"At the end of the day ISPs are not law enforcement agencies so they should not have to pay for it all," [a spokesman for the Internet Service Providers' Association ] said.
And, of course, they won't need to as they'll merely pass the savings (sic) to their customers. While politicians might be willing to merely call this the 'cost of doing business in the age of terrorism' I call it yet another stab into the heart of freedom and liberty.
I'm sorry, but what did the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people mean again?
Why not look up to those who do good works every day without worrying about bottom lines or shareholder value. Do we really want our business leaders to also be our moral leaders?
The LUGs have been supplanted by forums for users. Why wait until a LUG meeting to ask a question or trouble shoot a problem when you can ask it on your distribution's forums and get a knowledgeable answer in a fairly reasonable time period.
I agree that for many problems you can merely google the answer or find a forum to get an answer or three, but for the more detailed problems where else can you go to get an entire room full of knowledgeable people focused on finding you the answers for free?
From TFA: The service, called In2TV, will be free, supported by advertising, and will start early next year. More than 4,800 episodes will be made available online in the first year.
Programs on In2TV will have one to two minutes of commercials for each half-hour episode, compared with eight minutes in a standard broadcast. The Internet commercials cannot be skipped.
The article is extremely light on technical details, saying only that it "will use peer-to-peer file-sharing technology to get the video data to viewers." This, along with the commercials which cannot be skipped, suggests a custom client will be required to view the content, which probably means alternative OS users will not be supported. Regardless of how tentative it is, I Personally think it's a great first move at bringing old content online. Considering this is a free service, I guess we can't really complain, and it will be exciting to see what happens when their protocol is decrypted so we can stream the content to our player (or file) of choice.
In related news, Firefox 1.07 would crash on loading TFA, but 1.5RC2 doesn't seem to have a problem with it.
The OSS Project I've been watching is Vegastrike which is designed primarily as a single player engine, but which plans to incorporate multi-play at some point. Although there are a few commercial offerings (such as Vendetta Online (which has a linux client!)) I'm not aware of any projects that currently look to fill the void that XvT once filled, which does seem odd now that you mention it.
Maybe you don't use DNS a lot, but the rest of the world sure as heck does. It's a basic network service that the Internet is almost useless without. Personally, I think it's pretty scary that one country that, frankly, the world doesn't find very trustworthy right now, controls it.
Basic is right. It would be trivial for the rest of the world to setup and use their own set of root servers. I predict this was cause new metalists to spring up that would become the new de facto root servers. And then those in the know could pick and choose whatever list they trust, or we could even start keeping our own individual metalists while the unwashed masses continue to use whatever list their ISP decides on. The only real battle I see here is the content cartels want an easy one stop shop to turn their name into an internet address and don't want to have to convince each internet tribal warlord through tithe, threat, or coercion of the same thing.
Or maybe I'm too paranoid? Perhaps they only want economical gains from this
I don't know if you're being too paranoid (isn't the saying "but are you paranoid enough?") but whenever I hear China issue these edicts saying they are going to ignore what the rest of the world is doing and forge their own path I swear I hear Uruk-hai war drums in the distance.
Also consider another possibility. When the major corporate interests were forging their new standards in order to lock the rest of the world into their new licensing schemes, do you think they bothered to check if the Chinese government was interested in their meetings? Do you think they're interested now?
And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced. But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird. The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire and thunder upon them. For the beast had been reborn with its strength renewed, and the followers of Mammon cowered in horror.
But all it takes is a little bit of "What if?" sprinkled around the edges and suddenly people are drawn in, because maybe this time something groundbreaking will happen and they'll be there when it does.
And, of course, Windows users are used to this cycle of hope and despair. "I'll buy the new version and this time... this will fix my problems... this time...."
this is just going to turn into a game of Whack-a-Mole between the parties responsible for the bad tracker and the downloaders.
Exactly. This game has been going on for quite some time... remember all those gimmicky copy protection schemes they put on games in the 80s? My guy on "The Scene" just started to include photocopies of the instructions or code wheel or whatever. And then the games started including code wheels and secret decoder rings with colors that didn't photocopy well, so people just wrote up a cheat sheet of the codes and I got a photocopy of that. This digital arms race is just going to continue to escalate until the lawmakers are forced to choose between their constituents and the lobbying megacorps... and that day will be an interesting day.
