Isn't the reality that the content creators would be the ones locking everything up? Who says MS is going to for them?
Content creators? HA!
You mean publishers right?
If this DRM stuff goes through the way everyone wants it, your "content creators" will have two choices: DRM-enabled-digital, or cassette tapes.
Like hell the RIAA will let mp3s (or ogg) exist anymore, and if they do, I'll bet the default setting for any mp3 you record will be "don't copy this". How much do you think the RIAA will want to be paid for the right to change that bit? Changing it yourself is a violation of the DMCA, even though you're the copyright holder because the DMCA protects that bit not your copyright.
How good is this at covering the basics of the hazy cloud that is "real" security, both against online attacks and social engineering?
I'm currently at the level of "if it passes [insert_attack_script] its safe" but would like to learn how to get past that. I can competently secure a given box, but I think attempting a mid to large size network would be a "learning experience" (read: disaster) for me.
Simple. Just like the shuttle did, it would burn up in the atmosphere and break up. Maybe the lower portion of it would have some explosives to blow it into little pieces if it ever came apart (since it wouldn't be high enough up to burn up), but this is part of why it would be ocean-based (then, if it did fall the only people upset would be the environmentalists)
If this is built out of carbon nanotubes, like people suggest, then its possible they could be woven together in such a way that if any point broke, the chain would come apart in many places, so that a lot of little pieces would fall, however the extra length/weight of tubing required for this might make it prohibitive.
Common sense says that if X can kill people, and you publish X, you can probably spur research into the Y that stops X. There isn't always a Y, but which would be better, dying because terrorists got an incurable X from a journal somewhere, or dying because terrorists figured X out on their own or from the notes scribbled on napkins they pulled out of the trash?
And what if publishing X did cause the development of Y? Then is it better to be saved by Y or killed by the X the terrorists figured out without the benefit of the journals?
Slippery Slope Rant Follows:
Why don't we just cancel all of the journals. After all, who knows what sinister ends even the most innocuous inventions could be put to at the hands of terrorists. But why stop there? There could be a Terrist(tm) in your college classes with you! We better close all CS classes, all Engineering classes, all medical schools, and all Chemistry and Biology classes.
Once we've secured the higher education front against this illicit "learning", we will begin to attack the lower grades. Budding Terrists(tm) might be in your high schools at this very moment. What dangerous things could they be learning there? Clearly we must put a stop to these infiltration classes, thinly disguised as "English" and "American History". Every Real American already speaks perfect English and has memorized the entire history of This Great Country. All "Geography" teachers must be captured dead or alive for teaching these so-called students how to reach their Targets of Terror. No honest citizen needs to know the difference between Washington State and Washington DC, unless they were actually a Terrist(tm) aiming to bomb one or the other.
Tried to? Two weeks ago? Who still uses O6? O7 has been out for a while now.
The only extra work microsoft did was spending some extra time to figure out how to screw over the competitors, in the most plausible way possible. Too bad someone held this up, if they had started this months ago while O7 was still beta they would have had some plausibility.
If they hadn't sent the -30px stylesheet, Opera 6 would have messed up due to its poor, buggy code.
Ok, quick date check: how long has opera 7 been out? And when did microsoft start serving opera specific CSS? Uh-huh, MSN started this AFTER everyone had a chance to upgrade to a working browser.
You might want to reconsider your stance on microsoft, unless you want your professional behavior to include "attempts to undermine the competition in plausible ways, if only they had thought of it a few weeks sooner."
I wish it worked like you say. But for these patents (since they were filed before the law allowing new forms of examination came into effect in 1999) the only choice is to have an Ex Parte Examination, which by default assumes that the patent is valid given all prior art. Therefore, litigation is the only way for these to go, unless you can think of something new which breaks the patent. (Not exactly sure how that is supposed to work, but thats what the article says)
While this was probably not the logic used, there could be arguments made to support it.
With a few well made assumptions the problem can be cut away. Lets assume that "ability to find the blog" was one of the criteria for "this blog is greater" vs. "this blog is lesser". This is a realistic criteria since ability to find you = your ability to be heard. Thus, if there are only 1000 or so "well-connected" blogs, that would serve to prove his point that these 1000 have become the elite weblogs. You can then claim that the remainder of the blogs are part of the sample, but since they failed to be locatable, they were obviously not the elite and didn't warrant analysis.
