For as much as Linux (sorry, Mac user here---I need Quark) users kvetch about the lack of Flash any time web browsers come up, I thought it would get posted. Oh well.
Moderate this as off-topic if you will, but does anyone remember the days when AOL was *strictly* a propietary ISP? Before the days when AOL'ers lurked (leaked) onto the Net proper? I get nostalgic for the days of Netscape 1.0. (Or even Mosaic betas...)
This entire discussion -- ORBS, RBL, etc. -- does bring up an interesting tangent: as a community, we have a helluva pull on the marionette strings. When a company does something bad, the ball usually starts rolling here for protest pages. But why doesn't someone start an "evil-company blackhole list" and disallow *all* services to that company. Block access to www.mattel.com or, better yet, redirect to a page telling people why Mattel is being evil and then give them the option of continuing to the site or signing a petition.
It's just a thought, a random and tangential thought, but hey... I figured why not throw it out there.
I've read Lynda's books and they're really good for beginner - intermediate designers, but kinda' are redundant once you know what you're doing. That being said, she's a kick ass person and a Mac person as well. (iirc, she worked electronic pre-press long before.)
The story from the networking guys. It sounds as tho this was not the first time these parties did this. They'd already received a slap-on-the-wrist for the same thing last fall.
Moderators: Moderate the post at that link up a bit, okay? It really deserves a +4 informative at the very least:-) Don't waste your points on me! Get that post!
Okay, okay. This is about as bad as feeding the trolls. this is in respone to a bit o' spam that's dirtying/. Best yet, it's got email addresses. Ugh-huh. rocwithu@prodigy.net, spierce@netzero.net
[quote]Does anyone know how to contact these guys 'n' gal to tell them how we at Slashdot support them, and about this legal argument? Seems to me that if they get a really sympathetic judge, their attorney(s) might be able to get an immediate dismissal.[/quote]
The students? No. They had their internet access revoked and student at OK State aren't allowed to use the public labs to check their email anyway. *smirk*
But these people might be a might interesting to bog down:
Registrant: Oklahoma State University (OKSTATE-DOM) 113 Math Sciences Stillwater, OK 74078-1050 US
Domain Name: OKSTATE.EDU
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Zone Contact: McCormick, Martin (MM129) martin@DC.CIS.OKSTATE.EDU Oklahoma State University Computer Center Data Communications Group Stillwater, OK 74078
(405) 744-6301 Billing Contact: Accounting, CIS (AC6894-ORG) cisbilling@DC.CIS.OKSTATE.EDU Oklahoma State University 113 Math Sciences Stillwater , OK 74078-1050 US
405 744 6301 Fax- 405 744 7861
Record last updated on 08-Nov-1999. Record created on 03-Mar-1986. Database last updated on 24-Mar-2000 15:20:21 EST.
Interesting thought: Though Apple's base stations are a bit pricey, similar solutions based on the same set of protocols (someone link the IEEE doc for me, will ya'? It's 802.11 Thank'ee) for lower prices and higher capacity. Most wireless networking products act like a mini-router, letting more-than-one (varies depending on the product) machines use the single base station. They could easily multiply their available connections several times over this way. (Yeah, the speed would drop -- but for basic web surfing, email, etc., it should be bearable and certainly better than none.)
From what it sounds like, they were plugging into a plain-old 10 BaseT drop, not into a 100 BaseT line which would elevate the "offense" to another level. Yeah, I can see where it's probably wrong--letting one group of students get by with it puts you on a slippery slope. Next thing you know everyone will be doing it. (Yeah, that's a bit from the heap as well.) they need to be told, "don't do that" and the campus IT department needs to view it as a sign that they are ludditely-fucked-up when it comes to technology.
It's 2000 for gawd's sakes: not providing 24/7, high-speed internet access would be like asking students bring their own toilet paper to school. It is something that one assumes a school provides in all the residence halls. On the toiler paper analogy, would the campus authorities get pissed (no pun intended, really) if I stole a few rolls from a public bathroom? Likely not....