Of course, you could also argue that 'that day' has come and gone and the megacorps won.
All the arguments that open source is more secure because there are more eyes to spot problems and more hands to fix them are starting to ring a bit hollow as I upgrade/patch my Firefox install on what seems like a monthly basis.
I hear this is a lot, and it often leads to a misrepresentation of what makes OSS 'more secure'. The more eyes/hands claim doesn't assert that there will be less bugs, it means they are suppose to be spotted and corrected more quickly.
Security isn't a state of being, it's a state of mind. I believe there are more white hats than black hats, so OSS leads to better code. If you believe otherwise, you will probably feel more secure using closed source software (but that won't necessarily mean you ARE more secure.)
Before flying cars become a reality, we need a way to keep a fanatic from loading the passenger seat with plastic explosives and flying it into a school building.
Wha? You mean, just like a fanatic is prevented from doing the same with a more conventional ground car? I mean, I could almost accept the argument that it's much easier to control and direct ground based traffic away from 'secure' areas so we need to give up the freedom of flying in order to be kept safe... um... from ourselves. However, in terms of cars being used as weapons, they've been killing upwards of 40k+ a year which puts them in the top 10 leading killers (in the US).
It's awesome to watch a game where some professional gamer goes on a crazy rampage, doing all kinds of freaky/impossible moves and stuff, and that is the main draw to those events (as well as the celebrity factor), not the stats.
I agree, yet this is also the main limitation of 'e-sports' vs. the more conventional kind. In the really real world we don't have artificially coded limits to how fast we can run or how high we can jump. The software and hardware plays too large a part of the game for people to really admire the skill and prowess of computer gamers. Compare the finesse of a FPS player using a top-notch mouse and game pad on a high-end machine vs. Johnny Six pack with his mommy's email machine.
This is not to say there is not skill involved in gaming or that real tournaments don't level the playing field by giving everyone the same machine to play on. My point is merely we haven't reached the level yet where gaming skill is a significant enough factor in our games yet. We're going to need to improve our game inputs to the point where people will say, "Wow, I couldn't't do that." instead of "OMG! Hax0rs! BAN THEM!"
You might think you can code 10x better than the average code jockey, but that doesn't mean squat unless you can convince the people who count. The entire point of certifications is almost exactly the same as getting a degree. A potential employer needs some way of knowing what you know. Certifications are one way of attempting to demonstrate that knowledge when comparing you to other candidates. If you're already employed, the certs/degrees help your salary, as they influence what a competitor might pay if you decide to walk. You may have already convinced your boss that you know your stuff, but how well can you convince someone you've never worked for?
Getting a degree might not mean you know anything, but it can demonstrate that you're dedicated and dependable, which are important qualifications in the work place. A certification is typically a lot easier to get, so they don't hold the same weight, but that makes them a good way of showing potential employers that you're staying current with changing technologies.
Obviously there are other methods of demonstrating your worth to a potential employer, certs are just part of the 'ol resume toolkit.
I've been a longtime Shadowrun fan with a great love for the game universe and wealth of background material and numerous misgivings about the game mechanics.
My group picked up a few copies of the new 4th edition rules and we've been reading through all the changes. Keeping in mind that these are merely first impressions, I'm generally impressed with the changes to character creation and the Matrix, but am somewhere between dismayed and horrified at the new 'streamlined' skill and combat system.
Character creation is entirely point based with a wealth of options which allow them to be highly customized, and a bit more balanced.
The game universe has jumped to 2070 and they've updated the gameworld tech to make it a bit more high tech, featuring a Matrix that is now primarily designed for wireless access by anyone/anywhere. They've dubbed it 'Augmented Reality' which relates to the constant Matrix sensory input coming from a wealth of wireless sources to anyone with a datajack. I personally think it's full of lots of cool ideas.
