Return of a tech cultural phenomenon
on
Tron 2.0 Game
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· Score: 2
It's slightly disturbing that geeks have their own cultural phenomenons. It's even more disturbing that I'm old enough to recall their introduction. What a blast. I'm not usually a fan of games based on movies but this one looks to be interesting, not so much as a game but as a precursor to a vary promising movie. It looks to be a blast.
I can see it now. An angry mob of greasy little MPAA/RIAA lawyers would drag the machine into an empty soccer field, and in a fit of rage, take out all their frustrations upon it, taking turns kicking and beating it until it relented and agreed NEVER EVER copy another CD, even for archival purposes.
The previous poster needs to take his own advice. The mere fact that the employees of this company have the ability to direct the activity of the installed software constitutes the violation, regardless of if that action is to ask permission of the user or to display a window or any other operation the software would not perform without intervention.
That may be true. It remains to be seen. The other issue is access beyond granted privileges. As for the EULA. My agreeing to it, I agreed to install the software, I did not agree to allow their employees manipulate my computer in any way, directly or indirectly. Deployment of any distributed computing application constitutes such manipulation. Granted, the CEO claims permission will be requested before such use is made, so they may be on safe teritory here, but still, they seem to be walking a vary thin line.
A careful reading of the PATRIOT act, passed by congress established that any person who causes damage totaling $5,000 to any computer system or 'exceeding authority' granted on any computer involved in interstate commerce will be considered a terrorist, and be subject to a maximum of 10 years in prison for their first offense (20 for their second offense).
If this software utilized any cycles on my system, it will impact performance causing me expense which will rapidly increase to the $5000 threshold (a cumulative threshold). I granted no access nor privilage to use my systems, to any employee of Brilliant Digital Entertainment Inc. so as soon as any command is issued, affecting the behavior of any software installed on my computers, the employees and officers of Brilliant Digital Entertainment will imediately have become guilty of computer crimes under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act as modified by the USA Patriot act.
--CTH
This is my personal reading of the existing legislation. I am not a lawyer, but this company will be guilty of multiple serious criminal offenses the moment they turn on their network.
Posted byCmdrTacoon Monday April 02, @11:13AM
from the tightening-our-belts dept.
Well, folks, it started as an April fools joke, but we got such a positive response by companies such as Microsoft, eeger to spread FUD throughout the slashdot community, that we have decided to implement this new advertising strategy imediately. Thank you for your cooperation. Any converns should be addressed to me directly.
--CmdrTaco
Re:In Other News... Microsoft Buys up the Moon
on
AOL Buying Up Blogs
·
· Score: 2
Microsoft buys up the moon. Bill Gates travels back in time to a time long ago, in a galaxy far far away to seek guidance from his master the emperor on how to properly outfit the moon with plasma weapons and to recruit people with english accents, willing to march around in lock step, wearing silly white plastic helmets.
Not only have they survived while other.com era companies have faltered, they have ratained the good humor and playfullness that was a hallmark of that era.
Go GOOGLE!
AOL BUYS up all thought -blogs were the first step
on
AOL Buying Up Blogs
·
· Score: 5, Funny
AOL has also begun vigorously buying up brain waves. They have a wwbsite where you can sell them your brain waves and recieve compensation. Like blood banks, these brain wave banks are becoming popular with those down on their luck and out of work. After a successful program Launch in Boulder Colorado, the company opened up brain wave banks in major techonlogical centers, hoping to gather the thought patterns of every out-of-work engineer in such places as Silicon Valley, and Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Once contained, this highly charged free thought will be sold to Beistol Mayers/Squibb, for conversion into brain enhancing vitamin suplements.
First is pays to master Python. Make sure you own both of these books all about Python. Mastry of Python will lead to long satisfying enguagements where lerge sums of money may trade hands. Your expertise will serve you well in your travels, as lonely women seek out those who can best satisfy them. Remember, Python is not known for speed, but for flexibility and power, so go fourth young Python masters and spread the wealth.
--CTH
PS: And although some are better endowed than others, the longer the Python the better.
