This is good for many reasons. The cost is
primarily in the one time purchase of the equipment. And it makes a lot of sense where line of sight is a shorter distance than a fibre cable must travel (tops of buildings in a congested city). These dont interfere with radio freqencies, so you don't have to concern yourself with noise, or creating noise. And its unlikely a backhoe will ever be a problem (as long as it doesn't block the line of sight).
The downside is the line of sight. You ALWAYS have to have line of sight. Rain, fog, clouds, trees, idiots with signs, they all can cause problems. Short distances are less of a concern, but you still have to maintain an almost perfect orientation. A little gust of wind can have you dropping packets.
But its probably a better solution than fibre where running fibre isn't an economically feasable solution. But no matter how good this is, fibre has far greater potential capacity, even though we don't yet have the technology to use all of it. It doesn't make sense to start building the internet backbone out of these things.
At first a clone needed a human surrogate mother to carry the fetus to term. Now, we can clone the human and not even have a human carry it. This could be done behind closed doors. Nobody would even be aware that the child exists.
Combine that with genetic experiements, there are plenty of opportunities to play god and not get too concerned about the mistakes. Biology and medicine is more or less a game of trial and error, and genetics is unlikely to be much different. But if nobody knows about the 10,000 mutants that resulted from every success...
Portable MP3 players of all things get the voice tech first. Why? Same with phones. The cell phones have the voice recognition, but if there are POTS phones that have it, they aren't exactly making commercials about it (not that I watch TV anyways)
This feature would be no less useful on a desktop. It's definitely ideal for a small portable unit where working with a tiny display screen and buttons to switch between a large selection of songs can be tedious. However, being able to swap songs by simply speaking to your computer without forcing yourself to do a task switch could be helpful as well. Certainly, the 10-20 seconds you spend doing so isn't significant by itself, but this does add up over time. Its all about productivity people!
MP3 players are pioneering the way in other areas as well. Other than perhaps digital cameras, they provide a market for flash memory. And getting realtime playback, and hopefully soon widespread use of unrestricted realtime mp3 encoding for these units, will enhance their use beyond the simple playback of music. And of course, don't forget, anything that pisses off the RIAA is a good thing.:)
Run a successful business and have lots of cash reserves for lawsuits. Run ONLY open source software, no possible way you could be found guilty of IP theft.
Then hire someone. Have ALL your employees constantly talk about how brazen the company is about copying all the software without paying for ANY of it, it was all downloaded off the internet.
Set your computers up to LOOK like windows. Get a theme that looks that way and make sure your new hire is sufficiently dufus enough to not figure out the difference. As far as he's concerned, he's using windows, office, photoshop, etc.
Then one day, get one of those BSA extortion letters and brag loudly (so he hears you) about how messed up they are, how they couldn't do anything to you if they wanted to, how you'll keep copying software and give the BSA the middle finger, etc etc.
Then piss off that employee and fire him. If all goes right, he'll run to the BSA and paint a pretty picture for them.
Refuse to cooperate with them in any way, until you get raided. Then sue them back to the stoneage.
If you want to find out if I own the software, fine. YOU find out. Am I really obligated to show you evidence that I purchased software?
I know a police raiding looking for stolen equipment runs checks on the serial numbers. If the serial numbers come back clean, I'm not obligated to prove to them that I legally purchased it. They have to prove that it was stolen property to begin with or they have no case. Granted, having a box of receipts for everything gets them out the door faster as well as making your life a whole lot easier in the case of a mistake.
But for the BSA, who by the way is not a law enforcement agency, to require evidence of ownership does not extend to being provided with purchasing records. The certificate of ownership should be sufficient. Of course, I could stockpile those in case I fear they're coming, but I could just as easily format the harddrives.
In fact, that might not be a bad idea. Force all data, and I mean ALL data to be stored on network servers running free software, and only use proprietary boxes as workstations. Ghost those machines and nuke them every night. Receiving a command from the network completely wipes all machines on the network (except the fileservers).
I don't condone piracy, but I also don't endorse nazi style tactics. There is NO reason that a company that acts in good faith in purchasing software licenses who makes an honest mistake should be raked over the coals because some errant employee installed an extra copy of office in the wrong place.
It also kinda puts a sock in the mouth of those that complain about people "reselling" their bandwidth by offering up wireless access points. Now Vista does it themselves, its endorsed and they can maintain some control over it while still providing the same level of advantage to the customers that desire it.
