Asimov wrote a story about this, the title of which escapes me.
I'm pretty sure you're talking about the good doctor's story "Franchise", in which an election consists of Multivac interviewing a single randomly-selected individual and extrapolating "the will of the people".
Maybe I should reread it (been a really long time), but I don't remember it having much of this sort of political cynicism. That is, it seemed more like a spoof, carrying the mathematical foundation of polls to its absurd extreme. The claim, at least, was that this system really did produce the outcome that an ideal democracy would have chosen, but even better due to the lack of dirty political campaigning. That's not to say that it didn't have a subtle point: I would say the moral of the story (expressed mainly when the elector reflects afterward on how good it felt to have his voice heard...) was to emphasize the importance of voting, but in a poetic way, rather than by evoking fear of a possible future.
He wasn't describing a Brave New World, or a Big Brother. That wasn't his style -- he seemed to be generally optimistic, and more interested in the technological possibilities. Even though in this and other stories, Multivac did seem to take on a Big-Brotherish role, it usually seemed like it really was a benevolent one -- I think it even took into account the effect that it was having on humanity (freedom and self-reliance vs. safety, etc.) and carefully weighed the results. When he did get cynical, it was usually regarding humanity's dependence on technology, e.g., in "The Feeling of Power", where nobody remembered that it was even possible to do arithmetic without a calculator, and this (re)discovery had a profound impact. Again, though he was (hyperbolically) expressing a fear, the real point was to emphasize, to us, here and now, the importance of such things.
This always gets to me. People talk about the "webbiness" of some new thing that comes along, completely ignoring its other uses, even if the web connection is really only a side note.
Is this thing in any way even remotely specific to web stuff, or is it a general-purpose tactile-feedback interface? I didn't see anything that would make it web-specific, even though that's all they talk about. In fact, I can't even imagine how it possibly could be. It would almost have to have a driver API that any application could write to, including a web browser specially modified to take cues from the web content (requiring special tags?) and trigger the device accordingly.
This could be pretty cool as an augmentation to an entire GUI, as well as games, 3D modelling and graphic design apps, etc. I would suspect that, due to bandwidth limitations if nothing else, the web part would actually be among the least impressive applications for this thing.
But then, for anything to be exciting these days, it has to say "web", right?
Sorry, appearently I failed to avoid being unclear: I love the Gates quote because it makes him sound stupid. Right: either 1 and p don't "count", and there are no factors, or they do, and they're the only ones. Either way, it's not the intractable problem that it is often mistaken for, and on which RSA encryption is based.
I wasn't referring to the Gates quote, however, even though I mentioned it in passing. What I am amazed, amused, and a bit depressed at is how often people here make the same mistake in their/. posts. I remember a recent thread (too lazy to look it up, though) in which a gentle reminder didn't even work (I wasn't involved in this exchange; I just remember reading it.) It went something like:
>>>>>[...] how to factor large prime numbers [...] >>>>I can factor large prime numbers in my head, instantly. Try me. >>>Oh yeah? Factor [some large number]. >>One, and [the large number], assuming it's actually prime. >Doh!
It's amazing, amusing, and kind of depressing how many people get this wrong, especially on/., and especially on a page where I've already seen a sig of Bill Gates' immortal quote on the matter.
Once again: factoring primes is meaningless as a problem, since the factors of a prime p are 1 and p. Factoring numbers in general is more interesting. You could even say it's easy, since factoring a number n is O(n*log(n)). It's only exponential in the number of bits, and I've always thought it was a bit weird to be impressed at the fact that the value of n is O(2^(log(n))). However, since log(n), i.e., the number of bits needed to represent n, can be set arbitrarily, it is hard to factor large numbers, but only because they are really large numbers.
It's easy to write down a number that's so big you can't count to it -- try it.
I know this is simple stuff, but people keep saying it wrong. They probably know it and are just speaking carelessly, but it really is a dumb mistake to make. Just say "factor large numbers".
Shoot, if we're worried about harming the children's delicate sensiblities [...]
Interjection: my mother runs a computer program at an elementary school, including lots of internet stuff with fifth- and sixth-graders (~11-12 years old) -- just about the age where "inappropriate material" is most worrisome: old enough to be interested in looking for it and young enough that there is actually (arguably) some harm that it could do to them.
