[Hey, but why is everything 'Titanium' now anyway?]
It's just the latest marketing fad. Remember when everything was "Pro"? Or when soda (and everything else) turned "clear" or "crystal". I think Ultra was popular for awhile (not just with nVidia, but with detergents).
It's the same reason we had that year with two volcano movies, two asteriod movies, etc. There's only so many good ideas to go around when you're in product marketing.
It's amazing how many people in the US do not understand what the Supreme Court actually does (or rather, is supposed to do).
The purpose of the court is not to determine whether the law was "a good idea"... only that it meets VERY broad constitutional guidelines that were written in a different era (there's the power of strict constructionism, if anyone is interested). The court will most likely find all of the 1996 act constitutional - and thus only tinker at the edges. The power of Congress to make law in regards to interstate commerce is nearly absolute -- and over the past 75 years the commerce clause has come to embrace just about everything from civil rights to food inspection.
The poster is quite correct that if we expect meaningful change in the law, it will have to come from Congress, not from the court.
Re:doing the same to other movies?
on
Review: Zoolander
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· Score: 1
[...was how the media was already taking it upon itself to question the usefulness of the country's intelligence bureaus. This is not the job of the media--especially in a time of crisis.]
It isn't? Really? I think it is the difference between "reporting" and "analysis". Both of which are valid functions of the media. If it makes you feel better to call it a "watchdog" group, so be it. Although, the question of who watches the watchers comes to mind (not that the media are without their biases -- I don't think anyone can make that claim).
I think that "the media" are just as capable of performing that type of analysis as anyone else. Some things they'll get wrong, others right -- just like anyone else. But to say that in a time of "crisis" they are just supposed to fall lock-step behind the government, rather goes against a few principles that are supposed to make the United States different.
The number of areas where CRTs were superior to LCD displays continues to dwindle. It used to be they were only smaller/lighter. But in exchange for that, you paid 4x as much, and if you typed faster than 40wpm all you'd see is a grey smudge for 15 seconds (I remember the monochrome, passive matrix screen on my Powerbook 145b). Now the prices are becoming dollar-for-dollar competitive with CRTs, they are still smaller/lighter, and now they might actually be able to handle Quake 3 Arena and look as good as my 20" monitor (and yeah -- they are pretty close to that now, especially with a still image, but...). I think the days of the CRT really are numbered this time around.
It always amazes me how investors seem interested in tiny little companies that have a neat idea, but if it ever really takes off could be entirely duplicated by a larger, more well known company, do it all for "free" (ie: ads, having an account, whatever) and not even look back twice at the dark smudge they just ran over.
[Instead of figuring out ways they can be rid of the expensive employees, why don't companies see them as valuable employees? ]
Because employees really arent a company's most valuable asset. Their most valuable asset is money.
In reality this is the type of thinking that's both good and bad for the industry. The idea that when times get tough, just find the most expensive people and get rid of them (oddly, expect for managers) -- it helps to keep technical knowledge "in circulation". These guys are going to go (eventually) to another company, maybe a start-up and breath life into it. I believe this is how even the smartest, biggest companies eventually fall prey to the smaller upstarts.
[For an alternative to become viable MS would have to practically fall on its own sword and even with its current licensing trend it is obvious that is not happening.]
I tend to disagree with that. Microsoft is doing a pretty amazing job of "falling on its sword". The thing about corporate IT is that it is almost entirely money focused. In most organizations (not software or hardware companies), IT is normally part of the finance "function" -- so the CIO reports to the CFO. Everything the CFO's organization is a "cost center" -- they don't bring any money in, so you need to squeeze as much as you can for as little as you can.
I believe the reason that the PC began to become prevalent was that is was cheaper than the "centralized" (Mini's/Mainframes/etc) that it tended to replace, at least in the short term. Spending $2000 for a desktop computer for a secretary was generally cheaper than adding the +1 user to a system at its maximum load. The same thing happened in PC based environments eventually, but as an incremental cost things looked cheaper -- and again, in the world were IT reports to Finance, that is what is really important.
Now today we are talking about Microsoft increasing license costs by upwards of 100%. This is were the CFO (the real boss of IT) starts to ask about alternatives, because this cost is going to be on-going. It starts to make the old service contracts on his VAX look like a bargain. This is the real driver of IT spending, especially when there's no "hot" economy to cover up expensive sins.