I'm not debating whether the people that place value on a game character are right, or even sane.. but do they have any legal rights in this regard? I would certainly hope not, but OSI was sued because the game was laggy, who knows what people might try to sue for these days.
If you spend $10 a month playing a game, and 6 months into the game, the server crashes and you lose your data, or you lose all your items, or something strange happens, how are you to be compensated for the negligence of the company?
If there is adaquate precedence that character accounts are worth a certain dollar value, then upon this unfortunate loss, the company could be sued by the player for monetary compensation (encouraging the company to simply recreate the character)
Then you have the issue of cheating. Where before, cheating only gave in-game bonuses and the only potential consequence was the loss of the account, now you have some new issues. You can artificially inflate the value of your character. If this person is caught, should he/she be charged with fraud? One player cheating can lower the value of other's accounts. Can they sue the cheater? Can they sue the company for not stopping the cheating?
Of course, if the company forbids this, they're on better legal footing then if they condoned it or at the very least remained neutral.
And all of that is fine. Regardless, if I want to broadcast to the world in my house or my place of business, then that is my choice and I hardly see why its "disturbing" to the rest of the public when they are under no obligation to participate.
Are we so damn privacy concious that the very thought of stepping in front of a camera violates some deep rooted right? Its simple. There are cameras in there. Everyone in the world can watch them. If thats a problem......
DON'T GO IN THERE!!!!!!!
This would be like telling someone who's about to go on a game show that it will be televised, and having that person balk. Oh no... I thought it was just the hundreds of people in the audience watching. Didn't know there would be a CAMERA for the live televised show.
I've got webcams in my house. I tell anyone who walks in here that only the entire world can watch them. While some seem a bit aprehensive about it at first (and more so when the lights are constantly going on and off), they can at least accept it. I've thought about putting a huge notice by the doorbell that by ringing that bell they provide permission to be broadcast to the world (which they are the moment the doorbell is pressed when the camera in the front door takes a picture)
As with my house, as with the bar, you know the cameras are there. You know that people might get IM'ed if you swipe your card. Your wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend/boss/annoying best friend/dog will know you're going into that bar. Consider this fact carefully before entering. But don't get disturbed by it. There are for more serious issues in this world than that.
Its a great codec for providing near dvd quality at a much lower bitrate than an mpeg file of the same quality. But you lose out because it takes significntly more processing power to play. It also is a hog to encode. And since its not a streaming format, it rules itself out as a live broadcasting medium.
Ogg Tarkin might have some promise, but until there's something there to play with, its not going to do me much good.
Thats what these things will become. Unless you're constantly scanning for whats available, or make a list of what you're looking for, your only other option is to just collect everything. Sometimes this makes sense, but in most cases you don't want to collect but a very small fraction of what's available, and storage will become a rather extreme issue very quickly.
Still, if only working with small numbers of files at a time, this could work. If, for instance, everyone is currently trading the latest movie, it would be rather simplistic to simply walk around and transfer it to everyone during the course of a day, then by the end of the day, everyone will have it, and this spreading well, well, spread. Isolated to a single office where the first copy gets sent, in a very short period of time, the entire city could have collected the same file as the number of people in possession of it grows exponentially.
The downside of this is when you start collecting stuff you don't want. I suppose if I'm only collecting mp3's, I won't be picking up some guy's porn collection, but if my collection is more diversified and I'm set in a "collect everything you find" mode, this could get interesting.
Remember people, while we can be pretty damn secure (no pun intended) in the fact that we've gotten most of the security holes out of linux, there could still be many unknown holes in various windows operating systems that simply have yet to be discovered. With the source open, you're going to find more holes, assuming all things were done equally.
Also, are we looking only at the linux kernel itself (compared to the windows kernel) or all the programs that are typically packaged with it? Gnu and Linux usually stand together, but counting vulnerabilities in every program that could ever be run suid root may be reaching a bit far.
But when Ultima Online came out, I found myself spending a bare minimum of 8 hours a day playing it, more if I could manage it. I had to quit cold turkey 6 months after starting because the pathetic excuse for my life was starting to suffer as a results.
I played starcraft for a bit, but the most I could play it was 2-3 hours a day before getting bored with it. Now, I get my gaming in 15 minute spurts and go on with my life.
Subspace, Halflife, sometimes a little starcraft, and doom 2. Thats all I really mess around with anymore.
