The Macrovision thing is a somewhat different thing, though. Macrovision was applied to the software, not the hardware. You have no choice but to buy Macrovision-enabled software, because you can only get the video from one source (copyright). However, hardware is different. You can get hardware from more than one source, so no one should (in theory) be able to force you to buy copy-protection-enabled hardware.
Of course, if someone comes up with a way to make copy-protection-enabled software only play on copy-protection-enabled hardware, then you've got a problem (it was tried with dvd's and almost worked). But with the current generation of dvd's and cd's, that isn't completely possible. -----------
C'mon - I'm not just repeating a mantra. I have no illusions that markets are completely and purely free. Of course they are not. But neither are they utterly controlled and directed by government or "corporate forces." My point is that in this case, market forces will probably produce the desired result. -----------
I don't worry too much about this. It's not like the government is trying to force hardware manufacturers to do this. If Intel starts making chips that have copyright protection built-in, it only opens up a market to a chip manufacturer that won't. And hard drives? I find it unlikely that IBM, Seagate, Maxtor, Fujitsu, and all others would all uniformly adopt copy-protection technology in the competitive storage market, when that technology is a potential turn-off to the consumer.
After all, it's not the RIAA or MPAA that's buying the hardware, but consumers. As long as consumers are informed about what they are buying, they'll choose better. So the best defense is information. Don't allow these "improvements" to slip quietly in. When they do, make sure people know. And watch them gather dust on the shelf. The free market is the best way to send this to the DIVX Dustbin of History. -----------
Teenspoitation movies (bring it on, save the last dance, other lame cheerleader/high school T&A movies)
Violent action, "dinosaur hero" movies (shaft, gladiator)
Fantasy/Sci-fi/Techie movies (matrix, crouching tiger)
OK Jon, there has never been just one type of movie. And there aren't just three, contrary to your article. What about dramas? There's about a dozen different genres, and as many types of heroes, in dramatic films alone.
By your reasoning, you might as well say that with the release of "The Brothers" that movies with caucasian leads is "antiquated". The simple truth is that they've got different markets. They can coexist and flourish quite will independently. Maybe within the confines of the people you associate with, the "outated brawny superhero" is passe, but there are plumbers and salesmen and housewives and retirees out there, not just 24 year-old dot commers. And they must have missed the newsflash you saw about the old "solving problems through violence" hero, because Segal and everyone else in that movie are laughing all the way to the bank.
Oh, and the technology hero? He's not that new anyway. The first techie hero was Noah. Think about it.
Jon, this is tiresome. You take one small trend in one demographic in the U.S. over a short period of time (i.e., the popularity of a nerdy hero -- which, by the way is not all that new -- Wargames, anyone?) and extrapolate it to suddenly cover global society in perpetuity.
-----------
Hey, don't limit yourself to lecturing. If you want people to get the feel for the history of computing, have them experience it. Get yourself some vintage hardware or some emulators. Actually have the students write programs on punch cards. Have them struggle against the 3583 bytes total memory of a VIC-20. Have them flipping switches on a little box with lights and nothing else. Have them write in assembler, or better, machine language. Nothing too complicated, of course, but then they will appreciate the real progress of computers -- "You mean somebody actually worked like this every day for years?" -----------
I remember a different time, not so long ago, when all science was Slide Rule Science. And my grandaddy told me of a day when all science was Abacus Science. -----------
Features: The Open-Source Master Race
Posted by JonKatz on Friday March 7, @09:12AM
from the I'm-still-alive-and-ranting-dept.
All hail the race of geeks created through open-source BioTech! This new paradigm-shifting race of uber-geeks has blown the doors off our current mind-framework of what we thought humans were capable of... (note from future- this article goes on for another 4200 words, basically saying that the world will be radically changed by biotech-made people who pretty much can't do anything else but play video games 30% better than non-biotech people. I'd post it all, but, you know, read one Katz article, you've read them all...) -----------
A couple of points
1. Bandwidth can be a problem, yes. But it is more the ability of the human mind to multithread than the technology bandwidth. Typically, you should only have one conversation thread going on a channel at a time. If you want to cause some major chaos, start up a new thread while another one is going on. In fact, the limiting factor is the single-threaded nature because the human mind would not be able to handle more reliably. So you can't even get close to maxing the radio bandwidth before you max out brain bandwidth.
