All the people who are whining about how overpriced this is should note that MS intends for this not to be a set-top box, but a full-fledged computer that you watch TV on.
So, lets assume that you'll get close to $2000 worth of computer for your money. My only question is: why?
DVRs, which are sold as companion products for TVs by TiVo and Sonicblue's ReplayTV, are expected to become standard equipment on PCs over the next few years, say analysts....
Don Simon, a Windows user from Seattle, Wash., recently bought a Vaio RX780G PC. The avid TiVo user has networked other PCs to the Vaio, so he can "seamlessly watch TV on any PC in my house.
Do I have to turn in my geek credentials because I don't find TV on the PC all that compelling? I love DVDs on my laptop, and streaming audio and video, but we already have devices that are perfect to watch TV on... they're called televisions!. They have a simple UI and crash far less often than Windows does. We've had a box under the TV recording shows for years... Why does this box have to turn into a full-fledged computer just because we want to record these shows digitally now?
I have a TiVo and love using it, precisely because it doesn't feel like a computer when I'm using it! (Of course, it is -- the fact that I can upgrade the HD and add ethernet myself doesn't hurt, either.) When I want to rot my brain watching TV, I want it to just work, and I don't want to have to feel like I'm using a computer.
I always thought that Convergence meant that all of your dedicated media devices (which may actually be computers, but with a simpler UI) could talk to each other and exchange information, kind of like what Apple is trying to do with its iPod. Microsoft thinks Convergence means that all of your dedicated media devices become computers, running the latest MS OS, and with all of the problems and complications inherent in that. Of course, we know who's most likely to win this one...
Of course, the sad thing is that by making dedicated media devices more like computers and stuffing them chock-full of DRM badness, we'll end up making the actual computers more like dedicated media serving devices, since the same OS will run on both.:(
Excuse me while I put on my Apple Apologist hat for a moment...
This seems way too odd for Apple. While I don't recall them ever stating an explicit opinion on the DMCA, we know that they've embraced MP3s without restrictions, don't put Product Activation in their OS (and recently started selling a 5-license Family Pack of OS X for $200), and Steve Jobs has publically stated that Piracy (in relation to Music, but it can be extended to all media) is a social problem, not a technological one, and technical efforts to combat it will fail. In short, they haven't been the biggest proponent of draconian copyright protection measures.
Now, they seem to be invoking the DMCA to protect what seems to be a small revenue stream: people who already have Macs without an internal DVD burner and want to use iDVD with an external burner. Apple would rather have them buy a new Mac. Truth be told, however, lots of people in this position will buy a new Mac anyway. In truth, the number of people who would use this patch is quite small. Does Apple really think acting belligerent with third-party hardware vendors will lead to increased sales? Furthermore, what right does Apple have to limit their software to working on only internal drives when we all know that there's no technological reason for it? That sounds fishy to me, but totally legal under the DMCA.
The Conspiracy Theorist (and unabashed Apple fanatic) in me wants to believe that Apple knows that this action wouldn't hold water in court, and is trying to find a third-party who is big enough to challenge it, and get the DMCA overturned, so it can protect its future (and much bigger) revenue stream coming from Digital Hub-type applications and devices!
Then again, the realist in me believes that Apple is all in favor of a liberal approach to copyright protection only as long as it can make more money that way.
business first--consumers (I hate that word!) second. It makes me sick.
Try substituting "citizens" every time you mean to say "consumers". It will get rid of that sick feeling, and give you lots of Karma! (The cosmic kind, not the/. kind!)
Highlighting the actual problems with the law makes your point valid; exaggerating facts makes your entire point invalid.
You know, you're right. When Charlton Heston says that in order for the Liberals to take his guns, they will have to pry them from his cold, dead hands, it makes his entire point invalid, and no one listens to him!
Not bloddy likely. You have to exaggerate in politics to get your voice heard. If anything, Techies don't do well in the Political arena because they're more likely yo tell the truth about the technical merits of something than ancively try to exaggerate and sell it!
After reading the article, I can't imagine that a home user would ever make a point of purchasing a system on the order described. Hardware-level tampering resistance is a good thing for Department of Defense computers, say, but does the average home user, surfing the web and storing recipes, really have to worry about someone leeching that information from residual information that could (maybe) be gleaned from the CPU itself?
You're right -- for the average home user, a non-palladium system will be more useful than a palladiun system, all (technical) things being equal. But there will be marketing, social and political issues that will sway the average user --
Palladium will (and already is) being marketed as a way for the average user to secure his or her own information, even if this claim is somewhat dubious. (It has been billed as a way to prevent viruses from running, because they wouldn't be signed and would not be trusted by default, for instance.) Remember that no matter what their marketing people say, Microsoft doesn't care one whit about the integrity of your data, unless they can find a way to make money from it.