Undoubtably there are problems in this. The distinctions are entirely arbitrary, plus it misses entire opportunities (what if the other 3 million blogs were tightly linked to each other?).
Realistically, it was probably just a case of a small study, taking a small sample, to make a statement.
Hm, if you'd like more, go check out Princess Nine (the dvd's released by ADV are relatively cheap, so its not a huge monetary loss if you don't like it), which is a (fictional) story about the first girls' baseball team. There are a number of other sports-based shows, though things like Battle Atheletes might fall under your perception of Action.
There are a few other shows out there that would be more along the lines of general humor (Excel Saga, for instance). His and Her Circumstances is sort of a romance/documentary of student life. If you want historical drama, there is always Rose of Versailles (I don't think this is available in the US). If you enjoy a dash of insanity with your swordplay, you can get Revolutionary Girl Utena (ok, maybe this falls under adolescent fantasy, but it has much deeper concepts than some people give it credit for;)
For films, you should track down a copy of Memories. The first segment, Magnetic Rose, may be scifi, but the remainder is either thoughtful (Cannon Fodder) or humorous (Stink Bomb). I don't watch that many anime movies, so I can't think of any others that aren't scifi.
For the most part what is released here in the US is scifi/fantasy/action, because thats what people watch. A lot of the stuff exists for escapism, but thats the purpose of a lot of the stuff made in the US, too.
Part of the reason that the Big Picture difficulties crop up is that programmers are problem solvers. Their problem is "How Do I Do X".
And so they write something that Does X.
This goes wrong when the problem isn't "How Do I Do X", but is "How Do I Do X, Given Y". In these cases, Y may or may not be available to the programmer. The programmer may not understand that Y is important. The programmer might not be able to determine how Y applies, or how to get Y out of The Big Picture. Or the programmer may just be lazy and figure that someone else will take care of Y for them. Or the programmer decided to write the most generalized method for Doing X, so they can Do X Anywhere.
Solving this problem of ignoring Y is going to take education: First, know that Y exists. Second, find Y. Third, code for Y. Finally, when Y is "important enough", recycling code from somewhere else won't cut it.
The problem with storing CC numbers is that at some point you have to unencrypt them to do anything interesting with them. Its entirely possible that these cases had encrypted cc numbers, but an attacker found the unencrypt_and_charge program in/usr/local/bin, and put it to good use.
This is especially the case in automated systems, where somewhere there's a program thats run without a password or other user intervention that does the decryption. If the program in question runs some other program and automatically enters the password/phrase (eg pgp), you could probably use strings to get the password without even running the program.
but generally, patent offices have this period where they listen for people claiming prior art before the patent is issued.
I've never heard of this, but then again, it would be in the big companies best interests to keep their evil patent pending ideas hush-hush until they're ready to go, so maybe its there, but nobody gets to use it because its usually too late when it gets out.
Also, our patent reviewers work on a commission basis. They're paid for every patent they approve. So they approve a lot, as quickly as possible.
But what if the "wolf" does come along and someone says "if we had X, we could have caught them before this disaster.
Then hopefully someone in Congress will be smart enough and have the guts to say bullshit. Not a single thing can stop a person who is dead set (literally) to destroy something. If you pass laws requiring everyone to be strip searched upon leaving their house, and to wander around nude outdoors, someone will swallow C4 and a detonator.
Which of these rules will stop the terrorists? Stripping everyone of their citizenship on suspicion? Giving FBI agents the right to spy on my personal email, without telling me, until the guy gets fed up with his low pay and decides to use a loveletter to my girlfriend to try and blackmail me? Or shall the CIA monitor everything my company does, so that they can get their stock orders in early when we get a 50 million order from overseas?
Why not simply break up the costs? In a large city or even suburbia, start by getting fiber out to an area, then once you're close enough to make it a reasonable one-time installation fee, (or perhaps payable in installments over a given time frame, like most telephone installs are now), have the people who want fibre to their house get it.
