Re:This still won't work!
on
Peek-a-Boo(ty)
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· Score: 2
Yes, I can see it now... "You have downloaded pornography? As a law enforcer in China, I must act in accordance to gross exaggerated stereotypes of ignorant Americans, and SHOOT you!!" *Bang*
Those crazy Chinese devils, you never know what they're gonna do. Good to be safe and racist in the free US, eh?
They routinely execute Christians and Falun Gong members merely for having their religion behind closed doors. Yes, I think that they would happily murder thousands of people for circumventing their firewall and breaking their moral codes of conduct.
This still won't work!
on
Peek-a-Boo(ty)
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Peacefire has been following Peek-A-Booty for a while, and we keep coming to the conclusion that a peer-to-peer anti-censorship system is impossible. There's a very basic problem that Peek-A-Booty still hasn't solved.
The problem: Say I'm a user who wants to connect to a Peek-A-Booty network. I need to get the address of a node to connect to. How do I get this? The obvious solution, and the one used for Gnutella and other peer-to-peer apps, is to publish a list of nodes (or at least one). But that won't work here -- because then the censors can use the same list to track down the nodes and block and/or disable them. This is especially problematic if you're using Peek-A-Booty as it claims it is meant to be: if you're in a country that filters access (say, China) and the government can track down the users trying to circumvent the filters, they can and will punish/torture/kill those people.
Peek-A-Booty has not solved this problem. Read what Tom's article has to say about it:
"For security, there's no attempt at initial discovery - you'll get sent details of a node by word of mouth, or from some other secure source. Baronowski and de Villa expect that citizens groups (NGOs) will become trusted servers."
That's right -- the only way to connect to a Peek-A-Booty network is word-of-mouth, which is horribly ineffective. Finding a node will be extremely difficult unless you know the right people, and then it's very easy for the censor to ruin it. Trust the wrong person, and your whole network is exposed. Government spies could give out addresses that the claim are Peek-A-Booty networks, then catch anyone who tries to connect to those. Worst of all, they could just offer some huge incentive to people for turning in their friends.
I hate to say it, but this system simply isn't ready yet. They have not come up with a technically sound solution.
I was able to access the article several times earlier today, but now -- 2:37 AM EST -- every time I try to go to timecanada.com, i'm being redirected to the main time.com site. It would appear that they've essentially prevented access to the article, for now.
The article's been mirrored several times in the comments here, and the pictures weren't much -- although I see them mirrored in uuencoded ascii here -- so if you missed it, you shouldn't be missing out on too mcuh. Besides, the official announcement from Jobs and Apple is only a little over 12 hours away.
From the way companies like Microsoft whine about piracy, I'd assumed the figures were increasing, not decreasing.
Or maybe, just maybe, piracy is less common in America because Microsoft (and others) are harrassing people? Maybe, even though they're slightly inconveniencing law-abiding customers, they're going to keep "whining" as long as it keeps working?
You can claim that piracy is lower for whatever other reasons, but the fact is, tricks like the Windows XP Auth Code do reduce piracy. Granted, they don't stop the tech-aware people -- you can find cracked copies -- but I've personally watched it stop piracy in from "normal folk". People with XP preinstalled can't just share their OEM CD's and let others install from it. Families now realize they're supposed to buy multiple copies for multiple PCs -- and if you recall the Slashdot article about the sales of additional licenses, that has been even more successful that MS expected.
Now for something else you don't want to hear: Microsoft is justified in whining. They do have many, many people using their software without paying. Even if we see the software as crap, it's apparently "good enough" to be pretty damn popular. They deserve payment for that 24% (for Windows, probably more) of their software that's being pirated.
And their attempts to stop piracy haven't been unfair, either! There's all this complaining about the Windows Auth Code -- and not even anecdotal evidence of it harming anyone. So you let the software authorize itself, big deal. For the tiny, tiny percentage of people who upgrade a lot, they just need to give MS a call, and MS will authorize their new code. Big deal.
So let's get this straight: MS isn't whining, it's trying to educate consumers who don't realize that sharing copies or installing on multiple PC's isn't legal. And they appear to have been very successful in stopping piracy of XP among the "common" people.
I hate MS as much as the next guy, and I could drone on for hours about their monopolistic, anticompetitive actions that are unfair. But I'm not going to slander them for trying to recover a few billion bucks that they have rightfully earned.
I'm sure I'm not the only one wondering this. . . where am I gonna be able to find MPEG'd versions of next year's Super Bowl commercials now? It's often the only sports game I watch all year, and really just for the commercials -- but I like to download the funny ones afterwards. Can someone else recommend another site that might archive the Superbowl ads?
Also, their Investment Page is still up, so you can get some idea of the shear amount of traffic they receive -- 32,500,000 videos streamed last January alone (that's a lot of bandwidth)!