Major content distributors have, for the most part, been hesitant to distribute digital content without the ability to control it as much as possible. Once Palladium-enabled PC's ship, don't be suprised when all new CD's, DVD's, or whatever is carrying content at that time won't work on old PC's (or, old stand-alone players for that matter). This will be an incentive for the average user, who can't live without their media, to upgrade their hardware and software to Palladium-enhanced versions.
As we have seen in the past, content distributors will buy legislation, in as many countries as possible, that will make it illegal to circumvent the "protections" in a DRM scheme, and Microsoft will be happy to offer Palladium as a way to comply with that law. (As above, this will be billed as a way to protect consumers, when in reality it is a way to protect content distributors at the expense of the average citizen.) By licensing the technology to all "established" Commercial OS (and standalone media player!!) vendors, they can dodge the Monopoly accusations while getting to Microsoft's Holy Grail -- getting money for every PC (and CD/DVD/whatever player!!!) that ships, whether or not they actually own the OS that ships on it. It has the added benefit of mandating that people upgrade their hardware in order to comply with the law!
You're also ignoring the outer boroughs, which make up most of the population. Brooklyn and Queens have plenty of backyards and parks. The next time you're in New York and want to see what I mean, take the elevated J train towards Jamaica, and look north. Queens is almost a forest, with a VAST canopy of trees with the occasional house and building poking out.
As a former resident of that "almost a forest" part of Queens (who took that J train before the Z train ever existed), while I appreciate your sentiment, you're missing the fact that pretty much the entire above-ground stretch of the J train in Queens goes over Jamaica Avenue, which is just a few streets down from Forest Park, which stretches (roughly) from the Brooklyn Border all the way to Woodhaven Boulevard. Plus, Forest Park is on one of the highest points in that area of Queens. So, the reason why it looks like "almost a forest" is because it really is a forest, kinda! But look out the South windows, and you can see plenty of those backyards you're talking about it, even if they do look like Peter Parker's concrete backyard from that Spider-man movie!
But I agree that that the J train gives you one of the best views on the entire subway system. I always liked going right to the front of the train, next to the motorman's little cabin, and getting a good view of everything. The parts of Brooklyn that the train goes through have some magnificent old buildings and churches! And when you get to the turn just before the bridge, you get a spectacular view of Lower Manhattan. Even if the view has changed since I last rode that train, it should still be worth the price of admission.
When I was at CMU I knew a few people in the Robotics department. I know that at the time they were working on the problem of how to get a computer to drive a car by itself. AI, Machine vision, recognizing the lines painted on the road -- all that good stuff. I know that they ran all sorts of experiments with computers driving actual cars, but with human drivers as a backup.
I heard a story while I was there (that was never really confirmed) that on one trip, they decided to ditch the human driver in the car, and see how well the machine could do on its own. (They followed behind it in another car, IIRC, and probably had some remote-control apparatus as well, I'd imagine.) They got from Pittsburgh to just outside DC, at which point a Virginia Cop pulled the car over -- only because it didn't have a driver!
Can anyone currently at CMU confirm whether this is true? I've always wondered about that.
In the process of crossing the border, he carefully explained to the border guard/customs officer the exact manner in which he was breaking the law and should be arrested. Customs officer basically told him to fuck off, leave him alone, and go do his business in Tijuana.
I have no experience with Mexican border guards, who probably have more than enough problems and didn't want your friend adding to them, but based on my experience at the Canadian border, I'll tell you exactly what his problem was:
U.S. customs officers normally don't give a damn what you leave the country with. Coming back is a different matter altogether. He should have informed the officer of his exploits on the return trip. It would have generated much more interest then. Although it might have generated the same ultimate result, with the officer telling him to proceed about his business in Tiajuana!
This is the story where all the Managers who read/. will show themselves!
But seriously, I have no problem with these riddles in interviews, as long as they're used properly. The point of asking the question should not be to get a "correct" answer. It should be to see how people react under pressure, how creative and resourceful they are, and how flexible they can be in the presence of (possibly) incomplete information.
Even someone who gets one of these answers "wrong" (perhaps because they overlooked some obscure point) would score points in my book if they could explain somewhat sound reasoning behind it and not get flustered while doing it.
The best interviews I've had were right out of college, when the interviewer asked me about one of my grad school projects, then told me to explain it on a whiteboard, on the spot. Those were also the places I thought I'd most like to work at!
You, sir, must have one heck of an office manager in your workplace. I know there's a process in place where I work to keep track of things like that, but things do get lost, although not very often. Especially after a few office moves and personel changes, like we've had here. Sometimes people move from department to department (I'm in a big company) and bring their office furniture with them since it was bought with their ergonomics in mind; in your workplace, you obviously must transfer the reciepts for their equipment (and all their pencils) as well. I bow to your mad foo powers.
