The risk is hardly miniscule, considering that 40,000 people die on American highways every year. Exciting enough for you, son?
Yeah, but if you look at Causes of Death in the US, that translates into a fairly small (relatively speaking) amount.
More people die in the US from malaria than traffic accidents.
Unless all of the cars get switched over to this, you're still going to have to deal with the randomness of other drivers. And there's simply no way that everyone in the US is going to agree to buy a new car to get them all self driving and therefore safer.
These wouldn't be a magic bullet. And, really, if I'm just going to sit in a self-driving car and read a book or whatever, I'd be better off taking the train or flying. At least they have bathrooms. This is the worst of both worlds -- crammed into a small car and having nothing to do with the driving.
However, I would agree that the way people drive is a huge factor in traffic deaths -- people do amazingly stupid things when behind the wheel. But I still think it would be cheaper to go with rail transit instead of the massive spending which would need to happen to get everybody into autonomous cars.
Why would I need one? The virtual console and safe mode have always given me this ability.
Having a serial terminal laying around to work on your Linux box in case something goes wrong seems like a giant leap backwards... unless you have some fetish for old TTY devices.:-P
Sometimes, you need the lowest possible denominator in order to be able to do these things.
This rich density means that an emergency network could piggyback on nearby routers, giving first responders access to the Internet and contact with their headquarters. The researchers suggest that routers incorporate an emergency 'switch' that responders can activate to set up a backup network, thus giving them a voice and data link through the Internet
As soon as some well meaning person starts suggesting this be built into routers, this opens you up for another vector to be hacked.
If the routers have such a switch, it won't be long before someone else figures out how to enable it, and essentially turn your router over to them. And, for those of us whose internet usage is metered, we'd end up paying for this.
This is just a big giant back door which is screaming to be abused.
This is one of those ideas which sounds kind of nice on the surface, but which would be fraught with really bad implementations and unintended consequences. This researcher is kind of like people who try to pass laws around technology, and utterly fail to comprehend the other related issues.
You may not open up a communications channel on something I'm legally liable for without my permission. In many places, that is illegal.
I don't ever buy the OEM, because I believe (possibly mistakenly) that you can't re-install from it properly, and you didn't have the flexibility to upgrade some of the components (specifically the motherboard).
The last computer I bought, I insisted on getting the full boxed retail version. I've always seen the OEM license as being more restricted. Whether or not that's accurate, I'm not entirely sure.
Which then sounds like he could readily come back to the US.
So is the message here (guilty or not, because I have no idea) to skip off to a non-extradition country until they can't afford to keep your case open, and then come back a free man as the charges have been dropped with prejudice?
And, as I said elsewhere, I find it really hard to believe that it's beyond their means to keep storing this stuff. That just doesn't sound right. Storing large amounts of data is something the government should have a lot of experience in.
I noticed the summary conveniently forgets to mention that there are also several hundred boxes of paper evidence.
But, really, is hundreds of boxes of paper records even that unusual in these kind of cases? (And, TFS actually does mention them, so it was either updated or you didn't read far enough.)
Sure, 40 TB sounds like a small amount of data, but then again if you introduce 4 or 5 backups with tampering resistance... it suddenly starts looking like quite a bit.
Industry handles these kind of numbers all the time. I know people who work in SAN stuff, and between the disks, the tape backups (which go off-site under lock and key) and whatnot... 40TB of data, even with good backups, is in this day and age a manageable number.
It's not like it's petabytes or exabytes... it's frigging 2TB of source data, plus a few hundred boxes of data. I should think a few hundred boxes of paper is a slow week for some government departments.
These materials include two terabytes of electronic data (which consume approximately 5 percent of DEA's world-wide electronic storage capacity)
I'm sorry, but a major government agency can't afford two terabytes of data?
What happens to all of the stuff they seize and sell off? There should be no good reason why they can't have enough funds to pay for this.
