The world gravitates toward efficiency. Instant delivery, little cost, up-to-date. How can newspapers compete?
Have the laws changed to criminalise the technology and their customer base? Nah... it'd never happen...
And just how is such a device going to reach the Internet?
iptables -A INPUT --mac-source XX:XX:XX:XX:XX: -j DROP
And they can hardly send in the storm troopers based on this sort of evidence, "Midunno, the house got hit by lightning, maybe that screwed it up? I can't show you the device, it was broken so I threw it out".
That would also make for a nasty payload for a Windows virus. Not only does your DVD player get turned into a paperweight, the victim might also get raided by the DRM police.
I'll raise exactly one counter-example: Should fire departments be run as for-profit enterprises, and only purchase fire trucks in jurisdictions where they can make money charging for fire protection services?
This is how they started, insurance companies would run fire departments as a way of reducing the number of fire pay outs. The pointless duplication (where each area would be served by various companies) was rationalised to have one shared fire department (or something like that).
I am curious as to whether anyone is looking at Lend-Lease style arrangements for pandemic drugs? Say "owners" of drugs (we as a society arbitrarily say that they can "own" an idea) are paid a modest amount for production of critical drugs on the condition that those supplies are only used for national health. In return, these stocks are not released into the commercial market. This should not represent lost sales, as I doubt any public health budget would have the funds to buy all these drugs at the sticker price; in fact such sales should be in addition to what they'd get anyway.
If God Fearin' folk get hit by natural disasters, it's just like in Job and their faith is being tested.
If Godless goat sodomising strangers get hit by natural disasters, they are evil and are being righteously punished for their sins.
Simple eh?
Fortunaately most Godbotherers are intelligent enough to understand that if you chose to live in a hurricane zone, you will get the occassional hurricane.
There's a few hidden warts under the pretty veneer.For example, Google Earth uses a sphere instead of a proper coordinate space, making it silly to try read absolute location values. I am also (from first hand tinkering with the maps API) a bit dubious of connectivity via published standards (aka WMS, WFS).
My fear is that we'll lose a bunch of basic functionality in the rush to get pretty user interfaces.
RIM has been in the courts a lot with NTP and others: this non NTP one,here,here,and here. It wws all rather poetic since
RIM first came to notice as they seemed to be litigatious bastards until the blow torch of litigation was directed back at them.
All in all, an object demostration that closed proprietary systems are in not automatically immune from the patent cartels.
The big music labels do not need to exist anymore, all the middleware functions they used to provide are being automated (i.e. production and distribution of media) or commoditized (i.e. digital studios) out of existence. The big labels *know* that this happeneing, and while there's still a lot of industry based on the old model, they are working towards legislating themselves an ongoing source of income before it is realised that they are irrelevant. It is important to call them up on this sort of shennanigans lest the DRM gravy train be blindly accepted as a "natural" progression for the industry.
I am involved with a community radio station that used to offer (analogue) studio services for local bands. We got out of that because there's a bunch of small studios in town who can churn out damn fine recordings for very little cash, one of the *best* mastering people I have ever encountered has a little cave of a studio, some good mikes and a Macintosh. The whole million dollar studio thing is BS for people who love the sort of mussic industry we see in This is Spinal Tap.
The guy was on the news tonight, and his story was as fishy as. The reasons as to why he came back with such lousy proof are just odd, and he's heading off by himself to retrieve the rest (any day now) in secret for some poorly defined reason. If it was for real, you'd think he'd be pretty keen to at least have it up behind the bar at the local pub or something, the story's vibe was just wrong.
I am surprised that it's made the front page of Slashdot, then again...
Xix. (off to watch the MST3K episode of "Puma Man")
By late October, Mr. Srivastava's team was beginning to automate the testing that had historically been done by hand. If a feature had too many bugs, software "gates" rejected it from being used in Longhorn. If engineers had too many outstanding bugs they were tossed in "bug jail" and banned from writing new code. The goal, he says, was to get engineers to "do it right the first time."
All in all, the description sounds a lot like the Debian QA and build processes; automated builds, bug rates oncontributors and actions on contributors who bring in too many bugs.
I've seen a bunch of cool stuff being done with Ajax style approaches. Does anyone think for a minute that Google do not have plans to upgrade GMail? I hope Yahoo does well, as it will raise the bar for Google (and does anyone talk about Hotmail anymore, remember tham?).
