"Internet Explorer." Ok. Explains what it does. "NT". Ok, it's an acronym of sorts. People like those. "XP," same thing except it uses the letter "x" which people just adore in acronyms. "Intellimouse." Sounds nice and maybe people will think they become brighter when they use it, good call.
"Blackcomb"?
Marketroid #1: "Ooo! Bob! I have it! We'll combine the word 'black' -- dark and insidious -- with the word 'comb,' which is something that most of the people using our services pine longingly for the use of!" Marketroid #2: "Jesus, Tim, you're a !@#$ing genius! I love you!"
From the article: "WorldCom says that if problems with a spammer persist, the company will send increasingly stern notices and eventually cut off service."
I wonder if the relatively recent (October) change in hard drive warranties was a pre-emptive move on the manufacturers part realizing that they could ship these just-good-enough drives with severe early mortality rates and get away with it.
I don't see Fujitsu in the lineup but I know very little about hard drives, so far all I know one of the manufacturers Tom's Hardware reviews actually applies to them.
achurch writes: "In case you somehow missed it, nothing at all has happened to the information. The robbers stole a physical object. This particular physical object happens to contain valuable information, yes, but that information is still available from many other sources. This also has nothing to do with either the information itself or the physical object containing it being "too valuable for one person to own"; the issue is that the physical object was taken from its owner without permission. This is, quite simply, a case of theft in the most basic sense of the word."
No, I didn't miss a thing.
The point is that the robbers have said, basically, "this is now mine" to the exclusion of everyone else. Similarly, Intellectual Property Laws do the same thing -- they legally give one person the exclusive right to a chunk of information to the exclusion of everyone else.
I'm not trying to say that both items were physical, I'm saying that in both instnaces, one person gained while everyone else suffered.
You argue that a physical item was taken from the owner and as such it is a theft that sets it apart from something owned by virtue of IP law. But in doing this you actually make my point for me. I'm suggesting that while the thief took a physical item from it's rightful owner, a person who claims a bit of knowledge under IP law is stealing it from the public. For you to continue to disagree you'd have to argue that the information was never the public's to begin with.
Unfortunately, IP law does not give room for subsequent invention.
Suppose you make thing A in 1990 and, say, patent it. If I come to this same idea in 1995, I cannot do anything with it even if I never heard of your work. It's gone, it's out of the realm of 'possible,' whereas it once was. In other words, it went from the public pool -- where anyone could have thought it up if they were bright enough -- to the private domain of the first person to do so. This is accomplished through IP law.
It is with this logical sequence that I consider IP law in it's current manifestation to be "theft" that is no less heinous than the stealing of Principia. The only difference is social perception and legal application, which is arbitrary and demonstrably inconsistent.
Finally, I realize it is easier to paint someone as a "troll" than mount a logical defense, but it makes you look foolish. Use it sparingly.
An Anonymous Coward (aren't they all?) wrote: "Seriously, if I had points now I'd mod you down for having such a stupid, whinging.sig."
Gee, thanks for proving my point about the moderation system being inherantly abusive, scooter. The point being that discussion is far preferred to death-by-disagreement moderation. Challenge me with your keyboard, not your mouse.
Why do people view some sets of information as too valuable for one person to own (eg, the thief or the person who hired them) yet still back the very concept of Intellecual Property?
After all, all the robber did was remove it from the public domain, effectively. Illegal, sure, but the effect is the same; the public is out a tremendous good to benefit the greedy few/one.
michael writes: "Ever suspected (or feared) that web users are mostly mindless sheep evaluating your website more by the eye candy than your carefully crafted content? Well, it appears you were right."
Thanks, michael.
In other news. water is still wet, the sky is still blue and yes, Barbara Streisand still sucks.
SomeOtherGuy writes: "I don't know if I am just in a weird mood or not -- but that has to be the funniest post I have seen today."
Worse, I actually support all this no-buy-until-vorbis meme going on. I've just been seeing so damned much of it lately...and I figured it was funnier than wondering if I could beowulf them, right?
From the article: "We built our system on Microsoft Windows because Windows is a reliable, solid, reasonably priced, nearly universal platform - and for the software future, "universal" is nonnegotiable. We need to run the system on as many computers as possible and manage the maximum range of electronic documents.