My major problem so far is with their new game system. I've never been a big fan of the old system, but the new 'simplified' system is basically a cheap version of White Wolf's system without the bells and whistles. So far it feels like it diminishes some of the 'elite special operative' feel to the game. The rules themselves are not very concise and lack good descriptions and are almost as poorly laid out as the previous editions.
Overall I'm highly underwhelmed at the effort FanPro has put into this considering how long they've been sitting on the material.
This would be great for protecting VIPs. You could integrate GPS too, so the health and location of the VIP (e.g. president) are known at all times.
Would you really want to be sending a wireless signal announcing the location of your VIP (and his vitals to those who wants to crack your encryption) to anyone who wants to listen? Typically the DocWagon High-Threat Response teams are only alerted when the VIP manually triggers an alert, the bracelet is removed improperly, or your vitals drop and trigger an emergency. Which means the Bad Guys could potentially jam your signal if they knew ahead of time (and had the Electronics skill or Flux Pool needed.)
So where's the middle ground? One side wants too much money, and the other side doesn't want to pay anything. Good luck with that!
There are certainly more than two sides to this issue. In the middle you have those of us currently paying to buy songs from non-RIAA labels, and those who buy CDs of albums and singles and pay again to download from iTunes and again to get the ringtone. The problem here is not that people are not paying for music. The RIAA would claim the problem is that not enough people are paying for it, while the content consumers would complain that they're already paying too much for too little.
If we really want to generalize and create two sides we can declare that there is some amount of money X that the consumer masses are willing to spend on music. On one side you would have the content providers who want to put as little work as possible into providing their music for very large values of X. The content consumers want to get as much quality entertainment as they can for their presumably lower values of X. Economic Principles say there is some cross-over point, but common economics doesn't really apply since the supply of music isn't the number of tapes recorded or CDs pressed, but the variety and quality of music available.
I would maintain that the real problem lays in the murky legal area of copyright law where the word of law no longer represents the will of the people. It could even be maintained that copyright law no longer represents the common good it was designed to serve. Copyrights are supposed to encourage the creation of creative works, not serve of a bully point for the content providers to demand profits.
Re:I don't get it...
on
Podcasting
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I still don't get 'podcasting'... blogs are bad enough, but I hate talk radio so I don't think I'd be down with 'talk blogs'.
You might just be missing the signal from all the noise, but in general I actually agree with you. As the bar is so low, I find Sturgeon's Law quite apt in regards to both blogs and podcasts. Even worse, while the better bloggers might go back and edit their text, from the majority of my experience with podcasts I find people have no ability and/or desire to edit their creations. Even those who do have something interesting to say can be painful to listen to as they have little to no ability to orate and a painful lack of audio production experience. Dead air, as they say, kills.
Regardless, like any other new and growing content medium while we might be inundated with crap for the foreseeable future, this isn't to say it's all pointless or will always be pointless. As better/stronger/faster metafilter sites crop up we will be in a much better position to identify those few podcasters we might actually enjoy.
Personally I'd rather listen to something informative and/or entertaining while I'm commuting rather than music, so I'm looking forward to the time when I can load up my gizmo of choice with interesting content and listen to it while I'm on the move.
Microsoft is the only one that was able to offer a decent value on commodity hardware and end the compatibility battles, all while letting consumers know that they existed.
I will reluctantly agree that Microsoft out advertised the competition. IBM may have made FUD mainstream, but Microsoft turned it into an art form.
I was an Amiga zealot from 85 until 95 and while I tried to impress on the poor and unenlightened PC users all the things they were missing out on, they all basically had the same response. "Amiga? Isn't that a game machine?"
Those adjectives are also meaningless. What is essential liberty? Who defines what is essential?
Certainly proper debate requires a shared language which includes some agreed upon definitions. And while you can certainly make the case that essential liberty is inherently personal and does not completely translate well, this does not preclude a generally accepted idea that, as you claim, we call seek the freedom to seek our own desires. (Referred elsewhere as Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.)
Freedom is an illusion, designed as tool of manipulation for grumbling slave strata yearning for dominion.