The Big Lie is a great technique to compete against Microsoft, and MS uses it just as much against Linux (and other competitors) with issues such as security and TCO. Why do people use it? Because it seems to work. Do you think Balmer and Gates trash talk because they are petty?
LOMDON (AP) - A consortium of corporate sponsors today announced the Olympic Letter Management (OLM) initiative to enact mandatory technological measures to prevent uncontrolled use of alphabetic characters to steal valueable Intellectual Property.
"It's outrageuous!" exclaimed OLM spokesperson Bert Kneecapper, "After TrendySportingShoe(TM) spends billions buying Olympic (TM) naming rights, some thieving punk can steal our trademarks using a 20c crayon bought from any corner store!"
Under the OLM initiative, and device capable of reproducing alphabetic characters must implement a mechanism to honour the OLM Tradkemark flag, thereby preventing the device from reproducing trademarked sequences unless a valid licence exists. With time, they intend the service to extend to the enforcement of other text controls, such as micro-payments for use of famous quotes, and retrospective editing of history books.
Bert Kneecapper went on reject crayon manufacturer representations that the scheme was impractical, "Our members lose billions of dollars in un-earned revenue, how can they justify 20c crayons in the face of such flagerant theft?".
It is likely that the rate of change in pages will decline and the size of the page increase as the page matures/ages.
How about setting a threhold where edits to mature pages are randomly moderated by other Wikipedia users? This would not spot all abuses, but it would spot obvious defacement. If a small number of people agree that the edit looks OK, it goes live.
Some sort of karma system would also be a nice way of allowing authoritative sources (say who wrote the bulk of an article) to veto factual errors.
Can this also be used as a metric for the RIAA and MPAA to decide which people to take legal action against? Go for the most trusted, most highly rated individuals and take out the most influential (central? critical?) nodes. In the same way that cliques of poisoners would stand out.
We we turfed our old storage system, arranging a recognised "Certificate of Desttruction" was mandatory before I could let the disks and tapes out of the building. OTOH, most of government ICT is now outsourced here in Australia, so maybe the provider was cutting corners.
The agencies that handle lots of personal or sensitive data (the tax office, Medicare, Statistics, Defence etc.) have much stronger policies. For example, surplus PCs from these groups will be sold without drives. Lower risk areas can just scrib drives if there is a low risk of sensitive information being on the HD.
Until quite recently, our database software was on power unit licences. A formula number of CPUs x MHz x architecture is used to work out how much it will cost you to run the database. Why? Well they want people who are running huge databases to pay more, and size of server(s) is a pretty good measure, Amazon isn't going to run on a single CPU. That is, they charge as much as they think the customer can afford.
While an interesting question, how does this question manage to rate as a "insightful"?
To use a building analogy, we can create a perfect, bug-free classes, doors, windows, chimneys, plumbing, etc. etc. But even with "perfect" classes, you'll get some "idiot" using them in unexpected ways, like uing a shower curtain instead of a security screen for the front door.
Do we counter this by restricting how the "shower screen" class can be used? Or by limiting what kinds of classes can be inserted into ExteriorWall()? Can we reasonably anticipate how people will combine things?
To paraphrase The Young Ones, "Well it doesn't say, 'do not fill VCR with dish washing detergent'"
I can't even begin to count the number of times I've seen police in the US get away with speeding
Cops are allowed to do a lot of things that the general public are not allowed to do: speeding; carrying guns in public; physically restraining people; looking though your private things. Notionally they have the training and judgement that allows them to do these sorts of things safely. While most police forces have a policy against casual speeding, they aren't driving on a civilian licence anyway.
You need an "offshore" haven for (presumably) somewhat ambiguous "business" activities. Do you chose places like Switzerland, Cook Islands and suchlike, or a couple of guys sitting on top of a huge concrete drain pipe? Anyone with real money isn't going to take the risk.
How would they oppose action against Sealand? "Ehherm,... I have no *personal* interest in Sealand, but I want it to stay there because I like err... MP3s... errr.. tax evasion... errrr...."
OTOH, invading Switzerland look like poor form.
Anyway, it won't be troops. The Navy/RAF stop the Sealanders from landing until they get sick of drinking seawater. The last time Monaco seriously annoyed France, the French just shut the borders.
This is just plain stupid on their part. While a calculator may allow someone to check their answer, there's no-way it's going to show working as well. In any case, they should be insisting on working and be giving some marks to sttudents who understand what is required, but perhaps make a simple calculation error.
I agree, "show your workin" would eliminate the issue and make for better exams.
Xix.
