I will thrash them if they don't do what I want. Eventually they will die from overwork, or be shot in the head for being too old to run modern programs.
Yep, that was exactly my reaction. The most expensive special effect in the original Star Wars was that vector demo of how to blow up the Death Star they showed to the pilots! There were more complicated screen savers for Windows 3.1.
Whatever software is standard for movie editors in 2025 will have better special effects built-in than the most complicated stuff in the Matrix movies. Fifteen-year-olds will be outdoing Revenge of the Sith (on a special effects level, I mean--any high school play already beats the acting).
Look at all the comments on this story so far. Notice anything in common? Yes, every single one is against this. If I were selling computers, I'd notice that.
Yes, Slashdot isn't a representative sample of the computer-buying public. But Slashdot readers (and equivalent nerds) have a tremendous amount of influence in the computer market, outside of their raw numbers. The type of people who read Slashdot are early adopters, are IT workers and managers, and are the people whose families go to for computer purchasing advice. That's a lot of power in the computer market.
If a day really comes when no computer is made without this chip, then I'll start putting my own computers together without them and make a ton of money selling them. But that won't happen, because before I can do that some big computer company will notice the same market I did and beat me to the punch. Then all the other companies will see that their competitor's non-TPM computers are selling really well, because everybody on Slashdot and their mom is buying them. Guess what they decide to do then.
Capitalism is your friend. Capitalism is your best ally against crap like this. Nobody will even remember this in five years, just like nobody now remembers Divx or unique-ID Pentium chips. So just calm down.
Wow, could you stuff any *more* straw men in your argument? Where are you getting this stuff? What makes you think I'm against public funding of roads or jails? I'm obviously not against school funding, since one of the reasons I gave for being against public broadcasting funding was that it takes money *away* from school spending. And when did I object to taxes? Don't use me as a proxy for all your canned anti-libertarian rhetoric, especially when you don't know if I *am* a libertarian.
Yes, other people have made the same points about public broadcasting and arts funding as I have. But so what? Guess what, none of your arguments are original either. People have been arguing about these issues for decades; it would be pretty surprising if one of us managed to come up with a wholly original point that has escaped everyone else for the last 100 years in an off-the-cuff discussion in Slashdot, for God's sake. But just because people have made the same arguments that I have (or that you have, for that matter) doesn't make them prima facie wrong. Why not address the points I'm making, instead of trying to make them seem that they're so retro they're uncool, like earth-tones or jeri curl?
I agree that it's worth pointing out that only a small portion of NPR etc.'s budget comes from public funds, and so it shouldn't be considered "state media" like, say, the BBC.
But I think you're wrong that NPR would just vanish if it weren't for state funding. My point about their audience wasn't that no poor people ever listen to public radio, just that they have a reasonably affluent fanbase that could more than pick up the slack if government monies vanished one day. If people are "too lazy/stingy/self-centered/scared" to support NPR, then how is it getting all that other money? I've worked several public radio fundraisers and I can assure you that there are a *lot* of people out there willing to support it.
The point isn't the merit of NPR, or whether it's "worth having". The question is, should the government be in the business of funding a broadcasting outlet? If so, why? "Because NPR is really cool" is not a good reason.
Besides, you're assuming that if public financing of public broadcasting was stopped, there'd be no more public broadcasting. That's just not true, which is obvious when you're looking at how well-heeled NPR's (and PBS's) audience is. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that if NPR member stations went on the air during fundraising drives saying, "those evil Republicans are cutting off our funding," they'd end up ahead.
How exactly is PBS and NPR a service for the most well off members of society? Are you well off? Do You listen or watch either of those entities?
Yes, and yes, as a matter of fact. But to paraphrase one of the best-ever Slashdot comments, I am not a statistically significant sample size.
Something tells me that the richest memebers of society arent taking telecourses on PBS at 10pm at night. Merely, it is somehow your preconception that only rich people listen to NPR, or watch PBS. Rich children dont watch sesame st, they get taken shopping by their servants.
This is really not something that's up for debate. Both NPR and PBS, like all media outlets, keep very close tabs on their viewer demographic. Allow me to quote from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting:
Compared to the general public, NPR listeners are 152 percent more likely to own a home valued at $500,000 or more; 194 percent more likely to travel to France; and 326 percent more likely to read the "New Yorker."