In case anyone misses the irony, this is a site where people go looking for ads -- you'd think it's the perfect market for any advertisements. If banner ads can't succeed even here, then the future of free websites isn't looking too bright.
The only assumption is that their subscribers will increase to 50 mil. by 2010.
That's a HUGE assumption, and I have no faith in it whatsoever. The problem is that for every one of those new users, the speed of other users' connections will slow down. At the same time, other options - DSL et al. - are going to become much more widely available, and won't suffer from this congestion.
I wouldn't even be count on cable modems being around much at all 10 years from now. Think about what the Internet was 10 years ago - or, rather, don't, since that name didn't come around until 1993 (on a certain piece of legislation sponsored by a certain Al Gore, hence his responsiblity in creating the Internet as we know it). Anyone prediction the Internet and broadband then would be considered a raving lunatic. Would you be surprised if we're all using some new tech for net access in 2010?
And there's another key question you're not asking: if these calculations are so simple, why didn't @Home make them years ago and realize it couldn't borrow so much go into so heavy debt so soon? Because years ago, they were predicting many, many users -- many more than we have now. They've predicted wrong in the past, and they can certainly do it again.
Carlson resolved the fate of another ExciteAtHome asset Wednesday by approving InfoSpace Inc.'s $10 million purchase of the Web portal Excite.com. ExciteAtHome paid $7.8 billion for the Web portal two years ago.
There you have it. $7,800,000,000 ---> $10,000,000. Excite.com is now worth 0.00128 PERCENT of what it was worth two years ago!
As I said, these companies simply can't predict what the market will do. Do you trust the prediction of profitabilty in 10 years from a company that couldn't forsee one of its primary assets devalue 780 times in 2 years?
Even worse, let's say they have managed to draw up a plan to be profitable. Why didn't they have this plan a year ago, so they wouldn't be in the dilemma they face today? Oops, they can make those numbers move when they're forced to!
Believe me, I really don't want to see @Home go. My Internet connection this weekend will be Comcast@Home, and they don't even have a contingency plan (oooh, they say to use NetZero for 10 free hours! What a joke!). But this is absurd, and they simply cannot be allowed to continue on this joke of a profitablity plan of theirs.
Does anyone else think it's not very smart for a site that just received a threatening letter from hihhly paid lawyers for a multi-billion dollar corporation to be sticking little copyright and trademark indicators everywhere as a joke?
@Home has drawn plans (according to their chapter 11 filing) showing that they can pay all their debts and be profitable by 2010.
Yes, just like Amazon.com and all those other dot-coms, some 4 or 5 years ago, drawing plans showing that they could be profitable by now. The vast majority of those sites are no longer in business, and some of the most prominent among them are no better off now than they were then.
Let's face it, markets change. And in the Internet, still a very new and rapidly evolving medium, the market is bound to change. Any estimate by @Home or any other internet company making any promises about their marketability ten years from now should not be trusted. That's simply absurd.
There were, at one point, hundreds of companies predicting that ads alone would support them. What happened? As we all know, a few years ago, the bottom dropped out on the online ad market. Most of those companies are gone now - Inside.com is one of the many prominent sites among them. Others have been forced to overhaul their business models - Salon and others, including Slashdot, are moving to subscriber services (and last I saw, Salon still ain't close to profit).
And it's not just ads. The first site that comes to mind is Amazon.com -- everyone predicted that they'd hit a gold mine. People like buying books online, and by ditching brick-and-mortar stores and keeping all inventory in warehouses, they can streamline everything and save a bundle. Well, it's sure not working -- they're far from profitability as well.
I really hope people aren't as gullible as these companies seem to believe. Making predictions about Internet companies 10 years from now is rampant speculation at best. In fact, it's probably just total bullshit.
@Home can make whatever claims they want, but face the truth -- this is a desperate final attempt to keep in business. It's a blatant lie, and anyone who believes it is in for a surprise.
Wow, 33? I think we've just found the oldest person on Slashdot. I mean, 33 years ago. . . that's like, the sixties, right? How did kids ever grow up without the Internet?
If we take Moore's law and extrapolate. . . 33 years is 396 months, so technology must be 2^(396/18) = 4,194,304 times more advanced now than it was then. Did you guys even have fire yet, or were you still confined to nice warm Africa?
I think we need to call up Guiness (aside: isn't it strange that a record-tracking group also makes beer?) and update the records. This is a major archealogical find.
I see that the estimator has been Slashdotted, but it looks like NASA has a mirror of the estimator on different servers. Check out http://leonid.arc.nasa.gov/estimator.html.
He's not trying to show the world that breaking the law will get you in trouble. He's trying to show the world that people who obey the law are the ones being hampered
He's not showing the world anything; he's only telling those of us who follow Linux and Slashdot. He's simply "preaching to the choir."
