Okay, let's see if I have this straight. The Author lampoons the FSF executive director for a bad choice of analogy:
In a statement regarding the demonstration, FSF executive director Peter Brown said, "A media player that restricts what you can play is like a car that won't let you steer" -- a false analogy so patently absurd as to be laughable to a grade-school student.
Then later in the same article gives this analogy:
No DRM system ever told an artist what notes to play or what lyrics were OK to sing. But the FSF seems intent on doing just that.
Seems like we are missing one more analogy. It's right on the tip of my tongue. Something about kettles, pots, and the color black. I'm sure it will come to me...
Isn't restricting free speech based on money changing hands still restricting free speech though?
Critical thinking here just points out that when Republicans take our freedoms they are usually working for the interests of big business, and when the Democrats take our freedoms they are doing it to "protect us" because we, like small children, need to be told that what we read on the Internet might be biased.
But either way, this was a vote against personal freedom. The slant of the article was, therefore, justified.
I was talking to a couple, who are friends of my father's, and we were talking about video game addiction. When the subject came up the woman turned to her husband and said, "Oh God, remember how many times we stayed up all night playing Pac-Man and then had to go into work without any sleep or even call in occasionally."
I was floored. Pac-Man? But they explained that they would compete with each other, taking turns and getting higher and higher scores until they realized it was daybreak.
So, spending hours and hours playing a game to the detriment of your real world responsibilities is not something that can be attributed to MMORPGs.
I wonder if they consider music which is under a free to distribute license (like the stuff you find at http://www.podsafeaudio.com/) as "legal music downloads"
Now I know this is still a very small percentage, but I have seen figures that there are several million podcast listeners so I imagine the podsafe music is at least a drop in the bucket.
Personally, that is all I have downloaded or purchased in quite some time, if for no other reason than the fact that I don't want to give my money to the RIAA.
However, the price difference makes it worthwhile - for $10/month and no setup fee, no purchase, no contract, and two tuners, how can you go wrong? Plus, it's probably simpler than a Tivo in some respects: the Cox box is also your cable tuner, so you don't have to worry about setting two timers (one in Tivo, one in the cable box) and other such hassles.
I have used both a Satellite (Non-TiVo) DVR and a TiVo (which I own). I was absolutely floored by how primitive the DVR was, and your comment about setting timers makes me wonder if the DVR you are using is also more primitive.
I NEVER set a timer on my TiVo. I have had friends ask me when a show comes on, and I haven't got a clue. The reason is, I tell my TiVo what to record and it manages all of the details. I never have to set a timer on it or on my settop box (since TiVo changes the channels on the settop automatically before it starts recording).
So, for example, I have a wishlist setup that records movies that were made in the 1920's. I have season passes that record specific shows. But I never have to even think about the details behind these recordings. I just turn on my T.V. and look at the list of what shows are waiting for me to watch.
THAT is the beauty of TiVo and until I see another system that can abstract away the details as well as TiVo does I won't even consider switching.
First of all, how exactly is a review of a two year old fictional novel news for nerds?
Secondly, did the person reviewing this even bother to research the genre whatsoever? They make several blatantly false blanket statements about the fantasy genre.
This is different from most fantasy. Normally, magic is the only science there is (and often that isn't treated like a science either).
There are many novels in the genre where science and magic co-exist. Any of the Urban fantasies intermingle modern day science with magic (pick up nearly anything by Charles DeLint or American Gods by Neil Gaiman for examples of this). There are also several novels which have both magic and futuristic technology mixed (Look into Anne McCaffery and L. E. Modesitt Jr. for some good Sci-Fi/Fantasy crossover novels).
This review is poorly written. From uninformed generalizations to details about the story which are taken out of context and do not serve to provide any useful information to the reader. Why this made its way to the front page of Slashdot is beyond me.
Artificial Intelligence is lightyears away from Human Intelligence.
Have you ever actually PLAYED Everquest?
Steeeve shouts, 'DING! Level 2!'
Baddaz shouts, 'HELP'
Luzer shouts, 'SOW plz!!!'