... [PBS's] viewers are 44 percent more likely than the average Joe to have a household income over $150,000; 39 percent more likely to have a graduate degree; and 177 percent more likely to have investments of $150,000 and up.
As for the property tax deduction: I'm not sure what that has to do with anything, but yes, I support eliminating that (along with the mortgage deduction), for similar reasons.
Or, in other words, you dont have the slightest idea what you are talking about. Mainly, because the views you are expousing are not your own, you are simply parroting what you have heard other people say.
Because I disagree with you, I must not have any original views? Only people in favor of government-funded broadcasting can think of arguments on their own? How do you figure?
Word of advice: ad hominem attacks just weaken your argument, and make you look petty and juvenile.
Yeah, you guys are both libertarians except when the government is paying for something you like.
NPR and PBS have the best-educated, highest-paid demographic of any broadcast media outlets. If the government pulled funding, their existence would not be even slightly endangered. This is just a boondoggle for the rich and upper-middle class. We're basically taxing the poor (and underfunding much-needed services for the poor, like schools and police protection) to provide a service for the most well-off members of society.
Um, actually, you did. If nobody outside of the U.S. was interested in American TV, nobody would watch it, and the TV stations wouldn't waste their time with it. People in Europe don't eat Twinkies, because only Americans can stand them. Our exports are only successful if the foreign populations are interested. There's no American Army division going to people's houses in France and forcing them to watch "Everybody Loves Raymond."
We attempted integration with RSA and OpenSSH had significant problems that we had to resolve and in the end we could not resolve the final problem which was a session would hang after exiting the shell if the session was authenticated using the RSA PAM module.
I had that problem too... we fixed it by turning on PrivilegeSeparation (I know the RSA docs say to turn it off, but ignore that).
In any event, that's a problem with RSA's buggy PAM module, not OpenSSH.
There's no story here. The reporter has no reason to think this will happen. Nobody with either company has said the archives will be thrown out. AT&T's former archivist thinks SBC is good about keeping archives. SBC's spokesman says they keep archives. Some professor somewhere says, with no evidence at all, that they'll throw it all away, and that gives a bored reporter a hook to hang a bullshit story on.
Calm down, they'll keep it or give it to a museum.
I don't understand why people still use the Acrobat plugin. It made sense way back when external apps couldn't launch http links--it had to be a Netscape plugin so that PDFs could link to web sites. But this stopped being a problem, oh, six years ago. So all Acrobat-the-plugin (as opposed to standalone Acrobat) does is make your window smaller and your browser more unstable.
My favorite example of this is from the full-screen version of Repo Man--at one point an angry ska band is supposed to be beating and kicking a prostrate Emilio Estevez, who would be just below the frame. In the TV version, you can see that they're kicking a bag of sand.
Wait, spammers spam because it makes economic sense? What a bolt from the blue!
I've read the "tragedy of the commons" explanations of spam dozens of times already. Okay, I get it. Enough reiterations already.
I don't need the author of Sendmail to lecture me on Econ 101. I need the author of Sendmail to come up with workable solutions to the recoginized problem. What's the point of writing an article saying "Here's the problem that people have already pointed out, here are the unfeasable solutions that people have already suggested, the end"?
Sorry, didn't see that. I'm on Bugtraq so I had already read the message in my e-mail; when I brought up the web page I just looked at the first couple lines to make sure it was the same one and didn't scroll to the bottom.
People keep saying "don't use Format X, because nothing will read it in the future", and it's always crap. You can still get cylinder record players, 78 RPM record players, Betamax players, punchcard readers, player pianos, and Commodore Pet emulators. The computer I'm on right now will read.tex and.dvi files and still uncompress.Z files.
Just use whatever digital format is most convenient for you (preferably the least lossy). You'll always be able to find something to play it.
I'm in a similar situation, because my work allows running P2P as long as you don't share copyrighted material. Here's what I provide, or plan to:
Negativland's recordings are all public domain. There are also several more obscure artists in the Negativland vein, such as Evolution Control Committee, John Oswald, Tape-Beatles, and People Like Us, all of whom do not copyright their material.
The Conet Project, a collection of shortwave "numbers" transmissions: fascinating listening of encoded broadcasts by various governments to their agents overseas, all of whom deny that they do it (so they're de facto public domain).
The old cartoons from Fleischer Studios (Betty Boop, Popeye, Superman) are apparently public domain, judging by the number of small companies that have put out videotapes and DVDs of them. They also happen to be the best cartoons of the 1930's, period.
