I work for a small company that does business with much larger companies. I'm sure many Slashdotters are in the same situation. GiantCorp tells us "You will send us files in this format, because that's what we use." If we responded, "I'm sorry, the software that creates those files is based on a subscription model and we are philosophically opposed to it", we would get laughed off the conference call.
Oh, it's a troll. It's not blatant, though, it's brilliant. Look at his posting history. Only three posts come up, but they have generated almost 50 replies. That's some good trolling.
From dictionary.com:
Spy - An agent employed by a state to obtain secret information, especially of a military nature, concerning its potential or actual enemies.
Do they wear fedoras and exchange briefcases at outdoor cafes? No. Are they spying? Absolutely.
The way I understand it, the NSA has a small army of signals gathering people that it picks from the regular armed forces. They need uniformed military for the reasons above, but the people no longer report to the normal chain of command of their regular service. I don't know who actually cuts them a check, but they report to the NSA.
They were *spying*. But as uniformed military personelle, the treatment they have to receive is spelled out by the Geneva Convention. I'm sure those people were on the payroll of the NSA, but they are in the military and that's the rules everyone agreed to.
Forget about stealing one person's password and identity, what about stealing millions of people's identities? If Microsoft pulls this off anywhere close to how they're imagining it, they would be creating the granddaddy of all cracker/hacker targets. Even if MS manages to make it super duper secure (which thier track record puts in doubt) and 99.99% of all the attacks against HailStorm fail, that one guy (or group) that does crack it will be holding an unbelievable ammount of power. How much would a kidnapper pay for the complete schedule of a bank executive, complete with hotel room numbers? For every very cool scenario that Microsoft can think up for this system, you can come up with two horrifying ones.
I'm willing to bet that McDonald's has a ton of patents on all sorts of things. Both parents of an ex-girlfriend of mine were human factors engineers, taking existing things and tailoring them to people for efficiency and productivity. They said that the two best human factors departments in the world belonged to the US Postal Service and McDonald's. When McDonald's engineers figure out a way to flip a burger a half second faster, or fill a drink a little quicker, they go and patent that innovation. Why should Burger King get the improvement that McDonald's spent buckets of money developing? McDonald's wouldn't bother spending the cash if it wouldn't give them an advantage in the market. And then your food would take even longer and be even colder than it is now. And if there is one thing that is truly bad for consumers, it's cold french fries.
"This allows AutoDesk to charge about $2800 / license for what is essentially program that let's you draw pictures"
I can draw pictures with a crayon and notebook paper, also. The difference between the two is that the pictures I draw with AutoCAD can be turned into an $100M skyscraper.
It's not like these companies are saying, "We signed a contract saying we would pay you $500 per license, but now we're only going to pay you $100". These companies are being forced into things that they do not believe they agreed to.
The biggest problem is that no two people at MS give you the same answer to the same question. I have spent many hours on the phone with MS sales people and they are in general, smart, competent folks. But one guy interprets the contract-speak one way, another sales guy interprets it another way, and I read it a completely different way. When nobody is on the same page, things get screwed up. What I'm really afriad of is how they're going to license the new.net stuff. We'll jump off that bridge when we come to it.
There is an easier explanation. Maybe the poll was taken among a group where 95% of the population was above the overall average intelligence. Maybe it was a MENSA meeting, maybe it was Harvard freshmen orientation.
The reason that Isreal doesn't have a geography based political system is because they don't have much geography. The whole country is something like the size of New Jersey and a vast majority of the people live in a tiny fraction of it.
"This is a stupid user error, not a software error."
A stupid user error is a software error. If the user can't accomplish what they're trying to do because they're stupid and/or won't read the manual, then it's the user's fault. If the software actually crashes, no matter what the user did, I consider it a design failure. A programmer's first duty should be to protect the user from themselves.
"...but it will be months before their combined user base is as large as napster's"
The figure I've seen printed most often for Napter users is 65 million. That's a massive number of people. How many businesses have 65 million users/clients? Microsoft? Proctor & Gamble? I would be shocked if all of the Napster alternatives combined could get close to that number of users in the forseeable future.