This is how she handles the issue: she tells them, point blank, "Don't do anything in here that you wouldn't want to show and explain to: (1) me, (2) the Principal, and (3) your mother." There's a very strongly-implied "...because that's exactly what's going to happen if I catch you" hanging from the end of that. As far as I know, she hasn't had any "incidents", so apparently the combination of showing a little respect for their judgement and making them imagine the embarrassment that they would be in for actually works.
I remember that (but wasn't it more like Junior year?). I think I voted for him too, but I don't remember for sure. You can afford to waste a couple votes on jokes like that. For me, it was mostly a statement against political correctness. I seem to recall that a major factor (possibly the clincher) for me was that he was also handing out free pencils with his slogan printed on them.
I still think the best ASUC slogan was the BECS (Berkeley Engineers and Cal Scientists?) one from a year or so earlier: "Four out of five BECS candidates own crystallized caffeine."
By the way, I've tried growing caffeine crystals but it never quite worked. Any suggestions?
And despite what you said, you would have to spin head-per-track. Maybe you're thinking of the obvious extension of head-per-bit, but without motion there is no signal for a magnetic change detector.
More to the point, if you were going to make a head per bit, just use a memory chip: if you're already going to have O(one piece of circuitry) per bit, just make it a flip-flop or a capacitor instead of a magnetic reader/writer.
Actually, I have been thinking that having maybe two or three arm assemblies, instead of just one, would be a good idea: they could each be assigned to a smaller group of cylinders, reducing seeks, or all cover all cylinders but be arranged around the surface to reduce latency, or some combination of these. It would be expensive, and it would make the electronics in the controller a lot more expensive, but that's what these new faster ICs are for, right?
I remember the other day someone was complaining that the drive manufacturers keep concentrating on making the drives bigger instead of making them faster, which is the opposite of what is needed for big RAIDs. I guess the problem is that capacity looks more impressive, and the extra expense for a faster drive of the same size wouldn't impress most normal people, so it wouldn't pay off so well.
Does anyone else see a disturbing trend here? "They" seem to be trying to turn the web into television. Bad enough that so much of the web economy is based on advertising (which is at least not as bad as spam), but now these various media systems force you to stream the video. It doesn't seem to be incompetence -- they definitely seem to by doing everything they can to make it so that you can only view it as a stream, without being able to save it to disk. Aside from the control issues (which make this offensive enough), this reduces the quality of the experience in so many ways:
You can only view the video at the quailty dictated by your internet connection; they (try to) deny you the option of waiting through a long download in order to view it at higher quality.
Even the fastest internet connection will skip occasionally, so it's impossible to get really perfect playback.
Playback through browser plug-ins always sucks -- even with a local file, it skips more than with a separate player.
You can't resize the window or, better yet, put it in full-screen. Someone else said he was impressed that the stream (on a cable modem, of course) was broadcast-TV-quality, but even so, if it's in a little window, you don't get the full TV experience.
What I assume was |Cozmo|'s point: bandwidth -- even if they had the right to control how the content is used once it's on my system, why would they ever want to make it so that every single viewing has to be streamed from their server? Aside from annoying the hell out of us, all that does is cost them bandwidth.
Now, I think streaming is pretty cool stuff, and I've always been a fan of QuickTime (certainly vs. the other two lame formats on the page), but it should be an option, dammit! A good site would always provide an ordinary link to the actual file as well as the stream, but even more, a good media system would make it so that they wouldn't have to: it would be user-centric, so that by setting a browser option, or at most making a trivially obvious change to the URL, you could get at the file directly.
I didn't look (and I refuse to give them the hit), but the post said that it's a page full of banner ads. That could mean they're not even really selling anything, just trying to collect hits on the ads that they're carrying for other sites, since they get paid per impression. So even if we all just took one look and closed the window in disgust, they would make money, just not from us. So the actual porn sites lose money by paying for advertising that doesn't get them any customers, but I for one still find the whole thing offensive because they're spamming me and trying to trick me into letting them use my click for their profit.
If they're at all remotely smart, even in their own little paramecium/slime-mold/fungus/spammer way, they are probably not even hoping for us to be actual customers, just to collect hits. That's why it's important for us not to even look at the page, even "just to see for myself what it is, in order to be better-informed, yeah, that's it". Even that would make their attempt successful and hence endorse their spamming practices.
Especially in light of the past week's sequence on User Friendly, this is kind of scary. Maybe the local LUG should tag along as bodyguards. Or would they just be falling into the trap too?