Precedent: Silicon Graphics "Visual Workstation"
on
Apple Switching to Intel
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The SGI http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_Visual_Workstatio n>Visual Workstation shows just how easy it is to produce an x86 based computer that is not really a PC. The biggest difference is that there was no BIOS, but ARCS firmware.
Convergence in this area is something i have been expecting for a while now. The SIM in my phone has more capcity than my credit card, and I do not see why I need to carry a swag of plastic shards. We've already seen phone accounts being used for credit; call the vending machine and have the purchase added to you next phone bill. The phone companies already have the infrastructure to track and manage many small transactions.
Slashdot Mirror
The world gravitates toward efficiency. Instant delivery, little cost, up-to-date. How can newspapers compete?
Have the laws changed to criminalise the technology and their customer base? Nah... it'd never happen...
And just how is such a device going to reach the Internet?
iptables -A INPUT --mac-source XX:XX:XX:XX:XX: -j DROP
And they can hardly send in the storm troopers based on this sort of evidence, "Midunno, the house got hit by lightning, maybe that screwed it up? I can't show you the device, it was broken so I threw it out".
That would also make for a nasty payload for a Windows virus. Not only does your DVD player get turned into a paperweight, the victim might also get raided by the DRM police.
Xix.
I am curious as to whether anyone is looking at Lend-Lease style arrangements for pandemic drugs? Say "owners" of drugs (we as a society arbitrarily say that they can "own" an idea) are paid a modest amount for production of critical drugs on the condition that those supplies are only used for national health. In return, these stocks are not released into the commercial market. This should not represent lost sales, as I doubt any public health budget would have the funds to buy all these drugs at the sticker price; in fact such sales should be in addition to what they'd get anyway.
Xix.
It's easy for the literalists:
If God Fearin' folk get hit by natural disasters, it's just like in Job and their faith is being tested.
If Godless goat sodomising strangers get hit by natural disasters, they are evil and are being righteously punished for their sins.
Simple eh?
Fortunaately most Godbotherers are intelligent enough to understand that if you chose to live in a hurricane zone, you will get the occassional hurricane.
Xix.
The Australian Quarantine Inspection Service (AQIS) looks for that kind of stuff. Customs looks for stuff like pronography, guns, drugs and liquor.
There's a few hidden warts under the pretty veneer.For example, Google Earth uses a sphere instead of a proper coordinate space, making it silly to try read absolute location values. I am also (from first hand tinkering with the maps API) a bit dubious of connectivity via published standards (aka WMS, WFS).
My fear is that we'll lose a bunch of basic functionality in the rush to get pretty user interfaces.
Xix.
All in all, an object demostration that closed proprietary systems are in not automatically immune from the patent cartels.
Xix.
I am involved with a community radio station that used to offer (analogue) studio services for local bands. We got out of that because there's a bunch of small studios in town who can churn out damn fine recordings for very little cash, one of the *best* mastering people I have ever encountered has a little cave of a studio, some good mikes and a Macintosh. The whole million dollar studio thing is BS for people who love the sort of mussic industry we see in This is Spinal Tap.
Xix.
The guy was on the news tonight, and his story was as fishy as. The reasons as to why he came back with such lousy proof are just odd, and he's heading off by himself to retrieve the rest (any day now) in secret for some poorly defined reason. If it was for real, you'd think he'd be pretty keen to at least have it up behind the bar at the local pub or something, the story's vibe was just wrong.
I am surprised that it's made the front page of Slashdot, then again...
Xix.
(off to watch the MST3K episode of "Puma Man")
One of the biggest OS bigots I know is a Solaris bigot.
Xix.
By late October, Mr. Srivastava's team was beginning to
automate the testing that had historically been done by hand. If a feature had too many bugs, software "gates" rejected it from being used in Longhorn. If engineers had too many outstanding bugs they were tossed in "bug jail" and banned from writing new code. The goal, he says, was to get engineers to "do it right the first time."
All in all, the description sounds a lot like the Debian QA and build processes; automated builds, bug rates oncontributors and actions on contributors who bring in too many bugs.
I've seen a bunch of cool stuff being done with Ajax style approaches. Does anyone think for a minute that Google do not have plans to upgrade GMail? I hope Yahoo does well, as it will raise the bar for Google (and does anyone talk about Hotmail anymore, remember tham?).
Xix.
The Big Lie is a great technique to compete against Microsoft, and MS uses it just as much against Linux (and other competitors) with issues such as security and TCO. Why do people use it? Because it seems to work. Do you think Balmer and Gates trash talk because they are petty?