Anyway, I think you took my response a little too literally. I was trying to point out the absurdity of having some outside agency assume that if you can't prove you bought something, than you must have stolen it. Because that's what the BSA does on a routine basis. The Government is bound by this silly notion that you are innocent until proven guilty; luckily for us, in the BSA's world, we're all guilty of theft until we can prove we've bought every tool, chair, and pencil. I feel so much safer now.
I have no sympathy for business who try to cut corners by engaging in mass copyright infringement. But the BSA often goes too far in the other direction, and treats well-meaning businesses who are trying to comply with the rules with the same hardball tactics as the businesses who don't care about licensing.
Have a 100 machine site license and a hundred machines, but just bought that new desktop for the boss? Lost the paperwork for the server in the corner? Then you're one hundred percent in the wrong. When you're an organisation you should be keeping detailed records (after all you probably do when it concerns money owed to you).
In that case, since you're an expert as to what organizations do, I'm sure that you have proof of purchase for every piece of office furniture that you have in your office, don't you?
After all, by your logic, if the Office Furniture Alliance comes and does an audit, and finds that you're missing the proof of purchase for that one file cabinet in the small office that nobody uses, then somebody must have stolen it, right? Because if you can't prove you own every piece of furniture, you're one hundred percent in the wrong. When you're an organisation you should be keeping detailed records (after all you probably do when it concerns money owed to you).
The undertone of this keynote was, "We need more of your money." Other shows have been all about bringing more users into the fold, but this show was clearly about getting more money from the existing user base.
I agree. Between 10.2. and.Mac, I'm beginning to wonder why Apple doesn't just hack into our credit cards and take the money out directly. H2K2 was not far away, after all...
10.2 looks compelling, but most of the new features don't seem immediately useful to me. I may just skip this upgrade until I get some Bluetooth toys to play with.
I also noticed this, snipped from macnn.com: One last thing: Apple lowered the price of the SuperDrive iMac by $100 to $1,799 and introduces new 17" flat-panel iMac. It supports 1440x900--66% bigger than the 15" iMac, adds a Nvidia GeForce4. The 80GB/256MB/17"/SuperDrive/GeForce4 model is due in August for $1999.
That 17" iMac looks sweet, but I thought consumer-level computers were supposed to be getting cheaper lately. Even if this is the high end of Apple's consumer line, does Apple think that people will be willing to spend $2000 on an iMac? Or do they know something about the economy that we don't?
Now someone will respond and say "what if you built a heating duct from your room to the old lady's room and gave her permission to enjoy heating at your expense?"
The difference here is that heating costs in terms of energy and you are paying a fixed amount per kWh or per m^3 of natural gas. This means that the extra heating nessary to heat the old lady's place will increase your bill. On the other hand, WiFi'ing your broadband and giving the old lady access does not increase your bill.
Bandwidth costs money. More bandwidth costs more money. I think that for higher than average users, bandwidth should be paid per quantity used. In this way, it becomes easy to draw the line as to the 'cost' of sharing because no matter how you look at it, bandwidth costs money and more bandwidth costs more money.
Although I think that TWC is actually being reasonable in this instance (and saying TWC is being reasonable about anything is a first for me), I have to take exception to your analogy.
Heat, whether delivered by gas, electricity, or oil, is derived from a physical quantity that can be measured. You can save money by turning your thermostat down. You don't pay for the gas, electricity, or oil that you don't use. Once the infrastructure is in place to deliver this stuff to your home, you only pay for what you consume, and your supplier's responsibility is to supply enough to the neighborhood so noone does without.
If you consume an extra few KWh this month, your supplier hasto find a place to get it and deliver it to you.
Bandwidth is quite different in that there is no physical quantity changing hands. In fact, the infrastructure itself is the product. And maybe you're buying time also, since slower connections do everything faster connections do, and you're paying extra for the speed. If you don't use bandwidth, someone still pays for the fact that you could have used it.(Whether or not you actually pay a metered rate for bandwidth is not an issue; at some point, someone (probably your ISP) is paying for the whole pipe.) And, if you use a 100K extra bandwidth this month than last month, your supplier doesn't have to buy two more 56k modems to make up for it. All the supplier has to do is make sure he can meet the peak bandwidth demand with a reasonable amount of latency.
So, bandwidth costs money, and more bandwidth costs money, sort of. If you (being a consumer, business, or ISP) have a T1 utilized at 100% capacity, and you absolutely need an extra 1% in bandwidth, you'll have to buy another line and pay for it. But if your line is only utilized 50%, and you need an extra 10%, that extra bandwidth costs nothing, because you already bought it.
Heat is sold in physical units of something. Bandwidth is sold in potential maximum information transfer over time. They are very different.