The way I userstand the situation, Rambus did closer to #2 than #1. The group they joined with other RAM makers said that you couldn't patent the things the group decided on and that you couldn't suggest a standard patented by your company. The reason for these rules are obvious. Rambus went to the conference and either suggested, or allowed another party to suggest, standards that Rambus had a patent *pending* on. Since the patent was pending, when anyone from the group did a check on the standards, nothing came up. Then all of the sudden, after everyone starts implementing the decisions made by the group, poof, Rambus has a patent on it. It's definately one of the scummiest business deals I've seen.
Web ads similar to TV ads IMO are the best way to convey a message. I trade the TV network 2 minutes of my time in exchange for 15 minutes of programming. Most people seem ok with that trade off. And if you think about it, if banner ads really worked that well, wouldn't we have banner ads on television?
The problem is bandwidth. A good number of Slashdotters are in a position like me, great broadband at work, decent broadband (cable) at home. The fact is that we're in the small minority. Until a whole lot more people get a true broadband connection at either work or home, I don't think real interstital advertising is going to work for most sites.
Of course technology always moves forward and new mediums will replace older ones occasionally. But look at the changes in the last 40 years. There has always been a compelling reason for the consumer to switch. 8 tracks were more durable than vinyl and could play in your car*. Casettes weren't a huge improvement over 8 tracks, but they were quite a bit smaller. Someone older than me jump in: were 8 track players all that popular? Did everyone have one? Then you have the casette to CD transition that I was alive for. CDs are FAR superior to casettes in so many way. Sound quality and random access are the two biggies. Now we have this new dataplay disk. What is the compelling CONSUMER reason to switch? Nothing much. It's smaller. I keep a couple hundred CDs in my car now without any problem. So this latest attempt at a media change is being done almost entirely for the record companies interest. Yes, the public is stupid, but they're also cheap. Until there is a real reason to throw away their investment in the current system, they're not going to adopt a new one.
Like a vast majority of Slashdotters, I am not a lawyer. We also throw around the phrase "fair use" a whole lot. Could someone that really is a lawyer (or close) give the legal difinition of "fair use", please?
Marty, the story submitter, claims that Macrovision, as well as this new system, SafeAudio, are crushing our rights to copy stuff that we paid for and own. Are companies really required to give you a "plaintext" version of the music/video you buy so that you can make personal copies? I wouldn't think so.
Then you can get into the whole discussion about how companies are allowed to encode content, but people are not allowed to decode it because of the DMCA.
I own an old Apex 600a DVD player so Macrovision doesn't concern me much.
I would agree that anything fitting the definition of "revolution" in the personal computer industry has passed. One of the reasons that Dell and Compaq stock are getting slammed by Wall Street is because very few people are now buying a first computer. People that don't own any kind of PC today are probably not going to own one in the forseeable future. That very important market *growth* just isn't there anymore. Sure, the population is increasing to some degree and people are replacing old computers with new ones, but that's not where the big money is. I would say the PC "revolution" ended a lot closer to 2000 than 1995, but it was definately in the 90s.
Nope. Mr. Bucky designed and evangelized geodesic domes. The C60 molecules appearance resembles his architectural designs and were named in his honor. He was also something of a genius as well as a nutjob (in the finest tradition of genius nutjobs). Here is a pretty large FAQ about him: http://www.cjfearnley.com/fuller-faq.html
My old roommate worked at Blockbuster and arranged these three movies on the "Coming Next Month" board above the checkout:
My Giant
Big and Hairy
Dick
-B
I love that quote: "I don't think we've done enough education of policy makers to understand the threat."
Why do I picture an MS executive alone in the office of some commitee chairman, with checkbook in hand, saying "How much education do you think you'll need to outlaw open source software?" To which the Congressman replied, "I think 15 million credit hours will do nicely".
Slashdot Mirror
I work for a small company that does business with much larger companies. I'm sure many Slashdotters are in the same situation. GiantCorp tells us "You will send us files in this format, because that's what we use." If we responded, "I'm sorry, the software that creates those files is based on a subscription model and we are philosophically opposed to it", we would get laughed off the conference call.
