I understand your position and I think the country we live in today is more likly to do what you mention, but your argument suffers from being a Slippery Slope.
If we are going to want someone or something like the government to do somehting we need to start to appeal to logical understandable arguments which would hold up to a decent level of scrutiny. Becuase in the end it might have to in a court of law.
I mean come on, if as geeks/computer programmers we demand good code, can't we demand good thinking and good logic minus all the hysteria.
To me this doesn't seem like a big deal. This type of information is a marketing pleb's dream. And it looks like information about you personally would not be viewable. Aggregate is the way we as privacy experts should be pushing as a compromise. This is no big deal.
And as someone who has seen how this aggregate data is used with GIS software. Again, I say... Nothing to see, move along.
Ted Tschopp
All sales and selling is based on basic contracts and agreements, which in turn are based on trust. If I don't trust the seller, then as a buyer, I will not buy.
Real has proven itself to be untrustworthy in the past, and they continue to do the very things which caused me to loose my trust in them. So until they offer something that is either so amazing that I don't mind a distrustful seller, or they repair the trust problem, how am I to enter into an financial agreement with them?
How many of you trust or want Real to be selling you music.
This is from the company hides their free player, tricks you into purchasing an upgrade, and has an install process which hijacks everything on your browser.
Even if this was a good bargin I would reject if becuase it is from Real.
The point is that if they were your servers, and they were your customers, and it was your business model you would be screaming bloody murder.
And if you wern't then you need a serious reality check about how the real world operates. This is a company with shareholders who now has to explain why they wouldn't react the way they are to their shareholders.
On another note, does anyone else notice a trend on the games.slashdot.org stories and how many of them suffer from morre thoughtless comments than a normal Slashdot storie?
"We will eventually get to a point where [IT vendors] charge for usage in real time," said Thornton May, a futurist in Biddeford, Maine, and a Computerworld columnist. "If you want electricity on a hot day, you pay more. If you want bandwidth on a busy pipe-traffic day, you pay more."
or perhaps the author didn't read the article.
We are talking about computing power not bandwidth.
This here is proof that the plan is confusing to people.
Ted Tschopp
Tolkien thought that the further you got away from the earth and your ability to live off of it, the more and more you lost your ability to be a creative person. And the less magic you were able to see in the world.
It is a loss of this self suffency which is going to cause the greatest problems in our society. Just think of much of our food today is preprocessed or transported from someplace else.
What happens when the whole system breaks down. (When was the last time a complex system like the ones we have today didn't break down).
I think it's our mentatility to think about these problems becuase we get to think about them every day when it comes to computer systems.
I suspose I could ramble on about the philosophy and religious implications about subcreation and why good subcreators worry about this, but I think that the skills, determination, dedication, and ego that it takes to be a good programmer/sys admin/hacker are the same skills which cause us to worry about some of the more basic things in real life.
I think most people who are responding do not get the scope of the problem in the interprise.
I work for a rather large (unnamed company) which has one of the largest data centers in California (nope not that company, you would be suprised who we are).
In any event our intranet consists of over 150,000 flat HTML pages. We have over 2000 web servers running anything from NT4 to Unix to our Mainfraims hosting web services to get data out of them.
Now look at the problem of having a couple dozen physical locations where employees work. We also have 2 physical mirrors of all our data in 2 different locations.
Now here is the problem. The guy who works in the company cafateria wants to update his webpage which has the menu for what they are selling at the cafateria in building X.
He has no idea on how to use any technical tools, but the man cooks like there is no tomorrow. So don't ask him to wack away at HTML. Do not ask him to use CVS. Do not ask him to start a script. He wants something like a word processor to go in and edit his webpage.
Now this presents another whole new problem. How do the systems administrators know Mr. Chef is allowed in. How do we do rights management accross all our servers. We have everything from Mainframes to desktops, to NT to Windows 2003 to several flavors of *nix.
Now how does the system get back ahold of Mr. Chef when he doesn't update his webpage? There is no use in having information about a cafateria menu which is 2 weeks old? How does the system know that the data is stale, and how do we get Mr. Chef to come back and update his website. There needs to be some type of self governing mechinism.
