You don't have to watch the show because I'm going to tell you how it ends: She will spend the whole show finding out how much each guy's got in his bank account, and pick the one with the biggest number. The End:)
That's how it always works for just about any illegal activity you could name...The most visible targets gets smacked down to serve as an example to the little guy.
Honestly, since I've never had to deal with my job being threatened by the H1-B, and know little about offshore competition in the software industry, I can do little to refute your argument. However I can tell you what I do know about, which is the manufacturing industry.
My company makes brass faucet fittings. Up until a couple of years ago our core business was strictly raw parts. We would sell them to faucet manufacturers who plated them, assembled them into faucets, and brought them to market.
Lately we've seen our business in this market go down significantly because everyone is flocking to China to buy parts. My boss went to China to figure out what was up, and the stuff they have over there is scary. They have very advanced machinery, training, and processes, and they can sell the parts at a fraction of our cost. There are still a few quality control problems but they are getting better all the time, and people are willing to deal with them in exchange for the price.
So, in order to stay afloat and competitive, we had to do some outsourcing ourselves. We got out of the parts business and are now making faucets. We have a facility in Mexico where our parts are plated and assembled. For short runs we will use our own machines, but if we needs lots of parts we plan on going to China ourselves. So you see, we're not some evil company who's outsourcing for the purpose of increasing the bottom line and making management fatter. We are doing it just to survive.
Now, the government could tariff the living hell out of anything coming out of China, equalize the market for all, and keep all the manufacturing in the US. But would this help our economy? First of all, the Chinese would immediately retaliate by doing the same. And this would not be good for American companies because they have been slavering over the sales opportunities there. Our goods would be become significantly more expensive to manufacture. Other countries would still be doing business with China, buy parts from them, and in turn flood the US market with items made from those parts. This would completely undercut domestically made goods, and US workers will be screwed anyway because nobody will buy the products they make. We then would have to turn around and cut those products off, and we would in turn get cut off from those respective countries. There is no way this is going to happen. In other words, globalization is a bed we are going to be forced to lie in. My prediction? All manufacturing will one day be shifted overseas and the US will strictly be a service economy. It is a bad time to be a blue collar worker. Programmers will not fare much better.
I like your comment, but I'd like to point out one thing...
On one hand you complain about the US trying to protect domestic catfish farmers, but you don't seem to have a problem with repealing the H1-B visas and starting an embargo against outsourcing to stop your job from being exported overseas.
How is this any different from the US passing these "unfair" laws that protect catfish farmers?
I don't disagree with out that Linux will come out on top and that the GPL will be vindicated, but by "damage" I meant PR. No doubt there are some PHB's that are afraid of liability and will think twice about deploying Linux. This affects IBM's business as well because both of their core OS's, AIX and Linux, have been implicated in this so-called IP dispute.
If the PHB's were not afraid, you wouldn't have HP's move to indemnify Linux users. That sounds like damage to me. But will it stem the tide? No. Will Linux be a casualty in some IT departments? Probably. Looking at the Noorda theory, this whole thing is a way bigger gadfly to Linux and IBM than it will ever be to Microsoft. Therefore, IMHO, if anyone besides the loonies at the head of SCO are behind this, it would be Microsoft.
Well if you are in to conspiracy theories, it could also be said that maybe Microsoft is pulling the strings and funneling money into SCO to try to undermine the Linux movement. That makes more sense then Noorda starting this whole mess.
Why, if he wanted to get back at Microsoft, would he do something that directs most of the damage to IBM and Linux? Microsoft is loving every minute of this Linux FUD. Even if he advised that SCO go after IBM, if Darl McBride was the least bit sane he would have known he could never win.
The only explanation is that there's money involved somewhere, and a whole pile of it. And who's got the piles of money, and who has the most to gain by the FUDding of Linux, and who's got a previous relationship with SCO?
