there is a 1 in 10 chance this show won't survive because the hordes of Trekkies have nothing new to watch. It won't even matter if it's good
Uh oh Sam! It turns out that Ziggy got his calculations wrong. Trekkies are not enough to support a prime time show; they need Joe Sixpack as well, so it needs a decent hook. It can be well acted (TNG) well written (DS9), or it can have some nice T&A (Voyager post "Data in a D cup"), but it needs something more than just "The Original Series with zippers".
You bastards! We won't get it for at least six months in the UK, so I'll just have to moan and bitch about how it's not as good as The Original Series without even having the opportunity to refuse to watch it!
Really though, is it any better (or grimier) than Farscape or even Andromeda? From what I've seen so far, the cast looks anodyne, the plots predictable and your "promise" of good-ol space violence doesn't sound as though they had actual good-ol space violence.
Basically, I want to see Archer kick a giant lizard in the love spuds, chuck one up a seven breasted alien bimbo, fight off a Gooboid battle fleet, and then vapourise a couple of small planets just for laughs - and all before breakfast. Any chance of that?
I guess I'm somewhat assuming that when Napster goes commercial, they'll be hosting the songs on their server.
Frankly, I don't see how else they can do it. Also, I assume they'll need a free-for-all month to get everyone back on, but I can't see how even that will be workable if people just jump on to leech like frenzied weasels for a month.
the professor should be able to turn the access off and go about teaching, not spend all of the time policing the class, which then hurts the class for the other students
OK, point taken. Sorry to be so aggressive, I do appreciate how annoying it is to be blanked when you're trying to get an important point across. Also, I've only done work-for-hire teaching assistant work in practical labs, so I basically just kicked the wasters out and didn't have to give a damn about their grades. I can see that it would be different if they were actually "my" class, and I was accountable for their grades.
OK, you got me. What I'm actually thinking is that if I've lost their attention, I'd rather have them doing something constructive, rather than just doodling on bits of paper.;)
Sorry if I gave any offence, I do appreciate how frustrating it is when you're trying to get things across and you're facing a room of blank faces (or worse, people playing XPilot).
Even more fun is to pass LOTS of encrypted messages in the clear, but 99% are nothing but random noise. Look up the topic "Numbers Station"
I have even heard convincing arguments in favour of actually communicating in cleartext (or in a trivial or known broken code).
The reason is fiendishly simple. Your eavesdropper, an intelligence operative, will disbelieve anything that's too easy to intercept. He will spend all of his resources looking for hidden communications that aren't there.
It sounds too trivial and theoretical to be practical, but ask yourself this: when you read about a de-classified project, do you ever think "Ah, but what aren't they telling us?". Why do you think that? Why do people spend their lives analysing the Kennedy assination, Area 51, even the moon landings? We want to believe that there's more to be found, and we want to believe that we will be the ones to find it.
I'll bet dollars to cents that the folks who did this study were really gutted that they didn't find anything, and that we (i.e. our intelligence services) will keep on spending resources on looking for obfuscated political communication, when they could just drop by any of a dozen soc.culture groups and see plenty of it in plaintext. "But anything in plaintext won't be worth reading!", I hear you cry.
Exactly. Why even bother looking? Who'd be that stupid...
The system in place is one that I've actually used as a teaching assistant at UNC. [...] everytime the lights went down for instruction, the email terminals came up
Did you mind them reading email? If not, what's your point? If you did, why didn't you ask them to stop, then tell them to stop, then just kick them out?
This isn't armchair coaching, I've wrangled Computer Science lab classes as a TA, and I quickly found that I had to choose to either ignore the wasters, or to kick them out and focus on the good students. I chose the latter course, but the former's OK as well, as long as you're not hypocritical enough to then welcome a cyber nanny that saves you actually interacting with the students.
The thing that would worry me about this system (in any kind of Computer Science class) is if my students either couldn't crack it, or didn't want to, or (worst of all) didn't dare to.
To head off a potential rebuttal, no, I don't advocate students cracking systems in general, or their college system. I advocate them cracking anything that's put deliberately in their way purely to obstruct and restrict them, especially if it gives the message that using blanket suppression is better than obliging people to take personal responsiblility for their actions.
At the very least, I'd expect them to want to crack it, and then figure out how to do it and let me know. I'd expect them to want to crack it because it's there. It scares me that people here are saying that students should just accept this system without question, because it's for their own good. That way, how do you distinguish the timid from the lazy from the talented? You lower them all to the same level. In a computer science class, the one thing that I don't want to hear is silent keyboards.
Dude, what type of community college are you going to?