If 2TB is 5%, then they've got, what, 40TB total? At one point last year on a project we were using almost 100TB with various backups and the like, but we're easily using 40-50TB right now. This is a solved problem.
I realize large-scale enterprise storage gets a little more spendy, but surely they have tape backup technology or can afford some disks for a SAN.
This is like finding out they only really have 10 cars to share among themselves or something. It makes me wonder if this is the "real" reason they're looking to drop the case. It just sounds improbable they can't manage this.
TBH, I don't care about those who want to game on less capable hardware - profit limiting I know, but I'm writing the sim for myself first and foremost and I have great hardware that is poorly utilized by many mainstream games
And then you say...
Apple don't seem to be interested in trely powerful users of laptops - I guess that's what they have the Mac Pro for - but it doesn't help folks like me
So, it's ok if you want to ignore people with smaller systems, but it's a bad thing that Apple isn't interested in selling niche devices to people like you?
They're not interested in chasing "trely powerful users of laptops" -- they're interested in chasing as many people as possible. You likely represent a tiny fraction of the market.
The colors in this image are not what a human standing on Mars would see â" the presence of dust in the atmosphere would make the scene appear much redder. Instead, the pictures have been white-balanced to show how it would appear under typical Earth lighting conditions. This will help the Earth-centered geologists who are trained to recognize features based on how they look using more familiar light.
They have the images which aren't color corrected. But for certain kinds of science, it's easier to shift the colors to match what we expect to see on Earth so people can more readily know what they're looking at.
Really? As if embassies haven't been booted before? As if, for example, Bolivia has been threatening to do the same to the US embassy there for the past several months? Which nobody seems to care about what it does with embassies because it's a small impoverished south-American state oh wait a minute....
Yeah, but try to get a bit of perspective on this.
The UK is threatening to revoke the diplomatic status of an entire embassy so they can follow through with extraditing Julian Asange to Sweden to face sexual assault charges. One guy.
That's some hardcore shit. Bolivia has been threatening the US over much larger issues. To threaten this kind of action over someone taking asylum is a huge scary precedent. What if every other country decides that if the UK can do it they can too? That changes a lot of rules which if 'other' governments did this there would be outrage. All of a sudden diplomats get told to clear out and leave and hand over these guys, or, just save yourself the trouble and hand over these guys. All of this underscored by or else we're coming in to get them.
Is Britain so anxious to extradite this guy as to really do that? In this case, I think the situation isn't anywhere near as critical as to warrant that kind of threat. In fact, it seems grossly disproportionate to me.
In diplomatic terms, that is a Hostile Act. Which, in diplomatic terms, is pretty serious. In the old days (and maybe even now), if Ecuador gave that ultimatum to the UK, there would be a carrier group heading in that direction.
Hell, if I was Ecuador, I'd issue him a diplomatic passport to get him transit there, because if they violated his immunity... well, the shit would likely hit the fan then. (Actually, there are probably rules about that, but if we're going to ignore the rules...) Ecuador might even try to sanction them in the UN, though the US would likely veto that one, but I bet a lot of other countries would back them. This is pretty big. All this over one guy? Really?
This almost sounds like a friggin' Tom Clancy novel for crying out loud. Get my agent on the phone! Call Ben Affleck!!
It helps if you close the control panel, because it hides all but 18 of the most used buttons.
Yeah, sure, that is a huge improvement towards the single button I have now. With only 18 buttons I could master it after only a brief period of studying the manual and a good translator.:-P
Ignoring your whole TMI thing (*shudder*), I'm sure they're lovely toilets. But if I ever find myself in Japan, I'm going to need to make sure someone gives me the tour first. Finding myself in one of these realizing too late I have no idea how to operate it would make for a very awkward discussion.
Then again, once you know how to operate it, I'm sure it's hours of fun judging by the presence of words like "oscillating" and "pulsating" -- two things I've never had a toilet do for (to?) me.;-)
I wonder how many people get electrocuted on Japanese toilets every year?
