Deregulation would only help this sort of crisis, because it would be in the individual stake-holder's best interest to shield themselves from such an event.
But, considering how rare these grid overloads are, increased deregulation would do more harm than good, because it would complicate the normal daily function, and allow price gouging at every turn, while preventing the rare outage.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The previous major blackout for the area was in 1965. That is one HELL of a MTBF. By comparison to deregulated California, we in the North East will keep our 29 year uptime, thanks.
It's a sane and sensible suggestion, which is why it is verboten.
IIRC, honeypots and intentionally misrepresenting yourself as something you're not in the digisphere, is illegal under either the DMCA or one of the Patriot Laws.
My thought exactly, with one qualification. This will be a great input device for menus and other selection of discrete options, but it will suck for any significant data entry.
Tactile feedback is great for typing. Having your keys flash and beep each time you touch them, when typing or building up your input with multiple key presses, would get very irritating very quickly.
This begs for a reiteration of Slashdot policy on the disclosure to governments of the identity information of criminals, and the policy on reporting to the authorities evidence necessary for law enforcement.
I can see "as a former roadie, speakers are heavy, but the groupies make up for it". But the logic of "as a former roadie, I feel qualified to talk about the motivations of a Senator dealing with the legal issues of the music industry" somehow eludes me.
Obviously, accessing it with the proper protocol would get the data out.
The 'dead-man switch' would only kill the camera if someone were to try to get at the hardware. That's a 2 megapixel CCD in there. For $10.99. Imagine, a Beowulf cluster of those!
If there's a physical connection alone, we can hack it. Not only that, but Ritz has to have custom hardware made to interface with the thing. That costs money.
If I were to design something like this, I'd give it a cheap, standard serial interface, and an asymmetric cryptosystem such that the internal "public" key would encrypt the pics, and an external "private" key was needed to decode. At each complete read, I'd flash the keys with newly generated ones, which would be stored in the company DB until they were invoked for decode.
If I were a real bastard, and since I would be in it for the money, I would be, I'd make the camera tamper-proof so that opening it would wipe the pics and keys.
Personally, living as close to a women's college as I do, my initial application would be a bit different. But, yeah, lasers and nuclear disasters. That too micht work.
If your vision goes out each time you put on a tie, you're probably wearing it on a little too high. You're not in College anymore. In the Real World, it's supposed to go around your neck.
It *should* be about finding the sweet-spot between the two, but, at least in my experience as an IT apps developer, I can tell you that the money always takes precedence.
The managers and directors making these outsourcing decisions are the same ones who tell us to skimp on design and outright neglect testing, to cut costs. If they give outsourced developers the same incomplete specs, and skimp on testing as much, the work products will be utter crap.
Outsourced coders are not invested in the success of the company for whom they are coding. At the significantly lower cost of Indian programmers, liability clauses in their outsourcing contracts are not going to be effective punishment.
The Indian coders are smart, no doubt, and they're actually quite smarter than the US CIO's give them credit. The CIO's are thinking of Indian coders in terms of south-east Asia's manufacturing costs. This is a fallacy. It takes a significant investment to set up a manufacturing facility. You have to put out decent quality product to not lose that investment.
This is not the case with knowledge workers. They can turn in a prototype quality finished product, and you have no recourse. Sue the company into bankrupcy, sure. Watch it dissolve, move computers across the street, and likely get hired for big bucks to fix the problem they created in the first place.
Globalization, like Communism, works fine in a small, limited scope. Make it comprehensive, and it only works well on paper.
I live 13 miles from work. If I were willing to code for Indian prices, they'd not only cover the cost of my broadband, they'd give me a computer to do it on.
Would posting a Cliff-Notes summary and character analysis of a book be theft? Would posting the entire text? No, the first is perfectly fine and the second is a copyright issue.
Walking out of a book/music store with a book or CD you did not pay for in your pocket would be theft. Giving someone a copy of either is a copyright issue.
By using the word "theft", the RIAA skews public opinion. Judges, juries and lawyers too are members of the public, and whether we want to admit it or not, despite their education and specialization, they are subject to rhetoric, marketing and propaganda.
By accepting the word "theft", the seed of the notion that this is about tangible property, not distribution rights, is planted. Tangible property has an intrinsic value, while distribution rights over something non-tangible are more difficult to relate to, especially for non-techies.
By calling it "theft", the RIAA avoids the whole issue of their being distributors of goods that are so easily shared as to be a commodity. By making it seem as though it were about the theft of property, the RIAA avoids justifying their role and the possible subsequent questions about the value and validity of copyright and IP laws.
