Well, I think the problem here is that you don't understand music very much.
YOU: "Bands wouldn't sign contracts to produce albums if they didn't make money."
History: Music has been made, for free, for several thousand years. Musicians have lived off of tips and patronidge and "day jobs" forver. Music is not about money. The music INDUSTRY, which feeds your CD shop and your radio, is about money. The two aren't necesarily exclusive, but it seems that way a lot of the time.
If you are in a band, making what you feel is the best music ever played (and all musicians do), and I tell you that I will give you money and you'll get fame and airplay, and you can quit your day job because of the advance, wouldn't you do it?
Musicians are interested in music, not money. They see the advance check and don't do the math. $100,000 to make music? Better than mopping up at the A&P, so they take it. This makes sense...would cautious, sensible economic planners be humping electric guitars on stage 5 nights a week until 2 am and doing crazy drugs when they have to work at 9 am the next morning? Hell no.
Still, with a big label contract, there's always the chance you'll be the next big thing. And then they make SCADS of cash. This is why so many acts sound alike...even if your sound is fresh and original, your producer reminds you you'll have a better chance of getting BIG if you sound more "commercial." End result is, you trade a little creativity for the possibility of never having to work again, ostensibly so you can regain your creativity after you're comfortably rich. You sell out. The result is the bands you hear "polluting" the airwaves. Yes, they are in it for the cash grab. But it's a big lottery and like all gambling, the chances are much better that you'll fail miserably.
People play music because they want to appeal to others with their music. They take contracts because they are told they will make doing just that. In the process, the goal of making money can often obscure the goal of being heard, and even if it doesn't, chance is not on your side. Chances are, with a big label contract, you will make very little money in the long run, and you'll probably squander it anyway.
Nowadays a lot of artists, especially ones who want to play their own thing and not appeal to the masses with generic sound, are opting not to get the big advances and small print of the big record label. Small labels will press your sound and give you a much larger cut but with no promotion, no advance, no whatever. You have to self promote, appeal to the few remaining independent media outlets, and you have to pack people into your shows. Still, you will never have the exposure of the big boys, so it's very hard to get gold or platinum level sales. But it's much more likely that you'll make enough to live on comfortably.
Public key encryption is a great way to be sure that the author of a piece of information is consistant. But it is not a good way to tell if they're reliable. This is a problem with Freenet...it's very anonymous, it's very secure, it's very consistant. But since there's no agent of responsibility or accountability, you can't trust anyone. Believe me, I love Freenet for this reason. But if anything, communication over Freenet makes me more paranoid. Who is the guy you're talking with? Why should you trust his information? It too is Orwellian, but in a different way...
It doesn't matter who gets involved. SMTP is simply too chaotic for even government controls to work in all cases. You already can't use the internet the way you want to, because it's designed to not care. Your website is public and your email address is public. You can't make something public and have the same control you had over it when it was private...something content providers are realizing the world over. Rights or no rights, once information is known it can be exploited...isn't that one of the basic tenets of hacking?
Think of spam email like muggers in Central park...it's under the jurisdiction of the government, there are strict penalties, and yet muggings still occur. The only way to be sure is to be damn careful. Stay out of the park at night. Keep your personal email address seperate from your business address.
How can you stifle progress? Progress is the advancement of technology...it has no set goals, so it can have no set rate. I think it's foolish to think that progress must occur as quickly as it possibly can...since there's no endgame, there's no reason to rush.
Patents stifle creativity a bit...but it's the same patent system that fuels research, an essential element to science and technology that many futurists ignore. This isn't fucking star trek. Science costs money, a lot of money for uncertain goals. Once somebody's figured out the HOW of good science, and published his results, it's theoretically trivial to reproduce. That's risk, and without patents there would be little reason for private industry to engage in research.
I do think patents are way too expansive at the moment...but patents didn't seem to hurt the CD, the microchip, or even MP3.
Well, the problem here is again one of trust. In many ways, an untrusted P2P spam blocklist would be easier to invalidate...all spammers have to do is access the P2P net and start spewing out BS and the whole list becomes worthless.
And then there's the nuisance factor...script kiddies chucking up their enemys' domains as spammers, adding aol.com, etc.
In order to establish trust, you'd have to have one of two things: 1) a trust authenticator, which is a central organization which can be shut down using DDOS and invalidated or 2) a web of trust, requiring admins to opt in to certain zone administrators' records, which would take quite a bit of time and would be very fallible.
