Ah yes, my favorite moment is always the one when people are asked to stick out their neck for something they say they believe in.
I often get the feeling that the people on Slashdot like to bitch and moan, without actually stepping up and doing something about it. I don't mean to be preachy, but you can whine about things forever. But the coolest people on earth are those who step up for what they believe in.
To the point, if you think that the government shouldn't be able to tell these libraries to install crappy censorship software, help out. Honestly, it wouldn't cost you much money. You could order DSL for the library, and buy a router/hub for as many computers to share the connection as needed.
And guess what, in the end you actually will get something out of it - the knowledge that you kicked some ass and did something about it.
Why are we still talking about this as if it were something new? Really, this is old news being brought up again and again.
We all know that internet filtering software is quite pathetic. Even the people who create censoring software admit that they often censor things at their own whimsical ideology. Again and again, we keep coming back to the fact that our legislators have somewhat good intentions, but have someone whispering in their ear. This person whispering to them is often the benefactor of censorship. The solution to these problems, (again!) is education. 20 years down the road, perhaps our legislators will be internet savvy, but until then it's your job to yell louder than the lobbyist.
Using that idea, can you imagine how long development time would be?? Assuming that implementation in today's world takes about 1/10 as long as testing, with this model people would be too scared to do anything less than test for a year =)
Personally, I can live with minor bugs and hiccups in software, given the alternative of waiting an extra 6 months for someone to work out every last bug.
I know this is a little testy topic, pitting Carmacks vs Sweeneys... But you have to admit, software isn't doing to poorly these days, given the amount of complexity we have created for ourselves.
I think that the first hint of this evolutionary step was when my father took me to BattleTech, in Chicago. It was one of the first VR 'centers' ever created where ~20 people competed against each other from within their own capsules. (basically BattleMech) If I remember right, the game ran on Amigas and was considered the most advanced technology like it, back in the late 80's. Does anyone here remember that?
Obviously, it was just a hint of what was to come, and I really think that home systems have overridden this market. Don't forget that 3DFx was one of the top companies making chips in this arena (for Sega), and later abandoned it in favor of the home PC market. hmmmmm, and where are they now?
The RIAA says, "To be compelling to consumers... a service must offer tens or hundreds of thousands of songs, in which rights may be owned by hundreds or thousands of publishers," the petition said. "No service provider is eager to embark on individual negotiations with all those publishers unless it is necessary."
Duh, what do they think MP3.com was trying to do? The RIAA really is a joke. I find it quite hilarious that they themselves are being sued for exactly what they sued others for. Even the director of the KPIG online radio station called the RIAA a bunch of idiots.
..that if I am using a proxy server, this software really does nothing.
That was was the point that Yahoo was trying to make in a French court. That is, there is really no way for them to tell where a person is sitting. The person could be routed through servers in Iraq. But the French decided that it didn't matter
Therefore, the argument that this software applies to Yahoo is invalid.
arg.... why do these silly things keep getting granted??
Check out Zoomerang.com. Their polling is exactly what this sounds like. Does anyone know more about Zoomerang and their relationship with Microsoft? It sounds like they fall right into this thing.
Fred H. Cate, head of Indiana University's Information Law and Commerce Institute and a critic of new privacy laws, said the overall financial impact of privacy protections on all of the U.S. economy would be "in the trillions."
Can someone go and smack this guy please. Honestly, I know there are people from IU around here... Does this guy do a lot of LSD?
"..the group Monday went public with four industry-funded studies asserting that privacy legislation would cost consumers billions of dollars annually." and have "undertaken a campaign to nip Internet-privacy legislation in the bud"
So, let me get this straight. A big group of companies is saying that the reason they don't want privacy regulations, is that it would hurt the consumers?? Excuse me while I cough up a lung.
When was the last time that these companies stood for consumer's rights? Let's not forget that AT&T currently has a 40% stake in the cable TV market, and I'm sure would love to grab as much info about consumers from Digital TV as possible.
Like most companies who make electric cars, AC Propulsion fails to mention that they future may not be in electric cars.
It is widely circulated in some circles that electric plants emit more pollution generating the electricity required to drive an electric car, than a gas-powered car would emit, given similar circumstances.
I'm not an expert in this field, but have friends in the industry, not working on electric motors, but Hydrogen cars. I am told that the only things they emit is water. For some reason, though, the major car companies are only pursuing electrics... Did you know that for every electric car Honda sells, they lose around $3,000? That's because it has 2 engines, one gas and one electric. Neato, eh?