This kind of thing is *exactly* an example of technology that the high-paying bleeding edge early adopters can viably support, since their big bucks will bring the fibre closer and therefore cheaper to install to the common people. Aim at the gamers first. You could probably convince the people who pay hundreds of dollars on video cards, cooling gear, and their existing bandwidth to spend, say $2000 over the course of a year plus bandwidth costs (I already pay $100/month for my overpriced 1.5mbit dsl with a subnet of static IPs and phone service, I'd pay $250/mo for the first year if the bandwidth actually lived up to its promise).
Of course, all of this requires the expectation of actually making money off of the venture in the end, once everyone has fibre in their homes. And that seems to be the key issue in this article, that if they build this, in the end they have to essentially give it away because of the regulations.
Read some of their comics and you'll start realizing all of the sexual characters wear the school girl clothes and knee high socks.
And then you look in the schools and realize that all of the sexual characters there do too? And its not just in Japan. Just because you hide your head in the sand and pretend that people in high school or middle school don't have sex in the US, doesn't mean they don't.
Now, I'd hardly qualify anything that I read as "porn", but I have read manga with sexual encounters between people in school (Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou [Kare Kano in the US, or His and Her Circumstances in anime], and Paradise Kiss are two I've read recently). These are intended to be reflections of life for these people. When the karekano anime was produced, Hideaki interviewed dozens of school kids, and aimed to produce a show that reflected their fears and joys of life as a student.
Now as for the porn, well, it just depends on what you look at. From what I have seen for sale, it looks like Japanese men seem to prefer fantasizing about impossibly big-breasted women. I'm sure they make porn manga for every fetish out there, though, but the same goes for porn in the US, only the US has declared certain types of porn as illegal. (manga is officially recognized as an art in Japan)
characters that all have the exact same gigantic eyes and pointy chin (no, no they don't)
you can tell the name of the author by looking at the drawings, unlike mangas (is that such a good thing?)
How much of the European comics have you read, compared to Japanese? I can tell all of my favorite authors apart too, its not some magical power, it just takes experience. I can generally recognize a CLAMP character (and sometimes I can't, because character designs do change from series to series. Take a look at the girls in Magic Knight Rayearth, and compare to Sakura or Tomoyo in Cardcaptor Sakura, or to the characters in Wish, or Clover, or Angelic Layer). I can tell these characters apart from Watase's characters in Ceres or Fushigi Yuugi. And Takahashi's characters in Ranma.
It seems that you are in Europe, so I don't know about the availability of manga there. Maybe your bookstore found that author X was popular, so they tracked down stuff that looked similar to author X's work.
I applaud this IRC network for its stance related to the MPAA demands, and I hope it can survive the worst that the MPAA can throw at it.
Seriously, its about time that people started requiring evidence and due process of law again when dealing with criminals. Letting the MPAA and RIAA bully people around with the threat of ungrounded DMCA action has gone on long enough.
I still want to hear about someone getting a piece of the RIAA or MPAA's hide over a misfired DMCA letter, using that clause requiring them to pay for damages if it turns out that there was no copyright infringement.
Credit ratings are in fact accurate. If you have bad credit it is because you are not creditworthy or trustworthy in financial matters.
Say that to my face.
Or better yet, say that again when you've been in a major accident, miss two weeks of work, and the insurance company takes 4 months to pay off your medical bills, when you were reported to the collection agencies after 3 months.
Even better, say that when you've discovered someone had applied for a half-dozen lines of credit in your name, ran them up a few thousand dollars, and left you with the bill.
Credit reports are a load of bullshit, and using them to decide if person X might steal from you is even more bullshit (in America, its called innocent until proven guilty, and there is a whole criminal process to deal with people who steal from you).
Next thing we'll be hearing is that its ok to pre-emptively blow up countries that might cause a threat.
Ok, like I said originally (or maybe it was in some other post) I can't find fault in the companies behavoir. There is nothing inherently illegal or wrong in their behavior. They are simply seeking the cheapest source of labor to reduce costs. This is why I don't like the "beholden to the almighty dollar" view of corporations. They are demanding human rights, but are unwilling to show human responsibility, conscience, or ethics.
And therein is the big beef. Economics is a soulless behemoth that cares even less about the people than corporations do. Economics says "charge people what they are willing to pay" and leaves no strings attached. Things like "lie to the consumers about the quality so they are willing to pay more" are fully blessed by Economics. The same with "Generate false scarcity when supply is too high and therefore prices too low." IP laws also control scarcity, allowing monopolies to exist which are far more common than most people think. Furthermore, there is no room for the people to control this equation, either the demand exists or it doesn't. History shows that boycotts to reduce demand simply don't succeed, since corporations are willing to ignore short-term losses in the hopes that the consumers resolve will crumble.
