One of the police officers is my cousin. [...] He is a person who I would view as the least likely in the world to be bigotted, given that he is married to a black woman
Are you being deliberately provocative by failing to mention his ethnicity?
Anyway, big whoop, you know four honest cops. I guess that means that no cops abuse their power, and I must have imagined that punishment beating that I got years ago for the crime of "being a student in a small hick town, with intent to get the hell out".
As the government line goes, it's unfortunate that a few bad apples spoil the civil liberty barrel for everyone else, but if that argument applies to We, the People, why doesn't it apply to our watchmen as well?
No phone calls (I expect that calls by lawyers would need to be allowed.)
Why? I see the provision and assumption of council to be the biggest flaw with our legal system. It promotes the system over the individual, and excuses the vile situation where it is not only thought acceptable, but actually thought necessay that the legal process should be incomprehensible to We, the People.
I'm friends with four police officers in Massachusetts, three of which I see on a weekly basis. All of them are nice people, and none of them abuse their power.
Then, to use the government line, they should have no problems with having their every single action recorded. Only criminals have something to hide, right?
The nice thing about facetious arguments is that they cut both ways.
I know the network code for Quake3 inside out (well, I re-wrote it) [...] I wish I had the source to this to help fix it because I want to play!
I hear you, buddy. The AO developers will be trembling, shambling wrecks by now. They're probably beyond even caring about what they're doing. They really should take Graeme up on his offer.
TCP should be used for some stuff and UDP for other stuff, this is common in online games (such as netTrek).
Yay Netrek!. But it's a stonker of a point. Netrek dealt with these issues ten years ago. Jeez, AO guys, you only had to ask.
It seems to me that software companies are now saying, lets ship now and fix the bugs in a patch
That's precisely what happens. I know for a fact that when Braveheart went gold, the team went straight onto patch work, and had a (vital) patch ready by the time the box hit the shelves. They'd actually planned for this. The game was broken out of the box, and this was considered acceptable.
With a console, you CAN'T issure patches for a game
Want to bet? Wait for X-Box to raise the bar for everyone. Not in the first releases, but when the flood of under-resourced PC title conversions starts (two weeks, fifty bucks and all the pizza you can eat), they'd better have a patch strategy in place.
I'd be the first to say that network architecture of a MPOG ("Massively" is meaningless without context or quantification) is a complex beastie, and very tricky to get right first time.
But this mistake has been made over and over again. There is a great article about the screw ups made in X Wing vs TIE fighter, that explains why you need to send some (most) traffic by UDP. My god, Netrek worked through all this ten years ago.
Re:Too big for me, too small for thee?
on
Books on Demand
·
· Score: 2
Also, in the immediate future, publishers will likely only want to pay to digitise their bestsellers, not educational or special interest texts
I think you may have this backwards; the real economic benefit to publishers comes when they can do it the other way around.
Oh, you're quite right, and I agree completely. But I'm thinking about what will likely happen, which is that big publishers won't touch it with a barge pole because it will cost them up front and the rewards are small. Yes, it's a boon to small and special interest publishers, but they still have the cost of making a digital version available, again with the risk of making very little money off of it. They're talking about having a secure system to avoid piracy (ha!), so it's hardly a Guttenbergish product, and it's hard to see where the commercial incentive is to buy or support it.
I'm finding that there's a lot of inertia in the publishing business, especially regarding non-print media. Boilerplate contracts are standard for all but the biggest authors, and publishers just don't have the resources to hire savvy people to deal with exploiting new technology, even to the extent of considering it in contracts. There may be exceptions, but I haven't found one yet.
So I'll stick by my prediction that this sort of machine, while a great idea, is going to go through some rocky times (and probably a few owners and formats) before it breaks out of special interest printers and makes it into the high streets and shopping malls.
Re:Too big for me, too small for thee?
on
Books on Demand
·
· Score: 2
Uh, ever heard of pipelining? There's no reason the machine can't print and staple while it glues. Yes, the *latency* is seven minutes, but that says nothing about the throughput
Neither does the article.;)
Fair point, but I did think the "children's book" example was a little suspect. I'm willing to bet that this was a slim novella, not a Steven King monstrosity.
So, has anyone seen actual throughput figures for this beastie then?
Too big for me, too small for thee?
on
Books on Demand
·
· Score: 3
In seven minutes, I am holding a finished book-a trial run of a Simon & Schuster children's title
With 10% downtime, that's 185 (short, monochrome, page-paper covered?) books per machine per day. That's not really going to help the Amazons of the world. However, on the Amazon...