Zippyshorts shouts, 'We can't help you if you don't give us your LOC'
Luzer shouts, 'SOW PLZ!!!'
Regdum shouts 'WTS Spiderling Silk'
Splattt shouts 'What Level are Kodiaks?'
Luzer shouts, 'I NEED SOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'
Splattt shouts 'Can Anyone help me find my corpse?'
It all depends on how the class is taught. If they were being lectured to endlessly for that half day, with 1000 in a room then there would be little hope for the class. But if you note in the article:
"the experience of seeing offending snippets of code on a giant screen in a large auditorium proved humbling"
They were pulling up the stupid mistakes of their co-workers and pointing and laughing at the poor schmo. This sort of entertainment has a much better chance of keeping one's attention.
So I poked around their site a bit and found their Top 20 suggested toys for this fall.
#1 on the list was...
Handy Work Puppets Description: Child-sized hand puppets in different skin tones representing a number of professions, including a fireman, police officer, doctor, astronaut, chef and artist.
If my parents had given me a Handy Work Puppet as a kid I would have beaten them over the head with it.
Check out the movie Trekkies. It is a movie about the fans of Star Trek. There is a section in the movie that talks about things people have actually made from the series including the robot from "The Changeling" and Capt. Pike's Life Support chair from "The Menagerie".
While this may not be mainstream science, it would definitely make for an interesting anecdote for the class.
Reading through the comments there seems to be a couple of recurring themes I would like to address.
1) What happens if you visit the same page twice/refresh/etc?
I personally read this differently, as it said a penny per page... not a penny per hit or visit. Since they obviously know who you are (or how else could they bill you?) and are tracking what pages you are visiting then it would not be hard at all to only bill a penny per page. That is discard any page hits to a page you have already viewed as you have already paid for the priveledge of viewing that page. The only question I still see with this model is how long does you penny pay for the page? That is do they discard duplicates from this month? Year? Lifetime?
2) What about the mess created by charging a penny per transaction on your credit card?
I really don't think a system like this would use credit cards at all. Most systems that charge a very small fee use alternatives like Automated Clearing House Systems. If they used an ACH system you would give them the numbers at the bottom of one of your checks instead of credit card numbers. Then they would accumulate the penny charges and once a month they would simply charge your checking account. It would appear on your statement as either ACH or EFT (Some banks use the Electronic Funds Transfer acronym instead of ACH). This way there would be no more fees for anyone involved than there would be for cashing a check and you would only have one statement per company month instead of 2000 1 charges from OSDN each month =P
The Tick is played by Patrick Warburton, who was "Puddy" (Elaine's Boyfriend) in Seinfeld and Johnny James (Jimmy James's VP) in Newsradio. He also was the voice of Kronk in Emperor's New Groove. An excellent casting choice for what is obviously a hard role to cast.
Also of note, in addition to The Tick and Arthur are "Captain Liberty" and "Batmanuel". When you see these characters you will probably notice that they greatly resemble American Maid and Die Fledermaus. This is actually due to copyright negotiations (which actually held up the show for some time). The original comic book characters belong to Ben Edlund, but all of the characters that were created for the cartoon are jointly owned by all the groups that produced the cartoon (Fox Children's Network, Saban, Graz and Sunbow). Since Sony (who owns Columbia Tri-Star) could not reach an agreement on who received what proceeds among all the companies they simply replaced the characters.
Corporations are not well known for long term or forward thinking. Privatization does not mean that we will see a McMoonBurger or Luna Hollywood any faster than we would if the government was still running things, because by the time you added shipping costs you would be looking at each hamburger being hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Now, companies regularly spend millions of dollars on advertising and this is where we would notice a difference. Think about the Olympics and how every four years we see "Official Olympic Soft Drink" and "Official Olympic Running Shoe" everywhere we turn. Privatization of space will not lead to Heinlein's Luna City... but it may give you a chance to buy "The Official Operating System of the Jupiter Mission".