Summary: Yeah, they did a not-good thing. But they did it out of utter necessity and, on a not necessarily conscience level, social protest.
The people involved in this case apparently didn't want to pay the $24 a month to get access in their room -- they thought they would just freeload by running a cable up to their room.
Not necessarily. As one of the two articles mentions, the univeristy is fairly strapped for cash. Though I do not know the situation at the university in question, it isn't unreasonable to presume that they also face a housing shortage--seniors and undergrad students stuck in what sounds (no internet, cable, air conditioning, etc.) like a ghetto-dorm leads me to believe that they were placed there out of necessity, not out of will.
----
But why in this instance?
on
Rack An iMac
·
· Score: 2
I saw this the other day linked from a Mac site. Yeah, it's great to put an iMac in a rack mount. But why did this guy do it? In the pictures, he's got it sitting on a table in an office, not rack-mounted. Seems a little stupid to me in this instance.
Ironically, that does make sense: if you're dealing with even a 100,000 watt transmitter, you'll get fairly decent signal leakage into space. Let's see the MPAA try to get back that copy of DeCSS;-)
Though I'm a student, I work as a free-lance graphic designer. Right now I'm doing a bit of work on spec, meaning I get paid only if the client accepts the work, mainly to pad my portfolio and generally spread good karma because the client is a good guy.
Conveniently, he happens to be an independent musician in Austin Texas. (Guy by the name of Phil Pritchett. Check his web site out. It's cool -- and there are MP3s.) The company that is actually pressing the packaging and making and pressing the CD itself is DiscMakers a national company which does a lot of work for indie artists.
Just so happens that I've got a copy of their catalog sitting across my lap, open to page 5... and hey! There's a price listing here!
For CDs in Jewel boxes, the pricing is as follows:
300pc - $1995
500pc - $2190
1000pc - $2490
2000pc - $3780
3000pc - $4860
5000pc - $6100
10000pc - $10 400
(All prices US$. Subtract $200 if submitting your own, press ready art.)
The above includes:
Glass mastering
4/4, 4-page booklets. (Full color on each side of the paper)
Full color tray insert
Two color silk screen on the disc label. (Well... three really, if you count the silver of the disc itself)
All proofs -- design and audio -- FedEx'd to you overnight
UPC label which itself is normally $350 if you do the paperwork yourself.
Now for 10k pieces, the price-per-piece is US$1.04. Labels run more than that and own their presses and mastering equipment, meaning that they pay cost-only (film, plates, paper, ink) for their runs. So you can safely drop that per piece cost down to less than $.25/piece.
Now where is the rest of your $17 going? A bit to the artist, a bit for studio costs (mixing, recording time, etc.), a bit for marketing... and the rest is profit and corporate lawyer money.
Slightly off-topic, but I'm a bit miffed that people don't realise that the students are not the only ones pissed about the banning of Napster. My school recently added itself to the list of Napster free campuses. A few people that work in the computer center, primarily the poor souls who work the help center, are trying to work around the ban because they want their napster. Additionally, I've spoken with several professors who are all quite irked about the ban These aren't c.sci. professors or engineering, math, physics people: It is the philosophy professors.
Point? Point is: there are more people pissed than the RIAA realises. There is no stereotypical Napster user and there is no stereotypical "copyrighted MP3 downloader".
I've never bought anything from their online store, but B&N's campus bookstore arm is quite evil. My school recently released control of its bookstore to B&N. What happened? Textbook shortages, longer lines, and -- worst of all -- much higher prices. Not only did we lose our 10% discount, B&N actually increased prices by another 5% or so if my comparisson shopping is correct.