2. Usually, the real problem is enough hardware to stay on all the radio networks that you needed to listen/communicate on. When I was a platoon leader in an Armored Personnel Carrier (APC), I had three radios going, each monitoring a different net. And I could have used a couple more -- I would still be switching back and forth between nets.
3. The frequency hopping is not controlled by a central server. Basically, one radio sends out a synchronization signal at the beginning, and it is the individual radio's responsiblity to keep itself sync'ed with the others' hopping. There isn't all this P2P traffic keeping everyone together. Radios "fall off" sometimes because their clocks are a bit off. But, there is no reason that thousands or millions of radios couldn't keep up. The limiting factor there is range. You really don't have much use for thousands of radios all within SINCGARS range of each other -- it'd be a pretty densely packed area.
So yes, your points are valid in theory, but the human and logistical factors impose limits way before the technological limits kick in. You could "napter-ize" the radio solution and you still couldn't jam more traffic onto a single net, because it would confuse the users of the net. -----------
10. Benny Hill
9. France
8. missing "u" from word "colour"
7. Scientology
6. Recipes for edible food
5. Anything about the Falkland War
4. Prior art on hyperlinking
3. Gratuitous use of word "knickers"
2. American Revolution (will be changed to "colonial rebellion")
1. Vogon Poetry
Dear friendilees
It is most saddifying to enstop electrical males toward personas and others to who I have been sending to. Many regretabilities,
Predisent Bush -----------
10. Hey, some guy on the moon paid me 50 bucks to bring this back
9. This isn't my suitcase!
8. I brought this moon rock with me on the trip out
7. You can have half if you let me go
6. No, no, this is a piece of the Berlin Wall
5. Hey, aren't you going to check Armstrong?
4. Lunar customs didn't have a problem with it!
3. This is a paperweight - didn't you see the pictures of all that stuff flying around the capsule?
2. What's the tax on a rock anyway?
1. This is just moon cheese - take a bite!
-----------
...know even more, probably. They see not just a once-every-ten-years survey, but they know everywhere you shop (credit card) or every product you buy (supermarket -- that's what they use those "preferred shopper" discount cards for). Think of ten years of purchase records. You could probably figure out everything that goes on in a household. I don't know what you would get from being able to predict menstrual cycles of soccer moms in medium-to-large sized suburbs, but someone would find a way to exploit that info for $$$. -----------
...wouldn't computer books be the first to go? Yet if you've been to any large chain bookstore lately, the computer section is huge. Computer books are selling more than ever. If you can't get diehard techies to replace their books, you ain't gonna get Oprah's book club to go e-book only. -----------
The natural evolution of this...
on
License to Sit
·
· Score: 3
...is the coming generation of pay toilets - OUCH! -----------
What else can you do with deadbeats?
on
DSL Woes
·
· Score: 5
Anyone who has had people owe them money knows how to spot a deadbeat. Covad knows their customers. I would not be surprised if most of the customers that Covad turned off were just trying to stall with "payment plan" negotiations they mentioned in the article.
If a customer is going to file bankruptcy in a few months, then if you wait to turn them off until then, you'll never see a dime. If you turn them off while they still need the service, then you stand a reasonable chance of collecting *something*. What Covad did is just good sense dealing with bad customers. Deadbeats in translucent-plastic, high-tech decor and stylish casualwear are still deadbeats. Cut 'em off. -----------
If you want to act like Nick Burns, The Company Computer Guy, then go ahead and be "frustrated". There is a lot more to working in the IT profession than just pure technical ability. IT is a service/support function in business. That means that you exist for the sake of other people. If you cannot communicate them properly, you cannot provide them what they need. Likewise, managing projects is a human activity. Most people who are excellent at technical things are much slower learners at interpersonal skills, and are very likely to discount them as being important, especially compared to "hard" skills.