You can also look for a hobby such as this without dropping everything in the process. I have recently taken up swing dancing and have discovered that a surprising number of IT people are in the swing dancing scene. It is a great physical hobby and a great way to meet people. I would highly recommend that you at least look around for something similar... something that has both a physical and social aspect and which can take your mind away from school for a while without requiring you to drop everything.
I actually had an aunt that worked in a store where they were doing the "Pepsi Challenge". I hate to burst your bubble, but they actually made sure the coke sat out (opened) for several hours ahead of time... so the challenge was really, "Which do you like more this chilled Pepsi or this warm, flat Coke?"
You are correct in that you do not actually own a domain name, but you jump from that fact to a great deal of fiction which is not supported by the original fact.
When I purchase a Domain Name, this is similar to purchasing a lease. I agree to pay X number of dollars and Verisign (or whoever maintains the TLD I want) agrees to let me use it for X number of years. Domains differ from real estate in that one can often guess which domains large corporations want, and squat on them demanding exorborant amounts of money for them. This would be similar to finding out Nestle was going to build a factory on a piece of land and buying it before them... and the arbitration in place is good in dealing with this.
The problem is that Nestle has realized that they can now decide they want to build a plant somewhere and take your property using said arbitration even though you never had an inkling they wanted the land you leased.
The law of Supply and Demand influences the marketplace, but one should not be able to simply invalidate a lease agreement because someone comes along with a better offer.
Checking out a copy of Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" from the local library for a week: Free
Renting the eBook of Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" for ten hours: $1
Coming up with a new marketing scheme to get more money out of the public: Priceless
The problem we have in society in relation to the police is that because we get a speeding ticket, we suddenly decide to foster a hatred for the person who gave it to us.
The problem we have is that some police officers abuse their power and put a bad taste in everyone's mouth where police are concerned.
For example, I lived in a small town for about a year and I got pulled over about once a week. I was never pulled over for a good reason (Once I was told they pulled me over to let me know that one of the two lights which illuminate my rear liscense plate was burned out), but everytime I was pulled over they asked if they could search my car.
The one time I told them I did not want them to search my car (it was around midnight, and I explained that I had to get up at 6 the next morning for work) they told me they would have to call in a K-9 unit and made me sit on the side of the road for two hours waiting for K-9.
Now, keep in mind that my record is completely clean. I don't even have a speeding ticket, or parking ticket on my record.
It is this sort of behavior, not the receiving of a speeding ticket that a person deserves, that makes people dislike police and gives them all a bad name.
If I were a police officer, I would want all police stops recorded so that the people who abuse their power could be taken out of the system.
In this Cross section I couldn't help but notice the label "flying zone". At first I assumed this is where spacecraft bringing supplies would land, but you wouldn't think they would have spacecraft land in the middle of the spire. So I wonder... maybe they have something in mind like Heinlein's flying chamber... where people strap on oversized bird wings and learn to fly like birds with the reduced G. If so, that alone would be worth the cost of the trip =P
I think a real problem with strong AI is defining it. I know PEOPLE who could not pass the turing test. People who make me question the "Survival of the Fittest" ideas of Darwinism, yet I assume they have intelligence simply because they are people.
On the other side of the coin, a lot of people assume computers can't have anything resembling real intelligence because they are computers.
I think the question is basically moot. If we can get computers to a state where they can interact with us like a person and figure out what we want, so we don't have to read through a reference manual for two hours, then all of the research into AI was worthwhile.
Basically intelligence is an abstract concept and we will probably be arguing about whether a computer can truly be intelligent or not for many years to come.
Slashdot Mirror
(3) The game, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.
I guess this means no more Katamari???
Okay, let's see if I have this straight. The Author lampoons the FSF executive director for a bad choice of analogy:
In a statement regarding the demonstration, FSF executive director Peter Brown said, "A media player that restricts what you can play is like a car that won't let you steer" -- a false analogy so patently absurd as to be laughable to a grade-school student.
Then later in the same article gives this analogy:
No DRM system ever told an artist what notes to play or what lyrics were OK to sing. But the FSF seems intent on doing just that.
