Interesting. I've always found these frequent submissions of Roland's irritating because of their self-promoting aspect. His overviews tend to be somewhat shallow, and at times clueless -- who could forget the one about the "personal scent bubble" and "wellness molecules?" But deep down I always figured my reaction was mostly due to jealously, because at least he produces a site and regularly updates it -- something I wish I had the time and initiative to do. The editors at Slashdot must think his overviews are worthwhile in some way, or they wouldn't keep featuring them. Hopefully he will gradually evolve away from copying large chunks of other people's writing. Maybe not. [His site design sort of sucks too, but whatever...]
Quantum teleportation is akin to faxing a document and in the process destroying the original.
[Scene: RIAA Headquarters] Mitch Bainwol: "This quadrant teleportation thing sounds too good to be true." Cary Sherman: "Get me Orrin Hatch on the phone. We need mandatory quantum teleplantation by 2010."
And not a service to find people to play dodge-ball with, which was my first reaction upon skimming over the blurb. A service to look for opportunities to get hit in the face with a ball just wouldn't make sense.
About 4 years ago when I was on a contract job at MS Research, they were talking about locating people on your buddy list by looking up the location of the cell repeater each person was using. There was a bit of discussion of the Big Brother aspect, and I don't think it was ever implemented. The idea of voluntarily sharing this info with your friends seems kind of cool.
"So we thought, hey..." "We couldn't resist the temptation..." "We grabbed some stuff and were off." "We might make a smaller one..." etc.
Social butterflies though many Slashdotters may be, something tells me that in this particular case it's the figurative "we" as opposed to more than one actual person working on this.
re: the well link - 300 Jewish youth assembling from all over the continent "to talk Jewish, to think Jewish, to dance Jewish and to kiss Jewish" over the coming week.
I've never heard of "Jewish kissing," but visualizing the classic Jewish Mother character, something in me just goes, "Eeewww!"
Thanks to Intellectual Property, the feudal system lives!
Hunt thou not in the King's Forest, knave! Double not thy clicks, nor singly if for commerce they be. Scribe ye not the holy GIF format, nor the code of Linux employ within thine enterprise, lest ye suffer sorely in combat with the royal tort attorneys!
Some years ago an economist showed with very convincing arithmetic that long distance phone companies would make more money if they charged everybody a flat rate and eliminated the overhead of minute-by-minute accounting -- capturing the call data, generating the bills, resolving customer disputes, archiving the information, etc.
When I hear about elaborate technical schemes to monitor people's driving habits to collect road taxes, insurance and the like, I wonder what the payoff is for putting all this effort into making sure the right beans come out of the right piles. What if insurance were priced by car value alone? Surely some people would whine about paying for their irresponsible neighbor's bad habits. But if all the rate-juggling overhead were eliminated, would everybody's rates be higher or lower than what good drivers are paying now? And in another light, if it cost somewhat more than today would it be worth it to retain what's left of our privacy?
Come on guys, there are plenty of worthwhile ways to knock Microsoft without pretending to misunderstand the obvious. Windows 95 was banned because of an error in Office 95, which was fixed in its (Office 95's) replacement, Office 97, m'kay?
They might not make money from you if you don't return the camera, but as the parent poster pointed out this is probably an insignificant minority of people, not worth the cost of defeating.
Ice companies didn't try the tactic of outlawing refrigerators, which is essentially what the media industry is trying to do. Economics alone won't stop them and their lobbyists and bought congressmen from getting away with it. I doubt that the general public is going to rise up and demand the right to use P2P, or that copyright laws be revamped, as long as they're more worried about putting food on the table and getting their new HDTV paid for.
One subtext of this interview seems to be the inefficiency of capitalism, not in the Econ 101 sense of an "efficient market" but in the real sense of creating the most products or having the greatest impact, while using the least resources and selling at the lowest cost. The publishing economy (software, music, every type of media content) is very inefficient in real terms, with media companies still striving to make as much money off a given work as they did in the days when distributing copies was a physical process.