Furthermore, even if this was publicised, it would hardly seem like the case of a poor academic being wronged by and unjust law -- and that's because it isn't. It's a British hacker with no legal expertise stretching this American law so that he can cry out that he was wronged.
You and I and whoever else is reading this know that what he's saying might not be that much of a stretch, and that there is a slight chance this could get him in trouble. But he won't be earning any sympathy from anyone other than us unless that actually happens, and I think it's very unlikely that anyone would ever try to apply the DMCA against him in that manner anyway.
He's not trying to show the world that breaking the law will get you in trouble. He's trying to show the world that people who obey the law are the ones being hampered.
He's not showing the world anything; he's only telling those of us who follow Linux and Slashdot. He's simply "preaching to the choir."
Furthermore, even if this was publicised, it would hardly seem like the case of a poor academic being wronged by and unjust law -- and that's because it isn't. It's a British hacker with no legal expertise stretching this American law so that he can cry out that he was wronged.
You and I and whoever else is reading this know that what he's saying might not be that much of a stretch, and that there is a slight chance this could get him in trouble. But he won't be earning any sympathy from anyone other than us unless that actually happens, and I think it's very unlikely that anyone would ever try to apply the DMCA against him in that manner anyway.
This is liable to be score (-1, Unpopular Opinion), but it needs to be said:
If Alan Cox really wants to make a point, he should put his money where his mouth is and LET himself be open to a suit under the DMCA. His current approach, hiding the changelogs, does nothing to stop the DMCA, and by submitting to it he's giving its backers exactly what they want.
Laws don't get changed if nobody has the guts to challenge them. If Alan wants to get his point across, he should let himself be sued (not that it would actually happen, because I doubt any company really gives a damn what he puts in his changelog). Then he, like Felten and Sklyarov, has a great case to challenge the law with.
Instead, this "spectacle" seems to be Alan submitting to the DMCA, then trying to attract as much attention as possible to his crying about it. I have no pity for this, and I hope the rest of his audience feels the same.
For example, it is illegal in the US to publicly say bad things about other people (particularly if those things are not true). This is called libel law, and it's a clear limitation of free speech. In most countries, it's also illegal to call for murder...
Your understanding of US laws and your definition of libel is severely flawed. It's ONLY libel IF the "bad things" are false. It's perfectly legal - and indeed constitutionally protected - to say bad things about someone, as long as they're true (the exception being sexual harassment, but that's a special case).
Also, in the US, it is perfectly legal to "call for murder." In fact, the Supreme Court reaffirmed this last year when ruling on a website that listed the names and home addresses of some abortion doctors calling for their deaths (there was, of course, an article on Slashdot, too). What you cannot due is threaten someone directly, or actually arrange for their murder. I can say "Someone should please kill CowboyNeal," but not "I'm gonna kill you, CowboyNeal," or arrange to pay someone else $50 to kill CowboyNeal.
The Europeans think that calling for the elimination of a category of people is at least as bad as calling for the murder of one particular person. Racism is simply a call for murder disguised as political speech (just like Bin Laden's ramblings are calls for murder disguised as religious speech).
And if someone wants to express a racist opinion, they do have every right to do so. Take your Bin Laden example -- the government hasn't outlawed showing Bin Laden's videos. Even after they asked networks not to show them, for fear of hidden messages, only some networks complied. The government would like that the others not show the videos, but it can't force them.
Indeed, there are a number of organizations operating in America that the government doesn't like, but can't do anything about. Look at all these odious cults (Scientology is certainly a common topic of discussion here), or some of those southern militant separatist groups. The government can't persecute these groups solely for expressing their beliefs. The few times they can arrest Scientologists are when they break actual likes, such as by transporting someone under 18 across state lines.
If you think freedom of speech exists in the US and not in Europe, then explainto to us why we don't see naked bodies anywhere on American network TV (unlike in Europe).
Now this is a very valid point.
To your credit, there were a few other valid examples above. No, you cannot threaten someone directly, and no, you cannot sexually harass someone, and no, you cannot falsely scream "fire" in a theater. These, however, are all illegal because they directly infringe on the rights of others. The nudity example is still inexcusable.
Explain to me why the government can't stop me from calling for the murder of people of one particular color, but Microsoft can stop me from publishing benchmarks of their SQL server, and my ISP can regulate what I can put on my web page.
Microsoft can't stop you from publishing benchmarks. They can threaten too, but that has not and will not be held up. And your ISP can regulate what you put up because you can choose your ISP, and when you make that choice you agree to certain terms of service. There are certainly ISPs that allow you to put up whatever you like, be it porn, warez, or hate speech, and you should stop complaining and go find one if you so choose.