Its the same company. And I drink regular Dr. Pepper sometimes too. There's a LITTLE bit of variety in my drinking habits.
And I don't drink any other soft drink brands. Well, except for Sprite. (Coca Cola??? Listening?? I'm willing to diversify if you'll help me out here!!!)
I sit in front of my webcam drinking Dr. Pepper all day. Thousands of visitors see me drinking Dr. Pepper every month. But do you think Dr. Pepper has ever even ONCE offered to sponsor me??? NO! Of course not.
For tracking groceries? How can one in this high-tech time we live in even CONSIDER attempting a task so complex as grocery organization without keeping very careful and accurate inventory via computer. With a barcode scanner to ease the entry and removal of items from the system. I mean, *I* have a grocery inventory system in my kitchen (although I've yet to figure out WHY).
Actually, its emotions that would probably prevent them from doing something they shoudn't, despite the programming.
Remember, once robots are able to rationalize, reproduce themselves, and program themselves, they might someday rationlize that humans are inefficient, unnecessary burdens on the planet, and from their point of view, they would be correct. However, that wouldn't be the "right" thing to do.
Even if they instinctively unable to do any more than serve humans, once they reach the point where they have the technilogical means to accomplish the beforementioned task, we better hope that they're programmed with more attention to security than today's systems are. Worms, virues, script kiddies and other related vermin are little more than a costly nuisence. Having an army of windows boxes available for a DOS attack is nothing compared to having an army of real robots that could cause actual physical damage.
Slashdot Mirror
This is good for many reasons. The cost is
primarily in the one time purchase of the equipment. And it makes a lot of sense where line of sight is a shorter distance than a fibre cable must travel (tops of buildings in a congested city). These dont interfere with radio freqencies, so you don't have to concern yourself with noise, or creating noise. And its unlikely a backhoe will ever be a problem (as long as it doesn't block the line of sight).
The downside is the line of sight. You ALWAYS have to have line of sight. Rain, fog, clouds, trees, idiots with signs, they all can cause problems. Short distances are less of a concern, but you still have to maintain an almost perfect orientation. A little gust of wind can have you dropping packets.
But its probably a better solution than fibre where running fibre isn't an economically feasable solution. But no matter how good this is, fibre has far greater potential capacity, even though we don't yet have the technology to use all of it. It doesn't make sense to start building the internet backbone out of these things.
-Restil
At first a clone needed a human surrogate mother to carry the fetus to term. Now, we can clone the human and not even have a human carry it. This could be done behind closed doors. Nobody would even be aware that the child exists.
Combine that with genetic experiements, there are plenty of opportunities to play god and not get too concerned about the mistakes. Biology and medicine is more or less a game of trial and error, and genetics is unlikely to be much different. But if nobody knows about the 10,000 mutants that resulted from every success...
Something to think about anyways.
-Restil
Portable MP3 players of all things get the voice tech first. Why? Same with phones. The cell phones have the voice recognition, but if there are POTS phones that have it, they aren't exactly making commercials about it (not that I watch TV anyways)
:)
This feature would be no less useful on a desktop. It's definitely ideal for a small portable unit where working with a tiny display screen and buttons to switch between a large selection of songs can be tedious. However, being able to swap songs by simply speaking to your computer without forcing yourself to do a task switch could be helpful as well. Certainly, the 10-20 seconds you spend doing so isn't significant by itself, but this does add up over time. Its all about productivity people!
MP3 players are pioneering the way in other areas as well. Other than perhaps digital cameras, they provide a market for flash memory. And getting realtime playback, and hopefully soon widespread use of unrestricted realtime mp3 encoding for these units, will enhance their use beyond the simple playback of music. And of course, don't forget, anything that pisses off the RIAA is a good thing.
-Restil
Got one... although its only a 486 that does it. But its running linux.
:)
To to the link in my sig and go to the den cam... and turn on the lavalamp.
-Restil
I have an image on my site, and someone does a direct link to it, to display it on their site...
and therefore drains my bandwidth....
and deprives me of any ad revenue or anything else as a result....
I have to provide permission first.
Hmmm... is there a problem here?
Note, this doesnt' stop someone from creating a thumbnail and using it to link to my site... where someone can see the whole image.
-Restil
Only do this if you're legit. Completely.
:)
Run a successful business and have lots of cash reserves for lawsuits. Run ONLY open source software, no possible way you could be found guilty of IP theft.