...to have a Reuters sig under a photo obviously in the public domain for a long time.
Public Domain means that Reuters can use the original photo in their newsfeeds and "claim" a copyright on it, but they're just claiming a copyright on their version of the photo, not the photo itself. Anyone else can publish the original photo, just as long as they go back to the source and don't use Reuter's image.
Nobody can prevent you from taking Public Domain work and claiming a copyright on your version of it. That's why the Gnu people bothered to write a license, so that people know that can use GPL'd code freely, but they can't take GPL'd code written by other people and say its their own.
Then again, I'm not a lawyer, so there's every possibility that I'm full of it.
You'd think that a business magazine might attempt some analysis as to what is feasible, desirable, and what the competition (oops, forgot we were talking about Microsoft) might do in response.
Except that most readers of Fortune probably only care about technology to the extent that it can make them money. History is littered with examples of Superior and Feasable Technology getting the shaft in the marketplace. These examples of Superior Technology are considered dismal failures in the Business world. Whether or not this new MS initiative is feasable, it certainly seems marketable...
Besides, Technology is like Magic -- anything's possible, nothing is impossible. That's why we're in this whole DRM mess in the first place. Technology companies keep saying that protecting content to the extent required by the Content Providers (like shutting the Analog hole) is not feasable. Meanwhile, the content companies' executives (and bought-and-paid-for congressmen) won't accept it, they know that anything is possible with Computers and
just want Intel and Microsoft to pull another rabbit out of their hat!
Microsoft understands that the only way to implement DRM the way that content providers want it has the unfortunate side effect of reinforcing the MS monopoly...
Re:Windependence Day, my story.
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Windependence Day
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You just admitted that you were not in compliance for some period of time, and made a quick gesture to try to make up for it. In a nutshell, you showed that you had something to hide. It's like a traffic ticket; if you attempt to lie or hoodwink the cop, he will have no pity for you.
Except that a cop is a duly-sworn officer of the law, and a BSA auditor is not. (No matter what your opinions on cops are, you have to at least admit that!) Besides, If you get pulled over, and you admit to the cop that you were speeding (which is much more like what the Poster said his company did), the cop just writes you a ticket and sends you on your way; he doesn't arrest you for the robbery that just took place down the road!
Of course, none of this would even be necessary if the BSA would leave the "investigations" and "law enforcement" to the people who actually have the legal authority to do so.
No, that's not it at all.
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P2P Television?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
You're right, I didn't see P2P mentioned in the article, but that's because I don't think that's necessarily what he's aiming at.
In the P2P systems that we have seen, each node makes "their" data available on the system, and when looking for new data, it will search for it on the distributed system. When it is found, it will take it. It's like one big hard drive where everyone has access to data that is put on it.
But, notice that while the writer mentions the big distributed storage network, he never really mentions the free and unfettered access part of it. In fact, there's very definite references to DRM-like constructs where you'll "order" some media, and have it delivered electronically, perhaps with a "key" that gives you limited viewings. In this vision of distributed storage, if the new episode of Buffy is on your neighbor's TiVo, you can snatch it from there and not have to go to the network's servers to get it, maybe saving you from having it count against your monthly broadband access GB limit.. But you still need to buy a Buffy-viewing license before the device will actually let you view it. And licenses for newer content like first-run movies will expire after a while, and won't be perpetual like a DVD you buy right now (supposedly) is.
This is actually Pay-Per-View taken to an extreme, where your TiVo can get any episode of Star Trek you want automatically, but will prevent you from watching it unless you fork over money to Paramount. Is this really the direction where we want things to go?
I'll admit that I haven't been paying attention to the gaming industry in quite a few years, but the last time I checked, the RPG/Gaming industry was going downhill because the giant lizard with the head of a Pokemon named WoTC (and then Hasbro) was eating up all the gaming companies in sight.
It wasn't too long ago that WoTC was considered that other Monopoly from Washington State. And after Hasbro bought Avalon-Hill, it seemed like if you wanted to play any interesting new board games, you had to learn German.
What happened to make WoTC one of the good guys? Seriously, I'm lacking on the history of the last few years and would like an update... It must be more than just a silly contest that's causing/.ers to like this company...
There are two issues on the table. The one that everyone talks about is piracy. There's no way to win this in the law, although technology will probably make it possible to steal music and share it over the net for the foreseeable future.
The other one, and the one that is winnable, is about whether or not there will be open electronic distribution systems. Right now entertainment companies control distribution, and that's how they make their money.
Bingo! We all know that the Piracy stuff is grossly overstated by content distributors, but we also know that full-fledged Piracy does take place, but doesn't effect* sales to the extent that the distributors contend. We also know that there is no practical solution to the problem.
But the Powers That Be are anxious to do anything to make it look like they're being useful. Any action is better than no action in their eyes.
