hmm. yah, now that you mention it, I believe the hacking did take place in the matrix, so would simulate the infastructure of the present day, but she was hacking into a 'core network' outside the matrix (controlling matrix-external security systems) wasn't she? I duno. I guess I'll have ot go see the movie again and re-confirm.
I saw the movie last night and was disappointed generally, in that it was not as good as the first movie, but sequels are produced with the recognition that each sequel will have 2/3 the audience of it's predecessor, so I guess it's proffitable, but at some point producing sequels will devalue the original to the point where it will affect the overall perception of the franchise.
My biggest objection is Trinity has lost her whole S&M mystique in favor of this nice cuddly feel. Seems a real shame. Oh Well.
The SBL and other blackhole lists are a valiable tool in the war on SPAM. The problems with their use arise only when upstream providers of client email services, make use of such systems either without the knowledge of the end users or without providing those users optionality in the use of the system. I and many other readers of/. run their own mail servers for recipt of personal email rather than depend on the mail services of their ISPs. These indevidual mail servers can be configured as you see fit with as lax or stringent mail acceptance rules as desired. When upstream providers of mail services implement such systems there is the possibility that the end users would be unaware of the mail they were not recieving. These systems must be implemented with discretion.
As for the consequences for the sender, of sending to a recipient who may not recieve the mail, due to the appearance of the sender's IP address on the SBL or other such lists; the sender is responsible to insure that they recieve service from a reputable ISP who does not cater to spammers. This presumes that due diligence was performed before any IP is added to an SBL list. This also asumes that any mail recipient using such lists is responsible for using a reputable list provider where they are confident of the due diligent performed in generating the list. The whole system (not unlike many other elements of internet architecture) depends on the good faith / good will of the participents.
The primary responsibility lies with the email recipient who selects an SBL type list that is as lax or stringent about the content of the list, as the email recipient is comfortabe with, since the relative levels of stringency maps directly to how much legitimate mail that recipient will have rejected.
Read the EULA carefully - Users provide, um, 'content' but does microsoft take ownership of the er, 'content' after it is provided by the user? DO users retain rights to the content after it is provided? (Do users want to retain rights to it?)
One article stated that MSN saw a decline of 300,000 users in the first quarter of this year. Not satisfied with the number of people shitting on MSN, Microsoft now brings you the MSN Toilet!
This product opens up an opportunity for a whole new Microsoft slogan:
Microsoft - Where Do You Want To Shit Today?
And last but not least, Microsoft has found that deman for their steaming piles of crap far outstripps the supply, so they have come upw with a strategy to collect as much as possible. Enter, the iLoo!
Be a good citizen and remove the popup ad from your mirror of the SpamHaus letter. If you must, slap a banner ad or a few sponsored links on the page, but yank the damn popup as it's diametrically opposed to the spirit of offering a mirror.
The psychology of mythology - what makes a story?
on
Harry Potter with Guns
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
George Lucas is a bright guy. He worled with noted mythologist Joseph Campbell in designing the story line for the star wars saga, such that it is most compelling to the largest possible audience. The late Joseph Campbell theorised that there are identifiable story elements and common threads in all mythology that makes it so universally compelling and has allowed some stories to live on literally for thousands of years.
George Lucas sought to harness these concepts and taylor a mythology for the modern era, and with the help of Joseph Campbell, he succeeded. I recall hearing comments from many of my colligues that Harry Potter is a lot like Star Wars (back when the first one came out) and my imediate reaction was to examine the common threads where I found an almost identical human struggle. A lost chile finds his way in the world with the guidance of an elder who then (eventually) leaves the student to his own devices, to overcome a great evil, not only to save the world but to save some one or something far more personal to him. This is only a cursory summary of the similarities which were outlined in the article but can be examined more closely after a careful reading of some of Campbell's works on mythology. I recommend the Masks of God or the Mythic Dimention.
IN the case of the Matrix, I believe the brothers who's name I won't attemt to spell, simply stumbled upon this formula. Certainly there are similarities and this is what makes it such a compelling story, but as far as I know, they didn't approach the writing of the story as methodically, or in such a calculating way as did George Lucas or the author of the Harry Potter books.
Read the EULA carefully - Users provide, um, 'content' but does microsoft take ownership of the er, 'content' after it is provided by the user? DO users retain rights to the content after it is provided? (Do users want to retain rights to it?)