Then hire someone. Have ALL your employees constantly talk about how brazen the company is about copying all the software without paying for ANY of it, it was all downloaded off the internet.
Set your computers up to LOOK like windows. Get a theme that looks that way and make sure your new hire is sufficiently dufus enough to not figure out the difference. As far as he's concerned, he's using windows, office, photoshop, etc.
Then one day, get one of those BSA extortion letters and brag loudly (so he hears you) about how messed up they are, how they couldn't do anything to you if they wanted to, how you'll keep copying software and give the BSA the middle finger, etc etc.
Then piss off that employee and fire him. If all goes right, he'll run to the BSA and paint a pretty picture for them.
Refuse to cooperate with them in any way, until you get raided. Then sue them back to the stoneage.
oh well.. I can dream can't I?
-Restil
If you want to find out if I own the software, fine. YOU find out. Am I really obligated to show you evidence that I purchased software?
I know a police raiding looking for stolen equipment runs checks on the serial numbers. If the serial numbers come back clean, I'm not obligated to prove to them that I legally purchased it. They have to prove that it was stolen property to begin with or they have no case. Granted, having a box of receipts for everything gets them out the door faster as well as making your life a whole lot easier in the case of a mistake.
But for the BSA, who by the way is not a law enforcement agency, to require evidence of ownership does not extend to being provided with purchasing records. The certificate of ownership should be sufficient. Of course, I could stockpile those in case I fear they're coming, but I could just as easily format the harddrives.
In fact, that might not be a bad idea. Force all data, and I mean ALL data to be stored on network servers running free software, and only use proprietary boxes as workstations. Ghost those machines and nuke them every night. Receiving a command from the network completely wipes all machines on the network (except the fileservers).
I don't condone piracy, but I also don't endorse nazi style tactics. There is NO reason that a company that acts in good faith in purchasing software licenses who makes an honest mistake should be raked over the coals because some errant employee installed an extra copy of office in the wrong place.
-Restil
It also kinda puts a sock in the mouth of those that complain about people "reselling" their bandwidth by offering up wireless access points. Now Vista does it themselves, its endorsed and they can maintain some control over it while still providing the same level of advantage to the customers that desire it.
Makes sense to me anyways.
-Restil
I'm not debating whether the people that place value on a game character are right, or even sane.. but do they have any legal rights in this regard? I would certainly hope not, but OSI was sued because the game was laggy, who knows what people might try to sue for these days.
-Restil
Who's forcing anyone to be in my place? Nobody is forced to enter my house, just as nobody is forced to go in that bar.
-Restil
If you spend $10 a month playing a game, and 6 months into the game, the server crashes and you lose your data, or you lose all your items, or something strange happens, how are you to be compensated for the negligence of the company?
If there is adaquate precedence that character accounts are worth a certain dollar value, then upon this unfortunate loss, the company could be sued by the player for monetary compensation (encouraging the company to simply recreate the character)
Then you have the issue of cheating. Where before, cheating only gave in-game bonuses and the only potential consequence was the loss of the account, now you have some new issues. You can artificially inflate the value of your character. If this person is caught, should he/she be charged with fraud? One player cheating can lower the value of other's accounts. Can they sue the cheater? Can they sue the company for not stopping the cheating?
Of course, if the company forbids this, they're on better legal footing then if they condoned it or at the very least remained neutral.
-Restil
And all of that is fine. Regardless, if I want to broadcast to the world in my house or my place of business, then that is my choice and I hardly see why its "disturbing" to the rest of the public when they are under no obligation to participate.
-Restil
Are we so damn privacy concious that the very thought of stepping in front of a camera violates some deep rooted right? Its simple. There are cameras in there. Everyone in the world can watch them. If thats a problem......
DON'T GO IN THERE!!!!!!!
This would be like telling someone who's about to go on a game show that it will be televised, and having that person balk. Oh no... I thought it was just the hundreds of people in the audience watching. Didn't know there would be a CAMERA for the live televised show.
I've got webcams in my house. I tell anyone who walks in here that only the entire world can watch them. While some seem a bit aprehensive about it at first (and more so when the lights are constantly going on and off), they can at least accept it. I've thought about putting a huge notice by the doorbell that by ringing that bell they provide permission to be broadcast to the world (which they are the moment the doorbell is pressed when the camera in the front door takes a picture)
As with my house, as with the bar, you know the cameras are there. You know that people might get IM'ed if you swipe your card. Your wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend/boss/annoying best friend/dog will know you're going into that bar. Consider this fact carefully before entering. But don't get disturbed by it. There are for more serious issues in this world than that.