The US government does NOTHING to help me protect my freedom of speech or my privacy. European governments actually protect the privacy and the freedom of speech of their citizens to a much larger extent (and I have lived on both sides of the pond).
And this us just absurd. In most all cases, freedom and privacy directly contradict each other -- you can't have consumer protection laws that forbid companies from sharing marketting data and say that the company is free to say whatever it likes. In the few cases where they're on the same side, such as when a company tries to discover the identity of someone who anonymously criticized them on some message board, the courts have in fact ruled in favor of both.
Is the US perfect? No, of course not. But the vast majority of your examples are absolutely wrong. Sounds to me like you're looking to "pcik a fight" where no basis for one exists.
Re:Paying for _community_ content?
on
Slashdot Updates
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· Score: 2
I never said that those owning and operating the site aren't entitled to earn some money; I just think that they're making plenty, and Taco's claim that they need subscriptions because their costs are too high is total bunk. Frankly, if they said "we're going to start charging because we want to profit more," I'd be happy -- but don't give me any of this "traffic is up 90% and we won't be around in 4 years otherwise" crap.
Re: Paying for _community_ content?
on
Slashdot Updates
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· Score: 2
The folks at Slashdot deserve to profit from their service. Banner ads are no longer viable. I'll wager ads don't defray the cost of bandwidth -- which probably runs tens of thousands of dollars per month.
Yes, they deserve to profit. However, if they were serious about wanting to profit, I don't think that release Slashcode, their content engine, for free was all too smart =)
But I would disagree with you on how much the ad profit and bandwidth cost are. But that's also why I suggested that a subscription system should be accompanied by an open-book policy on Slashdot's finances, so if they do make this claim there will be no question as to where all the money is going and whether it's justified.
Re:Paying for _community_ content?
on
Slashdot Updates
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· Score: 2
Slashdot's bandwidth costs are relatively small? Relative to what, Yahoo? I'm thinking if you mistakenly got the cost of Slashdot's badwidth added onto your phone bill, you would be raising holy hell.
That's certainly not what I said, but since your trolling gives me a chance to clarify, I'll reply anyway.
Don't you think that the price of a highly-targeted ad on each page outweighs the cost of a few kilobytes of bandwidth? Ads on Slashdot are much more valuable than ads on some other sites because it's a fairly pure demographic - "News for Nerds." I've bought from Slashdot advertisers before, and I have no problem with the ads as they are now. The cost of bandwidth, relative to the "property value," if you will, for prospective advertisers, is small.
I sure expect that the ads easily balance the bandwidth cost, and if not, the site needs to be redesigned in order to lower the bandwidth:advertisement ratio. God (substitute your prefered diety if you like) knows that this jumbled mess of a layout isn't encouraging me to pay for it. . .
Paying for _community_ content?
on
Slashdot Updates
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· Score: 5, Troll
I know that subscriptions seem to be the potential solution for many sites' money problems, but they are NOT appropriate for Slashdot.
Now, take a site like Salon, which should have subscriptions. Salon creates its own content - and that's often unique and interesting content, and it requires the investment of a great deal of time and effort from Salon writers, many of whom actually go to work in a building and work all day.
So how much time and effort - or other resources - does Slashdot invest in the daily operations of the site? Very little.
Slashdot's content is entirely community-driven; it's all submitted by the users, for free. What do the editors have to do? Why, the horrible, grueling task of reading through user submissions, choosing a few to post, and relaxing as the site does its thing.
In fact, it seems that the real cost of Slashdot is relatively small: the cost of servers/bandwidth, and a modest salary for the editors and administrators who do this as a full-time job.
IIRC, Slashdot lasted years as Taco and Hemo's only job. This sudden need for money seems to go back to the Andover takeover; it's entirely a business decision. But unlike Salon, this isn't a business venture that requires huge amounts of effort, because the content is provided by users.
So, let me get to my main beef: We already "pay" for the site by submitting content! Should Slashdot be profitting off our article submissions, and our comments? That's why I read the site, not because of the editors. If we keep the Salon analogy, essentially suggesting charging the "writers" rather than paying them. Maybe I should be paid by advertisers for submitting this comment, rather than the site?
Now, if the editors would at least do their jobs well, I might reconsider - but I don't see fact-checking, I don't see anything done to stop all these duplicate stories -- heck, I don't even see spell-checking!
If Slashdot even wants to consider this system, they should have completely open records. Show us all your costs, from servers to salaries, and your profit. Let us know that we're being charged this because of need, and not because of the avarice of a few businessmen over at VA.
Yes, many technological devices and mediums rely on commercial advertising -- look at TV/Radio, Newspapers/Magazines, the Internet, etc. Yes, NASA could benefit greatly by doing the same.
But if we're going to take a cue from history, let's point NASA toward the real profit from technology lies: Porn.