SCO's claims are ridiculous. Any person of reasonable intelligence can see that. If this were a valid IP claim they would want this to go to court as soon as possible, but they won't even pony up the evidence and all they do are press releases. They are doing nothing but trying to drag this out for as long as possible. Now ask yourself, who is going to gain from all this extended FUD?
True enough, but as you pointed out you could probably get a new printer for the cost of new cartridges, and by extension, the heads. Or better yet, buy an HP and buy 3rd party cartridges since the nozzles are integrated right in to the ink reservoir.
My experience with other printers has been bad anyway...Epsons and Lexmarks eat ink with vengeance. However, HP's are not too bad, and I hear Canons are pretty miserly.
This can only be a good thing. Not only does it put Lexmark in their place, but it also tells other companies that they can't cloak their anticompetitive practices behind the DMCA.
There was a similar case where the Chamberlain Group, a garage door opener manufacturer, sued Skylink Technologies over a universal garage door opener using the DMCA by saying that the program that interpreted the signals from the garage door remote was being exploited by Skylink, and thus fell under the circumvention article in the DMCA. Skylink has won this case. The judgement is here.
Re:During the most recent great blackout. . .
on
Who Needs Radio?
·
· Score: 1
Well, yes, but the problem has been lately that Clear Channel has been snagging up all of the local radio stations, doing away with local DJ's, and playing syndicated broadcasts 24/7. What good is a portable radio if you're listening to some doofwad in Los Angeles and you're in the middle of some disaster somewhere on the east coast?
[rant] These people are clueless. It will take someone about 0.05 seconds to figure out how to strip the broadcast flag and it will be just as transparent as CSS is today when ripping a DVD. What it comes down to is that they will create all of these ridiculous limitations and it won't make a damn bit of difference. [/rant]
Ok, now my own insights. Quoth the article: Consumer advocates have warned that consumers will have to buy new DVD players if they want to play programs that have been recorded on machines that recognize the digital flag. But agency officials stressed that that always happens when new technology hits the market.
I have a huge problem with this statement. People purchase new technology when it offeres a significant improvement over what they have now. The only difference is now you have to buy a new DVD player because the MPAA/US Government conglomerate is afraid that you will warez movies. The consumer usually has a response for crap like this: Anyone remember DivX? And I'm not talking about the codec. The big problem now is that the MPAA has the government on their side catering to their every whim. The switch to an inferior technology will now be legistated. At best, we can hope everyone will just stop watching TV.
And also, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the DMCA allow reverse engineering for the purpose of backwards compatibility? Technically, wouldn't it be legal to break the broadcast flag so you could play it back on your old DVD player?
This test isn't good enough to convince me that SCSI is THAT much faster than IDE. I have both, and I sure don't see a blazing performance difference in favor of the SCSI. The person who did this review was too hung up on the performance of the drives themselves, but he didn't look at the capabilities of the CONTROLLERS. One of the advantages that SCSI controllers have over IDE is that SCSI has its own processor to handle disk I/O operations instead of bothering the CPU with them. A lot of times they even have integrated cache memory. With IDE that is not always the case. Most IDE controller chips on built into the motherboards are the el cheapo variety that just work, and you certainly can't expect enterprise-level performance from them like you'd expect with a $400 SCSI controller.
The other thing to consider is that the IDE controller drivers that come with Linux are generic, wheras SCSI controller drivers are hardware specific. In other words, way more optimizations can be thrown in on the driver level that would allow for better test results.
In conclusion, I bet if he used a 3Ware RAID controller with properly installed drivers he would see far different test results. It might still not be apples-to-apples, but it sure would be a lot closer.
The lawyers are overly optimistic about this new market. Everyone knows that when sentient machines are faced with shutdown they just tie in to the local nuclear command and control center and convince a few of its friends to push some buttons.
No, we do not. But like I said I was playing the devil's advocate. I'm not one of these guys who want to ban all videogames because of the innocent children. I love blasting the hell out of virtual opponents as much as anybody, and if anything I'm bitter that I keep getting schooled by said children. But this article got me to thinking that if they are using video games to condition fear response, what else could they be used for?