The article stated that MSN saw a decline of 300,000 users in the first quarter of this year. That's a lot of people shitting on MSN even without the deployment of MSN toilets.
This product opens up an opportunity for a whole new Microsoft slogan:
Do you hear voices? Did the gnomes tell you to put them in the computer lab, or is this a precursor to an all-out invasion? If the gnomes don't talk to you, then you can read about all the things the gnomes tell others across this expanse we call the internet:
We swear, we knew about the invasion of the lawn gnomes long before those MIT students ever got wind of their master plan (although, like anyone who knows the truth we can't prove it and no one would believe us even if we could).
In your example, the cops would be required to obtain a search warrant by demonstrating probable cause in front of a judge (not just a court clerk). Also, the seach warrant could only be sought by representatives of the local, state or federal government, not private organizations such as the RIAA.
There were two telling quotes that pretty much sum up the RIAA position by Matt Oppenheimer, Senior Vice President for Business and Legal Affairs at the RIAA:
copyright owners have a clear and unambiguous entitlement to determine who is infringing their copyrights online and that entitlement is constitutional.
Well no, Matt, actually, current legislation establishes the clear and unambiuous entitlement of copyright owners to defend their limited term monopoly in court if they see fit. It does not grant them the right to shift the costs of seeking owt copyright violators, to other organizations such as Vorizon. Part of the cost of owning any intellectual property is defending it. The only reason the RIAA wants Varizon to be forced to expend man-power and financial resources to seek out copyright violators, is because if the RIAA had to do it on their own, then they would go bankrupt. It is simply not cost effective to defend intellectual property that is producing a revenue stream below a certain level. In fact, studies have shown that 90% of the revenue stream from any given piece of intellectual property, is generated within the first 10 years of it's production. If the RIAA focused their efforts of content with revenue streams that justified the expense of defending their IP rights, they would have no need for trying to force Varizon or any other company to foot the bill for that work.
Even scarier, is this gen from the Justice Department statement of the decision:
the law did not violate the free-speech rights of everyday users because it is only targeted at those who violate copyrights
So aparently it's accepatable to violate the due process rights if suspected crininals. I look forward to seeing the 'clarification' of this statement that is sure to be issued, because we all know the justice department can't support the violation of the due process rights of suspected criminals.
--CTH
World Intellectual Property Organization Treaty
on
DMCA, Auf Deutsch
·
· Score: 3, Informative
This shouldn't be a suprise to anyone. This is just the next step required of each signatory to the 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization Treaty. First the DMCA, in the US, then legislation in Mexico and now Germany. It's important also to note that the DMCA is only the first step with regard to amended copyright legislation in the U.S. It only partially brings the United States into complience with the 1996 treaty. The german legislation comes closer to bringing that country into compliance, than the U.S. legislation. Expect far more stringent laws to be passed in the U.S., updating the DMCA, and also additional legislation in Germany (after passage of the bill currently before their legislature) to bring that country completely into compliance with the treaty as well.
Of course. Printer manufacturers realized -maybe 10 years ago- the same thing that game manufacturers realized more recently; that far greater proffits await those who seek out continuous revenue streams. In the case of game manufacturers, sell subscriptions to online games, with monthly fees. For printer manufacturers, dump the printer hardware at cost and maintain the high margin revenue streream available through sale of replacement ink cartridges. This revenue stream is so lucrative that some manufacturers have gone so far as to include encrypted signatures encoded in their cartridges sutch that competing vendors can't produce cartridghes for their printers. As I recall, some would-be cartridge vendors have sued printer manufactuters claimin that this practice is anti-competitive. At the moment I don't recall which companies this relates to. I believe it was one of Cannon, Brother or HP, and that there was a story about it on/. a year or so ago.
--CTH
Observations on the study and it's implications
on
BSA IDC FUD
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The study seems to be employing a basic rhetorical falacy. They axtrapolate from their data beyond any level that is supportable by a reasonable person, in order to please their employer (in this case the BSA). Honestly, I can see how craskind down on software piracy can create jobs and expand the IT secor in effected countries. This would naturally occur if companies had to employ auditors for license tracking, maintain a vast number of concurrent-use license servers, and support insecure and broken but highly restrictive software products, each purchased from the one true OS vendor (gag) thereby generating a whole new tax base within that country.