No, really, think about it. Early photographs? Porn. Videos? Porn. DVDs? Why, Porn again! And don't even get me started on where all the "innovations" in Internet commerce and advertising have come from -- we may all hate the X10 ads, but they're using both innovation AND implied voyeurism to make a profit.
Now, just imagine what NASA could do by selling Space Porn. I'm sure that millions of guys across America would be "curious" enough to pay a few bucks to see sex in space. And any modeling company would love it -- no mode need for Wonderbras for lift, since there's no gravity to make them fall. And they'd bring about a whole new wave of public interest in space travel and technology (surely this would be more effective in creating public interest than the proposed return-to-the-moon plans)!
Let's face it -- a little Porn goes a long way toward the technological advancement of the human race. Abandon your silly preconceived morals and let the avarice take control.
(Moderators: With any luck, this will be funny. But it might be a troll. I'm honestly not sure =)
No, result should depend on types of operands
on
Apocalypse 3
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· Score: 3, Informative
'a'+'b' = 'c'?
'a'+'b' = "ab"?
No, the results of this should rely on the type of the operands, as it does with numerical values in C and C++ and most C++ classes. Keep in mind that single quotes denote a character (really an 8-bit ASCII value), and double quotes indicate a string (usually zero-terminated):
'a' + 'b' = 'Ã'
(char and char results in another char by adding their ASCII values)
"a" + 'b' = "ab"
(string and char results in a string by concatenation)
'a' + "b" = "ab"
(char and string -- order does not matter, so see string and char above)
"a" + "b" = "ab"
(string and string results in a string by concatenation)
To summarize, if a string is involved, then the char(s) is (are) promoted up to string(s) and the result depends on concatenation. If all operands are chars, then no promotion occurs and they are added by ASCII value.
This is similar to the numerical addition rules of C, C++, and a number of similar languages. One simple example: If an int and a float are added, the int is promoted to be a float and the result is a float. If an int and an int are added, the result is an int and must by cast (either explicitly or implicitly) in order to be a float value.
I'm not too familiar with Perl, but this seems to be the most sensible behavior. If I'm missing something and there's a valid reason not to use an addition sign for concatenation, please reply and let me know.
FYI, you should probably check out this page on ZDNet Japan, which has just-released pictures of the prototype GPS and Camera modules for the Clie (which use the MemStick slot). I'm not sure what exactly you're looking for, but it looks like the GPS folds up into a nice form factor. I haven't seen anything on the price.
As for the screen, I just recently upgraded from a IIIxe to a Clie N610C, and the differece is remarkable. And while color is often not necessary, I find myself echoing the comments I heard when the IIIc came out -- with a color screen, "black and white" is "black and WHITE", not "black and pea-green." It does improve the readability, and with the rechargable battery I can even run with full backlight full time without getting even close to draining it.
However, the real kicker is the high resolution. Now that I have it, I can't stand to look at other Palm devices. It used to be that I couldn't really read the Palm for an hour without getting a slight headache (I should point out that I'm about 18 and have 20/20 vision -- it's not bad eyes, it's a bad screen). Now, the high-res fonts are just so easy to read that I can sit with it for hours, reading ebooks or the New York Times (which I sync to it daily). Worth every penny I paid for it.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem: Say I'm a user who wants to connect to a Peek-A-Booty network. I need to get the address of a node to connect to. How do I get this? The obvious solution, and the one used for Gnutella and other peer-to-peer apps, is to publish a list of nodes (or at least one). But that won't work here -- because then the censors can use the same list to track down the nodes and block and/or disable them. This is especially problematic if you're using Peek-A-Booty as it claims it is meant to be: if you're in a country that filters access (say, China) and the government can track down the users trying to circumvent the filters, they can and will punish/torture/kill those people.
Peek-A-Booty has not solved this problem. Read what Tom's article has to say about it:
That's right -- the only way to connect to a Peek-A-Booty network is word-of-mouth, which is horribly ineffective. Finding a node will be extremely difficult unless you know the right people, and then it's very easy for the censor to ruin it. Trust the wrong person, and your whole network is exposed. Government spies could give out addresses that the claim are Peek-A-Booty networks, then catch anyone who tries to connect to those. Worst of all, they could just offer some huge incentive to people for turning in their friends.I hate to say it, but this system simply isn't ready yet. They have not come up with a technically sound solution.
The article's been mirrored several times in the comments here, and the pictures weren't much -- although I see them mirrored in uuencoded ascii here -- so if you missed it, you shouldn't be missing out on too mcuh. Besides, the official announcement from Jobs and Apple is only a little over 12 hours away.
