"Anidroccg to crad cniyrrag lcitsiugnis planoissefors at an uemannd, utisreviny in Bsitirh Cibmuloa, and crartnoy to the duoibus cmials of the ueticnd rcraeseh, a slpmie, macinahcel ioisrevnn of ianretnl cretcarahs araepps sneiciffut to csufnoe the eadyrevy oekoolnr."
"According to card carrying linguistics professionals at an unnamed, university in British Columbia, and contrary to the dubious claims of the uncited research, a simple, mechanical inversion of internal characters appears sufficient to confuse the everyday onlooker."
As Washington National Cathedral approached completion, the west towers rose towards the sky, striking toward heaven. During the building a startling idea was hatched: hold a competition for children to design decorative sculpture for the Cathedral.
Word of the competition was spread nationwide through National Geographic World Magazine. The third-place winner was Christopher Rader, with his drawing of that fearful villain, Darth Vader. The fierce head was sculpted by Jay Hall Carpenter, carved by Patrick J. Plunkett and placed high upon the northwest tower of the Cathedral...
To Find Darth Vader you have to leave the building through the ramp entrance. This is located at the northwest corner of the nave, through the double wooden doors of Lincoln Bay. Go down the ramp, and step into the parking lot. Then, turn around and look back up at the tower closest to you. He is almost impossible to see without the assistance of binoculars.
Way way way up, almost at the top of the tower is a gablet, or small peaked roof, located between the two huge louvered arches. At the bottom of each slope of this gablet is a carved grotesque. Darth Vader is on the north, or right-hand, side. There is a carved skull situated on a gablet much closer to the ground which many people often mistake for Darth Vader. From this skull, Darth Vader is up and to the left.
I have a feeling that Microsoft "XML" will use Microsoft "Unicode." That is, any character in the range of 0x82 to 0x95, which Unicode reserves for extra control characters, will be littered with "smart" quotes, emdashes, and other proprietary extensions to Unicode that ensure that nothing works with it. I ran into this problem when I tried converting FrontPage generated HTML into XHTML so I could do conversions with XSLT. Needless to say, it took a lot of effort, even with HTML Tidy, to get Microsoft's generated HTML to get converted into XHTML! HTML Tidy constantly complained about the HTML, and looking at what FrontPage generates, it's not hard to see why it complained.
I ran across the demoroniser, which fixes Microsoft Unicode problems, but it still doesn't fix the invalid HTML that FrontPage generates.
Microsoft XML? Hah! I'll believe it when I see it.
I've seen these (albeit without the scroll wheel) over 6 years ago. My friend had one, and although it took a little while to get used to, it was kind of nice since you could sit back and use your computer.
The game they *sell* isn't the game you play, the *real* game is breaking the copy-protection... Sure it's kind of fun, but once you've played one form of copy protection a few time, it's not so much fun anymore. This is why they have to keep coming with new copy-protection schemes, umm I mean games, for us to play so we continue playing!:-)
In every other industry, the name of the game is being able to do more with less resources. And in every other industry, quality has improved, productivity has improved, and more can be done now with fewer resources!
In the software industry, the name of the game is using as many resources as possible to get what you want done. And in the software industry, quality has remained steady, productivity hasn't improved since the first word processors and spreadsheets, and now software takes up more resources than ever before!
The software industry has been in this situation for decades, and the day that Moore's law slows down is the day that software, like all other goods and services will need to do more with less resources. And when that day comes, expect the quality of software to improve drastically, and expect productivity to improve as well.
I find this legislation abhorrant, but I can understand why the industries feel they need to have the legislation. The industries aren't necessarily stupid: they know the genie is out of the bottle, and their only recourse, they believe, is to make the copying the see everywhere illegal. What they don't know is that it isn't too late for them to offer a market based solution that doesn't infringe upon the wishes or the rights of the customers or even the Kazaa users out there. What the industries need is an alternative to legislation.