Well, in this case, taking into account the water and sanitary needs of developing countries, this makes perfect sense.
Not everybody has the luxury of municipal water which takes such things away to be handled by Someone Else.
Doing it in a way that is portable, cheap to operate, doesn't require a massive infrastructure, and doesn't spread disease... well, for a lot of people in the world, that would be a huge improvement.
From TFA:
About 2.6 billion people around the world don't have proper access to safe and suitable sanitation, and as a result, more than 1.5 million children die each year from diarrhea-related diseases or illnesses caused by consuming dirty water.
So, really, what wheel are you insinuating is being reinvented here?
vs. your reaction if he mentioned "so... the other day i was looking at child porn and the FBI put this message on my computer....."
Except for the fact that a tiny fraction of people getting this (if any) would have done so, and would be damned sure they hadn't.
It's not like they had to target people actually doing this for it to be effective.
I know if I got an email like that I would immediately know it to be fake. I stumbled on some almost a decade ago when usenet was the wild west -- and I hope to never see it again.
And, really, who is going to believe the FBI would let you off with a fine? This is something they prosecute quite seriously.
it turns out it only takes 1-3 percent of victims to pay up to make it seriously worth the fraudsters' while
Isn't this about the same percentage as any spam campaign? That's pretty much why it's still profitable.
Though, you'd think that most people would realize that law enforcement doesn't simply send you an email demanding you pay a fine or face criminal charges -- there really isn't that option as far as I know. Well, at least not in all countries.
If you present legislation that mirrors an existing proposal, or has slightly modified wording than the original that has already been defeated, you would be charged. If convicted, no imprisonment, only punishable by death.
So, all those people who fought for civil rights over a very long span, or other such things should also be punished by death?
That would have the effect of making society stagnate -- there is only ever one opportunity to change a law, with all subsequent attempts punishable by death.
Unfortunately, your brilliant solution cuts both ways. Though, the irony of people subsequently trying to outlaw abortion being burned at the stake is kind of amusing, I'm afraid that what you've not really thought this through.
Never is the short answer. Everybody has staked their fortune and future on the idea of this kind of property rights, and people will just keep extending it to its extreme conclusion.
Of course, this is absurd, because this is creating a new kind of right for them. They don't own the work, but somehow the work + the specific set of commercials (and channel identification on screen) has now become a new protected class. Eventually America might try to reject it because it wasn't in the Constitution, but in the mean time they'll keep foisting it on the rest of the world -- having tied their fortunes to IP, the American government is being very aggressive about exporting such laws.
If they don't pass it now, they'll keep taking a run at it. When we're all beholden to them and can't do anything without their permission, then they'll just find new things -- probably things that say we're required to watch their shows or buy their stuff.
I know a lot of people think it sounds a little extreme, but it's hard not to see the many forms of dystopian futures hurtling at us. Pick one, either the government are all invasive and control our lives, or the corporations do. Eventually, there's convergence.
I'd call it art. But i dont think people should pay $10k for it, nor does it belong in a museum.
Now there's an understatement, but if you go to a modern art museum, you might be surprised at some of the stuff you see -- some of it is creepy, some of it just plain bizarre, and some you're not really sure it's art (I once saw a piece that was the caution wet floor sign and a mop and bucket -- took me several minutes to realize it was being placed out as art).
And following on. does the entire icanhascheezeburger network of websites count as art in your mind?
Not necessarily good art, possibly quite derivative, but why not? Some of them are amusing and a little interesting. Most of them are pretty trite, but a few here and there are somewhat artistic.
Can an artist make something & never show it, and have it still considered art?
I have stumbled on faces carved in trees quite far off the beaten track. I've seen inukshuk stuck out in the middle of nowhere. There have been never before seen paintings of great artists which have been discovered. People sometimes make amazing sketches they then tear up or never let anybody see. I'm not sure art always needs an observer.
