Hey, that's an easy one! Copyright laws should be used to encourage creativity, not stifle it. I think the two main abuses of current copyright law are the blocking of derivative works and the extension of the term of copyright.
In both cases, these are driven not by the creators, but by the greedy businessmen who are selling their creative works. The problem is that they are the ones who have been essentially dictating copyright law for the last 40 years or so, and their only purpose is to maximize their monopoly profits.
Mickey Mouse should have died and been replaced a LONG time ago. Preserving the Disney franchise is *NOT* the primary goal of copyright.
Since Democrats take great pleasure in quoting every slip of the tongue every Republican ever made, I think it quite fair for Gore to be gored by the same ox.
You just pegged the hypocrisy meter. Careful, your head might explode if you lie too hard.
Anyway, I believe everything I read on the Web. Really.
I suppose I better clarify my statement. I really do believe everything I read on the Web. What I believe is that someone wrote it (subject to epistemological qualifications). However, I do *NOT* believe in the sense of believing that it is true or even that it has meaning. I believe someone wrote it, and there is a context in which there were reasons why it was written. But true? Just for beginners, the author might be mistaken, though in this case the more obvious concern is that the author might be externally motivated by political considerations. True? Sorry, I'm not going to believe it just because someone on/. says so.
In this case, there were two standards for truth. Dubya could say the most stupid things imaginable, and his errors, hypocrisy, and even lies, were ignored. Unfortunately, BushCo is building their entire "marketing campaign" on a bald lie of Dubya's non-existent competence.
Sadly, BushCo is very much in touch with our times--just like Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert is in touch with modern "reality". Truth is becoming a meaningless notion. Creating "proper" images and making money are apparently the only things that count.
Sad to watch, though from a historical perspective I don't care that much. However, that's just my faith in truth and democracy. I think they are good, and therefore will ultimately prevail--but the current evidence is that the places where they prevail will be elsewhere than my beloved homeland.
I just want to chime in agreement with these two posts. I've only read a few of his books, but I found them to be profoundly unimaginative. Yes, he's a decent enough craftsman, but he has no business offering criticism of others for a lack of creativity, etc.
His self-promotional activities are also well known, and apparently quite successful--though not with people like me. His books will be soon forgotten.
Noble Piece versus Nobel Peace? Talk about a cheap ripoff.
The article needs a little note like "NOT to be confused with the actually famous Nobel Peace Prize."
At least that's my initial reaction, along with the thought that they need to vet the articles more carefully. I'll eat my post in a follow up if I'm wrong, but I'd bet against it. Especially since the Nobel prizes are announced in October, and my calendar is insisting this is May.
Hmm... Hypocrite? No, I think they sincerely believe it, so it isn't hypocrisy per se.
The basic problem is that the Bible is filled with logical inconsistencies, and the Bible thumpers can't actually be sure of anything. In the simplest logical terms, if you accept "A and ~A" are both true, then *ANYTHING* is true. Logic is part of reality, so the result is that the Bible thumpers have to selectively ignore or forget about various parts of the Bible.
In conclusion, if the Bible really is the work of God, you have to conclude God is an idiot. The fundamental problem is that we now know how to encode and represent information reliably--but we have only developed the required mathematics of information theory fairly recently. Therefore, the Bible could have used information theoretic principles to avoid problems in the transmission of God's message. It doesn't matter that the Bible was written before we humans knew how to do this. If you insist God is intelligent, then he would already know information theory and would have used it to avoid the kind of problems we see now--including the abuse of "His word" to support all manner of contradictory positions.
One more thing. The standard of historical scholarship in the Bible is really appalling. It's not like an omniscient God would have needed any fact checkers.
I was going to buy the "insightful" ranking except for the glaring error in point b). Even though I agree with most of it, one of my principles is that "insightful" must begin by being "true", and that is a counterfactual statement. The astronauts have many backgrounds, and these days very few of them ever worked as test pilots, and flying on the space shuttle is the most dangerous thing they have ever done in their lives.
Poing e) is also highly debatable, since "viability" is such a mutable concept. Actually, there's nothing alive in "mission", and it's already a metaphorical usage, and I think it's basically impossible to set any concrete criteria of "mission viability". The main advantage of robotic missions is precisely their lack of life. It doesn't matter what goes wrong--we can just try again.
