but do you care when you get it? If they can use OOD tools to release the game in a year instead of in 10 (write it all in assembly, tune it for all possible hardware it may run on), then I'd rather they do that, and I'll upgrade my machine to run it.
"But quake ran fine on my PII!" - then run Quake.
"They should make this new game run fast on my 4 year old computer." No, you should buy (or write) games that run fast on your 4 year old computer (try 4 year old games). I want games that are released in my lifetime with lots of features and visual effects - so I get hardware that can run them.
And if Quake4 played like Quake1, why would they make Quake4? Especially if it ran the same on the same hardware? I think you're a sales demographic ID can afford to lose.
http://www.sphere.bc.ca. The page is horrible, though (forwarned). The first and lasting impression you get is that its completely covered with ads, and no content. In fact, there are no ads on the page. just bad design. But you can find 6", 10/12" and student (very cheap) rules easily.
Plants, plants, plants! (But only in an otherwise unclutered cube) If your company allows it, these really make it feel better. However, in a cluttered cube, they just make it seem more closed in. Oh, and don't forget - just because you can live on Jolt doesn't mean your green friends can.
Small bookshelf. A small bookshelf (1.5' wide, 3' high) can be aquired cheaply, and gives you more top surface - as well as removing the stacks of binders you have. It really is amazing where those will fit, so don't just give up on it!
Pen jar - a mug or jar for your pens can really make a big difference if you are like I was. I had pens, pencils, slide rule, etc spread all over my desktop. Now, one coffee mug makes my desk ever so much neater.
Cord keepers. Little bits of velcro strips make more of a difference than you think.
Get rid of the 50 post-its on your monitor - it'll make your space seem bigger immediately
organize and clean up the crap you have stuck on your walls.
But the problem with the above is this: If I want to write a browser to use these functions written into the OS (reading HTML in your example), it's NOT exposed to me! I have to install IE to use these functions... now, that doesn't seem quite right. If all IE does is use functionality written into the OS, then shouldn't I be able to? shouldn't Netscape or Opera be able to?
You're thinking in the wrong discipline. Reversable computing happens already all the time.
Think of it this way - a photon hits an electron in it's ground state, raising it to a higher state. Then, it emits an identical photon and drops to it's ground state again. Effectively, You added energy to store a bit (0 -> 1) of information in an electron. Then the operation reversed, and you gained the original energy back.
The problem with reversible computing is getting the information out in a reversible way. In my example above, how do we know if the electron is a 0 or a 1? we have to extract the photon to do it, thus destroying the reversibility. Now, there are some quantum properties that can be measured without destroying the reversibility, but they are difficult to control (the system easily loses coherence).
Reversible computers don't use the same 'modern electronics' that your current computer does. but they are theoretically possible (using only a small amount of energy to observe the state). Just not yet practical. Wait around a bit.
I somewhat share your views on the whole middle ground thing, BUT:
I dissagree that it would mean the end of musicians excepts as marketed. I think perhaps the other way around.. Most musicians get the vast majority of thier money for live performance, not for records sold. Selling CDs or singles is a way to get people to want to see them live. Marketing by the big labels does the same thing. Distributing the music for free will not really change this. Perhaps it will mean that more people are exposed to more bands, and the good ones hype themselves. who knows?
I do this a lot: I'll 'priate' a certain song from someone on napster.. then I'll browse thier collection. If they have lots of stuff I like, I'll try d/l ing some of the stuff I haven't heard of. I figure, they have tastes like mine, so this unknown stuff might be something I like.
Now, I'm not saying that this will make all good bands succeed and all hype-only bands lose, but I am saying that I think 'P2P' sharing of music will not seriously change the industry for the bands or for the fans. who cares if it screws up the labels.
I don't understand - the music industry has been saying that using napster is tantamount to stealing from them (stuff they rightfully stole in the first place!), but if we have to pay to steal from them, and they get a bit of the action, it's okay?
And as for the artists that get royalties per disc or single, they will get what out of this? We pay napster a 'subscription'. They bribe - er, pay the RIAA off, and no where in there does the artist that actually created the work get a dime, right? there's no accounting of WHAT was copied, so no royalty. The RIAA later re-affirms that napster is bad, but doesn't do anything about it as long as they get a check every month, the artists still get squat, and we are again paying THE WRONG PEOPLE for music
That's why I like openNap and sites that pay the artists directly: I'd rather steal music than pay the RIAA for it. I'd rather pay the artists to keep making music than anything else, and I'd rather rant on slashdot than actually DOING anything. It's a great world.
The problem is - how many mainstream app vendors will recompile their product with this compiler? All? 50%? 25%? If 50% or 75% of the apps I run at work (and those people who I buy machines for) will run slower when I upgrade the 667MHz PIII's to 1.5GHz P4s(at a huge cost to us), then why would I do it? But, if at a smaller cost I can upgrade to 1.2GHz Athlons that run everything faster, then I'll do that.
