gratification for free. Jeez, watch the ads.
One of the things that I thought of when I heard this story is that the term 'linux' has gone generic, like scotch tape or aspirin. I know about a million pedantic techies can't help themselves and have to declare that linux is a kernel, not an operating system whenever this issue arises, but John Q. User thinks that all open source, free, GPL'd, whatever OSs are the same. And nit-picking will only turn them off to the distinction.
Linux raised public conciousness of free *nix style systems and the reward is that when people think of free distributions, they think 'Linux'.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, that should read "while the entire US of A sat with its thumb up its ass and its head under a blanket". Apologies for poor punctuation, especially when I'm dissing the USians.
Uh, we tell it differently in the UK - we had to mortgage the empire because we spent 3 years fighting the forces of fascism across the world on our own, while the entire US of A sat with it's thumb up it's ass and it's head under a blanket hoping the nasty goose-steppers would all turn out to be a horrible dream.
And who were our bankers, who foreclosed on us after the war? The US of A. The US current global domination is a simple combination of immense local natural resources and that they took the opportunity to restructure the world's economy to suit their purposes after WWII.
Anyway, my point is the British Empire analogy is totally bogus - the British Empire's ultimate downfall was its vigilance, not its complacency. The British Empire was willing to sacrifice its existence to oppose fascism.
I mean, in the last series it took them 20 years, and a weedy space albino, to figure out that if they run for Earth then the Cylons can just hang back and fry them and our mostly harmless selves when contact's made. What's a two decade wait to a galactic empire of robots? How's about this time we organise an online petition to tell those dumbass Galacticans to stay the hell away from Earth?
Also, there's the question of their immigration status. Now, they can't really claim to be asylum seekers 'cos they started the war with the Cylons in the first place by being a big bunch of Buttinskis and not letting the Cylons subjugate a vassal race as they saw fit (subjugation's kinda the point in being Galactic Overlords after all...) It'd be funny of they got to Earth and the Department of Homeland Security just stuck them in a camp.
Thinking about it that way, the smartest thing we could do when the Galactican's arrive is stick them in a camp. Then when the Cylons turn up we cosy up to them and point out that our most powerful nations are those with the strongest rule of law, and by the way have you thought about extraditing the Galacticans to Cylon as war criminals? Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they commit genocide when they destroyed a planet in the movie? "Oh, it was just an 'accident', was it? Well I'm very sure that if you're innocent then you'll have nothing to fear at trial. On Cylon."
Then we're well in with our new alien masters, obviously being a different, more pragmatic breed of humanity and a bright shining future awaits humanity as the Cylons' premier client race.
It's what I'd do.
It's not like spam is a new problem, so why has it taken so long for ISPs to start making serious noises about getting it under control? Why isn't there a technical solution in place between at least the major ISPs to interdict the flow of spam?
Seriously, I got 56 messages yesterday, of which all but 2 were spam.
IANAML, but I thought getting your hand cut off was for a second offense under Sharia law. A good slap for a first offense and trouble opening jamjars after the second.
Anyway, in the "civilised" west we could add a few wrinkles, like instead of throwing the offender's mitt to the mutts we could stick it on ice for a few years. Then, when the bad man has behaved himself, and said he's very sorry for being naughty, and promised he's never going to be naughty again we can re-attach it with microsurgery.
I think this would be especially appropriate for teeny car thieves. Find out which hand they spank the monkey with and and then ice the paw until their majority. A couple of years having to satisfy themselves with the wrong hand (because car thieves ARE wankers) and they'll learn the error of their ways. It'd work the same for crackers too.
And if something goes wrong sticking it back on and their hand turns black and their arm has to be amputated at the shoulder, well... fuck 'em.
5 bucks, a pair of Levis and a packet of Marlboros to the right Hungarian and the guys at Xupiter are as dead as yesterday's fish.
That'd be a killer app for micropayments - community based assasinations. Everybody sticks in 20p into escrow for when the contractor delivers the goods. Nobody would ever fuck with technologists if we got this set up.
OK, so Sauron may really have been a misrepresented progressive, and the Empire was an (albeit ruthless) meritocracy replacing an overbearing and incompetent theocracy. But these are only sideshows to the greatest story of injustice and legerdemaine in any form of media: the repression of the thriving mutant population by the aristocratic Thundercats.
In the very first episode the Thundercats admit that mutant technology is superior to their own, indicating a higher degree of development and effective organisation in mutant society. What's the Thundercats' response? Trade? Cultural exchanges? Nope, genocidal war. Which the Thundercats are dumb enough to lose, and are forced to flee. It's only when Lion-o and his inbred chums manage to strand themselves on a technologically backward rock, isolating the mutants from their technology, that they begin to stand a chance of avoiding the extinction that they deserve (although 7 males and one female don't exactly constitute a breeding population).