I'm not saying everything everybody does is 'art', but I'm saying the dividing line can be fuzzy, and almost entirely subjective. One man's stupid cat pictures is another man's art.:-P
Do you judge by objective criteria? Intent? Affect? Do you judge by commercial or critical success? How many people saw it? It's bordering on metaphysics in some ways, so to me it's one of those things that falls apart the more you try to figure it out.
Going by your examples, 'art' is something that (a) is called art, and (b) sells.
That's exactly what I'm saying, with the proviso that it doesn't actually have to sell (but selling it might help get it called art). There truly is no objective standard for what constitutes art that holds up to much. Hell, some art never gets seen by others, or is transitory in nature, or is just plain weird -- like Yoko Ono or Andy Kaufman.;-)
If you dropped any of them in front of someone from 1,000 years ago or 1,000 years from now - someone who didn't know the context - they would think it was a random mess, a simple reproduction, or disgusting.
No, but it's the context and the history of it that contribute to its value. By now there's only a small number of tins of merda 'dartista, so their value is worth more to people who assign value to it.
Compare that with a work of one of the masters
Again, highly subjective... I find many of the old masters are boring, long since cliched, and over-rated. I can't even figure out WTF Picasso was all about, and I've seen some surrealist stuff that gave me the willies -- but, I'm not going to say it isn't art. It's just not art that I'm into.
In some circles, a man peeing into a rubber boot could be considered art (and, no, I have no idea if that's been done or not) -- not everyone will agree on its merits. But to someone, for whatever reason, it might be considered art.
I don't think art needs to be rigidly defined like that. And I'm not convinced it can be with enough rigor to bother.
Personally, I think selling cans of your own shit is more of a statement about what passes for art than almost anything else. I think it's nasty, but he did manage to convince people to buy it.
In the end, though, it's kind of like "post-modernism", where people have submitted computer generated papers and nobody could tell the difference -- if you can convince the intelligencia that something cool is happening, does it become art? Likewise, some folk art looks like something made by a 3 year old, but people collect that stuff too, and can actually pay a lot of money for it.
Hell, I could probably put a butt-plug on a pedestal with a picture of Lindsey Lohan on it, and call it social commentary about how we have pop culture rammed up our asses. Someone would laugh at it, thereby validating it as art.;-)
the thought of involving any major multinational corporation in drafting a standard is preposterous
Ummm... most standards I've ever seen have come out of industry groups all working to arrive at a workable solution -- IEEE 802 group being a fine example of this. Do you think a bunch of guys in academia come up with a reference standard that people actually adopt?
Now, in this case, this should never have really been called a "standard" in any way shape or form, since Microsoft had never actually implemented it, and the spec basically had loads of "should behave the same as this old format we never documented" in it. So nobody but Microsoft could ever really adhere to it, making it a complete joke. But Microsoft isn't really interested in interoperability, and haven't really ever been.
Telephones, cell phones, networks... most of the things we think of as standards were hashed out by a bunch of multi-nationals.
The joke with standards has always been that if you don't like one, create (or use) another one, there's plenty.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but if you look at Causes of Death in the US, that translates into a fairly small (relatively speaking) amount.
More people die in the US from malaria than traffic accidents.
Unless all of the cars get switched over to this, you're still going to have to deal with the randomness of other drivers. And there's simply no way that everyone in the US is going to agree to buy a new car to get them all self driving and therefore safer.
These wouldn't be a magic bullet. And, really, if I'm just going to sit in a self-driving car and read a book or whatever, I'd be better off taking the train or flying. At least they have bathrooms. This is the worst of both worlds -- crammed into a small car and having nothing to do with the driving.
However, I would agree that the way people drive is a huge factor in traffic deaths -- people do amazingly stupid things when behind the wheel. But I still think it would be cheaper to go with rail transit instead of the massive spending which would need to happen to get everybody into autonomous cars.
Why would I need one? The virtual console and safe mode have always given me this ability.
