Why do people feel the need to be so "smart" about this? Why is it cool to use your half-formed scientific knowledge to criticise something you clearly know nothing about? The Ozone Hole connection is the screaming give away, but before that, what is this?
"we certainly are not as significant as the political rallying groups would like you to believe" says who? you, according to what analysis of what data? Or is it just your opinion, based on the feeling that you like being counter to "the liberal agenda"? You see, the "rallying groups" might be wrong, but don't go taking the high ground without actually contributing knowledge or, you see, you are just like them.
I've *never* flamed anyone personally on Slashdot before (call me on it, please), but it's part of a wider symptom that's going to be a real problem for US. You and me and everyone we care about.
Listen, learn, read. Scientists are not out to bring America down, or trying to stop us having fun in cool cars. They're totally regular people whose only crime is knowing about the frickin topic they're talking about, and smart-arses like you seem to hate them for it.
I disagree with your analogy. Limiting a car to 65mph is a bad idea because under certain circumstances it would be unsafe. Trying to accelerate away from a 16 wheeler losing control on the freeway and failing would be, um, disappointing. This notional system (I'll get to this is a sec) for preventing anyone from *only* illegal copying is pretty hard to object to.
The question is a great example of a straw-man argument. IF you could make a DRM system that would *only* limit illegal copying and not impact you in *any* other way, would you support it? I can't imagine a sensible negative response that isn't basically "but I like getting music for free".
But the assumption in the question is fundamentally a lie. It's not possible: no-one knows how to do it without affecting fair use, or imposing a crazy authentication burden to the user, and it won't be possible any time soon.
If someone asks a question like that, you know the next step is that they offer up some scheme of theirs that they claim meets that criterion, but it's always a flawed approximation.
I don't object to Utopian DRM. That would be fine. I don't object to Utopian Communism or Utopian Freemarket Anarchists either, but they just don't work in practice.
That totally stood out to me. PR-speak if ever I saw it.
Let's see. I'm guessing Starbucks don't have movie-makers on their books. Perhaps they employ a... erm.. media relations/PR consultancy of some sort? And perhaps that PR consultancy is enamoured of "grass-roots" style communications?
Hmmm. That would explain the (admittedly impressive) YouTube response. And the subsequent posting of said response to Slashdot.
Someone earned their dollars today. Congrats,kligmond. (or prove me wrong)
The US was going to cancel the visa-waiver scheme to nations that DID NOT include biometric information on passports by Oct 26th 2006. So the UK government had to choose between choking up US-UK travel for millions of people or rushing a minimal-requirements biometric ID scheme in. Not a happy scenario.
Given the economic consequences of making *every single passenger* travelling from the UK to the US apply for a visa, it didn't have much choice. Telling them to 'stick it' is fun, but not that practical.
anybody else remember the uber-creepy, totally abstract PS2 adverts, directed by David Lynch? The third place?
Duck-headed people. Nothing at all to do with gaming.
And I still remember them now: I think they pretty strongly sent the message that this was no normal gaming system, and that Sony was at the cutting edge: of games, of art, of movie. And that they had money to burn hiring a top level director for 1min commericials.
These seem like tamed-down rehashs of those ideas - be arresting, surprising. But no duck-heads. Shame.
I'd only add that interested, wealthy parties (the energy industry being the most significant) have deliberately fuelled the idea that those climate scientists are corrupt or have some bizarre malign agenda of their own. For those who don't follow the basic concepts of science (eg. peer review) and are conspiracy minded, it's convincing, reassuring and reinforces their basic view of the world.
You also get to play smart-ass by pointing out how different from the 'herd' you are by holding the 'alternative' view. Cool.
Dangerous, self-defeating, stupid...
I believe this is the great challenge of our maturing generation - everyone in their 20's and 30's now. The last couple of generations created this mess. The middle-aged politicians of this generation aren't capable of getting their heads around fixing this: they're still fighting the cold war and trying to fight for oil. We're going to have to step up or watch our children suffer the consequences.