And how exactly did the mutants get to be mutants in the first place? Where did the mutagenic chemicals that warped their bodies come from? Working in the Thundercat uranium mines no doubt, or in the Thundercats' poppy field getting sprayed by toxic pesticides. If the Thundercats have a culture old enough to recognise that the mutants are mutants then it's pretty clear that they are the ones whose industrialisation and explotation created the environment for the mutations to develop.
And what about that Sword of Omens that Lion-o wields to effect his oppression? How can that blatant penis metaphor be allowed near our childrens' delicate developing minds? It basically conditions our children to believe that an erection is the correct response to interpersonal conflict!
I respectfully submit that there are much bigger fish to fry in the arts than Sauron's democratic revolt against the anti-progressive elven gerontocracy or the Emperor's motivational techniques in a galaxy so vast that only grand gestures are visible. The injustice of the Thundercats must end!
It strikes me that another agency wouldn't be able to access your data in a usable form either: the company holding it. They'd need your permission every time they wanted to compile a management report, or research sales trends, or whatever, so the cost of this sort of activity would be so high there'd be no point in them developing IT solutions for these tasks at all. This would adversely impact on corporate efficiency and profitability (also, other projects with interdependencies on these tasks would probably find it harder to justify claims for funding with the board - i.e. no jobs for us).
Any company that implemented a solution like this for its sales data would probably be cutting it's own throat.
Or, if they had a key to unlock the database, then the spooks could just take that too. And you're right back to where you started.
Is it just me, or was the world complicated enough without having another 8 different licenses to consider when you're publishing your work? I know the idea is that you forget that GPL, BSD and whatnot ever existed and rely exclusively on Creative Commons judgement about what should be in the license but it would have been nice to have been given a 'best fit' from the existing licenses in the wild. Also a quick run-down on the differences between the Creative Commons license and the best fit, and hints as to what they might mean in a courtroom or in corporate negotiations would be nice.
There's simply not enough information regarding the strengths and weaknesses of the given licenses, and how they compare to the incumbents, to make them compelling. And if they're not compelling then they're just another 8 licenses to try and pin the tail on when you're starting up a project.
Great book, wrong decade. "Stand On Zanzibar" was published in 1968, and is extremely influenced by what was going on in "Swingin' London" during the writing of the book.
Doh! I checked my copy (trust no-one!). Now I feel dumb(er). But it was still a damn good book.
I'll take a look at "The Shockwave Rider" if I can find a copy. Cheers.
As Holocron says the problem is that the unit cost of managing the storage space isn't constant; it takes a step up once a certain threshold is passed or, in english, to store more costs more when there's more stuff stored.
They're taking this step to:
A. increase their profitability;
B. no B.
But hopefully you get the benefit of a system that has a bit more money sloshing around to pay for more development time and better customer support.
Pay your money, take your choice.
I'd like to nominate Olaf Stapledon for "Star Maker" (which wasn't even meant to be scifi when he wrote it) for it's depth and vision, John Brunner for "Stand on Zanzibar" (cyberpunk in the 1950s - eat your heart out William Gibson), and James Blish for "Cities in Flight" (weak ending but the anti-humanist tone throughout is chillingly plausible).
Plus: Doyle? Good writing? He was a total hack. Entertaining, and inspiring, possibly. But good? No. Not a lot of human truth in Sherlock Holmes. If you want classical period detectives, try Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. Top notch scary old bag.
Pity this post is totally off-topic. But don't mod it down 'cos I'm paying for yesterday's refusal to endorse the herd view that St. DVD-Jon should be given the keys to the city of Hollywood.
Innovation != Ethical. The words don't even look the same. There's a reason for that - they're 2 different concepts.
We aren't talking about a system that protects a cure for cancer because the greedy drug companies want to make a fast buck selling chemotherapy. The information disclosed is not in the public interest, the only ethical defence I can think of to DVD-Jon's actions. It's Hollywood movies. It will not represent the end of the world if you never see Titanic. The sun will still rise tomorrow if not one single person sees The Two Towers.How is CSS stifling? You can produce an unencrypted, region-free DVD movie all you want and distribute it to who you want. No-one's going to stop you. CSS doesn't prevent anyone from expressing themselves with DVD media.
Oh, you mean that if anyone anywhere does anything entertaining it's their duty to pay for the privilege of showing it to you. Sorry, I didn't get that earlier.
Won't or can't?
The inventors of the internet did not copy other peoples' stuff. They created it as a way to secure communications and to publish original research. What DVD-Jon did was the digital equivalent of manufacturing a bunch of lockpicks and instructions, and then he handed them out free on the corner of the world's biggest high-crime area. Criminal negligence.
