I don't get spam... no in my main account anyway. It's a pretty simple feat too: Never give your address out. Use easily trashable redirectors or sneakemail for everything. If one starts getting spam, delete it. I have a quasi-private address at my domain name that my friends get. Thanks to doing it right from the beginning, I get *no* spam.
"This PL = 1000 thing is actually rather bad for the P2P network as a whole. If noone sees the need to share files fewer people will share files (specially in the light of recent RIAA threats)"
I don't agree with this because even with kazaa lite, you are sharing by default. So everything you download is automatically shared unless you click that 'don't share' box or move it from your shared directory. And considering that most kazaa users are average folks, they won't bother to configure the application or mess with any settings because they are already happily downloading music. (If it ain't broke, don't fix it.) So most people are sharing whether they know it or not.
"My experience with PeopleSoft products has been nothing but awful. I understand that they get the job done, and I don't really know what the end user experience is like, but what I do know is that supporting them is terrible."
Wasn't the online course selection and billing system used by the Univ. of Waterloo made by peoplesoft? I have heard some harrowing tales about that system from students who defected to my own university. (Mind you, our system is pretty stupid too, but not nearly as bad as what I have heard about the PeopleSoft software. That's what you get when decisions are made by administration and not techs.) Stupid crap like it mailing all your bills and grade reports to other addresses, not letting you do your course selection, forgetting your selections, etc. Supposedly it's been cleaned up now. Would any waterloo students care to comment? I know you're out there...
"If we really get down to it, who killed Explorer Mac? Safari did."
NO! WRONG!!
Microsoft killed IE for Mac. They were planning all along to add all kinds of exclusive proprietary functionality in the next Internet Explorer that will be integrated into the Windows Longhorn OS. This is part of their strategy for forcing you to buy their next OS. They want everyone running IE7 so as to marginalise Safari, Mozilla, Konqueror, Opera, et al. They by doing this, the also marginalise Linux and Mac OS X which is something they very much want to do.
So instead of admitting that this was their plan, Microsoft just made up the line that they couldn't compete with Safari because dropping it fit with their business plan to begin with. It's just the same old monopolistic behaviour all over again, except this time they are using the browser to marginalise the OS market instead of the OS to marginalise the browser market.
"It's easy to find cases [sptimes.com] where people get light [polkonline.com] sentences [dfw.com] for crimes that, at least to me, seem much more damaging to society than a few swapped files. How do you justify asking for billions of dollars of so-called damages or years of jail time when people who shoplift some CDs receive little if any punishment?"
Because rape and murder don't quantifiably lower shareholder value. He who has the gold makes the rules. Remember, it is no longer "The United States of America." It is the "Incorporated States of America."
"Can you summarize the public good performed by your efforts that a taxpayer, who is neither a stockholder nor employee of the content industry, can realize and should support as a necessary function of the federal government?"
That's easy. The 'official' answer is that they prevent piracy from eating up companies' profits so that they can continue making programs for 'consumers' to buy. Otherwise there would be no programs.
(Disclaimer: I am saying that that would be THEIR answer, not mine. OSS is truly a lovely concept.)
I am aware that companies spend large sums of money on holograms, authenticity cards, product activation schemes, anti-CD-copying schemes, serial numbers and so on. When investigating alleged copyright infringement, do you find that these anti-IP-infringement techniques have a real effect on preventing such things from happenning? Does copyright infringement go down when companies put up roadblocks like these or do the infringers get away with it nontheless?
"Is this true? True, the standard of living for many people is 'lower' than in North America or Europe, but the quality of life could be said to be higher in some cases. I remember the first time I went to Tobago, (to meet my future in-laws). We came from Barbados having stopped there for a week on the way out from England. Being in Tobago after being in Barbados was a shock, true enough. The way of life, the lack of creature comforts, no big department stores etc. However, after a few days, I found I wasn't missing them. Life was laid back, simple and cool."
You'd be surprised how it has changed. It is getting a lot more touristic, although I think there are still no big department stores or strips with McDonalds, KFC, etc.
But I do agree with the part about being laid back, simple and cool. I think the smaller the island is, the further back into the 'past' you go with regards to how relaxed and friendly it is.
"Anyway, enough already. You forget to mention the racial differences and the break down of wealth between the different racial groups. You also forget to mention the TT Government monopoly on oil distribution and (AFAIK) production. The corruption etc. I personally think Tobago would be better off without Trinidad."
True enough. Because I didn't grow up in TT, such things are not so apparent to me, but I am well aware of the struggles between the Afrian versus Indian populations and the stigmas that exist even today.
" Jah, mon! We got the bobsled team feelin' irie after jammin' on tuxracer a few times.