You may be the tech guru that you think you are, but your post shows that you have a lack of understanding of the people to whom you are responsible. You cannot see it from their point of view -- in your mind, they must conform to you. Any salesman worth his salt will tell you that you will not sell vacuum cleaner one with that attitude. And you're trying to sell yourself -- that is what this is about, really. People are not computer programs. -----------
That will only work for e-mail YOU send. The JavaScript code will still be in the message, and when Joe Recipient gets the message, he won't have JavaScript turned off, so his reply/forward will be sent to the person who bugged the e-mail -- and if your message is quoted in the reply/forward, yours is sent too. So unless you can guarantee that every recipient of the message has JavaScript turned off, and everyone they send it too has it turned off, and so on, your privacy is at risk. It's like the reverse of a spread of a disease. Anyone downstream can affect the upstream people. -----------
A game, often, has it's point to decide a "winner" vs. a "loser". Therefore it is zero sum by definition -- there can be only one winner (brr-Highlander flashback). The things that are least zero-sum are creative. Some "party" games are not really zero-sum-centric becuase they the real point is to create a fun atmosphere, that benefits both "winners" and "losers"
Also, anyone who truly likes to play sports will tell you that winning is the icing on the cake. The thrill of competition, the exercise, the fun, the comraderie, these are all the best parts of sports. Losing when you poured your heart into it is more satisfying than winning casually. -----------
What? You mean someone has the gall to want to keep people from performing one of the most hazardous, unpleasant, life-shortening jobs ever dreamed up? Doesn't everyone have the right to not have some machine take their backbreaking, coal-dust-breathing job? I bet next those monsters will try to take away elephant-dung shoveling! I mean, didn't we learn anything from the tragedy of the Pony Express? -----------
There are a great many forces pulling the internet in different directions. Businesses, large and small, wanting to make the internet safe for their customers and their intellectual property, ordinary users who want access to information but want their privacy, hackers (good and bad) exploring the limits of what the internet can do, and governments charged with keeping the laws of their countries trying to maintain those laws within the internet.
Who will be able to exercise control over the internet? Do you think it can be regulated? Do you think that technologies will be put in place to more easily track people on the internet? Will government be able to exercise the nearly unrestrained freedom to monitor communication that it desires? Do you feel that there is a atmosphere of paranoia about hackers? -----------
Most employees understand that their privacy at work is not what they get at home. But the problem is that they do not know what is being monitored and what is not. If you review phone logs periodically, *say so*. If you do random nighttime inspections of desks and file cabinets, *say so*. If you have cameras in the bathrooms to find coke addicts, *say so*. Sometimes I think that employers get all excited about catching people "red-handed" that they forget that the real reason for these kind of measures is to *prevent* them. There are a few advantages to full disclosure:
1. Trust. Employees work better when uncertainty is at a minimum.
2. Self-policing. If you have a filter which logs every url I hit on the web, and flags inappropriate ones, I'm simply not going to go to those sites, which is the whole point in the first place.
3. Voluntary removal. Employees who can't/won't live with the restrictions may simply quit once they see the handwriting on the wall.
4. Early correction. If you don't disclose that you are logging all web activity, and you approach an employee who goes to an xxx site, suddenly everyone feels violated (it will get out quickly), starts worrying about what they were doing when they thought they were alone and you have a real morale and maybe legal problem. If you disclose what you are doing, then you can have the guy's boss say "hey, you know this stuff is logged, knock it off" and it isn't a huge deal.
-----------
Slashdot Mirror
"Hey, it looks like booster rocket #4 made $500 worth of calls to a 900 line..."
-----------
The Macrovision thing is a somewhat different thing, though. Macrovision was applied to the software, not the hardware. You have no choice but to buy Macrovision-enabled software, because you can only get the video from one source (copyright). However, hardware is different. You can get hardware from more than one source, so no one should (in theory) be able to force you to buy copy-protection-enabled hardware.