A. One of those people that store up a huge number of blocks for a month or so, then send them all in, and bask in the glory of seeing themselves as #1 in the daily rankings.
This seems the most likely by far. He just had better luck than I did the day a couple months back when I checked in a bit over 100K blocks, but: a) the last 8K missed the stat run so I only showed 92K (Doh!), and b) some other guy in Japan had to pick the same day to check in his 160K, so I was #2 (Arrghh!)
Is there anything wrong with that? It's harmless and it makes this more competitive and hence more fun and leads to higher key rates. Sure, it's at least a little bit silly, maybe even immature, but anyone who says that the resultant "spiking" of the stat distribution does some kind of real harm is just showing that he takes this even more seriously than I, when I'm already acknowledging that I'm taking it way too seriously and need a life. The only real harm I can think of is the possibility that hoarding the blocks could cause duplicate work, but that is so remote as to be insignificant.
As for SlashDot losing the #1 spot, AnandTech checked in half a million blocks yesterday, but they've only done 38 million total, to our 140 million in the same 600 days, so unless they've got a new key-cracking supercomputer or otherwise massively increased their horsepower, it must also have been a matter of saving them up. I think it's kinda cool that they managed to do it, even though it knocked us down a rung, which, of course, means war. Like I said, competition is fun.
Hey, wait, it looks like they were also #2 the previous day. Maybe they have got the horsepower to keep this up. Do something! Let's see, how many more clients can I install here at work?
Without having read the book, I can imagine that her theory is similar to Daniel Dennett's "Multiple Drafts" model of consciousness, which he presents in Consciousness Explained as an alternative to what he calls the "Cartesian Theater".
If that's correct, I would say the claim that the mind is entirely composed of memes is a matter of definition -- it sounds like she extends the definition of memes to encompass all those things that make up our "inner lives" (with or without giving a better explanation than anyone else has of exactly what those things are). I guess that makes sense, in that the concepts from "Selfish Genes and Selfish Memes" (IIRC, the relevant chapter from Dawkins' The Selfish Gene) can be applied to these things as well as to the more discrete memes. Dawkins' central idea (or one of them) was the application of the concepts of evolution beyond their traditional domain of genes, right? This is just taking it further.
I think where this would cause trouble is if you fail to keep the extended definition of "meme" in mind: if you still think of it as referring to the relatively large, discrete ideas, then it would certainly sound wrong to say that that is all the mind consists of, but I think you would be misunderstanding the theory.
Though again, I haven't read the book, and maybe this is not what she is saying at all. This is a theory that I could agree with, but if it's not the one she is suggesting, then I may or may not agree with whatever it is that she does mean.
As I recall, you and I debated for a few rounds on the legitimacy of anonymous posting last time this came up, which I think was around the time that scores appeared, effectively filtering out anonymous posts (since, before moderation, it was AC gets 0, login gets 1). User accounts had only been here for a little while; I had held out for a few months on general principles (though I always signed my posts with my full name and real e-mail address, not even spam-proofed, just not through an account), but I had just recently created my account at the time.
I was and still am very much in favor of the right to post anonymously. I respect those people who feel even more strongly than I about those general principles.
Some object for technical reasons, such as refusing to use cookies, and the argument that you can "ln -s/dev/null ~/.netscape/cookies" is irrelevant: not everyone uses Unix, and more to the pont, he didn't say he doesn't want a cookie file, he said he refuses to log into a site that requires a cookie. The argument that he should use cookies is even worse. The answer is "Sez who?". He said he doesn't want to, and I for one can respect that without necessarily agreeing. Should that eliminate him from SlashDot?
Even if it were implemented without cookies (or any objectionable technology du jour), some just object to being required to yield any personal information in order to use a site. Why should they have to?
I think you should have the right to have that filtering button that you ask for, because you want it, even though I think you're wrong to want it. See how this works? People have the right to post anonymously, but you have the right not to read what they say, or even see it, since you find it so offensive.
But now, we're talking about whether people have the right to speak anonymously at all, not just whether or not their posts can or should assault your eyeballs. You emphasize the importance of people standing behind their words:
How strongly can you feel about your company, government, or other local opressive body if you're too afraid to say it yourself?