I think what bothers me about it is not that Apple can do it. Of course they can do -- IP law seems to pretty clear that they can.
The real question is "Why". It seems to me that Apple would want the "Aqua" interface to represent the cutting edge of how UI should look in everything from OS X to a skin for WinAmp. I mean, that's really what has kept them at any level of "mind-share". Looking at Windows today is based on the Mac OS, which was based on the work at PARC and so on. If you are going to be the number 2 computer company, you have to make the other guy (Microsoft) be constantly reacting and wasting time trying to make their product look like yours.
Imagine if Microsoft could have spent the last 10 years working on the underlying code of DOS/Windows instead of being forever obsessed with having a GUI as pretty as Apple's.
Re:It all seemed so clear the first time through..
on
Brian West Update
·
· Score: 1
No, not at all. Just perhaps less demanding, in that a design methodology that is acceptable for a smaller/lower volume operation usually isn't as sophisticated as what would be needed by a larger shop. Why pay the big $$$ that I'm sure you charge for your expertise to get a great solution, when you can have "good enough" for less.
You are completely right. It is very easily around here (and fancying myself a bit of a civil libertarian) to start thinking of government as the actual root of all evil. Of course that's simply not true. They aren't all good, but they certainly aren't all bad. I hope someone mods ya up for pointing that out.
Re:It all seemed so clear the first time through..
on
Brian West Update
·
· Score: 1
Ok -- sorry, I should have been more clear with smiley, 's, or something like that. It was a joke. For the record, nobody should ever have a list of usernames/passwords that don't belong to them and whatever other boilerplate is needed to cover any possible circumstance.
It all seemed so clear the first time through...
on
Brian West Update
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I remember reading that story and thinking about here was a good guy -- one of us, doing a fairly nice thing and reporting a security hole (that obviously someone other than him should have been the first to notice). I remember being more than a bit outraged that law enforcement couldn't tell the difference between between breaking into a system malciously, and just noticing something amiss.
Now, I can't say that I blame him for poking around a bit. If it was me, I'd probably have done the same -- never know when a username/password list is going to come in handy I suppose. I think it is the for "profit" motive - that he would steal someone elses work and try to sell it as his own is the real sin here. I guess I also can't imagine the Perl scripts of some fairly small town newspaper (we're not talking the NY Times here - although I do feel the need to say, "Free Registration Required") being that cool that they deserved to be stolen.
I'm glad the rest of the details came out on this one.
It seems that (I guess not just in the US anymore) that we are moving toward a time where every "public" service is paid for by ads. At some point, it seems to me, that you'd reach a place where there are so many messasges hitting someone that they aren't effective.
Who in the world thinks of their screen saver as some sort of compelling mini-series they must watch (apologies to Scott Adams)? A thought that strikes me as a bit unsettling would be to go into a computer lab with 100 machines all extolling the virtues of Pepsi (instead of the 3D Flower Box).
I suppose it's not true anymore, but it seems that labs, classrooms, etc. should be places reasonably free of corporate sponsorship. It is inevitable that once something has a corporate sponsor, the message gets influenced (anyone remember Microsoft donating money with some strings attached to universities?), and schools, especially publicly funded ones, should be free of that type of "influence peddling".
I couldn't agree more. DS9 tried to dabble in the idea of a continuing plot line (a real continuing plot line -- not just "Oh yeah, Capt. Picard is gone for the 2nd part of this two parter -- and you know he'll be back by the end), but never really got the hang of it. Toward the end, they could remember there was a war going on from episode to episode, but that was about it.
The great thing about B5 was that when a character did something -- you could understand why. It wasn't just because that's what fit into the script that week. The writers seemed to actually be able to come up with real motivations that seemed plausible.
Now that won't stop me from watching Enterprise tonight -- or even sticking with it for a season or two no matter how bad it is. I did the same with Voyager. I made it through a season and 1/2 -- couldn't stand it, and came back around the 5th season, and things had looked up a bit. Then you can just catch the good ones you miss in syndication.
