Did users of this site have to pay to be listed on it? How easy was it for someone who just doesn't like you to put your name and address on there? Was "ashleying" people a thing, like swatting?
I was a sysop on bulletin boards (remember those?) once. I still have the meter-thick epidermis, so no problem. I make a certain percentage of intentionally provocative comments here, and I'm always amazed at (1) the number of such comments that just fall unnoticed into the ether and (2) the times that someone will go Chernobyl over some totally ordinary observation.
I'm just saying that imbalances of power can go back and forth with time. Unions formed for a reason, and many older industries that could have adapted and survived died for a reason. We must maintain situational awareness and historical perspective.
Today, having hung onto my Sub S, I occupy a niche as the IT country doctor in a small rural town. This job involves a certain amount of sadness. I'm the one who has to go out in a snowstorm to tell an 80-year-old widow that her faithful companion of a generation, her Windows XP desktop, is now far too old to upgrade - its HD growing flakier by the month, its Registry spavined from innumerable bad encounters with Home Shopping Network malware, the primordial graphics card throwing random patches of Clan Stuart tartan onto her desktop. I count it a win if I can copy off her lifetime of cruise photographs before it flatlines.
But there are joyful days too, when I get the call that the long-awaited UPS delivery has come and I can set up and start some young family's new Mac, its bootup chime telling us that fresh life has been brought into the world, ready to continue the Circle of Computer Technology.
This is my fiftieth year in tech, and whenever the word "union" has come up in the field, workers have reacted to horror stories from Detroit, Chicago and DC, where the imbalance of power was clearly in the opposite direction: graft and featherbedding destroying grand old industries, driving the smoldering remnants of our national productivity away to Asia. What we were not being cognizant of was that there was an earlier time - in the mining camps of the Gilded Age, in meatpacking plants crammed with immigrants fresh from eastern Europe and willing to do anything to survive, in steel mills where nobody cared about working conditions - where the imbalance of power went the other way. That was when the union movement got started.
I'm fortunate to have spent most of my career in times and places where developers had the upper hand over companies in negotiations. You got mistreated at one place, there was always a better job around the corner, and everyone knew it. If the stories coming out about conditions at Amazon and other tech companies are true, today's young people don't have that luxury, and may have no choice but to organize.
Compared to the primordial African savanna "Eden" we evolved to fit, most of the places where humans already live are unbelievably harsh. Clothing, agriculture, shelter and other simple technologies have brought us this far. Now, civilization and high-order technology are combining in ways that are about to make things really interesting.
Man plus machine form a complex that can live anywhere that physics will permit.
"which one will have the Environmental Impact Study finished first? Then which one will be able to navigate the years of cease and desist lawsuits first?"
"Put the DC onshore. Run pipes, they can be as long as you need"
Good idea, especially if you want to make use of the waste heat when it emerges as hot water. But the Greens are going to object that in the event of a tsunami, the local groundwater is going to get contaminated with ones and zeroes. Windows malware could persist in the environment for generations to come.
Actually, government serving influential corporations was my whole point. That's why small businessmen are the people who register Libertarian, not anyone with political clout. Large-corporate people love government regulation, because they get to set it up to benefit themselves.
That's why Son Of Return To Beyond the Valley Of DMCA, Part 2, the legislation being negotiated now as part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, is so horripilating that they're afraid to even tell us what's in it.
So let's do some reading. From the EFF link above:
SCC won over Lexmark on narrow technical grounds: "The Sixth Circuit ruled in favor of SCC holding that (1) some of the Lexmark software was insufficiently creative to deserve copyright protection and (2) the authentication handshake did not effectively protect the software because printer owners could directly access the software through other open interfaces."
Aaand...the big BUT:
"While an important victory against the anti-competitive uses of the DMCA and digital rights management (aka "technical protection measures") the Sixth Circuit ruling likely will not prevent companies from trying tactics similar to those used by Lexmark in the future.
In addition Lexmark is also using patent law to restrict competition in secondary markets for refilled toner cartridges."
The Sixth Circuit did not hold that printer cartridge DRM is not copyrightable, so Xerox' ability to invoke DMCA in this case depends on avoiding the traps in Lexmark.
Interesting. So there has been an actual appellate defeat for anti-circumvention on cartridges, then - and not by the Ninth Circuit either, the one that always gets overruled by SCOTUS.
To defend against a DMCA indictment for bypassing cartridge DRM, your expensive legal team would have to convince a court that the Sixth Circuit's narrow ruling applies. Good luck!
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Did users of this site have to pay to be listed on it? How easy was it for someone who just doesn't like you to put your name and address on there? Was "ashleying" people a thing, like swatting?
I was a sysop on bulletin boards (remember those?) once. I still have the meter-thick epidermis, so no problem. I make a certain percentage of intentionally provocative comments here, and I'm always amazed at (1) the number of such comments that just fall unnoticed into the ether and (2) the times that someone will go Chernobyl over some totally ordinary observation.
Basic question: Does Amazon have stack ranking as official policy, or does it not? Or is it just in certain departments?
Referral bonuses still exist? I thought those had gone the way of the 40-hour week with paid overtime and the Aeron chairs for all.
I'm just saying that imbalances of power can go back and forth with time. Unions formed for a reason, and many older industries that could have adapted and survived died for a reason. We must maintain situational awareness and historical perspective.