"It is quite flawed, though, in that it gives exemptions to the countries which are most likely to be big polluters in coming decades. It would also impose economic penalties on countries like the US which are already doing quite a lot to reduce their environmental impact."
wow. you brought out my inner troll.
so your argument is... "it's bad because it exempts countries WHICH ARE LIKELY to be big polluters..." (at some point in the future) & "it's bad because it doesn't exempt the US" (provably the biggest polluter by any measure at all, say, per capita GHG emissions)
huh? in what way is the "quite a lot" the US is allegedly doing actually solving this problem? Say, compared to the Kyoto treaty?
i think people are a little confused about what Sony are trying to achieve with the PS3. Sure, it's going to be up against the Wii and XB360, but I'm guessing that's a secondary concern to Mr Stringer.
The PS2 sold 105million units. Let's say the PS3 is a disaster - how bad could it be? 50million? 25million?
Those are all Blu-ray devices. At least an installed base of 25million Blu-ray players sold in a few years time. Versus how many HD-DVD players? How can HD-DVD compete with that kind of a headstart?
Owning the next-gen DVD format is the prize here. HD-DVD is only 33% ahead of Blu-ray today, before the PS3 even hits the market. I think that's more precious to Sony than losing a bit of ground to Microsoft. Maybe they calculated on losing gaming market share this time round.
Not just that, but to say their competitor is iPod is a bit of an assumption. I'd say the market breaks out into Joe Public, who'll buy what he's heard of (iPod) and techies who buy on features, size, battery life, etc, etc. (This is Slashdot - you fall into the latter category).
Geeks are (I reckon) more likely to buy outside iPod - witness the amount of Slashposts about Nomads, Zen, etc, etc. So at that point the fact that Zune is the same price as an iPod is pretty irrelevant. Now the Zune looks like the expensive option compared to the 'also-ran's, (say, the Vision:M @$230), because iPod is the *premium* price point. If you're the new contender on the block, you're fighting with the other contenders, not the champ. Calling yourself an iPod killer and pricing to EQUAL iPod is asking for trouble.
Of course, I bet they know this. I bet the iPod price cut tore their business plan to ribbons.
In gawd-awful NBC show "Surface" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0452718/, there was a scene when the heroine had to release the hero/nut-job from a prison cell locked with a retinal scanner. The buildings gonna blow, so she's in a hurry. Tries pressing everything, no dice.
There just happens to be CCTV displays in the same room! yay! She manages to find full-face security footage of a guard on one of these displays (lucky!), and zooms it (say 10,000X) so just the eye is showing. No, really.
Resourcefully, she then rips out the LCD display showing an image of a big eye and holds it up to the retinal scanner. The door pops open.
At this point my disbelief got up, left the room and shot itself.
what bugs me about this hero worship is that the words "Jonathon Ives" frequently get confused with "Apple's ID group". See how often items in that article are actually credited to "Ives' team", rather than the guy himself?
Apple have an extraordinary ID team, which obviously includes many talented individuals who simply don't get the credit. It's obviously in Apple's interests to build up the mystique of their 'genius' ID guru, but to the nameless ID's who executed these designs: I salute you!
Despite the fact Thurott clearly likes Microsoft and their products, and has good contacts with them, he has often been a fair and insightful commentator both in favor of OSX and against Win Vista. Plus he's a competent writer, which is more than can be said for nearly all the competing sites. Give a guy a break - liking Microsoft products does not equate to 'corrupt'.
"I dunno how much AIDS scares y'all, but I got a theory: the day they come out with a cure for AIDS, a guaranteed one-shot cure, on that day there's gonna be fucking in the streets, man."
should be fun.
(ps. I know this is a vaccine, not a cure, but it kinda amounts to the same thing)
My life improved a great deal when I discovered this little system tray item: http://members.execulink.com/~pjones/toggler/index .htm The Toggler! You set the number of seconds that you need to hold down CAPS LOCK before it becomes active - and no more accidental Caps LOCKING EVER AGAIN.
It has other great uses too, like disabling the windows key to avoid that 'crash to desktop' feel in the middle of a game...
From past experience, can anyone guess when Gen 2 of the MacBook will be available? I assume they make internal revs 'on the quiet' without announcing version 1.1 or whatever it is.