Of course, if someone comes up with a way to make copy-protection-enabled software only play on copy-protection-enabled hardware, then you've got a problem (it was tried with dvd's and almost worked). But with the current generation of dvd's and cd's, that isn't completely possible.
-----------
C'mon - I'm not just repeating a mantra. I have no illusions that markets are completely and purely free. Of course they are not. But neither are they utterly controlled and directed by government or "corporate forces." My point is that in this case, market forces will probably produce the desired result.
-----------
I don't worry too much about this. It's not like the government is trying to force hardware manufacturers to do this. If Intel starts making chips that have copyright protection built-in, it only opens up a market to a chip manufacturer that won't. And hard drives? I find it unlikely that IBM, Seagate, Maxtor, Fujitsu, and all others would all uniformly adopt copy-protection technology in the competitive storage market, when that technology is a potential turn-off to the consumer.
After all, it's not the RIAA or MPAA that's buying the hardware, but consumers. As long as consumers are informed about what they are buying, they'll choose better. So the best defense is information. Don't allow these "improvements" to slip quietly in. When they do, make sure people know. And watch them gather dust on the shelf. The free market is the best way to send this to the DIVX Dustbin of History.
-----------
Teenspoitation movies (bring it on, save the last dance, other lame cheerleader/high school T&A movies)
Violent action, "dinosaur hero" movies (shaft, gladiator)
Fantasy/Sci-fi/Techie movies (matrix, crouching tiger)
OK Jon, there has never been just one type of movie. And there aren't just three, contrary to your article. What about dramas? There's about a dozen different genres, and as many types of heroes, in dramatic films alone.
By your reasoning, you might as well say that with the release of "The Brothers" that movies with caucasian leads is "antiquated". The simple truth is that they've got different markets. They can coexist and flourish quite will independently. Maybe within the confines of the people you associate with, the "outated brawny superhero" is passe, but there are plumbers and salesmen and housewives and retirees out there, not just 24 year-old dot commers. And they must have missed the newsflash you saw about the old "solving problems through violence" hero, because Segal and everyone else in that movie are laughing all the way to the bank.
Oh, and the technology hero? He's not that new anyway. The first techie hero was Noah. Think about it.
Jon, this is tiresome. You take one small trend in one demographic in the U.S. over a short period of time (i.e., the popularity of a nerdy hero -- which, by the way is not all that new -- Wargames, anyone?) and extrapolate it to suddenly cover global society in perpetuity.
-----------
Hey, don't limit yourself to lecturing. If you want people to get the feel for the history of computing, have them experience it. Get yourself some vintage hardware or some emulators. Actually have the students write programs on punch cards. Have them struggle against the 3583 bytes total memory of a VIC-20. Have them flipping switches on a little box with lights and nothing else. Have them write in assembler, or better, machine language. Nothing too complicated, of course, but then they will appreciate the real progress of computers -- "You mean somebody actually worked like this every day for years?"
-----------
I remember a different time, not so long ago, when all science was Slide Rule Science. And my grandaddy told me of a day when all science was Abacus Science.
-----------
Features: The Open-Source Master Race
Posted by JonKatz on Friday March 7, @09:12AM from the I'm-still-alive-and-ranting-dept.
All hail the race of geeks created through open-source BioTech! This new paradigm-shifting race of uber-geeks has blown the doors off our current mind-framework of what we thought humans were capable of...
(note from future- this article goes on for another 4200 words, basically saying that the world will be radically changed by biotech-made people who pretty much can't do anything else but play video games 30% better than non-biotech people. I'd post it all, but, you know, read one Katz article, you've read them all...)
-----------
A couple of points
1. Bandwidth can be a problem, yes. But it is more the ability of the human mind to multithread than the technology bandwidth. Typically, you should only have one conversation thread going on a channel at a time. If you want to cause some major chaos, start up a new thread while another one is going on. In fact, the limiting factor is the single-threaded nature because the human mind would not be able to handle more reliably. So you can't even get close to maxing the radio bandwidth before you max out brain bandwidth.