Hey, and because everyone doesn't share my view, Norwey's giving him a perfectly fair trial where he can defend his actions. The system works and all that.
Anyway, my point was: DVD-Jon painted a big bullseye on his forehead when he published DeCSS, so hell bloody mend him.
Oh it's all very popular to support this guy and act like he's Robin Hood v2.0 but let's face facts: what he did was unethical and criminal. He didn't want to support the risks of attempting to launch a commercial linux player with it's attendant licensing fees, so he devised a system to decrypt and copy the protected information. I mean he didn't create a player, he created a way to make an unprotected copy of the information.
Now, if he'd kept that process to himself, his actions would have been ethical and he'd wouldn't incur the risk of prosecution. He gets to watch his DVDs on his equipment. Everyone is happy at this point. Him, the DVD Consortium, Linux users (who can't be worried by what they don't know about). But he has to show off how bloody clever he is and sticks the code on the net, knowing full well his code will allow hundreds of thousands of people to rip off information that was meant to be paid for.
Not so clever now, are we Mr. HaxØrsson? I hope the memory of his geek fandom, and all the chicks he managed to score with using the line "I'm the guy that decrypted CSS", sustain him through those dark times when he drops his soap in the showers from now on.
He's going down for his immature hubris, and I won't get all misty for him.
And if you can make their heads burst in to flames and explode from orbit (with no warning at all) you can seriously curtail their desire to nick food from the peacekeepers. Who can stay lightly armed.
Ah, that's because you haven't thrown in the internet to confuse them. How about patenting "an online system for allowing public access and review of innovative designs and business processes during, and after, the process of registering intellectual property rights." See if you can get away with that, and then sue the shit out of the USPTO website for violating the patent they were careless enough to grant.
Maybe when your public accounts committee (or whoever you USians have to check the government's departmental spending) starts asking questions like "what happened to all the money we gave you just last week to pay everyone's salaries?" you'll start getting a bit of accountablility in the system.
Gary
This just shows that conciousness is a function of organised matter - you make the assumption that cold virii don't infect and affect neural tissues in the brain.
You wanna see how brains and conciousness are linked then try having a migraine. I had one once that completely robbed me of the ability to put together a coherent sentence. I couldn't even think the sentence, never mind articulate it. I basically had a mini Tourette's episode (funny how the sweary words don't go away...)
If I were a Microsoft employee I'd be a bit worried that the #2 man in the company has such an appalling grasp of economics. Open source/free solutions are nothing but added value. You start with a box of electronics which is worth nothing on it's own (unless making irritating noises is worth something to you), you install linux off a CD you downloaded for free, and presto, you have a system that can be used for work and recreation. Value value value.
The only way Microsoft products will have any value compared to open source/free is if they can do something that open source/free products can't do (crashing twice a day, taking 15mins to boot up, and having more security holes than my underpants aren't exactly unique selling points). Microsoft would have to start innovating to sell their bloatware (today, pretty coloured GUIs != innovation). How likely is that?
Personally, I reckon open source/free software could clean Microsoft's clock in about a decade if more work was put into educational software and entry-level programming tools. Get linux in schools! Schools'd rather be spending their money on library books and heating than licenses. They are the softest targets in the world for increasing the mindshare for open source/free software, but the effort going into office productivity apps (a market Microsoft has got sewn up tighter than a gnat's chuff) dwarfs that spent on educational gubbins.
Microsoft only exist because of kiddie hackers who could transform Windows 3.x into a working system and install hardware for nothing as a favour. Otherwise all the refunds to users forced to return that unusable heap of shit would have killed the company like the MSX fiasco should have. If all the kids who keep PCs running around the world for nada were brought up on linux, rather than windows, they'd be selling those solutions to the grown-ups and bringing them into the workplace as they grew up themselves.
And I've got to say the only game I wasn't disappointed in was Tempest 2000. It was an absolute gem (and the only reason to buy a jag). AvP was repetitive and Iron Soldier was too sparsely detailed to allow me to feel I was in a 200-foot killer robot.
The problem was, at the time the PC had just raised the bar for computer games, with Doom and Ultima Underworld the year before. If you had any money to throw around it was thrown in the direction of the system with the best games (plus it was way easier to get my parents to provide a PC for 'studying' - I had to pay for my jag myself).
It was basically a choice between a console and a PC at the time of the PCs greatest inroads into peoples' mindshare. Office applications, a usable windowing system, hardware like CDROMs, and the best games made PCs unbeatable as a games platform at that time. The only reason the PS wasn't stillborn was the 3D hardware was better than anything the PC had at consumer level (for about 6 months).