And now... now they are building a superstore north of campus, in the middle of friggin nowhere relative to the campus proper and the residence halls. At the very least, it's a several block hike. You may say, "big deal... I can actually get some excercise" but we're talking the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Most people buy their books for the spring semester when they come back after break, first week or second week in January. Last year, 1999, the temps were about -30 without the wind chill and substantially colder. Don't believe me? Check out Jan uary 13, 1999 in North Dakota.
Okay yeah, Rob went a bit nuts with the summary so we need to give him a collective good kick in the ass. Someone set a date/time in Zulu time and I'll be there.
anyway, I'm puzzling over the fact that the company states that it will cost US$12 500 to issue new logins and passwords? WTF? Depending on the size of the company, it's going to be an administrative bitch, but it's nothing terribly difficult and is basically a time is money issue.
Are they embellshing for effect, or are they just morons?
What are your views on standards compliance for, baseline, HTML 4.01 and CSS-1? Are we fighting towards a goal which is universally unattainable (due to the embbeded nature of some browsers like WebTV and *cough* IE on Windows), or are we nearing a new age for web developers?
"They lost negative $n." By losing a negative, you're actually gaining money. It's like saying, "Hey, I just lost -1 shoe! I had one shoe before, now I have two!" It's an easy enough mistake unless you read Michael's leader carefully, asking yourself what it is really saying.
Really like the sarcasm, Michael, but doesn't it sound like the bullshit the RIAA is using in its own propaganda? "MP3s hurt music sales... we're selling more music! People place 'intrinsic value' in music!"
What they've been spoon-feeding the media (it's kinda incestual in a way... they've been media-fucking their keepers; e.g., Time-Warner, etc. who have interests in music and news media) is exactly that: a huge contradiction. I'm going to assume that their sales statistics are based on fact. This means that their entire crusade against MP3s is based on non-existant evidence. The RIAA wants us to believe that MP3s are hurting music distribution, when in fact their monetary sales and unit sales are both substantially up? Doesn't make sense.
Of course the few odd pirates will impact the bottom line, but I'm guessing there are a lot of people who get an MP3 from a friend, off the net, etc. and then go buy the album. A friend just turned me on to Neutral Milk Hotel via 200MBs of MP3s that she had up on restricted FTP server. Guess what CDs are going to be in my mail box on Monday? Two Neutral Milk Hotel albums.
I couldn't agree more with the fact that "culture" is an elitist term, and we're out for a divergence or at the very least a huge paradigm shift. In my decade on the Internet (I was around pre-web), I've developed several strong friendships and close personal ties. I was even involved in a year-and-a-half long net romance with someone from the opposite corner of North Dakota. In many ways, it is the relationship by which I measure all others, as she and I were deeply intimate on a mental level. (Of course, pleasures of the flesh did come later.)
Anyway, I think we're heading for a culture shift. For far too long, good culture has been defined in a top-down-matter: the upper crust of society says it is good, so it is good. True, we do see bottom up movements, but quite often their import is denied or warned against by the "cultural elite". With the rise of the web, culture has already become far more democratic than 10 years ago. The web is probably not the stimulus for change, but it is one hell of a catalyst.
I remember reading a piece on Scott Adams about a month or two before the animated Dilbert series started airing. IIRC, they had a shot of the packaging mock-up and had a bit from Adams on it. Anyone else remember this? Mmmmmm.... PHB. Pointy-Haired-Burrito.
I'm really glad to see a corporate entity with somewhat of a soul. In a utilitarian sense, they are just doing what's good for the economy and good for their bottom line: reducing costs to boost profit. Good for Tesco.
Now the question is: How is this done and can off-the-shelf DVD equipment in the United States and Canada be modified in a like way? And what penalty -- if any -- will the MPA (or MPAA... never got the two straightened out) impose upon Tesco for selling a unit which can be made to defeat zones? I view it somewhat akin to overclocking: The manufacturer provides the ability, but assumes no legal responsibility if you screw up. If the device is in your possesion, you should be able to modify it as you wish.