(I don't expect anyont to *know* - just is it 3months? 6months? a year?)
- i believe there's some evidence that TeGenero overlooked/minimised some adverse reactions in primate subjects: if so, they should be hung out to dry by every court in the US and Europe.
Meanwhile - this is exactly how drugs get developed *all the time*. You can't pick and choose. If you saw some of the benefits that drugs in this class are have for (literally) millions and millions of people around the world, perhaps you might say it's worth it. Potential treatments for cancer, alzheimer's disease, the list is endless.
After all, these people are volunteers - we couldn't possibly develop new drugs without someone stepping forward to try them. Compare this count (four people, seriously injured) to, say famous cases where too little testing was done: DDT, thalidomide spring to mind.
Before you wail on 'evil drug' companies treating people as 'disposable', give me one half sensible alternative to regulated drug trials.....
Listen to that interesting sound: the sound of someone fighting against reality... sad, really...
not gonna happen, buster. The DVR people are competing against each other. Can you see "NEW generation Tivo! Now with an inability to FFWD ads!" How would that sell? How would the marketing guys feel about that feature?
Jeese. That's the best thing about my Tivo. Take it away and I'll use my PC to do the same job.
... if this could be related to re-thinking that radical user-interface change that they've attached to Word. (I use a CAD program that adopted this kind of thing a few releases back and I still detest this, just like anyone with tendonitis would detest pointless extra mouse clicks.)
Beta preview is right the time that all their big corporate accounts would feedback "for the love of God, we're not retraining every person in the darn organization just to use Word. Now CHANGE IT BACK!"
Slashdot Mirror
At least until the Chinese government purify it.
Why do people feel the need to be so "smart" about this? Why is it cool to use your half-formed scientific knowledge to criticise something you clearly know nothing about? The Ozone Hole connection is the screaming give away, but before that, what is this?
"we certainly are not as significant as the political rallying groups would like you to believe"
says who? you, according to what analysis of what data? Or is it just your opinion, based on the feeling that you like being counter to "the liberal agenda"? You see, the "rallying groups" might be wrong, but don't go taking the high ground without actually contributing knowledge or, you see, you are just like them.
I've *never* flamed anyone personally on Slashdot before (call me on it, please), but it's part of a wider symptom that's going to be a real problem for US. You and me and everyone we care about.
Listen, learn, read. Scientists are not out to bring America down, or trying to stop us having fun in cool cars. They're totally regular people whose only crime is knowing about the frickin topic they're talking about, and smart-arses like you seem to hate them for it.
I disagree with your analogy. Limiting a car to 65mph is a bad idea because under certain circumstances it would be unsafe. Trying to accelerate away from a 16 wheeler losing control on the freeway and failing would be, um, disappointing. This notional system (I'll get to this is a sec) for preventing anyone from *only* illegal copying is pretty hard to object to.
The question is a great example of a straw-man argument. IF you could make a DRM system that would *only* limit illegal copying and not impact you in *any* other way, would you support it? I can't imagine a sensible negative response that isn't basically "but I like getting music for free".
But the assumption in the question is fundamentally a lie. It's not possible: no-one knows how to do it without affecting fair use, or imposing a crazy authentication burden to the user, and it won't be possible any time soon.
If someone asks a question like that, you know the next step is that they offer up some scheme of theirs that they claim meets that criterion, but it's always a flawed approximation.
I don't object to Utopian DRM. That would be fine. I don't object to Utopian Communism or Utopian Freemarket Anarchists either, but they just don't work in practice.
That totally stood out to me. PR-speak if ever I saw it.
Let's see. I'm guessing Starbucks don't have movie-makers on their books. Perhaps they employ a... erm.. media relations/PR consultancy of some sort? And perhaps that PR consultancy is enamoured of "grass-roots" style communications?
Hmmm. That would explain the (admittedly impressive) YouTube response. And the subsequent posting of said response to Slashdot.
Someone earned their dollars today. Congrats,kligmond. (or prove me wrong)
Agreed: put it this way. Geologists don't lie awake at night worrying about the definition of the word "continent".
yep. dead right.
