We don't live in a homogeneous world. Even giving Tivo-like systems the ability to zap out all commercials would not kill commercial television, because not nearly everyone has such a system. Going to the bathroom or getting a snack during commercials hasn't killed commercial tv either, because it doesn't happen enough. If things like Tivo did start hurting commercial tv, what I think they would do is what they already do in low-end markets. They play cheaper programming and sell cheaper ad time. If you want a vision of commercial tv in a Tivo-dominated world, just watch broadcast tv after midnight on a Wednesday in Boise.
It may seem like an overreaction on the part of the Ohio schools, but having worked for school districts over the years I can attest that they are run by what you might call "hall monitor" personalities. People whose first reaction to an idea is not, "What an interesting idea," but, "What rule does it break?" No matter how good an idea sounds or what the benefits would be, school district management people will go out of their way to make sure everybody in the world has ample opportunity to throw in a monkey wrench. It's sort of a compulsive failure mentality, and it drives a lot of excellent people away from the world of education.
Oh come on. Spam is going to level the political playing field about as much as the Internet leveled the business playing field. Do people buy more books from amazon.com or from Wobberly's? If an underdog mounts an email campaign, an overdog mounts a bigger email campaign. Duh!
People still cling to the quaint vision of democracy in America rising from the ashes because of some magic ring that can only be worn by the good guys. There's no such thing!
America is governed by lobbyists and PACs who have successfully cracked the system. The only way I can think of to win is not to play the game. Instead of competing make money irrelevant, for example by making Congress sort of like a priesthood, wherein elected officials relinquish all material goods for the rest of their lives and live on a modest stipend. Something like that might work. Yeah, like it would ever happen.
This is the same guy who proclaimed a couple months ago that television viewers who don't watch commercials are guilty of stealing programming. Sure, I'll believe whatever he says about DRM.
This looks like a lot of fun. I bet the "not responsible for damage to your equipment" part of their documentation is humongous, but they could probably sum it up with: "Duh!!"
I am left wondering at the apparent cluelessness of their marketing team. Is Microsoft pretty much completely run by its legal staff now? Companies increasingly seem to revel in that haughty, because-I-can attitude for which attorneys are so well known. But surely even they must realize they have nothing tangible to gain and a lot of goodwill to lose by taking back all their legos and going home. Or will the next move be to file a patent on scalable fonts and slap infringement suits on anybody who dares to generate their own?
A BBC News article today has this ironic quote from Bush's National Security Advisor, speaking about Iran:
"I don't think there's any doubt that we are concerned that Iran is a place where an unelected few are really crushing the aspirations of their people."
Unelected few? Gee, sounds awfully familiar to me, an American living in the good old USA. She continues...
"So what we are saying to the Iranians is act like elected leaders, and that these unelected few should not be permitted to hijack the aspirations of the Iranian people."
Senator Hollings, Congressman Boucher, are you guys listening?
I actually used to be a big fan of Microsoft. Evil Empire, shady business tactics, yeah yeah, whatever. I admired their goal of transforming the then-chaotic software world into a coherent, integrated whole that would do really cool things. Ask almost anybody at Microsoft ten years ago and they would have sincerely told you that was their mission.
But back then MS was still truly a geek-run company, headed by one particular geek who had figured out how to hack the business world. Today lawyers and bean counters are running the show, and making tremendous amounts of money is the only goal. Today we get root authorization snuck into security patches, and circle jerking with the entertainment industry.
Reading through all the MS instructions... Personal License Migration Service blah blah... Personal License Update Utility yada yada... I translate these 4 or 5 paragraphs into one sentence:
What depresses me most about this is the unbelievable smugness of attorney Eric Pinker of Somebody, Somebody and Pinker, with lines like, "This isn't complicated at all." Of course it isn't, Eric. Somebody hires you and your friends to beat the shit out of some poor sucker and you do it. Simple. Nobody has any rights whatsoeover except you, your colleagues, and the assholes who have enough money to hire you. The ideals you may have had when you were younger don't mean shit. Ethics don't mean shit, and most of all, other people don't mean shit. Only you and money mean a damn thing, and I sure feel privileged to be an insignificant part of your world.
Dammit, I naively expected the link to lead to an *interactive* NYC map, which would have been extremely cool. But I suppose making it public would make it too easy for terrorists to find all the best places to plant bombs. Stupid me.
Eudaemonic Pie taught me how to make rice
on
MIT vs. Las Vegas
·
· Score: 2
As fascinating as the saga of beating the roulette wheels was, the factoid I got from that book that has stayed with me to this day was how to cook rice without measuring. No matter how much rice you are making or what size pot you are cooking it in, add enough water to reach the first knuckle on your finger when your fingertip is touching the top of the rice. NEVER FAILS.