Having a serial terminal laying around to work on your Linux box in case something goes wrong seems like a giant leap backwards ... unless you have some fetish for old TTY devices. :-P
Sometimes, you need the lowest possible denominator in order to be able to do these things.
As soon as some well meaning person starts suggesting this be built into routers, this opens you up for another vector to be hacked.
If the routers have such a switch, it won't be long before someone else figures out how to enable it, and essentially turn your router over to them. And, for those of us whose internet usage is metered, we'd end up paying for this.
This is just a big giant back door which is screaming to be abused.
This is one of those ideas which sounds kind of nice on the surface, but which would be fraught with really bad implementations and unintended consequences. This researcher is kind of like people who try to pass laws around technology, and utterly fail to comprehend the other related issues.
You may not open up a communications channel on something I'm legally liable for without my permission. In many places, that is illegal.
I don't ever buy the OEM, because I believe (possibly mistakenly) that you can't re-install from it properly, and you didn't have the flexibility to upgrade some of the components (specifically the motherboard).
The last computer I bought, I insisted on getting the full boxed retail version. I've always seen the OEM license as being more restricted. Whether or not that's accurate, I'm not entirely sure.
Which then sounds like he could readily come back to the US.
So is the message here (guilty or not, because I have no idea) to skip off to a non-extradition country until they can't afford to keep your case open, and then come back a free man as the charges have been dropped with prejudice?
And, as I said elsewhere, I find it really hard to believe that it's beyond their means to keep storing this stuff. That just doesn't sound right. Storing large amounts of data is something the government should have a lot of experience in.
But, really, is hundreds of boxes of paper records even that unusual in these kind of cases? (And, TFS actually does mention them, so it was either updated or you didn't read far enough.)
Industry handles these kind of numbers all the time. I know people who work in SAN stuff, and between the disks, the tape backups (which go off-site under lock and key) and whatnot ... 40TB of data, even with good backups, is in this day and age a manageable number.
It's not like it's petabytes or exabytes ... it's frigging 2TB of source data, plus a few hundred boxes of data. I should think a few hundred boxes of paper is a slow week for some government departments.
LOL, ok, so TFS even said 40TB. :-P
I'm sorry, but a major government agency can't afford two terabytes of data?
What happens to all of the stuff they seize and sell off? There should be no good reason why they can't have enough funds to pay for this.
If 2TB is 5%, then they've got, what, 40TB total? At one point last year on a project we were using almost 100TB with various backups and the like, but we're easily using 40-50TB right now. This is a solved problem.
I realize large-scale enterprise storage gets a little more spendy, but surely they have tape backup technology or can afford some disks for a SAN.
This is like finding out they only really have 10 cars to share among themselves or something. It makes me wonder if this is the "real" reason they're looking to drop the case. It just sounds improbable they can't manage this.
First you say ...
And then you say ...
So, it's ok if you want to ignore people with smaller systems, but it's a bad thing that Apple isn't interested in selling niche devices to people like you?
They're not interested in chasing "trely powerful users of laptops" -- they're interested in chasing as many people as possible. You likely represent a tiny fraction of the market.
From TFA ...
They have the images which aren't color corrected. But for certain kinds of science, it's easier to shift the colors to match what we expect to see on Earth so people can more readily know what they're looking at.
LOL, so on the one hand, you're pro-life and all life is sacred, but on the other hand you're advocating the death penalty?
You can't have it both ways, or you're just a hypocrite.
Yeah, but try to get a bit of perspective on this.
The UK is threatening to revoke the diplomatic status of an entire embassy so they can follow through with extraditing Julian Asange to Sweden to face sexual assault charges. One guy.
That's some hardcore shit. Bolivia has been threatening the US over much larger issues. To threaten this kind of action over someone taking asylum is a huge scary precedent. What if every other country decides that if the UK can do it they can too? That changes a lot of rules which if 'other' governments did this there would be outrage. All of a sudden diplomats get told to clear out and leave and hand over these guys, or, just save yourself the trouble and hand over these guys. All of this underscored by or else we're coming in to get them.