If DELL tells me that I'll see huge speed improvements with the P4, just as soon as I recompile Office 97 (or all the other apps our teams run), I'm going to laugh at them! Intel writing their own optimizing compiler is great, but worthless to the consumer untill mainstream apps actually use it.
Thanks! I haven't read anything this funny for a while. Your grasp of the knee-jerk reaction that most uninformed and ignorant members of the 'moral majority' display is perfect... even down to the misunderstanding of monotheistic vs. polytheistic.
One of the masterfull twists was bringing in David Koresh's name, implying a link between a fantasy game and a man involved in a cult massacre, even though no such link existed (which you don't mention). This really shows your understanding of how a person looking to influence weak minds would act - use emotions, not facts.
Another nice touch is to make sure that it is evident that your 'character' is a devout Christian, who takes the view that anything that makes children think about the bible, instead of simply accepting it as fact, is evil and should be destroyed.
The one thing you really forgot was to show that God-fearing (instead of God-loving... oooh, your're good. I just saw that one.) people managed to show some problem with the old D&D saturday cartoon, and get it pulled. Well, I'm sure you'll work it in next time.
Well, again, thanks, and keep the laughs coming. Next time, try to be a racist or bigot.. I'm sure you'll do well, as your portrayal of a supremely ignorant reactionary is superb!
Your eye is already sensitive to UV light (very sensitive in fact), but the cornea blocks it. For those people who had the first rounds of artificial corneal transplants, they could see in low-light situations, some could even read in light that most people found themselves hitting walls in!
The difference is that the untreated plastic would allow the UV to pass. The UK and US (possibly more undocumented)both had a (Very) short stint where they would have agents in the intellegence business undergo this surgery to be able to operate at night.
The drawback to this amazing vision? premature loss of vision. Sure, the eye is sensitive to UV, as it destroys the retina and causes blindness. Hmm.. guess I'll stick to a flashlight.
I'm in Omaha, NE.... a completely republican state. I voted for Gore. It did NOTHING - the five electoral votes all went to Bush, as we all knew they would.
Now, had I lived in Florida, my vote may have counted... may even have helped decide the election. Is this fair? no. Does this inspire me to get out there and vote? No. Is this simply the dumbest system ever? Yes.
Hopefully this election will get people to finally abolish this antiquated and pointless system- I'd bet that voter turnout would be much higher.
This 'Porsche' analogy is only correct if ALL the cars out there have the same price tag.
All the software out there (with the notable exception of the relatively new OSS software) has similar ELUAs on it. Add to this the problem of compatibility. Say you try to buy an open source car to compete with this porsche... but you can only drive it on 15% of the roads out there. You can't visit your customers or suppliers by driving it.. Do you really have a choice to 'skip' software that doesn't have an ELUA?
Maybe at home, but howabout the business network you run... can you skip it there?
Not agreeing to any ELUA's is (with the current state of affairs) tantamount to agreeing not to use computers to run your business. 95% of our customers run Windows. I don't know how we can provide softare for them without agreeing to any ELUA's.. if you can help me out, I'd love it!
after working at a large (14state) phone company for a while, I've learned a bit about slamming.. Yes, virginia, it is illegal. Call up and bitch a bit. They get fined for each instance reported at the end of every year, or so I'm told. (Still happens though)..
But the fun thing is the local carriers. The 'local' part of our phone company will require more and more stringent checks when switching service to long distance providers with a high rate of 'slamming'.. Some of them were so high on the list that the requirements normally discouraged customers from switching altogether! This sends a message.. You cut into the money, and they listen
This is done because when people are slammed, they normally call their local provider first to complain. The local provider doesn't want people tied up on those calls, and so they punish the long distance carriers.. eventually, the LD carriers get the message and fly right.
The 'backwards wheel' effect is because of the difference in rotation rate vs. perceived framerate. If a wheel rotates 30 times per second, and you see it at 30fps, it will seem to be standing still (ignoring motion blur). Think on that a second.. the frame is captured with the wheel in exactly the same position as the previous frame... no apparent motion. If the wheel rotates at slightly less than the framerate then it will appear to rotate backwards. This difference in frequency can actually be decided by (wheel rotate freq.) mod (framerate).
In the practical, as opposed to theory, motion blur and motion relative to other objects also strongly influence percieved rotation.
I use Debian on several company firewalls here, because of the ease of keeping it up to date. We can't afford a real admin for these boxes (charitable org), and having apt-get with security sources in the apt source list makes patching holes a breeze.