Most non-techies can not relate to digital data. The RIAA, by calling it "theft", brings to mind books. Books are copyrighted, and they cost money. When people buy a book, they "feel" that they pay for the medium. The "unauthorized reproduction" clause is there, and most people understand it because text isn't easily divorced from paper.
Digitalization makes the separation of content from medium very possible (obviously) and this is where the confusion by the public comes in. "What do you mean I can't share this? I didn't make a physical copy. It's digital, not REAL".
Calling it "theft" is the RIAA's way of making it feel real, but it is a misrepresentation of what it is. It's not theft, it is unauthorized reproduction and redistribution; and the ugly side of that is that people who didn't properly buy the right to access the content now do not need to give the RIAA money.
Were the RIAA to put this whole issue in semantically correct terms, they would come across to Joe Public as running a racket, which, really, they are. Joe Public would then, at the next election, likely influence legislation in a direction unfavorable to the RIAA. So they're calling it what it's not, to stack public opinion in their favor.
Join us, won't you, as "The Community" learns that the same company that embraces Free (and in BEER, you numb-skulls) software, also likes to cut costs elsewhere - namely, where you get paid.
Why does every security "enhancement" have to have something to do with 9/11?
The more "minutia" there is to provide identification, the more reliable the identification is. The more heterogenous technologies are involved in the identification, the more difficult, time-consuming and risky it is to falsify the identification. "Smart" paperwork is harder to forge than "dumb" paperwork. That's it.
There is no effective way of screening out a heretofore model citizen who just this morning decided to go and blow up a building. But, with "smart" papers, you can be much more certain that it is that individual, and not someone else using false identification, that actually did (or attempted to do) $WHATEVER.
From a security stand-point, the authentication aspect is valuable information after the fact.
when someone mentions RFIDs, everyone gets all up in arms about it, but when it's Steve Wozniak behind them (these things are basically an advanced form of RFIDs and can be used in much the same way), it's wahoo! go woz! you rock man!
Steve Wozniak is a tool. As such he can be useful or he can be abused just like any other tool. (Gates, Ellison, Grove, Torvalds etc...etc...etc...). What RFDI has done is created a paradigm whereby individuals can harness the power of this technology to enable their lives through their own choice as opposed to Steve Wozniak technology being used without permission or knowledge.
Napster, Kazaa and P2P are the least of your problems. The above-mentioned USENET isn't a major threat either.
It's the consumers. Or rather, the non-consumers, who get to partake of the fruits of your labors each time they turn on the radio, or fail to stick their fingers in their ears when a car drives by their home at night with the bass turned up.
Surely, not everyone who is exposed to, say the latest offering from Eminem, legally owns the album - and therefore does not have the right to listen to the "work for hire" RIAA product.
Unfortunately, no amount of marketing will change this. Some people just do not realize that what is popular to a hand-selected focus-group should be popular enough with everyone to justify the purchase of the disc.
The solution is simple however. By applying concerted pressure to the Senators and Representatives whose mortgages are underwritten by the RIAA and their associates, Laws may be drafted and passed to impose a Federal lever tax on all US Residents. This culture tax, of approximately 2% of their annual income (a meager amount to spend on entertainment and the pinnacle of human culture, provided by the RIAA) would surely off-set the loss of potential profit suffered at the wicked hands (or ears) of people who steal music by listening to it from passing cars and the radio, without ever paying for the distribution media.
Please consider this solution, offered by this concerned consumer, and feel free to suggest it to your friends at the MPAA, Disney, Sony, Viacom, AOL-TW, and anyone else who isn't realizing the profits they are so rightfully entitled to.
Sharing usually involves taking something that belongs to you, and depriving yourself of it to allow others to use it as well, thus improving things for everyone.
No, that sounds a whole lot more like "giving". "Sharing" means expanding the group of beneficiaries.
The music industry "shares" what they "have" with everyone willing to pay for it, so long as they abide by the conditions (such as "not sharing farther").
How much personal sacrifice is involved in "sharing" GNU source code? None at all. How much in the case of sharing personal experience? Again, none. It is the terms set by the original "giver" that make the distinction.
Your point here is valid, but your redefining common words to set up the otherwise sound argument asks to be questioned.
Slashdot Mirror
Right. What we're seeing here is a lan-storm.
Deregulation would only help this sort of crisis, because it would be in the individual stake-holder's best interest to shield themselves from such an event.
But, considering how rare these grid overloads are, increased deregulation would do more harm than good, because it would complicate the normal daily function, and allow price gouging at every turn, while preventing the rare outage.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The previous major blackout for the area was in 1965. That is one HELL of a MTBF. By comparison to deregulated California, we in the North East will keep our 29 year uptime, thanks.