And don't go on about Marathon on the Mac. Duke kicked that cyborg's ass square.
Gary
...Pop Dog brand coke, they'd have made a killing.
I flew down to London last week for the first time since last September. It never occurred to me that the penknife and pen (in the shape of a rifle cartridge - a friend got it for me from a touring James Bond exhibition) would be classed as hazardous until I reached the metal detectors. Possibly, I'm just not that bright.
Now here's the funny thing: although I removed the penknife from the keyring at Glasgow (and posted it home) the cartridge/pen went right through the security checks after a quick look at it. Only in Stanstead, coming back, did the cartridge/pen get flagged as dodgy. I was asked about it, I dismantled it and showed it to them carefully (it was really just a pen) but they still didn't allow it on board and I had to buy a new padded envelope and find a post box with a gap wider than 5mm to post it back home again.
I can understand them being cautious if something like my cartridge/pen turns up (believe me, i really can), but if they are so clueless when it comes to firearms that they can't even identify cartridges when they disassmemble them, then what use are the checks? It's slightly idiotic that someone who has never, ever seen a real weapon in their lives is asked to provide life-critical security cover.
So NASA are facing a budget crunch, huh? Well here's a thought: good. That should shake management out of their complacency. They could have been taking paying astronauts up at $20m a pop, but they aren't. How many software upgrades would a single self-financed crewman (or crewwoman - no need to be sexist) have paid for?
When the Shuttle was still just a concept they claimed that the crew wouldn't be super-fit fighter pilots, just ordinarily fit men and women. But they never made the cultural conversion to allow that to happen - it's still fighter pilots and PhDs on the shuttle (check out the crew for STS-112, if proof is required).
What about the dumb, fat gimps that cough up their taxes every year? Don't they get a ride-along if they want one? What are they? Too stupid to go, but dumb enough to pay? How long's that going to last for? You could ask for a ride-along in a cop car, but I guess it's too much to expect that NASA would realise that it's a publicly-funded instution and beholden to the people in exactly the same way.
Now, I'm not saying that they have to give a lift to every spud with $20m in their back pocket, but a flat refusal to even entertain the idea of self-financed crewmen is nothing but profound institutional arrogance. Take their money and give them the groundside training. If they don't make the grade then can their ass and keep the bucks. If they do make the grade then NASA still makes a tidy profit and has another trained astronaut on their books. Win-win.
Maybe, when a few more engineers get pink-slipped, the ones that are left will start pulling out their calculators and pointing out to management that NASA really needs that money.
Why not just go the whole hog and patent delaying patent issuance, and allowing a patented technolgy to come to widespread use by not defending the patent, in order to bilk everyone using your patentable technology as a business process. Then every time some nimrod tries this tactic this you can sue the bastard into the ground...
In all this ruction, what gets me is that broadcasters don't use the p2p distribution network to sell their ads. All they have to do is produce a mid-quality version (lower than broadcast quality so folks watch the local version and local ads too) of their show, convince some transnat like, say, tobacco companies (how can you legislate against people choosing to download tobacco related advertising?) to sponsor and pay for advertising space (spliced into the show at super-duper quality levels) and distribute that. Keep the ads not too long and intrusive (more entertaining too might be an idea) and folks will think it's too much bother to cut them out, and anyway the ad-enabled version will be the one most prevelant on the network, because its the original.
The broadcasters will be doing exactly what they want to do: make money by broadcasting. Punters will be happy because this gives them what they want: more better stuff for free. Also, bonuses for broadcasters they don't need to maintain a big cable network, or pay for RF bandwidth for this revenue stream. Shit, we pay for the internet. This way they co-opt us into paying for the distribution.
And if you really want to be tricksy you can do a deal with Microsoft to check hashes on the files over the internet and, for amended (or unrecognised) files, flag up a warning that says: "Possible corruption or malicious content in video file. This video file may contain content which would render the possessor liable to prosecution in their jurisdiction and attempted playback may cause damage to your computer. Proceed? (Yes/No/Delete the Smelly Bastard)". Hard-core anti-fudmeisters will laugh heartily and disregard this (and probably won't be using Microsoft Media Player anyway), but Joe Pubic on his wintel will be hitting the Panic button and ridding the world of one more ad-disabled version of the video.
It's not a perfect model (and with tobacco ads and FUD thrown in, possibly Satanically unholy) but it's still a damn-sight less costly and more profitable than pitting your wits against every cracker in the world.
This is not rocket science. A bit of compromise and only a smidgen of innovation could have serious benefits for all parties. And it's not being helped by people that reckon they should get gratification for free. Jeez, watch the ads.
Linux raised public conciousness of free *nix style systems and the reward is that when people think of free distributions, they think 'Linux'.