-B
Oh, it's a troll. It's not blatant, though, it's brilliant. Look at his posting history. Only three posts come up, but they have generated almost 50 replies. That's some good trolling.
Bravo and Huzzah!
-B
From dictionary.com:
Spy - An agent employed by a state to obtain secret information, especially of a military nature, concerning its potential or actual enemies.
Do they wear fedoras and exchange briefcases at outdoor cafes? No. Are they spying? Absolutely.
-B
The way I understand it, the NSA has a small army of signals gathering people that it picks from the regular armed forces. They need uniformed military for the reasons above, but the people no longer report to the normal chain of command of their regular service. I don't know who actually cuts them a check, but they report to the NSA.
-B
They were *spying*. But as uniformed military personelle, the treatment they have to receive is spelled out by the Geneva Convention. I'm sure those people were on the payroll of the NSA, but they are in the military and that's the rules everyone agreed to.
-B
Doh!
It's only called cheating if you get caught. If you don't get caught it's called winning.
-B
It's only called cheating if you get caught. If you don't get caught it's called winning.
-B
Forget about stealing one person's password and identity, what about stealing millions of people's identities? If Microsoft pulls this off anywhere close to how they're imagining it, they would be creating the granddaddy of all cracker/hacker targets. Even if MS manages to make it super duper secure (which thier track record puts in doubt) and 99.99% of all the attacks against HailStorm fail, that one guy (or group) that does crack it will be holding an unbelievable ammount of power. How much would a kidnapper pay for the complete schedule of a bank executive, complete with hotel room numbers? For every very cool scenario that Microsoft can think up for this system, you can come up with two horrifying ones.
-B
I'm willing to bet that McDonald's has a ton of patents on all sorts of things. Both parents of an ex-girlfriend of mine were human factors engineers, taking existing things and tailoring them to people for efficiency and productivity. They said that the two best human factors departments in the world belonged to the US Postal Service and McDonald's. When McDonald's engineers figure out a way to flip a burger a half second faster, or fill a drink a little quicker, they go and patent that innovation. Why should Burger King get the improvement that McDonald's spent buckets of money developing? McDonald's wouldn't bother spending the cash if it wouldn't give them an advantage in the market. And then your food would take even longer and be even colder than it is now. And if there is one thing that is truly bad for consumers, it's cold french fries.
-B
"This allows AutoDesk to charge about $2800 / license for what is essentially program that let's you draw pictures"
I can draw pictures with a crayon and notebook paper, also. The difference between the two is that the pictures I draw with AutoCAD can be turned into an $100M skyscraper.
-B
It's not like these companies are saying, "We signed a contract saying we would pay you $500 per license, but now we're only going to pay you $100". These companies are being forced into things that they do not believe they agreed to.
.net stuff. We'll jump off that bridge when we come to it.
The biggest problem is that no two people at MS give you the same answer to the same question. I have spent many hours on the phone with MS sales people and they are in general, smart, competent folks. But one guy interprets the contract-speak one way, another sales guy interprets it another way, and I read it a completely different way. When nobody is on the same page, things get screwed up. What I'm really afriad of is how they're going to license the new
-B
There is an easier explanation. Maybe the poll was taken among a group where 95% of the population was above the overall average intelligence. Maybe it was a MENSA meeting, maybe it was Harvard freshmen orientation.
-B
The reason that Isreal doesn't have a geography based political system is because they don't have much geography. The whole country is something like the size of New Jersey and a vast majority of the people live in a tiny fraction of it.
-B
"This is a stupid user error, not a software error."
A stupid user error is a software error. If the user can't accomplish what they're trying to do because they're stupid and/or won't read the manual, then it's the user's fault. If the software actually crashes, no matter what the user did, I consider it a design failure. A programmer's first duty should be to protect the user from themselves.
-B
"...but it will be months before their combined user base is as large as napster's"
The figure I've seen printed most often for Napter users is 65 million. That's a massive number of people. How many businesses have 65 million users/clients? Microsoft? Proctor & Gamble? I would be shocked if all of the Napster alternatives combined could get close to that number of users in the forseeable future.