Making a system that requires that all new devices enforce copyrights and ignores existing devices (both domestic and abroad) that do not enforce copy restrictions simply wont work: as long as one person is able to make a copy of something on an existing computer, anybody can make copies. This problem is "solved" in one of two ways, neither of which would work: new "Hollings" computers could refuse to network with all existing computers (which would make them essentially useless), OR, the government could issue an order to destroy all existing computers & replace them with the new Hollings machines. Both of these "solutions" would be impractical, and if legislated, would cause major revolts/riots (the last part is speculative, but probable). As with the Clipper chip debate, making this system work (assuming it's possible, which it most likely is not (a mathematical proof could be handy)) would require the cooperation of every country connected to the Internet to either destroy all existing pre-Hollings machines & replace them with new machines, or America would cut itself off from the rest of the world, with American "crippled" computers while the rest of the world enjoys their existing machines. Any legislative alternative is politically infeasible.
The recording and movie industries are engaging in political entrepreneurship. Political entrepreneurship is distinguished from market entrepreneurship. Market entrepreneurship involves offering goods and services in response to customer demands or behavior that is both profitable for the company and satisfies the customer's wishes. Political entrepreneurship, on the other hand, typically involves attacking the customer's demands or behaviors and tries to make such customer demands illegal. Political entrepreneurship is insidious because it goes against the market, which ALWAYS satisfies customer demand, whether in the black market or in the legal market. Political entrepreneurship is typically engaged in by dying industries or industries already regulated heavily anyway.
That said, the record & movie industries need to get a clue and realize that the only way out of this mess is to offer their music and movies and tv shows on the internet, because this is what we, the customers, want. It is the path taken by the software industry that learned that fighting piracy isn't profitable, but listening to the customer, on the other hand, is profitable. If we can present a method that is profitable to both the customers and the record and movie industries without attacking these industries, we could go so far! Ask anybody! I'd be happy to pay either a small monthly fee ($5-10) or pay a small fee (say 25 cents per song/movie/tv episode) IF I knew that I could get whatever song, movie, tv show episode quickly, reliably, and at a high quality. The black market methods guarantee a great selection, and if any industry backed way to distribute music, movies or tv shows wants to succeed, they will need to offer the same sort of selection already provided or better! I want the industries to know that they still have the upper hand because Napster, Kazaa and Gnutella still don't offer very quick or reliable downloads, and even when the download is complete (or incomplete), the quality of what you've downloaded varies widely. The industries as well as the users know this, and the industries need to realize they can still fulfill the customer demands and make a profit at it!
Looking into the future, assuming this legislation has passed with little revision, libraries will be hampered, research will be stifled, the economy will suffer, the demand for higher bandwidth will drop, etc, etc, because of our ability to copy is severly infringed. I'm preaching to the choir here, but it something worth noting that for the music and movie industries, copying is TOO easy. If you can't beat them, join them! The record and movie industries would love to cripple our abilities to copy, but they have so much to gain if they utilize our abilities to make copies.
It's interesting to note that a media executive pondered what it would be like if windows code got out there -- would technology companies sit on the issue? The media industry is notorious for neglecting the past and repeatedly fails to learn from it. At one time, software companies tried to impose copy protection, but when they realized it doesn't work, they found an alternative: listen to the customer! Software companies learned to keep prices low and to offer many ways to acquire software legally. And besides, even though people can acquire software illegally, it's becoming more of a hassle to do so. The market will always respond to demand, whether through the black market or through the legitimate market.
This mozilla release (as mentioned in the release notes), has a fix for the zlib vulnerability, just a few hours after the vulnerability was discovered!