Slashdot Mirror
Well I submitted this as a story the other day, but apparently no one cared about it:
For as much as Linux (sorry, Mac user here---I need Quark) users kvetch about the lack of Flash any time web browsers come up, I thought it would get posted. Oh well.
----
----
Moderate this as off-topic if you will, but does anyone remember the days when AOL was *strictly* a propietary ISP? Before the days when AOL'ers lurked (leaked) onto the Net proper? I get nostalgic for the days of Netscape 1.0. (Or even Mosaic betas...)
This entire discussion -- ORBS, RBL, etc. -- does bring up an interesting tangent: as a community, we have a helluva pull on the marionette strings. When a company does something bad, the ball usually starts rolling here for protest pages. But why doesn't someone start an "evil-company blackhole list" and disallow *all* services to that company. Block access to www.mattel.com or, better yet, redirect to a page telling people why Mattel is being evil and then give them the option of continuing to the site or signing a petition.
It's just a thought, a random and tangential thought, but hey... I figured why not throw it out there.
----
I've read Lynda's books and they're really good for beginner - intermediate designers, but kinda' are redundant once you know what you're doing. That being said, she's a kick ass person and a Mac person as well. (iirc, she worked electronic pre-press long before.)
----
SID Link
The story from the networking guys. It sounds as tho this was not the first time these parties did this. They'd already received a slap-on-the-wrist for the same thing last fall.
Moderators: Moderate the post at that link up a bit, okay? It really deserves a +4 informative at the very least :-) Don't waste your points on me! Get that post!
----
Okay, okay. This is about as bad as feeding the trolls. this is in respone to a bit o' spam that's dirtying /. Best yet, it's got email addresses. Ugh-huh. rocwithu@prodigy.net, spierce@netzero.net
----
Giving them the benefit of the doubt, might they be on a PBX phone system or the like? Or they could just be stupid. Yup. Stupid.
----
[quote]Does anyone know how to contact these guys 'n' gal to tell them how we at Slashdot support them, and about this legal argument? Seems to me that if they get a really sympathetic judge, their attorney(s) might be able to get an immediate dismissal.[/quote]
The students? No. They had their internet access revoked and student at OK State aren't allowed to use the public labs to check their email anyway. *smirk*
But these people might be a might interesting to bog down:
Registrant:
Oklahoma State University (OKSTATE-DOM)
113 Math Sciences
Stillwater, OK 74078-1050
US
Domain Name: OKSTATE.EDU
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
McCormick, Martin (MM129) martin@DC.CIS.OKSTATE.EDU
Oklahoma State University Computer Center
Data Communications Group
Stillwater, OK 74078
(405) 744-6301
Billing Contact:
Accounting, CIS (AC6894-ORG) cisbilling@DC.CIS.OKSTATE.EDU
Oklahoma State University
113 Math Sciences
Stillwater , OK 74078-1050
US
405 744 6301
Fax- 405 744 7861
Record last updated on 08-Nov-1999.
Record created on 03-Mar-1986.
Database last updated on 24-Mar-2000 15:20:21 EST.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS.CIS.OKSTATE.EDU 139.78.100.1
NS2.CIS.OKSTATE.EDU 139.78.200.1
----
Interesting thought: Though Apple's base stations are a bit pricey, similar solutions based on the same set of protocols (someone link the IEEE doc for me, will ya'? It's 802.11 Thank'ee) for lower prices and higher capacity. Most wireless networking products act like a mini-router, letting more-than-one (varies depending on the product) machines use the single base station. They could easily multiply their available connections several times over this way. (Yeah, the speed would drop -- but for basic web surfing, email, etc., it should be bearable and certainly better than none.)
----
From what it sounds like, they were plugging into a plain-old 10 BaseT drop, not into a 100 BaseT line which would elevate the "offense" to another level. Yeah, I can see where it's probably wrong--letting one group of students get by with it puts you on a slippery slope. Next thing you know everyone will be doing it. (Yeah, that's a bit from the heap as well.) they need to be told, "don't do that" and the campus IT department needs to view it as a sign that they are ludditely-fucked-up when it comes to technology.