Neither is that great an idea.
What IS a good idea is a distributed network of blocklists not like Kazaa, but like an IRC network or DNS. Trusted submitters are given powers like unto moderators to push information to a core set of servers, from which other servers pull their spam blocklists.
We could do this now, using the server mirroring system that already exists for things like Linux kernels. Hell, we could even maintain versioning, to back off mistakenly blacklisted domains.
Of course, the best idea will always be not to publish your email address and to guard it like a hawk. I get maybe 5 spam emails per day and that doesn't bother me at all.
Yes. The lesson is that if you get off your ass you can do interesting things. I don't see where intelelctual property comes into it. In fact, one could just as easily argue that, since he did nothing more than cobble together the type of generator that has been done before, that he has not advanced "science" at all. Sure, he's advanced his own knowledge, it certainly is an interesting and awesome project, but science hasn't moved an inch. That's why he only got SECOND place for this project -- he's shown he's a really talenter tinkerer, not the next Heisenberg.
As for applying an open source model to ideas...well, we already do that, stupid, it's called peer review. It manifests itself in the form of these cool, incredibly terse publications about the size of silver age comic books, with the words JOURNAL OF at the front of the title and a bunch of syllables at the end. This system is how we "know" cold fusion isn't real, or at the very least it isn't going to be easy. The methodology of experimentation is not prevented by intellectual property law. Patenting something doesn't mean nobody else understands how it works, or prevent you from improving upon it. Pantent law PROTECTS improvements. There is no DMCA for this sort of thing, no FBI agent will come to your lab. In the biotech field you can make as many AIDS cocktails as you like for research. Steal the recipe right out of the JAMA if you like. Shit, Glaxo wants you to. The more publications there are that back up their findings, the easier it is to get the FDA to lay off on them.
All patent law does is assure that the first guy to come up with a brilliant new concept will be allowed to make money from technologies based off of it. That's how researchers live...selling ideas that can be made into profits. Taking that away from them doesn't help science, mate.
Go watch the excellent Bond film Die Another Day before you say that. And it's "Cher." And she also sucks. So does Celine Dion. Come to think of it, most female singers annoy me, because i don't like songs about a woman's fantasy of true love. I like many female country singers for this reason. And Bjork.
And, of course, that hot lead singer from Even In Blackouts. Wowie wow.
I was using P2P back when it was called IRC channels with a bunch of guys running FTP servers. Before that, I was into the type of P2P that was traded in wierd locations throughout Compuserve. Before that, we called the Bleeding Edge and other local BBS's and spent hours uploading gif files to their public areas. Before then, it was floppies and a copy of Renegade, and casette tapes with holes drilled in them.
Now, I've gone off the searchable networked P2P, and on to sending secret web links to people I meet over IRC. Napster, Kazaa, they just simplify and dehumanize the interaction. The ways that used to work -- hunting down generous people with loose morals and begging them for files -- still work just as well. As does sneakernet and a stack of discs. I've had file sharing "parties" in the past year...grandiose events where three friends come over with a couple cool CDs and we trade them.
Ironically, I don't trade files much at all. Not because I am afraid of the RIAA, but because most of what I want to listen to nowadays is off the major lables that are members of the RIAA and I want to support them. I had to seriously hunt for CDs from bands like Jiker, Valis, Edan (the humble magnificent) and the Black Keys. These same bands are all over the P2P networks. When your music distribution system is so screwed up that it is EASY to steal music but nearly impossible to BUY it...you've got big problems. Maybe an answer is to shut down p2p. Maybe a better answer is finding some way to reach the millions of listeners who don't want to hear Madonna's robotic warbling.
the biggest battle was over which Linux vendor to use - RedHat or SuSE.
I guarantee you that the Ford motor company's IT department is bigger than either RedHat or SuSE. Why choose a distro when you can make your own system so easily? I mean, which is better: paying high priced consultants and smooth talking project managers to solve your emergency problems on their terms, or pressuring your own guys to do the same?
Plus, who wouldn't want to see Ford Linux? I may not like Ford cars, or Ford as a car company, but Ford as an engineering paradigm is something that I have respected for a LONG time. I even used to have a big Ford emblem on my first webserver...because it was as reliable as my old Ranger, which wasn't very reliable at all. It wouldn't have to be an official distribution, but wouldn't it be great if it was? Ford Linux, emphasis on secure embedded transaction systems. Direct competition with Microsoft in the market...and Linux on the dashboard of Fords, Cougars, Volvos, Jaguars...