I have to say, also, that the authors dismissal of Debian and Slackware seem like either he didn't research those distros, or was too lazy to try and compile the information to his 'metrics' about them.
The amount of sensationalism associated with slashdot has reached a disturbing level. As others have pointed out the legality of deep linking has already been upheld in court also the RIAA has said that they are not going after the site for linking but for being running a site that indexes illegal material.
True, the slashdot headline is a bit misleading, but so is your quote.. the case about deep linking had to do with being able to link directly to content that another site wishes that you had to go through advertising to get to... That case did not have anything to do with linking to illegal content. It was just about linking past a hundred pages of navigation through ads that the linked site wanted revenue from.
This case is still pretty heavy. They are going after linkers, but they are distinguishing between automated links and intentional links. I would say that if intentional links to copyrighted material is deemed illegal, it will make a lot of copyright litigation much easier for the copyright holder.
Umm... I was under the impression that the copyright to the RSA encryption formulae expired not too long ago. And since all copyrights expire a fixed length of time after each individual copyright is given they expire quite often.
And, your post seems to imply that all copyrights will expire in 2008. That is also untrue. Please clarify your posting.
I know this is a bit offtopic (and applies to the US) , but My problem with the DMCA is not how much it gives the copyright holder, nor what it takes from the consumer.
I hate what it takes from the thief.
See, it has measures that seek to take away the ability to steal, not just to make it illegal. They say the encryption is illegal to break, and it's illegal to show others how to break it. Next, having a debugger will be illegal because it gives us the abity to figure out the encryption and so break it. (okay maybe an exageration) This is bad. Now, don't take me wrong here, I don't want to live in a crime ridden world. But there is a reason that we have a right to a jury of our peers.. That reason is that only people like us can judge us guilty of a crime. Even people who have admittedly killed other people have been let free, judged to have extenuating circumstance, or other reason to do so. Ever hear of self defence?
So If the ability to kill is taken from me, what do I do when a person who has figured out how to retain that ability triess to kill me? Die, I guess.
No, I don't think that people should or could pirate DVDs for self defence. No, I don't think that copying DVDs is tantamount to murder. I simply think that you can make it illegal for me to do something, and punish me for doing it, but you should NOT be able to take away my ability to do so.
See, a all-encompasing law can not pertain to every case. A body of peers will help to keep the law applied fairly (well, it should, but let's assume it does for now). So let me keep my ability to steal. Just punish me for doing so after the fact, okay?
Murder is illegal, but a kitchen knife is not. Copying DVDs is illegal, but the decryption software is not... oops. At least I can tell others where to get the decryption software... right?
Btw: what happens when thinking about circumventing copy protection is outlawed, and circumventing the 'anti-Bad Thought device' is illegal? Should our ability to think bad things go too? Don't laugh, 600 years ago the idea of sending a message instantly to the other side of the planet would have gotten you laughed at or killed.... there was no other side of the planet, let alone the message part. Yet here I am, doing it.
My own outlook is that IAs will eventually evolve to become PCs as we understand them now. People will want to write letters on their IA, and won't really understand why they need to buy a seperate machine to do that. So IAs will emerge with the power to do so. Before long they will have HDDs and user-fsckable GUIs. That is, they will be PCs by another name
This is what scares me. (And excites, too) People want to write a document on the IA. 'Why should I need a new computer?' they say. So, someone fills the need. In my fears, this is Microsoft. They have a web-based (with ActiveX) word processor. You can use it to write great docs, but you have to pay a monthy fee for the service.
See, At the moment, no company has yet been able to charge using the subscription model for mainstream software. Users won't hear of it. 'What if My subscription runs out when I have a big presentation?', and the companies aren't sure how to go about enforcing. But, with a web-based approach, users must log in. The system verifies the account status (and maybe allowed subnet for that account?), and they go on using WebWord. Stop paying? no problem, you just can't edit your docs, or print them.... And if MSWebWord stores your files 'securely' on the server, you can't even have someone else access them. All for your convenience.
That's just one scenerio. Hopefully, a free solution would be available, but the problem with that is server bandwitdh.. I'm sure ads would creep in somewhere (not that that's a problem at all).
Anyway, just some rants and raves. Don't take me too seriously.
The difference between tracking on the net, and tracking in real life is the ease of tracking hundreds of thousands at once, automatically. If I wanted to track you in real life, it'd be tough to also track all of the people on your block at the same time. Not so with net traffic. In fact, after initial setup, a place like doubleclick can gather much more usefull (to marketers) infomation much more quickly about hundreds of thousands of people than I can about you following you in real life.
As for needing my privacy; Do I care if someone knows I like nifty electronics? No. Do I care if I get unsolicited calls, emails, and letters selling such? Yes. I hate email spam. I hate telemarketers. The only thing worse is being target-marketed by a group of them that think I'm a hot prospect because of some damn data collected by an internet company.