Let us not forget that it was Steve Balmer who said software piracy was a key element of Microsoft's market penetration strategy (in 1994), where in developing countries, users would pirate Microsoft software - since they souldn't affort to license it anyway, then as their productivity rose through use of this high qwuality software, their revenues would grow and by the time the BSA got around to auditing them, they could afford to license the software they had previously pirated.
It's important to note that this has NOTHING to do with Intellectual Property Rights or Privacy but simply enforcement of contract law. IP rights - those that are defensable anyway - relate to issues such as term of copyright, the nature of fair use and the transition of protected works into the public domain. Nobody, as far as I know has ever questioned whether Microsoft owns the rights to it's products, or has exclusive rights to sell their own products (except in a few countries such as China).
As for Privacy, the only way software piracy in any way relates to privacy is in terms of the ability to conceal a crime. I can understand how reduced software piracy can improve an economy, especially if the countries studied had Gross National Products smaller than Microsoft's marketing budget, but the only way that a reduction in privaly could cause a reduction in software piracy is if Microsoft were allowed to prevent users from disabling such Windows features as the automatic license varification within Windows Media Player, or gather additional detailed system and software data as part of Windows Update (which it turns out Microsoft is already doing) or if companies were allowed to hack into the networks of suspected software pirates.
Nothing new here. We already knew that Microsoft wanted to prevent users from disabling the monitoring features that already exist in Windows Media Player and Windows XP, and we've already seen such organizations as the RIAA (in the case of the music industry) propose that they should be able to hack into computers owned by private citizens to confirm that they had not illegally optained copies of un-licenced IP. Overall, I think this was a horendously bad move on the part of the BSA (I still think the boyscouts should sue the business software alliance for use of the acronym, since it's clear that the latter has done serious and irreperable harm to the international perception of the acronym in any context), in that instead of making these findings public, they should have been used in support of a private lobying effort to ease privacy restrictions so Microsoft can look back at us through our computer screens and watch our every move.
There is little debate among outsiders of the position that ICANN is in resperate need of being disbanded and redesigned from the ground up. The question is, - since there is little or no oversight of the organization - how would lawmakers go about tearing down the golem they've created. It's not simply a matter of U.S. law anymore. I'm not certain that ICANN could be disbanded and redesigned using anything less than an international treaty, but IANAL, so perhaps someone with expertise in this area could speak to the issue of how change would be brought about (which, is equally as interesting as what those changes would be).
Forget those micro-racers, those little tiny remote control cars that made a perfect fad gist over christmas last year. I can see it now. Every 10 year old kid will want one of these put in their christmas stocking. "But dad, It's not a real car! IT's remote control! Joey across the street has a remote control car! Why can't I?"
There is the valid point that by giving your kit an RC car of this size, you'd never have to give him another christmas gift for the rest of his life. It would also be an effective deterrent to potential playground bullies, knowing that your kid has the ability to run them down and get away clean.
It should be interesting to guage the impact on sales, of these DRM'd CDs. There are two schools of thought on this. First, if the sales are dramatically reduced, the record label won't have impacted a large percentage of their revenue, even if sales for these artists disappear off the bonnom of the charts. For this reason it's rather wise to use these artists as test cases.
On the other side of the argument, opponants of current DRM strategies can argue that demographics of the respective fan bases of these artists are those more likely to buy sucg crippled products without understanding the reduced value of the products on which they're spending their hard earned cash.
Either way, I look forward to seeing how crippling these products will impact their sales.
--CTH
Managers either get it or don't - and won't cange
on
Psychology of a Programmer
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I've worked for a fariety of managers over the past few years and I've found that they either understand programmers, or don't. They can either acomodate the quirks or can't and that's it. This or any article stands no chance of changing their outlook.
One issue the article fails to mention is that you can in fact divide one programmer between development and support roles. The article says don't intersperse these roles durring the work day, but I've found in my own work, - which requires both activities - that the manager simply has to allow the programmers to do his own time alocation, for example, I find that I can get into the work day completing a series of support tasks, in the morning when I'm relitively stress-free, then in the afternoon, turn my focus to one of the never ending pile of development projects on my desk.
Having said this, I have to agree with the author that interspersing these tasks such that every 45 minutes the programmer has to stop developing and change his mindset to support a user, hten shift back into development mode is inherently bad.
The point is, programmers - being artistic as they are - are reasonably flexible. It's just important not to expect unreasonable flexibility, as this would prevent achieving the nessecery level of focus on each of the tasks at hand.