It can vary a lot. I went to one lecture in the 2nd half of my final year. It was a pre-exam revision lecture for a course that I quickly realised that I hadn't done, but that was OK because I fell asleep anyway as I'd been up all night hacking Xfire.
And yet I still got a solid degree from a great school, because I knew my shit. While I was "goofing off" from class, I was learning actual programming skills, rather than the abstract pet projects of the professors. I scammed enough notes off of my classmates (or off of their screens - lock those X terms, guys) to figure out what I was expected to say in the exams, and I dutifully said it and was graded on that basis, not on what I actually knew.
And now that I think about it, sometimes the only chance I got to use computer resources was when a class was held in a lab. I had the choice of two-finger typing in a stupid toy program, or I could demonstrate to myself why PPK authentication is a waste of time for open source programs. I chose the latter route, and learned a lot more.
So let's not just write off all non-class related work as a waste of time. I've wrangled lab classes, and I'd far rather walk around, see what the students are doing, encourage the smart kids (including the ones going faster than I can keep up with) and just kick the real wasters out. I don't want some crippleware nanny program doing it for me. In fact, my first assignment would be to get the class to find a way around it.
Do you agree with using a gutless technical solution rather than obliging the wasters to be personally responsible for their actions? What's that teaching them? That if you can figure out how to work around the system, that's OK?
Ask them to stop, tell them to stop, kick them out. I've wrangled lab classes, and believe me, it works just fine.
If students are not paying attention to what's happening at the front of the class, I would much prefer they leave and go elsewhere
Absolutely. I've wranged lab classes and completely agree. Kick the wasters out and give the time and resources to the people who give a fuck.
But what's the connection with this situation? You can throw people out right now for screwing around. Putting in technical blocks (rather than holding them responsible for their actions) just gives them something fun to hack.
Man, those professors are living in the past. They must think you're actually supposed to listen and even participate in the courses they teach. God, they're so backward
Well, yes. By the time that I got my degree in 1995, all I was required to do was to ace the 20% of my CS degree that was actually skills based, then regurgitate enough of the pet projects of my lecturers to scrape a pass. Using The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy as an example for most problems also seemed to work well.
Back when Napster was in full swing and I only have a 56k modem, I still managed to download about 500 128kbps+ songs in a few months
Go back and read what I wrote. Napster is reliant on having plenty of fast, always on broadband connections uploading content. Who did you think was serving those tracks to you? Other modem users?
I'm hoping that they realise that and have some financial distinction between uploaders and downloaders. This isn't a flame or a criticism, I used Napster back when I had a diallup, and completely understand that the only practical way to use it is to turn off sharing.
Like the aging rock star attempting make a comeback, Napster finds itself no longer the front-running trend-setter that it used to be
Oh my god... "Hey kids, we're on your side, party on, we're down and, er, jiggly wiv dat, but you still have to pay us money"... it's true... you always become the thing you hate... they've become... Metallica!
Re:How is it going to be profitable?
on
Napster Clawing Back
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Who will pay for a subscription to Napster when there are a multitude of other free services around - like Gnutella, for example
Specifically, who will pay money to be granted the priveledge of serving up content? If I serve up more than I pull down over gnutella (which I do), why am I going to pay Napster to be allowed to do that for them?
Napster need me a lot more than I need them. I wonder if they realise that yet?
A year ago I would have said nobody will pay for that service. But now I think enough time has elapsed and enough other free services have gone under, that they maybe be able to get a user base going again
Very possibly, but I can see one major flaw with that argument. Napster will be reliant on people with fast broadband connections paying it money for the priveledge of serving content.
Now, if I'm primarily serving content (which I am), am I going to do it over a free network like gnutella (which I do), or am I going to pay Napster to be allowed to do it for them, when I know (or suspect) that most of the uploads will be to leechers?
I'd be hesitant to sign up until I knew there were plenty of people who were already subscribed
Yup. Surely they'll open with a free-for-all month to get the numbers back.
and dial-up'ers don't count
Sadly, I agree. I'm sure that there are plenty of dialup users who serve files (thank, guys), but I'm also sure that the majority only leech. (hint: if this doesn't apply to you, then I'm not talking about you, and you needn't flame me)
It really does beg the question that if I'm serving files over my cable modem, and Napster are charging people to find those files, why aren't I getting a cut? Yes, my payback is to get files from other servers, but shouldn't I at least get a discounted service?
If my choice is freely sharing files over gnutella, or paying to be allowed to share files over Napster, I know which one I'll be doing.