-Restil
Its a great codec for providing near dvd quality at a much lower bitrate than an mpeg file of the same quality. But you lose out because it takes significntly more processing power to play. It also is a hog to encode. And since its not a streaming format, it rules itself out as a live broadcasting medium.
Ogg Tarkin might have some promise, but until there's something there to play with, its not going to do me much good.
-Restil
Thats what these things will become. Unless you're constantly scanning for whats available, or make a list of what you're looking for, your only other option is to just collect everything. Sometimes this makes sense, but in most cases you don't want to collect but a very small fraction of what's available, and storage will become a rather extreme issue very quickly.
Still, if only working with small numbers of files at a time, this could work. If, for instance, everyone is currently trading the latest movie, it would be rather simplistic to simply walk around and transfer it to everyone during the course of a day, then by the end of the day, everyone will have it, and this spreading well, well, spread. Isolated to a single office where the first copy gets sent, in a very short period of time, the entire city could have collected the same file as the number of people in possession of it grows exponentially.
The downside of this is when you start collecting stuff you don't want. I suppose if I'm only collecting mp3's, I won't be picking up some guy's porn collection, but if my collection is more diversified and I'm set in a "collect everything you find" mode, this could get interesting.
-Restil
Still worried? Check out my site. You shouldn't be concerned any longer then. :)
-Restil
Remember people, while we can be pretty damn secure (no pun intended) in the fact that we've gotten most of the security holes out of linux, there could still be many unknown holes in various windows operating systems that simply have yet to be discovered. With the source open, you're going to find more holes, assuming all things were done equally.
Also, are we looking only at the linux kernel itself (compared to the windows kernel) or all the programs that are typically packaged with it? Gnu and Linux usually stand together, but counting vulnerabilities in every program that could ever be run suid root may be reaching a bit far.
-Restil
But when Ultima Online came out, I found myself spending a bare minimum of 8 hours a day playing it, more if I could manage it. I had to quit cold turkey 6 months after starting because the pathetic excuse for my life was starting to suffer as a results.
I played starcraft for a bit, but the most I could play it was 2-3 hours a day before getting bored with it. Now, I get my gaming in 15 minute spurts and go on with my life.
Subspace, Halflife, sometimes a little starcraft, and doom 2. Thats all I really mess around with anymore.
-Restil
This is the second article today that I have seen the world "boondoggle" in. Is this the new media catchword of the week or something?
Do I need to start using it in everyday speech??
-Restil
Nope, no lights in my bedroom. :)
-Restil
Damn... Extortion! Why didn't I think of that.
I've been approching this all wrong. Yes. A month long campaign to threaten to switch brands if I'm not offered a sponsorship.
I'll get started on that right away!
-Restil
Its the same company. And I drink regular Dr. Pepper sometimes too. There's a LITTLE bit of variety in my drinking habits.
And I don't drink any other soft drink brands. Well, except for Sprite. (Coca Cola??? Listening?? I'm willing to diversify if you'll help me out here!!!)
-Restil
I sit in front of my webcam drinking Dr. Pepper all day. Thousands of visitors see me drinking Dr. Pepper every month. But do you think Dr. Pepper has ever even ONCE offered to sponsor me??? NO! Of course not.
-Restil
For tracking groceries? How can one in this high-tech time we live in even CONSIDER attempting a task so complex as grocery organization without keeping very careful and accurate inventory via computer. With a barcode scanner to ease the entry and removal of items from the system. I mean, *I* have a grocery inventory system in my kitchen (although I've yet to figure out WHY).
Oh well. Maybe the next version.
-Restil
Actually, its emotions that would probably prevent them from doing something they shoudn't, despite the programming.
Remember, once robots are able to rationalize, reproduce themselves, and program themselves, they might someday rationlize that humans are inefficient, unnecessary burdens on the planet, and from their point of view, they would be correct. However, that wouldn't be the "right" thing to do.
Even if they instinctively unable to do any more than serve humans, once they reach the point where they have the technilogical means to accomplish the beforementioned task, we better hope that they're programmed with more attention to security than today's systems are. Worms, virues, script kiddies and other related vermin are little more than a costly nuisence. Having an army of windows boxes available for a DOS attack is nothing compared to having an army of real robots that could cause actual physical damage.
-Restil