No, I don't think banning outsourcing is going to save the world or anything like that, but I do question all these people who say "relax, it will equalize, and you'll just have to adapt" I'd really like to know when it will equalize and what it is I'm adapting to, so I can know whether I should stockpile my beans and rice while I still have a job and I can afford to.
As long as its in the best interests of the bandwidth providers (who get mega cash for all these GBs) this kind of crap will never stop.
And guess what, its EASY to stop! Simply require the netork borders to perform filtering on packets crossing the border. If your cable modem is spewing out packets addressed from China, and you're in Florida, SOMETHING IS WRONG. These packets should have never gotten into the internet in the first place.
Suddenly, when spoofing is no longer possible, DoS doesn't seem like such a great idea. Even with botnets and crap for DDoS usage, if you can be tracked back from a single trojaned box, you'd have to be stupid to try.
First off, there are logistical barriers to maintaining a workforce in some 50 or 60 countries at once. Attempting to cover all of the countries would incur costs making it too expensive to do so.
Secondly, there is a lower limit to what countries the companies can hire in, at least for technical jobs. Right now only a dozen or so of those countries have the infrastructure in place. Others are in states of unrest which make it not-ideal for a workforce. As the dozen or so countries start getting money poured into them by these companies, these other countries are going to find themselves behind, and will race to put together the infrastructure and put down whatever insurrection du jour is happening, in order to grab at that money stream. Then, since they'll be behind, they'll offer the companies lower taxes and cheaper labor than what India or the other countries offer, and the companies would move. Meanwhile, these abandoned countries lack the input to maintain their infrastructure, and have to undercut the new countries in order to draw business back.
What is this "equilibrium" you seek? All I can see is the trend going to Zero, as people who used to make their living picking ants off of plants for dinner get training and the chance to work for a pound of cornmeal and beans and a gallon of somewhat clean water a week.
By the way, the reason you are the only one quoting Adam Smith is because many of the economic principles make assumptions (such as behavior in the best interest of the company) that companies have turned on their heads. Long term goals? Companies have lived and died for this quarter's profits. Not doing so well? Slash R&D. The company won't make it another year but this quarter will look great! Sales not looking too good? Get legislature mandating purchase of your goods (see governmental ISO requirements and the ability to patent ISO processes). Supply and Demand? Lets sell electricity to ourselves so we can artifically raise demand in California. I wonder which of Adam Smith's economic models predicted that the music industry would run itself into the ground like it has. These economic models are worthless in the face of people who refuse to play by the rules.
Wait five years, then go talk to some of the programmers in India.
You could reminisce about the good ol' days when there were jobs there, before the companies decided that India was too expensive and moved on to Pffstonia (name completely made up) where people were willing to work for fatter ants than they had been able to pick off the ground themselves.
The problem isn't the jobs. (Well, ok, for some short sighted people, its the jobs.) The problem is the fact that these companies have proven that loyalty to its employees means nothing when they can find cheaper employees in another country. This cycle will continue to repeat, as countries build themselves into ruin:
Step 1) Go into debt by building infrastructure (theres more to it than just network... power, streets, water, and so on) Step 2) Attract companies into the country with offers of cheap labor and bandwidth and low taxes Step 3) Companies exploit local labor until the labor force somewhere else is cheaper Step 4) Companies leave, nation still in debt. Step 5) Suffer.
At some point, the nation will be suffering enough that it will gladly welcome the companies back at less than what they were getting before, and this is exploitation at its worst.
Yeah, right. Less than $14,560/year? I don't even think you'll find that in Alabama or Arkansas
That is the exact point the poster is trying to make. You can't find that anywhere in the US, but guess what, you can get a programmer in another country for that much, tops.
If it was truly a matter of overinflated wages, then why is it becoming harder and harder to find an IT job at any price here in the US?
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't the reality that the content creators would be the ones locking everything up? Who says MS is going to for them?
Content creators? HA!
You mean publishers right?