His Girl Friday, The 39 Steps, and The Lady Vanishes are all public domain, so I'm planning on encoding and sharing nice prints of these one of these days.
Occasionally I'll use Streambox VCR to grab a C-Span Real Media stream of something interesting and then share it. This is a little unethical, perhaps, but any broadcasts of speeches or government proceedings they make are public domain.
Slashdot Mirror
Um, 78s aren't vinyl. They're shellac.
In Bananas .
They are my slaves.
I will thrash them if they don't do what I want. Eventually they will die from overwork, or be shot in the head for being too old to run modern programs.
Yep, that was exactly my reaction. The most expensive special effect in the original Star Wars was that vector demo of how to blow up the Death Star they showed to the pilots! There were more complicated screen savers for Windows 3.1.
Whatever software is standard for movie editors in 2025 will have better special effects built-in than the most complicated stuff in the Matrix movies. Fifteen-year-olds will be outdoing Revenge of the Sith (on a special effects level, I mean--any high school play already beats the acting).
Many years ago, I worked at an ISP where a customer chose "core" for his username. A weekly OS cleanup script kept deleting his mail spool.
As one of Trotsky's fans once said: "It is proof of Trotsky's farsightedness that none of his predictions has yet come true."
(probably apocryphal, but who cares)
Look at all the comments on this story so far. Notice anything in common? Yes, every single one is against this. If I were selling computers, I'd notice that.
Yes, Slashdot isn't a representative sample of the computer-buying public. But Slashdot readers (and equivalent nerds) have a tremendous amount of influence in the computer market, outside of their raw numbers. The type of people who read Slashdot are early adopters, are IT workers and managers, and are the people whose families go to for computer purchasing advice. That's a lot of power in the computer market.
If a day really comes when no computer is made without this chip, then I'll start putting my own computers together without them and make a ton of money selling them. But that won't happen, because before I can do that some big computer company will notice the same market I did and beat me to the punch. Then all the other companies will see that their competitor's non-TPM computers are selling really well, because everybody on Slashdot and their mom is buying them. Guess what they decide to do then.
Capitalism is your friend. Capitalism is your best ally against crap like this. Nobody will even remember this in five years, just like nobody now remembers Divx or unique-ID Pentium chips. So just calm down.
Wow, could you stuff any *more* straw men in your argument? Where are you getting this stuff? What makes you think I'm against public funding of roads or jails? I'm obviously not against school funding, since one of the reasons I gave for being against public broadcasting funding was that it takes money *away* from school spending. And when did I object to taxes? Don't use me as a proxy for all your canned anti-libertarian rhetoric, especially when you don't know if I *am* a libertarian.
Yes, other people have made the same points about public broadcasting and arts funding as I have. But so what? Guess what, none of your arguments are original either. People have been arguing about these issues for decades; it would be pretty surprising if one of us managed to come up with a wholly original point that has escaped everyone else for the last 100 years in an off-the-cuff discussion in Slashdot, for God's sake. But just because people have made the same arguments that I have (or that you have, for that matter) doesn't make them prima facie wrong. Why not address the points I'm making, instead of trying to make them seem that they're so retro they're uncool, like earth-tones or jeri curl?
I agree that it's worth pointing out that only a small portion of NPR etc.'s budget comes from public funds, and so it shouldn't be considered "state media" like, say, the BBC.
But I think you're wrong that NPR would just vanish if it weren't for state funding. My point about their audience wasn't that no poor people ever listen to public radio, just that they have a reasonably affluent fanbase that could more than pick up the slack if government monies vanished one day. If people are "too lazy/stingy/self-centered/scared" to support NPR, then how is it getting all that other money? I've worked several public radio fundraisers and I can assure you that there are a *lot* of people out there willing to support it.
The point isn't the merit of NPR, or whether it's "worth having". The question is, should the government be in the business of funding a broadcasting outlet? If so, why? "Because NPR is really cool" is not a good reason.
Besides, you're assuming that if public financing of public broadcasting was stopped, there'd be no more public broadcasting. That's just not true, which is obvious when you're looking at how well-heeled NPR's (and PBS's) audience is. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that if NPR member stations went on the air during fundraising drives saying, "those evil Republicans are cutting off our funding," they'd end up ahead.
How exactly is PBS and NPR a service for the most well off members of society? Are you well off? Do You listen or watch either of those entities?