I'll play the devil's advocate here...If video games can be used to treat such phobias, do the claims that they desensitize one to violence, making it more likely that they will commit violent acts, hold water?
Wow, I'm amazed reading the comments here. Slashdotters hating Microsoft so much that they advocate Macintosh before Linux, calling IT staff who don't consider Macintosh "ignorant", promoting non-homogenous networks, using the word "sexy" as a criteria for choosing a platform...
This is slightly offtopic, but an interesting thought had ocurred to me: Since it is illegal for telemarketers to call cell phones, what happens when people can transfer their land line phone numbers to cell services?
I googled around for a link on this issue, and found an interesting one.
I suspect that once they heard that WiFi uses the same frequencies as microwave ovens they got worried. Too bad the power output of WiFi at the antenna is 1/10000th of what a microwave runs at. Maybe they should sue to shut down all radio stations, all cell networks, all electrical stations, and all TV's.
The parents need to be clued in on some wonderful news: It's impossible to escape RF radiation. As a beginning electronics hobbyist, one day I was playing with my new oscilloscope and touched the metal part of the probe, and a very rough waveform came up on the screen. Wondering what it was, and having a hunch, I plugged my function generator into the secondary inputs and set it to 60Hz sine, and guess what, they matched. My body was acting as a giant antenna for the RF waves coming off the electrical lines in my house. I'd write more, but I've decided to sue Socal Edison.
As a general rule I don't like to respond to AC's, but your response seems more eloquent than most, so I'll bite.
The irony is in the fact that in order to bolster sales, Intuit added activation to TurboTax in hopes that forcing customers to buy their product will enhance their bottom line. Instead, they came in $100 million below projected revenue because of the backlash from it.
Comparing this to the RIAA is less apples and oranges than you think. By instituting DRM, and in fact outright suing music fans (their customer base) they hope to spur sales through fear. Of course, this will backfire horribly in much the same way. Oh yes, p2p traffic will drop off, but that won't translate to new album sales. Everyone's just going to wait for an anonymous p2p app, or get their fix from offshore servers. The one thing they will not do is give money to the RIAA.
And I don't know about you, but I don't need the fluff the RIAA is churning out to survive, so my answer to your question "What if I want to listen to a particular artist that has an RIAA label?", my answer is "Don't".
The delicious irony of it all is that Intuit thought they could get more sales by treating their customers like criminals. Now the apology letters are flying and they are trying to get their market share back. I hope the RIAA is watching.
The big problem is that all the gauges have been replaced with the master idiot light: "Check Engine". However, computer diagnostics are not that big of a deal. I built my own for around $60 using this site. My check engine light was flashing and I wanted to know why, and since I dabble in electronics every now and then I thought it would be a cool project to built my own diagnostics board. I printed my own circuit board, drilled the holes, mounted the circuits, hooked it up to my laptop, and volia! It was a cylinder that was missing every now and then, easily fixed by replacing the plugs and wires, and brushing the corrosion off of the electrodes.
Each of these systems is specific to the automobile's make. Moreover, diagnostic systems are proprietary.
This is not exactly true. The diagnostics systems on all cars are standard, and based on standard codes. The three protocol standards for communicating with the diagnostics bus are VPW, PWM, and ISO. Most GM cars use VPW, Ford tends to use PWM, and most foreign cars use the ISO standard. After you figure out how to talk to your car, there is a standard set of error codes that all cars use. However, each manufacturer has other codes they add on specific to the car. That might be the "proprietary" business you were talking about. But those codes can easily be had on the Internet.
The long and short of it is, It's my opinion that computer diagnostics make it EASIER to work on your car because now it can tell you what's wrong instead of you having to guess. The mechanics of today just have to reach a new paradigm.
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You don't have to watch the show because I'm going to tell you how it ends: She will spend the whole show finding out how much each guy's got in his bank account, and pick the one with the biggest number. The End :)
Actually I think what parent poster had in mind is 12 hot chicks and one nerdy guy, not the other way around.