You miss the point on crypto. You seem to assume that you need to have something to hide from legal authorities to use it. I use it every day, and here's why:
My father and I run a website that gets a small amount of e-commerce (ie, they buy things with credit cards) traffic. My father is deaf, and so we do most of our communicating by email. I DO NOT want the password-of-the-week seen by others. I know my email is intercepted regularly by script-kidz on my cable segment (I have a cable modem). So, I encrypt all the emails I send to him.. Is there any illegal activity here? no. Would a kid sniffing my email be breaking the law if he hacked my site? probably, but then I'd be out of business, and he probably couldn't pay if I successfully sued him. Encryption is simply the prudent thing to do here.
Now say my father sends me an encrypted email, and he accidentally encrypts it with my uncle's public key (he did that once). I now have encrypted data on my computer that reasonably I SHOULD have the key to, but I don't. Should I go to jail?
We had a 'thriving' local band.. we could sometimes do 4 gigs a month, and had a fairly good following. We had pressed our own CDs, and could sell a few, but we wanted the almighty exposure. We figured, hey, if more people heard our work, we could sell lots more CDs
So we signed up with a 'service' (that will rename nameless as long as I remain named). Mistake.
Here's the picture: we paid for top billing for a week, and had over 6,000 downloads. One of our songs was on a 'sampler' CD. Great, right?
Nope. we made exactly $0 from all this, and only sold 43 CDs. The profit we were paid lost us money over OUR costs to press each CD (our profit was about $.45 per CD, had we sold them all at that rate. But since we didn't we lost lots of money on the CDs we pressed in anticipation)
We were not told anything about the demographics of the audience downloading our CDs (I'm sure 'service' sold that information to someone else, though), and we made no money. We now have two songs that we can not ever put on CDs (at least we can play them live.) that are not sold through the 'service', and life generally sucks.
Now, even though we had a small local following, we are broken up. Could we have been contenders had we sticked it out? Probably not, but who knows... if a traditional label had signed us, we would certainly have sold more, made more, and still be playing...
Moral of the story: The record industry screws artists. The e-music industry is much worse, however, and should be avoided at all costs. Hell, I'd rather have had our mp3s pirated.
At the consulting firm I work for, and many others in this city (Omaha, NE), we get a 'hybrid' style. I'm paid salary at a good rate. This includes benefits on top, paid bench time, and vacation/holiday pay. For overtime, we am paid by the hour at whatever my salary/2080 comes out to. This amounts to straight time for overtime, but we do get paid.
This means I have a minimum check amount that increases when I work more hours. The client pays straight time for my services above 40 hrs. All told, I love this arrangement, and I have been both salary(exempt from overtime) and hourly with time+1/2 for overtime.
Actually, for consultant/contractors, I'm surprised this is not more standard.
This 'blurb' incorrectly states that all you have to do is open the email. Untrue.
In fact, all this kiddie is doing is mass-mailing an AOL grabbing trojan to AOL users. If they open the attached executable file (bypassing the warnings that AOL gives), then it gets the users stored AOL password and sends it back to a specific email address.
While I'm not an AOL fan or user, I have to say that this no more cracks AOL than BO2K cracks my windoze machine. As long as I don't run any unknown exe, its fine. However, If I'm dumb enough to do so, then the OS won't help me out with security. Same with AOL, don't be stupid, but if you are, then be aware that AOL stores your password on your machine in an easily accessable way.
This is not new. There've been lots of AOL password grabber trojans. Shouldn't AOL take the hint and possibly NOT store the password in this way? Not that I care too much about AOL.
Well, yes, entrapment and the power of the law can be scary, but let's think this through..
He actually thought that this girl was 13, and attempted to meet her to have sex with her.
If he had meet an actual 13yr old vulnerable to his 'charms', he would have possibly had sex with her.
Would you rather the law reacted to this, and let this girls life (and others?) possibly be ruined before they arrested him? Or should they try to stop it before he does it? If I had talked to this agent, who pretended to be a 13 yearold, I would have had a polite online conversation, and left her alone. (I have little in common with 13 yr old girls) They would not have arrested me, or searched my computer for kiddie porn. Why couldn't he do the same? The fact that he didn't do the same means he WOULD try it with any real girls he meets online.
If I tried to hire a hitman to kill you, wouldn't you rather that the first one I found was actually an agent undercover, instead? If so, should I be let go because he wasn't an _actual_ agent, but only a pretend one? So by your logic, the crime never happened, right?
I believe that the lawmakers go too far, and some law enforcers go too far. But in cases involving sex with minors (my sister is 13), I say, hang 'em all.