Just as an FYI, the currency of most of the major industrial countries hasn't been backed by gold (or silver, or much of anything else), since the early 1970's when the US withdrew from the Bretton Woods system. Today, the "value" of paper currency (beyond the value of paper itself) is simply a measure of the demand for it to buy that country's goods and services vs. the amount that country spends. This is the reason that we all get worked up from time to time over the trade deficit in the United States. The notion is that at some point everyone will have all the dollars (US) that they want/need and will not be willing take any more of them -- hence they lose value. Now, that's a/very/ simplified explanation, but if anybody thinks they can take their $20 Dollar bill to their local Federal Reserve Bank and get a fixed amount of gold/silver/etc. is in for a surprise (however, you might be able to get a fair amount of nickel coated copper, or vice versa).
That is absolutely (I guess I need to be careful about that term now) correct. Of course it is relative -- it is only relatively recently in human "progress" that killing/murdering (as another reply points out, the term murder implies certain attributes of the killing that may or may not be true) has become specifically undesireable/punishable. Of course, we carve out all sorts of exceptions to that.
It's ok to take another life in a war. The Old Testament is clear that there are acts from adultery on up (or down) that call for the taking of life. Today, if I were to stone you to death for adultery, I would be a murderer. 2500 years ago, I'd be performing an act of justice ordered by an all powerful God.
Morals have always been relative. They always will be, by definition they must be.
Oh sure -- it's funny now, but one has to remember the environment we were in when this guy got his dot bomb job. Anyone who could say PL/SQL (and not try to pronounce them as a word without vowels) had at least "potential". We hired anyone we thought had the potential of being teachable -- and we're a profitable company and everything. Of course now we're not hiring, and can't beat the guys with 10+ years experience writing Larry's Big Brother Database-O-Rama off of us with a pointed stick.
It's just a good idea to keep perspective -- even if the job this guy had is laughably silly now.
This is completely right. The real problem with airport security are the "rent-a-cops". In fact, even far worse than just a normal "mall-cop". They are paid as close to minimum wage as can be gotten away with, not properly trained, don't realize that just because the screen lights up on a laptop doesn't mean there isn't a bomb in the 2nd battery bay -- and we trust them to keep the really dangerous things off the plane. I believe that is where the focus has to be if we are going to prevent these types of things from happening again. Bring back the Federal Air Marshals!
Slashdot Mirror
Because "spam" is technically commerce. The standard of protection for commerical speech is much lower than that for political speech.
Citations you might find helpful are Bigelow v. Virginia (1975) and the earlier Valentine v. Chrestonson (1942).
Posting a list of "spammers" is an inducement against commerce -- the reason for posting the information is to reduce commerical traffic, etc.
[Hey, but why is everything 'Titanium' now anyway?]
It's just the latest marketing fad. Remember when everything was "Pro"? Or when soda (and everything else) turned "clear" or "crystal". I think Ultra was popular for awhile (not just with nVidia, but with detergents).
It's the same reason we had that year with two volcano movies, two asteriod movies, etc. There's only so many good ideas to go around when you're in product marketing.
It's amazing how many people in the US do not understand what the Supreme Court actually does (or rather, is supposed to do).
... only that it meets VERY broad constitutional guidelines that were written in a different era (there's the power of strict constructionism, if anyone is interested). The court will most likely find all of the 1996 act constitutional - and thus only tinker at the edges. The power of Congress to make law in regards to interstate commerce is nearly absolute -- and over the past 75 years the commerce clause has come to embrace just about everything from civil rights to food inspection.
The purpose of the court is not to determine whether the law was "a good idea"
The poster is quite correct that if we expect meaningful change in the law, it will have to come from Congress, not from the court.
[...was how the media was already taking it upon itself to question the usefulness of the country's intelligence bureaus. This is not the job of the media--especially in a time of crisis.]
It isn't? Really? I think it is the difference between "reporting" and "analysis". Both of which are valid functions of the media. If it makes you feel better to call it a "watchdog" group, so be it. Although, the question of who watches the watchers comes to mind (not that the media are without their biases -- I don't think anyone can make that claim).
I think that "the media" are just as capable of performing that type of analysis as anyone else. Some things they'll get wrong, others right -- just like anyone else. But to say that in a time of "crisis" they are just supposed to fall lock-step behind the government, rather goes against a few principles that are supposed to make the United States different.