In conclusion, I think manned space flight is a wonderful idea, but fundamentally flawed because of the support overhead. In terms of acquiring scientific data, you simply don't need tons of food and oxygen. More importantly, for most of the trip, you don't need anything at all--and a robot can go into a standby mode where it also needs nothing.
This tactical idea of rumor-based marketing by getting some bloggers to testify to Longhorn's wonderfulness makes perfect sense in that context.
Whoops, I suppose I better clarify my statement. I really do believe everything I read on the Web. What I believe is that someone wrote it. (Actually even that belief is subject to some epistemological qualifications, such as that my computer and eyes are working properly, etc.) However, I do *NOT* believe in the sense of believing that it is true or even that it has meaning. I believe someone wrote it, and there is a context in which there were reasons why it was written. But true? Just for beginners, the author might be mistaken, though in this case the more obvious concern is that the author might be externally motivated by Microsoft. True? Sorry, I'm not going to believe it just because some blogger says so.
I just had a BSOD a few minutes ago. That's one of Microsoft's Blue Screens of Death, just in case you're some kind of n00b. That's on Microsoft's current "latest and greatest" XP OS.
I keep thinking about what has been reported as the marketing slogan for Longhorn: "It just works." If so, that would be the first time in the history of Microsoft. I really doubt it. Yes, I appreciate that Microsoft is sincerely trying to make better software, but they continue to make their software more and more complex, and I'd certainly wager that Longhorn will have bugs. (Actually, I've already won that bet--Microsoft has already begun patching Longhorn's bugs.) There will be lots of times when it will *NOT* just work. They are building their entire marketing campaign on a bald lie.
Sadly, Microsoft is very much in touch with our times--just like Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert is in touch with modern "reality". Truth is becoming a meaningless notion. Creating "proper" images and making money are apparently the only things that count.
Sad to watch, though from a historical perspective I don't care that much. However, that's just my faith in truth and democracy. I think they are good, and therefore will ultimately prevail--but the current evidence is that the places where they prevail will be elsewhere than my beloved homeland.
I only threw that out as the first obvious point of attack, but even for your delay problem, I can think of an obvious workaround if the data rate of the "secure" channel remains less than the rate of non-secure channels. (They'd need two splices, with the delay masked by the faster channel. Or perhaps they'd even need to force the secure channel to use a less direct route.) However, that's not really addressing the fundamental problem, which is that absolute security is always an illusion. The real question is whether or not the adversary has the resources required to crack the system and believes the value of the cracking justifies the expenditure of the necessary resources. There are always other places and methods to attack. For example, if we concede that the channel is impervious (which I still doubt), then the adversary would have to go after the information at the endpoints, either before or after it entered or left the channel.
The original fibre taps just spliced into the fibre and repeated the signals. It's only the later technology that could try to interpret the leakage. I don't see how this adds any security, except perhaps insofar as the time to make the more difficult splice will increase the odds of noticing the interruption. "Unhackable"? Nope. The race will never end.
A simple "RTFA" would have sufficed for all your ranting. Do you feel superior to anyone yet?
However, extending to the satellite scenario, superconducting approaches still make more sense, but if you think I'm going to waste time discussing technical matters with a rude fool...
My basic reaction is that superconducting approaches make much more sense. Weight is pretty much not a factor for normal usages. When the quantity of electricity involved is large enough that the weight does become a factor, then you're probably thinking of power transmission lines, and in that scenario you can consider the tradeoff for seriously large amounts of power. I can imagine a small refrigerated tunnel containing a high-temperature ceramic semiconductor and carrying extremely large amounts of electricity with very little lossage. I don't have the numbers at hand, but I feel like this approach is already pretty close to economic viability. (But maybe that's why they don't feel the need to put any additional government money behind it?)
Because at some point big business is going to realize that Dubya's style of faith-based corruption is economically harmful to them. Unfortunately, by that time the Chinese economy will probably be so strong that no one will care what BushCo wants at IATC or anywhere else. The US is sinking to the level of banana republic, which isn't too surprising considering the Banana Republicans calling these crazy shots.
At some point you'd think the cognitive dissonance would make their heads explode. Radio frequency standards are political, too? Why? Worried about too much communication or something?
Anyway, I'm going to get a BIG sign and run around the White House screaming "Be Reasonable!"