Freedom (like security) is a state of mind, not a state of being. The concepts of Freedom surly existed in primitive minds before the dawn of civilization. The concepts of being free from hunger, free from sickness, free from the terrors of the environment are part of the core constructs of conscious life. You can certainly argue that the concepts have since been warped to suit the needs of the powerful, but this does not cause the concepts themselves to lose meaning or value. It merely requires humanitarians to fight harder.
However, if you're of the philosophical bent that all states of mind are illusionary, I would argue that Freedom is no more ethereal than any other concept.
I'm not signing off Linux forever, though. I tend to try it every two or three years or so, just to see how it's going. I do like the idea of Linux, but until it becomes easier to learn, I don't think I'll use it.
Just so we're all being honest here, what you really mean isn't that Linux needs to be "easier to learn" merely that it needs to be "more like Windows."
I agree that the transition to Linux isn't as easy as learning a few new keyboard shortcuts and directory names. While I tried to play the dual-boot game for awhile, the transition process for me didn't really start until I set up a personal Linux gateway/firewall machine to handle my new broadband connection. It took me several days to set up that meager functionality following the advice from some online howtos and getting semi-helpful emails from a local LUG. And it took almost a year of playing with that box before I felt comfortable enough to ditch windows entirely.
Today, I relate the process of installing new software on windows to the process of compiling software under Linux. I merely download the source, configure/make/make install and the software is installed. Sure, I might need to install a few new pieces of software to support the new program, but I relate that to the process of needing to update ActiveX or some other driver to support a new game under windows.
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And, of course, they won't need to as they'll merely pass the savings (sic) to their customers. While politicians might be willing to merely call this the 'cost of doing business in the age of terrorism' I call it yet another stab into the heart of freedom and liberty.
I'm sorry, but what did the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people mean again?
Why not look up to those who do good works every day without worrying about bottom lines or shareholder value. Do we really want our business leaders to also be our moral leaders?
I agree that for many problems you can merely google the answer or find a forum to get an answer or three, but for the more detailed problems where else can you go to get an entire room full of knowledgeable people focused on finding you the answers for free?
The service, called In2TV, will be free, supported by advertising, and will start early next year. More than 4,800 episodes will be made available online in the first year.
Programs on In2TV will have one to two minutes of commercials for each half-hour episode, compared with eight minutes in a standard broadcast. The Internet commercials cannot be skipped.
The article is extremely light on technical details, saying only that it "will use peer-to-peer file-sharing technology to get the video data to viewers." This, along with the commercials which cannot be skipped, suggests a custom client will be required to view the content, which probably means alternative OS users will not be supported. Regardless of how tentative it is, I Personally think it's a great first move at bringing old content online. Considering this is a free service, I guess we can't really complain, and it will be exciting to see what happens when their protocol is decrypted so we can stream the content to our player (or file) of choice.
In related news, Firefox 1.07 would crash on loading TFA, but 1.5RC2 doesn't seem to have a problem with it.
The OSS Project I've been watching is Vegastrike which is designed primarily as a single player engine, but which plans to incorporate multi-play at some point. Although there are a few commercial offerings (such as Vendetta Online (which has a linux client!)) I'm not aware of any projects that currently look to fill the void that XvT once filled, which does seem odd now that you mention it.
Basic is right. It would be trivial for the rest of the world to setup and use their own set of root servers. I predict this was cause new metalists to spring up that would become the new de facto root servers. And then those in the know could pick and choose whatever list they trust, or we could even start keeping our own individual metalists while the unwashed masses continue to use whatever list their ISP decides on. The only real battle I see here is the content cartels want an easy one stop shop to turn their name into an internet address and don't want to have to convince each internet tribal warlord through tithe, threat, or coercion of the same thing.
I think the implication of the "Great Firewall" wasn't that China was going to control the world market, but merely the one inside itself.
I don't know if you're being too paranoid (isn't the saying "but are you paranoid enough?") but whenever I hear China issue these edicts saying they are going to ignore what the rest of the world is doing and forge their own path I swear I hear Uruk-hai war drums in the distance.
Also consider another possibility. When the major corporate interests were forging their new standards in order to lock the rest of the world into their new licensing schemes, do you think they bothered to check if the Chinese government was interested in their meetings? Do you think they're interested now?
from The Book of Mozilla, 7:15
"It doesn't matter when it's Arcturian, baby!"