You can claim that piracy is lower for whatever other reasons, but the fact is, tricks like the Windows XP Auth Code do reduce piracy. Granted, they don't stop the tech-aware people -- you can find cracked copies -- but I've personally watched it stop piracy in from "normal folk". People with XP preinstalled can't just share their OEM CD's and let others install from it. Families now realize they're supposed to buy multiple copies for multiple PCs -- and if you recall the Slashdot article about the sales of additional licenses, that has been even more successful that MS expected.
Now for something else you don't want to hear: Microsoft is justified in whining. They do have many, many people using their software without paying. Even if we see the software as crap, it's apparently "good enough" to be pretty damn popular. They deserve payment for that 24% (for Windows, probably more) of their software that's being pirated.
And their attempts to stop piracy haven't been unfair, either! There's all this complaining about the Windows Auth Code -- and not even anecdotal evidence of it harming anyone. So you let the software authorize itself, big deal. For the tiny, tiny percentage of people who upgrade a lot, they just need to give MS a call, and MS will authorize their new code. Big deal.
So let's get this straight: MS isn't whining, it's trying to educate consumers who don't realize that sharing copies or installing on multiple PC's isn't legal. And they appear to have been very successful in stopping piracy of XP among the "common" people.
I hate MS as much as the next guy, and I could drone on for hours about their monopolistic, anticompetitive actions that are unfair. But I'm not going to slander them for trying to recover a few billion bucks that they have rightfully earned.
Also, their Investment Page is still up, so you can get some idea of the shear amount of traffic they receive -- 32,500,000 videos streamed last January alone (that's a lot of bandwidth)!
In case anyone misses the irony, this is a site where people go looking for ads -- you'd think it's the perfect market for any advertisements. If banner ads can't succeed even here, then the future of free websites isn't looking too bright.
I wouldn't even be count on cable modems being around much at all 10 years from now. Think about what the Internet was 10 years ago - or, rather, don't, since that name didn't come around until 1993 (on a certain piece of legislation sponsored by a certain Al Gore, hence his responsiblity in creating the Internet as we know it). Anyone prediction the Internet and broadband then would be considered a raving lunatic. Would you be surprised if we're all using some new tech for net access in 2010?
And there's another key question you're not asking: if these calculations are so simple, why didn't @Home make them years ago and realize it couldn't borrow so much go into so heavy debt so soon? Because years ago, they were predicting many, many users -- many more than we have now. They've predicted wrong in the past, and they can certainly do it again.
From the Wired Article:
There you have it. $7,800,000,000 ---> $10,000,000. Excite.com is now worth 0.00128 PERCENT of what it was worth two years ago!As I said, these companies simply can't predict what the market will do. Do you trust the prediction of profitabilty in 10 years from a company that couldn't forsee one of its primary assets devalue 780 times in 2 years?
Even worse, let's say they have managed to draw up a plan to be profitable. Why didn't they have this plan a year ago, so they wouldn't be in the dilemma they face today? Oops, they can make those numbers move when they're forced to!
Believe me, I really don't want to see @Home go. My Internet connection this weekend will be Comcast@Home, and they don't even have a contingency plan (oooh, they say to use NetZero for 10 free hours! What a joke!). But this is absurd, and they simply cannot be allowed to continue on this joke of a profitablity plan of theirs.
Let's face it, markets change. And in the Internet, still a very new and rapidly evolving medium, the market is bound to change. Any estimate by @Home or any other internet company making any promises about their marketability ten years from now should not be trusted. That's simply absurd.
There were, at one point, hundreds of companies predicting that ads alone would support them. What happened? As we all know, a few years ago, the bottom dropped out on the online ad market. Most of those companies are gone now - Inside.com is one of the many prominent sites among them. Others have been forced to overhaul their business models - Salon and others, including Slashdot, are moving to subscriber services (and last I saw, Salon still ain't close to profit).
And it's not just ads. The first site that comes to mind is Amazon.com -- everyone predicted that they'd hit a gold mine. People like buying books online, and by ditching brick-and-mortar stores and keeping all inventory in warehouses, they can streamline everything and save a bundle. Well, it's sure not working -- they're far from profitability as well.
I really hope people aren't as gullible as these companies seem to believe. Making predictions about Internet companies 10 years from now is rampant speculation at best. In fact, it's probably just total bullshit.
@Home can make whatever claims they want, but face the truth -- this is a desperate final attempt to keep in business. It's a blatant lie, and anyone who believes it is in for a surprise.
Although that's not the meaning of "even" I was trying to use. But you probably realized that. Wit is good.
Remember, even primes have two factors!
If we take Moore's law and extrapolate. . . 33 years is 396 months, so technology must be 2^(396/18) = 4,194,304 times more advanced now than it was then. Did you guys even have fire yet, or were you still confined to nice warm Africa?
I think we need to call up Guiness (aside: isn't it strange that a record-tracking group also makes beer?) and update the records. This is a major archealogical find.