At [$30,000] they could be distributed widely enough to put everyone on the planet within a few miles and a few dollars of every book ever written. "I see this going into places like India or Brazil where you have real distribution needs," he says.
Now, that is a big whoop. However, at $30,000 and with lots of moving bits, this beastie might be too expensive to buy and maintain. If you're that cash strapped, you could buy a good printer, cheap PC and hot glue binder that would let you do the same job (and more) for less money (but a little slower).
Also, in the immediate future, publishers will likely only want to pay to digitise their bestsellers, not educational or special interest texts. But have a look on the ebooks usenet groups, and there are plenty of titles out there if you have a PC setup and aren't not that fussed about copyright - and remember, we're now talking about the impoverished here, where we're trying to educate people up to the stage where they do have the leisure and luxury to care about abstract issues like copyright.
As a prospective author currently whoring my way around publishers, I find this an attractive idea. However, it looks as though it falls between two stools, being too small scale for commercial use, but over-engineered and expensive for those who could really benefit. I think they'll find it hard to break out of their initial target niche of corporate documentation departments, although I can also see college bookshops making great use of this to print obscure texts - but at a premium, and assuming that they can get them in a (proprietary!) digital form.
If you want to live on the bleeding edge, expect a few hiccups, otherwise wait for a while. They've created this amazing piece of software, this amazing piece of engineering, and all you can do is whine!
My, what a rant. Unfortunately, AO is an appalling piece of engineering. TCP? TCP?
Do you have *any* experience of the gaming industry? and esp. MMORPG's? or even Diablo?
I do.
They've all been plagued with launch issues affecting availability and the like
OK. But the AO developers didn't even take the time to learn about trivial stuff, like that TCP sucks (for bulk game traffic)? I wish them well, but it sounds to me like whoever made that decision needs to be shown the door, and soon, if AO is to rescue itself.
But hell, they've got nice box art, so it'll do well.;)
it seems that the new offence is possession with intent
Note to self: read all articles before deciding whether to post rather than mod. This is the only worthwhile post in this thread. Please moderate it up.
So what is it that is so bad about this bill? And YES I've read 1984 and NO, this is nothing like that.
Because there's no mention of intent, merely possession. Also, licensing "authorised" possession is a shoddy way of doing it: I need to get a license if I want to download tools for hobbyist purposes? I need to a priori prove my innocence?
Do you see having to prove your innocence as being substantially different from 1984? How?
I fail to see how's that so different from lockpicking tools possession being illegal, or having to open your safe for police inspection if a judge mandates it.
Lockpicking tools? OK, let's put locksmiths (professional and hobbyist) out of business. While we're at it, when I locked myself out of my house, I was both relieved and horrified to discover that I could open the lock on my back door with a screwdriver and a pin (plus plenty of time and incentive). So, we should ban screwdrivers and pins, right?
Similarly, I can "scan" networks using ping/telnet and a shell script. Hell, I can even do it using standard DOS tools. Better ban those too!
"The legislation will enable police powers to copy computer data and examine computer equipment and disks off-site and enable them to obtain assistance from computer owners."
The article isn't entirely clear, but recent Ozzie precedent is to give the police (not courts) the power to do whatever the hell they want when dealing with the feared and accursed computers. This doesn't look to be any different.
The counter to all this paranoia is the argument that these powers probably won't be used that much, so don't get so het up.
99% number was class A drugs. Most where coke. not 99%.. read the fscking story.
"banknotes tainted with cocaine. [...] Scientists have found that more than 99% of banknotes tested from the capital were contaminated by the class A drug[singular]."
But of course, I understand that actually reading the story carefully yourself before posting excitedly your pedantic - and incorrect - correction isn't in the spirit of/.;)
Does the BSA reimburse companies for the waste of manhours it takes to find and verify all software licenses
I'd recommend modding this us. It's a superb point, and the exact reason that large companies just buy batches of extra Microsoft licenses when the BSA comes a-knockin', rather than go to the expense of tracking down and auditing every piece of hardware they own. It really is cheaper to just buy the licenses - regardless of whether you are using them or not.
The government has the power to police these companies, and if it creates loopholes for them to exploit, we should expect the companies to take full advantage of those loopholes.
More, as shareholders, we should demand that they do everything that they can to maximise their profits.
Which is kind of the problem. Trace share ownership, and most of it comes back (directly or indirectly) to a few super wealthy individuals, with a good deal of overlap with the group of elite CEO's who can command millions of dollars a year in salaries and bonuses.
When government buddies up with business to create a dynamic, wealth generating economy, who are they generating wealth for?
Consumers? The guys on the factory line?
Uh, no. The few big shareholders.
I'm not saying that's bad, just that capitalism only benefits you and me accidentally.