While dependency is a problem, if the states insist on their original proposal, it is much more reasonable to require that it must be simple to substitute one module in place of another, provided the two modules utilize the same interface. Quite simple, this is already possible. The issue then becomes requiring Microsoft to publish the COM object interfaces found throughout Windows, as well as insure the interfaces are not needlesly complex, such that it ramains possible to write a subtitute module for given windows componants.
Recently I've looked at a number of extremely complex software development projects. What I've seen - and this should be blatently obvious to any software development project manager - is that it is impossible to successfully develop complex software systems without making them modular.
Not only is modular structure required for design by a large development staff, but it is also required in order to facilitate future patching and upgrades.
Also, consider for a moment, the wording used my microsoft atourneys:
[Windows] was not designed to be modular
The question is not the design intent. The question is Is It In Fact Modular? I maintain that it could not have been written in a way that is not modular. While it might be possible to intentionally obfuscate it's mosularity, from a software design and loadbuild perspective, there is no way it could possibly function if it were not modular.
This does not preclude the possibility that from a consumer perspective the system does not appear modular. In order to meet the demands of the ramaining states in the antitrust case, Microsoft may have to replace vertain functions with stubs to facilitate the consumer-side modularity. This should be a trivial matter for a software development organization capable of producing such a vast system.
This is at least two weeks old. I'm fairly certain I came across it earleir than that. So, varasign is enguaging in sleezy business practices. Who here is suprised? As a customer of GoDaddy Software, I recieved the email Declan mentioned and I'm happier than ever to be using them rather than Verasign as a registrar. In fact, I tried over a year ago, so get a domain name report from Varasign (a listing of all the domains I have registered with them) since I have domains that were registered going way back before they migrated away fro mtheir email based registration interface. They still have not provided the requested listing. My service request is still open with them. Talking to their custoemr service is like talking to a brick wall (again, who's suprised?).
Although I'd say your interpretation of the press release is just a matter of spin, I'd have to agree with your statement regarding slow migrations. Here you make a vary good point. One of the few other examples of software that facilitates this slow migration might be OpenOffice. Interoperability is a dangerous thing though. You have to adopt the ways of the enemy in order to use it effectively. Provide interoperability, but provide greater (and non-compatible) functionality which encourages the user to migrate away from the product to which you originally provided interoperability. The problemwith this is - since we are preaching open standards - we must extend an open standard such that it provides the greater functionality, rather than implement in a closed way. This means the only advantage possible is in a feature development race, where Microsoft has greater resources to draw upon and so will certainly win such contents. Granted, this is a rather gloomy analysis. I hope I'm wrong.
I don't blame Microsoft for there being no good OSS alternatives to their product. I blame them for not enabling standard protocols like IMAP, and iCal out-of-the box. Granted, there are a lot of incompetant admins out there that don't realize they can enable these protocols, but in every other arena, Microsoft has catered to the lowest common denomicator in the way of user intelligence, so why not here? The answer is simple. They want their protocol to become the defacto standard (which has pretty much already become) and the creation of software that facilitates this use of non-open standards, where equivelent open standards DO EXIST, is shameful; especially from a company that preaches the virtues of OSS.
This looks like a neat pieve of software, but it's outragous that it's needed at all. In this instance, Microsoft has created a new software development business - the business of conforming to 'Microsoft Standards'. It's discraceful that we've let this go on. Companies should not be able to find it profitable to create interfaces into Microsoft's proprietary protocols. Instead, Microsoft should find it unprofitable to ignore standards and go out on their own. While I have no objection to Ximian as a whole, they are facilitating this behavior, by providing interoperability products. Really, though, at it's core this is our fault. Clearly sufficient pressure has not been aplied to Microsoft to force them co conform to the standards that the rest of the software world now uses.
In the early betas of Windows 2000 Advanced Server there was a concept called 'Windows Application Refresh' which was esentially a scheduled reboot, which addressed memory leaks and other issues of Microsoft Product Entropy. Thankfully I have not been cursed with having to use it since then. Can anyone tell me if Microsoft is still trying to sell this steaming pile of Cr@p as a standard system administration practice?
Well, in the case of your telco, it loooks better on the books not to have capital depreciating, so their move made economic sense, from a business finance perspective.