MIT students are certainly not the first to take a scientific approach to card counting. Back around 1979 I read a mathematics book in the engineering library at Tektronix that explained card counting in great detail. It also predicted fractals would be a big thing.
Sounds like this discovery is sure to threaten the status quo. I wouldn't give the wealthy bastards who rule the world's so-called democracies the lead time they need to suppress, control or destroy the thing before it can do them any harm.
That sounds great until you consider that the end result of your scenario is that the music industry dies. Musicians absolutely can survive without the industry, since there is now a free mechanism to distribute their music without signing away the rights. As new bands flourish on the Internet and popular bands move to the Internet, the Music Industry is left with only their existing catalog of increasingly moldy oldies to peddle, becoming a nostalgia industry that eventually folds up.
Oh, sure, Hilary and her sleazy friends will settle for that destiny. They'll never see that one coming. Naww. No way they'll react by doing something like this:
Paying their lackeys in Congress to force hardware makers to embed DRM that REQUIRES security technology that is owned by - guess who!! - which gets licensed to aspiring musicians for, oh, say the same-ish terms record companies have been imposing on them for decades. The industry retains control over the master access valve, we get to hear the same stream of big-hit bands selected for us by assholes in expensive suits, on computers and other machines that will no longer play just whatever we want, and 99.99% of the population of musicians grubs along like they do now.
So much for this guy's rant from 3 or 4 articles back, "A Private European Internet?" -- yeah, it's the US alright that is screwing up the Internet, with its lawyers, politicians and corporations. Weasels live everywhere, Mr. Thompson.
I hope they never do make that 80-oz cup. If I put one of those in my cup holder, the whole damn computer would tip over.
Why aren't spammers prosecuted for cracking?
on
Meet the Spammers
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· Score: 2
Maybe this is a stupid question, but I'm serious. A mailbox is a database and a spam filter is a security measure. Spammers deliberately bypass security so they can insert unauthorized data. Can't we put them in jail for that?
Wow, this supports what I've been thinking for many years -- that excessive personal ambition and competetive spirit are mental aberrations. The very nature of these defects drives those who suffer from them into positions of power, where they make life miserable for the rest of us.
If you currently have any domains registered by Verisign, immediately change to a different registrant and notify Verisign's customer service department as to exactly why you are doing it. Don't just threaten to do it, really do it. Even if you can't get a refund and have to shell out another $20 to somebody else, even if Verisign offers you incentives not to leave. Leave. And unless it makes you feel better don't waste your time crafting an eloquent manifesto, because they don't care about you or your moral arguments. They care about your money. Be clear, be blunt, and just take your business elsewhere.
This is my version of an authentic soup from Senegal. Takes less than a half hour to make, goes great with beer and will knock your socks off.
Thinly slice and dice a medium onion and a carrot (little bits, not thick round slices). In a big pot heat about 2 Tablespoons olive oil on medium high. Saute the onions and carrots a couple minutes. Then add the following:
6 Tablespoons curry powder, as hot as you like it 1 teaspoon cumin (optional) half teaspoon garlic powder 1 can chopped tomatoes 1 can tomato sauce 2 cans chicken broth half cup chunky style peanut butter (natural is better, but Jif will do). Stir really well to disperse the peanut butter.
Turn down the heat to medium.
Put 3 frozen boneless chicken breasts on a microwaveable plate and cover with another plate, leaving little or no gap. You are trying to form a very confined steam chamber. Nuke the covered chicken on medium for 3 minutes, then remove the top plate, flip the pieces over, cover again and nuke another 2 or 3 minutes on medium, depending on how cooked it looks. Use your judgement. Don't do it on high. It won't speed things up all that much and will make the chicken rubbery.
Carefully lift off the top plate (very hot steam will escape) and cut up the chicken into bite-size pieces as quickly as possible. Speed is of the essence here, as the quicker you get the chicken from the microwave to the pot, the more moist and tender it will be. Finally, pour off the juice from the now empty plate into the pot, and summon the hungry hordes.
Optional step: While the chicken is cooking use a potato masher to mash up the ingredients in the pot a little, to make it a bit thicker.
Tastes best with a blob of plain yogurt on top and some cilantro and chopped peanuts sprinkled on it, with some good bread and an extremely cold beer.
Very True. If you repeatedly poison the well, eventually even the stupidest people will stop drinking out of it. Our lean-and-mean, smart-sized, just-in-time business community doesn't seem to understand this behavior any better than our politicians. Oops, same thing.