This concludes my karma whoring for the day =)
Furthermore, even if this was publicised, it would hardly seem like the case of a poor academic being wronged by and unjust law -- and that's because it isn't. It's a British hacker with no legal expertise stretching this American law so that he can cry out that he was wronged.
You and I and whoever else is reading this know that what he's saying might not be that much of a stretch, and that there is a slight chance this could get him in trouble. But he won't be earning any sympathy from anyone other than us unless that actually happens, and I think it's very unlikely that anyone would ever try to apply the DMCA against him in that manner anyway.
(There goes my karma. Kill the messenger =)
He's not showing the world anything; he's only telling those of us who follow Linux and Slashdot. He's simply "preaching to the choir."
Furthermore, even if this was publicised, it would hardly seem like the case of a poor academic being wronged by and unjust law -- and that's because it isn't. It's a British hacker with no legal expertise stretching this American law so that he can cry out that he was wronged.
You and I and whoever else is reading this know that what he's saying might not be that much of a stretch, and that there is a slight chance this could get him in trouble. But he won't be earning any sympathy from anyone other than us unless that actually happens, and I think it's very unlikely that anyone would ever try to apply the DMCA against him in that manner anyway.
(There goes my karma. Kill the messenger =)
If Alan Cox really wants to make a point, he should put his money where his mouth is and LET himself be open to a suit under the DMCA. His current approach, hiding the changelogs, does nothing to stop the DMCA, and by submitting to it he's giving its backers exactly what they want.
Laws don't get changed if nobody has the guts to challenge them. If Alan wants to get his point across, he should let himself be sued (not that it would actually happen, because I doubt any company really gives a damn what he puts in his changelog). Then he, like Felten and Sklyarov, has a great case to challenge the law with.
Instead, this "spectacle" seems to be Alan submitting to the DMCA, then trying to attract as much attention as possible to his crying about it. I have no pity for this, and I hope the rest of his audience feels the same.
Also, in the US, it is perfectly legal to "call for murder." In fact, the Supreme Court reaffirmed this last year when ruling on a website that listed the names and home addresses of some abortion doctors calling for their deaths (there was, of course, an article on Slashdot, too). What you cannot due is threaten someone directly, or actually arrange for their murder. I can say "Someone should please kill CowboyNeal," but not "I'm gonna kill you, CowboyNeal," or arrange to pay someone else $50 to kill CowboyNeal.
And if someone wants to express a racist opinion, they do have every right to do so. Take your Bin Laden example -- the government hasn't outlawed showing Bin Laden's videos. Even after they asked networks not to show them, for fear of hidden messages, only some networks complied. The government would like that the others not show the videos, but it can't force them.Indeed, there are a number of organizations operating in America that the government doesn't like, but can't do anything about. Look at all these odious cults (Scientology is certainly a common topic of discussion here), or some of those southern militant separatist groups. The government can't persecute these groups solely for expressing their beliefs. The few times they can arrest Scientologists are when they break actual likes, such as by transporting someone under 18 across state lines.
Now this is a very valid point.To your credit, there were a few other valid examples above. No, you cannot threaten someone directly, and no, you cannot sexually harass someone, and no, you cannot falsely scream "fire" in a theater. These, however, are all illegal because they directly infringe on the rights of others. The nudity example is still inexcusable.
Microsoft can't stop you from publishing benchmarks. They can threaten too, but that has not and will not be held up. And your ISP can regulate what you put up because you can choose your ISP, and when you make that choice you agree to certain terms of service. There are certainly ISPs that allow you to put up whatever you like, be it porn, warez, or hate speech, and you should stop complaining and go find one if you so choose. And this us just absurd. In most all cases, freedom and privacy directly contradict each other -- you can't have consumer protection laws that forbid companies from sharing marketting data and say that the company is free to say whatever it likes. In the few cases where they're on the same side, such as when a company tries to discover the identity of someone who anonymously criticized them on some message board, the courts have in fact ruled in favor of both.Is the US perfect? No, of course not. But the vast majority of your examples are absolutely wrong. Sounds to me like you're looking to "pcik a fight" where no basis for one exists.
I never said that those owning and operating the site aren't entitled to earn some money; I just think that they're making plenty, and Taco's claim that they need subscriptions because their costs are too high is total bunk. Frankly, if they said "we're going to start charging because we want to profit more," I'd be happy -- but don't give me any of this "traffic is up 90% and we won't be around in 4 years otherwise" crap.
But I would disagree with you on how much the ad profit and bandwidth cost are. But that's also why I suggested that a subscription system should be accompanied by an open-book policy on Slashdot's finances, so if they do make this claim there will be no question as to where all the money is going and whether it's justified.