Not everyone has the courage to be John Hancock, but I don't think that makes their opinions completely worthless -- they just get somewhat less respect. You ignore the possibility that the "local opressive body" might really be oppressive, so much so that someone might legitimately fear for his job or his life if he spoke too freely. Should he really not be able to speak unless he is willing to literally risk his life? Protecting the right to anonymous speech weakens the forces of oppression. No, I don't really mean to imply that SlashDot is that important in the scheme of things, but this story is about a Federal Court ruling, so we're talking about stuff with big social consequences.
As for SlashDot, moderation has had an interesting effect: at least some moderators seem to be a little quick on the "Offtopic" and "Troll" triggers, possibly causing some people to censor themselves too much. A certain amount of thread drift is not a bad thing, it's what makes these discussions interesting, and not every expression of a dissenting opinion is a troll. People who care about their cumulative score might want to log out before posting something that is good but may not be well-received, and I think we do want this to be possible -- what fun would this be if we all agreed with each other?
I think this is an example of a good reason for anonymity: It's especially problematic that posts regarding moderation can be moderated, when issues related to SlashDot itself are ones for which completely free discussion is especially important. I think there should be a special area for this in which everything would be anonymous, but with comments automatically tagged indicating whether or not the poster has an account or has ever been a moderator.
The way I figure, Palpatine had some sort of master plan for a power play involving Naboo. Something like: the real goal was to become Chancellor. So, he wanted to call attention to the weakness of the system, presenting himself as a new source of strength. By (covertly) encouraging the Trade Federation to make trouble (in general; way before the Naboo embargo), he created a crisis situation, which would call attention to the weak state of things -- no doubt he was vocally opposing the Federation's position all along. Maybe it was going too slowly, or maybe it was the plan all along, but eventually he decided to bring matters to a head by having the Federation do something drastic. Since he was their most vocal opponent, his home planet was their most logical target, so they blockaded it. This made his position in the situation even more prominent. Under the original master plan, the power play was probably still some way off, but the Jedi showed up at Naboo, forcing him to accelerate things.
He wasn't counting on the Queen escaping (not only was he displeased when it happened, he sent Maul to try to catch them), but her arrival as Coruscant made things even better for him: it gave "his" side even more visibility and sympathy, and provided a sooner-than-expected opportunity to depose the old Chancellor and get himself nominated to succeed him ("A surprise, to be sure, but... a pleasant one.")
He was not looking too happy when she announced that she was going back home, but the gears started turning even as he attempted to dissuade her, and did you catch the faintest hint of a smile on one side of his mouth just as the scene faded? He probably figured that at worst, he was back where he started, with her back home as a sympathetic figure, but more so, because the Senate had seen her in person, and with the added bonus of her having helped depose the old Chancellor. Only now, she was leading a hopeless resistance effort, rather than simply being held captive -- hence, an even more sympathetic figure than before. Most likely, she would be killed, letting him play on the guilt of those who refused to help her ("If you'd only done something when I first asked you to..."). Or she could be captured, leaving him back where he started. Or, if the impossible happened and she actually won, he would not only have the moral high ground, but be the representative of the winning side, all but guaranteeing his election.
Basically, everything they did played perfectly into Palpatine's hands, even better than he probably hoped. So, to answer Brin's question --
Uh... will anyone please explain why the Sith Lord and Trade Federation risk everything to capture a teeny periphery planet? Can we have a clue why Naboo was important -- any hint at all? Hello?
-- Naboo was not important, except as a playing piece, because it happened to be Palpatine's homeworld and the world whose Senator he was. The invasion was only a Phantom Menace.
To me, what made the movie good was seeing these little subtleties and trying to figure out what was really going on "between the frames", integrating and reconciling it with what I had seen in, and subsequently theorized about, the original movies. This movie can't be taken in a vacuum. The big picture that is formed when you consider all the movies together and apply some thought -- that is what is really interesting.
Brin missed all this and, as others have pointed out, much of his criticism is based on the mistaken claim that Vader destroyed Alderaan in A New Hope when it was Tarkin, not Vader, who gave the order, so I would say that he didn't really pay close enough attention. However, I have to agree with his criticisms of some of the moral messages, such as judging by appearances, elitism, and the failings of democracy.
Interesting that this is an almost-identical repeat of a previous post. Trying to get as much attention as possible, eh?
I can't decide if this is just flamebait or genuine astroturf. (When an MS person writes something like this, posing as an ordinary person, he is trying to create the appearance of grass-roots support for MS. Astroturf is fake grass. ESR seems to thinks it's a verb; I think it's a noun.)