-B
The way I userstand the situation, Rambus did closer to #2 than #1. The group they joined with other RAM makers said that you couldn't patent the things the group decided on and that you couldn't suggest a standard patented by your company. The reason for these rules are obvious. Rambus went to the conference and either suggested, or allowed another party to suggest, standards that Rambus had a patent *pending* on. Since the patent was pending, when anyone from the group did a check on the standards, nothing came up. Then all of the sudden, after everyone starts implementing the decisions made by the group, poof, Rambus has a patent on it. It's definately one of the scummiest business deals I've seen.
-B
Web ads similar to TV ads IMO are the best way to convey a message. I trade the TV network 2 minutes of my time in exchange for 15 minutes of programming. Most people seem ok with that trade off. And if you think about it, if banner ads really worked that well, wouldn't we have banner ads on television?
The problem is bandwidth. A good number of Slashdotters are in a position like me, great broadband at work, decent broadband (cable) at home. The fact is that we're in the small minority. Until a whole lot more people get a true broadband connection at either work or home, I don't think real interstital advertising is going to work for most sites.
-B
Of course technology always moves forward and new mediums will replace older ones occasionally. But look at the changes in the last 40 years. There has always been a compelling reason for the consumer to switch. 8 tracks were more durable than vinyl and could play in your car*. Casettes weren't a huge improvement over 8 tracks, but they were quite a bit smaller. Someone older than me jump in: were 8 track players all that popular? Did everyone have one? Then you have the casette to CD transition that I was alive for. CDs are FAR superior to casettes in so many way. Sound quality and random access are the two biggies. Now we have this new dataplay disk. What is the compelling CONSUMER reason to switch? Nothing much. It's smaller. I keep a couple hundred CDs in my car now without any problem. So this latest attempt at a media change is being done almost entirely for the record companies interest. Yes, the public is stupid, but they're also cheap. Until there is a real reason to throw away their investment in the current system, they're not going to adopt a new one.
-B
*There were car LP players, but not many
Like a vast majority of Slashdotters, I am not a lawyer. We also throw around the phrase "fair use" a whole lot. Could someone that really is a lawyer (or close) give the legal difinition of "fair use", please?
Marty, the story submitter, claims that Macrovision, as well as this new system, SafeAudio, are crushing our rights to copy stuff that we paid for and own. Are companies really required to give you a "plaintext" version of the music/video you buy so that you can make personal copies? I wouldn't think so.
Then you can get into the whole discussion about how companies are allowed to encode content, but people are not allowed to decode it because of the DMCA.
I own an old Apex 600a DVD player so Macrovision doesn't concern me much.
-B
I would agree that anything fitting the definition of "revolution" in the personal computer industry has passed. One of the reasons that Dell and Compaq stock are getting slammed by Wall Street is because very few people are now buying a first computer. People that don't own any kind of PC today are probably not going to own one in the forseeable future. That very important market *growth* just isn't there anymore. Sure, the population is increasing to some degree and people are replacing old computers with new ones, but that's not where the big money is. I would say the PC "revolution" ended a lot closer to 2000 than 1995, but it was definately in the 90s.
-B
Nope. Mr. Bucky designed and evangelized geodesic domes. The C60 molecules appearance resembles his architectural designs and were named in his honor. He was also something of a genius as well as a nutjob (in the finest tradition of genius nutjobs). Here is a pretty large FAQ about him: http://www.cjfearnley.com/fuller-faq.html
-B
Without the damn HTML formatting, that's:
My Giant
Big and Hairy
Dick
-B
My old roommate worked at Blockbuster and arranged these three movies on the "Coming Next Month" board above the checkout: My Giant Big and Hairy Dick -B
I love that quote: "I don't think we've done enough education of policy makers to understand the threat."
Why do I picture an MS executive alone in the office of some commitee chairman, with checkbook in hand, saying "How much education do you think you'll need to outlaw open source software?" To which the Congressman replied, "I think 15 million credit hours will do nicely".
Hemos: Great Strangelove reference.
-B