The number of areas where CRTs were superior to LCD displays continues to dwindle. It used to be they were only smaller/lighter. But in exchange for that, you paid 4x as much, and if you typed faster than 40wpm all you'd see is a grey smudge for 15 seconds (I remember the monochrome, passive matrix screen on my Powerbook 145b). Now the prices are becoming dollar-for-dollar competitive with CRTs, they are still smaller/lighter, and now they might actually be able to handle Quake 3 Arena and look as good as my 20" monitor (and yeah -- they are pretty close to that now, especially with a still image, but...). I think the days of the CRT really are numbered this time around.
It always amazes me how investors seem interested in tiny little companies that have a neat idea, but if it ever really takes off could be entirely duplicated by a larger, more well known company, do it all for "free" (ie: ads, having an account, whatever) and not even look back twice at the dark smudge they just ran over.
[Instead of figuring out ways they can be rid of the expensive employees, why don't companies see them as valuable employees? ]
Because employees really arent a company's most valuable asset. Their most valuable asset is money.
In reality this is the type of thinking that's both good and bad for the industry. The idea that when times get tough, just find the most expensive people and get rid of them (oddly, expect for managers) -- it helps to keep technical knowledge "in circulation". These guys are going to go (eventually) to another company, maybe a start-up and breath life into it. I believe this is how even the smartest, biggest companies eventually fall prey to the smaller upstarts.
[For an alternative to become viable MS would have to practically fall on its own sword and even with its current licensing trend it is obvious that is not happening.]
I tend to disagree with that. Microsoft is doing a pretty amazing job of "falling on its sword". The thing about corporate IT is that it is almost entirely money focused. In most organizations (not software or hardware companies), IT is normally part of the finance "function" -- so the CIO reports to the CFO. Everything the CFO's organization is a "cost center" -- they don't bring any money in, so you need to squeeze as much as you can for as little as you can.
I believe the reason that the PC began to become prevalent was that is was cheaper than the "centralized" (Mini's/Mainframes/etc) that it tended to replace, at least in the short term. Spending $2000 for a desktop computer for a secretary was generally cheaper than adding the +1 user to a system at its maximum load. The same thing happened in PC based environments eventually, but as an incremental cost things looked cheaper -- and again, in the world were IT reports to Finance, that is what is really important.
Now today we are talking about Microsoft increasing license costs by upwards of 100%. This is were the CFO (the real boss of IT) starts to ask about alternatives, because this cost is going to be on-going. It starts to make the old service contracts on his VAX look like a bargain. This is the real driver of IT spending, especially when there's no "hot" economy to cover up expensive sins.
I think what bothers me about it is not that Apple can do it. Of course they can do -- IP law seems to pretty clear that they can.
The real question is "Why". It seems to me that Apple would want the "Aqua" interface to represent the cutting edge of how UI should look in everything from OS X to a skin for WinAmp. I mean, that's really what has kept them at any level of "mind-share". Looking at Windows today is based on the Mac OS, which was based on the work at PARC and so on. If you are going to be the number 2 computer company, you have to make the other guy (Microsoft) be constantly reacting and wasting time trying to make their product look like yours.
Imagine if Microsoft could have spent the last 10 years working on the underlying code of DOS/Windows instead of being forever obsessed with having a GUI as pretty as Apple's.
No, not at all. Just perhaps less demanding, in that a design methodology that is acceptable for a smaller/lower volume operation usually isn't as sophisticated as what would be needed by a larger shop. Why pay the big $$$ that I'm sure you charge for your expertise to get a great solution, when you can have "good enough" for less.
You are completely right. It is very easily around here (and fancying myself a bit of a civil libertarian) to start thinking of government as the actual root of all evil. Of course that's simply not true. They aren't all good, but they certainly aren't all bad. I hope someone mods ya up for pointing that out.
Ok -- sorry, I should have been more clear with smiley, 's, or something like that. It was a joke. For the record, nobody should ever have a list of usernames/passwords that don't belong to them and whatever other boilerplate is needed to cover any possible circumstance.
I remember reading that story and thinking about here was a good guy -- one of us, doing a fairly nice thing and reporting a security hole (that obviously someone other than him should have been the first to notice). I remember being more than a bit outraged that law enforcement couldn't tell the difference between between breaking into a system malciously, and just noticing something amiss.