Here is a plan that I am working on, and would appreciate your input
The pitfall of all P2P sharing programs is that one single company or product is the P2P program. This single entity is usually the target of copyright suits and other problems. (ie NAPSTER) I think one strong statement made in the article above, was that a solid way to beat infringment is to component-ize the P2P program. This way, there is no single target or entity for companies to go after, and claim they knew that infringing uses were being done through their service.
What I am saying is that we need to standardize the way P2P programs are built, and have groups specialize in these different functional areas. For example, a few groups would work on search mechanisms, other groups on the transfer protocols, others on a chat mechanisms, etc...
Finally, it would be up to the user to decide how he puts his P2P program together. He could pick from different search components, different transfer components, etc...
This standard would allow anyone who produced a single component to claim no knowledge of how it may be used in the end (ie The BETAMAX defense). The user is the one who decides to put the program together and use it for either infringing uses, or non-infringing uses.
in the article it states that this is a "case in which the plaintiff (a state judge) is seeking discovery of the identity of a Doe defendant who allegedly posted defamatory material about the judge on a website the defendant created through AOL's service"
It is quite amusing to me that a judge is the person who is trying to limit someone's freedom of speech.
I really wish we could see what was posted about this guy.
I would rather they ported the Playstation 2 to Linux. You know, an emulator. Now that would be cool.
Although, running Linux on the PS2 could have some charm. Like, if your system ever crashes, the controllers would start vibrating and shaking... poof!
what happens when there is a thunderstorm?? Also, the area they are talking about in Boston (Back Bay) has buildings with some of the worst wiring I've ever seen. When I lived there, whenever I turned on my computer, I could here the hum through my stereo speakers downstairs... This does not bode well for wireless communication.
"The company is based in a brand-new office building at the eastern tip of the Black Falcon Cruise Terminal, with spectacular views of the harbor and Logan Airport"
yah yah, right. I don't know if you've ever been there, but the bay and airport are the ugliest pieces of sh!t you could ever see in Boston.
Certainly, the power of the non-compete waiver is in the 'vagueness' of the document. In the case of legal action against the signer, this leeway allows the law (or possibly a arbitrator) to interpret whether or not the signer was within the bounds of legality.
Of course, a judge will probably not uphold action against a developer for re-using his VB skills at another house, but if he were to use 'specific' or 'trade-secret' knowledge obtained at his previous employer, he may be in jeopardy.
Finally, remember that all of this is at the discretion of the company making you sign on the line. They only wish to protect themselves against their competitors, but does not mean that they would go after an engineer who knows how to use Word.
This is a very important issue that many technology professionals get caught up in. Kids out of college are most harmed by a non-compete waiver that most companies will impose (at their discretion).
People should be very aware that these contracts are indeed legal, and binding. They will hold up in court and I've seen it happen.
One story I have is of a guy who had been working at a tech firm for a year when a VP invited him into his office. The VP passed a document over the desk, casually, and said that he would need it returned within a day. Of course, the document was a non-compete waiver that the company was instigating. In it was provisioned that this man, should he leave his current job, could not compete directly/indirectly with his current company, and could not use knowledge that he gained at the company for 2 years. He was told, that if he did not sign the waiver, he would be fired. The sad thing is that this is perfectly legal for a company to do. It's very important for people to ask about non-competes when they first jump into a job, because it may turn up and bite them in the arse at any time.
Also, I have strong advice for young techies to be careful about signing these things. You could very easily be locked into your job permanently.
Better advice, is to find a friend or relative that is a lawyer and have them take a look at any waivers before you sign on the line.
"A timeline at the beginning of the book is great reading all by itself, and an included CD-ROM contains more audio clips, pictures and history as well. "
Sounds like a laxative right?? Well, that's what I thought it was the first time I heard its name.
Once, in college, I was assigned the task of creating (in homage to the old days) a virtual VAX machine written in ASM for MIPS chips. What a great combination eh? Needless to say, the variable length instructions made me want to scream and hurt people.
Does anyone still have their Atari 8600 with cassette tape drive? What a great machine =)
"There are also apparently plans to reinstate the old limits on.org domains - if you aren't a non-profit corporation, you won't be permitted to register or keep a.org domain"
Really, how long do you think it will be before they require all.com registrations to be real companies? This really isn't that far-fetched. They may require proof from you that you own the trademark you are trying to register...
Obviously, this is all trending towards the corporatization of the web... yee-haw.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't mind this bill at all... there's nothing I hate more than a sticky keyboard.
Ah yes, my favorite moment is always the one when people are asked to stick out their neck for something they say they believe in.
I often get the feeling that the people on Slashdot like to bitch and moan, without actually stepping up and doing something about it. I don't mean to be preachy, but you can whine about things forever. But the coolest people on earth are those who step up for what they believe in.