The fact that something like OpenOffice, for example, can be created and distributed without spending millions of dollars, is right out there for everybody to see. If the public eventually recognizes it, our long-held perception of the value of a copy of something might change, to the point where newer business models based on real costs are the only ones that will still work. Why should an industry exist to produce something that for all practical purposes grows on trees. The same goes for the recording industry. If bands can generate fame and get better performance gigs by distributing free copies of their songs, there's no need for them to sign away their rights to a record company.
One obvious way for the old gang to stop this evolution is to outlaw the means that will enable it. Like file sharing.
What's in a name? If a bunch of people get together and pool their resources, and when one of them has a problem they get taken care of, we call it socialism. If you do the same thing only with stockholders raking off some of the money, we call it an insurance company.
When someone wants to give away something that someone else is trying to sell, should that be called "socialism?" I can think of one recent case where it was called "Microsoft Internet Explorer."
Sounds like you are very happy in your job. Fine. Lots of people are. But there's a reason Dilbert is so popular, and it's not because cubicle-land is utopia. My experience of 25 years in the corporate world as a contractor, working for many different companies, is that managements that treat technical employees like commodities are more common than those that don't.
Post again someday after you change jobs and work for a manager who is technically clueless yet insists on micromanaging you anyway, who turns vague estimates into hard deadlines, who insists that you work 60 hrs/week to solve the latest crisis caused by his/her own ill-considered decisions, who believes outside consultants and ignores you, who basically wants you to shut and do as you're told and leave the thinking to the smarter, higher-paid people who get stock options. Then come back and preach the joys of your world.
As the cost of mass storage and processing are approaching zero, various people are predicting that soon hardware will be free. Only the software and content will cost money. But the shift towards content being the only source of profit will make copyright enforcement more and more important. This will mean tighter copyright laws and ever more draconian restrictions on consumer use of technology.
But there's a much deeper shift going on. It's a transition from paying for things because we can't do them ourselves to paying because we aren't allowed to do them. Supply used to be the other side of Demand. With a limitless supply of copies easily available, Supply will be replaced by Permission. Keeping this system going requires much more granular regulation of individual behavior.
I try to put it in a historical context. Not long ago, North America was a land where if you wanted to you could walk out into the wilds with some tools, build a cabin, put up a fence and start farming. Nowadays every square inch of land is owned by somebody or something, and usually not by the people who live on it. We borrow and pay. Even after your house is paid for you still don't really "own" it, because if you don't keep paying your property taxes you can get kicked out. Sounds like rent to me.
But we've gotten used to all that. We will probably also get used to the notion that other people own everything we see and hear. Within our lifetimes most information and media content will probably be on a pay-per-view basis. It will be editable or removable at any time by the owners. History will disappear unless individual people choose to privately write things down -- paraphrasing of course, not quoting. I think people will tolerate restrictions and loss of privacy for the sake of copyright protection just as we have accepted the authority of planning commissions and building inspectors for the sake of public safety. That's what I think will happen anyway, but somehow I still don't like it.
Hard to believe a movie version of that classic TV show could be so bad, especially with Sean Connery and Uma Thurman in it. Uma and the twit who played John Steed skipped blithely through their parts like two acting students running lines before class. What a major disappointment.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting. I've always found these frequent submissions of Roland's irritating because of their self-promoting aspect. His overviews tend to be somewhat shallow, and at times clueless -- who could forget the one about the "personal scent bubble" and "wellness molecules?" But deep down I always figured my reaction was mostly due to jealously, because at least he produces a site and regularly updates it -- something I wish I had the time and initiative to do. The editors at Slashdot must think his overviews are worthwhile in some way, or they wouldn't keep featuring them. Hopefully he will gradually evolve away from copying large chunks of other people's writing. Maybe not.
[His site design sort of sucks too, but whatever...]