Besides, mon, lemme tell you -- after they said that Linux had superior rastability, we were sold."
You obviously are not fluent in Caribbean languages;-) What you just wrote there is Jamacian. Here is the Trinidadian translation:
Ya, man! We got de cricket team feelin' rel good jammin' on de tuxracer a few times.
Besides, man, lemme tell yeh -- after dey say dah Linux had de bes' reliability fo' true, we was all sole!
Seriously, in high school in Trinidad, they teach english as a second language. This is according to my mother who was a teacher in that country for many years.
"The two-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago (TT) relies on imports for almost everything except beer, rum, some locally-grown farm products, and oil -- and oil is its major cash export. That oil is expected to last, at most, another 35 years. After that, how is TT going to pay foreign companies for software licenses?"
My family is from T&T (although I was born in Canada) so let me clarify a few things:
It's more than 2 islands. There are a lot of little islands too but the 2 main ones are Trinidad and Tobago. They used to be separate countries but were amalgamated by the British (who valued them for the cane fields) for administrative simplicity.
T&T has 2 major exports, not one: Oil and drugs. Seriously. The US suppliers take their yhats down from Florida and sail into Tobago beaches. This is where they load up on that which was produced in South America, particularly Colombia. The other main industry is tourism which is obviously not a cash export.
But the author is right about oil being critical to the economy. The main reason my family is well off is that my father's father worked for the oil companies for 35 years earning far above average wages. Keep in mind that T&T is a 3rd world country and you see poverty over there like you never see in north america, not even in the First Nations' areas of Canada.
" Too often, when we hear the phrase, "developing country," it's used as a euphemism for, "poverty-stricken nation whose most obvious features are poorly-maintained roads, tin-roofed shacks, bad plumbing, and unreliable electricity.""
There is a lot of poverty. There are a whole lot of VERY VERY wealthy people as well. I expect that the relative number of wealthy and poor people to middle class folks is higher than in the USA.
The highways and roads in cities are well maintained. If you get out into rural areas in the jungle and such, it is to be expected that you will dodge potholes that your car could fall into. And when driving on mountain roads, you've gotta watch out for sections that have fallen into the sea.
As to housing, there is a lot of nice housing, and there are a lot of poor shacks as well.
The electricity is more reliable than you'd think. But the level of people connecting things illegally to the power lines is high. This makes being a power linesman quite dangerous because you can get killed when the power is officially shut down and someone's illegally and improperly connected device fries you.
What about WANs that use 900 MHz? Those higher 802.11x frequencies are very common, but when faces with a lot of trees, hills, etc you want something that has less signal loss through obstacles. The equipment is definitely available.
I am surprised that the book does not cover this technology because the spectrum is license free (at least in Canada and the USA) and it has a lot of potential for Wider Area Lans in hilly, forested, wooded areas like my own.
"Why do the people stand for this? KICK the theivin' employees out!"
Postal systems are complicated. You don't know which branch or office or employee stole your stuff. And I expect that in the corrupt branches, the managers are in on it too so you can't just report it to them.
"With exception of Burma, Siera Leone, North Korea and other countries with active civil wars and a complete lack of Government, you can ship anywhere in the world with ease."
Not you can't. Some countries without active civil wars or US Trade embargoes have serious problems with mail. My own family in Trinidad & Tobago (a small island near Cuba) know all too well how people working in corrupt postal offices will open up boxes if it looks like there's something good in them and then keep it for themselves. That is why we always send gifts and packages back and forth with relatives who are personally travelling to the country instead of through the mail. I know that the same thing happens in the Philippines as well. It probably happens in a lot of other coutries too. A reliable mail system is something that we in first world countries take for granted.
The original article: "...IBM, Apple and Dell operate web stores that sell almost their entire range of kit, they only ship to the USA...."
This is not correct. Apple with ship to many countries: USA, Canada, Japan, UK, Australia, Germany, Austria, Korea, Belgium, Brazil, China, Denmark, Finland, India, Mexico, Singapore, South Africa and a bunch more.
My own iBook was shipped to Canada. I'm not saying that it isn't a tragedy that they don't seem to ship to Hungary. I'm just saying that they're not a US-exclusive business.
"The problem with BSD is that it doesn't have enough visibility (or at least less visibility that Linux). Why is linux getting all that good press is the real puzzlement."
Because people like cute penguins.
Seriously, I was sitting at my desk helping my sister with her homework. She looks at my screen and says, "It's a penguin!" She saw the 'linux' topic logo on the top of the slashdot homepage. I can't remember which OS I had booted at the time, but cool names with the letter X and cute penguins are a lot more interesting for news programs than FreeBSD. The same principle explains why malware with catchy names (Code Red, Slammer, Melissa) get all the press and most other ones do not.