Developer: Umm, we have the Flash demo that we showed to the investors, and this code that draws a spinning wireframe cube.
You guys got your cube to spin? Ours just twisted itself inside out. Something to do with the Matrices being back to front, apparently, although they haven't released the Matrix 2 and 3 yet, so I don't get that... unless they're prequels...
Just being a bit realistic, in what $20/month buys you, if you want your ISP to take on some of that risk you had better make it financially attractive to the ISP
Uh, I don't know of any ISP's that charge hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to Joe Sixpack.
What you're saying that is if you don't have any money, you don't have any protection. That's true, but that's also a shame, and I mean in a "that's a national shame" kind of way.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you being deliberately provocative by failing to mention his ethnicity?
Anyway, big whoop, you know four honest cops. I guess that means that no cops abuse their power, and I must have imagined that punishment beating that I got years ago for the crime of "being a student in a small hick town, with intent to get the hell out".
As the government line goes, it's unfortunate that a few bad apples spoil the civil liberty barrel for everyone else, but if that argument applies to We, the People, why doesn't it apply to our watchmen as well?
Why? I see the provision and assumption of council to be the biggest flaw with our legal system. It promotes the system over the individual, and excuses the vile situation where it is not only thought acceptable, but actually thought necessay that the legal process should be incomprehensible to We, the People.
Then, to use the government line, they should have no problems with having their every single action recorded. Only criminals have something to hide, right?
The nice thing about facetious arguments is that they cut both ways.
Well worth reading, thank for that.
I hear you, buddy. The AO developers will be trembling, shambling wrecks by now. They're probably beyond even caring about what they're doing. They really should take Graeme up on his offer.
Yay Netrek!. But it's a stonker of a point. Netrek dealt with these issues ten years ago. Jeez, AO guys, you only had to ask.
That's precisely what happens. I know for a fact that when Braveheart went gold, the team went straight onto patch work, and had a (vital) patch ready by the time the box hit the shelves. They'd actually planned for this. The game was broken out of the box, and this was considered acceptable.
Want to bet? Wait for X-Box to raise the bar for everyone. Not in the first releases, but when the flood of under-resourced PC title conversions starts (two weeks, fifty bucks and all the pizza you can eat), they'd better have a patch strategy in place.
I say appalling advisedly.
I'd be the first to say that network architecture of a MPOG ("Massively" is meaningless without context or quantification) is a complex beastie, and very tricky to get right first time.
But this mistake has been made over and over again. There is a great article about the screw ups made in X Wing vs TIE fighter, that explains why you need to send some (most) traffic by UDP. My god, Netrek worked through all this ten years ago.
- Also, in the immediate future, publishers will likely only want to pay to digitise their bestsellers, not educational or special interest texts
I think you may have this backwards; the real economic benefit to publishers comes when they can do it the other way around.Oh, you're quite right, and I agree completely. But I'm thinking about what will likely happen, which is that big publishers won't touch it with a barge pole because it will cost them up front and the rewards are small. Yes, it's a boon to small and special interest publishers, but they still have the cost of making a digital version available, again with the risk of making very little money off of it. They're talking about having a secure system to avoid piracy (ha!), so it's hardly a Guttenbergish product, and it's hard to see where the commercial incentive is to buy or support it.
I'm finding that there's a lot of inertia in the publishing business, especially regarding non-print media. Boilerplate contracts are standard for all but the biggest authors, and publishers just don't have the resources to hire savvy people to deal with exploiting new technology, even to the extent of considering it in contracts. There may be exceptions, but I haven't found one yet.
So I'll stick by my prediction that this sort of machine, while a great idea, is going to go through some rocky times (and probably a few owners and formats) before it breaks out of special interest printers and makes it into the high streets and shopping malls.
Neither does the article. ;)
Fair point, but I did think the "children's book" example was a little suspect. I'm willing to bet that this was a slim novella, not a Steven King monstrosity.
So, has anyone seen actual throughput figures for this beastie then?
With 10% downtime, that's 185 (short, monochrome, page-paper covered?) books per machine per day. That's not really going to help the Amazons of the world. However, on the Amazon...
Now, that is a big whoop. However, at $30,000 and with lots of moving bits, this beastie might be too expensive to buy and maintain. If you're that cash strapped, you could buy a good printer, cheap PC and hot glue binder that would let you do the same job (and more) for less money (but a little slower).
Also, in the immediate future, publishers will likely only want to pay to digitise their bestsellers, not educational or special interest texts. But have a look on the ebooks usenet groups, and there are plenty of titles out there if you have a PC setup and aren't not that fussed about copyright - and remember, we're now talking about the impoverished here, where we're trying to educate people up to the stage where they do have the leisure and luxury to care about abstract issues like copyright.