When drafting legislation it's critical that the drafters are forward-looking so the legislation can adapt to conditions not net concieved by the drafters, and acomodate situations of the sort Mr. Clark describes. Certainly the situation hasn't yet occurred, but then again classes are still primarily tought using print media. There are vary few classes for which the purchase of a text book is not required. Consider for a moment, a situation where the materials for a course are distributed as an ISO image of a DVD-ROM containing all the published works to be utilized in the class (an englsih class for example). Consider that one of the works is a clip from a movie adaptation of one of those publsihed works. The TEACH Act clearly states that a license is not required for usage for academic purposes, yet it is illegal to distribute, aquire or use the circumvention tools needed for implementation of the fair use exceptions spelled out in the TEACH act.
Organizations such as the MPAA have the stated position that copyright should be absolute in nature, indefinate in durration and that fair use does not exist. Clearly, the TEACH act is in direct conflict with this position, but instead of stepping up to work within the law, the Motion Picture Association of America chooses to bend the law, then have it re-written to accomodate it's whims.
Clearly, by implication of the TEACH Act, circumvention tools are in fact not only legal to develop, distribute and use, but encouraged. This is good news for all who wish to see the creative works of the past preserves in accessible forms for future generations.
The idea I was refering to is to maintain a firewall between the wireless network and the rest of the LAPD's internal network so even if someone unauthorized person were to drive by and obrain access to their wireless network through some means, they still wouldn't have access ot the rest of the LAPD's network. It's really a vary simple idea and comonly implemented, regardless of whether network in question is connected to the internet.
Wasn't it the Department of Homeland Security that was concerned about the security of wireless networks that extend far beyond the property of the network owner? The article says nothing about how the LAPD plans to secure this network. WEP just doesn't cut it, as we learned years ago when a variety of people broke WEP keys using timing and other techniques. I suppose they're going to follow everyone else's lead and place a firewall between wireless and wired networks, providing VPN access. I astonished me this was not even mentioned in passing in the article.
heh. I needed something round and recognizable. I first typed 'orange' but realized that was too big. I then saw an advertisement for the movie. What can I say. It works...
Forget going OSS with some minor application. Apple has allready proven you can go half OSS with an OS and not run into big problems. Microsoft, no matter what else you say about them employs some smart programmers. They could release a decent linux distribution of their own rewriting Microsoft Windows as a closed source window manager that you have the option to run within your X enviroment. Support could be such that the MS Window manager would be garenteed to interoperate with their setup but was a standard Window Manager so could optinally be run on top of any *nix system on the market. This would achieved the desired greater market penetration, as well al allow MS to dip their collective little toe into the OSS market while retaining total control over that intellectial property they prize above all else. It would also allow them to focus on the GUI and high level layers of computing systems rather than worrying about the underlying architecture, which they really have no stake in other than as investments in companies like Intel and AMD. Why bother continuing to write, maintain and update a kernel when you can retain the same market power while just writing a desktop manager/window manager combination product?
Slashdot Mirror
hmm. yah, now that you mention it, I believe the hacking did take place in the matrix, so would simulate the infastructure of the present day, but she was hacking into a 'core network' outside the matrix (controlling matrix-external security systems) wasn't she? I duno. I guess I'll have ot go see the movie again and re-confirm.
--CTH
I saw the movie last night and was disappointed generally, in that it was not as good as the first movie, but sequels are produced with the recognition that each sequel will have 2/3 the audience of it's predecessor, so I guess it's proffitable, but at some point producing sequels will devalue the original to the point where it will affect the overall perception of the franchise.
My biggest objection is Trinity has lost her whole S&M mystique in favor of this nice cuddly feel. Seems a real shame. Oh Well.
--CTH
Severla hundred years in the future and still, IPv6 hasn't been adopted. Personally, I'm not suprised. It'll take an act of god to get it deployed.
--CTH
The SBL and other blackhole lists are a valiable tool in the war on SPAM. The problems with their use arise only when upstream providers of client email services, make use of such systems either without the knowledge of the end users or without providing those users optionality in the use of the system. I and many other readers of /. run their own mail servers for recipt of personal email rather than depend on the mail services of their ISPs. These indevidual mail servers can be configured as you see fit with as lax or stringent mail acceptance rules as desired. When upstream providers of mail services implement such systems there is the possibility that the end users would be unaware of the mail they were not recieving. These systems must be implemented with discretion.