In conclusion, Jim Guckert is probably the ultimate screw-reality poster child for BushCo. And of course the ultimate problem is that reality is very persistant, and refuses to go away.
Actually, there is (or maybe was) a line that was running with a computerized system. I remember because they had a pretty serious problem with it a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, I can't recall the details now, though I think it was also near Osaka, but that no one was injured.
The train systems are becoming increasingly automated however. For example, the older lines have open platforms, but several of the newer lines have a wall at the edge of the platform, with elevator-style doors that align with the train doors. No way to fall off the platform in that situation. I'm pretty sure they use a computerized braking system to stop the trains precisely so that that the doors line up, and probably a computerized interlock system to synchronize the pairs of doors.
I think it may be too early to rule out any connection to the fatal derailment. There is some preliminary evidence that the engineer may have been pushing in an attempt to get back on schedule--and the delays may have been indirectly related to the train delays mentioned in this article.
However, I admit that it was more likely due to his youth and inexperience. He was 23 and had less than a year handling the trains--but they also need to reconsider any external factors that may have helped pressure him to make the fatal mistake.
On the main topic, I'm not sure why Virus Buster is not being mentioned here. One of my Japanese co-workers said that was the affected product. I think they may have been acquired by Trend Micro, but it's still marketed under that name (written in katakana), and I think it is still the top anti-virus product in the Japanese market. I worked in Akihabara some years ago, and it was definitely quite dominant at that time.
I think the site is/.ed right now. Not much you can do since they insist on streaming video distribution. Good thing they aren't trying to advertise network distribution services!
This is a job for BitTorrent Man!
Seriously, this is a case where sharing the network resources of the people who want to see the file makes extremely good sense. And after all, the entire purpose of advertising is to get as many people to see it as possible. Copyright extremism ought not to be the issue here.
Anyway, I don't have the patience now. I'll try again in 12 hours or so. Is that long enough for the/. effect to wear off? I should think so.
When the original comment said "psychotic", the word that leaped to my mind was "immature" as the admitedly weaker alternative I would have chosen. Still, I think that "immature" definitely applies to the moderators who regarded the post as flamebait.
However, I'm actually scanning the thread looking for humorous comments on Ballmer's claim that Microsoft's resources are too limited. How many billions of dollars does Microsoft have in the bank? But now their resources are too limited? Riiiiiiight! (Back to scanning.)
Yes, it means nine-tenths, but unless you can provide a definitive citation, I have to stand on "nine points". I did quite a bit of digging on that point some months ago, and it certainly appeared that the "nine points" usage is prevalent--but I wasn't able to come up with a definitive citation, either. In particular, I could not find any specific attribution that seemed credible, and the expression seems to be quite old.
They should offer an option to keep a certain amount of email online for convenient access, but I think it should be a small amount and a brief period. At least I'd certainly set it that way for my account.
Backup services is a separate and very viable business model, but they don't need to be able to real all of your email to offer that.
If you want to use Google as a backup service, they should offer a backup service, preferably a secure and intelligent one that would also support your migration to new computers over the years. The data should be encrypted on your PC, and Google should keep only the encrypted backups. Security? They email you the decryption password, and you print it and keep it in a really safe place.
Slashdot Mirror
In both cases, these are driven not by the creators, but by the greedy businessmen who are selling their creative works. The problem is that they are the ones who have been essentially dictating copyright law for the last 40 years or so, and their only purpose is to maximize their monopoly profits.
Mickey Mouse should have died and been replaced a LONG time ago. Preserving the Disney franchise is *NOT* the primary goal of copyright.
Anyway, I believe everything I read on the Web. Really.
I suppose I better clarify my statement. I really do believe everything I read on the Web. What I believe is that someone wrote it (subject to epistemological qualifications). However, I do *NOT* believe in the sense of believing that it is true or even that it has meaning. I believe someone wrote it, and there is a context in which there were reasons why it was written. But true? Just for beginners, the author might be mistaken, though in this case the more obvious concern is that the author might be externally motivated by political considerations. True? Sorry, I'm not going to believe it just because someone on /. says so.
In this case, there were two standards for truth. Dubya could say the most stupid things imaginable, and his errors, hypocrisy, and even lies, were ignored. Unfortunately, BushCo is building their entire "marketing campaign" on a bald lie of Dubya's non-existent competence.