Slashdot Mirror
but do you care when you get it? If they can use OOD tools to release the game in a year instead of in 10 (write it all in assembly, tune it for all possible hardware it may run on), then I'd rather they do that, and I'll upgrade my machine to run it.
"But quake ran fine on my PII!" - then run Quake.
"They should make this new game run fast on my 4 year old computer." No, you should buy (or write) games that run fast on your 4 year old computer (try 4 year old games). I want games that are released in my lifetime with lots of features and visual effects - so I get hardware that can run them.
And if Quake4 played like Quake1, why would they make Quake4? Especially if it ran the same on the same hardware? I think you're a sales demographic ID can afford to lose.
http://www.sphere.bc.ca. The page is horrible, though (forwarned). The first and lasting impression you get is that its completely covered with ads, and no content. In fact, there are no ads on the page. just bad design. But you can find 6", 10/12" and student (very cheap) rules easily.
- Plants, plants, plants! (But only in an otherwise unclutered cube) If your company allows it, these really make it feel better. However, in a cluttered cube, they just make it seem more closed in. Oh, and don't forget - just because you can live on Jolt doesn't mean your green friends can.
- Small bookshelf. A small bookshelf (1.5' wide, 3' high) can be aquired cheaply, and gives you more top surface - as well as removing the stacks of binders you have. It really is amazing where those will fit, so don't just give up on it!
- Pen jar - a mug or jar for your pens can really make a big difference if you are like I was. I had pens, pencils, slide rule, etc spread all over my desktop. Now, one coffee mug makes my desk ever so much neater.
- Cord keepers. Little bits of velcro strips make more of a difference than you think.
- Get rid of the 50 post-its on your monitor - it'll make your space seem bigger immediately
- organize and clean up the crap you have stuck on your walls.
Hope these help - they helped me!But the problem with the above is this: If I want to write a browser to use these functions written into the OS (reading HTML in your example), it's NOT exposed to me! I have to install IE to use these functions... now, that doesn't seem quite right. If all IE does is use functionality written into the OS, then shouldn't I be able to? shouldn't Netscape or Opera be able to?
You're thinking in the wrong discipline. Reversable computing happens already all the time.
Think of it this way - a photon hits an electron in it's ground state, raising it to a higher state. Then, it emits an identical photon and drops to it's ground state again. Effectively, You added energy to store a bit (0 -> 1) of information in an electron. Then the operation reversed, and you gained the original energy back.
The problem with reversible computing is getting the information out in a reversible way. In my example above, how do we know if the electron is a 0 or a 1? we have to extract the photon to do it, thus destroying the reversibility. Now, there are some quantum properties that can be measured without destroying the reversibility, but they are difficult to control (the system easily loses coherence).
Reversible computers don't use the same 'modern electronics' that your current computer does. but they are theoretically possible (using only a small amount of energy to observe the state). Just not yet practical. Wait around a bit.
I somewhat share your views on the whole middle ground thing, BUT:
I dissagree that it would mean the end of musicians excepts as marketed. I think perhaps the other way around.. Most musicians get the vast majority of thier money for live performance, not for records sold. Selling CDs or singles is a way to get people to want to see them live. Marketing by the big labels does the same thing. Distributing the music for free will not really change this. Perhaps it will mean that more people are exposed to more bands, and the good ones hype themselves. who knows?
I do this a lot: I'll 'priate' a certain song from someone on napster.. then I'll browse thier collection. If they have lots of stuff I like, I'll try d/l ing some of the stuff I haven't heard of. I figure, they have tastes like mine, so this unknown stuff might be something I like.
Now, I'm not saying that this will make all good bands succeed and all hype-only bands lose, but I am saying that I think 'P2P' sharing of music will not seriously change the industry for the bands or for the fans. who cares if it screws up the labels.
As long as you have to pay somebody
I don't understand - the music industry has been saying that using napster is tantamount to stealing from them (stuff they rightfully stole in the first place!), but if we have to pay to steal from them, and they get a bit of the action, it's okay?
And as for the artists that get royalties per disc or single, they will get what out of this? We pay napster a 'subscription'. They bribe - er, pay the RIAA off, and no where in there does the artist that actually created the work get a dime, right? there's no accounting of WHAT was copied, so no royalty. The RIAA later re-affirms that napster is bad, but doesn't do anything about it as long as they get a check every month, the artists still get squat, and we are again paying THE WRONG PEOPLE for music
That's why I like openNap and sites that pay the artists directly: I'd rather steal music than pay the RIAA for it. I'd rather pay the artists to keep making music than anything else, and I'd rather rant on slashdot than actually DOING anything. It's a great world.