Quantum teleportation is akin to faxing a document and in the process destroying the original.
[Scene: RIAA Headquarters]
Mitch Bainwol: "This quadrant teleportation thing sounds too good to be true."
Cary Sherman: "Get me Orrin Hatch on the phone. We need mandatory quantum teleplantation by 2010."
Abbie Hofffman's classic 60's underground how-to , now free online.
Seven years ago, PG-13 was old enough to get into itself.
Rule 1: Never read Slashdot while you're eating.
Rule 2: See rule 1.
And not a service to find people to play dodge-ball with, which was my first reaction upon skimming over the blurb. A service to look for opportunities to get hit in the face with a ball just wouldn't make sense.
About 4 years ago when I was on a contract job at MS Research, they were talking about locating people on your buddy list by looking up the location of the cell repeater each person was using. There was a bit of discussion of the Big Brother aspect, and I don't think it was ever implemented. The idea of voluntarily sharing this info with your friends seems kind of cool.
Who does "we" mean?
"So we thought, hey..."
"We couldn't resist the temptation..."
"We grabbed some stuff and were off."
"We might make a smaller one..."
etc.
Social butterflies though many Slashdotters may be, something tells me that in this particular case it's the figurative "we" as opposed to more than one actual person working on this.
Doesn't mean it's not a cool hack though, say we.
...never mind.
re: the well link - 300 Jewish youth assembling from all over the continent "to talk Jewish, to think Jewish, to dance Jewish and to kiss Jewish" over the coming week.
I've never heard of "Jewish kissing," but visualizing the classic Jewish Mother character, something in me just goes, "Eeewww!"
Thanks to Intellectual Property, the feudal system lives!
Hunt thou not in the King's Forest, knave! Double not thy clicks, nor singly if for commerce they be. Scribe ye not the holy GIF format, nor the code of Linux employ within thine enterprise, lest ye suffer sorely in combat with the royal tort attorneys!
Reality check.
Brushing your teeth is a fight against tooth decay, not denture companies.
Home insulation is a fight against cold, not furnace companies.
Quitting smoking is a fight against disease, not tobacco farmers.
Using a safe browser is a fight against assholes who write viruses, not IE.
Etc, etc.
No it's not against IE. It's against infiltration and popups, which IE happens to be synonymous with.
A robot shall not infringe on Intellectual Property, or through inaction allow Intellectual Property to be infringed.
Some years ago an economist showed with very convincing arithmetic that long distance phone companies would make more money if they charged everybody a flat rate and eliminated the overhead of minute-by-minute accounting -- capturing the call data, generating the bills, resolving customer disputes, archiving the information, etc.
When I hear about elaborate technical schemes to monitor people's driving habits to collect road taxes, insurance and the like, I wonder what the payoff is for putting all this effort into making sure the right beans come out of the right piles. What if insurance were priced by car value alone? Surely some people would whine about paying for their irresponsible neighbor's bad habits. But if all the rate-juggling overhead were eliminated, would everybody's rates be higher or lower than what good drivers are paying now? And in another light, if it cost somewhat more than today would it be worth it to retain what's left of our privacy?
Did I read this right? ...scramjet engine fired for a planned 10-s test, achieving an incredible Mach 7, or 5,000 mph.
It reached 5000 mph in TEN SECONDS? Holy crap, dude!
If this is right I am truly impressed. Could a human passenger survive that acceleration?
No need to worry about Hotmail going down. Hotmail runs under BSD. Where do you want to store 2Gb today?
Come on guys, there are plenty of worthwhile ways to knock Microsoft without pretending to misunderstand the obvious. Windows 95 was banned because of an error in Office 95, which was fixed in its (Office 95's) replacement, Office 97, m'kay?
They might not make money from you if you don't return the camera, but as the parent poster pointed out this is probably an insignificant minority of people, not worth the cost of defeating.
Apparently I'm not the only one who read this on Fark yesterday.