And why is it so strange that Ford should make software? GM owns an insurance company and a bank. GE owns a damn TV network. Hell, this company we just partnered with is somehow owned by Niagra Mohawk, the power company responsible for the northeastern blackout last month. Their "core competency" may be automotive design, but if you've got a massive team of hackers tapping away at infrastructure code already, you might as well sell it. Use your name to take it to Joe Nascar's Dell...
Once, I kept a lady on the phone for like an hour, talking about magazines. I was gonna order the whole lot. Then she says, "Okay, I need your credit card to continue." I calmly reply, "Credit Card? Oh no no no. That's how they get ya. I keep all my money in a box under my bed."
Unfortunately, she doesn't take cash.
Another time, I actually read off the numbers to the credit card, but accidentally turned up SLAYER on the stereo for the last 6 digits. Oops.
I drive a turbocharged 4 cylinder with a manual transmission. When I use the same driving techniques I see about 35 mpg. When I drive like a jackrabbit, I see 27 mpg, less in the city (24). That's a difference of 9 mpg, or if you drive 300 miles a week like I do, about $260 per year. Not a big deal, unless it comes out of your gas & food budget. It's an extra $20 restaurant bill every month.
I didn't get a hybrid, simply because I need a bit more power sometimes. My car is a daily driver, a weekend excursioner and my vacationer. It can pull a trailer with four boats on it and still get over 30 mpg. Hybrids are still sort of considered an "economy" idea, and "economy" in the US market doesn't mean efficiency, but "small and powerless." I am interested in economy, but not if it means having to buy separate autos for everything I want to do...I need a larger minimum amount of power, but I want to get it as efficiently as possible.
Incidentally, I'll bet time will show hybrids to be VERY long lived mobiles. According to everything I've read about keeping cars alive, idling kills cars faster than even shotgun starts. When it's idling, an engine isn't cleaning itself, it's just grinding itself up and eating about a gallon of gas per hour. Yes, all those people you see leaving their cars idling to keep them warm or cold are just killing their engines. Hybrids don't idle...at least, not much. They cut into the much more efficient, much higher torque electric motor.
Personally, I can't wait for the first truly high power (150+ bhp, not racecar but fast enough to pique the interest of street racers and therefore the performance mod industry) hybridized engines. High horses with high efficiency means we can stick them in bigger bodies, do more with them without burning as much wasted petrol. Plus, they'll have much better acceleration than comparable gas-only engines. My ideal setup? An all aluminum frame with a 40 hp hybrid motor attached to a turbocharged H4. The electric motor would also reduce the effects of turbo lag (turbos spin based on engine exhaust, so they aren't as powerful at low RPMs, a factor which makes them good for daily drivers but which causes a definite lag when you NEED power, like accelerating too avoid something).
Oh no, of course you're right. Amazing hackers exist, and nobody will see them because they're kept in basements filled with doughnuts and computer monitors.
You do know that they don't shoot you when you retire from the CIA, NSA or Secret Service, right? That these are fake things invented to make interesting stories? That in the real world, intelligence is never just one charismatice/intelligent/talented guy taking on the enemy?
Not necessarily. It is just as likely that there are no really great hackers. For one thing, there's no proof that there are anythin other than the self important run-of-the-mill kind of hacker other than creepy speculative statements made by self important members of the "security" community. I know a lot of smart people who disappeared off the face of the earth too. Once in a while I rediscover them, working in coffee shops or as security guards at the zoo. They dropped contact when they gave up on intellectualism for a life of hedonistic pleasures like having friends and making a little money.
You know, it's funny...as much as people here hate on Microsoft for using FUD tactics, they seem to okay the computer security industry using the same tactics to scare people into buying expensive security audits. Better buy a new firewall...Bigfoot broke the cisco backdoor and the Loch Ness Monster could be SSH'd into your daughter's underwear drawer right now and we'd never know because they're using special Voodoo IP addresses that cannot be logged!
See, hackers work by writing code to exploit bugs. It is impossible to write code that is bug free. It is just as impossible to write exploits that are bug free (see: that blaster "fix" that did as much "damage" as the worm did). As such, it is impossible to write code that is completely indetectable. There are bound to be bugs in the indetectability. So this whole idea that stealthy ninja superhackers are sliding in and out of our nation's mainframes without anybody knowing is something I tend to place in the same realm of fiction as bible code.