So, what this tells me is that carnivores - and therefore predators - are smarter than herbivorous cattle. Surprise, surprise!
And the consequence of the stinky sweat is that predators have to know which way the wind blows, in order to stalk their prey from down-wind.
So, BO makes life harder for the hunters, necessitating that they be smarter to overcome the additional hardship. Who'da thunk it?!
It's a sane and sensible suggestion, which is why it is verboten.
IIRC, honeypots and intentionally misrepresenting yourself as something you're not in the digisphere, is illegal under either the DMCA or one of the Patriot Laws.
My thought exactly, with one qualification. This will be a great input device for menus and other selection of discrete options, but it will suck for any significant data entry.
Tactile feedback is great for typing. Having your keys flash and beep each time you touch them, when typing or building up your input with multiple key presses, would get very irritating very quickly.
This begs for a reiteration of Slashdot policy on the disclosure to governments of the identity information of criminals, and the policy on reporting to the authorities evidence necessary for law enforcement.
I can see "as a former roadie, speakers are heavy, but the groupies make up for it". But the logic of "as a former roadie, I feel qualified to talk about the motivations of a Senator dealing with the legal issues of the music industry" somehow eludes me.
Which part of "tamper-proof" confused you?
Obviously, accessing it with the proper protocol would get the data out.
The 'dead-man switch' would only kill the camera if someone were to try to get at the hardware. That's a 2 megapixel CCD in there. For $10.99. Imagine, a Beowulf cluster of those!
If there's a physical connection alone, we can hack it. Not only that, but Ritz has to have custom hardware made to interface with the thing. That costs money.
If I were to design something like this, I'd give it a cheap, standard serial interface, and an asymmetric cryptosystem such that the internal "public" key would encrypt the pics, and an external "private" key was needed to decode. At each complete read, I'd flash the keys with newly generated ones, which would be stored in the company DB until they were invoked for decode.
If I were a real bastard, and since I would be in it for the money, I would be, I'd make the camera tamper-proof so that opening it would wipe the pics and keys.
Personally, living as close to a women's college as I do, my initial application would be a bit different. But, yeah, lasers and nuclear disasters. That too micht work.
If your vision goes out each time you put on a tie, you're probably wearing it on a little too high. You're not in College anymore. In the Real World, it's supposed to go around your neck.
It *should* be about finding the sweet-spot between the two, but, at least in my experience as an IT apps developer, I can tell you that the money always takes precedence.
The managers and directors making these outsourcing decisions are the same ones who tell us to skimp on design and outright neglect testing, to cut costs. If they give outsourced developers the same incomplete specs, and skimp on testing as much, the work products will be utter crap.
Outsourced coders are not invested in the success of the company for whom they are coding. At the significantly lower cost of Indian programmers, liability clauses in their outsourcing contracts are not going to be effective punishment.
The Indian coders are smart, no doubt, and they're actually quite smarter than the US CIO's give them credit. The CIO's are thinking of Indian coders in terms of south-east Asia's manufacturing costs. This is a fallacy. It takes a significant investment to set up a manufacturing facility. You have to put out decent quality product to not lose that investment.
This is not the case with knowledge workers. They can turn in a prototype quality finished product, and you have no recourse. Sue the company into bankrupcy, sure. Watch it dissolve, move computers across the street, and likely get hired for big bucks to fix the problem they created in the first place.
Globalization, like Communism, works fine in a small, limited scope. Make it comprehensive, and it only works well on paper.
Distance has nothing to do with it.
I live 13 miles from work. If I were willing to code for Indian prices, they'd not only cover the cost of my broadband, they'd give me a computer to do it on.
For one CD, I agree. For compulsive downloaders, I'd suggest claiming kleptomania though.
Would posting a Cliff-Notes summary and character analysis of a book be theft? Would posting the entire text? No, the first is perfectly fine and the second is a copyright issue.
Walking out of a book/music store with a book or CD you did not pay for in your pocket would be theft. Giving someone a copy of either is a copyright issue.
By using the word "theft", the RIAA skews public opinion. Judges, juries and lawyers too are members of the public, and whether we want to admit it or not, despite their education and specialization, they are subject to rhetoric, marketing and propaganda.
By accepting the word "theft", the seed of the notion that this is about tangible property, not distribution rights, is planted. Tangible property has an intrinsic value, while distribution rights over something non-tangible are more difficult to relate to, especially for non-techies.
By calling it "theft", the RIAA avoids the whole issue of their being distributors of goods that are so easily shared as to be a commodity. By making it seem as though it were about the theft of property, the RIAA avoids justifying their role and the possible subsequent questions about the value and validity of copyright and IP laws.