Seems like we are missing one more analogy. It's right on the tip of my tongue. Something about kettles, pots, and the color black. I'm sure it will come to me...
Isn't restricting free speech based on money changing hands still restricting free speech though?
Critical thinking here just points out that when Republicans take our freedoms they are usually working for the interests of big business, and when the Democrats take our freedoms they are doing it to "protect us" because we, like small children, need to be told that what we read on the Internet might be biased.
But either way, this was a vote against personal freedom. The slant of the article was, therefore, justified.
I was talking to a couple, who are friends of my father's, and we were talking about video game addiction. When the subject came up the woman turned to her husband and said, "Oh God, remember how many times we stayed up all night playing Pac-Man and then had to go into work without any sleep or even call in occasionally."
I was floored. Pac-Man? But they explained that they would compete with each other, taking turns and getting higher and higher scores until they realized it was daybreak.
So, spending hours and hours playing a game to the detriment of your real world responsibilities is not something that can be attributed to MMORPGs.
I wonder if they consider music which is under a free to distribute license (like the stuff you find at http://www.podsafeaudio.com/) as "legal music downloads"
Now I know this is still a very small percentage, but I have seen figures that there are several million podcast listeners so I imagine the podsafe music is at least a drop in the bucket.
Personally, that is all I have downloaded or purchased in quite some time, if for no other reason than the fact that I don't want to give my money to the RIAA.
However, the price difference makes it worthwhile - for $10/month and no setup fee, no purchase, no contract, and two tuners, how can you go wrong? Plus, it's probably simpler than a Tivo in some respects: the Cox box is also your cable tuner, so you don't have to worry about setting two timers (one in Tivo, one in the cable box) and other such hassles.
I have used both a Satellite (Non-TiVo) DVR and a TiVo (which I own). I was absolutely floored by how primitive the DVR was, and your comment about setting timers makes me wonder if the DVR you are using is also more primitive.
I NEVER set a timer on my TiVo. I have had friends ask me when a show comes on, and I haven't got a clue. The reason is, I tell my TiVo what to record and it manages all of the details. I never have to set a timer on it or on my settop box (since TiVo changes the channels on the settop automatically before it starts recording).
So, for example, I have a wishlist setup that records movies that were made in the 1920's. I have season passes that record specific shows. But I never have to even think about the details behind these recordings. I just turn on my T.V. and look at the list of what shows are waiting for me to watch.
THAT is the beauty of TiVo and until I see another system that can abstract away the details as well as TiVo does I won't even consider switching.
Biologic sensing devices will become small enough to reside on or inside people, animals, and crops.
Crops?
First of all, how exactly is a review of a two year old fictional novel news for nerds?
Secondly, did the person reviewing this even bother to research the genre whatsoever? They make several blatantly false blanket statements about the fantasy genre.
This is different from most fantasy. Normally, magic is the only science there is (and often that isn't treated like a science either).
There are many novels in the genre where science and magic co-exist. Any of the Urban fantasies intermingle modern day science with magic (pick up nearly anything by Charles DeLint or American Gods by Neil Gaiman for examples of this). There are also several novels which have both magic and futuristic technology mixed (Look into Anne McCaffery and L. E. Modesitt Jr. for some good Sci-Fi/Fantasy crossover novels).
This review is poorly written. From uninformed generalizations to details about the story which are taken out of context and do not serve to provide any useful information to the reader. Why this made its way to the front page of Slashdot is beyond me.
Artificial Intelligence is lightyears away from Human Intelligence.
Have you ever actually PLAYED Everquest?
Steeeve shouts, 'DING! Level 2!'
Baddaz shouts, 'HELP'
Luzer shouts, 'SOW plz!!!'
Zippyshorts shouts, 'We can't help you if you don't give us your LOC'
Luzer shouts, 'SOW PLZ!!!'
Regdum shouts 'WTS Spiderling Silk'
Splattt shouts 'What Level are Kodiaks?'
Luzer shouts, 'I NEED SOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'
Splattt shouts 'Can Anyone help me find my corpse?'