Concert attendance has been plumetting over the last 10 years...
if you had tried to get concert tickets to any show Backstreet Boys, NSync, Britney, etc. played in the past 2 years, you would realize how sadly untrue this statement is
OK, ten seconds of seaching found this article that reckons that concert spending dropped in Canada between 1986 and 1996. Let me take a wild guess that we're going to fewer but bigger concerts rather than more but smaller ones.
Perhaps you could spend ten seconds coming up with more recent figures to back up your counter argument?
Slashdot Mirror
Uh oh Sam! It turns out that Ziggy got his calculations wrong. Trekkies are not enough to support a prime time show; they need Joe Sixpack as well, so it needs a decent hook. It can be well acted (TNG) well written (DS9), or it can have some nice T&A (Voyager post "Data in a D cup"), but it needs something more than just "The Original Series with zippers".
You bastards! We won't get it for at least six months in the UK, so I'll just have to moan and bitch about how it's not as good as The Original Series without even having the opportunity to refuse to watch it!
Really though, is it any better (or grimier) than Farscape or even Andromeda? From what I've seen so far, the cast looks anodyne, the plots predictable and your "promise" of good-ol space violence doesn't sound as though they had actual good-ol space violence.
Basically, I want to see Archer kick a giant lizard in the love spuds, chuck one up a seven breasted alien bimbo, fight off a Gooboid battle fleet, and then vapourise a couple of small planets just for laughs - and all before breakfast. Any chance of that?
Frankly, I don't see how else they can do it. Also, I assume they'll need a free-for-all month to get everyone back on, but I can't see how even that will be workable if people just jump on to leech like frenzied weasels for a month.
OK, point taken. Sorry to be so aggressive, I do appreciate how annoying it is to be blanked when you're trying to get an important point across. Also, I've only done work-for-hire teaching assistant work in practical labs, so I basically just kicked the wasters out and didn't have to give a damn about their grades. I can see that it would be different if they were actually "my" class, and I was accountable for their grades.
OK, you got me. What I'm actually thinking is that if I've lost their attention, I'd rather have them doing something constructive, rather than just doodling on bits of paper. ;)
Sorry if I gave any offence, I do appreciate how frustrating it is when you're trying to get things across and you're facing a room of blank faces (or worse, people playing XPilot).
I have even heard convincing arguments in favour of actually communicating in cleartext (or in a trivial or known broken code).
The reason is fiendishly simple. Your eavesdropper, an intelligence operative, will disbelieve anything that's too easy to intercept. He will spend all of his resources looking for hidden communications that aren't there.
It sounds too trivial and theoretical to be practical, but ask yourself this: when you read about a de-classified project, do you ever think "Ah, but what aren't they telling us?". Why do you think that? Why do people spend their lives analysing the Kennedy assination, Area 51, even the moon landings? We want to believe that there's more to be found, and we want to believe that we will be the ones to find it.
I'll bet dollars to cents that the folks who did this study were really gutted that they didn't find anything, and that we (i.e. our intelligence services) will keep on spending resources on looking for obfuscated political communication, when they could just drop by any of a dozen soc.culture groups and see plenty of it in plaintext. "But anything in plaintext won't be worth reading!", I hear you cry.
Exactly. Why even bother looking? Who'd be that stupid...
Did you mind them reading email? If not, what's your point? If you did, why didn't you ask them to stop, then tell them to stop, then just kick them out?
This isn't armchair coaching, I've wrangled Computer Science lab classes as a TA, and I quickly found that I had to choose to either ignore the wasters, or to kick them out and focus on the good students. I chose the latter course, but the former's OK as well, as long as you're not hypocritical enough to then welcome a cyber nanny that saves you actually interacting with the students.
The thing that would worry me about this system (in any kind of Computer Science class) is if my students either couldn't crack it, or didn't want to, or (worst of all) didn't dare to.
To head off a potential rebuttal, no, I don't advocate students cracking systems in general, or their college system. I advocate them cracking anything that's put deliberately in their way purely to obstruct and restrict them, especially if it gives the message that using blanket suppression is better than obliging people to take personal responsiblility for their actions.
At the very least, I'd expect them to want to crack it, and then figure out how to do it and let me know. I'd expect them to want to crack it because it's there. It scares me that people here are saying that students should just accept this system without question, because it's for their own good. That way, how do you distinguish the timid from the lazy from the talented? You lower them all to the same level. In a computer science class, the one thing that I don't want to hear is silent keyboards.
It can vary a lot. I went to one lecture in the 2nd half of my final year. It was a pre-exam revision lecture for a course that I quickly realised that I hadn't done, but that was OK because I fell asleep anyway as I'd been up all night hacking Xfire.