If this DRM stuff goes through the way everyone wants it, your "content creators" will have two choices: DRM-enabled-digital, or cassette tapes.
Like hell the RIAA will let mp3s (or ogg) exist anymore, and if they do, I'll bet the default setting for any mp3 you record will be "don't copy this". How much do you think the RIAA will want to be paid for the right to change that bit? Changing it yourself is a violation of the DMCA, even though you're the copyright holder because the DMCA protects that bit not your copyright.
How good is this at covering the basics of the hazy cloud that is "real" security, both against online attacks and social engineering?
I'm currently at the level of "if it passes [insert_attack_script] its safe" but would like to learn how to get past that. I can competently secure a given box, but I think attempting a mid to large size network would be a "learning experience" (read: disaster) for me.
Any suggestions?
Simple. Just like the shuttle did, it would burn up in the atmosphere and break up. Maybe the lower portion of it would have some explosives to blow it into little pieces if it ever came apart (since it wouldn't be high enough up to burn up), but this is part of why it would be ocean-based (then, if it did fall the only people upset would be the environmentalists)
If this is built out of carbon nanotubes, like people suggest, then its possible they could be woven together in such a way that if any point broke, the chain would come apart in many places, so that a lot of little pieces would fall, however the extra length/weight of tubing required for this might make it prohibitive.
Common sense says that if X can kill people, and you publish X, you can probably spur research into the Y that stops X. There isn't always a Y, but which would be better, dying because terrorists got an incurable X from a journal somewhere, or dying because terrorists figured X out on their own or from the notes scribbled on napkins they pulled out of the trash?
And what if publishing X did cause the development of Y? Then is it better to be saved by Y or killed by the X the terrorists figured out without the benefit of the journals?
Slippery Slope Rant Follows:
Why don't we just cancel all of the journals. After all, who knows what sinister ends even the most innocuous inventions could be put to at the hands of terrorists. But why stop there? There could be a Terrist(tm) in your college classes with you! We better close all CS classes, all Engineering classes, all medical schools, and all Chemistry and Biology classes.
Once we've secured the higher education front against this illicit "learning", we will begin to attack the lower grades. Budding Terrists(tm) might be in your high schools at this very moment. What dangerous things could they be learning there? Clearly we must put a stop to these infiltration classes, thinly disguised as "English" and "American History". Every Real American already speaks perfect English and has memorized the entire history of This Great Country. All "Geography" teachers must be captured dead or alive for teaching these so-called students how to reach their Targets of Terror. No honest citizen needs to know the difference between Washington State and Washington DC, unless they were actually a Terrist(tm) aiming to bomb one or the other.
Microsoft actually happens to adapt to things very quickly at times
I think the idea is that Microsoft needs to learn to do it themselves instead of adapting by buying out a small company who has already done so.
Tried to? Two weeks ago? Who still uses O6? O7 has been out for a while now.
The only extra work microsoft did was spending some extra time to figure out how to screw over the competitors, in the most plausible way possible. Too bad someone held this up, if they had started this months ago while O7 was still beta they would have had some plausibility.
If they hadn't sent the -30px stylesheet, Opera 6 would have messed up due to its poor, buggy code.
Ok, quick date check: how long has opera 7 been out? And when did microsoft start serving opera specific CSS? Uh-huh, MSN started this AFTER everyone had a chance to upgrade to a working browser.
You might want to reconsider your stance on microsoft, unless you want your professional behavior to include "attempts to undermine the competition in plausible ways, if only they had thought of it a few weeks sooner."
Getting a reexamination
I wish it worked like you say. But for these patents (since they were filed before the law allowing new forms of examination came into effect in 1999) the only choice is to have an Ex Parte Examination, which by default assumes that the patent is valid given all prior art. Therefore, litigation is the only way for these to go, unless you can think of something new which breaks the patent. (Not exactly sure how that is supposed to work, but thats what the article says)
While this was probably not the logic used, there could be arguments made to support it.
With a few well made assumptions the problem can be cut away. Lets assume that "ability to find the blog" was one of the criteria for "this blog is greater" vs. "this blog is lesser". This is a realistic criteria since ability to find you = your ability to be heard. Thus, if there are only 1000 or so "well-connected" blogs, that would serve to prove his point that these 1000 have become the elite weblogs. You can then claim that the remainder of the blogs are part of the sample, but since they failed to be locatable, they were obviously not the elite and didn't warrant analysis.