Content companies are using the Piracy problem as an excuse to make proposals that secure a government-sanctioned oligopoly on content distribution on the Internet. AOLTW and Sony and Disney get to distribute conetent, and you don't if you don't have their blessing. Ever. Preventing Piracy is just a smokescreen. Anyone who whines about Napster or Fair Use without making this point will simply get ignored.
* = affect or effect? I always get them confused...
This came out a month ago, right? So, is there any analysis from "Management-approved" sources about the "All A/D Converters" bit? I mean, a source that my management would consider viable, not just some guy's blog (no matter how smart he is). Engineering trade publications might be a good place to look for non-Disney bias. I read a few of them, and haven't found something like this.
My company works with A/D converters, and if this is interpreted by "management-approved sources" as something that can really effect "All A/D converters", you can bet that someone here would be interested in contacting the polititians about it. And, we all know that my company's word (and campaign contributions) are worth far more than my own.
(By the way, even if you can figure out where I work (which you can't), these opinions are my own and not those of my company.)
Big surpise this article comes from Register who has made it its sole purpose to badmouth MS.
It seems to me that the Register has a habit of badmouthing everyone more or less equally. Also, looking over from my side of the world, it seems that (with the execption of the UK government) people in Europe seem much more wary of Microsoft than people in the U.S. do. I don't think the Reg goes out of their way to bash Microsoft like we do here on/., but sometimes it just happens.
They don't realize that gaming isn't the only thing MS has planned for the XBox. MS, and many other companies, have always wanted an integrated home media box that does everything from check your email, to help you plan a grocery list, to play video games.
On the contrary, if you actually read the article you'd know that they have more planned, even if the Reg doesn't spell out what those plans might be -- they have more server capacity planned for Xbox Live than they currently do for microsoft.com, after all. Quotes from MS Execs indicate that Microsoft wants to serve the PG, sanitized, "Disneyland" version of Media on its network. The Reg's claim is that it's doomed to failure, because in order to do this with any effectiveness, you're going to have to build your own separate, parallel network, and populate it with your own sanitized content, which you then have to police for violations of your sanitization policies. When the inevitable violations occur, and occur frequently, people lose confidence in your sanitized network, and your main differentiating feature is now gone.
The only people who come close to pulling off a separate network is AOL, who built their "gated community" before the Internet caught on, and permits access to the Internet-at-large, so it isn't really a separate network. AOL can police its own content, but not the Internet-at-large.
You could debate with the Reg's claim, but it seems legitimate to me.
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I would have called the music industry a different horse product, myself....
So, lets assume that you'll get close to $2000 worth of computer for your money. My only question is: why?
Do I have to turn in my geek credentials because I don't find TV on the PC all that compelling? I love DVDs on my laptop, and streaming audio and video, but we already have devices that are perfect to watch TV on... they're called televisions!. They have a simple UI and crash far less often than Windows does. We've had a box under the TV recording shows for years... Why does this box have to turn into a full-fledged computer just because we want to record these shows digitally now?
I have a TiVo and love using it, precisely because it doesn't feel like a computer when I'm using it! (Of course, it is -- the fact that I can upgrade the HD and add ethernet myself doesn't hurt, either.) When I want to rot my brain watching TV, I want it to just work, and I don't want to have to feel like I'm using a computer.
I always thought that Convergence meant that all of your dedicated media devices (which may actually be computers, but with a simpler UI) could talk to each other and exchange information, kind of like what Apple is trying to do with its iPod. Microsoft thinks Convergence means that all of your dedicated media devices become computers, running the latest MS OS, and with all of the problems and complications inherent in that. Of course, we know who's most likely to win this one...
Of course, the sad thing is that by making dedicated media devices more like computers and stuffing them chock-full of DRM badness, we'll end up making the actual computers more like dedicated media serving devices, since the same OS will run on both. :(
This seems way too odd for Apple. While I don't recall them ever stating an explicit opinion on the DMCA, we know that they've embraced MP3s without restrictions, don't put Product Activation in their OS (and recently started selling a 5-license Family Pack of OS X for $200), and Steve Jobs has publically stated that Piracy (in relation to Music, but it can be extended to all media) is a social problem, not a technological one, and technical efforts to combat it will fail. In short, they haven't been the biggest proponent of draconian copyright protection measures.
Now, they seem to be invoking the DMCA to protect what seems to be a small revenue stream: people who already have Macs without an internal DVD burner and want to use iDVD with an external burner. Apple would rather have them buy a new Mac. Truth be told, however, lots of people in this position will buy a new Mac anyway. In truth, the number of people who would use this patch is quite small. Does Apple really think acting belligerent with third-party hardware vendors will lead to increased sales? Furthermore, what right does Apple have to limit their software to working on only internal drives when we all know that there's no technological reason for it? That sounds fishy to me, but totally legal under the DMCA.