As a prospective author currently whoring my way around publishers, I find this an attractive idea. However, it looks as though it falls between two stools, being too small scale for commercial use, but over-engineered and expensive for those who could really benefit. I think they'll find it hard to break out of their initial target niche of corporate documentation departments, although I can also see college bookshops making great use of this to print obscure texts - but at a premium, and assuming that they can get them in a (proprietary!) digital form.
My, what a rant. Unfortunately, AO is an appalling piece of engineering. TCP? TCP?
I do.
OK. But the AO developers didn't even take the time to learn about trivial stuff, like that TCP sucks (for bulk game traffic)? I wish them well, but it sounds to me like whoever made that decision needs to be shown the door, and soon, if AO is to rescue itself.
But hell, they've got nice box art, so it'll do well. ;)
Isn't that just preparing him for a job on an assembly line?
Sure, Lego Technic is fun, but Mecanno encourages you to invent new things.
I recommend fdisk. ;)
Oooh, wait, a thought occurs. Why is Microsoft pushing GPL as "viral"?
New crime: Installing GNU/Linux with intent. "I swear, it's for personal use only! I wasn't dealing, man!" ;)
Note to self: read all articles before deciding whether to post rather than mod. This is the only worthwhile post in this thread. Please moderate it up.
Because there's no mention of intent, merely possession. Also, licensing "authorised" possession is a shoddy way of doing it: I need to get a license if I want to download tools for hobbyist purposes? I need to a priori prove my innocence?
Do you see having to prove your innocence as being substantially different from 1984? How?
Lockpicking tools? OK, let's put locksmiths (professional and hobbyist) out of business. While we're at it, when I locked myself out of my house, I was both relieved and horrified to discover that I could open the lock on my back door with a screwdriver and a pin (plus plenty of time and incentive). So, we should ban screwdrivers and pins, right?
Similarly, I can "scan" networks using ping/telnet and a shell script. Hell, I can even do it using standard DOS tools. Better ban those too!
"The legislation will enable police powers to copy computer data and examine computer equipment and disks off-site and enable them to obtain assistance from computer owners."
The article isn't entirely clear, but recent Ozzie precedent is to give the police (not courts) the power to do whatever the hell they want when dealing with the feared and accursed computers. This doesn't look to be any different.
The counter to all this paranoia is the argument that these powers probably won't be used that much, so don't get so het up.
Fine. So why grant them?
- 99% number was class A drugs. Most where coke. not 99%.. read the fscking story.
"banknotes tainted with cocaine. [...] Scientists have found that more than 99% of banknotes tested from the capital were contaminated by the class A drug[singular]."But of course, I understand that actually reading the story carefully yourself before posting excitedly your pedantic - and incorrect - correction isn't in the spirit of /. ;)
Actually, this is funny, not OT - unless you're a technically illiterate goober, that is.
Hey, I've got karma to burn and I'm tired of being modded down by ignorant bitches. Do your worst, bitches.
I'd recommend modding this us. It's a superb point, and the exact reason that large companies just buy batches of extra Microsoft licenses when the BSA comes a-knockin', rather than go to the expense of tracking down and auditing every piece of hardware they own. It really is cheaper to just buy the licenses - regardless of whether you are using them or not.
More, as shareholders, we should demand that they do everything that they can to maximise their profits.
Which is kind of the problem. Trace share ownership, and most of it comes back (directly or indirectly) to a few super wealthy individuals, with a good deal of overlap with the group of elite CEO's who can command millions of dollars a year in salaries and bonuses.
When government buddies up with business to create a dynamic, wealth generating economy, who are they generating wealth for?
Consumers? The guys on the factory line?
Uh, no. The few big shareholders.
I'm not saying that's bad, just that capitalism only benefits you and me accidentally.
You guys got your cube to spin? Ours just twisted itself inside out. Something to do with the Matrices being back to front, apparently, although they haven't released the Matrix 2 and 3 yet, so I don't get that... unless they're prequels...
Barney was an uncredited writer on all the Voyager "It was just a Holodeck/dream" episodes.
- judge: clerk?
- thingy hanging around?
Prosecution council: I just litigated me a new Porche, what did you get?clerk: yes judge?
judge: do we still have that first amendment
clerk: we do.
judge: case dismissed.
Defence council: Beach house in Aruba!
Uh, I don't know of any ISP's that charge hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to Joe Sixpack.
What you're saying that is if you don't have any money, you don't have any protection. That's true, but that's also a shame, and I mean in a "that's a national shame" kind of way.