And, of course, Windows users are used to this cycle of hope and despair. "I'll buy the new version and this time... this will fix my problems... this time...."
Exactly. This game has been going on for quite some time... remember all those gimmicky copy protection schemes they put on games in the 80s? My guy on "The Scene" just started to include photocopies of the instructions or code wheel or whatever. And then the games started including code wheels and secret decoder rings with colors that didn't photocopy well, so people just wrote up a cheat sheet of the codes and I got a photocopy of that. This digital arms race is just going to continue to escalate until the lawmakers are forced to choose between their constituents and the lobbying megacorps... and that day will be an interesting day.
Of course, you could also argue that 'that day' has come and gone and the megacorps won.
I hear this is a lot, and it often leads to a misrepresentation of what makes OSS 'more secure'. The more eyes/hands claim doesn't assert that there will be less bugs, it means they are suppose to be spotted and corrected more quickly.
Security isn't a state of being, it's a state of mind. I believe there are more white hats than black hats, so OSS leads to better code. If you believe otherwise, you will probably feel more secure using closed source software (but that won't necessarily mean you ARE more secure.)
Wha? You mean, just like a fanatic is prevented from doing the same with a more conventional ground car? I mean, I could almost accept the argument that it's much easier to control and direct ground based traffic away from 'secure' areas so we need to give up the freedom of flying in order to be kept safe... um... from ourselves. However, in terms of cars being used as weapons, they've been killing upwards of 40k+ a year which puts them in the top 10 leading killers (in the US).
I agree, yet this is also the main limitation of 'e-sports' vs. the more conventional kind. In the really real world we don't have artificially coded limits to how fast we can run or how high we can jump. The software and hardware plays too large a part of the game for people to really admire the skill and prowess of computer gamers. Compare the finesse of a FPS player using a top-notch mouse and game pad on a high-end machine vs. Johnny Six pack with his mommy's email machine.
This is not to say there is not skill involved in gaming or that real tournaments don't level the playing field by giving everyone the same machine to play on. My point is merely we haven't reached the level yet where gaming skill is a significant enough factor in our games yet. We're going to need to improve our game inputs to the point where people will say, "Wow, I couldn't't do that." instead of "OMG! Hax0rs! BAN THEM!"
Getting a degree might not mean you know anything, but it can demonstrate that you're dedicated and dependable, which are important qualifications in the work place. A certification is typically a lot easier to get, so they don't hold the same weight, but that makes them a good way of showing potential employers that you're staying current with changing technologies.
Obviously there are other methods of demonstrating your worth to a potential employer, certs are just part of the 'ol resume toolkit.
My group picked up a few copies of the new 4th edition rules and we've been reading through all the changes. Keeping in mind that these are merely first impressions, I'm generally impressed with the changes to character creation and the Matrix, but am somewhere between dismayed and horrified at the new 'streamlined' skill and combat system.
Character creation is entirely point based with a wealth of options which allow them to be highly customized, and a bit more balanced.
The game universe has jumped to 2070 and they've updated the gameworld tech to make it a bit more high tech, featuring a Matrix that is now primarily designed for wireless access by anyone/anywhere. They've dubbed it 'Augmented Reality' which relates to the constant Matrix sensory input coming from a wealth of wireless sources to anyone with a datajack. I personally think it's full of lots of cool ideas.
My major problem so far is with their new game system. I've never been a big fan of the old system, but the new 'simplified' system is basically a cheap version of White Wolf's system without the bells and whistles. So far it feels like it diminishes some of the 'elite special operative' feel to the game. The rules themselves are not very concise and lack good descriptions and are almost as poorly laid out as the previous editions.
Overall I'm highly underwhelmed at the effort FanPro has put into this considering how long they've been sitting on the material.
Would you really want to be sending a wireless signal announcing the location of your VIP (and his vitals to those who wants to crack your encryption) to anyone who wants to listen? Typically the DocWagon High-Threat Response teams are only alerted when the VIP manually triggers an alert, the bracelet is removed improperly, or your vitals drop and trigger an emergency. Which means the Bad Guys could potentially jam your signal if they knew ahead of time (and had the Electronics skill or Flux Pool needed.)