Most non-techies can not relate to digital data. The RIAA, by calling it "theft", brings to mind books. Books are copyrighted, and they cost money. When people buy a book, they "feel" that they pay for the medium. The "unauthorized reproduction" clause is there, and most people understand it because text isn't easily divorced from paper.
Digitalization makes the separation of content from medium very possible (obviously) and this is where the confusion by the public comes in. "What do you mean I can't share this? I didn't make a physical copy. It's digital, not REAL".
Calling it "theft" is the RIAA's way of making it feel real, but it is a misrepresentation of what it is. It's not theft, it is unauthorized reproduction and redistribution; and the ugly side of that is that people who didn't properly buy the right to access the content now do not need to give the RIAA money.
Were the RIAA to put this whole issue in semantically correct terms, they would come across to Joe Public as running a racket, which, really, they are. Joe Public would then, at the next election, likely influence legislation in a direction unfavorable to the RIAA. So they're calling it what it's not, to stack public opinion in their favor.
Join us, won't you, as "The Community" learns that the same company that embraces Free (and in BEER, you numb-skulls) software, also likes to cut costs elsewhere - namely, where you get paid.
Life sucks, don't it?
Why does every security "enhancement" have to have something to do with 9/11?
The more "minutia" there is to provide identification, the more reliable the identification is. The more heterogenous technologies are involved in the identification, the more difficult, time-consuming and risky it is to falsify the identification. "Smart" paperwork is harder to forge than "dumb" paperwork. That's it.
There is no effective way of screening out a heretofore model citizen who just this morning decided to go and blow up a building. But, with "smart" papers, you can be much more certain that it is that individual, and not someone else using false identification, that actually did (or attempted to do) $WHATEVER.
From a security stand-point, the authentication aspect is valuable information after the fact.
when someone mentions RFIDs, everyone gets all up in arms about it, but when it's Steve Wozniak behind them (these things are basically an advanced form of RFIDs and can be used in much the same way), it's wahoo! go woz! you rock man!
Steve Wozniak is a tool. As such he can be useful or he can be abused just like any other tool. (Gates, Ellison, Grove, Torvalds etc...etc...etc...). What RFDI has done is created a paradigm whereby individuals can harness the power of this technology to enable their lives through their own choice as opposed to Steve Wozniak technology being used without permission or knowledge.
You go RFID!
Boy, you'll really hate "man pages" then. ;)
Dear RIAA,
Napster, Kazaa and P2P are the least of your problems. The above-mentioned USENET isn't a major threat either.
It's the consumers. Or rather, the non-consumers, who get to partake of the fruits of your labors each time they turn on the radio, or fail to stick their fingers in their ears when a car drives by their home at night with the bass turned up.
Surely, not everyone who is exposed to, say the latest offering from Eminem, legally owns the album - and therefore does not have the right to listen to the "work for hire" RIAA product.
Unfortunately, no amount of marketing will change this. Some people just do not realize that what is popular to a hand-selected focus-group should be popular enough with everyone to justify the purchase of the disc.
The solution is simple however. By applying concerted pressure to the Senators and Representatives whose mortgages are underwritten by the RIAA and their associates, Laws may be drafted and passed to impose a Federal lever tax on all US Residents. This culture tax, of approximately 2% of their annual income (a meager amount to spend on entertainment and the pinnacle of human culture, provided by the RIAA) would surely off-set the loss of potential profit suffered at the wicked hands (or ears) of people who steal music by listening to it from passing cars and the radio, without ever paying for the distribution media.
Please consider this solution, offered by this concerned consumer, and feel free to suggest it to your friends at the MPAA, Disney, Sony, Viacom, AOL-TW, and anyone else who isn't realizing the profits they are so rightfully entitled to.
By that logic, half the slashdot community has a password somehow connected to the the Goatse.cx Guy.
Considering all the "Find Weapons of Mass Destruction FAST!!!" spam the White House must get on a regular basis, this doesn't surprise me one bit.
I want THAT job!
Rednecks, baking in the sun all day, could fund the space program with their beer purchases alone.
Sharing usually involves taking something that belongs to you, and depriving yourself of it to allow others to use it as well, thus improving things for everyone.
No, that sounds a whole lot more like "giving". "Sharing" means expanding the group of beneficiaries.
The music industry "shares" what they "have" with everyone willing to pay for it, so long as they abide by the conditions (such as "not sharing farther").
How much personal sacrifice is involved in "sharing" GNU source code? None at all. How much in the case of sharing personal experience? Again, none. It is the terms set by the original "giver" that make the distinction.
Your point here is valid, but your redefining common words to set up the otherwise sound argument asks to be questioned.