The problem is - how many mainstream app vendors will recompile their product with this compiler? All? 50%? 25%? If 50% or 75% of the apps I run at work (and those people who I buy machines for) will run slower when I upgrade the 667MHz PIII's to 1.5GHz P4s(at a huge cost to us), then why would I do it? But, if at a smaller cost I can upgrade to 1.2GHz Athlons that run everything faster, then I'll do that.
If DELL tells me that I'll see huge speed improvements with the P4, just as soon as I recompile Office 97 (or all the other apps our teams run), I'm going to laugh at them! Intel writing their own optimizing compiler is great, but worthless to the consumer untill mainstream apps actually use it.
Thanks! I haven't read anything this funny for a while. Your grasp of the knee-jerk reaction that most uninformed and ignorant members of the 'moral majority' display is perfect... even down to the misunderstanding of monotheistic vs. polytheistic.
One of the masterfull twists was bringing in David Koresh's name, implying a link between a fantasy game and a man involved in a cult massacre, even though no such link existed (which you don't mention). This really shows your understanding of how a person looking to influence weak minds would act - use emotions, not facts.
Another nice touch is to make sure that it is evident that your 'character' is a devout Christian, who takes the view that anything that makes children think about the bible, instead of simply accepting it as fact, is evil and should be destroyed.
The one thing you really forgot was to show that God-fearing (instead of God-loving... oooh, your're good. I just saw that one.) people managed to show some problem with the old D&D saturday cartoon, and get it pulled. Well, I'm sure you'll work it in next time.
Well, again, thanks, and keep the laughs coming. Next time, try to be a racist or bigot.. I'm sure you'll do well, as your portrayal of a supremely ignorant reactionary is superb!
Your eye is already sensitive to UV light (very sensitive in fact), but the cornea blocks it. For those people who had the first rounds of artificial corneal transplants, they could see in low-light situations, some could even read in light that most people found themselves hitting walls in!
The difference is that the untreated plastic would allow the UV to pass. The UK and US (possibly more undocumented)both had a (Very) short stint where they would have agents in the intellegence business undergo this surgery to be able to operate at night.
The drawback to this amazing vision? premature loss of vision. Sure, the eye is sensitive to UV, as it destroys the retina and causes blindness. Hmm.. guess I'll stick to a flashlight.
I'm in Omaha, NE.... a completely republican state. I voted for Gore. It did NOTHING - the five electoral votes all went to Bush, as we all knew they would.
Now, had I lived in Florida, my vote may have counted... may even have helped decide the election. Is this fair? no. Does this inspire me to get out there and vote? No. Is this simply the dumbest system ever? Yes.
Hopefully this election will get people to finally abolish this antiquated and pointless system- I'd bet that voter turnout would be much higher.
This 'Porsche' analogy is only correct if ALL the cars out there have the same price tag.
All the software out there (with the notable exception of the relatively new OSS software) has similar ELUAs on it. Add to this the problem of compatibility. Say you try to buy an open source car to compete with this porsche... but you can only drive it on 15% of the roads out there. You can't visit your customers or suppliers by driving it.. Do you really have a choice to 'skip' software that doesn't have an ELUA?
Maybe at home, but howabout the business network you run... can you skip it there?
Not agreeing to any ELUA's is (with the current state of affairs) tantamount to agreeing not to use computers to run your business. 95% of our customers run Windows. I don't know how we can provide softare for them without agreeing to any ELUA's.. if you can help me out, I'd love it!
after working at a large (14state) phone company for a while, I've learned a bit about slamming.. Yes, virginia, it is illegal. Call up and bitch a bit. They get fined for each instance reported at the end of every year, or so I'm told. (Still happens though)..
But the fun thing is the local carriers. The 'local' part of our phone company will require more and more stringent checks when switching service to long distance providers with a high rate of 'slamming'.. Some of them were so high on the list that the requirements normally discouraged customers from switching altogether! This sends a message.. You cut into the money, and they listen
This is done because when people are slammed, they normally call their local provider first to complain. The local provider doesn't want people tied up on those calls, and so they punish the long distance carriers.. eventually, the LD carriers get the message and fly right.
The 'backwards wheel' effect is because of the difference in rotation rate vs. perceived framerate. If a wheel rotates 30 times per second, and you see it at 30fps, it will seem to be standing still (ignoring motion blur). Think on that a second.. the frame is captured with the wheel in exactly the same position as the previous frame... no apparent motion. If the wheel rotates at slightly less than the framerate then it will appear to rotate backwards. This difference in frequency can actually be decided by (wheel rotate freq.) mod (framerate).
In the practical, as opposed to theory, motion blur and motion relative to other objects also strongly influence percieved rotation.
I use Debian on several company firewalls here, because of the ease of keeping it up to date. We can't afford a real admin for these boxes (charitable org), and having apt-get with security sources in the apt source list makes patching holes a breeze.