Do you want the actual answer?
The US was going to cancel the visa-waiver scheme to nations that DID NOT include biometric information on passports by Oct 26th 2006. So the UK government had to choose between choking up US-UK travel for millions of people or rushing a minimal-requirements biometric ID scheme in. Not a happy scenario.
Given the economic consequences of making *every single passenger* travelling from the UK to the US apply for a visa, it didn't have much choice. Telling them to 'stick it' is fun, but not that practical.
anybody else remember the uber-creepy, totally abstract PS2 adverts, directed by David Lynch? The third place?
Duck-headed people. Nothing at all to do with gaming.
And I still remember them now: I think they pretty strongly sent the message that this was no normal gaming system, and that Sony was at the cutting edge: of games, of art, of movie. And that they had money to burn hiring a top level director for 1min commericials.
These seem like tamed-down rehashs of those ideas - be arresting, surprising. But no duck-heads. Shame.
Cheers,
rob
Great question, good answer.
I'd only add that interested, wealthy parties (the energy industry being the most significant) have deliberately fuelled the idea that those climate scientists are corrupt or have some bizarre malign agenda of their own. For those who don't follow the basic concepts of science (eg. peer review) and are conspiracy minded, it's convincing, reassuring and reinforces their basic view of the world.
You also get to play smart-ass by pointing out how different from the 'herd' you are by holding the 'alternative' view. Cool.
Dangerous, self-defeating, stupid...
I believe this is the great challenge of our maturing generation - everyone in their 20's and 30's now. The last couple of generations created this mess. The middle-aged politicians of this generation aren't capable of getting their heads around fixing this: they're still fighting the cold war and trying to fight for oil. We're going to have to step up or watch our children suffer the consequences.
"It is quite flawed, though, in that it gives exemptions to the countries which are most likely to be big polluters in coming decades. It would also impose economic penalties on countries like the US which are already doing quite a lot to reduce their environmental impact."
wow. you brought out my inner troll.
so your argument is...
"it's bad because it exempts countries WHICH ARE LIKELY to be big polluters..." (at some point in the future)
&
"it's bad because it doesn't exempt the US" (provably the biggest polluter by any measure at all, say, per capita GHG emissions)
huh? in what way is the "quite a lot" the US is allegedly doing actually solving this problem? Say, compared to the Kyoto treaty?
i think people are a little confused about what Sony are trying to achieve with the PS3. Sure, it's going to be up against the Wii and XB360, but I'm guessing that's a secondary concern to Mr Stringer.
The PS2 sold 105million units. Let's say the PS3 is a disaster - how bad could it be? 50million? 25million?
Those are all Blu-ray devices. At least an installed base of 25million Blu-ray players sold in a few years time. Versus how many HD-DVD players? How can HD-DVD compete with that kind of a headstart?
Owning the next-gen DVD format is the prize here. HD-DVD is only 33% ahead of Blu-ray today, before the PS3 even hits the market. I think that's more precious to Sony than losing a bit of ground to Microsoft. Maybe they calculated on losing gaming market share this time round.
Not just that, but to say their competitor is iPod is a bit of an assumption. I'd say the market breaks out into Joe Public, who'll buy what he's heard of (iPod) and techies who buy on features, size, battery life, etc, etc. (This is Slashdot - you fall into the latter category).
Geeks are (I reckon) more likely to buy outside iPod - witness the amount of Slashposts about Nomads, Zen, etc, etc.
So at that point the fact that Zune is the same price as an iPod is pretty irrelevant. Now the Zune looks like the expensive option compared to the 'also-ran's, (say, the Vision:M @$230), because iPod is the *premium* price point. If you're the new contender on the block, you're fighting with the other contenders, not the champ. Calling yourself an iPod killer and pricing to EQUAL iPod is asking for trouble.
Of course, I bet they know this. I bet the iPod price cut tore their business plan to ribbons.
Oh! Oh! You're gonna love this one:
In gawd-awful NBC show "Surface" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0452718/, there was a scene when the heroine had to release the hero/nut-job from a prison cell locked with a retinal scanner. The buildings gonna blow, so she's in a hurry. Tries pressing everything, no dice.