As for the consequences for the sender, of sending to a recipient who may not recieve the mail, due to the appearance of the sender's IP address on the SBL or other such lists; the sender is responsible to insure that they recieve service from a reputable ISP who does not cater to spammers. This presumes that due diligence was performed before any IP is added to an SBL list. This also asumes that any mail recipient using such lists is responsible for using a reputable list provider where they are confident of the due diligent performed in generating the list. The whole system (not unlike many other elements of internet architecture) depends on the good faith / good will of the participents.
The primary responsibility lies with the email recipient who selects an SBL type list that is as lax or stringent about the content of the list, as the email recipient is comfortabe with, since the relative levels of stringency maps directly to how much legitimate mail that recipient will have rejected.
--CTH
One article stated that MSN saw a decline of 300,000 users in the first quarter of this year. Not satisfied with the number of people shitting on MSN, Microsoft now brings you the MSN Toilet!
This product opens up an opportunity for a whole new Microsoft slogan: And last but not least, Microsoft has found that deman for their steaming piles of crap far outstripps the supply, so they have come upw with a strategy to collect as much as possible. Enter, the iLoo!
--CTH
In Moz 1.3 they broke some of the popup blocking. I'm not real impressed with their new site-by-site approach, myself...
Be a good citizen and remove the popup ad from your mirror of the SpamHaus letter. If you must, slap a banner ad or a few sponsored links on the page, but yank the damn popup as it's diametrically opposed to the spirit of offering a mirror.
George Lucas is a bright guy. He worled with noted mythologist Joseph Campbell in designing the story line for the star wars saga, such that it is most compelling to the largest possible audience. The late Joseph Campbell theorised that there are identifiable story elements and common threads in all mythology that makes it so universally compelling and has allowed some stories to live on literally for thousands of years.
George Lucas sought to harness these concepts and taylor a mythology for the modern era, and with the help of Joseph Campbell, he succeeded. I recall hearing comments from many of my colligues that Harry Potter is a lot like Star Wars (back when the first one came out) and my imediate reaction was to examine the common threads where I found an almost identical human struggle. A lost chile finds his way in the world with the guidance of an elder who then (eventually) leaves the student to his own devices, to overcome a great evil, not only to save the world but to save some one or something far more personal to him. This is only a cursory summary of the similarities which were outlined in the article but can be examined more closely after a careful reading of some of Campbell's works on mythology. I recommend the Masks of God or the Mythic Dimention.
IN the case of the Matrix, I believe the brothers who's name I won't attemt to spell, simply stumbled upon this formula. Certainly there are similarities and this is what makes it such a compelling story, but as far as I know, they didn't approach the writing of the story as methodically, or in such a calculating way as did George Lucas or the author of the Harry Potter books.
--CTH
The article stated that MSN saw a decline of 300,000 users in the first quarter of this year. That's a lot of people shitting on MSN even without the deployment of MSN toilets.
This product opens up an opportunity for a whole new Microsoft slogan:--CTH
--CTH
In your example, the cops would be required to obtain a search warrant by demonstrating probable cause in front of a judge (not just a court clerk). Also, the seach warrant could only be sought by representatives of the local, state or federal government, not private organizations such as the RIAA.
Even scarier, is this gen from the Justice Department statement of the decision:So aparently it's accepatable to violate the due process rights if suspected crininals. I look forward to seeing the 'clarification' of this statement that is sure to be issued, because we all know the justice department can't support the violation of the due process rights of suspected criminals.
--CTH
This shouldn't be a suprise to anyone. This is just the next step required of each signatory to the 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization Treaty. First the DMCA, in the US, then legislation in Mexico and now Germany. It's important also to note that the DMCA is only the first step with regard to amended copyright legislation in the U.S. It only partially brings the United States into complience with the 1996 treaty. The german legislation comes closer to bringing that country into compliance, than the U.S. legislation. Expect far more stringent laws to be passed in the U.S., updating the DMCA, and also additional legislation in Germany (after passage of the bill currently before their legislature) to bring that country completely into compliance with the treaty as well.