At Lawrence University, we have an Honor System. All freshmen get informed of the Lawrence University Honor Code, and as students we reaffirm all our written assignments with the Honor Code. The Honor Code is policed by the Honor Council, a student/faculty organization that hears complaints about Honor Code violations. Faculty can report student papers to the Honor Council, and students who confess to violating the honor code are usually given lighter sanctions than students who deny involvement. All in all, it is a very effective solution that costs nothing to implement. Profesors can leave the room while we take exams knowing full well that all students are bound by the same code. The Honor Code gives students great flexibility with how we can do our assignments as well. And, since the Honor Council is an on campus organization, violations of the Honor Code are taken care of quickly. It is taken seriously by the students, and it encourages all of us to be fair in ways no web site ever could.
When there are alternatives to dairy & cheese made from soy or rice, it seems crazy to develop a new way to keep dairy from spoiling when it's easy enough to produce a plant based sauce with the consistency of cheese. It is also very easy to simulate the flavor of cheese itself with some chemicals. Food chemistry is a science with its own fascinating consequences. Most of the "natural" and artificial flavors come from the same factory along the New Jersey turnpike, so why not add a cheese flavored chemical to the sauce and fake it? It's not like MREs are that spectacular, anyway...
Although not quite related, in Stackless Python, there is work being done on allowing function invocations to persist in secondary storage and get called again in a later program invocations. They call it "pickling" a function call. In theory, one could pickle the main() function call at some point in its execution and achieve the same effect as suspending the process and recording the state of the program.
So, everybody's whining about how some universities are making gov't funded code proprietary, and universities should release the source to any public funded code. But wait, didn't people whine a few months ago because Microsoft wanted all gov't funded software to be under the BSD? So, slashdotters, which one is it?
I can see why KPMG doesn't want anybody to link to their site without their permission... Anybody see how crummy the page looks? Yeah, I agree with KPMG: they'll probably tell people to stop linking to their page until they make it look good.
Slashdot Mirror
"Anidroccg to crad cniyrrag lcitsiugnis planoissefors at an uemannd, utisreviny in Bsitirh Cibmuloa, and crartnoy to the duoibus cmials of the ueticnd rcraeseh, a slpmie, macinahcel ioisrevnn of ianretnl cretcarahs araepps sneiciffut to csufnoe the eadyrevy oekoolnr."
"According to card carrying linguistics professionals at an unnamed, university in British Columbia, and contrary to the dubious claims of the uncited research, a simple, mechanical inversion of internal characters appears sufficient to confuse the everyday onlooker."
As Washington National Cathedral approached completion, the west towers rose towards the sky, striking toward heaven. During the building a startling idea was hatched: hold a competition for children to design decorative sculpture for the Cathedral.
Word of the competition was spread nationwide through National Geographic World Magazine. The third-place winner was Christopher Rader, with his drawing of that fearful villain, Darth Vader. The fierce head was sculpted by Jay Hall Carpenter, carved by Patrick J. Plunkett and placed high upon the northwest tower of the Cathedral...
To Find Darth Vader you have to leave the building through the ramp entrance. This is located at the northwest corner of the nave, through the double wooden doors of Lincoln Bay. Go down the ramp, and step into the parking lot. Then, turn around and look back up at the tower closest to you. He is almost impossible to see without the assistance of binoculars.
Way way way up, almost at the top of the tower is a gablet, or small peaked roof, located between the two huge louvered arches. At the bottom of each slope of this gablet is a carved grotesque. Darth Vader is on the north, or right-hand, side. There is a carved skull situated on a gablet much closer to the ground which many people often mistake for Darth Vader. From this skull, Darth Vader is up and to the left.
When in doubt, use The Internet archive. It works wonders, and it archives images (unlike Google Cache).
Darth Vader at National Cathedral Mirror.
Why isn't the games section linked from the home page any more? Is this section still in "testing?"