So I don't think CVS or whatever will solve this problem. Interprise CMS problems are of the non-trivial type. Our company has spent the last year or so studying the problem, and will problably spend another year or so before we actually choose the direction we are going. And to be honest we are probably looking at a $50+ million investment to roll out our CMS system. How's that for non-trivial?
The problem can also be laid at the feet of the Copy protection software/hardware companies which see Hollywood an opportunity to sell their product into a new market.
They have had a devil of a time trying to sell other software companies for the last 10ish years on the idea, but now they have a new market open and this market isn't as technically sauvey as the Software Industry was back in the late 80's early 90's when we all decided the copy protection wars were not feasible.
That we as a socity seem to have lost our ability to tell if something is good or worth saving. Right now we should be asking ourselves the question, should we save people's life to a hard drive?
Who would use this information, how would this information be used. Answers to this question can be fun theroetical problems, but what world will we live in where we can go back and replay a conversation we had when we were 14 years old when we are 50.
It's things like this which make me ask, when is this insane rat race going to end?
Ted Tschopp
Well, the interesting thing to study about each case is to look at public opinion and see what it was before and after each of these cases. You will see that the public eventually agreed with the Court. And our societies ideas of right and wrong were altered.
But I will always argue that the law as it is written in the book is our collective socieities attempt to codify what we currently believe the univeral law to be. Sadly as we now know, that understanding can be wrong. Or if not wrong at least we know it can change, so by defaut either the first position must be wrong and the second right (hopefully) or perhaps the first one is correct and the second position is wrong (Sadly today this is mosty what happens).
Someday it is my hope that medical evidence and logic will prevail and murder will be called murder.
It's simple we live in a country where right and wrong are being defined by a group elite educated people who interpert the laws. The head of this group is the Supreme Court.
Granted its not as simple as I put it there, but you see why I would state this.
Most agree that Rape and Murder are Bad. But, all would aree that there is something which is good and something which is bad, they might disagree on the details. But right and wrong are something which is universal.
I would therefore say that the Law is Universal. Our codification of the Law is something which is incomplete and incorrect, but we try to make our governmental laws conform to the universal understanding of right and wrong.
I think we can all agree that this codification of the Law is always flawed, and it our jobs as good citizens to argue, fight, and work towards conforming our governments laws towards these universal.
The Law, in general, is a tool to create justice. Use it as such, to do otherwise is injust. Do not use the law to create wealth. Do not use the law to create righteousness. Neither should the law be used to allow lawlessness or injustice. The law doesn't define what is right it is a tool to set the wrongs right.
The problem with our society is that we think that the law defines the boundries of right and wrong behaviour. It isn't. And it never will.
Then again I learned how to program on a computer with only 64k and a processor that could have been rated in single digit megahertz. As opposed to the hundreds and thousands which are nor available.
I also remember my first hard drive had 10mb on it and I paid $1500 for it.
In the United States if you demand that a retailer sell something at a certain price, or you try to force the issue, you can go to jail.
That's why it called the manufactureres Suggested Retail Price or MSRP. GW is the manufacturer, they sell to distributers who sell to retailers, who sell to the public.
The problem is that GW doesn't like the fact that the mini's they make for $.25 and are sold to the distributer for $2.00 are being sold by internet retailers for $2.25 +S/H. Becuase at a GW owned store and at most Brick and Mortor stores, they go for $6.00.
I got free music when I purchased my car.
I got a radio.... Big deal...
When someone dies, they usually start to loose grip with reality, It's sad actually.
Slashdot Mirror
I understand your position and I think the country we live in today is more likly to do what you mention, but your argument suffers from being a Slippery Slope.
If we are going to want someone or something like the government to do somehting we need to start to appeal to logical understandable arguments which would hold up to a decent level of scrutiny. Becuase in the end it might have to in a court of law.
I mean come on, if as geeks/computer programmers we demand good code, can't we demand good thinking and good logic minus all the hysteria.