--CTH
Of course. Printer manufacturers realized -maybe 10 years ago- the same thing that game manufacturers realized more recently; that far greater proffits await those who seek out continuous revenue streams. In the case of game manufacturers, sell subscriptions to online games, with monthly fees. For printer manufacturers, dump the printer hardware at cost and maintain the high margin revenue streream available through sale of replacement ink cartridges. This revenue stream is so lucrative that some manufacturers have gone so far as to include encrypted signatures encoded in their cartridges sutch that competing vendors can't produce cartridghes for their printers. As I recall, some would-be cartridge vendors have sued printer manufactuters claimin that this practice is anti-competitive. At the moment I don't recall which companies this relates to. I believe it was one of Cannon, Brother or HP, and that there was a story about it on /. a year or so ago.
--CTH
The study seems to be employing a basic rhetorical falacy. They axtrapolate from their data beyond any level that is supportable by a reasonable person, in order to please their employer (in this case the BSA). Honestly, I can see how craskind down on software piracy can create jobs and expand the IT secor in effected countries. This would naturally occur if companies had to employ auditors for license tracking, maintain a vast number of concurrent-use license servers, and support insecure and broken but highly restrictive software products, each purchased from the one true OS vendor (gag) thereby generating a whole new tax base within that country.
Let us not forget that it was Steve Balmer who said software piracy was a key element of Microsoft's market penetration strategy (in 1994), where in developing countries, users would pirate Microsoft software - since they souldn't affort to license it anyway, then as their productivity rose through use of this high qwuality software, their revenues would grow and by the time the BSA got around to auditing them, they could afford to license the software they had previously pirated.
It's important to note that this has NOTHING to do with Intellectual Property Rights or Privacy but simply enforcement of contract law. IP rights - those that are defensable anyway - relate to issues such as term of copyright, the nature of fair use and the transition of protected works into the public domain. Nobody, as far as I know has ever questioned whether Microsoft owns the rights to it's products, or has exclusive rights to sell their own products (except in a few countries such as China).
As for Privacy, the only way software piracy in any way relates to privacy is in terms of the ability to conceal a crime. I can understand how reduced software piracy can improve an economy, especially if the countries studied had Gross National Products smaller than Microsoft's marketing budget, but the only way that a reduction in privaly could cause a reduction in software piracy is if Microsoft were allowed to prevent users from disabling such Windows features as the automatic license varification within Windows Media Player, or gather additional detailed system and software data as part of Windows Update (which it turns out Microsoft is already doing) or if companies were allowed to hack into the networks of suspected software pirates.
Nothing new here. We already knew that Microsoft wanted to prevent users from disabling the monitoring features that already exist in Windows Media Player and Windows XP, and we've already seen such organizations as the RIAA (in the case of the music industry) propose that they should be able to hack into computers owned by private citizens to confirm that they had not illegally optained copies of un-licenced IP. Overall, I think this was a horendously bad move on the part of the BSA (I still think the boyscouts should sue the business software alliance for use of the acronym, since it's clear that the latter has done serious and irreperable harm to the international perception of the acronym in any context), in that instead of making these findings public, they should have been used in support of a private lobying effort to ease privacy restrictions so Microsoft can look back at us through our computer screens and watch our every move.
-- George Orwell
There is little debate among outsiders of the position that ICANN is in resperate need of being disbanded and redesigned from the ground up. The question is, - since there is little or no oversight of the organization - how would lawmakers go about tearing down the golem they've created. It's not simply a matter of U.S. law anymore. I'm not certain that ICANN could be disbanded and redesigned using anything less than an international treaty, but IANAL, so perhaps someone with expertise in this area could speak to the issue of how change would be brought about (which, is equally as interesting as what those changes would be).
--CTH
Forget those micro-racers, those little tiny remote control cars that made a perfect fad gist over christmas last year. I can see it now. Every 10 year old kid will want one of these put in their christmas stocking. "But dad, It's not a real car! IT's remote control! Joey across the street has a remote control car! Why can't I?"
There is the valid point that by giving your kit an RC car of this size, you'd never have to give him another christmas gift for the rest of his life. It would also be an effective deterrent to potential playground bullies, knowing that your kid has the ability to run them down and get away clean.
--CTH
It should be interesting to guage the impact on sales, of these DRM'd CDs. There are two schools of thought on this. First, if the sales are dramatically reduced, the record label won't have impacted a large percentage of their revenue, even if sales for these artists disappear off the bonnom of the charts. For this reason it's rather wise to use these artists as test cases.
On the other side of the argument, opponants of current DRM strategies can argue that demographics of the respective fan bases of these artists are those more likely to buy sucg crippled products without understanding the reduced value of the products on which they're spending their hard earned cash.