Also see their hilarious FAQ! :-)
Can't wait for the research to go commercial? Try the FuckU-FuckMe, the ultimate remote sex solution! :-)
I have a feeling that Microsoft "XML" will use Microsoft "Unicode." That is, any character in the range of 0x82 to 0x95, which Unicode reserves for extra control characters, will be littered with "smart" quotes, emdashes, and other proprietary extensions to Unicode that ensure that nothing works with it. I ran into this problem when I tried converting FrontPage generated HTML into XHTML so I could do conversions with XSLT. Needless to say, it took a lot of effort, even with HTML Tidy, to get Microsoft's generated HTML to get converted into XHTML! HTML Tidy constantly complained about the HTML, and looking at what FrontPage generates, it's not hard to see why it complained.
I ran across the demoroniser, which fixes Microsoft Unicode problems, but it still doesn't fix the invalid HTML that FrontPage generates.
Microsoft XML? Hah! I'll believe it when I see it.
I've seen these (albeit without the scroll wheel) over 6 years ago. My friend had one, and although it took a little while to get used to, it was kind of nice since you could sit back and use your computer.
The game they *sell* isn't the game you play, the *real* game is breaking the copy-protection... Sure it's kind of fun, but once you've played one form of copy protection a few time, it's not so much fun anymore. This is why they have to keep coming with new copy-protection schemes, umm I mean games, for us to play so we continue playing! :-)
I invented solid water too! It's in my freezer! It comes in little cubes!
In every other industry, the name of the game is being able to do more with
less resources. And in every other industry, quality has improved, productivity
has improved, and more can be done now with fewer resources!
In the software industry, the name of the game is using as many resources as
possible to get what you want done. And in the software industry, quality has
remained steady, productivity hasn't improved since the first word processors
and spreadsheets, and now software takes up more resources than ever before!
The software industry has been in this situation for decades, and the day that
Moore's law slows down is the day that software, like all other goods and services
will need to do more with less resources. And when that day comes, expect the
quality of software to improve drastically, and expect productivity to improve
as well.
Am I the only one who glanced at this article and thought that Katz wrote this?
Making a system that requires that all new devices enforce copyrights and ignores existing devices (both domestic and abroad) that do not enforce copy restrictions simply wont work: as long as one person is able to make a copy of something on an existing computer, anybody can make copies. This problem is "solved" in one of two ways, neither of which would work: new "Hollings" computers could refuse to network with all existing computers (which would make them essentially useless), OR, the government could issue an order to destroy all existing computers & replace them with the new Hollings machines. Both of these "solutions" would be impractical, and if legislated, would cause major revolts/riots (the last part is speculative, but probable). As with the Clipper chip debate, making this system work (assuming it's possible, which it most likely is not (a mathematical proof could be handy)) would require the cooperation of every country connected to the Internet to either destroy all existing pre-Hollings machines & replace them with new machines, or America would cut itself off from the rest of the world, with American "crippled" computers while the rest of the world enjoys their existing machines. Any legislative alternative is politically infeasible.
The recording and movie industries are engaging in political entrepreneurship. Political entrepreneurship is distinguished from market entrepreneurship. Market entrepreneurship involves offering goods and services in response to customer demands or behavior that is both profitable for the company and satisfies the customer's wishes. Political entrepreneurship, on the other hand, typically involves attacking the customer's demands or behaviors and tries to make such customer demands illegal. Political entrepreneurship is insidious because it goes against the market, which ALWAYS satisfies customer demand, whether in the black market or in the legal market. Political entrepreneurship is typically engaged in by dying industries or industries already regulated heavily anyway.
That said, the record & movie industries need to get a clue and realize that the only way out of this mess is to offer their music and movies and tv shows on the internet, because this is what we, the customers, want. It is the path taken by the software industry that learned that fighting piracy isn't profitable, but listening to the customer, on the other hand, is profitable. If we can present a method that is profitable to both the customers and the record and movie industries without attacking these industries, we could go so far! Ask anybody! I'd be happy to pay either a small monthly fee ($5-10) or pay a small fee (say 25 cents per song/movie/tv episode) IF I knew that I could get whatever song, movie, tv show episode quickly, reliably, and at a high quality. The black market methods guarantee a great selection, and if any industry backed way to distribute music, movies or tv shows wants to succeed, they will need to offer the same sort of selection already provided or better! I want the industries to know that they still have the upper hand because Napster, Kazaa and Gnutella still don't offer very quick or reliable downloads, and even when the download is complete (or incomplete), the quality of what you've downloaded varies widely. The industries as well as the users know this, and the industries need to realize they can still fulfill the customer demands and make a profit at it!