The Conspiracy Theorist (and unabashed Apple fanatic) in me wants to believe that Apple knows that this action wouldn't hold water in court, and is trying to find a third-party who is big enough to challenge it, and get the DMCA overturned, so it can protect its future (and much bigger) revenue stream coming from Digital Hub-type applications and devices!
Then again, the realist in me believes that Apple is all in favor of a liberal approach to copyright protection only as long as it can make more money that way.
Try substituting "citizens" every time you mean to say "consumers". It will get rid of that sick feeling, and give you lots of Karma! (The cosmic kind, not the /. kind!)
You know, you're right. When Charlton Heston says that in order for the Liberals to take his guns, they will have to pry them from his cold, dead hands, it makes his entire point invalid, and no one listens to him!
Not bloddy likely. You have to exaggerate in politics to get your voice heard. If anything, Techies don't do well in the Political arena because they're more likely yo tell the truth about the technical merits of something than ancively try to exaggerate and sell it!
You're right -- for the average home user, a non-palladium system will be more useful than a palladiun system, all (technical) things being equal. But there will be marketing, social and political issues that will sway the average user --
Yup, I'll agree to that!
As a former resident of that "almost a forest" part of Queens (who took that J train before the Z train ever existed), while I appreciate your sentiment, you're missing the fact that pretty much the entire above-ground stretch of the J train in Queens goes over Jamaica Avenue, which is just a few streets down from Forest Park, which stretches (roughly) from the Brooklyn Border all the way to Woodhaven Boulevard. Plus, Forest Park is on one of the highest points in that area of Queens. So, the reason why it looks like "almost a forest" is because it really is a forest, kinda! But look out the South windows, and you can see plenty of those backyards you're talking about it, even if they do look like Peter Parker's concrete backyard from that Spider-man movie!
But I agree that that the J train gives you one of the best views on the entire subway system. I always liked going right to the front of the train, next to the motorman's little cabin, and getting a good view of everything. The parts of Brooklyn that the train goes through have some magnificent old buildings and churches! And when you get to the turn just before the bridge, you get a spectacular view of Lower Manhattan. Even if the view has changed since I last rode that train, it should still be worth the price of admission.
Of course IT is overrated... would you pay that much for a scooter?
I heard a story while I was there (that was never really confirmed) that on one trip, they decided to ditch the human driver in the car, and see how well the machine could do on its own. (They followed behind it in another car, IIRC, and probably had some remote-control apparatus as well, I'd imagine.) They got from Pittsburgh to just outside DC, at which point a Virginia Cop pulled the car over -- only because it didn't have a driver!
Can anyone currently at CMU confirm whether this is true? I've always wondered about that.
I have no experience with Mexican border guards, who probably have more than enough problems and didn't want your friend adding to them, but based on my experience at the Canadian border, I'll tell you exactly what his problem was:
U.S. customs officers normally don't give a damn what you leave the country with. Coming back is a different matter altogether. He should have informed the officer of his exploits on the return trip. It would have generated much more interest then. Although it might have generated the same ultimate result, with the officer telling him to proceed about his business in Tiajuana!
But seriously, I have no problem with these riddles in interviews, as long as they're used properly. The point of asking the question should not be to get a "correct" answer. It should be to see how people react under pressure, how creative and resourceful they are, and how flexible they can be in the presence of (possibly) incomplete information.
Even someone who gets one of these answers "wrong" (perhaps because they overlooked some obscure point) would score points in my book if they could explain somewhat sound reasoning behind it and not get flustered while doing it.
The best interviews I've had were right out of college, when the interviewer asked me about one of my grad school projects, then told me to explain it on a whiteboard, on the spot. Those were also the places I thought I'd most like to work at!
Anyway, I think you took my response a little too literally. I was trying to point out the absurdity of having some outside agency assume that if you can't prove you bought something, than you must have stolen it. Because that's what the BSA does on a routine basis. The Government is bound by this silly notion that you are innocent until proven guilty; luckily for us, in the BSA's world, we're all guilty of theft until we can prove we've bought every tool, chair, and pencil. I feel so much safer now.
I have no sympathy for business who try to cut corners by engaging in mass copyright infringement. But the BSA often goes too far in the other direction, and treats well-meaning businesses who are trying to comply with the rules with the same hardball tactics as the businesses who don't care about licensing.
Then you're one hundred percent in the wrong. When you're an organisation you should be keeping detailed records (after all you probably do when it concerns money owed to you).
In that case, since you're an expert as to what organizations do, I'm sure that you have proof of purchase for every piece of office furniture that you have in your office, don't you?