"A portion of the transmit audio is also mixed in to the receive audio. If you don't do this, people think the phone is broken. Analog phones do this by unbalancing the hybrid that separates transmit and receive audio."
True. Supposedly this is why people talk so loudly on cellphones -- usually you DON'T hear yourself in the earpiece so instinctively you talk more loudly because your brain thinks it's not being picked up by the mic.
I grock the theory that people speak more loudly on cells to attract attention to themselves because of this. Sure, there are your occasional freaks but most people don't mean to do it.
"I know that intel's facilities use VoIP for thier internal phone calls. I heard they had problems with the clarity, and had to add noise creation mechanisms to the chips because people thought the other party had hung up due to beautiful silence.:)"
The office where I work is working completely on VoIP. And yes, there are systems to deliberately add static to the sound so you know the other person has not hung up. The part that you may not know is that static is also added by your phone company to your analogue line too for the same reasons.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't get spam ... no in my main account anyway. It's a pretty simple feat too: Never give your address out. Use easily trashable redirectors or sneakemail for everything. If one starts getting spam, delete it. I have a quasi-private address at my domain name that my friends get. Thanks to doing it right from the beginning, I get *no* spam.
So true. I love this variation ;-)
I don't agree with this because even with kazaa lite, you are sharing by default. So everything you download is automatically shared unless you click that 'don't share' box or move it from your shared directory. And considering that most kazaa users are average folks, they won't bother to configure the application or mess with any settings because they are already happily downloading music. (If it ain't broke, don't fix it.) So most people are sharing whether they know it or not.
um. Who do you mean by 'everyone?' Do you actually mean 'everyone?' Most people have never heard of Oracle or Peoplesoft.
Wasn't the online course selection and billing system used by the Univ. of Waterloo made by peoplesoft? I have heard some harrowing tales about that system from students who defected to my own university. (Mind you, our system is pretty stupid too, but not nearly as bad as what I have heard about the PeopleSoft software. That's what you get when decisions are made by administration and not techs.) Stupid crap like it mailing all your bills and grade reports to other addresses, not letting you do your course selection, forgetting your selections, etc. Supposedly it's been cleaned up now. Would any waterloo students care to comment? I know you're out there ...
"If we really get down to it, who killed Explorer Mac? Safari did."
NO! WRONG!!
Microsoft killed IE for Mac. They were planning all along to add all kinds of exclusive proprietary functionality in the next Internet Explorer that will be integrated into the Windows Longhorn OS. This is part of their strategy for forcing you to buy their next OS. They want everyone running IE7 so as to marginalise Safari, Mozilla, Konqueror, Opera, et al. They by doing this, the also marginalise Linux and Mac OS X which is something they very much want to do.
So instead of admitting that this was their plan, Microsoft just made up the line that they couldn't compete with Safari because dropping it fit with their business plan to begin with. It's just the same old monopolistic behaviour all over again, except this time they are using the browser to marginalise the OS market instead of the OS to marginalise the browser market.
Because rape and murder don't quantifiably lower shareholder value. He who has the gold makes the rules. Remember, it is no longer "The United States of America." It is the "Incorporated States of America."
That's easy. The 'official' answer is that they prevent piracy from eating up companies' profits so that they can continue making programs for 'consumers' to buy. Otherwise there would be no programs.
(Disclaimer: I am saying that that would be THEIR answer, not mine. OSS is truly a lovely concept.)
I am aware that companies spend large sums of money on holograms, authenticity cards, product activation schemes, anti-CD-copying schemes, serial numbers and so on. When investigating alleged copyright infringement, do you find that these anti-IP-infringement techniques have a real effect on preventing such things from happenning? Does copyright infringement go down when companies put up roadblocks like these or do the infringers get away with it nontheless?
You'd be surprised how it has changed. It is getting a lot more touristic, although I think there are still no big department stores or strips with McDonalds, KFC, etc.
But I do agree with the part about being laid back, simple and cool. I think the smaller the island is, the further back into the 'past' you go with regards to how relaxed and friendly it is.
"Anyway, enough already. You forget to mention the racial differences and the break down of wealth between the different racial groups. You also forget to mention the TT Government monopoly on oil distribution and (AFAIK) production. The corruption etc. I personally think Tobago would be better off without Trinidad."
True enough. Because I didn't grow up in TT, such things are not so apparent to me, but I am well aware of the struggles between the Afrian versus Indian populations and the stigmas that exist even today.
Besides, mon, lemme tell you -- after they said that Linux had superior rastability, we were sold."