Undoubtably there are problems in this. The distinctions are entirely arbitrary, plus it misses entire opportunities (what if the other 3 million blogs were tightly linked to each other?).
Realistically, it was probably just a case of a small study, taking a small sample, to make a statement.
Hm, if you'd like more, go check out Princess Nine (the dvd's released by ADV are relatively cheap, so its not a huge monetary loss if you don't like it), which is a (fictional) story about the first girls' baseball team. There are a number of other sports-based shows, though things like Battle Atheletes might fall under your perception of Action.
;)
There are a few other shows out there that would be more along the lines of general humor (Excel Saga, for instance). His and Her Circumstances is sort of a romance/documentary of student life. If you want historical drama, there is always Rose of Versailles (I don't think this is available in the US). If you enjoy a dash of insanity with your swordplay, you can get Revolutionary Girl Utena (ok, maybe this falls under adolescent fantasy, but it has much deeper concepts than some people give it credit for
For films, you should track down a copy of Memories. The first segment, Magnetic Rose, may be scifi, but the remainder is either thoughtful (Cannon Fodder) or humorous (Stink Bomb). I don't watch that many anime movies, so I can't think of any others that aren't scifi.
For the most part what is released here in the US is scifi/fantasy/action, because thats what people watch. A lot of the stuff exists for escapism, but thats the purpose of a lot of the stuff made in the US, too.
Part of the reason that the Big Picture difficulties crop up is that programmers are problem solvers. Their problem is "How Do I Do X".
And so they write something that Does X.
This goes wrong when the problem isn't "How Do I Do X", but is "How Do I Do X, Given Y". In these cases, Y may or may not be available to the programmer. The programmer may not understand that Y is important. The programmer might not be able to determine how Y applies, or how to get Y out of The Big Picture. Or the programmer may just be lazy and figure that someone else will take care of Y for them. Or the programmer decided to write the most generalized method for Doing X, so they can Do X Anywhere.
Solving this problem of ignoring Y is going to take education: First, know that Y exists. Second, find Y. Third, code for Y. Finally, when Y is "important enough", recycling code from somewhere else won't cut it.
The problem with storing CC numbers is that at some point you have to unencrypt them to do anything interesting with them. Its entirely possible that these cases had encrypted cc numbers, but an attacker found the unencrypt_and_charge program in /usr/local/bin, and put it to good use.
This is especially the case in automated systems, where somewhere there's a program thats run without a password or other user intervention that does the decryption. If the program in question runs some other program and automatically enters the password/phrase (eg pgp), you could probably use strings to get the password without even running the program.
but generally, patent offices have this period where they listen for people claiming prior art before the patent is issued.
I've never heard of this, but then again, it would be in the big companies best interests to keep their evil patent pending ideas hush-hush until they're ready to go, so maybe its there, but nobody gets to use it because its usually too late when it gets out.
Also, our patent reviewers work on a commission basis. They're paid for every patent they approve. So they approve a lot, as quickly as possible.
But what if the "wolf" does come along and someone says "if we had X, we could have caught them before this disaster.
Then hopefully someone in Congress will be smart enough and have the guts to say bullshit. Not a single thing can stop a person who is dead set (literally) to destroy something. If you pass laws requiring everyone to be strip searched upon leaving their house, and to wander around nude outdoors, someone will swallow C4 and a detonator.
Which of these rules will stop the terrorists? Stripping everyone of their citizenship on suspicion? Giving FBI agents the right to spy on my personal email, without telling me, until the guy gets fed up with his low pay and decides to use a loveletter to my girlfriend to try and blackmail me? Or shall the CIA monitor everything my company does, so that they can get their stock orders in early when we get a 50 million order from overseas?
Why not simply break up the costs? In a large city or even suburbia, start by getting fiber out to an area, then once you're close enough to make it a reasonable one-time installation fee, (or perhaps payable in installments over a given time frame, like most telephone installs are now), have the people who want fibre to their house get it.