Now, I can't say that I blame him for poking around a bit. If it was me, I'd probably have done the same -- never know when a username/password list is going to come in handy I suppose. I think it is the for "profit" motive - that he would steal someone elses work and try to sell it as his own is the real sin here. I guess I also can't imagine the Perl scripts of some fairly small town newspaper (we're not talking the NY Times here - although I do feel the need to say, "Free Registration Required") being that cool that they deserved to be stolen.
I'm glad the rest of the details came out on this one.
It seems that (I guess not just in the US anymore) that we are moving toward a time where every "public" service is paid for by ads. At some point, it seems to me, that you'd reach a place where there are so many messasges hitting someone that they aren't effective.
Who in the world thinks of their screen saver as some sort of compelling mini-series they must watch (apologies to Scott Adams)? A thought that strikes me as a bit unsettling would be to go into a computer lab with 100 machines all extolling the virtues of Pepsi (instead of the 3D Flower Box).
I suppose it's not true anymore, but it seems that labs, classrooms, etc. should be places reasonably free of corporate sponsorship. It is inevitable that once something has a corporate sponsor, the message gets influenced (anyone remember Microsoft donating money with some strings attached to universities?), and schools, especially publicly funded ones, should be free of that type of "influence peddling".
I couldn't agree more. DS9 tried to dabble in the idea of a continuing plot line (a real continuing plot line -- not just "Oh yeah, Capt. Picard is gone for the 2nd part of this two parter -- and you know he'll be back by the end), but never really got the hang of it. Toward the end, they could remember there was a war going on from episode to episode, but that was about it.
The great thing about B5 was that when a character did something -- you could understand why. It wasn't just because that's what fit into the script that week. The writers seemed to actually be able to come up with real motivations that seemed plausible.
Now that won't stop me from watching Enterprise tonight -- or even sticking with it for a season or two no matter how bad it is. I did the same with Voyager. I made it through a season and 1/2 -- couldn't stand it, and came back around the 5th season, and things had looked up a bit. Then you can just catch the good ones you miss in syndication.
Just wander around your local Best Buy or CompUSA for about 20 minutes. Then you will understand why one mouse button is one too many.
Just as an FYI, the currency of most of the major industrial countries hasn't been backed by gold (or silver, or much of anything else), since the early 1970's when the US withdrew from the Bretton Woods system. Today, the "value" of paper currency (beyond the value of paper itself) is simply a measure of the demand for it to buy that country's goods and services vs. the amount that country spends. This is the reason that we all get worked up from time to time over the trade deficit in the United States. The notion is that at some point everyone will have all the dollars (US) that they want/need and will not be willing take any more of them -- hence they lose value. Now, that's a /very/ simplified explanation, but if anybody thinks they can take their $20 Dollar bill to their local Federal Reserve Bank and get a fixed amount of gold/silver/etc. is in for a surprise (however, you might be able to get a fair amount of nickel coated copper, or vice versa).
That is absolutely (I guess I need to be careful about that term now) correct. Of course it is relative -- it is only relatively recently in human "progress" that killing/murdering (as another reply points out, the term murder implies certain attributes of the killing that may or may not be true) has become specifically undesireable/punishable. Of course, we carve out all sorts of exceptions to that.
It's ok to take another life in a war. The Old Testament is clear that there are acts from adultery on up (or down) that call for the taking of life. Today, if I were to stone you to death for adultery, I would be a murderer. 2500 years ago, I'd be performing an act of justice ordered by an all powerful God.
Morals have always been relative. They always will be, by definition they must be.
Oh sure -- it's funny now, but one has to remember the environment we were in when this guy got his dot bomb job. Anyone who could say PL/SQL (and not try to pronounce them as a word without vowels) had at least "potential". We hired anyone we thought had the potential of being teachable -- and we're a profitable company and everything. Of course now we're not hiring, and can't beat the guys with 10+ years experience writing Larry's Big Brother Database-O-Rama off of us with a pointed stick.
It's just a good idea to keep perspective -- even if the job this guy had is laughably silly now.
This is completely right. The real problem with airport security are the "rent-a-cops". In fact, even far worse than just a normal "mall-cop". They are paid as close to minimum wage as can be gotten away with, not properly trained, don't realize that just because the screen lights up on a laptop doesn't mean there isn't a bomb in the 2nd battery bay -- and we trust them to keep the really dangerous things off the plane. I believe that is where the focus has to be if we are going to prevent these types of things from happening again. Bring back the Federal Air Marshals!