Don't you think that the price of a highly-targeted ad on each page outweighs the cost of a few kilobytes of bandwidth? Ads on Slashdot are much more valuable than ads on some other sites because it's a fairly pure demographic - "News for Nerds." I've bought from Slashdot advertisers before, and I have no problem with the ads as they are now. The cost of bandwidth, relative to the "property value," if you will, for prospective advertisers, is small.
I sure expect that the ads easily balance the bandwidth cost, and if not, the site needs to be redesigned in order to lower the bandwidth:advertisement ratio. God (substitute your prefered diety if you like) knows that this jumbled mess of a layout isn't encouraging me to pay for it. . .
Now, take a site like Salon, which should have subscriptions. Salon creates its own content - and that's often unique and interesting content, and it requires the investment of a great deal of time and effort from Salon writers, many of whom actually go to work in a building and work all day.
So how much time and effort - or other resources - does Slashdot invest in the daily operations of the site? Very little.
Slashdot's content is entirely community-driven; it's all submitted by the users, for free. What do the editors have to do? Why, the horrible, grueling task of reading through user submissions, choosing a few to post, and relaxing as the site does its thing.
In fact, it seems that the real cost of Slashdot is relatively small: the cost of servers/bandwidth, and a modest salary for the editors and administrators who do this as a full-time job.
IIRC, Slashdot lasted years as Taco and Hemo's only job. This sudden need for money seems to go back to the Andover takeover; it's entirely a business decision. But unlike Salon, this isn't a business venture that requires huge amounts of effort, because the content is provided by users.
So, let me get to my main beef: We already "pay" for the site by submitting content! Should Slashdot be profitting off our article submissions, and our comments? That's why I read the site, not because of the editors. If we keep the Salon analogy, essentially suggesting charging the "writers" rather than paying them. Maybe I should be paid by advertisers for submitting this comment, rather than the site?
Now, if the editors would at least do their jobs well, I might reconsider - but I don't see fact-checking, I don't see anything done to stop all these duplicate stories -- heck, I don't even see spell-checking!
If Slashdot even wants to consider this system, they should have completely open records. Show us all your costs, from servers to salaries, and your profit. Let us know that we're being charged this because of need, and not because of the avarice of a few businessmen over at VA.
But if we're going to take a cue from history, let's point NASA toward the real profit from technology lies: Porn.
No, really, think about it. Early photographs? Porn. Videos? Porn. DVDs? Why, Porn again! And don't even get me started on where all the "innovations" in Internet commerce and advertising have come from -- we may all hate the X10 ads, but they're using both innovation AND implied voyeurism to make a profit.
Now, just imagine what NASA could do by selling Space Porn. I'm sure that millions of guys across America would be "curious" enough to pay a few bucks to see sex in space. And any modeling company would love it -- no mode need for Wonderbras for lift, since there's no gravity to make them fall. And they'd bring about a whole new wave of public interest in space travel and technology (surely this would be more effective in creating public interest than the proposed return-to-the-moon plans)!
Let's face it -- a little Porn goes a long way toward the technological advancement of the human race. Abandon your silly preconceived morals and let the avarice take control.
(Moderators: With any luck, this will be funny. But it might be a troll. I'm honestly not sure =)
'a' + 'b' = 'Ã'
(char and char results in another char by adding their ASCII values)
"a" + 'b' = "ab"
(string and char results in a string by concatenation)
'a' + "b" = "ab"
(char and string -- order does not matter, so see string and char above)
"a" + "b" = "ab"
(string and string results in a string by concatenation)
To summarize, if a string is involved, then the char(s) is (are) promoted up to string(s) and the result depends on concatenation. If all operands are chars, then no promotion occurs and they are added by ASCII value.
This is similar to the numerical addition rules of C, C++, and a number of similar languages. One simple example: If an int and a float are added, the int is promoted to be a float and the result is a float. If an int and an int are added, the result is an int and must by cast (either explicitly or implicitly) in order to be a float value.
I'm not too familiar with Perl, but this seems to be the most sensible behavior. If I'm missing something and there's a valid reason not to use an addition sign for concatenation, please reply and let me know.
As for the screen, I just recently upgraded from a IIIxe to a Clie N610C, and the differece is remarkable. And while color is often not necessary, I find myself echoing the comments I heard when the IIIc came out -- with a color screen, "black and white" is "black and WHITE", not "black and pea-green." It does improve the readability, and with the rechargable battery I can even run with full backlight full time without getting even close to draining it.
However, the real kicker is the high resolution. Now that I have it, I can't stand to look at other Palm devices. It used to be that I couldn't really read the Palm for an hour without getting a slight headache (I should point out that I'm about 18 and have 20/20 vision -- it's not bad eyes, it's a bad screen). Now, the high-res fonts are just so easy to read that I can sit with it for hours, reading ebooks or the New York Times (which I sync to it daily). Worth every penny I paid for it.