I have to say, also, that the authors dismissal of Debian and Slackware seem like either he didn't research those distros, or was too lazy to try and compile the information to his 'metrics' about them.
The amount of sensationalism associated with slashdot has reached a disturbing level. As others have pointed out the legality of deep linking has already been upheld in court also the RIAA has said that they are not going after the site for linking but for being running a site that indexes illegal material.
True, the slashdot headline is a bit misleading, but so is your quote.. the case about deep linking had to do with being able to link directly to content that another site wishes that you had to go through advertising to get to... That case did not have anything to do with linking to illegal content. It was just about linking past a hundred pages of navigation through ads that the linked site wanted revenue from.
This case is still pretty heavy. They are going after linkers, but they are distinguishing between automated links and intentional links. I would say that if intentional links to copyrighted material is deemed illegal, it will make a lot of copyright litigation much easier for the copyright holder.
Umm... I was under the impression that the copyright to the RSA encryption formulae expired not too long ago. And since all copyrights expire a fixed length of time after each individual copyright is given they expire quite often.
And, your post seems to imply that all copyrights will expire in 2008. That is also untrue. Please clarify your posting.
I know this is a bit offtopic (and applies to the US) , but My problem with the DMCA is not how much it gives the copyright holder, nor what it takes from the consumer.
I hate what it takes from the thief.
See, it has measures that seek to take away the ability to steal, not just to make it illegal. They say the encryption is illegal to break, and it's illegal to show others how to break it. Next, having a debugger will be illegal because it gives us the abity to figure out the encryption and so break it. (okay maybe an exageration) This is bad. Now, don't take me wrong here, I don't want to live in a crime ridden world. But there is a reason that we have a right to a jury of our peers.. That reason is that only people like us can judge us guilty of a crime. Even people who have admittedly killed other people have been let free, judged to have extenuating circumstance, or other reason to do so. Ever hear of self defence?
So If the ability to kill is taken from me, what do I do when a person who has figured out how to retain that ability triess to kill me? Die, I guess.
No, I don't think that people should or could pirate DVDs for self defence. No, I don't think that copying DVDs is tantamount to murder. I simply think that you can make it illegal for me to do something, and punish me for doing it, but you should NOT be able to take away my ability to do so.
See, a all-encompasing law can not pertain to every case. A body of peers will help to keep the law applied fairly (well, it should, but let's assume it does for now). So let me keep my ability to steal. Just punish me for doing so after the fact, okay?
Murder is illegal, but a kitchen knife is not. Copying DVDs is illegal, but the decryption software is not... oops. At least I can tell others where to get the decryption software... right?
Btw: what happens when thinking about circumventing copy protection is outlawed, and circumventing the 'anti-Bad Thought device' is illegal? Should our ability to think bad things go too? Don't laugh, 600 years ago the idea of sending a message instantly to the other side of the planet would have gotten you laughed at or killed.... there was no other side of the planet, let alone the message part. Yet here I am, doing it.
My own outlook is that IAs will eventually evolve to become PCs as we understand them now. People will want to write letters on their IA, and won't really understand why they need to buy a seperate machine to do that. So IAs will emerge with the power to do so. Before long they will have HDDs and user-fsckable GUIs. That is, they will be PCs by another name
This is what scares me. (And excites, too) People want to write a document on the IA. 'Why should I need a new computer?' they say. So, someone fills the need. In my fears, this is Microsoft. They have a web-based (with ActiveX) word processor. You can use it to write great docs, but you have to pay a monthy fee for the service.
See, At the moment, no company has yet been able to charge using the subscription model for mainstream software. Users won't hear of it. 'What if My subscription runs out when I have a big presentation?', and the companies aren't sure how to go about enforcing. But, with a web-based approach, users must log in. The system verifies the account status (and maybe allowed subnet for that account?), and they go on using WebWord. Stop paying? no problem, you just can't edit your docs, or print them.... And if MSWebWord stores your files 'securely' on the server, you can't even have someone else access them. All for your convenience.
That's just one scenerio. Hopefully, a free solution would be available, but the problem with that is server bandwitdh.. I'm sure ads would creep in somewhere (not that that's a problem at all).
Anyway, just some rants and raves. Don't take me too seriously.
The difference between tracking on the net, and tracking in real life is the ease of tracking hundreds of thousands at once, automatically. If I wanted to track you in real life, it'd be tough to also track all of the people on your block at the same time. Not so with net traffic. In fact, after initial setup, a place like doubleclick can gather much more usefull (to marketers) infomation much more quickly about hundreds of thousands of people than I can about you following you in real life.
As for needing my privacy; Do I care if someone knows I like nifty electronics? No. Do I care if I get unsolicited calls, emails, and letters selling such? Yes. I hate email spam. I hate telemarketers. The only thing worse is being target-marketed by a group of them that think I'm a hot prospect because of some damn data collected by an internet company.