Slashdot Mirror
We don't live in a homogeneous world. Even giving Tivo-like systems the ability to zap out all commercials would not kill commercial television, because not nearly everyone has such a system. Going to the bathroom or getting a snack during commercials hasn't killed commercial tv either, because it doesn't happen enough. If things like Tivo did start hurting commercial tv, what I think they would do is what they already do in low-end markets. They play cheaper programming and sell cheaper ad time. If you want a vision of commercial tv in a Tivo-dominated world, just watch broadcast tv after midnight on a Wednesday in Boise.
It may seem like an overreaction on the part of the Ohio schools, but having worked for school districts over the years I can attest that they are run by what you might call "hall monitor" personalities. People whose first reaction to an idea is not, "What an interesting idea," but, "What rule does it break?" No matter how good an idea sounds or what the benefits would be, school district management people will go out of their way to make sure everybody in the world has ample opportunity to throw in a monkey wrench. It's sort of a compulsive failure mentality, and it drives a lot of excellent people away from the world of education.
Oh come on. Spam is going to level the political playing field about as much as the Internet leveled the business playing field. Do people buy more books from amazon.com or from Wobberly's ? If an underdog mounts an email campaign, an overdog mounts a bigger email campaign. Duh!
People still cling to the quaint vision of democracy in America rising from the ashes because of some magic ring that can only be worn by the good guys. There's no such thing!
America is governed by lobbyists and PACs who have successfully cracked the system. The only way I can think of to win is not to play the game. Instead of competing make money irrelevant, for example by making Congress sort of like a priesthood, wherein elected officials relinquish all material goods for the rest of their lives and live on a modest stipend. Something like that might work. Yeah, like it would ever happen.
I think if we just pronounce it "sacked" we'll pretty much have the whole concept down.
This is the same guy who proclaimed a couple months ago that television viewers who don't watch commercials are guilty of stealing programming. Sure, I'll believe whatever he says about DRM.
Don't watch tv. Don't buy music.
This looks like a lot of fun. I bet the "not responsible for damage to your equipment" part of their documentation is humongous, but they could probably sum it up with: "Duh!!"
I am left wondering at the apparent cluelessness of their marketing team. Is Microsoft pretty much completely run by its legal staff now? Companies increasingly seem to revel in that haughty, because-I-can attitude for which attorneys are so well known. But surely even they must realize they have nothing tangible to gain and a lot of goodwill to lose by taking back all their legos and going home. Or will the next move be to file a patent on scalable fonts and slap infringement suits on anybody who dares to generate their own?
A BBC News article today has this ironic quote from Bush's National Security Advisor, speaking about Iran:
"I don't think there's any doubt that we are concerned that Iran is a place where an unelected few are really crushing the aspirations of their people."
Unelected few? Gee, sounds awfully familiar to me, an American living in the good old USA. She continues...
"So what we are saying to the Iranians is act like elected leaders, and that these unelected few should not be permitted to hijack the aspirations of the Iranian people."
Senator Hollings, Congressman Boucher, are you guys listening?
I actually used to be a big fan of Microsoft. Evil Empire, shady business tactics, yeah yeah, whatever. I admired their goal of transforming the then-chaotic software world into a coherent, integrated whole that would do really cool things. Ask almost anybody at Microsoft ten years ago and they would have sincerely told you that was their mission.
... Personal License Migration Service blah blah... Personal License Update Utility yada yada... I translate these 4 or 5 paragraphs into one sentence:
But back then MS was still truly a geek-run company, headed by one particular geek who had figured out how to hack the business world. Today lawyers and bean counters are running the show, and making tremendous amounts of money is the only goal. Today we get root authorization snuck into security patches, and circle jerking with the entertainment industry.
Reading through all the MS instructions
Do not use Microsoft software.
Yeah, expecting popup blocking in Netscape now is like expecting a Coke machine not to have a coin slot.
Reminds me of the old joke, would you rather have your mail delivered by Boeing, or fly in a plane designed by the Postal Service?
What depresses me most about this is the unbelievable smugness of attorney Eric Pinker of Somebody, Somebody and Pinker, with lines like, "This isn't complicated at all." Of course it isn't, Eric. Somebody hires you and your friends to beat the shit out of some poor sucker and you do it. Simple. Nobody has any rights whatsoeover except you, your colleagues, and the assholes who have enough money to hire you. The ideals you may have had when you were younger don't mean shit. Ethics don't mean shit, and most of all, other people don't mean shit. Only you and money mean a damn thing, and I sure feel privileged to be an insignificant part of your world.
Dammit, I naively expected the link to lead to an *interactive* NYC map, which would have been extremely cool. But I suppose making it public would make it too easy for terrorists to find all the best places to plant bombs. Stupid me.