Ted Tschopp
To me this doesn't seem like a big deal. This type of information is a marketing pleb's dream. And it looks like information about you personally would not be viewable. Aggregate is the way we as privacy experts should be pushing as a compromise. This is no big deal. And as someone who has seen how this aggregate data is used with GIS software. Again, I say... Nothing to see, move along. Ted Tschopp
All sales and selling is based on basic contracts and agreements, which in turn are based on trust. If I don't trust the seller, then as a buyer, I will not buy.
Real has proven itself to be untrustworthy in the past, and they continue to do the very things which caused me to loose my trust in them. So until they offer something that is either so amazing that I don't mind a distrustful seller, or they repair the trust problem, how am I to enter into an financial agreement with them?
Ted
How many of you trust or want Real to be selling you music.
This is from the company hides their free player, tricks you into purchasing an upgrade, and has an install process which hijacks everything on your browser.
Even if this was a good bargin I would reject if becuase it is from Real.
Ted Tschopp
It's a business.
The point is that if they were your servers, and they were your customers, and it was your business model you would be screaming bloody murder.
And if you wern't then you need a serious reality check about how the real world operates. This is a company with shareholders who now has to explain why they wouldn't react the way they are to their shareholders.
On another note, does anyone else notice a trend on the games.slashdot.org stories and how many of them suffer from morre thoughtless comments than a normal Slashdot storie?
Ted Tschopp
There was one always parked in Old Town Pasadena. I loved seeing that thing sitting there. Always wanted to have one as well.
Oh well, time for another dream.
Ted
That was the sound of the 800lb gorilla in the corner getting smacked upside the head. Ted Tschopp
Tolkien thought that the further you got away from the earth and your ability to live off of it, the more and more you lost your ability to be a creative person. And the less magic you were able to see in the world.
It is a loss of this self suffency which is going to cause the greatest problems in our society. Just think of much of our food today is preprocessed or transported from someplace else.
What happens when the whole system breaks down. (When was the last time a complex system like the ones we have today didn't break down).
I think it's our mentatility to think about these problems becuase we get to think about them every day when it comes to computer systems.
I suspose I could ramble on about the philosophy and religious implications about subcreation and why good subcreators worry about this, but I think that the skills, determination, dedication, and ego that it takes to be a good programmer/sys admin/hacker are the same skills which cause us to worry about some of the more basic things in real life.
Ted Tschopp
I will never do that. I mean the idea is funny, but give these guys yet another couple ways to get ahold of you and abuse you. I DON'T THINK SO!
Ted
Nope not carrier Solutions, that is just one branch of the company. Just a small one.
I think most people who are responding do not get the scope of the problem in the interprise.
I work for a rather large (unnamed company) which has one of the largest data centers in California (nope not that company, you would be suprised who we are).
In any event our intranet consists of over 150,000 flat HTML pages. We have over 2000 web servers running anything from NT4 to Unix to our Mainfraims hosting web services to get data out of them.
Now look at the problem of having a couple dozen physical locations where employees work. We also have 2 physical mirrors of all our data in 2 different locations.
Now here is the problem. The guy who works in the company cafateria wants to update his webpage which has the menu for what they are selling at the cafateria in building X.
He has no idea on how to use any technical tools, but the man cooks like there is no tomorrow. So don't ask him to wack away at HTML. Do not ask him to use CVS. Do not ask him to start a script. He wants something like a word processor to go in and edit his webpage.
Now this presents another whole new problem. How do the systems administrators know Mr. Chef is allowed in. How do we do rights management accross all our servers. We have everything from Mainframes to desktops, to NT to Windows 2003 to several flavors of *nix.
Now how does the system get back ahold of Mr. Chef when he doesn't update his webpage? There is no use in having information about a cafateria menu which is 2 weeks old? How does the system know that the data is stale, and how do we get Mr. Chef to come back and update his website. There needs to be some type of self governing mechinism.