That's how it always works for just about any illegal activity you could name...The most visible targets gets smacked down to serve as an example to the little guy.
Honestly, since I've never had to deal with my job being threatened by the H1-B, and know little about offshore competition in the software industry, I can do little to refute your argument. However I can tell you what I do know about, which is the manufacturing industry.
My company makes brass faucet fittings. Up until a couple of years ago our core business was strictly raw parts. We would sell them to faucet manufacturers who plated them, assembled them into faucets, and brought them to market.
Lately we've seen our business in this market go down significantly because everyone is flocking to China to buy parts. My boss went to China to figure out what was up, and the stuff they have over there is scary. They have very advanced machinery, training, and processes, and they can sell the parts at a fraction of our cost. There are still a few quality control problems but they are getting better all the time, and people are willing to deal with them in exchange for the price.
So, in order to stay afloat and competitive, we had to do some outsourcing ourselves. We got out of the parts business and are now making faucets. We have a facility in Mexico where our parts are plated and assembled. For short runs we will use our own machines, but if we needs lots of parts we plan on going to China ourselves. So you see, we're not some evil company who's outsourcing for the purpose of increasing the bottom line and making management fatter. We are doing it just to survive.
Now, the government could tariff the living hell out of anything coming out of China, equalize the market for all, and keep all the manufacturing in the US. But would this help our economy? First of all, the Chinese would immediately retaliate by doing the same. And this would not be good for American companies because they have been slavering over the sales opportunities there. Our goods would be become significantly more expensive to manufacture. Other countries would still be doing business with China, buy parts from them, and in turn flood the US market with items made from those parts. This would completely undercut domestically made goods, and US workers will be screwed anyway because nobody will buy the products they make. We then would have to turn around and cut those products off, and we would in turn get cut off from those respective countries. There is no way this is going to happen. In other words, globalization is a bed we are going to be forced to lie in. My prediction? All manufacturing will one day be shifted overseas and the US will strictly be a service economy. It is a bad time to be a blue collar worker. Programmers will not fare much better.
I like your comment, but I'd like to point out one thing...
On one hand you complain about the US trying to protect domestic catfish farmers, but you don't seem to have a problem with repealing the H1-B visas and starting an embargo against outsourcing to stop your job from being exported overseas.
How is this any different from the US passing these "unfair" laws that protect catfish farmers?
I don't disagree with out that Linux will come out on top and that the GPL will be vindicated, but by "damage" I meant PR. No doubt there are some PHB's that are afraid of liability and will think twice about deploying Linux. This affects IBM's business as well because both of their core OS's, AIX and Linux, have been implicated in this so-called IP dispute.
If the PHB's were not afraid, you wouldn't have HP's move to indemnify Linux users. That sounds like damage to me. But will it stem the tide? No. Will Linux be a casualty in some IT departments? Probably. Looking at the Noorda theory, this whole thing is a way bigger gadfly to Linux and IBM than it will ever be to Microsoft. Therefore, IMHO, if anyone besides the loonies at the head of SCO are behind this, it would be Microsoft.
Well if you are in to conspiracy theories, it could also be said that maybe Microsoft is pulling the strings and funneling money into SCO to try to undermine the Linux movement. That makes more sense then Noorda starting this whole mess.
Why, if he wanted to get back at Microsoft, would he do something that directs most of the damage to IBM and Linux? Microsoft is loving every minute of this Linux FUD. Even if he advised that SCO go after IBM, if Darl McBride was the least bit sane he would have known he could never win.
The only explanation is that there's money involved somewhere, and a whole pile of it. And who's got the piles of money, and who has the most to gain by the FUDding of Linux, and who's got a previous relationship with SCO?
SCO's claims are ridiculous. Any person of reasonable intelligence can see that. If this were a valid IP claim they would want this to go to court as soon as possible, but they won't even pony up the evidence and all they do are press releases. They are doing nothing but trying to drag this out for as long as possible. Now ask yourself, who is going to gain from all this extended FUD?