Each is nonetheless still solid enough to be a good, steady platform for the next step in software. But Windows is the marketplace victor and has now won a decisive legal imprimatur. There is no technical reason for us to move to Linux; why should we switch? Why should our customers?"
I think it is amusing that David Gelernter, the author, is clamoring for a new paradigm in the way that we look at information yet buttresses his argument for using Windows as a platform by saying Windows is the old paradigm. I guess my best answer to Mr. Gelernter as to why he should port to Linux is "don't." If it is a good idea, we will. And if the information is really entirely removed from the operating system with which it is stored, then this is merely a matter of implementation. If it isn't, and we can't, then you really haven't done what you've set out to do, have you?
My tagline reads: It's much easier to mod me down than to post an intelligent reply.
An Anonymous Coward (aren't they all) wrote: "Hmm, good point. I'll remember that next time i have mod points."
Well thank god you posted anonymously! Preserving those all-important karma points!!
The point is that it is much more useful to have dialogue than a knee-jerk "oh, I don't agree with you" moderation system because it gets abused. -1 no longer means "this is a bad post" so much as "I don't like what you had to say." I'm not sure it was ever anything else, really.
And really, at least try for the appearance of self-respect and just post as yourself. Is karma that important to you? It shouldn't be. Observe:
Hey! Someone with mod points! Here is a big fat link to some guy's torn-up asshole. Please mod this post down to prove that people should be more worried about saying what is on their mind than karmawhoring. Metamoderators, please disregard any -1 modding done to this post. It was requested.
And to the original AC, you're a nitwit. People like you are the reason the signal-to-noise ratio on Slash went to complete shit years ago. Thanks, much obliged.
This is of marginal value because while it may keep things under wraps while the hack is occurring, if the hacker is caught (the goal, after all), then they have the right (in the U.S. at least) to face their accusers. Barring a rather broad-sweeping gag order, the press will get wind of it. And given that the bait here is for the company to remain anonymous permanently so users of that company to not lose trust in that company, this is of dubious value.
Plus, IF the hacker (remember a lot of jobs are done from the inside) catches wind that the FBI has been contacted and is being asked to be discrete, this is a new weapon. They now know that they have brand new button to push that the company would, for whatever reason, really not want pushed.
E. Starting three months after the entry of this Final Judgment to the Court, Microsoft shall make available for use by third parties, for the sole purpose of interoperating or communicating with a Windows Operating System Product, on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms (consistent with Section III.I), any Communications Protocol that is, on or after the date this Final Judgment is submitted to the Court, (i) implemented in a Windows Operating System Product installed on a client computer, and (ii) used to interoperate, or communicate, natively (i.e., without the addition of software code to the client operating system product) with a Microsoft server operating system product.
Actually, I think you might have hit upon the answer; film in binocular.
This will preserve the interference "source." While monitors will be in mono, we're not looking for depth, only reproduction of color. If this display works using an interference pattern, then it can reproduce the colors in a way that we see it. The difference is that the color is produced by the panel and not your brain.
I'd really like to have some photographers chime in on this one.
I'm a photographer myself and "amateur" would be an understatement. I've always been vexed by the inability of the camera to record what I see. For example, I went to the Boston Aquarium a few months back and while my shots were acceptable, the colors were nothing like what I was seeing in-person. Brilliant blues and yellows look painfully muted and boring in my results. I'm told that is a shortcoming of the photography medium and photographers have to use tricks to get those wonderful colors you see in mags like National Geographic, Photo, etc. Well...why?
So what I guess I'm asking is "can this technology be used to not only create and present colors in a 'natural' way but possibly capture them that way as well?"
On page three of the GameSpy article, they get into AI a bit. I wonder if we're ever going to have AI cards like we do now with nics and graphics cards.
Why not? Why not have a whole processor dedicated specifically to the type of algorithmic applications that AI requires?
I certainly did not mean to imply some cabalistic conspiracy. But I am suggesting that the Vatican might be hesitant to go out of their way to invite problems.
jdavidb writes: "Not sure where the poster above got the idea that Esther was omitted in Catholic or Protestant Bibles..."