To the point, if you think that the government shouldn't be able to tell these libraries to install crappy censorship software, help out. Honestly, it wouldn't cost you much money. You could order DSL for the library, and buy a router/hub for as many computers to share the connection as needed.
And guess what, in the end you actually will get something out of it - the knowledge that you kicked some ass and did something about it.
Why are we still talking about this as if it were something new? Really, this is old news being brought up again and again.
We all know that internet filtering software is quite pathetic. Even the people who create censoring software admit that they often censor things at their own whimsical ideology. Again and again, we keep coming back to the fact that our legislators have somewhat good intentions, but have someone whispering in their ear. This person whispering to them is often the benefactor of censorship. The solution to these problems, (again!) is education. 20 years down the road, perhaps our legislators will be internet savvy, but until then it's your job to yell louder than the lobbyist.
Using that idea, can you imagine how long development time would be?? Assuming that implementation in today's world takes about 1/10 as long as testing, with this model people would be too scared to do anything less than test for a year =)
Personally, I can live with minor bugs and hiccups in software, given the alternative of waiting an extra 6 months for someone to work out every last bug.
I know this is a little testy topic, pitting Carmacks vs Sweeneys... But you have to admit, software isn't doing to poorly these days, given the amount of complexity we have created for ourselves.
I think that the first hint of this evolutionary step was when my father took me to BattleTech, in Chicago. It was one of the first VR 'centers' ever created where ~20 people competed against each other from within their own capsules. (basically BattleMech) If I remember right, the game ran on Amigas and was considered the most advanced technology like it, back in the late 80's. Does anyone here remember that?
Obviously, it was just a hint of what was to come, and I really think that home systems have overridden this market. Don't forget that 3DFx was one of the top companies making chips in this arena (for Sega), and later abandoned it in favor of the home PC market. hmmmmm, and where are they now?
The RIAA says, "To be compelling to consumers
Duh, what do they think MP3.com was trying to do? The RIAA really is a joke. I find it quite hilarious that they themselves are being sued for exactly what they sued others for. Even the director of the KPIG online radio station called the RIAA a bunch of idiots.
..that if I am using a proxy server, this software really does nothing.
That was was the point that Yahoo was trying to make in a French court. That is, there is really no way for them to tell where a person is sitting. The person could be routed through servers in Iraq. But the French decided that it didn't matter
Therefore, the argument that this software applies to Yahoo is invalid.
arg.... why do these silly things keep getting granted??
Check out Zoomerang.com. Their polling is exactly what this sounds like. Does anyone know more about Zoomerang and their relationship with Microsoft? It sounds like they fall right into this thing.
Fred H. Cate, head of Indiana University's Information Law and Commerce Institute and a critic of new privacy laws, said the overall financial impact of privacy protections on all of the U.S. economy would be "in the trillions."
Can someone go and smack this guy please. Honestly, I know there are people from IU around here... Does this guy do a lot of LSD?
"..the group Monday went public with four industry-funded studies asserting that privacy legislation would cost consumers billions of dollars annually." and have "undertaken a campaign to nip Internet-privacy legislation in the bud"
So, let me get this straight. A big group of companies is saying that the reason they don't want privacy regulations, is that it would hurt the consumers?? Excuse me while I cough up a lung.
When was the last time that these companies stood for consumer's rights? Let's not forget that AT&T currently has a 40% stake in the cable TV market, and I'm sure would love to grab as much info about consumers from Digital TV as possible.
Like most companies who make electric cars, AC Propulsion fails to mention that they future may not be in electric cars.
It is widely circulated in some circles that electric plants emit more pollution generating the electricity required to drive an electric car, than a gas-powered car would emit, given similar circumstances.
I'm not an expert in this field, but have friends in the industry, not working on electric motors, but Hydrogen cars. I am told that the only things they emit is water. For some reason, though, the major car companies are only pursuing electrics... Did you know that for every electric car Honda sells, they lose around $3,000? That's because it has 2 engines, one gas and one electric. Neato, eh?
Here is a plan that I am working on, and would appreciate your input
The pitfall of all P2P sharing programs is that one single company or product is the P2P program. This single entity is usually the target of copyright suits and other problems. (ie NAPSTER) I think one strong statement made in the article above, was that a solid way to beat infringment is to component-ize the P2P program. This way, there is no single target or entity for companies to go after, and claim they knew that infringing uses were being done through their service.
What I am saying is that we need to standardize the way P2P programs are built, and have groups specialize in these different functional areas. For example, a few groups would work on search mechanisms, other groups on the transfer protocols, others on a chat mechanisms, etc...