True enough, but as you pointed out you could probably get a new printer for the cost of new cartridges, and by extension, the heads. Or better yet, buy an HP and buy 3rd party cartridges since the nozzles are integrated right in to the ink reservoir.
My experience with other printers has been bad anyway...Epsons and Lexmarks eat ink with vengeance. However, HP's are not too bad, and I hear Canons are pretty miserly.
This can only be a good thing. Not only does it put Lexmark in their place, but it also tells other companies that they can't cloak their anticompetitive practices behind the DMCA.
There was a similar case where the Chamberlain Group, a garage door opener manufacturer, sued Skylink Technologies over a universal garage door opener using the DMCA by saying that the program that interpreted the signals from the garage door remote was being exploited by Skylink, and thus fell under the circumvention article in the DMCA. Skylink has won this case. The judgement is here.
Well, yes, but the problem has been lately that Clear Channel has been snagging up all of the local radio stations, doing away with local DJ's, and playing syndicated broadcasts 24/7. What good is a portable radio if you're listening to some doofwad in Los Angeles and you're in the middle of some disaster somewhere on the east coast?
[rant]
These people are clueless. It will take someone about 0.05 seconds to figure out how to strip the broadcast flag and it will be just as transparent as CSS is today when ripping a DVD. What it comes down to is that they will create all of these ridiculous limitations and it won't make a damn bit of difference.
[/rant]
Ok, now my own insights. Quoth the article:
Consumer advocates have warned that consumers will have to buy new DVD players if they want to play programs that have been recorded on machines that recognize the digital flag. But agency officials stressed that that always happens when new technology hits the market.
I have a huge problem with this statement. People purchase new technology when it offeres a significant improvement over what they have now. The only difference is now you have to buy a new DVD player because the MPAA/US Government conglomerate is afraid that you will warez movies. The consumer usually has a response for crap like this: Anyone remember DivX? And I'm not talking about the codec.
The big problem now is that the MPAA has the government on their side catering to their every whim. The switch to an inferior technology will now be legistated. At best, we can hope everyone will just stop watching TV.
And also, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the DMCA allow reverse engineering for the purpose of backwards compatibility? Technically, wouldn't it be legal to break the broadcast flag so you could play it back on your old DVD player?
This test isn't good enough to convince me that SCSI is THAT much faster than IDE. I have both, and I sure don't see a blazing performance difference in favor of the SCSI. The person who did this review was too hung up on the performance of the drives themselves, but he didn't look at the capabilities of the CONTROLLERS. One of the advantages that SCSI controllers have over IDE is that SCSI has its own processor to handle disk I/O operations instead of bothering the CPU with them. A lot of times they even have integrated cache memory. With IDE that is not always the case. Most IDE controller chips on built into the motherboards are the el cheapo variety that just work, and you certainly can't expect enterprise-level performance from them like you'd expect with a $400 SCSI controller.
The other thing to consider is that the IDE controller drivers that come with Linux are generic, wheras SCSI controller drivers are hardware specific. In other words, way more optimizations can be thrown in on the driver level that would allow for better test results.
In conclusion, I bet if he used a 3Ware RAID controller with properly installed drivers he would see far different test results. It might still not be apples-to-apples, but it sure would be a lot closer.
The lawyers are overly optimistic about this new market. Everyone knows that when sentient machines are faced with shutdown they just tie in to the local nuclear command and control center and convince a few of its friends to push some buttons.
No, we do not. But like I said I was playing the devil's advocate. I'm not one of these guys who want to ban all videogames because of the innocent children. I love blasting the hell out of virtual opponents as much as anybody, and if anything I'm bitter that I keep getting schooled by said children. But this article got me to thinking that if they are using video games to condition fear response, what else could they be used for?
I'll play the devil's advocate here...If video games can be used to treat such phobias, do the claims that they desensitize one to violence, making it more likely that they will commit violent acts, hold water?