Sadly, BushCo is very much in touch with our times--just like Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert is in touch with modern "reality". Truth is becoming a meaningless notion. Creating "proper" images and making money are apparently the only things that count.
Sad to watch, though from a historical perspective I don't care that much. However, that's just my faith in truth and democracy. I think they are good, and therefore will ultimately prevail--but the current evidence is that the places where they prevail will be elsewhere than my beloved homeland.
His self-promotional activities are also well known, and apparently quite successful--though not with people like me. His books will be soon forgotten.
Noble Piece versus Nobel Peace? Talk about a cheap ripoff. The article needs a little note like "NOT to be confused with the actually famous Nobel Peace Prize."
At least that's my initial reaction, along with the thought that they need to vet the articles more carefully. I'll eat my post in a follow up if I'm wrong, but I'd bet against it. Especially since the Nobel prizes are announced in October, and my calendar is insisting this is May.
Anyway, I don't care. The only point of curiosity is how often your "conversations" sink to that level.
The basic problem is that the Bible is filled with logical inconsistencies, and the Bible thumpers can't actually be sure of anything. In the simplest logical terms, if you accept "A and ~A" are both true, then *ANYTHING* is true. Logic is part of reality, so the result is that the Bible thumpers have to selectively ignore or forget about various parts of the Bible.
In conclusion, if the Bible really is the work of God, you have to conclude God is an idiot. The fundamental problem is that we now know how to encode and represent information reliably--but we have only developed the required mathematics of information theory fairly recently. Therefore, the Bible could have used information theoretic principles to avoid problems in the transmission of God's message. It doesn't matter that the Bible was written before we humans knew how to do this. If you insist God is intelligent, then he would already know information theory and would have used it to avoid the kind of problems we see now--including the abuse of "His word" to support all manner of contradictory positions.
One more thing. The standard of historical scholarship in the Bible is really appalling. It's not like an omniscient God would have needed any fact checkers.
Poing e) is also highly debatable, since "viability" is such a mutable concept. Actually, there's nothing alive in "mission", and it's already a metaphorical usage, and I think it's basically impossible to set any concrete criteria of "mission viability". The main advantage of robotic missions is precisely their lack of life. It doesn't matter what goes wrong--we can just try again.
In conclusion, I think manned space flight is a wonderful idea, but fundamentally flawed because of the support overhead. In terms of acquiring scientific data, you simply don't need tons of food and oxygen. More importantly, for most of the trip, you don't need anything at all--and a robot can go into a standby mode where it also needs nothing.
This tactical idea of rumor-based marketing by getting some bloggers to testify to Longhorn's wonderfulness makes perfect sense in that context.
Whoops, I suppose I better clarify my statement. I really do believe everything I read on the Web. What I believe is that someone wrote it. (Actually even that belief is subject to some epistemological qualifications, such as that my computer and eyes are working properly, etc.) However, I do *NOT* believe in the sense of believing that it is true or even that it has meaning. I believe someone wrote it, and there is a context in which there were reasons why it was written. But true? Just for beginners, the author might be mistaken, though in this case the more obvious concern is that the author might be externally motivated by Microsoft. True? Sorry, I'm not going to believe it just because some blogger says so.
I just had a BSOD a few minutes ago. That's one of Microsoft's Blue Screens of Death, just in case you're some kind of n00b. That's on Microsoft's current "latest and greatest" XP OS.
I keep thinking about what has been reported as the marketing slogan for Longhorn: "It just works." If so, that would be the first time in the history of Microsoft. I really doubt it. Yes, I appreciate that Microsoft is sincerely trying to make better software, but they continue to make their software more and more complex, and I'd certainly wager that Longhorn will have bugs. (Actually, I've already won that bet--Microsoft has already begun patching Longhorn's bugs.) There will be lots of times when it will *NOT* just work. They are building their entire marketing campaign on a bald lie.
Sadly, Microsoft is very much in touch with our times--just like Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert is in touch with modern "reality". Truth is becoming a meaningless notion. Creating "proper" images and making money are apparently the only things that count.
Sad to watch, though from a historical perspective I don't care that much. However, that's just my faith in truth and democracy. I think they are good, and therefore will ultimately prevail--but the current evidence is that the places where they prevail will be elsewhere than my beloved homeland.