And if you were "good enough" to write invincible code, it seems to me you could lead a much better life without this stupid Swordfish subterfuge, teaching your methods to senior programmers across the country for big bank. Shit, I'm sure MS has an opening somewhere. The New York Times definitely does.
We can say frivalent, but we probably shouldn't as it isn't a word and has no readily agreed upon definition. Try frivolous, meaning "lacking seriousness" or "of little weight or importance." Or better yet, try "completely decent," since this guy sued Register.com for putting up a placeholder full of annoying pop up ads for Register.com and never told him they were doing so. And, thanks to the trickle down of domain information, the banners on his new site were there for two days. That, my friend, sucks, and they should tell you the domain you paid too much for (two to three times too much) is going to be used to serve ads for two days before you can put up your site.
Because the register.com "Coming Soon" page was full of advertisements, many of them pop ups, pop unders and pop away ads. A placeholder hurts nobody, but a placeholder full of ads can hurt your reputation.
I think register.com was banking on the ad revenue from domain squatters. I think that's a stupid anti-social idea, and I'm glad it's been taxed $600,000.
The thing you are forgetting is that you only hear the bad parts of each piece of ligitigation, never hear the eventual outcome, never hear the settled price, etc.
First off, a lot of the nuisance suits you read about in papers and emails are urban legends or flat out lies...check out snopes.com sometime. Most "nuisance" injury lawsuits ARE thrown out. And some that seem nuisance at the skin level -- like that old lady who spilled coffee on herself -- aren't so bad. That lady got third degree burns and had to have plastic surgery to repair her damaged skin. That's really fucking hot coffee. The lawsuit wasn't about it being hot, it was about it being needlessly physically dangerous with no warning or explanation.
This lawsuit is similarly easy to dismiss. But realize it isn't about having a placeholder...it's about the placeholder being inexplicably covered with advertisements and really annoying ones at that. What if you got your car back from Midas, and it had a big fuck-off Midas sticker on the hood? One that you didn't know how to pull off?
And some idiots will still pay it. I don't *get* Register.com...no benefit over the nine dollar guys, and DNS is set up so you can't get screwed even if your registrar goes under...do some people just prefer paying too much for fascist tactics, pinhead management and inferior service?
Dude, space flight remains an AMAZINGLY expensive process in terms of raw resources. It doesn't seem like this is going to get a whole lot cheaper. And once we do get off the planet, we've still got to live on resources FROM the planet.
Seems really wasteful to me...spend all these resources just to get up above air and say "Look at me! I'm in space! Please send food, water, oxygen and heat and radiation shielding materials!"
There's no real benefit to the cool domed terraformed worlds of Heinlein and Kubrick. So, we haven't done it. I like the sensible real world 21st century, even if I can't take a whiz on a moon rock.
For some reason, I am not affected at all by insults from people too scared of retribution to sign their name.
On the INTERNET, no less.
Re:VS sucks
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Java vs .NET
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· Score: 3, Insightful
What the fuck are you talking about?
Since 2002 when Visual Studio.NET "dropped support" for VB6, there have been several service pack releases for VB6. Our company, which has a massive set of applications written in VB6, has released an update every month for our VB customers, written in VB.
We will eventually be rewriting in in.NET, not because the language "has no future," something our clients couldn't care less about anyway, but because the application is a clusterfuck which needs to be updated. Writing it in a faster, safer language like VB.NET is not be considered a liability by anyone in this company. In fact, the eventual rewrite has been used to tease the development staff..."After this, you guys can relax and do that rewrite!"
A lot of people complained about having to essentially rewrite all their Java 1 applications when Java 2 came out because 1 had no future. Those people are what we call LAZY.
Re:VS sucks
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Java vs .NET
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· Score: 2, Insightful
My company chooses Microsoft. Instead of bitching and moaning about it like a good slashdotter, I point out the good, and that makes me a fanboy?
In that case, I am also a Maxwell House coffee fanboy, a Sanford pencils fanboy, a Novell Border Manager fanboy, and a Road Runner Business Class fanboy.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I think the problem here is that you don't understand music very much.
YOU: "Bands wouldn't sign contracts to produce albums if they didn't make money."