It's 2000 for gawd's sakes: not providing 24/7, high-speed internet access would be like asking students bring their own toilet paper to school. It is something that one assumes a school provides in all the residence halls. On the toiler paper analogy, would the campus authorities get pissed (no pun intended, really) if I stole a few rolls from a public bathroom? Likely not....
Summary: Yeah, they did a not-good thing. But they did it out of utter necessity and, on a not necessarily conscience level, social protest.
----
The people involved in this case apparently didn't want to pay the $24 a month to get access in their room -- they thought they would just freeload by running a cable up to their room.
Not necessarily. As one of the two articles mentions, the univeristy is fairly strapped for cash. Though I do not know the situation at the university in question, it isn't unreasonable to presume that they also face a housing shortage--seniors and undergrad students stuck in what sounds (no internet, cable, air conditioning, etc.) like a ghetto-dorm leads me to believe that they were placed there out of necessity, not out of will.
----
I saw this the other day linked from a Mac site. Yeah, it's great to put an iMac in a rack mount. But why did this guy do it? In the pictures, he's got it sitting on a table in an office, not rack-mounted. Seems a little stupid to me in this instance.
----
Ironically, that does make sense: if you're dealing with even a 100,000 watt transmitter, you'll get fairly decent signal leakage into space. Let's see the MPAA try to get back that copy of DeCSS ;-)
----
Though I'm a student, I work as a free-lance graphic designer. Right now I'm doing a bit of work on spec, meaning I get paid only if the client accepts the work, mainly to pad my portfolio and generally spread good karma because the client is a good guy.
Conveniently, he happens to be an independent musician in Austin Texas. (Guy by the name of Phil Pritchett. Check his web site out. It's cool -- and there are MP3s.) The company that is actually pressing the packaging and making and pressing the CD itself is DiscMakers a national company which does a lot of work for indie artists.
Just so happens that I've got a copy of their catalog sitting across my lap, open to page 5... and hey! There's a price listing here!
For CDs in Jewel boxes, the pricing is as follows:
(All prices US$. Subtract $200 if submitting your own, press ready art.)
The above includes:
Now for 10k pieces, the price-per-piece is US$1.04. Labels run more than that and own their presses and mastering equipment, meaning that they pay cost-only (film, plates, paper, ink) for their runs. So you can safely drop that per piece cost down to less than $.25/piece.
Now where is the rest of your $17 going? A bit to the artist, a bit for studio costs (mixing, recording time, etc.), a bit for marketing... and the rest is profit and corporate lawyer money.
----
Slightly off-topic, but I'm a bit miffed that people don't realise that the students are not the only ones pissed about the banning of Napster. My school recently added itself to the list of Napster free campuses. A few people that work in the computer center, primarily the poor souls who work the help center, are trying to work around the ban because they want their napster. Additionally, I've spoken with several professors who are all quite irked about the ban These aren't c.sci. professors or engineering, math, physics people: It is the philosophy professors.
Point? Point is: there are more people pissed than the RIAA realises. There is no stereotypical Napster user and there is no stereotypical "copyrighted MP3 downloader".
----
I've never bought anything from their online store, but B&N's campus bookstore arm is quite evil. My school recently released control of its bookstore to B&N. What happened? Textbook shortages, longer lines, and -- worst of all -- much higher prices. Not only did we lose our 10% discount, B&N actually increased prices by another 5% or so if my comparisson shopping is correct.
And now... now they are building a superstore north of campus, in the middle of friggin nowhere relative to the campus proper and the residence halls. At the very least, it's a several block hike. You may say, "big deal... I can actually get some excercise" but we're talking the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Most people buy their books for the spring semester when they come back after break, first week or second week in January. Last year, 1999, the temps were about -30 without the wind chill and substantially colder. Don't believe me? Check out Jan uary 13, 1999 in North Dakota.