You miss the point on crypto. You seem to assume that you need to have something to hide from legal authorities to use it. I use it every day, and here's why:
My father and I run a website that gets a small amount of e-commerce (ie, they buy things with credit cards) traffic. My father is deaf, and so we do most of our communicating by email. I DO NOT want the password-of-the-week seen by others. I know my email is intercepted regularly by script-kidz on my cable segment (I have a cable modem). So, I encrypt all the emails I send to him.. Is there any illegal activity here? no. Would a kid sniffing my email be breaking the law if he hacked my site? probably, but then I'd be out of business, and he probably couldn't pay if I successfully sued him. Encryption is simply the prudent thing to do here.
Now say my father sends me an encrypted email, and he accidentally encrypts it with my uncle's public key (he did that once). I now have encrypted data on my computer that reasonably I SHOULD have the key to, but I don't. Should I go to jail?
We had a 'thriving' local band.. we could sometimes do 4 gigs a month, and had a fairly good following. We had pressed our own CDs, and could sell a few, but we wanted the almighty exposure. We figured, hey, if more people heard our work, we could sell lots more CDs
So we signed up with a 'service' (that will rename nameless as long as I remain named). Mistake.
Here's the picture: we paid for top billing for a week, and had over 6,000 downloads. One of our songs was on a 'sampler' CD. Great, right?
Nope. we made exactly $0 from all this, and only sold 43 CDs. The profit we were paid lost us money over OUR costs to press each CD (our profit was about $.45 per CD, had we sold them all at that rate. But since we didn't we lost lots of money on the CDs we pressed in anticipation)
We were not told anything about the demographics of the audience downloading our CDs (I'm sure 'service' sold that information to someone else, though), and we made no money. We now have two songs that we can not ever put on CDs (at least we can play them live.) that are not sold through the 'service', and life generally sucks.
Now, even though we had a small local following, we are broken up. Could we have been contenders had we sticked it out? Probably not, but who knows... if a traditional label had signed us, we would certainly have sold more, made more, and still be playing...
Moral of the story: The record industry screws artists. The e-music industry is much worse, however, and should be avoided at all costs. Hell, I'd rather have had our mp3s pirated.
At the consulting firm I work for, and many others in this city (Omaha, NE), we get a 'hybrid' style. I'm paid salary at a good rate. This includes benefits on top, paid bench time, and vacation/holiday pay. For overtime, we am paid by the hour at whatever my salary/2080 comes out to. This amounts to straight time for overtime, but we do get paid.
This means I have a minimum check amount that increases when I work more hours. The client pays straight time for my services above 40 hrs. All told, I love this arrangement, and I have been both salary(exempt from overtime) and hourly with time+1/2 for overtime.
Actually, for consultant/contractors, I'm surprised this is not more standard.
This 'blurb' incorrectly states that all you have to do is open the email. Untrue.
In fact, all this kiddie is doing is mass-mailing an AOL grabbing trojan to AOL users. If they open the attached executable file (bypassing the warnings that AOL gives), then it gets the users stored AOL password and sends it back to a specific email address.
While I'm not an AOL fan or user, I have to say that this no more cracks AOL than BO2K cracks my windoze machine. As long as I don't run any unknown exe, its fine. However, If I'm dumb enough to do so, then the OS won't help me out with security. Same with AOL, don't be stupid, but if you are, then be aware that AOL stores your password on your machine in an easily accessable way.
This is not new. There've been lots of AOL password grabber trojans. Shouldn't AOL take the hint and possibly NOT store the password in this way? Not that I care too much about AOL.
Well, yes, entrapment and the power of the law can be scary, but let's think this through..
He actually thought that this girl was 13, and attempted to meet her to have sex with her.
If he had meet an actual 13yr old vulnerable to his 'charms', he would have possibly had sex with her.
Would you rather the law reacted to this, and let this girls life (and others?) possibly be ruined before they arrested him? Or should they try to stop it before he does it? If I had talked to this agent, who pretended to be a 13 yearold, I would have had a polite online conversation, and left her alone. (I have little in common with 13 yr old girls) They would not have arrested me, or searched my computer for kiddie porn. Why couldn't he do the same? The fact that he didn't do the same means he WOULD try it with any real girls he meets online.
If I tried to hire a hitman to kill you, wouldn't you rather that the first one I found was actually an agent undercover, instead? If so, should I be let go because he wasn't an _actual_ agent, but only a pretend one? So by your logic, the crime never happened, right?
I believe that the lawmakers go too far, and some law enforcers go too far. But in cases involving sex with minors (my sister is 13), I say, hang 'em all.