History: Music has been made, for free, for several thousand years. Musicians have lived off of tips and patronidge and "day jobs" forver. Music is not about money. The music INDUSTRY, which feeds your CD shop and your radio, is about money. The two aren't necesarily exclusive, but it seems that way a lot of the time.
If you are in a band, making what you feel is the best music ever played (and all musicians do), and I tell you that I will give you money and you'll get fame and airplay, and you can quit your day job because of the advance, wouldn't you do it?
Musicians are interested in music, not money. They see the advance check and don't do the math. $100,000 to make music? Better than mopping up at the A&P, so they take it. This makes sense...would cautious, sensible economic planners be humping electric guitars on stage 5 nights a week until 2 am and doing crazy drugs when they have to work at 9 am the next morning? Hell no.
Still, with a big label contract, there's always the chance you'll be the next big thing. And then they make SCADS of cash. This is why so many acts sound alike...even if your sound is fresh and original, your producer reminds you you'll have a better chance of getting BIG if you sound more "commercial." End result is, you trade a little creativity for the possibility of never having to work again, ostensibly so you can regain your creativity after you're comfortably rich. You sell out. The result is the bands you hear "polluting" the airwaves. Yes, they are in it for the cash grab. But it's a big lottery and like all gambling, the chances are much better that you'll fail miserably.
People play music because they want to appeal to others with their music. They take contracts because they are told they will make doing just that. In the process, the goal of making money can often obscure the goal of being heard, and even if it doesn't, chance is not on your side. Chances are, with a big label contract, you will make very little money in the long run, and you'll probably squander it anyway.
Nowadays a lot of artists, especially ones who want to play their own thing and not appeal to the masses with generic sound, are opting not to get the big advances and small print of the big record label. Small labels will press your sound and give you a much larger cut but with no promotion, no advance, no whatever. You have to self promote, appeal to the few remaining independent media outlets, and you have to pack people into your shows. Still, you will never have the exposure of the big boys, so it's very hard to get gold or platinum level sales. But it's much more likely that you'll make enough to live on comfortably.
Public key encryption is a great way to be sure that the author of a piece of information is consistant. But it is not a good way to tell if they're reliable. This is a problem with Freenet...it's very anonymous, it's very secure, it's very consistant. But since there's no agent of responsibility or accountability, you can't trust anyone. Believe me, I love Freenet for this reason. But if anything, communication over Freenet makes me more paranoid. Who is the guy you're talking with? Why should you trust his information? It too is Orwellian, but in a different way...
It doesn't matter who gets involved. SMTP is simply too chaotic for even government controls to work in all cases. You already can't use the internet the way you want to, because it's designed to not care. Your website is public and your email address is public. You can't make something public and have the same control you had over it when it was private...something content providers are realizing the world over. Rights or no rights, once information is known it can be exploited...isn't that one of the basic tenets of hacking?
Think of spam email like muggers in Central park...it's under the jurisdiction of the government, there are strict penalties, and yet muggings still occur. The only way to be sure is to be damn careful. Stay out of the park at night. Keep your personal email address seperate from your business address.
How can you stifle progress? Progress is the advancement of technology...it has no set goals, so it can have no set rate. I think it's foolish to think that progress must occur as quickly as it possibly can...since there's no endgame, there's no reason to rush.
Patents stifle creativity a bit...but it's the same patent system that fuels research, an essential element to science and technology that many futurists ignore. This isn't fucking star trek. Science costs money, a lot of money for uncertain goals. Once somebody's figured out the HOW of good science, and published his results, it's theoretically trivial to reproduce. That's risk, and without patents there would be little reason for private industry to engage in research.
I do think patents are way too expansive at the moment...but patents didn't seem to hurt the CD, the microchip, or even MP3.
IBM 4247 printer for me.
Duh duh duh duh zeah zeah zeah zeah duh duh duh duh. Da Da...eegle eegle eegle eegle snuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh toffle toffle.
80+ db for a magnificent 6 ppm.
Well, the problem here is again one of trust. In many ways, an untrusted P2P spam blocklist would be easier to invalidate...all spammers have to do is access the P2P net and start spewing out BS and the whole list becomes worthless.
And then there's the nuisance factor...script kiddies chucking up their enemys' domains as spammers, adding aol.com, etc.
In order to establish trust, you'd have to have one of two things: 1) a trust authenticator, which is a central organization which can be shut down using DDOS and invalidated or 2) a web of trust, requiring admins to opt in to certain zone administrators' records, which would take quite a bit of time and would be very fallible.