Today, having hung onto my Sub S, I occupy a niche as the IT country doctor in a small rural town. This job involves a certain amount of sadness. I'm the one who has to go out in a snowstorm to tell an 80-year-old widow that her faithful companion of a generation, her Windows XP desktop, is now far too old to upgrade - its HD growing flakier by the month, its Registry spavined from innumerable bad encounters with Home Shopping Network malware, the primordial graphics card throwing random patches of Clan Stuart tartan onto her desktop. I count it a win if I can copy off her lifetime of cruise photographs before it flatlines.
But there are joyful days too, when I get the call that the long-awaited UPS delivery has come and I can set up and start some young family's new Mac, its bootup chime telling us that fresh life has been brought into the world, ready to continue the Circle of Computer Technology.
This is my fiftieth year in tech, and whenever the word "union" has come up in the field, workers have reacted to horror stories from Detroit, Chicago and DC, where the imbalance of power was clearly in the opposite direction: graft and featherbedding destroying grand old industries, driving the smoldering remnants of our national productivity away to Asia. What we were not being cognizant of was that there was an earlier time - in the mining camps of the Gilded Age, in meatpacking plants crammed with immigrants fresh from eastern Europe and willing to do anything to survive, in steel mills where nobody cared about working conditions - where the imbalance of power went the other way. That was when the union movement got started.
I'm fortunate to have spent most of my career in times and places where developers had the upper hand over companies in negotiations. You got mistreated at one place, there was always a better job around the corner, and everyone knew it. If the stories coming out about conditions at Amazon and other tech companies are true, today's young people don't have that luxury, and may have no choice but to organize.
Here's an interesting case for unionization in tech:
https://michaelochurch.wordpre...
Discuss.
Compared to the primordial African savanna "Eden" we evolved to fit, most of the places where humans already live are unbelievably harsh. Clothing, agriculture, shelter and other simple technologies have brought us this far. Now, civilization and high-order technology are combining in ways that are about to make things really interesting.
Man plus machine form a complex that can live anywhere that physics will permit.
And to shoot dogs whenever you feel like it.
"There are (reportedly) 10,000 govt employees in the Ashley Madison hack that would probably disagree with you, Jeb"
Especially the major player formerly posting as wjc@whitehouse.gov .
Thanks for the update. That's another candidate scratched off my list.
If users find DRMed cartridges to be both odious and uncrackable, they will just avoid the Xerox line. Problem solved.
That's Slashdot.
Whenever Germany sees an opportunity for a new rule and a big fine for something, that opportunity will be taken.
"which one will have the Environmental Impact Study finished first?
Then which one will be able to navigate the years of cease and desist lawsuits first?"
My prediction: the Beijing-Shanghai corridor.
"Put the DC onshore. Run pipes, they can be as long as you need"
Good idea, especially if you want to make use of the waste heat when it emerges as hot water. But the Greens are going to object that in the event of a tsunami, the local groundwater is going to get contaminated with ones and zeroes. Windows malware could persist in the environment for generations to come.
"Running the fiber optic cables could get rather expensive though.."
Look at the proliferation of places where underwater cables are landed now. There would be no need to patch over to an interconnect point.
California could use the waste heat from the servers for desalination.
Actually, government serving influential corporations was my whole point. That's why small businessmen are the people who register Libertarian, not anyone with political clout. Large-corporate people love government regulation, because they get to set it up to benefit themselves.
That's why Son Of Return To Beyond the Valley Of DMCA, Part 2, the legislation being negotiated now as part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, is so horripilating that they're afraid to even tell us what's in it.
So let's do some reading. From the EFF link above:
SCC won over Lexmark on narrow technical grounds:
"The Sixth Circuit ruled in favor of SCC holding that (1) some of the Lexmark software was insufficiently creative to deserve copyright protection and (2) the authentication handshake did not effectively protect the software because printer owners could directly access the software through other open interfaces."
Aaand...the big BUT:
"While an important victory against the anti-competitive uses of the DMCA and digital rights management (aka "technical protection measures") the Sixth Circuit ruling likely will not prevent companies from trying tactics similar to those used by Lexmark in the future.
In addition Lexmark is also using patent law to restrict competition in secondary markets for refilled toner cartridges."
The Sixth Circuit did not hold that printer cartridge DRM is not copyrightable, so Xerox' ability to invoke DMCA in this case depends on avoiding the traps in Lexmark.
Interesting. So there has been an actual appellate defeat for anti-circumvention on cartridges, then - and not by the Ninth Circuit either, the one that always gets overruled by SCOTUS.
To defend against a DMCA indictment for bypassing cartridge DRM, your expensive legal team would have to convince a court that the Sixth Circuit's narrow ruling applies. Good luck!
...Is that you can't talk about Right To Be Forgotten?
It's fun watching the EU fly in ever-decreasing circles until it flies up its own colon.
"Where in the motherfucking hell do you find anything about "federal power" preventing you from hacking your Eastern European cartridge?"
It's called the DMCA. Most other nerds have heard of it by now.
"If everyone was educated up to PhD level, it wouldn't magically mean that we all get massive salaries."
It would mean that we would all get regular PhD salaries, the kind you have to supplement by moonlighting at an Amazon warehouse.