Looking into the future, assuming this legislation has passed with little revision, libraries will be hampered, research will be stifled, the economy will suffer, the demand for higher bandwidth will drop, etc, etc, because of our ability to copy is severly infringed. I'm preaching to the choir here, but it something worth noting that for the music and movie industries, copying is TOO easy. If you can't beat them, join them! The record and movie industries would love to cripple our abilities to copy, but they have so much to gain if they utilize our abilities to make copies.
It's interesting to note that a media executive pondered what it would be like if windows code got out there -- would technology companies sit on the issue? The media industry is notorious for neglecting the past and repeatedly fails to learn from it. At one time, software companies tried to impose copy protection, but when they realized it doesn't work, they found an alternative: listen to the customer! Software companies learned to keep prices low and to offer many ways to acquire software legally. And besides, even though people can acquire software illegally, it's becoming more of a hassle to do so. The market will always respond to demand, whether through the black market or through the legitimate market.
This mozilla release (as mentioned in the release notes), has a fix for the zlib vulnerability, just a few hours after the vulnerability was discovered!
...to dream up something like this.
At Lawrence University, we have an Honor System. All freshmen get informed of the Lawrence University Honor Code, and as students we reaffirm all our written assignments with the Honor Code. The Honor Code is policed by the Honor Council, a student/faculty organization that hears complaints about Honor Code violations. Faculty can report student papers to the Honor Council, and students who confess to violating the honor code are usually given lighter sanctions than students who deny involvement. All in all, it is a very effective solution that costs nothing to implement. Profesors can leave the room while we take exams knowing full well that all students are bound by the same code. The Honor Code gives students great flexibility with how we can do our assignments as well. And, since the Honor Council is an on campus organization, violations of the Honor Code are taken care of quickly. It is taken seriously by the students, and it encourages all of us to be fair in ways no web site ever could.
When there are alternatives to dairy & cheese made from soy or rice, it seems crazy to develop a new way to keep dairy from spoiling when it's easy enough to produce a plant based sauce with the consistency of cheese. It is also very easy to simulate the flavor of cheese itself with some chemicals. Food chemistry is a science with its own fascinating consequences. Most of the "natural" and artificial flavors come from the same factory along the New Jersey turnpike, so why not add a cheese flavored chemical to the sauce and fake it? It's not like MREs are that spectacular, anyway...
I'd love to pay $4.95 a month for The End of Free!
Oh, wait...
If they can't reliably predict the weather tomorrow, how can they possibly pretend to predict the weather years from now?!?
Although not quite related, in Stackless Python, there is work being done on allowing function invocations to persist in secondary storage and get called again in a later program invocations. They call it "pickling" a function call. In theory, one could pickle the main() function call at some point in its execution and achieve the same effect as suspending the process and recording the state of the program.
... will probably not be able to compile the kernel. The Linux kernel is notorious for using GNU extensions to the C language.
So, everybody's whining about how some universities are making gov't funded code proprietary, and universities should release the source to any public funded code. But wait, didn't people whine a few months ago because Microsoft wanted all gov't funded software to be under the BSD? So, slashdotters, which one is it?
...that I see this ad on a page bemoaning the fact that morning news programs spend a third of their time selling things to the public...
I can see why KPMG doesn't want anybody to link to their site without their permission... Anybody see how crummy the page looks? Yeah, I agree with KPMG: they'll probably tell people to stop linking to their page until they make it look good.