----
Okay yeah, Rob went a bit nuts with the summary so we need to give him a collective good kick in the ass. Someone set a date/time in Zulu time and I'll be there.
anyway, I'm puzzling over the fact that the company states that it will cost US$12 500 to issue new logins and passwords? WTF? Depending on the size of the company, it's going to be an administrative bitch, but it's nothing terribly difficult and is basically a time is money issue.
Are they embellshing for effect, or are they just morons?
----
What are your views on standards compliance for, baseline, HTML 4.01 and CSS-1? Are we fighting towards a goal which is universally unattainable (due to the embbeded nature of some browsers like WebTV and *cough* IE on Windows), or are we nearing a new age for web developers?
----
"They lost negative $n." By losing a negative, you're actually gaining money. It's like saying, "Hey, I just lost -1 shoe! I had one shoe before, now I have two!" It's an easy enough mistake unless you read Michael's leader carefully, asking yourself what it is really saying.
----
Really like the sarcasm, Michael, but doesn't it sound like the bullshit the RIAA is using in its own propaganda? "MP3s hurt music sales... we're selling more music! People place 'intrinsic value' in music!"
What they've been spoon-feeding the media (it's kinda incestual in a way... they've been media-fucking their keepers; e.g., Time-Warner, etc. who have interests in music and news media) is exactly that: a huge contradiction. I'm going to assume that their sales statistics are based on fact. This means that their entire crusade against MP3s is based on non-existant evidence. The RIAA wants us to believe that MP3s are hurting music distribution, when in fact their monetary sales and unit sales are both substantially up? Doesn't make sense.
Of course the few odd pirates will impact the bottom line, but I'm guessing there are a lot of people who get an MP3 from a friend, off the net, etc. and then go buy the album. A friend just turned me on to Neutral Milk Hotel via 200MBs of MP3s that she had up on restricted FTP server. Guess what CDs are going to be in my mail box on Monday? Two Neutral Milk Hotel albums.
----
I couldn't agree more with the fact that "culture" is an elitist term, and we're out for a divergence or at the very least a huge paradigm shift. In my decade on the Internet (I was around pre-web), I've developed several strong friendships and close personal ties. I was even involved in a year-and-a-half long net romance with someone from the opposite corner of North Dakota. In many ways, it is the relationship by which I measure all others, as she and I were deeply intimate on a mental level. (Of course, pleasures of the flesh did come later.)
Anyway, I think we're heading for a culture shift. For far too long, good culture has been defined in a top-down-matter: the upper crust of society says it is good, so it is good. True, we do see bottom up movements, but quite often their import is denied or warned against by the "cultural elite". With the rise of the web, culture has already become far more democratic than 10 years ago. The web is probably not the stimulus for change, but it is one hell of a catalyst.
----
I remember reading a piece on Scott Adams about a month or two before the animated Dilbert series started airing. IIRC, they had a shot of the packaging mock-up and had a bit from Adams on it. Anyone else remember this? Mmmmmm.... PHB. Pointy-Haired-Burrito.
----
Well, at least you guys are free to own guns.
Yes... that way, we can overthrow the MPAA.
----
I'm really glad to see a corporate entity with somewhat of a soul. In a utilitarian sense, they are just doing what's good for the economy and good for their bottom line: reducing costs to boost profit. Good for Tesco.
Now the question is: How is this done and can off-the-shelf DVD equipment in the United States and Canada be modified in a like way? And what penalty -- if any -- will the MPA (or MPAA... never got the two straightened out) impose upon Tesco for selling a unit which can be made to defeat zones? I view it somewhat akin to overclocking: The manufacturer provides the ability, but assumes no legal responsibility if you screw up. If the device is in your possesion, you should be able to modify it as you wish.
----
I bet Scott McNealy is wondering when the security system for Bill Gates' mansion reboots daily.
----