I suspect the latter, but do they really think anyone here is dumb enough to take this seriously? Maybe they're just doing it so they can elsewhere claim to have the support of some/. readers. Let's all watch for a ZDNet article referring to this/. discussion and quoting only that comment. (!) Or maybe they're just flamebaiting in hopes of being able to quote (dumb, obscene) replies and show how immature we are.
It's pathetically transparent. Why won't they just go away?
Put it this way: whatever sort of lossy compression is going on, you have to be storing enough visual information to do some pretty amazing pattern recognition. You can recognize objects based on very small visual clues: you can distinguish similar-looking people's faces by small differences in their eyebrows, cheekbones, noses, etc., including people that you've just met and ones that you haven't seen in years. There are a lot of gold-colored 1997 Toyota Corollas on the road (look around), yet, even, when one is parked right next to me, I can usually tell at a glance which one is mine, probably by almost-subliminally noting differences in trim, scratches on the fender, seat covers, etc. This process has got to involve a lot more than 100 bits per second.
The thing about counting yes/no questions probably means that they were trying to determine hoe many bits it takes to identify a concept, and hence how big the "address space" of concepts is, but this seems pretty ridiculous. The "space" of things that someone might pick in a game of "20 Questions" is surely a tiny portion of that of all human thought. The 100-baud figure has got to be based on the rate of speech, which is far from being our fastest, let alone our only, "I/O device". That said, I do believe in the concept of "mind uploads", and it might even be possible in our lifetime, but not with Jaz disks.
Back to how to fill a 200GB drive: a (probably almost) TV-quality music video in MPEG 1 format is about 40MB, or about 10 MB/minute, or about the same size as uncompressed CD audio. DV format would be even better. Passing those around on the net like mp3s would be kind of prohibitive, but they could be distributed on CDs or DVDs. I could definitely see having a big collection, which would slurp up the disk space pretty fast.
From the premise on their story page, this has potential to be one weird game.
You probably expect me to say something about causing major historical changes. You're waiting for me to tell you not to touch anything, talk to anyone, or break anything. Balderdash! Just the opposite. We want you to attempt to cause rifts in the timestream by any means necessary. Kill whomever you want. Blow up a building if you can. It's only by testing our technology (and the universe) to it's limits that we will learn from this experiment. Keep in mind that other historians receive the same advice; it will be just as important to defend yourself against them, as well as the Chronopolian natives. Since we're a scientific expedition, we're not licensed to issue weapons of any sort. You will need to find them yourself.
If this means that the game will actually try to keep track of events that happen at different times, and the way they affect each other... Well, it's hard to imagine how they'll manage it, but it could really be something. The problem is, since we can't really time-travel, how would it resolve cases like, "I think I'll beam a BFG-9000 back to the room where I had that fight last week. Then I wouldn't have gotten killed, so I would be able to do it."
They do seem to imply that that's the sort of thing they want to make possible, but it could get ridiculous, like that scene in "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" -- "After I win, I'll go back and put a gun here that I can use to kill you (and win)." "Oh yeah? Well, after we win, we'll go back and make sure your gun isn't loaded, so we'll win."...
It'll have to have some way of resolving these things: you can't have something you do take effect before the subjective time that you decide to do it, and even then it needs some way to be sure that you actually will do it before it can take effect.
This is all probably way beyond what it'll actually be, but it looks like they are going for some way of having actions and events affect each other non-sequentially. Maybe like forcing a rematch if you change the circumstances of a previous fight, and cascading the effects if the outcome is different. I hope they can pull it off.
That Crystal Space thing looks pretty interesting, too. I hadn't heard of it before. My #@%*% modem just hung up at 90% on the download, so I won't be trying it out for another few hours, though. (Why can't Netscape continue interrupted downloads instead of starting over? It does so occasionally, but it seems to decide pretty much randomly. I know, I know, read the source and fix it, right?)
When I read Stallman's paper ( The URL again), I got the impression that when he removed the obscenities from the GNU Emacs source code, he wasn't really afraid that he'd face a quarter-million-dollar fine and five years in prison if he failed to do so.
I thought it was pretty obvious that he was more making fun of the stupidity of the law, as well as, more seriously, arguing how truly bad it was, by pointing out what anybody, even Senator Exon, must see as an absurd consequence.