Is Britain so anxious to extradite this guy as to really do that? In this case, I think the situation isn't anywhere near as critical as to warrant that kind of threat. In fact, it seems grossly disproportionate to me.
In diplomatic terms, that is a Hostile Act. Which, in diplomatic terms, is pretty serious. In the old days (and maybe even now), if Ecuador gave that ultimatum to the UK, there would be a carrier group heading in that direction.
Hell, if I was Ecuador, I'd issue him a diplomatic passport to get him transit there, because if they violated his immunity ... well, the shit would likely hit the fan then. (Actually, there are probably rules about that, but if we're going to ignore the rules ...) Ecuador might even try to sanction them in the UN, though the US would likely veto that one, but I bet a lot of other countries would back them. This is pretty big. All this over one guy? Really?
This almost sounds like a friggin' Tom Clancy novel for crying out loud. Get my agent on the phone! Call Ben Affleck!!
Yeah, sure, that is a huge improvement towards the single button I have now. With only 18 buttons I could master it after only a brief period of studying the manual and a good translator. :-P
Ignoring your whole TMI thing (*shudder*), I'm sure they're lovely toilets. But if I ever find myself in Japan, I'm going to need to make sure someone gives me the tour first. Finding myself in one of these realizing too late I have no idea how to operate it would make for a very awkward discussion.
Then again, once you know how to operate it, I'm sure it's hours of fun judging by the presence of words like "oscillating" and "pulsating" -- two things I've never had a toilet do for (to?) me. ;-)
I wonder how many people get electrocuted on Japanese toilets every year?
Maybe so, but if I was confronted with this, I would be quite baffled. I mean, 38 buttons on a toilet control panel?
I'm betting a lot of Western visitors find themselves with a big "what the heck do I do now" moment. :-P
Well, in this case, taking into account the water and sanitary needs of developing countries, this makes perfect sense.
Not everybody has the luxury of municipal water which takes such things away to be handled by Someone Else.
Doing it in a way that is portable, cheap to operate, doesn't require a massive infrastructure, and doesn't spread disease ... well, for a lot of people in the world, that would be a huge improvement.
From TFA:
So, really, what wheel are you insinuating is being reinvented here?
Except for the fact that a tiny fraction of people getting this (if any) would have done so, and would be damned sure they hadn't.
It's not like they had to target people actually doing this for it to be effective.
I know if I got an email like that I would immediately know it to be fake. I stumbled on some almost a decade ago when usenet was the wild west -- and I hope to never see it again.
And, really, who is going to believe the FBI would let you off with a fine? This is something they prosecute quite seriously.
LOL, suddenly, am I imagining Mae West saying "Is that a tablet in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"
Isn't this about the same percentage as any spam campaign? That's pretty much why it's still profitable.
Though, you'd think that most people would realize that law enforcement doesn't simply send you an email demanding you pay a fine or face criminal charges -- there really isn't that option as far as I know. Well, at least not in all countries.
So, all those people who fought for civil rights over a very long span, or other such things should also be punished by death?
That would have the effect of making society stagnate -- there is only ever one opportunity to change a law, with all subsequent attempts punishable by death.
Unfortunately, your brilliant solution cuts both ways. Though, the irony of people subsequently trying to outlaw abortion being burned at the stake is kind of amusing, I'm afraid that what you've not really thought this through.
Never is the short answer. Everybody has staked their fortune and future on the idea of this kind of property rights, and people will just keep extending it to its extreme conclusion.
Of course, this is absurd, because this is creating a new kind of right for them. They don't own the work, but somehow the work + the specific set of commercials (and channel identification on screen) has now become a new protected class. Eventually America might try to reject it because it wasn't in the Constitution, but in the mean time they'll keep foisting it on the rest of the world -- having tied their fortunes to IP, the American government is being very aggressive about exporting such laws.