Ice companies didn't try the tactic of outlawing refrigerators, which is essentially what the media industry is trying to do. Economics alone won't stop them and their lobbyists and bought congressmen from getting away with it. I doubt that the general public is going to rise up and demand the right to use P2P, or that copyright laws be revamped, as long as they're more worried about putting food on the table and getting their new HDTV paid for.
One subtext of this interview seems to be the inefficiency of capitalism, not in the Econ 101 sense of an "efficient market" but in the real sense of creating the most products or having the greatest impact, while using the least resources and selling at the lowest cost. The publishing economy (software, music, every type of media content) is very inefficient in real terms, with media companies still striving to make as much money off a given work as they did in the days when distributing copies was a physical process.
The fact that something like OpenOffice, for example, can be created and distributed without spending millions of dollars, is right out there for everybody to see. If the public eventually recognizes it, our long-held perception of the value of a copy of something might change, to the point where newer business models based on real costs are the only ones that will still work. Why should an industry exist to produce something that for all practical purposes grows on trees. The same goes for the recording industry. If bands can generate fame and get better performance gigs by distributing free copies of their songs, there's no need for them to sign away their rights to a record company.
One obvious way for the old gang to stop this evolution is to outlaw the means that will enable it. Like file sharing.
What's in a name? If a bunch of people get together and pool their resources, and when one of them has a problem they get taken care of, we call it socialism. If you do the same thing only with stockholders raking off some of the money, we call it an insurance company.
When someone wants to give away something that someone else is trying to sell, should that be called "socialism?" I can think of one recent case where it was called "Microsoft Internet Explorer."
Sounds like you are very happy in your job. Fine. Lots of people are. But there's a reason Dilbert is so popular, and it's not because cubicle-land is utopia. My experience of 25 years in the corporate world as a contractor, working for many different companies, is that managements that treat technical employees like commodities are more common than those that don't.
Post again someday after you change jobs and work for a manager who is technically clueless yet insists on micromanaging you anyway, who turns vague estimates into hard deadlines, who insists that you work 60 hrs/week to solve the latest crisis caused by his/her own ill-considered decisions, who believes outside consultants and ignores you, who basically wants you to shut and do as you're told and leave the thinking to the smarter, higher-paid people who get stock options. Then come back and preach the joys of your world.
As the cost of mass storage and processing are approaching zero, various people are predicting that soon hardware will be free. Only the software and content will cost money. But the shift towards content being the only source of profit will make copyright enforcement more and more important. This will mean tighter copyright laws and ever more draconian restrictions on consumer use of technology.
But there's a much deeper shift going on. It's a transition from paying for things because we can't do them ourselves to paying because we aren't allowed to do them. Supply used to be the other side of Demand. With a limitless supply of copies easily available, Supply will be replaced by Permission. Keeping this system going requires much more granular regulation of individual behavior.
I try to put it in a historical context. Not long ago, North America was a land where if you wanted to you could walk out into the wilds with some tools, build a cabin, put up a fence and start farming. Nowadays every square inch of land is owned by somebody or something, and usually not by the people who live on it. We borrow and pay. Even after your house is paid for you still don't really "own" it, because if you don't keep paying your property taxes you can get kicked out. Sounds like rent to me.
But we've gotten used to all that. We will probably also get used to the notion that other people own everything we see and hear. Within our lifetimes most information and media content will probably be on a pay-per-view basis. It will be editable or removable at any time by the owners. History will disappear unless individual people choose to privately write things down -- paraphrasing of course, not quoting. I think people will tolerate restrictions and loss of privacy for the sake of copyright protection just as we have accepted the authority of planning commissions and building inspectors for the sake of public safety. That's what I think will happen anyway, but somehow I still don't like it.
Hard to believe a movie version of that classic TV show could be so bad, especially with Sean Connery and Uma Thurman in it. Uma and the twit who played John Steed skipped blithely through their parts like two acting students running lines before class. What a major disappointment.