I have serious doubts about this article though. While they make the single valid point that it costs money to light up a network, there were and still are valid mechanisms for financing that activity. Most of the telcos that have gone under were in debt to the equipment manufacturers like Lucent, Ericson, and Nortel Networks. That is all bad debt now, which causes these manufacturers to cut costs by (among other things) reducing R&D expendatures. This means advances in the industry will not come as fast as they were, but they will still come eventually.
These manufacturers are still willing to finance the lighting of fiber networks, as needed, (in that such activity requires purchase of multiplexing equipment and switches, the sale of which these companies have financed for the past two decades).
When it comes down to it, the industry is returning to a pre-tech-bouble state, not dying completely. The determination of which companies will still be standing will be which are able to adapt quickly enough. Unfortunately, this is made more difficult with a Wall Street backlash against the telecom industry, but such things happen and will be overcome in time.
There will be no shortage because the market is capable of meeting demand. The required financing will become available because it is the only way the manufacturers will stay in business.
In closing, let me just say that I always get my technology news from McPaper because after all they're known for their technical expertise and research prowess.
Infortunately, our legislators still do not heed email and faxes to the degree they should. This is probably because such technological marvels facilitate communication to a degree that promotes a deluge of mindless mailings that represent to effort or forethought on the part of the sender.
For this reason, our legislators tend to pay far more attention to writen letters sent by snail mail, not least because mailings are limited to some minor degree by the cost of stamps, and it is currently illegal to impersonate others via postal mail, whereas the same is not true via email.
Faxing your well thought out objections to this bill, might be a good compromise, but I recommend postal mail as the most effective means of communicating with your senators.
If you are unsure of how to contact the senators from your state, Look Here. Also, it would be useful to begin to address this issue in the house as well. The house of representatives has a far more convenient contact mechanism. You can Lookup your Representatives Here.
Remember, do your research, and make coherent arguments. Don't waste the time of our elected oficials. They are not stupid, but simply need to be better informed of the problems with this legislation.
I meant technically inclined in the sense of those who are likely to use the service and derive benefit from it's provition and funding through county taxes. Certainly there is an argument that democrats may be more in favor of this service in that democrats are seemingly always in favor of more government spending but I didsn't want to open that hornets nest.
I used to take an extreme free-speech position as an argument against government sensorship of this sort. Personally, I'd rather not see certain sites but I'd prefer to choose which sites to ignore, on my own.
Having said that, it's important to recognize that the lawmakers who came up with this legislation are trying to do a noble thing, but their efforts are misguided and are doomed to failure, simple because of the mechanism through which they attempt to achieve their goal.
This is our fault. We need ot better educate our representitives with regard to technical issues, understanding of which is of great importance in drafting legislation in recent years. We need to teach our representitives about the technologies they wish to control through legislation or to legislate out of existance, before too many mis-steps are taken.
My reading of their website is that the costs of network operations are covered in county taxes. This is a great way to encourage those who may not have broadband access to make use of the service, since they're paying for it anyway. Granted this is the position of the technically inclined. Those less technically inclined might take umbrage at paying taxes to facilitate a service that they may not choose to use. Of course, the same argument has been made by senior citizens and those without childrand regarding town and county taxes fupporting schools, where they may not have any children in attendance, but since in that case, the arguments have been easily rebuffed, I suppose the arguments against county taxes going toward provision of network access, could be just as easily if not more easily rebuffed.
It's shocking that ICANN expects to be able to hide it's basic financials from members of it's own board of directors.
I was rather amused though by board member Wilson's comment to Auerbach that his request for records had been rejected because he has requested them in Electronic Form; after all. ICANN can't be expected to be particularly technologically savvy. It's not like they do business in a high tech field. In fact, It's a miracle they even have a board member mailing list, from the tone of the petittion.
I remember vividly my discussions with microsoft personel at the Win2K launch even in North Carolina. We were debating the validity of adding data to optional fields in a Kerb ticket which would effectively prevent a ticket issued in a unix realm from beung useful in a Windos Kerb realm, but not the reverse.