Neither is that great an idea.
What IS a good idea is a distributed network of blocklists not like Kazaa, but like an IRC network or DNS. Trusted submitters are given powers like unto moderators to push information to a core set of servers, from which other servers pull their spam blocklists.
We could do this now, using the server mirroring system that already exists for things like Linux kernels. Hell, we could even maintain versioning, to back off mistakenly blacklisted domains.
Of course, the best idea will always be not to publish your email address and to guard it like a hawk. I get maybe 5 spam emails per day and that doesn't bother me at all.
It has been 8 years since I have used a modem. I still laugh at NO CARRIER jokes and people who whistle 9600 baud connect tones.
This is why people don't take me seriously as a pundit.
All property is theft anyway, man. Objects want to be free...that's why cars need parking brakes!
Yes. The lesson is that if you get off your ass you can do interesting things. I don't see where intelelctual property comes into it. In fact, one could just as easily argue that, since he did nothing more than cobble together the type of generator that has been done before, that he has not advanced "science" at all. Sure, he's advanced his own knowledge, it certainly is an interesting and awesome project, but science hasn't moved an inch. That's why he only got SECOND place for this project -- he's shown he's a really talenter tinkerer, not the next Heisenberg.
As for applying an open source model to ideas...well, we already do that, stupid, it's called peer review. It manifests itself in the form of these cool, incredibly terse publications about the size of silver age comic books, with the words JOURNAL OF at the front of the title and a bunch of syllables at the end. This system is how we "know" cold fusion isn't real, or at the very least it isn't going to be easy. The methodology of experimentation is not prevented by intellectual property law. Patenting something doesn't mean nobody else understands how it works, or prevent you from improving upon it. Pantent law PROTECTS improvements. There is no DMCA for this sort of thing, no FBI agent will come to your lab. In the biotech field you can make as many AIDS cocktails as you like for research. Steal the recipe right out of the JAMA if you like. Shit, Glaxo wants you to. The more publications there are that back up their findings, the easier it is to get the FDA to lay off on them.
All patent law does is assure that the first guy to come up with a brilliant new concept will be allowed to make money from technologies based off of it. That's how researchers live...selling ideas that can be made into profits. Taking that away from them doesn't help science, mate.
Like it matters. When we finally do acheive cold fusion, here on slashdot everybody will argue how much better PHP is, anyway.
Go watch the excellent Bond film Die Another Day before you say that. And it's "Cher." And she also sucks. So does Celine Dion. Come to think of it, most female singers annoy me, because i don't like songs about a woman's fantasy of true love. I like many female country singers for this reason. And Bjork.
And, of course, that hot lead singer from Even In Blackouts. Wowie wow.
I was using P2P back when it was called IRC channels with a bunch of guys running FTP servers. Before that, I was into the type of P2P that was traded in wierd locations throughout Compuserve. Before that, we called the Bleeding Edge and other local BBS's and spent hours uploading gif files to their public areas. Before then, it was floppies and a copy of Renegade, and casette tapes with holes drilled in them.
Now, I've gone off the searchable networked P2P, and on to sending secret web links to people I meet over IRC. Napster, Kazaa, they just simplify and dehumanize the interaction. The ways that used to work -- hunting down generous people with loose morals and begging them for files -- still work just as well. As does sneakernet and a stack of discs. I've had file sharing "parties" in the past year...grandiose events where three friends come over with a couple cool CDs and we trade them.
Ironically, I don't trade files much at all. Not because I am afraid of the RIAA, but because most of what I want to listen to nowadays is off the major lables that are members of the RIAA and I want to support them. I had to seriously hunt for CDs from bands like Jiker, Valis, Edan (the humble magnificent) and the Black Keys. These same bands are all over the P2P networks. When your music distribution system is so screwed up that it is EASY to steal music but nearly impossible to BUY it...you've got big problems. Maybe an answer is to shut down p2p. Maybe a better answer is finding some way to reach the millions of listeners who don't want to hear Madonna's robotic warbling.
the biggest battle was over which Linux vendor to use - RedHat or SuSE.
I guarantee you that the Ford motor company's IT department is bigger than either RedHat or SuSE. Why choose a distro when you can make your own system so easily? I mean, which is better: paying high priced consultants and smooth talking project managers to solve your emergency problems on their terms, or pressuring your own guys to do the same?