2. Usually, the real problem is enough hardware to stay on all the radio networks that you needed to listen/communicate on. When I was a platoon leader in an Armored Personnel Carrier (APC), I had three radios going, each monitoring a different net. And I could have used a couple more -- I would still be switching back and forth between nets.
3. The frequency hopping is not controlled by a central server. Basically, one radio sends out a synchronization signal at the beginning, and it is the individual radio's responsiblity to keep itself sync'ed with the others' hopping. There isn't all this P2P traffic keeping everyone together. Radios "fall off" sometimes because their clocks are a bit off. But, there is no reason that thousands or millions of radios couldn't keep up. The limiting factor there is range. You really don't have much use for thousands of radios all within SINCGARS range of each other -- it'd be a pretty densely packed area.
So yes, your points are valid in theory, but the human and logistical factors impose limits way before the technological limits kick in. You could "napter-ize" the radio solution and you still couldn't jam more traffic onto a single net, because it would confuse the users of the net.
-----------
10. WeAreGivingAway20DollarBills.com
9. Hey We're A Linux Company Too, Inc.
8. GourmetMustardAndConcreteSupply.com
7. JustRidingTheNasdaq.com
6. VentureCapitalistsAreSuckers.com
5. aWholeBunchOfBannerAdsAndNothingElse.com
4. Virtual Sushi
3. WeHaveNoBiznessPlan.com
2. Refurbished Porno Warehouse
1. CopyOfSlashdot.com
-----------
10. Benny Hill
9. France
8. missing "u" from word "colour"
7. Scientology
6. Recipes for edible food
5. Anything about the Falkland War
4. Prior art on hyperlinking
3. Gratuitous use of word "knickers"
2. American Revolution (will be changed to "colonial rebellion")
1. Vogon Poetry
-----------
It should be un-moderated, like, say, Slashdo- oh, never mind...
-----------
Dear friendilees
It is most saddifying to enstop electrical males toward personas and others to who I have been sending to. Many regretabilities,
Predisent Bush
-----------
10. Hey, some guy on the moon paid me 50 bucks to bring this back 9. This isn't my suitcase! 8. I brought this moon rock with me on the trip out 7. You can have half if you let me go 6. No, no, this is a piece of the Berlin Wall 5. Hey, aren't you going to check Armstrong? 4. Lunar customs didn't have a problem with it! 3. This is a paperweight - didn't you see the pictures of all that stuff flying around the capsule? 2. What's the tax on a rock anyway? 1. This is just moon cheese - take a bite!
-----------
...know even more, probably. They see not just a once-every-ten-years survey, but they know everywhere you shop (credit card) or every product you buy (supermarket -- that's what they use those "preferred shopper" discount cards for). Think of ten years of purchase records. You could probably figure out everything that goes on in a household. I don't know what you would get from being able to predict menstrual cycles of soccer moms in medium-to-large sized suburbs, but someone would find a way to exploit that info for $$$.
-----------
...wouldn't computer books be the first to go? Yet if you've been to any large chain bookstore lately, the computer section is huge. Computer books are selling more than ever. If you can't get diehard techies to replace their books, you ain't gonna get Oprah's book club to go e-book only.
-----------
...is the coming generation of pay toilets - OUCH!
-----------
Anyone who has had people owe them money knows how to spot a deadbeat. Covad knows their customers. I would not be surprised if most of the customers that Covad turned off were just trying to stall with "payment plan" negotiations they mentioned in the article.
If a customer is going to file bankruptcy in a few months, then if you wait to turn them off until then, you'll never see a dime. If you turn them off while they still need the service, then you stand a reasonable chance of collecting *something*. What Covad did is just good sense dealing with bad customers. Deadbeats in translucent-plastic, high-tech decor and stylish casualwear are still deadbeats. Cut 'em off.