After filtering out the marketoids who repeatedly insisted everything was fine, a couple engineers conceded that the implementation was broken. It;s interesting to see Microsoft try and sell this as an extension that others shoupls implement and use. Unfortunately, this is yet another example of the effect of monopoly power.
'We support the standard but if you want to access our systems you need to implement the standard our way'
Slashdot Mirror
It's slightly disturbing that geeks have their own cultural phenomenons. It's even more disturbing that I'm old enough to recall their introduction. What a blast. I'm not usually a fan of games based on movies but this one looks to be interesting, not so much as a game but as a precursor to a vary promising movie. It looks to be a blast.
--CTH
The previous poster needs to take his own advice. The mere fact that the employees of this company have the ability to direct the activity of the installed software constitutes the violation, regardless of if that action is to ask permission of the user or to display a window or any other operation the software would not perform without intervention.
--CTH
That may be true. It remains to be seen. The other issue is access beyond granted privileges. As for the EULA. My agreeing to it, I agreed to install the software, I did not agree to allow their employees manipulate my computer in any way, directly or indirectly. Deployment of any distributed computing application constitutes such manipulation. Granted, the CEO claims permission will be requested before such use is made, so they may be on safe teritory here, but still, they seem to be walking a vary thin line.
A careful reading of the PATRIOT act, passed by congress established that any person who causes damage totaling $5,000 to any computer system or 'exceeding authority' granted on any computer involved in interstate commerce will be considered a terrorist, and be subject to a maximum of 10 years in prison for their first offense (20 for their second offense).
If this software utilized any cycles on my system, it will impact performance causing me expense which will rapidly increase to the $5000 threshold (a cumulative threshold). I granted no access nor privilage to use my systems, to any employee of Brilliant Digital Entertainment Inc. so as soon as any command is issued, affecting the behavior of any software installed on my computers, the employees and officers of Brilliant Digital Entertainment will imediately have become guilty of computer crimes under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act as modified by the USA Patriot act.
--CTH
This is my personal reading of the existing legislation. I am not a lawyer, but this company will be guilty of multiple serious criminal offenses the moment they turn on their network.
Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday April 02, @11:13AM
from the tightening-our-belts dept.
Well, folks, it started as an April fools joke, but we got such a positive response by companies such as Microsoft, eeger to spread FUD throughout the slashdot community, that we have decided to implement this new advertising strategy imediately. Thank you for your cooperation. Any converns should be addressed to me directly.
--CmdrTaco
Microsoft buys up the moon. Bill Gates travels back in time to a time long ago, in a galaxy far far away to seek guidance from his master the emperor on how to properly outfit the moon with plasma weapons and to recruit people with english accents, willing to march around in lock step, wearing silly white plastic helmets.
Not only have they survived while other .com era companies have faltered, they have ratained the good humor and playfullness that was a hallmark of that era.
Go GOOGLE!
AOL has also begun vigorously buying up brain waves. They have a wwbsite where you can sell them your brain waves and recieve compensation. Like blood banks, these brain wave banks are becoming popular with those down on their luck and out of work. After a successful program Launch in Boulder Colorado, the company opened up brain wave banks in major techonlogical centers, hoping to gather the thought patterns of every out-of-work engineer in such places as Silicon Valley, and Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Once contained, this highly charged free thought will be sold to Beistol Mayers/Squibb, for conversion into brain enhancing vitamin suplements.
First is pays to master Python. Make sure you own both of these books all about Python. Mastry of Python will lead to long satisfying enguagements where lerge sums of money may trade hands. Your expertise will serve you well in your travels, as lonely women seek out those who can best satisfy them. Remember, Python is not known for speed, but for flexibility and power, so go fourth young Python masters and spread the wealth.
--CTH
PS: And although some are better endowed than others, the longer the Python the better.
While dependency is a problem, if the states insist on their original proposal, it is much more reasonable to require that it must be simple to substitute one module in place of another, provided the two modules utilize the same interface. Quite simple, this is already possible. The issue then becomes requiring Microsoft to publish the COM object interfaces found throughout Windows, as well as insure the interfaces are not needlesly complex, such that it ramains possible to write a subtitute module for given windows componants.