After all, by your logic, if the Office Furniture Alliance comes and does an audit, and finds that you're missing the proof of purchase for that one file cabinet in the small office that nobody uses, then somebody must have stolen it, right? Because if you can't prove you own every piece of furniture, you're one hundred percent in the wrong. When you're an organisation you should be keeping detailed records (after all you probably do when it concerns money owed to you).
I agree. Between 10.2. and .Mac, I'm beginning to wonder why Apple doesn't just hack into our credit cards and take the money out directly. H2K2 was not far away, after all...
10.2 looks compelling, but most of the new features don't seem immediately useful to me. I may just skip this upgrade until I get some Bluetooth toys to play with.
I also noticed this, snipped from macnn.com:
One last thing: Apple lowered the price of the SuperDrive iMac by $100 to $1,799 and introduces new 17" flat-panel iMac. It supports 1440x900--66% bigger than the 15" iMac, adds a Nvidia GeForce4. The 80GB/256MB/17"/SuperDrive/GeForce4 model is due in August for $1999.
That 17" iMac looks sweet, but I thought consumer-level computers were supposed to be getting cheaper lately. Even if this is the high end of Apple's consumer line, does Apple think that people will be willing to spend $2000 on an iMac? Or do they know something about the economy that we don't?
As I keep telling my friends who are Analog IC Engineers, there are only two identities for digits -- '0' and '1'. How hard can this be?
The difference here is that heating costs in terms of energy and you are paying a fixed amount per kWh or per m^3 of natural gas. This means that the extra heating nessary to heat the old lady's place will increase your bill. On the other hand, WiFi'ing your broadband and giving the old lady access does not increase your bill.
Bandwidth costs money. More bandwidth costs more money. I think that for higher than average users, bandwidth should be paid per quantity used. In this way, it becomes easy to draw the line as to the 'cost' of sharing because no matter how you look at it, bandwidth costs money and more bandwidth costs more money.
Although I think that TWC is actually being reasonable in this instance (and saying TWC is being reasonable about anything is a first for me), I have to take exception to your analogy.
Heat, whether delivered by gas, electricity, or oil, is derived from a physical quantity that can be measured. You can save money by turning your thermostat down. You don't pay for the gas, electricity, or oil that you don't use. Once the infrastructure is in place to deliver this stuff to your home, you only pay for what you consume, and your supplier's responsibility is to supply enough to the neighborhood so noone does without. If you consume an extra few KWh this month, your supplier hasto find a place to get it and deliver it to you.
Bandwidth is quite different in that there is no physical quantity changing hands. In fact, the infrastructure itself is the product. And maybe you're buying time also, since slower connections do everything faster connections do, and you're paying extra for the speed. If you don't use bandwidth, someone still pays for the fact that you could have used it.(Whether or not you actually pay a metered rate for bandwidth is not an issue; at some point, someone (probably your ISP) is paying for the whole pipe.) And, if you use a 100K extra bandwidth this month than last month, your supplier doesn't have to buy two more 56k modems to make up for it. All the supplier has to do is make sure he can meet the peak bandwidth demand with a reasonable amount of latency.
So, bandwidth costs money, and more bandwidth costs money, sort of. If you (being a consumer, business, or ISP) have a T1 utilized at 100% capacity, and you absolutely need an extra 1% in bandwidth, you'll have to buy another line and pay for it. But if your line is only utilized 50%, and you need an extra 10%, that extra bandwidth costs nothing, because you already bought it. Heat is sold in physical units of something. Bandwidth is sold in potential maximum information transfer over time. They are very different.
Public Domain means that Reuters can use the original photo in their newsfeeds and "claim" a copyright on it, but they're just claiming a copyright on their version of the photo, not the photo itself. Anyone else can publish the original photo, just as long as they go back to the source and don't use Reuter's image.
Nobody can prevent you from taking Public Domain work and claiming a copyright on your version of it. That's why the Gnu people bothered to write a license, so that people know that can use GPL'd code freely, but they can't take GPL'd code written by other people and say its their own.
Then again, I'm not a lawyer, so there's every possibility that I'm full of it.
Except that most readers of Fortune probably only care about technology to the extent that it can make them money. History is littered with examples of Superior and Feasable Technology getting the shaft in the marketplace. These examples of Superior Technology are considered dismal failures in the Business world. Whether or not this new MS initiative is feasable, it certainly seems marketable...
Besides, Technology is like Magic -- anything's possible, nothing is impossible. That's why we're in this whole DRM mess in the first place. Technology companies keep saying that protecting content to the extent required by the Content Providers (like shutting the Analog hole) is not feasable. Meanwhile, the content companies' executives (and bought-and-paid-for congressmen) won't accept it, they know that anything is possible with Computers and just want Intel and Microsoft to pull another rabbit out of their hat!
Microsoft understands that the only way to implement DRM the way that content providers want it has the unfortunate side effect of reinforcing the MS monopoly...