So I don't think CVS or whatever will solve this problem. Interprise CMS problems are of the non-trivial type. Our company has spent the last year or so studying the problem, and will problably spend another year or so before we actually choose the direction we are going. And to be honest we are probably looking at a $50+ million investment to roll out our CMS system. How's that for non-trivial?
Ted Tschopp
When was the last time the news got the story 100% correct? Ted Tschopp
The problem can also be laid at the feet of the Copy protection software/hardware companies which see Hollywood an opportunity to sell their product into a new market.
They have had a devil of a time trying to sell other software companies for the last 10ish years on the idea, but now they have a new market open and this market isn't as technically sauvey as the Software Industry was back in the late 80's early 90's when we all decided the copy protection wars were not feasible.
Ted Tschopp
I don't think you know what you are talking about.
There are several amazing places to get Pizza in Pasadena.
Ted
That we as a socity seem to have lost our ability to tell if something is good or worth saving. Right now we should be asking ourselves the question, should we save people's life to a hard drive? Who would use this information, how would this information be used. Answers to this question can be fun theroetical problems, but what world will we live in where we can go back and replay a conversation we had when we were 14 years old when we are 50. It's things like this which make me ask, when is this insane rat race going to end? Ted Tschopp
That was me just me ranting. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Ted Tschopp
Well, the interesting thing to study about each case is to look at public opinion and see what it was before and after each of these cases. You will see that the public eventually agreed with the Court. And our societies ideas of right and wrong were altered.
But I will always argue that the law as it is written in the book is our collective socieities attempt to codify what we currently believe the univeral law to be. Sadly as we now know, that understanding can be wrong. Or if not wrong at least we know it can change, so by defaut either the first position must be wrong and the second right (hopefully) or perhaps the first one is correct and the second position is wrong (Sadly today this is mosty what happens).
Someday it is my hope that medical evidence and logic will prevail and murder will be called murder.
Ted Tschopp
It's simple we live in a country where right and wrong are being defined by a group elite educated people who interpert the laws. The head of this group is the Supreme Court.
Granted its not as simple as I put it there, but you see why I would state this.
Ted Tschopp
Most agree that Rape and Murder are Bad. But, all would aree that there is something which is good and something which is bad, they might disagree on the details. But right and wrong are something which is universal.
I would therefore say that the Law is Universal. Our codification of the Law is something which is incomplete and incorrect, but we try to make our governmental laws conform to the universal understanding of right and wrong.
I think we can all agree that this codification of the Law is always flawed, and it our jobs as good citizens to argue, fight, and work towards conforming our governments laws towards these universal.
Ted
The Law, in general, is a tool to create justice. Use it as such, to do otherwise is injust. Do not use the law to create wealth. Do not use the law to create righteousness. Neither should the law be used to allow lawlessness or injustice. The law doesn't define what is right it is a tool to set the wrongs right.
The problem with our society is that we think that the law defines the boundries of right and wrong behaviour. It isn't. And it never will.
Ted Tschopp
Yeah, you are right... 16MB sucks... NOT!
Then again I learned how to program on a computer with only 64k and a processor that could have been rated in single digit megahertz. As opposed to the hundreds and thousands which are nor available.
I also remember my first hard drive had 10mb on it and I paid $1500 for it.
Anyway, enough with the 'good ol days'.
In the United States if you demand that a retailer sell something at a certain price, or you try to force the issue, you can go to jail.
That's why it called the manufactureres Suggested Retail Price or MSRP. GW is the manufacturer, they sell to distributers who sell to retailers, who sell to the public.
The problem is that GW doesn't like the fact that the mini's they make for $.25 and are sold to the distributer for $2.00 are being sold by internet retailers for $2.25 +S/H. Becuase at a GW owned store and at most Brick and Mortor stores, they go for $6.00.
Ted Tschopp
What % of the top requested files on a given P2P network are in the 100-n%?
In other words, how about this. Get rid of all mp3 files on a P2P network which are played on the Radio.
Ted
I got free music when I purchased my car. I got a radio.... Big deal... When someone dies, they usually start to loose grip with reality, It's sad actually.