I only threw that out as the first obvious point of attack, but even for your delay problem, I can think of an obvious workaround if the data rate of the "secure" channel remains less than the rate of non-secure channels. (They'd need two splices, with the delay masked by the faster channel. Or perhaps they'd even need to force the secure channel to use a less direct route.) However, that's not really addressing the fundamental problem, which is that absolute security is always an illusion. The real question is whether or not the adversary has the resources required to crack the system and believes the value of the cracking justifies the expenditure of the necessary resources. There are always other places and methods to attack. For example, if we concede that the channel is impervious (which I still doubt), then the adversary would have to go after the information at the endpoints, either before or after it entered or left the channel.
The original fibre taps just spliced into the fibre and repeated the signals. It's only the later technology that could try to interpret the leakage. I don't see how this adds any security, except perhaps insofar as the time to make the more difficult splice will increase the odds of noticing the interruption. "Unhackable"? Nope. The race will never end.
Funny you should ask. He probably just got a big contract from Microsoft.
Whoops, I'm starting a discussion with a fool.
However, extending to the satellite scenario, superconducting approaches still make more sense, but if you think I'm going to waste time discussing technical matters with a rude fool...
My basic reaction is that superconducting approaches make much more sense. Weight is pretty much not a factor for normal usages. When the quantity of electricity involved is large enough that the weight does become a factor, then you're probably thinking of power transmission lines, and in that scenario you can consider the tradeoff for seriously large amounts of power. I can imagine a small refrigerated tunnel containing a high-temperature ceramic semiconductor and carrying extremely large amounts of electricity with very little lossage. I don't have the numbers at hand, but I feel like this approach is already pretty close to economic viability. (But maybe that's why they don't feel the need to put any additional government money behind it?)
Because at some point big business is going to realize that Dubya's style of faith-based corruption is economically harmful to them. Unfortunately, by that time the Chinese economy will probably be so strong that no one will care what BushCo wants at IATC or anywhere else. The US is sinking to the level of banana republic, which isn't too surprising considering the Banana Republicans calling these crazy shots.
Anyway, I'm going to get a BIG sign and run around the White House screaming "Be Reasonable!"
In conclusion, Jim Guckert is probably the ultimate screw-reality poster child for BushCo. And of course the ultimate problem is that reality is very persistant, and refuses to go away.
The train systems are becoming increasingly automated however. For example, the older lines have open platforms, but several of the newer lines have a wall at the edge of the platform, with elevator-style doors that align with the train doors. No way to fall off the platform in that situation. I'm pretty sure they use a computerized braking system to stop the trains precisely so that that the doors line up, and probably a computerized interlock system to synchronize the pairs of doors.
However, I admit that it was more likely due to his youth and inexperience. He was 23 and had less than a year handling the trains--but they also need to reconsider any external factors that may have helped pressure him to make the fatal mistake.
On the main topic, I'm not sure why Virus Buster is not being mentioned here. One of my Japanese co-workers said that was the affected product. I think they may have been acquired by Trend Micro, but it's still marketed under that name (written in katakana), and I think it is still the top anti-virus product in the Japanese market. I worked in Akihabara some years ago, and it was definitely quite dominant at that time.
This is a job for BitTorrent Man!
Seriously, this is a case where sharing the network resources of the people who want to see the file makes extremely good sense. And after all, the entire purpose of advertising is to get as many people to see it as possible. Copyright extremism ought not to be the issue here.
Anyway, I don't have the patience now. I'll try again in 12 hours or so. Is that long enough for the /. effect to wear off? I should think so.
However, I'm actually scanning the thread looking for humorous comments on Ballmer's claim that Microsoft's resources are too limited. How many billions of dollars does Microsoft have in the bank? But now their resources are too limited? Riiiiiiight! (Back to scanning.)
Yes, it means nine-tenths, but unless you can provide a definitive citation, I have to stand on "nine points". I did quite a bit of digging on that point some months ago, and it certainly appeared that the "nine points" usage is prevalent--but I wasn't able to come up with a definitive citation, either. In particular, I could not find any specific attribution that seemed credible, and the expression seems to be quite old.
They should offer an option to keep a certain amount of email online for convenient access, but I think it should be a small amount and a brief period. At least I'd certainly set it that way for my account.
Backup services is a separate and very viable business model, but they don't need to be able to real all of your email to offer that.
One password in the darkness binds them?