Yes, and yes, as a matter of fact. But to paraphrase one of the best-ever Slashdot comments, I am not a statistically significant sample size.
Something tells me that the richest memebers of society arent taking telecourses on PBS at 10pm at night. Merely, it is somehow your preconception that only rich people listen to NPR, or watch PBS. Rich children dont watch sesame st, they get taken shopping by their servants.
This is really not something that's up for debate. Both NPR and PBS, like all media outlets, keep very close tabs on their viewer demographic. Allow me to quote from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting:
(from here.)
As for the property tax deduction: I'm not sure what that has to do with anything, but yes, I support eliminating that (along with the mortgage deduction), for similar reasons.
Or, in other words, you dont have the slightest idea what you are talking about. Mainly, because the views you are expousing are not your own, you are simply parroting what you have heard other people say.
Because I disagree with you, I must not have any original views? Only people in favor of government-funded broadcasting can think of arguments on their own? How do you figure?
Word of advice: ad hominem attacks just weaken your argument, and make you look petty and juvenile.
Yeah, you guys are both libertarians except when the government is paying for something you like.
NPR and PBS have the best-educated, highest-paid demographic of any broadcast media outlets. If the government pulled funding, their existence would not be even slightly endangered. This is just a boondoggle for the rich and upper-middle class. We're basically taxing the poor (and underfunding much-needed services for the poor, like schools and police protection) to provide a service for the most well-off members of society.
we didn't ask the US to dump crap TV on us ...
Um, actually, you did. If nobody outside of the U.S. was interested in American TV, nobody would watch it, and the TV stations wouldn't waste their time with it. People in Europe don't eat Twinkies, because only Americans can stand them. Our exports are only successful if the foreign populations are interested. There's no American Army division going to people's houses in France and forcing them to watch "Everybody Loves Raymond."
We attempted integration with RSA and OpenSSH had significant problems that we had to resolve and in the end we could not resolve the final problem which was a session would hang after exiting the shell if the session was authenticated using the RSA PAM module.
I had that problem too... we fixed it by turning on PrivilegeSeparation (I know the RSA docs say to turn it off, but ignore that).
In any event, that's a problem with RSA's buggy PAM module, not OpenSSH.
There's no story here. The reporter has no reason to think this will happen. Nobody with either company has said the archives will be thrown out. AT&T's former archivist thinks SBC is good about keeping archives. SBC's spokesman says they keep archives. Some professor somewhere says, with no evidence at all, that they'll throw it all away, and that gives a bored reporter a hook to hang a bullshit story on.
Calm down, they'll keep it or give it to a museum.
I don't understand why people still use the Acrobat plugin. It made sense way back when external apps couldn't launch http links--it had to be a Netscape plugin so that PDFs could link to web sites. But this stopped being a problem, oh, six years ago. So all Acrobat-the-plugin (as opposed to standalone Acrobat) does is make your window smaller and your browser more unstable.
No, because Thatcher disbanded it! Can't you read?
My favorite example of this is from the full-screen version of Repo Man--at one point an angry ska band is supposed to be beating and kicking a prostrate Emilio Estevez, who would be just below the frame. In the TV version, you can see that they're kicking a bag of sand.
Wait, spammers spam because it makes economic sense? What a bolt from the blue!
I've read the "tragedy of the commons" explanations of spam dozens of times already. Okay, I get it. Enough reiterations already.
I don't need the author of Sendmail to lecture me on Econ 101. I need the author of Sendmail to come up with workable solutions to the recoginized problem. What's the point of writing an article saying "Here's the problem that people have already pointed out, here are the unfeasable solutions that people have already suggested, the end"?
Sorry, didn't see that. I'm on Bugtraq so I had already read the message in my e-mail; when I brought up the web page I just looked at the first couple lines to make sure it was the same one and didn't scroll to the bottom.
This isn't exactly what you want, but I think you'll find it of interest:
Chilling Effects
There was a really good Slate article on that very topic last year: http://slate.msn.com/id/2063524/
People keep saying "don't use Format X, because nothing will read it in the future", and it's always crap. You can still get cylinder record players, 78 RPM record players, Betamax players, punchcard readers, player pianos, and Commodore Pet emulators. The computer I'm on right now will read .tex and .dvi files and still uncompress .Z files.
Just use whatever digital format is most convenient for you (preferably the least lossy). You'll always be able to find something to play it.
6 GB, right here.