--CTH
Not only is modular structure required for design by a large development staff, but it is also required in order to facilitate future patching and upgrades.
Also, consider for a moment, the wording used my microsoft atourneys:The question is not the design intent. The question is Is It In Fact Modular? I maintain that it could not have been written in a way that is not modular. While it might be possible to intentionally obfuscate it's mosularity, from a software design and loadbuild perspective, there is no way it could possibly function if it were not modular.
This does not preclude the possibility that from a consumer perspective the system does not appear modular. In order to meet the demands of the ramaining states in the antitrust case, Microsoft may have to replace vertain functions with stubs to facilitate the consumer-side modularity. This should be a trivial matter for a software development organization capable of producing such a vast system.
--CTH
This is at least two weeks old. I'm fairly certain I came across it earleir than that. So, varasign is enguaging in sleezy business practices. Who here is suprised? As a customer of GoDaddy Software, I recieved the email Declan mentioned and I'm happier than ever to be using them rather than Verasign as a registrar. In fact, I tried over a year ago, so get a domain name report from Varasign (a listing of all the domains I have registered with them) since I have domains that were registered going way back before they migrated away fro mtheir email based registration interface. They still have not provided the requested listing. My service request is still open with them. Talking to their custoemr service is like talking to a brick wall (again, who's suprised?).
--CTH
Although I'd say your interpretation of the press release is just a matter of spin, I'd have to agree with your statement regarding slow migrations. Here you make a vary good point. One of the few other examples of software that facilitates this slow migration might be OpenOffice. Interoperability is a dangerous thing though. You have to adopt the ways of the enemy in order to use it effectively. Provide interoperability, but provide greater (and non-compatible) functionality which encourages the user to migrate away from the product to which you originally provided interoperability. The problemwith this is - since we are preaching open standards - we must extend an open standard such that it provides the greater functionality, rather than implement in a closed way. This means the only advantage possible is in a feature development race, where Microsoft has greater resources to draw upon and so will certainly win such contents. Granted, this is a rather gloomy analysis. I hope I'm wrong.
--CTH
I don't blame Microsoft for there being no good OSS alternatives to their product. I blame them for not enabling standard protocols like IMAP, and iCal out-of-the box. Granted, there are a lot of incompetant admins out there that don't realize they can enable these protocols, but in every other arena, Microsoft has catered to the lowest common denomicator in the way of user intelligence, so why not here? The answer is simple. They want their protocol to become the defacto standard (which has pretty much already become) and the creation of software that facilitates this use of non-open standards, where equivelent open standards DO EXIST, is shameful; especially from a company that preaches the virtues of OSS.
--CTH
This looks like a neat pieve of software, but it's outragous that it's needed at all. In this instance, Microsoft has created a new software development business - the business of conforming to 'Microsoft Standards'. It's discraceful that we've let this go on. Companies should not be able to find it profitable to create interfaces into Microsoft's proprietary protocols. Instead, Microsoft should find it unprofitable to ignore standards and go out on their own. While I have no objection to Ximian as a whole, they are facilitating this behavior, by providing interoperability products. Really, though, at it's core this is our fault. Clearly sufficient pressure has not been aplied to Microsoft to force them co conform to the standards that the rest of the software world now uses.
--CTH
In the early betas of Windows 2000 Advanced Server there was a concept called 'Windows Application Refresh' which was esentially a scheduled reboot, which addressed memory leaks and other issues of Microsoft Product Entropy. Thankfully I have not been cursed with having to use it since then. Can anyone tell me if Microsoft is still trying to sell this steaming pile of Cr@p as a standard system administration practice?
--CTH
Well, in the case of your telco, it loooks better on the books not to have capital depreciating, so their move made economic sense, from a business finance perspective.
I have serious doubts about this article though. While they make the single valid point that it costs money to light up a network, there were and still are valid mechanisms for financing that activity. Most of the telcos that have gone under were in debt to the equipment manufacturers like Lucent, Ericson, and Nortel Networks. That is all bad debt now, which causes these manufacturers to cut costs by (among other things) reducing R&D expendatures. This means advances in the industry will not come as fast as they were, but they will still come eventually.