The RIAA is pushing for new legislation which would make it illegal to exchange Legos, having heard that they may soon be used to store .mp3's
It all depends on how the class is taught. If they were being lectured to endlessly for that half day, with 1000 in a room then there would be little hope for the class. But if you note in the article:
"the experience of seeing offending snippets of code on a giant screen in a large auditorium proved humbling"
They were pulling up the stupid mistakes of their co-workers and pointing and laughing at the poor schmo. This sort of entertainment has a much better chance of keeping one's attention.
So I poked around their site a bit and found their Top 20 suggested toys for this fall.
#1 on the list was...
Handy Work Puppets
Description: Child-sized hand puppets in different skin tones representing a number of professions, including a fireman, police officer, doctor, astronaut, chef and artist.
If my parents had given me a Handy Work Puppet as a kid I would have beaten them over the head with it.
Check out the movie Trekkies. It is a movie about the fans of Star Trek. There is a section in the movie that talks about things people have actually made from the series including the robot from "The Changeling" and Capt. Pike's Life Support chair from "The Menagerie".
While this may not be mainstream science, it would definitely make for an interesting anecdote for the class.
Reading through the comments there seems to be a couple of recurring themes I would like to address.
1) What happens if you visit the same page twice/refresh/etc?
I personally read this differently, as it said a penny per page... not a penny per hit or visit. Since they obviously know who you are (or how else could they bill you?) and are tracking what pages you are visiting then it would not be hard at all to only bill a penny per page. That is discard any page hits to a page you have already viewed as you have already paid for the priveledge of viewing that page. The only question I still see with this model is how long does you penny pay for the page? That is do they discard duplicates from this month? Year? Lifetime?
2) What about the mess created by charging a penny per transaction on your credit card?
I really don't think a system like this would use credit cards at all. Most systems that charge a very small fee use alternatives like Automated Clearing House Systems. If they used an ACH system you would give them the numbers at the bottom of one of your checks instead of credit card numbers. Then they would accumulate the penny charges and once a month they would simply charge your checking account. It would appear on your statement as either ACH or EFT (Some banks use the Electronic Funds Transfer acronym instead of ACH). This way there would be no more fees for anyone involved than there would be for cashing a check and you would only have one statement per company month instead of 2000 1 charges from OSDN each month =P
As a long time Tick fan I have been eagerly awaiting this show. You can view a few 45 second clips of the show at http://www.spe.sony.com/tv/shows/tick/video.phtml.
The Tick is played by Patrick Warburton, who was "Puddy" (Elaine's Boyfriend) in Seinfeld and Johnny James (Jimmy James's VP) in Newsradio. He also was the voice of Kronk in Emperor's New Groove. An excellent casting choice for what is obviously a hard role to cast.
Also of note, in addition to The Tick and Arthur are "Captain Liberty" and "Batmanuel". When you see these characters you will probably notice that they greatly resemble American Maid and Die Fledermaus. This is actually due to copyright negotiations (which actually held up the show for some time). The original comic book characters belong to Ben Edlund, but all of the characters that were created for the cartoon are jointly owned by all the groups that produced the cartoon (Fox Children's Network, Saban, Graz and Sunbow). Since Sony (who owns Columbia Tri-Star) could not reach an agreement on who received what proceeds among all the companies they simply replaced the characters.
Corporations are not well known for long term or forward thinking. Privatization does not mean that we will see a McMoonBurger or Luna Hollywood any faster than we would if the government was still running things, because by the time you added shipping costs you would be looking at each hamburger being hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Now, companies regularly spend millions of dollars on advertising and this is where we would notice a difference. Think about the Olympics and how every four years we see "Official Olympic Soft Drink" and "Official Olympic Running Shoe" everywhere we turn. Privatization of space will not lead to Heinlein's Luna City... but it may give you a chance to buy "The Official Operating System of the Jupiter Mission".
We have the first space tourist, and now the announcement that Nasa is considering going commercial? One has to wonder where this is leading.