And yet I still got a solid degree from a great school, because I knew my shit. While I was "goofing off" from class, I was learning actual programming skills, rather than the abstract pet projects of the professors. I scammed enough notes off of my classmates (or off of their screens - lock those X terms, guys) to figure out what I was expected to say in the exams, and I dutifully said it and was graded on that basis, not on what I actually knew.
And now that I think about it, sometimes the only chance I got to use computer resources was when a class was held in a lab. I had the choice of two-finger typing in a stupid toy program, or I could demonstrate to myself why PPK authentication is a waste of time for open source programs. I chose the latter route, and learned a lot more.
So let's not just write off all non-class related work as a waste of time. I've wrangled lab classes, and I'd far rather walk around, see what the students are doing, encourage the smart kids (including the ones going faster than I can keep up with) and just kick the real wasters out. I don't want some crippleware nanny program doing it for me. In fact, my first assignment would be to get the class to find a way around it.
Do you agree with using a gutless technical solution rather than obliging the wasters to be personally responsible for their actions? What's that teaching them? That if you can figure out how to work around the system, that's OK?
Ask them to stop, tell them to stop, kick them out. I've wrangled lab classes, and believe me, it works just fine.
Absolutely. I've wranged lab classes and completely agree. Kick the wasters out and give the time and resources to the people who give a fuck.
But what's the connection with this situation? You can throw people out right now for screwing around. Putting in technical blocks (rather than holding them responsible for their actions) just gives them something fun to hack.
Hot chicks. Dumb fucking question.
Absolutely. So why don't they?
Has the concept of personal responsibility gone so far out of fashion?
Well, yes. By the time that I got my degree in 1995, all I was required to do was to ace the 20% of my CS degree that was actually skills based, then regurgitate enough of the pet projects of my lecturers to scrape a pass. Using The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy as an example for most problems also seemed to work well.
Think of it as training for corporate life, only your "co-workers" are younger and prettier.
Go back and read what I wrote. Napster is reliant on having plenty of fast, always on broadband connections uploading content. Who did you think was serving those tracks to you? Other modem users?
I'm hoping that they realise that and have some financial distinction between uploaders and downloaders. This isn't a flame or a criticism, I used Napster back when I had a diallup, and completely understand that the only practical way to use it is to turn off sharing.
Got a reference?
Then we knew shit. Name me ten artists that retain copyright on their music rather than selling it to their label.
Nothing is stopping us, other than we've gotten used to doing it the easy way.
> cp sandman.mp3 sandman.nap
> Napster2&
> mv sandman.mp3 sandman.pmf
> Napster2&
They're going to verify the format of all content shared over the network?
Jon who? Wait, wait, I remember him... argh, the memories! Let me out of the cellar, daddy, I'll be good! Don't make me read another Katz rant!
Oh my god... "Hey kids, we're on your side, party on, we're down and, er, jiggly wiv dat, but you still have to pay us money" ... it's true... you always become the thing you hate... they've become... Metallica!
Specifically, who will pay money to be granted the priveledge of serving up content? If I serve up more than I pull down over gnutella (which I do), why am I going to pay Napster to be allowed to do that for them?
Napster need me a lot more than I need them. I wonder if they realise that yet?
Very possibly, but I can see one major flaw with that argument. Napster will be reliant on people with fast broadband connections paying it money for the priveledge of serving content.
Now, if I'm primarily serving content (which I am), am I going to do it over a free network like gnutella (which I do), or am I going to pay Napster to be allowed to do it for them, when I know (or suspect) that most of the uploads will be to leechers?
For me, it's a no brainer.
Yup. Surely they'll open with a free-for-all month to get the numbers back.
Sadly, I agree. I'm sure that there are plenty of dialup users who serve files (thank, guys), but I'm also sure that the majority only leech. (hint: if this doesn't apply to you, then I'm not talking about you, and you needn't flame me)
It really does beg the question that if I'm serving files over my cable modem, and Napster are charging people to find those files, why aren't I getting a cut? Yes, my payback is to get files from other servers, but shouldn't I at least get a discounted service?
If my choice is freely sharing files over gnutella, or paying to be allowed to share files over Napster, I know which one I'll be doing.
- Concert attendance has been plumetting over the last 10 years...
if you had tried to get concert tickets to any show Backstreet Boys, NSync, Britney, etc. played in the past 2 years, you would realize how sadly untrue this statement isOK, ten seconds of seaching found this article that reckons that concert spending dropped in Canada between 1986 and 1996. Let me take a wild guess that we're going to fewer but bigger concerts rather than more but smaller ones.
Perhaps you could spend ten seconds coming up with more recent figures to back up your counter argument?