Except that a cop is a duly-sworn officer of the law, and a BSA auditor is not. (No matter what your opinions on cops are, you have to at least admit that!) Besides, If you get pulled over, and you admit to the cop that you were speeding (which is much more like what the Poster said his company did), the cop just writes you a ticket and sends you on your way; he doesn't arrest you for the robbery that just took place down the road!
Of course, none of this would even be necessary if the BSA would leave the "investigations" and "law enforcement" to the people who actually have the legal authority to do so.
In the P2P systems that we have seen, each node makes "their" data available on the system, and when looking for new data, it will search for it on the distributed system. When it is found, it will take it. It's like one big hard drive where everyone has access to data that is put on it.
But, notice that while the writer mentions the big distributed storage network, he never really mentions the free and unfettered access part of it. In fact, there's very definite references to DRM-like constructs where you'll "order" some media, and have it delivered electronically, perhaps with a "key" that gives you limited viewings. In this vision of distributed storage, if the new episode of Buffy is on your neighbor's TiVo, you can snatch it from there and not have to go to the network's servers to get it, maybe saving you from having it count against your monthly broadband access GB limit.. But you still need to buy a Buffy-viewing license before the device will actually let you view it. And licenses for newer content like first-run movies will expire after a while, and won't be perpetual like a DVD you buy right now (supposedly) is.
This is actually Pay-Per-View taken to an extreme, where your TiVo can get any episode of Star Trek you want automatically, but will prevent you from watching it unless you fork over money to Paramount. Is this really the direction where we want things to go?
It wasn't too long ago that WoTC was considered that other Monopoly from Washington State. And after Hasbro bought Avalon-Hill, it seemed like if you wanted to play any interesting new board games, you had to learn German.
What happened to make WoTC one of the good guys? Seriously, I'm lacking on the history of the last few years and would like an update... It must be more than just a silly contest that's causing /.ers to like this company...
The other one, and the one that is winnable, is about whether or not there will be open electronic distribution systems. Right now entertainment companies control distribution, and that's how they make their money.
Bingo! We all know that the Piracy stuff is grossly overstated by content distributors, but we also know that full-fledged Piracy does take place, but doesn't effect* sales to the extent that the distributors contend. We also know that there is no practical solution to the problem.
But the Powers That Be are anxious to do anything to make it look like they're being useful. Any action is better than no action in their eyes.
Content companies are using the Piracy problem as an excuse to make proposals that secure a government-sanctioned oligopoly on content distribution on the Internet. AOLTW and Sony and Disney get to distribute conetent, and you don't if you don't have their blessing. Ever. Preventing Piracy is just a smokescreen. Anyone who whines about Napster or Fair Use without making this point will simply get ignored.
* = affect or effect? I always get them confused...
This came out a month ago, right? So, is there any analysis from "Management-approved" sources about the "All A/D Converters" bit? I mean, a source that my management would consider viable, not just some guy's blog (no matter how smart he is). Engineering trade publications might be a good place to look for non-Disney bias. I read a few of them, and haven't found something like this.
My company works with A/D converters, and if this is interpreted by "management-approved sources" as something that can really effect "All A/D converters", you can bet that someone here would be interested in contacting the polititians about it. And, we all know that my company's word (and campaign contributions) are worth far more than my own.
(By the way, even if you can figure out where I work (which you can't), these opinions are my own and not those of my company.)
It seems to me that the Register has a habit of badmouthing everyone more or less equally. Also, looking over from my side of the world, it seems that (with the execption of the UK government) people in Europe seem much more wary of Microsoft than people in the U.S. do. I don't think the Reg goes out of their way to bash Microsoft like we do here on /., but sometimes it just happens.
They don't realize that gaming isn't the only thing MS has planned for the XBox. MS, and many other companies, have always wanted an integrated home media box that does everything from check your email, to help you plan a grocery list, to play video games.
On the contrary, if you actually read the article you'd know that they have more planned, even if the Reg doesn't spell out what those plans might be -- they have more server capacity planned for Xbox Live than they currently do for microsoft.com, after all. Quotes from MS Execs indicate that Microsoft wants to serve the PG, sanitized, "Disneyland" version of Media on its network. The Reg's claim is that it's doomed to failure, because in order to do this with any effectiveness, you're going to have to build your own separate, parallel network, and populate it with your own sanitized content, which you then have to police for violations of your sanitization policies. When the inevitable violations occur, and occur frequently, people lose confidence in your sanitized network, and your main differentiating feature is now gone.
The only people who come close to pulling off a separate network is AOL, who built their "gated community" before the Internet caught on, and permits access to the Internet-at-large, so it isn't really a separate network. AOL can police its own content, but not the Internet-at-large.
You could debate with the Reg's claim, but it seems legitimate to me.