There just happens to be CCTV displays in the same room! yay! She manages to find full-face security footage of a guard on one of these displays (lucky!), and zooms it (say 10,000X) so just the eye is showing. No, really.
Resourcefully, she then rips out the LCD display showing an image of a big eye and holds it up to the retinal scanner. The door pops open.
At this point my disbelief got up, left the room and shot itself.
I hope you intended to raise Kryptonite stock. It looks like you really struggled. And you had to have a car jack "handy".
what bugs me about this hero worship is that the words "Jonathon Ives" frequently get confused with "Apple's ID group". See how often items in that article are actually credited to "Ives' team", rather than the guy himself?
Apple have an extraordinary ID team, which obviously includes many talented individuals who simply don't get the credit. It's obviously in Apple's interests to build up the mystique of their 'genius' ID guru, but to the nameless ID's who executed these designs: I salute you!
Nasty knee-jerk problem you've got there.
Despite the fact Thurott clearly likes Microsoft and their products, and has good contacts with them, he has often been a fair and insightful commentator both in favor of OSX and against Win Vista. Plus he's a competent writer, which is more than can be said for nearly all the competing sites. Give a guy a break - liking Microsoft products does not equate to 'corrupt'.
"I dunno how much AIDS scares y'all, but I got a theory: the day they come out with a cure for AIDS, a guaranteed one-shot cure, on that day there's gonna be fucking in the streets, man."
should be fun.
(ps. I know this is a vaccine, not a cure, but it kinda amounts to the same thing)
My life improved a great deal when I discovered this little system tray item:x .htm
http://members.execulink.com/~pjones/toggler/inde
The Toggler! You set the number of seconds that you need to hold down CAPS LOCK before it becomes active - and no more accidental Caps LOCKING EVER AGAIN.
It has other great uses too, like disabling the windows key to avoid that 'crash to desktop' feel in the middle of a game...
great reply - thanks!
From past experience, can anyone guess when Gen 2 of the MacBook will be available? I assume they make internal revs 'on the quiet' without announcing version 1.1 or whatever it is.
(I don't expect anyont to *know* - just is it 3months? 6months? a year?)
- i believe there's some evidence that TeGenero overlooked/minimised some adverse reactions in primate subjects: if so, they should be hung out to dry by every court in the US and Europe.
Meanwhile - this is exactly how drugs get developed *all the time*. You can't pick and choose. If you saw some of the benefits that drugs in this class are have for (literally) millions and millions of people around the world, perhaps you might say it's worth it. Potential treatments for cancer, alzheimer's disease, the list is endless.
After all, these people are volunteers - we couldn't possibly develop new drugs without someone stepping forward to try them. Compare this count (four people, seriously injured) to, say famous cases where too little testing was done: DDT, thalidomide spring to mind.
Before you wail on 'evil drug' companies treating people as 'disposable', give me one half sensible alternative to regulated drug trials.....
Listen to that interesting sound: the sound of someone fighting against reality... sad, really...
not gonna happen, buster. The DVR people are competing against each other. Can you see "NEW generation Tivo! Now with an inability to FFWD ads!" How would that sell? How would the marketing guys feel about that feature?
Jeese. That's the best thing about my Tivo. Take it away and I'll use my PC to do the same job.
... if this could be related to re-thinking that radical user-interface change that they've attached to Word. (I use a CAD program that adopted this kind of thing a few releases back and I still detest this, just like anyone with tendonitis would detest pointless extra mouse clicks.)
Beta preview is right the time that all their big corporate accounts would feedback "for the love of God, we're not retraining every person in the darn organization just to use Word. Now CHANGE IT BACK!"
remember, people:
Internet cafes in "GOONhilly": funny.
Internet cafes http://www.tullys.com/stores/store_list.asp on "SHATtuck Avenue, BERKeley": not.
Isn't this a great opportunity to push 'old' OpenOffice?
"Less user training, greater productivity if you switch to OpenOffice than Office 2007"
I think a lot of people will be scared of change (they always are) and there's probably never been a better time to suggest the 'consistency' of OO.