It's called "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." =)
My main idea is still there (will the church allow possibly conflicting books' "source code" to be released?), but I was a bit hasty in including Esther. I read that it was omitted in some works and made a leap of logic that apparently was wrong.
I would imagine most Slashdotters are aware that the Vatican is the head of the Roman Catholic Church. Another factoid, but possibly not so obvious, is that the Bible as we know it today -- most people are familiar with the King James Version -- is a collection of works whose inclusion (or exclusion if you want to think of it that way) is more or less arbitrary. For example, "Esther" is omitted (yes, I'm serious).
So what I'm getting at is whether the Vatican plans on opening up all works for perusal or do they plan on omitting certain works based, possibly, on how well the information fits in with the desired line of thinking.
What if there are works that don't dovetail with the accepted works? What if some writings in their collection outright contradict other writings? Is the Vatican ready to drop the line that theology is too important to leave to the commoners, really?
From the article: "A Navy ship could use the laser, with its beam traveling at the speed of light, to fend off even the fastest missiles. And ground troops could use a Humvee-mounted version of the weapon to instantly knock out incoming enemy artillery and mortar shells. "
This is, of course, an arms race. So what happens when they're not firing missles anymore, but lasers?
I'm not suggesting it's a bad idea. I'd just love to see what protection they'll propose when our opponents get up-to-speed. I also have to wonder if there is a low-tech way of defeating it (remember when we spent millions coming up with a pen that would write in zero-G and the Russians just used pencils?)...
Slashdot Mirror
Lendrick wrote:
"You stop right now, or we'll issue an ultimatum!"
You know, WorldCom's stance toward spammers is beginning to look a lot like Bush Part Deux' stance toward Iraq.
I can't think of anything else funny to say about the whole thing so this will have to suffice.
"Internet Explorer." Ok. Explains what it does. "NT". Ok, it's an acronym of sorts. People like those. "XP," same thing except it uses the letter "x" which people just adore in acronyms. "Intellimouse." Sounds nice and maybe people will think they become brighter when they use it, good call.
"Blackcomb"?
Marketroid #1: "Ooo! Bob! I have it! We'll combine the word 'black' -- dark and insidious -- with the word 'comb,' which is something that most of the people using our services pine longingly for the use of!"
Marketroid #2: "Jesus, Tim, you're a !@#$ing genius! I love you!"
From the article:
... Or we'll say 'stop' again!
"WorldCom says that if problems with a spammer persist, the company will send increasingly stern notices and eventually cut off service."
Stop!
I wonder if the relatively recent (October) change in hard drive warranties was a pre-emptive move on the manufacturers part realizing that they could ship these just-good-enough drives with severe early mortality rates and get away with it.
I don't see Fujitsu in the lineup but I know very little about hard drives, so far all I know one of the manufacturers Tom's Hardware reviews actually applies to them.
achurch writes:
"In case you somehow missed it, nothing at all has happened to the information. The robbers stole a physical object. This particular physical object happens to contain valuable information, yes, but that information is still available from many other sources. This also has nothing to do with either the information itself or the physical object containing it being "too valuable for one person to own"; the issue is that the physical object was taken from its owner without permission. This is, quite simply, a case of theft in the most basic sense of the word."
No, I didn't miss a thing.
The point is that the robbers have said, basically, "this is now mine" to the exclusion of everyone else. Similarly, Intellectual Property Laws do the same thing -- they legally give one person the exclusive right to a chunk of information to the exclusion of everyone else.
I'm not trying to say that both items were physical, I'm saying that in both instnaces, one person gained while everyone else suffered.
You argue that a physical item was taken from the owner and as such it is a theft that sets it apart from something owned by virtue of IP law. But in doing this you actually make my point for me. I'm suggesting that while the thief took a physical item from it's rightful owner, a person who claims a bit of knowledge under IP law is stealing it from the public. For you to continue to disagree you'd have to argue that the information was never the public's to begin with.
Unfortunately, IP law does not give room for subsequent invention.