There are certainly more than two sides to this issue. In the middle you have those of us currently paying to buy songs from non-RIAA labels, and those who buy CDs of albums and singles and pay again to download from iTunes and again to get the ringtone. The problem here is not that people are not paying for music. The RIAA would claim the problem is that not enough people are paying for it, while the content consumers would complain that they're already paying too much for too little.
If we really want to generalize and create two sides we can declare that there is some amount of money X that the consumer masses are willing to spend on music. On one side you would have the content providers who want to put as little work as possible into providing their music for very large values of X. The content consumers want to get as much quality entertainment as they can for their presumably lower values of X. Economic Principles say there is some cross-over point, but common economics doesn't really apply since the supply of music isn't the number of tapes recorded or CDs pressed, but the variety and quality of music available.
I would maintain that the real problem lays in the murky legal area of copyright law where the word of law no longer represents the will of the people. It could even be maintained that copyright law no longer represents the common good it was designed to serve. Copyrights are supposed to encourage the creation of creative works, not serve of a bully point for the content providers to demand profits.
You might just be missing the signal from all the noise, but in general I actually agree with you. As the bar is so low, I find Sturgeon's Law quite apt in regards to both blogs and podcasts. Even worse, while the better bloggers might go back and edit their text, from the majority of my experience with podcasts I find people have no ability and/or desire to edit their creations. Even those who do have something interesting to say can be painful to listen to as they have little to no ability to orate and a painful lack of audio production experience. Dead air, as they say, kills.
Regardless, like any other new and growing content medium while we might be inundated with crap for the foreseeable future, this isn't to say it's all pointless or will always be pointless. As better/stronger/faster metafilter sites crop up we will be in a much better position to identify those few podcasters we might actually enjoy.
Personally I'd rather listen to something informative and/or entertaining while I'm commuting rather than music, so I'm looking forward to the time when I can load up my gizmo of choice with interesting content and listen to it while I'm on the move.
I will reluctantly agree that Microsoft out advertised the competition. IBM may have made FUD mainstream, but Microsoft turned it into an art form.
I was an Amiga zealot from 85 until 95 and while I tried to impress on the poor and unenlightened PC users all the things they were missing out on, they all basically had the same response. "Amiga? Isn't that a game machine?"
Certainly proper debate requires a shared language which includes some agreed upon definitions. And while you can certainly make the case that essential liberty is inherently personal and does not completely translate well, this does not preclude a generally accepted idea that, as you claim, we call seek the freedom to seek our own desires. (Referred elsewhere as Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.)
Freedom is an illusion, designed as tool of manipulation for grumbling slave strata yearning for dominion.
Freedom (like security) is a state of mind, not a state of being. The concepts of Freedom surly existed in primitive minds before the dawn of civilization. The concepts of being free from hunger, free from sickness, free from the terrors of the environment are part of the core constructs of conscious life. You can certainly argue that the concepts have since been warped to suit the needs of the powerful, but this does not cause the concepts themselves to lose meaning or value. It merely requires humanitarians to fight harder.
However, if you're of the philosophical bent that all states of mind are illusionary, I would argue that Freedom is no more ethereal than any other concept.
So, it's okay to play with daylight savings time but this leap second is a pain and needs to go?
Just so we're all being honest here, what you really mean isn't that Linux needs to be "easier to learn" merely that it needs to be "more like Windows."
I agree that the transition to Linux isn't as easy as learning a few new keyboard shortcuts and directory names. While I tried to play the dual-boot game for awhile, the transition process for me didn't really start until I set up a personal Linux gateway/firewall machine to handle my new broadband connection. It took me several days to set up that meager functionality following the advice from some online howtos and getting semi-helpful emails from a local LUG. And it took almost a year of playing with that box before I felt comfortable enough to ditch windows entirely.
Today, I relate the process of installing new software on windows to the process of compiling software under Linux. I merely download the source, configure/make/make install and the software is installed. Sure, I might need to install a few new pieces of software to support the new program, but I relate that to the process of needing to update ActiveX or some other driver to support a new game under windows.