"Thank you for flying Nasa. This flight has been brought to you by the letter M and the number 7. Now sit back and enjoy your in-flight commercials."
You can also look for a hobby such as this without dropping everything in the process. I have recently taken up swing dancing and have discovered that a surprising number of IT people are in the swing dancing scene. It is a great physical hobby and a great way to meet people. I would highly recommend that you at least look around for something similar... something that has both a physical and social aspect and which can take your mind away from school for a while without requiring you to drop everything.
I actually had an aunt that worked in a store where they were doing the "Pepsi Challenge". I hate to burst your bubble, but they actually made sure the coke sat out (opened) for several hours ahead of time... so the challenge was really, "Which do you like more this chilled Pepsi or this warm, flat Coke?"
Hmmmm... that's a toughie.
You are correct in that you do not actually own a domain name, but you jump from that fact to a great deal of fiction which is not supported by the original fact.
When I purchase a Domain Name, this is similar to purchasing a lease. I agree to pay X number of dollars and Verisign (or whoever maintains the TLD I want) agrees to let me use it for X number of years. Domains differ from real estate in that one can often guess which domains large corporations want, and squat on them demanding exorborant amounts of money for them. This would be similar to finding out Nestle was going to build a factory on a piece of land and buying it before them... and the arbitration in place is good in dealing with this.
The problem is that Nestle has realized that they can now decide they want to build a plant somewhere and take your property using said arbitration even though you never had an inkling they wanted the land you leased. The law of Supply and Demand influences the marketplace, but one should not be able to simply invalidate a lease agreement because someone comes along with a better offer.
For the last time, Quit Playing With Your Food!
Checking out a copy of Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" from the local library for a week: Free Renting the eBook of Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" for ten hours: $1 Coming up with a new marketing scheme to get more money out of the public: Priceless
The problem we have in society in relation to the police is that because we get a speeding ticket, we suddenly decide to foster a hatred for the person who gave it to us. The problem we have is that some police officers abuse their power and put a bad taste in everyone's mouth where police are concerned.
/*
echo Mhbqnrnes Stbjr | tr [a-y] [b-z]
For example, I lived in a small town for about a year and I got pulled over about once a week. I was never pulled over for a good reason (Once I was told they pulled me over to let me know that one of the two lights which illuminate my rear liscense plate was burned out), but everytime I was pulled over they asked if they could search my car.
The one time I told them I did not want them to search my car (it was around midnight, and I explained that I had to get up at 6 the next morning for work) they told me they would have to call in a K-9 unit and made me sit on the side of the road for two hours waiting for K-9.
Now, keep in mind that my record is completely clean. I don't even have a speeding ticket, or parking ticket on my record.
It is this sort of behavior, not the receiving of a speeding ticket that a person deserves, that makes people dislike police and gives them all a bad name.
If I were a police officer, I would want all police stops recorded so that the people who abuse their power could be taken out of the system.
In this Cross section I couldn't help but notice the label "flying zone". At first I assumed this is where spacecraft bringing supplies would land, but you wouldn't think they would have spacecraft land in the middle of the spire. So I wonder... maybe they have something in mind like Heinlein's flying chamber... where people strap on oversized bird wings and learn to fly like birds with the reduced G. If so, that alone would be worth the cost of the trip =P
/*
echo Mhbqnrnes Stbjr | tr [a-y] [b-z]
I think a real problem with strong AI is defining it. I know PEOPLE who could not pass the turing test. People who make me question the "Survival of the Fittest" ideas of Darwinism, yet I assume they have intelligence simply because they are people.
On the other side of the coin, a lot of people assume computers can't have anything resembling real intelligence because they are computers.
I think the question is basically moot. If we can get computers to a state where they can interact with us like a person and figure out what we want, so we don't have to read through a reference manual for two hours, then all of the research into AI was worthwhile.
Basically intelligence is an abstract concept and we will probably be arguing about whether a computer can truly be intelligent or not for many years to come.
echo Mhbqnrnes Stbjr | tr [a-y] [b-z]