As fascinating as the saga of beating the roulette wheels was, the factoid I got from that book that has stayed with me to this day was how to cook rice without measuring. No matter how much rice you are making or what size pot you are cooking it in, add enough water to reach the first knuckle on your finger when your fingertip is touching the top of the rice. NEVER FAILS.
MIT students are certainly not the first to take a scientific approach to card counting. Back around 1979 I read a mathematics book in the engineering library at Tektronix that explained card counting in great detail. It also predicted fractals would be a big thing.
Sounds like this discovery is sure to threaten the status quo. I wouldn't give the wealthy bastards who rule the world's so-called democracies the lead time they need to suppress, control or destroy the thing before it can do them any harm.
That sounds great until you consider that the end result of your scenario is that the music industry dies. Musicians absolutely can survive without the industry, since there is now a free mechanism to distribute their music without signing away the rights. As new bands flourish on the Internet and popular bands move to the Internet, the Music Industry is left with only their existing catalog of increasingly moldy oldies to peddle, becoming a nostalgia industry that eventually folds up.
Oh, sure, Hilary and her sleazy friends will settle for that destiny. They'll never see that one coming. Naww. No way they'll react by doing something like this:
Paying their lackeys in Congress to force hardware makers to embed DRM that REQUIRES security technology that is owned by - guess who!! - which gets licensed to aspiring musicians for, oh, say the same-ish terms record companies have been imposing on them for decades. The industry retains control over the master access valve, we get to hear the same stream of big-hit bands selected for us by assholes in expensive suits, on computers and other machines that will no longer play just whatever we want, and 99.99% of the population of musicians grubs along like they do now.
So much for this guy's rant from 3 or 4 articles back, "A Private European Internet?" -- yeah, it's the US alright that is screwing up the Internet, with its lawyers, politicians and corporations. Weasels live everywhere, Mr. Thompson.
I hope they never do make that 80-oz cup. If I put one of those in my cup holder, the whole damn computer would tip over.
Maybe this is a stupid question, but I'm serious. A mailbox is a database and a spam filter is a security measure. Spammers deliberately bypass security so they can insert unauthorized data. Can't we put them in jail for that?
I can see it now... www.LeanerSpotting.com
Wow, this supports what I've been thinking for many years -- that excessive personal ambition and competetive spirit are mental aberrations. The very nature of these defects drives those who suffer from them into positions of power, where they make life miserable for the rest of us.
If you currently have any domains registered by Verisign, immediately change to a different registrant and notify Verisign's customer service department as to exactly why you are doing it. Don't just threaten to do it, really do it. Even if you can't get a refund and have to shell out another $20 to somebody else, even if Verisign offers you incentives not to leave. Leave. And unless it makes you feel better don't waste your time crafting an eloquent manifesto, because they don't care about you or your moral arguments. They care about your money. Be clear, be blunt, and just take your business elsewhere.
This is my version of an authentic soup from Senegal. Takes less than a half hour to make, goes great with beer and will knock your socks off.
Thinly slice and dice a medium onion and a carrot (little bits, not thick round slices). In a big pot heat about 2 Tablespoons olive oil on medium high. Saute the onions and carrots a couple minutes. Then add the following:
6 Tablespoons curry powder, as hot as you like it
1 teaspoon cumin (optional)
half teaspoon garlic powder
1 can chopped tomatoes
1 can tomato sauce
2 cans chicken broth
half cup chunky style peanut butter (natural is better, but Jif will do).
Stir really well to disperse the peanut butter.
Turn down the heat to medium.
Put 3 frozen boneless chicken breasts on a microwaveable plate and cover with another plate, leaving little or no gap. You are trying to form a very confined steam chamber. Nuke the covered chicken on medium for 3 minutes, then remove the top plate, flip the pieces over, cover again and nuke another 2 or 3 minutes on medium, depending on how cooked it looks. Use your judgement. Don't do it on high. It won't speed things up all that much and will make the chicken rubbery.
Carefully lift off the top plate (very hot steam will escape) and cut up the chicken into bite-size pieces as quickly as possible. Speed is of the essence here, as the quicker you get the chicken from the microwave to the pot, the more moist and tender it will be. Finally, pour off the juice from the now empty plate into the pot, and summon the hungry hordes.
Optional step: While the chicken is cooking use a potato masher to mash up the ingredients in the pot a little, to make it a bit thicker.
Tastes best with a blob of plain yogurt on top and some cilantro and chopped peanuts sprinkled on it, with some good bread and an extremely cold beer.
I don't know which is more scary -- the idea of an asteroid hitting the Earth, or the name "NT7".
Very True. If you repeatedly poison the well, eventually even the stupidest people will stop drinking out of it. Our lean-and-mean, smart-sized, just-in-time business community doesn't seem to understand this behavior any better than our politicians. Oops, same thing.