Plus, who wouldn't want to see Ford Linux? I may not like Ford cars, or Ford as a car company, but Ford as an engineering paradigm is something that I have respected for a LONG time. I even used to have a big Ford emblem on my first webserver...because it was as reliable as my old Ranger, which wasn't very reliable at all. It wouldn't have to be an official distribution, but wouldn't it be great if it was? Ford Linux, emphasis on secure embedded transaction systems. Direct competition with Microsoft in the market...and Linux on the dashboard of Fords, Cougars, Volvos, Jaguars...
And why is it so strange that Ford should make software? GM owns an insurance company and a bank. GE owns a damn TV network. Hell, this company we just partnered with is somehow owned by Niagra Mohawk, the power company responsible for the northeastern blackout last month. Their "core competency" may be automotive design, but if you've got a massive team of hackers tapping away at infrastructure code already, you might as well sell it. Use your name to take it to Joe Nascar's Dell...
Once, I kept a lady on the phone for like an hour, talking about magazines. I was gonna order the whole lot. Then she says, "Okay, I need your credit card to continue." I calmly reply, "Credit Card? Oh no no no. That's how they get ya. I keep all my money in a box under my bed."
Unfortunately, she doesn't take cash.
Another time, I actually read off the numbers to the credit card, but accidentally turned up SLAYER on the stereo for the last 6 digits. Oops.
I drive a turbocharged 4 cylinder with a manual transmission. When I use the same driving techniques I see about 35 mpg. When I drive like a jackrabbit, I see 27 mpg, less in the city (24). That's a difference of 9 mpg, or if you drive 300 miles a week like I do, about $260 per year. Not a big deal, unless it comes out of your gas & food budget. It's an extra $20 restaurant bill every month.
I didn't get a hybrid, simply because I need a bit more power sometimes. My car is a daily driver, a weekend excursioner and my vacationer. It can pull a trailer with four boats on it and still get over 30 mpg. Hybrids are still sort of considered an "economy" idea, and "economy" in the US market doesn't mean efficiency, but "small and powerless." I am interested in economy, but not if it means having to buy separate autos for everything I want to do...I need a larger minimum amount of power, but I want to get it as efficiently as possible.
Incidentally, I'll bet time will show hybrids to be VERY long lived mobiles. According to everything I've read about keeping cars alive, idling kills cars faster than even shotgun starts. When it's idling, an engine isn't cleaning itself, it's just grinding itself up and eating about a gallon of gas per hour. Yes, all those people you see leaving their cars idling to keep them warm or cold are just killing their engines. Hybrids don't idle...at least, not much. They cut into the much more efficient, much higher torque electric motor.
Personally, I can't wait for the first truly high power (150+ bhp, not racecar but fast enough to pique the interest of street racers and therefore the performance mod industry) hybridized engines. High horses with high efficiency means we can stick them in bigger bodies, do more with them without burning as much wasted petrol. Plus, they'll have much better acceleration than comparable gas-only engines. My ideal setup? An all aluminum frame with a 40 hp hybrid motor attached to a turbocharged H4. The electric motor would also reduce the effects of turbo lag (turbos spin based on engine exhaust, so they aren't as powerful at low RPMs, a factor which makes them good for daily drivers but which causes a definite lag when you NEED power, like accelerating too avoid something).
Oh no, of course you're right. Amazing hackers exist, and nobody will see them because they're kept in basements filled with doughnuts and computer monitors.
You do know that they don't shoot you when you retire from the CIA, NSA or Secret Service, right? That these are fake things invented to make interesting stories? That in the real world, intelligence is never just one charismatice/intelligent/talented guy taking on the enemy?
Not necessarily. It is just as likely that there are no really great hackers. For one thing, there's no proof that there are anythin other than the self important run-of-the-mill kind of hacker other than creepy speculative statements made by self important members of the "security" community. I know a lot of smart people who disappeared off the face of the earth too. Once in a while I rediscover them, working in coffee shops or as security guards at the zoo. They dropped contact when they gave up on intellectualism for a life of hedonistic pleasures like having friends and making a little money.
You know, it's funny...as much as people here hate on Microsoft for using FUD tactics, they seem to okay the computer security industry using the same tactics to scare people into buying expensive security audits. Better buy a new firewall...Bigfoot broke the cisco backdoor and the Loch Ness Monster could be SSH'd into your daughter's underwear drawer right now and we'd never know because they're using special Voodoo IP addresses that cannot be logged!