Finally, it would be up to the user to decide how he puts his P2P program together. He could pick from different search components, different transfer components, etc...
This standard would allow anyone who produced a single component to claim no knowledge of how it may be used in the end (ie The BETAMAX defense). The user is the one who decides to put the program together and use it for either infringing uses, or non-infringing uses.
Does this make sense?
-Lab-
"According to the lab, the technology used in the compression algorithm was initially invented there for processing images from nuclear tests."
Riiiight... I'll bet it was technology stolen from the webcam in the rec-room.
-Lab-
32768 Channels, and nothing on...
-Lab-
in the article it states that this is a "case in which the plaintiff (a state judge) is seeking discovery of the identity of a Doe defendant who allegedly posted defamatory material about the judge on a website the defendant created through AOL's service"
It is quite amusing to me that a judge is the person who is trying to limit someone's freedom of speech.
I really wish we could see what was posted about this guy.
-Lab-
I would rather they ported the Playstation 2 to Linux. You know, an emulator. Now that would be cool.
Although, running Linux on the PS2 could have some charm. Like, if your system ever crashes, the controllers would start vibrating and shaking... poof!
-Lab-
what happens when there is a thunderstorm??
Also, the area they are talking about in Boston (Back Bay) has buildings with some of the worst wiring I've ever seen. When I lived there, whenever I turned on my computer, I could here the hum through my stereo speakers downstairs... This does not bode well for wireless communication.
"The company is based in a brand-new office building at the eastern tip of the Black Falcon Cruise Terminal, with spectacular views of the harbor and Logan Airport"
yah yah, right. I don't know if you've ever been there, but the bay and airport are the ugliest pieces of sh!t you could ever see in Boston.
Ah, you are correct sir! I guess half my brain was thinking about the 2600 (the gaming half), and the other was day-dreaming.
Yes, I have 2 of those things in the attic.
Let the conspiracy theorists go on this one.
Isn't it obvious that the MPAA and the DoD are in on this? And do you really think that Norton will come up with a solution? =) heheh
Certainly, the power of the non-compete waiver is in the 'vagueness' of the document. In the case of legal action against the signer, this leeway allows the law (or possibly a arbitrator) to interpret whether or not the signer was within the bounds of legality.
Of course, a judge will probably not uphold action against a developer for re-using his VB skills at another house, but if he were to use 'specific' or 'trade-secret' knowledge obtained at his previous employer, he may be in jeopardy.
Finally, remember that all of this is at the discretion of the company making you sign on the line. They only wish to protect themselves against their competitors, but does not mean that they would go after an engineer who knows how to use Word.
This is a very important issue that many technology professionals get caught up in. Kids out of college are most harmed by a non-compete waiver that most companies will impose (at their discretion).
People should be very aware that these contracts are indeed legal, and binding. They will hold up in court and I've seen it happen.
One story I have is of a guy who had been working at a tech firm for a year when a VP invited him into his office. The VP passed a document over the desk, casually, and said that he would need it returned within a day. Of course, the document was a non-compete waiver that the company was instigating. In it was provisioned that this man, should he leave his current job, could not compete directly/indirectly with his current company, and could not use knowledge that he gained at the company for 2 years. He was told, that if he did not sign the waiver, he would be fired. The sad thing is that this is perfectly legal for a company to do. It's very important for people to ask about non-competes when they first jump into a job, because it may turn up and bite them in the arse at any time.
Also, I have strong advice for young techies to be careful about signing these things. You could very easily be locked into your job permanently.
Better advice, is to find a friend or relative that is a lawyer and have them take a look at any waivers before you sign on the line.
What we NEED, is Mr NRA Charlton Heston as our spokesman.
"You can pry my domain away from me, over my cold dead body!."
Maybe that wouldn't go over so well in the press...
"A timeline at the beginning of the book is great reading all by itself, and an included CD-ROM contains more audio clips, pictures and history as well. "
What? No punchcards included?? WTF!
Sounds like a laxative right?? Well, that's what I thought it was the first time I heard its name.
Once, in college, I was assigned the task of creating (in homage to the old days) a virtual VAX machine written in ASM for MIPS chips. What a great combination eh?
Needless to say, the variable length instructions made me want to scream and hurt people.
Does anyone still have their Atari 8600 with cassette tape drive? What a great machine =)
"There are also apparently plans to reinstate the old limits on .org domains - if you aren't a non-profit corporation, you won't be permitted to register or keep a .org domain"
.com registrations to be real companies? This really isn't that far-fetched. They may require proof from you that you own the trademark you are trying to register...
Really, how long do you think it will be before they require all
Obviously, this is all trending towards the corporatization of the web... yee-haw.