Suppose you make thing A in 1990 and, say, patent it. If I come to this same idea in 1995, I cannot do anything with it even if I never heard of your work. It's gone, it's out of the realm of 'possible,' whereas it once was. In other words, it went from the public pool -- where anyone could have thought it up if they were bright enough -- to the private domain of the first person to do so. This is accomplished through IP law.
It is with this logical sequence that I consider IP law in it's current manifestation to be "theft" that is no less heinous than the stealing of Principia. The only difference is social perception and legal application, which is arbitrary and demonstrably inconsistent.
Finally, I realize it is easier to paint someone as a "troll" than mount a logical defense, but it makes you look foolish. Use it sparingly.
An Anonymous Coward (aren't they all?) wrote: .sig."
"Seriously, if I had points now I'd mod you down for having such a stupid, whinging
Gee, thanks for proving my point about the moderation system being inherantly abusive, scooter. The point being that discussion is far preferred to death-by-disagreement moderation. Challenge me with your keyboard, not your mouse.
Why do people view some sets of information as too valuable for one person to own (eg, the thief or the person who hired them) yet still back the very concept of Intellecual Property?
After all, all the robber did was remove it from the public domain, effectively. Illegal, sure, but the effect is the same; the public is out a tremendous good to benefit the greedy few/one.
Where is the difference?
SACD, meet DivX. DivX, meet SACD.
michael writes:
"Ever suspected (or feared) that web users are mostly mindless sheep evaluating your website more by the eye candy than your carefully crafted content? Well, it appears you were right."
Thanks, michael.
In other news. water is still wet, the sky is still blue and yes, Barbara Streisand still sucks.
SomeOtherGuy writes:
...and I figured it was funnier than wondering if I could beowulf them, right?
"I don't know if I am just in a weird mood or not -- but that has to be the funniest post I have seen today."
Worse, I actually support all this no-buy-until-vorbis meme going on. I've just been seeing so damned much of it lately
I'm not buying one untill it supports the OGG format.
From the article:
"We built our system on Microsoft Windows because Windows is a reliable, solid, reasonably priced, nearly universal platform - and for the software future, "universal" is nonnegotiable. We need to run the system on as many computers as possible and manage the maximum range of electronic documents.
Each is nonetheless still solid enough to be a good, steady platform for the next step in software. But Windows is the marketplace victor and has now won a decisive legal imprimatur. There is no technical reason for us to move to Linux; why should we switch? Why should our customers?"
I think it is amusing that David Gelernter, the author, is clamoring for a new paradigm in the way that we look at information yet buttresses his argument for using Windows as a platform by saying Windows is the old paradigm. I guess my best answer to Mr. Gelernter as to why he should port to Linux is "don't." If it is a good idea, we will. And if the information is really entirely removed from the operating system with which it is stored, then this is merely a matter of implementation. If it isn't, and we can't, then you really haven't done what you've set out to do, have you?
chevybowtie writes:
"What is the social problem?"
Well, it's social, and they consider it a problem. Hence a technical solution to a social issue.
Doesn't mean *I* consider it a problem. Hell, looks like the march of technology to me. You can only bail out the luddites for so long.
Ah. A technical solution to a social problem. I swear, the politicians never learn and never will.
My tagline reads:
It's much easier to mod me down than to post an intelligent reply.
An Anonymous Coward (aren't they all) wrote:
"Hmm, good point. I'll remember that next time i have mod points."
Well thank god you posted anonymously! Preserving those all-important karma points!!
The point is that it is much more useful to have dialogue than a knee-jerk "oh, I don't agree with you" moderation system because it gets abused. -1 no longer means "this is a bad post" so much as "I don't like what you had to say." I'm not sure it was ever anything else, really.
And really, at least try for the appearance of self-respect and just post as yourself. Is karma that important to you? It shouldn't be. Observe:
Hey! Someone with mod points! Here is a big fat link to some guy's torn-up asshole. Please mod this post down to prove that people should be more worried about saying what is on their mind than karmawhoring. Metamoderators, please disregard any -1 modding done to this post. It was requested.
And to the original AC, you're a nitwit. People like you are the reason the signal-to-noise ratio on Slash went to complete shit years ago. Thanks, much obliged.