This kind of thing is *exactly* an example of technology that the high-paying bleeding edge early adopters can viably support, since their big bucks will bring the fibre closer and therefore cheaper to install to the common people. Aim at the gamers first. You could probably convince the people who pay hundreds of dollars on video cards, cooling gear, and their existing bandwidth to spend, say $2000 over the course of a year plus bandwidth costs (I already pay $100/month for my overpriced 1.5mbit dsl with a subnet of static IPs and phone service, I'd pay $250/mo for the first year if the bandwidth actually lived up to its promise).
Of course, all of this requires the expectation of actually making money off of the venture in the end, once everyone has fibre in their homes. And that seems to be the key issue in this article, that if they build this, in the end they have to essentially give it away because of the regulations.
Read some of their comics and you'll start realizing all of the sexual characters wear the school girl clothes and knee high socks.
And then you look in the schools and realize that all of the sexual characters there do too? And its not just in Japan. Just because you hide your head in the sand and pretend that people in high school or middle school don't have sex in the US, doesn't mean they don't.
Now, I'd hardly qualify anything that I read as
"porn", but I have read manga with sexual encounters between people in school (Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou [Kare Kano in the US, or His and Her Circumstances in anime], and Paradise Kiss are two I've read recently). These are intended to be reflections of life for these people. When the karekano anime was produced, Hideaki interviewed dozens of school kids, and aimed to produce a show that reflected their fears and joys of life as a student.
Now as for the porn, well, it just depends on what you look at. From what I have seen for sale, it looks like Japanese men seem to prefer fantasizing about impossibly big-breasted women. I'm sure they make porn manga for every fetish out there, though, but the same goes for porn in the US, only the US has declared certain types of porn as illegal. (manga is officially recognized as an art in Japan)
characters that all have the exact same gigantic eyes and pointy chin (no, no they don't)
you can tell the name of the author by looking at the drawings, unlike mangas (is that such a good thing?)
How much of the European comics have you read, compared to Japanese? I can tell all of my favorite authors apart too, its not some magical power, it just takes experience. I can generally recognize a CLAMP character (and sometimes I can't, because character designs do change from series to series. Take a look at the girls in Magic Knight Rayearth, and compare to Sakura or Tomoyo in Cardcaptor Sakura, or to the characters in Wish, or Clover, or Angelic Layer). I can tell these characters apart from Watase's characters in Ceres or Fushigi Yuugi. And Takahashi's characters in Ranma.
It seems that you are in Europe, so I don't know about the availability of manga there. Maybe your bookstore found that author X was popular, so they tracked down stuff that looked similar to author X's work.
I applaud this IRC network for its stance related to the MPAA demands, and I hope it can survive the worst that the MPAA can throw at it.
Seriously, its about time that people started requiring evidence and due process of law again when dealing with criminals. Letting the MPAA and RIAA bully people around with the threat of ungrounded DMCA action has gone on long enough.
I still want to hear about someone getting a piece of the RIAA or MPAA's hide over a misfired DMCA letter, using that clause requiring them to pay for damages if it turns out that there was no copyright infringement.
Credit ratings are in fact accurate. If you have bad credit it is because you are not creditworthy or trustworthy in financial matters.
Say that to my face.
Or better yet, say that again when you've been in a major accident, miss two weeks of work, and the insurance company takes 4 months to pay off your medical bills, when you were reported to the collection agencies after 3 months.
Even better, say that when you've discovered someone had applied for a half-dozen lines of credit in your name, ran them up a few thousand dollars, and left you with the bill.
Credit reports are a load of bullshit, and using them to decide if person X might steal from you is even more bullshit (in America, its called innocent until proven guilty, and there is a whole criminal process to deal with people who steal from you).
Next thing we'll be hearing is that its ok to pre-emptively blow up countries that might cause a threat.
Just as a note, CLAMP is a group of females, so it would be women who draw the seven foot three inch wide men.
Ok, like I said originally (or maybe it was in some other post) I can't find fault in the companies behavoir. There is nothing inherently illegal or wrong in their behavior. They are simply seeking the cheapest source of labor to reduce costs. This is why I don't like the "beholden to the almighty dollar" view of corporations. They are demanding human rights, but are unwilling to show human responsibility, conscience, or ethics.