-----------
If you want to act like Nick Burns, The Company Computer Guy, then go ahead and be "frustrated". There is a lot more to working in the IT profession than just pure technical ability. IT is a service/support function in business. That means that you exist for the sake of other people. If you cannot communicate them properly, you cannot provide them what they need. Likewise, managing projects is a human activity. Most people who are excellent at technical things are much slower learners at interpersonal skills, and are very likely to discount them as being important, especially compared to "hard" skills.
You may be the tech guru that you think you are, but your post shows that you have a lack of understanding of the people to whom you are responsible. You cannot see it from their point of view -- in your mind, they must conform to you. Any salesman worth his salt will tell you that you will not sell vacuum cleaner one with that attitude. And you're trying to sell yourself -- that is what this is about, really. People are not computer programs.
-----------
That will only work for e-mail YOU send. The JavaScript code will still be in the message, and when Joe Recipient gets the message, he won't have JavaScript turned off, so his reply/forward will be sent to the person who bugged the e-mail -- and if your message is quoted in the reply/forward, yours is sent too. So unless you can guarantee that every recipient of the message has JavaScript turned off, and everyone they send it too has it turned off, and so on, your privacy is at risk. It's like the reverse of a spread of a disease. Anyone downstream can affect the upstream people.
-----------
A game, often, has it's point to decide a "winner" vs. a "loser". Therefore it is zero sum by definition -- there can be only one winner (brr-Highlander flashback). The things that are least zero-sum are creative. Some "party" games are not really zero-sum-centric becuase they the real point is to create a fun atmosphere, that benefits both "winners" and "losers"
Also, anyone who truly likes to play sports will tell you that winning is the icing on the cake. The thrill of competition, the exercise, the fun, the comraderie, these are all the best parts of sports. Losing when you poured your heart into it is more satisfying than winning casually.
-----------
What? You mean someone has the gall to want to keep people from performing one of the most hazardous, unpleasant, life-shortening jobs ever dreamed up? Doesn't everyone have the right to not have some machine take their backbreaking, coal-dust-breathing job? I bet next those monsters will try to take away elephant-dung shoveling! I mean, didn't we learn anything from the tragedy of the Pony Express?
-----------
You can read the story Supertoys Last All Summer Long At:u pe rtoys.html
http://members.xoom.it/nessuno2001/kubrick/ai/s
-----------
There are a great many forces pulling the internet in different directions. Businesses, large and small, wanting to make the internet safe for their customers and their intellectual property, ordinary users who want access to information but want their privacy, hackers (good and bad) exploring the limits of what the internet can do, and governments charged with keeping the laws of their countries trying to maintain those laws within the internet.
Who will be able to exercise control over the internet? Do you think it can be regulated? Do you think that technologies will be put in place to more easily track people on the internet? Will government be able to exercise the nearly unrestrained freedom to monitor communication that it desires? Do you feel that there is a atmosphere of paranoia about hackers?
-----------
Most employees understand that their privacy at work is not what they get at home. But the problem is that they do not know what is being monitored and what is not. If you review phone logs periodically, *say so*. If you do random nighttime inspections of desks and file cabinets, *say so*. If you have cameras in the bathrooms to find coke addicts, *say so*. Sometimes I think that employers get all excited about catching people "red-handed" that they forget that the real reason for these kind of measures is to *prevent* them. There are a few advantages to full disclosure:
1. Trust. Employees work better when uncertainty is at a minimum.
2. Self-policing. If you have a filter which logs every url I hit on the web, and flags inappropriate ones, I'm simply not going to go to those sites, which is the whole point in the first place.
3. Voluntary removal. Employees who can't/won't live with the restrictions may simply quit once they see the handwriting on the wall.
4. Early correction. If you don't disclose that you are logging all web activity, and you approach an employee who goes to an xxx site, suddenly everyone feels violated (it will get out quickly), starts worrying about what they were doing when they thought they were alone and you have a real morale and maybe legal problem. If you disclose what you are doing, then you can have the guy's boss say "hey, you know this stuff is logged, knock it off" and it isn't a huge deal.
-----------