These manufacturers are still willing to finance the lighting of fiber networks, as needed, (in that such activity requires purchase of multiplexing equipment and switches, the sale of which these companies have financed for the past two decades).
When it comes down to it, the industry is returning to a pre-tech-bouble state, not dying completely. The determination of which companies will still be standing will be which are able to adapt quickly enough. Unfortunately, this is made more difficult with a Wall Street backlash against the telecom industry, but such things happen and will be overcome in time.
There will be no shortage because the market is capable of meeting demand. The required financing will become available because it is the only way the manufacturers will stay in business.
In closing, let me just say that I always get my technology news from McPaper because after all they're known for their technical expertise and research prowess.
--CTH
Infortunately, our legislators still do not heed email and faxes to the degree they should. This is probably because such technological marvels facilitate communication to a degree that promotes a deluge of mindless mailings that represent to effort or forethought on the part of the sender.
For this reason, our legislators tend to pay far more attention to writen letters sent by snail mail, not least because mailings are limited to some minor degree by the cost of stamps, and it is currently illegal to impersonate others via postal mail, whereas the same is not true via email.
Faxing your well thought out objections to this bill, might be a good compromise, but I recommend postal mail as the most effective means of communicating with your senators.
If you are unsure of how to contact the senators from your state, Look Here. Also, it would be useful to begin to address this issue in the house as well. The house of representatives has a far more convenient contact mechanism. You can Lookup your Representatives Here.
Remember, do your research, and make coherent arguments. Don't waste the time of our elected oficials. They are not stupid, but simply need to be better informed of the problems with this legislation.
--CTH
I meant technically inclined in the sense of those who are likely to use the service and derive benefit from it's provition and funding through county taxes. Certainly there is an argument that democrats may be more in favor of this service in that democrats are seemingly always in favor of more government spending but I didsn't want to open that hornets nest.
--CTH
I used to take an extreme free-speech position as an argument against government sensorship of this sort. Personally, I'd rather not see certain sites but I'd prefer to choose which sites to ignore, on my own.
Having said that, it's important to recognize that the lawmakers who came up with this legislation are trying to do a noble thing, but their efforts are misguided and are doomed to failure, simple because of the mechanism through which they attempt to achieve their goal.
This is our fault. We need ot better educate our representitives with regard to technical issues, understanding of which is of great importance in drafting legislation in recent years. We need to teach our representitives about the technologies they wish to control through legislation or to legislate out of existance, before too many mis-steps are taken.
--CTH
My reading of their website is that the costs of network operations are covered in county taxes. This is a great way to encourage those who may not have broadband access to make use of the service, since they're paying for it anyway. Granted this is the position of the technically inclined. Those less technically inclined might take umbrage at paying taxes to facilitate a service that they may not choose to use. Of course, the same argument has been made by senior citizens and those without childrand regarding town and county taxes fupporting schools, where they may not have any children in attendance, but since in that case, the arguments have been easily rebuffed, I suppose the arguments against county taxes going toward provision of network access, could be just as easily if not more easily rebuffed.
--CTH
It's shocking that ICANN expects to be able to hide it's basic financials from members of it's own board of directors.
I was rather amused though by board member Wilson's comment to Auerbach that his request for records had been rejected because he has requested them in Electronic Form; after all. ICANN can't be expected to be particularly technologically savvy. It's not like they do business in a high tech field. In fact, It's a miracle they even have a board member mailing list, from the tone of the petittion.
--CTH
I remember vividly my discussions with microsoft personel at the Win2K launch even in North Carolina. We were debating the validity of adding data to optional fields in a Kerb ticket which would effectively prevent a ticket issued in a unix realm from beung useful in a Windos Kerb realm, but not the reverse.
After filtering out the marketoids who repeatedly insisted everything was fine, a couple engineers conceded that the implementation was broken. It;s interesting to see Microsoft try and sell this as an extension that others shoupls implement and use. Unfortunately, this is yet another example of the effect of monopoly power.
'We support the standard but if you want to access our systems you need to implement the standard our way'
What a sham.
--CTH