Xix.
LOMDON (AP) - A consortium of corporate sponsors today announced the Olympic Letter Management (OLM) initiative to enact mandatory technological measures to prevent uncontrolled use of alphabetic characters to steal valueable Intellectual Property.
"It's outrageuous!" exclaimed OLM spokesperson Bert Kneecapper, "After TrendySportingShoe(TM) spends billions buying Olympic (TM) naming rights, some thieving punk can steal our trademarks using a 20c crayon bought from any corner store!"
Under the OLM initiative, and device capable of reproducing alphabetic characters must implement a mechanism to honour the OLM Tradkemark flag, thereby preventing the device from reproducing trademarked sequences unless a valid licence exists. With time, they intend the service to extend to the enforcement of other text controls, such as micro-payments for use of famous quotes, and retrospective editing of history books.
Bert Kneecapper went on reject crayon manufacturer representations that the scheme was impractical, "Our members lose billions of dollars in un-earned revenue, how can they justify 20c crayons in the face of such flagerant theft?".
I don't know about "all", they still get it wrong sometimes.
Xix.
It is likely that the rate of change in pages will decline and the size of the page increase as the page matures/ages.
How about setting a threhold where edits to mature pages are randomly moderated by other Wikipedia users? This would not spot all abuses, but it would spot obvious defacement. If a small number of people agree that the edit looks OK, it goes live.
Some sort of karma system would also be a nice way of allowing authoritative sources (say who wrote the bulk of an article) to veto factual errors.
Xix.
Can this also be used as a metric for the RIAA and MPAA to decide which people to take legal action against? Go for the most trusted, most highly rated individuals and take out the most influential (central? critical?) nodes. In the same way that cliques of poisoners would stand out.
Xix.
We we turfed our old storage system, arranging a recognised "Certificate of Desttruction" was mandatory before I could let the disks and tapes out of the building. OTOH, most of government ICT is now outsourced here in Australia, so maybe the provider was cutting corners.
The agencies that handle lots of personal or sensitive data (the tax office, Medicare, Statistics, Defence etc.) have much stronger policies. For example, surplus PCs from these groups will be sold without drives. Lower risk areas can just scrib drives if there is a low risk of sensitive information being on the HD.
Xix.
Until quite recently, our database software was on power unit licences. A formula number of CPUs x MHz x architecture is used to work out how much it will cost you to run the database. Why? Well they want people who are running huge databases to pay more, and size of server(s) is a pretty good measure, Amazon isn't going to run on a single CPU. That is, they charge as much as they think the customer can afford.
While an interesting question, how does this question manage to rate as a "insightful"?
Xix.
And just what is "bug free" anyway?
To use a building analogy, we can create a perfect, bug-free classes, doors, windows, chimneys, plumbing, etc. etc. But even with "perfect" classes, you'll get some "idiot" using them in unexpected ways, like uing a shower curtain instead of a security screen for the front door.
Do we counter this by restricting how the "shower screen" class can be used? Or by limiting what kinds of classes can be inserted into ExteriorWall()? Can we reasonably anticipate how people will combine things?
To paraphrase The Young Ones, "Well it doesn't say, 'do not fill VCR with dish washing detergent'"
Xix.
Xix.
How would they oppose action against Sealand? "Ehherm,... I have no *personal* interest in Sealand, but I want it to stay there because I like err... MP3s... errr.. tax evasion... errrr...."
OTOH, invading Switzerland look like poor form.
Anyway, it won't be troops. The Navy/RAF stop the Sealanders from landing until they get sick of drinking seawater. The last time Monaco seriously annoyed France, the French just shut the borders.
This is just plain stupid on their part. While a calculator may allow someone to check their answer, there's no-way it's going to show working as well. In any case, they should be insisting on working and be giving some marks to sttudents who understand what is required, but perhaps make a simple calculation error.
I agree, "show your workin" would eliminate the issue and make for better exams.
Xix.
The SGI http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_Visual_Workstatio n>Visual Workstation shows just how easy it is to produce an x86 based computer that is not really a PC. The biggest difference is that there was no BIOS, but ARCS firmware.
Convergence in this area is something i have been expecting for a while now. The SIM in my phone has more capcity than my credit card, and I do not see why I need to carry a swag of plastic shards. We've already seen phone accounts being used for credit; call the vending machine and have the purchase added to you next phone bill. The phone companies already have the infrastructure to track and manage many small transactions.