If they don't pass it now, they'll keep taking a run at it. When we're all beholden to them and can't do anything without their permission, then they'll just find new things -- probably things that say we're required to watch their shows or buy their stuff.
I know a lot of people think it sounds a little extreme, but it's hard not to see the many forms of dystopian futures hurtling at us. Pick one, either the government are all invasive and control our lives, or the corporations do. Eventually, there's convergence.
Now there's an understatement, but if you go to a modern art museum, you might be surprised at some of the stuff you see -- some of it is creepy, some of it just plain bizarre, and some you're not really sure it's art (I once saw a piece that was the caution wet floor sign and a mop and bucket -- took me several minutes to realize it was being placed out as art).
Not necessarily good art, possibly quite derivative, but why not? Some of them are amusing and a little interesting. Most of them are pretty trite, but a few here and there are somewhat artistic.
I have stumbled on faces carved in trees quite far off the beaten track. I've seen inukshuk stuck out in the middle of nowhere. There have been never before seen paintings of great artists which have been discovered. People sometimes make amazing sketches they then tear up or never let anybody see. I'm not sure art always needs an observer.
I'm not saying everything everybody does is 'art', but I'm saying the dividing line can be fuzzy, and almost entirely subjective. One man's stupid cat pictures is another man's art. :-P
Do you judge by objective criteria? Intent? Affect? Do you judge by commercial or critical success? How many people saw it? It's bordering on metaphysics in some ways, so to me it's one of those things that falls apart the more you try to figure it out.
My moustache! That's where I left it.
In Ecuador ... asylum seeks you, senor.
That's exactly what I'm saying, with the proviso that it doesn't actually have to sell (but selling it might help get it called art). There truly is no objective standard for what constitutes art that holds up to much. Hell, some art never gets seen by others, or is transitory in nature, or is just plain weird -- like Yoko Ono or Andy Kaufman. ;-)
No, but it's the context and the history of it that contribute to its value. By now there's only a small number of tins of merda 'dartista, so their value is worth more to people who assign value to it.
Again, highly subjective ... I find many of the old masters are boring, long since cliched, and over-rated. I can't even figure out WTF Picasso was all about, and I've seen some surrealist stuff that gave me the willies -- but, I'm not going to say it isn't art. It's just not art that I'm into.
In some circles, a man peeing into a rubber boot could be considered art (and, no, I have no idea if that's been done or not) -- not everyone will agree on its merits. But to someone, for whatever reason, it might be considered art.
I don't think art needs to be rigidly defined like that. And I'm not convinced it can be with enough rigor to bother.
Personally, I think selling cans of your own shit is more of a statement about what passes for art than almost anything else. I think it's nasty, but he did manage to convince people to buy it.
In the end, though, it's kind of like "post-modernism", where people have submitted computer generated papers and nobody could tell the difference -- if you can convince the intelligencia that something cool is happening, does it become art? Likewise, some folk art looks like something made by a 3 year old, but people collect that stuff too, and can actually pay a lot of money for it.
Hell, I could probably put a butt-plug on a pedestal with a picture of Lindsey Lohan on it, and call it social commentary about how we have pop culture rammed up our asses. Someone would laugh at it, thereby validating it as art. ;-)
Ummm ... most standards I've ever seen have come out of industry groups all working to arrive at a workable solution -- IEEE 802 group being a fine example of this. Do you think a bunch of guys in academia come up with a reference standard that people actually adopt?
Now, in this case, this should never have really been called a "standard" in any way shape or form, since Microsoft had never actually implemented it, and the spec basically had loads of "should behave the same as this old format we never documented" in it. So nobody but Microsoft could ever really adhere to it, making it a complete joke. But Microsoft isn't really interested in interoperability, and haven't really ever been.
Telephones, cell phones, networks ... most of the things we think of as standards were hashed out by a bunch of multi-nationals.
The joke with standards has always been that if you don't like one, create (or use) another one, there's plenty.