And therein is the big beef. Economics is a soulless behemoth that cares even less about the people than corporations do. Economics says "charge people what they are willing to pay" and leaves no strings attached. Things like "lie to the consumers about the quality so they are willing to pay more" are fully blessed by Economics. The same with "Generate false scarcity when supply is too high and therefore prices too low." IP laws also control scarcity, allowing monopolies to exist which are far more common than most people think. Furthermore, there is no room for the people to control this equation, either the demand exists or it doesn't. History shows that boycotts to reduce demand simply don't succeed, since corporations are willing to ignore short-term losses in the hopes that the consumers resolve will crumble.
No, I don't think banning outsourcing is going to save the world or anything like that, but I do question all these people who say "relax, it will equalize, and you'll just have to adapt" I'd really like to know when it will equalize and what it is I'm adapting to, so I can know whether I should stockpile my beans and rice while I still have a job and I can afford to.
As long as its in the best interests of the bandwidth providers (who get mega cash for all these GBs) this kind of crap will never stop.
And guess what, its EASY to stop! Simply require the netork borders to perform filtering on packets crossing the border. If your cable modem is spewing out packets addressed from China, and you're in Florida, SOMETHING IS WRONG. These packets should have never gotten into the internet in the first place.
Suddenly, when spoofing is no longer possible, DoS doesn't seem like such a great idea. Even with botnets and crap for DDoS usage, if you can be tracked back from a single trojaned box, you'd have to be stupid to try.
First off, there are logistical barriers to maintaining a workforce in some 50 or 60 countries at once. Attempting to cover all of the countries would incur costs making it too expensive to do so.
Secondly, there is a lower limit to what countries the companies can hire in, at least for technical jobs. Right now only a dozen or so of those countries have the infrastructure in place. Others are in states of unrest which make it not-ideal for a workforce. As the dozen or so countries start getting money poured into them by these companies, these other countries are going to find themselves behind, and will race to put together the infrastructure and put down whatever insurrection du jour is happening, in order to grab at that money stream. Then, since they'll be behind, they'll offer the companies lower taxes and cheaper labor than what India or the other countries offer, and the companies would move. Meanwhile, these abandoned countries lack the input to maintain their infrastructure, and have to undercut the new countries in order to draw business back.
What is this "equilibrium" you seek? All I can see is the trend going to Zero, as people who used to make their living picking ants off of plants for dinner get training and the chance to work for a pound of cornmeal and beans and a gallon of somewhat clean water a week.
By the way, the reason you are the only one quoting Adam Smith is because many of the economic principles make assumptions (such as behavior in the best interest of the company) that companies have turned on their heads. Long term goals? Companies have lived and died for this quarter's profits. Not doing so well? Slash R&D. The company won't make it another year but this quarter will look great! Sales not looking too good? Get legislature mandating purchase of your goods (see governmental ISO requirements and the ability to patent ISO processes). Supply and Demand? Lets sell electricity to ourselves so we can artifically raise demand in California. I wonder which of Adam Smith's economic models predicted that the music industry would run itself into the ground like it has. These economic models are worthless in the face of people who refuse to play by the rules.
Wait five years, then go talk to some of the programmers in India.
You could reminisce about the good ol' days when there were jobs there, before the companies decided that India was too expensive and moved on to Pffstonia (name completely made up) where people were willing to work for fatter ants than they had been able to pick off the ground themselves.
The problem isn't the jobs. (Well, ok, for some short sighted people, its the jobs.) The problem is the fact that these companies have proven that loyalty to its employees means nothing when they can find cheaper employees in another country. This cycle will continue to repeat, as countries build themselves into ruin:
Step 1) Go into debt by building infrastructure (theres more to it than just network... power, streets, water, and so on)
Step 2) Attract companies into the country with offers of cheap labor and bandwidth and low taxes
Step 3) Companies exploit local labor until the labor force somewhere else is cheaper
Step 4) Companies leave, nation still in debt.
Step 5) Suffer.
At some point, the nation will be suffering enough that it will gladly welcome the companies back at less than what they were getting before, and this is exploitation at its worst.
Yeah, right. Less than $14,560/year? I don't even think you'll find that in Alabama or Arkansas
That is the exact point the poster is trying to make. You can't find that anywhere in the US, but guess what, you can get a programmer in another country for that much, tops.
If it was truly a matter of overinflated wages, then why is it becoming harder and harder to find an IT job at any price here in the US?