Either way, I look forward to seeing how crippling these products will impact their sales.
--CTH
I've worked for a fariety of managers over the past few years and I've found that they either understand programmers, or don't. They can either acomodate the quirks or can't and that's it. This or any article stands no chance of changing their outlook.
One issue the article fails to mention is that you can in fact divide one programmer between development and support roles. The article says don't intersperse these roles durring the work day, but I've found in my own work, - which requires both activities - that the manager simply has to allow the programmers to do his own time alocation, for example, I find that I can get into the work day completing a series of support tasks, in the morning when I'm relitively stress-free, then in the afternoon, turn my focus to one of the never ending pile of development projects on my desk.
Having said this, I have to agree with the author that interspersing these tasks such that every 45 minutes the programmer has to stop developing and change his mindset to support a user, hten shift back into development mode is inherently bad.
The point is, programmers - being artistic as they are - are reasonably flexible. It's just important not to expect unreasonable flexibility, as this would prevent achieving the nessecery level of focus on each of the tasks at hand.
--CTH
When drafting legislation it's critical that the drafters are forward-looking so the legislation can adapt to conditions not net concieved by the drafters, and acomodate situations of the sort Mr. Clark describes. Certainly the situation hasn't yet occurred, but then again classes are still primarily tought using print media. There are vary few classes for which the purchase of a text book is not required. Consider for a moment, a situation where the materials for a course are distributed as an ISO image of a DVD-ROM containing all the published works to be utilized in the class (an englsih class for example). Consider that one of the works is a clip from a movie adaptation of one of those publsihed works. The TEACH Act clearly states that a license is not required for usage for academic purposes, yet it is illegal to distribute, aquire or use the circumvention tools needed for implementation of the fair use exceptions spelled out in the TEACH act.
Organizations such as the MPAA have the stated position that copyright should be absolute in nature, indefinate in durration and that fair use does not exist. Clearly, the TEACH act is in direct conflict with this position, but instead of stepping up to work within the law, the Motion Picture Association of America chooses to bend the law, then have it re-written to accomodate it's whims.
Clearly, by implication of the TEACH Act, circumvention tools are in fact not only legal to develop, distribute and use, but encouraged. This is good news for all who wish to see the creative works of the past preserves in accessible forms for future generations.
--CTH
The idea I was refering to is to maintain a firewall between the wireless network and the rest of the LAPD's internal network so even if someone unauthorized person were to drive by and obrain access to their wireless network through some means, they still wouldn't have access ot the rest of the LAPD's network. It's really a vary simple idea and comonly implemented, regardless of whether network in question is connected to the internet.
Wasn't it the Department of Homeland Security that was concerned about the security of wireless networks that extend far beyond the property of the network owner? The article says nothing about how the LAPD plans to secure this network. WEP just doesn't cut it, as we learned years ago when a variety of people broke WEP keys using timing and other techniques. I suppose they're going to follow everyone else's lead and place a firewall between wireless and wired networks, providing VPN access. I astonished me this was not even mentioned in passing in the article.
--CTH
heh. I needed something round and recognizable. I first typed 'orange' but realized that was too big. I then saw an advertisement for the movie. What can I say. It works...
Forget going OSS with some minor application. Apple has allready proven you can go half OSS with an OS and not run into big problems. Microsoft, no matter what else you say about them employs some smart programmers. They could release a decent linux distribution of their own rewriting Microsoft Windows as a closed source window manager that you have the option to run within your X enviroment. Support could be such that the MS Window manager would be garenteed to interoperate with their setup but was a standard Window Manager so could optinally be run on top of any *nix system on the market. This would achieved the desired greater market penetration, as well al allow MS to dip their collective little toe into the OSS market while retaining total control over that intellectial property they prize above all else. It would also allow them to focus on the GUI and high level layers of computing systems rather than worrying about the underlying architecture, which they really have no stake in other than as investments in companies like Intel and AMD. Why bother continuing to write, maintain and update a kernel when you can retain the same market power while just writing a desktop manager/window manager combination product?
--CTH
Ss you want to sell laptops to the US Army?
Yes, would you like to test it out?
Yes, Put it over there.
[Officer aims a rifle at the laptop and puts a hole the size of a small tangerine through the case]
I'm sorry. Your product has failed our quality inspection. Have a nice day.