You obviously are not fluent in Caribbean languages ;-) What you just wrote there is Jamacian. Here is the Trinidadian translation:
Ya, man! We got de cricket team feelin' rel good jammin' on de tuxracer a few times.
Besides, man, lemme tell yeh -- after dey say dah Linux had de bes' reliability fo' true, we was all sole!
Seriously, in high school in Trinidad, they teach english as a second language. This is according to my mother who was a teacher in that country for many years.
My family is from T&T (although I was born in Canada) so let me clarify a few things:
It's more than 2 islands. There are a lot of little islands too but the 2 main ones are Trinidad and Tobago. They used to be separate countries but were amalgamated by the British (who valued them for the cane fields) for administrative simplicity.
T&T has 2 major exports, not one: Oil and drugs. Seriously. The US suppliers take their yhats down from Florida and sail into Tobago beaches. This is where they load up on that which was produced in South America, particularly Colombia. The other main industry is tourism which is obviously not a cash export.
But the author is right about oil being critical to the economy. The main reason my family is well off is that my father's father worked for the oil companies for 35 years earning far above average wages. Keep in mind that T&T is a 3rd world country and you see poverty over there like you never see in north america, not even in the First Nations' areas of Canada.
" Too often, when we hear the phrase, "developing country," it's used as a euphemism for, "poverty-stricken nation whose most obvious features are poorly-maintained roads, tin-roofed shacks, bad plumbing, and unreliable electricity.""
There is a lot of poverty. There are a whole lot of VERY VERY wealthy people as well. I expect that the relative number of wealthy and poor people to middle class folks is higher than in the USA.
The highways and roads in cities are well maintained. If you get out into rural areas in the jungle and such, it is to be expected that you will dodge potholes that your car could fall into. And when driving on mountain roads, you've gotta watch out for sections that have fallen into the sea.
As to housing, there is a lot of nice housing, and there are a lot of poor shacks as well.
The electricity is more reliable than you'd think. But the level of people connecting things illegally to the power lines is high. This makes being a power linesman quite dangerous because you can get killed when the power is officially shut down and someone's illegally and improperly connected device fries you.
"Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few." -- G.B. Shaw
(qotd = quote of the day)
Correction:
...and if (God forbid!) you'd actually like to do something about the problems you see in the country you love, you're a terrorist.
I live in a broadband-less rural part of Canada lots of hills, forest, rabbits, etc. and 2.4 GHz probably would not stand a chance.
[rimshot]
http://www.booksmags.com/books/shop/pd1587050692/
It appears to be identical to this slashdot article.
I am surprised that the book does not cover this technology because the spectrum is license free (at least in Canada and the USA) and it has a lot of potential for Wider Area Lans in hilly, forested, wooded areas like my own.
Postal systems are complicated. You don't know which branch or office or employee stole your stuff. And I expect that in the corrupt branches, the managers are in on it too so you can't just report it to them.
Not you can't. Some countries without active civil wars or US Trade embargoes have serious problems with mail. My own family in Trinidad & Tobago (a small island near Cuba) know all too well how people working in corrupt postal offices will open up boxes if it looks like there's something good in them and then keep it for themselves. That is why we always send gifts and packages back and forth with relatives who are personally travelling to the country instead of through the mail. I know that the same thing happens in the Philippines as well. It probably happens in a lot of other coutries too. A reliable mail system is something that we in first world countries take for granted.
This is not correct. Apple with ship to many countries: USA, Canada, Japan, UK, Australia, Germany, Austria, Korea, Belgium, Brazil, China, Denmark, Finland, India, Mexico, Singapore, South Africa and a bunch more.
My own iBook was shipped to Canada. I'm not saying that it isn't a tragedy that they don't seem to ship to Hungary. I'm just saying that they're not a US-exclusive business.
Because people like cute penguins.
Seriously, I was sitting at my desk helping my sister with her homework. She looks at my screen and says, "It's a penguin!" She saw the 'linux' topic logo on the top of the slashdot homepage. I can't remember which OS I had booted at the time, but cool names with the letter X and cute penguins are a lot more interesting for news programs than FreeBSD. The same principle explains why malware with catchy names (Code Red, Slammer, Melissa) get all the press and most other ones do not.
*smiles* ;-)
True. Supposedly this is why people talk so loudly on cellphones -- usually you DON'T hear yourself in the earpiece so instinctively you talk more loudly because your brain thinks it's not being picked up by the mic.
I grock the theory that people speak more loudly on cells to attract attention to themselves because of this. Sure, there are your occasional freaks but most people don't mean to do it.
The office where I work is working completely on VoIP. And yes, there are systems to deliberately add static to the sound so you know the other person has not hung up. The part that you may not know is that static is also added by your phone company to your analogue line too for the same reasons.