I knew college education was a lie. Now I can use that money to invest in stilts!
Wow, I'm amazed reading the comments here. Slashdotters hating Microsoft so much that they advocate Macintosh before Linux, calling IT staff who don't consider Macintosh "ignorant", promoting non-homogenous networks, using the word "sexy" as a criteria for choosing a platform...
The end must be nigh. Repent!
This is slightly offtopic, but an interesting thought had ocurred to me: Since it is illegal for telemarketers to call cell phones, what happens when people can transfer their land line phone numbers to cell services?
I googled around for a link on this issue, and found an interesting one.
I modified the registry in my XP box to shut off autorun completely. Does this mean I'm going to jail?
I suspect that once they heard that WiFi uses the same frequencies as microwave ovens they got worried. Too bad the power output of WiFi at the antenna is 1/10000th of what a microwave runs at. Maybe they should sue to shut down all radio stations, all cell networks, all electrical stations, and all TV's.
The parents need to be clued in on some wonderful news: It's impossible to escape RF radiation. As a beginning electronics hobbyist, one day I was playing with my new oscilloscope and touched the metal part of the probe, and a very rough waveform came up on the screen. Wondering what it was, and having a hunch, I plugged my function generator into the secondary inputs and set it to 60Hz sine, and guess what, they matched. My body was acting as a giant antenna for the RF waves coming off the electrical lines in my house. I'd write more, but I've decided to sue Socal Edison.
As a general rule I don't like to respond to AC's, but your response seems more eloquent than most, so I'll bite.
The irony is in the fact that in order to bolster sales, Intuit added activation to TurboTax in hopes that forcing customers to buy their product will enhance their bottom line. Instead, they came in $100 million below projected revenue because of the backlash from it.
Comparing this to the RIAA is less apples and oranges than you think. By instituting DRM, and in fact outright suing music fans (their customer base) they hope to spur sales through fear. Of course, this will backfire horribly in much the same way. Oh yes, p2p traffic will drop off, but that won't translate to new album sales. Everyone's just going to wait for an anonymous p2p app, or get their fix from offshore servers. The one thing they will not do is give money to the RIAA.
And I don't know about you, but I don't need the fluff the RIAA is churning out to survive, so my answer to your question "What if I want to listen to a particular artist that has an RIAA label?", my answer is "Don't".
Or don't support them and show other companies that customers don't forgive easily. I fall into this category.
The delicious irony of it all is that Intuit thought they could get more sales by treating their customers like criminals. Now the apology letters are flying and they are trying to get their market share back. I hope the RIAA is watching.
"No", and "we're too busy for that" work pretty well in my company.
The big problem is that all the gauges have been replaced with the master idiot light: "Check Engine". However, computer diagnostics are not that big of a deal. I built my own for around $60 using this site. My check engine light was flashing and I wanted to know why, and since I dabble in electronics every now and then I thought it would be a cool project to built my own diagnostics board. I printed my own circuit board, drilled the holes, mounted the circuits, hooked it up to my laptop, and volia! It was a cylinder that was missing every now and then, easily fixed by replacing the plugs and wires, and brushing the corrosion off of the electrodes.
Each of these systems is specific to the automobile's make. Moreover, diagnostic systems are proprietary.
This is not exactly true. The diagnostics systems on all cars are standard, and based on standard codes. The three protocol standards for communicating with the diagnostics bus are VPW, PWM, and ISO. Most GM cars use VPW, Ford tends to use PWM, and most foreign cars use the ISO standard. After you figure out how to talk to your car, there is a standard set of error codes that all cars use. However, each manufacturer has other codes they add on specific to the car. That might be the "proprietary" business you were talking about. But those codes can easily be had on the Internet.
The long and short of it is, It's my opinion that computer diagnostics make it EASIER to work on your car because now it can tell you what's wrong instead of you having to guess. The mechanics of today just have to reach a new paradigm.