See, hackers work by writing code to exploit bugs. It is impossible to write code that is bug free. It is just as impossible to write exploits that are bug free (see: that blaster "fix" that did as much "damage" as the worm did). As such, it is impossible to write code that is completely indetectable. There are bound to be bugs in the indetectability. So this whole idea that stealthy ninja superhackers are sliding in and out of our nation's mainframes without anybody knowing is something I tend to place in the same realm of fiction as bible code.
And if you were "good enough" to write invincible code, it seems to me you could lead a much better life without this stupid Swordfish subterfuge, teaching your methods to senior programmers across the country for big bank. Shit, I'm sure MS has an opening somewhere. The New York Times definitely does.
We can say frivalent, but we probably shouldn't as it isn't a word and has no readily agreed upon definition. Try frivolous, meaning "lacking seriousness" or "of little weight or importance." Or better yet, try "completely decent," since this guy sued Register.com for putting up a placeholder full of annoying pop up ads for Register.com and never told him they were doing so. And, thanks to the trickle down of domain information, the banners on his new site were there for two days. That, my friend, sucks, and they should tell you the domain you paid too much for (two to three times too much) is going to be used to serve ads for two days before you can put up your site.
Because the register.com "Coming Soon" page was full of advertisements, many of them pop ups, pop unders and pop away ads. A placeholder hurts nobody, but a placeholder full of ads can hurt your reputation.
I think register.com was banking on the ad revenue from domain squatters. I think that's a stupid anti-social idea, and I'm glad it's been taxed $600,000.
The thing you are forgetting is that you only hear the bad parts of each piece of ligitigation, never hear the eventual outcome, never hear the settled price, etc.
First off, a lot of the nuisance suits you read about in papers and emails are urban legends or flat out lies...check out snopes.com sometime. Most "nuisance" injury lawsuits ARE thrown out. And some that seem nuisance at the skin level -- like that old lady who spilled coffee on herself -- aren't so bad. That lady got third degree burns and had to have plastic surgery to repair her damaged skin. That's really fucking hot coffee. The lawsuit wasn't about it being hot, it was about it being needlessly physically dangerous with no warning or explanation.
This lawsuit is similarly easy to dismiss. But realize it isn't about having a placeholder...it's about the placeholder being inexplicably covered with advertisements and really annoying ones at that. What if you got your car back from Midas, and it had a big fuck-off Midas sticker on the hood? One that you didn't know how to pull off?
And some idiots will still pay it. I don't *get* Register.com...no benefit over the nine dollar guys, and DNS is set up so you can't get screwed even if your registrar goes under...do some people just prefer paying too much for fascist tactics, pinhead management and inferior service?
Why can't you believe this?
Dude, space flight remains an AMAZINGLY expensive process in terms of raw resources. It doesn't seem like this is going to get a whole lot cheaper. And once we do get off the planet, we've still got to live on resources FROM the planet.
Seems really wasteful to me...spend all these resources just to get up above air and say "Look at me! I'm in space! Please send food, water, oxygen and heat and radiation shielding materials!"
There's no real benefit to the cool domed terraformed worlds of Heinlein and Kubrick. So, we haven't done it. I like the sensible real world 21st century, even if I can't take a whiz on a moon rock.
For some reason, I am not affected at all by insults from people too scared of retribution to sign their name.
On the INTERNET, no less.
What the fuck are you talking about?
.NET, not because the language "has no future," something our clients couldn't care less about anyway, but because the application is a clusterfuck which needs to be updated. Writing it in a faster, safer language like VB.NET is not be considered a liability by anyone in this company. In fact, the eventual rewrite has been used to tease the development staff..."After this, you guys can relax and do that rewrite!"
Since 2002 when Visual Studio.NET "dropped support" for VB6, there have been several service pack releases for VB6. Our company, which has a massive set of applications written in VB6, has released an update every month for our VB customers, written in VB.
We will eventually be rewriting in in
A lot of people complained about having to essentially rewrite all their Java 1 applications when Java 2 came out because 1 had no future. Those people are what we call LAZY.
My company chooses Microsoft. Instead of bitching and moaning about it like a good slashdotter, I point out the good, and that makes me a fanboy?
In that case, I am also a Maxwell House coffee fanboy, a Sanford pencils fanboy, a Novell Border Manager fanboy, and a Road Runner Business Class fanboy.