This is of marginal value because while it may keep things under wraps while the hack is occurring, if the hacker is caught (the goal, after all), then they have the right (in the U.S. at least) to face their accusers. Barring a rather broad-sweeping gag order, the press will get wind of it. And given that the bait here is for the company to remain anonymous permanently so users of that company to not lose trust in that company, this is of dubious value.
Plus, IF the hacker (remember a lot of jobs are done from the inside) catches wind that the FBI has been contacted and is being asked to be discrete, this is a new weapon. They now know that they have brand new button to push that the company would, for whatever reason, really not want pushed.
Just a thought.
Does this mean what I think it means?
E. Starting three months after the entry of this Final Judgment to the Court, Microsoft shall
make available for use by third parties, for the sole purpose of interoperating or
communicating with a Windows Operating System Product, on reasonable and
non-discriminatory terms (consistent with Section III.I), any Communications Protocol
that is, on or after the date this Final Judgment is submitted to the Court, (i) implemented
in a Windows Operating System Product installed on a client computer, and (ii) used to
interoperate, or communicate, natively (i.e., without the addition of software code to the
client operating system product) with a Microsoft server operating system product.
Actually, I think you might have hit upon the answer; film in binocular.
This will preserve the interference "source." While monitors will be in mono, we're not looking for depth, only reproduction of color. If this display works using an interference pattern, then it can reproduce the colors in a way that we see it. The difference is that the color is produced by the panel and not your brain.
I'd really like to have some photographers chime in on this one.
...why?
I'm a photographer myself and "amateur" would be an understatement. I've always been vexed by the inability of the camera to record what I see. For example, I went to the Boston Aquarium a few months back and while my shots were acceptable, the colors were nothing like what I was seeing in-person. Brilliant blues and yellows look painfully muted and boring in my results. I'm told that is a shortcoming of the photography medium and photographers have to use tricks to get those wonderful colors you see in mags like National Geographic, Photo, etc. Well
So what I guess I'm asking is "can this technology be used to not only create and present colors in a 'natural' way but possibly capture them that way as well?"
On page three of the GameSpy article, they get into AI a bit. I wonder if we're ever going to have AI cards like we do now with nics and graphics cards.
Why not? Why not have a whole processor dedicated specifically to the type of algorithmic applications that AI requires?
I certainly did not mean to imply some cabalistic conspiracy. But I am suggesting that the Vatican might be hesitant to go out of their way to invite problems.
That's all.
jdavidb writes:
"Not sure where the poster above got the idea that Esther was omitted in Catholic or Protestant Bibles..."
It's called "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." =)
My main idea is still there (will the church allow possibly conflicting books' "source code" to be released?), but I was a bit hasty in including Esther. I read that it was omitted in some works and made a leap of logic that apparently was wrong.
I would imagine most Slashdotters are aware that the Vatican is the head of the Roman Catholic Church. Another factoid, but possibly not so obvious, is that the Bible as we know it today -- most people are familiar with the King James Version -- is a collection of works whose inclusion (or exclusion if you want to think of it that way) is more or less arbitrary. For example, "Esther" is omitted (yes, I'm serious).
So what I'm getting at is whether the Vatican plans on opening up all works for perusal or do they plan on omitting certain works based, possibly, on how well the information fits in with the desired line of thinking.
What if there are works that don't dovetail with the accepted works? What if some writings in their collection outright contradict other writings? Is the Vatican ready to drop the line that theology is too important to leave to the commoners, really?
From the article:
"A Navy ship could use the laser, with its beam traveling at the speed of light, to fend off even the fastest missiles. And ground troops could use a Humvee-mounted version of the weapon to instantly knock out incoming enemy artillery and mortar shells. "
This is, of course, an arms race. So what happens when they're not firing missles anymore, but lasers?
I'm not suggesting it's a bad idea. I'd just love to see what protection they'll propose when our opponents get up-to-speed. I also have to wonder if there is a low-tech way of defeating it (remember when we spent millions coming up with a pen that would write in zero-G and the Russians just used pencils?)...
Sorry, Brian, I accidentally replied to your post in the wrong spot. Pls check the link above for the continuation of the thread.