I am partly responding to a couple of posts above, which seem to be responding in genuine fear to the possibility that the Linux source code would be banned in Australia. This is obviously absurd, and I got the impression that this article also was using this example to show how awful the law is, but not actually suggesting that it would happen. It's not "When we put in these filters, Linux source will be blocked," but rather "If we were to put in these filters, Linux source would be blocked, so we clearly cannot do that."
Then again, it often happens that just when I think I've become entirely disillusioned, something happens that shocks me anyway, showing that I still had some ideals left -- something that I thought was plain common sense actually turns out to be idealism. Could this be the case here? I mean, what kind of idiots have you got running things down there? Or do I not want to know?
Check out Richard Stallman's response to the USA's Communications Decency Act of 1996: Censoring My Software
He found himself in the same situation. The gist is that the GNU Emacs package includes a copy of Weizenbaum's Eliza program, which has a feature to detect profane and obscene words and admonish the user to "watch your language, please". Of course, in order for this to work, the code has to contain a list of such words, which makes it obscene.
So, RMS distributed a special CDA-compliant version, whose Doctor program had that feature removed. Ironically, this means that if you swear at the new version, it will swear back at you, where the "obscene" version would not.
I suppose this would have applied to Linux source as well, but GNU Emacs is the example that he chose to focus on at the time, and it works for the Australian situation now, as well. In a way, it is an even better example than the Linux source, because in Eliza, the obscenities are actually integral parts of the program's function, and especially because of the irony of the fact that removing them actually makes it possible for the program to output obscenities.
What if the encoder embeds a fingerprint into the mp3 file that is tied to the PC (e.g., using the Ethernet card's MAC), and the player is rigged to require a handshake with the PC before downloading, confirming that the fingerprint matches, meaning that the file is being downloaded from the same PC it was created on? That would work, assuming that they could force everybody to use those encoders and players. (yeah, right, though as pointed out above, they can require the handshake on any device that also plays SDMI.)
There's not even any need for the CDs to be watermarked, but maybe the watermark is to distinguish protected material from other audio sources -- that way, even their encoder would make "free" (like speech) mp3s if desired if you use it to encode your own recordings. (That would actually be a "genuine" concession on their part toward the community, though not nearly enough, IMO.) Otherwise, I can't really think what purpose watermarking the CDs would serve -- if the idea were to make watermarked mp3s regardless of the encoder, I don't see how they could be linked to the PC.
Assuming I'm right about the fingerprint tied to the PC, what we need is an argument that even they can't refute (though they'll doubtless ignore it instead) as to why they have no moral right to do this, independent of the moral status of their entire position. How's this:
What happens when I buy a new computer? All my mp3s that I ripped (legally) from my own CDs will suddenly stop working because the fingerprints won't match anymore. The only solution would be for me to re-rip them from the original CDs, right? What if they have gotten irreparably scratched or otherwise damaged, or I've lost them or thrown them away? The whole point of ripping them was that mp3s are more convenient than CDs, as well as being my "backup/archival copy", right? besides, even if I'm able to re-rip, why should I be so inconvenienced by their system, when my use has been completely legal?
I don't know about that. We pretty much have to test our web stuff on five separate platforms: both IE and Netscape on both Mac and Windows, plus Netscape on Irix. What with frames, cookies, JavaScript, etc., (I know, yuck, but this is an intranet application) it behaves differently on every single one. IE on (any) Unix would just be one more platform to test for, but it wouldn't really save us from needing to test IE on the other platforms.
As for stability and different versions, I pretty much hated Netscape 3.x (slow and ugly) -- I just stayed with 2.0.2 until skipping to 4. I've been pretty happy since they got to 4.0.4, and I haven't even been tempted to try anything newer than that. That's on the Mac. I guess different versions stack up differently on different platforms. On the Mac, the best ones IMO have been 1.1, 2.0.2, and 4.0.4. Basically, I expect my next browser to be Mozilla.
If the movie is to be changed, then the original version would be that much more of a collector's item, wouldn't it? Sure, they have digital copies, but nobody else does, until whoever did this digitizes it. Even if the film degrades (which I heard from you first), if these guys are smart they will have a pretty high-quality digital copy of the movie in its original form. Later, when the movie starts playing on TV and/or becomes available on DVD or whatever, people will go nuts over being able to play them side by side and spot the discrepancies. Even if Lucas also releases the original in a "Collector's Edition", the bootlegged version will have a certain "vintage" appeal to it, I suspect.
Also, you said:
So using long-lived film doesn't make any sense at this point.
This seems to imply that the degrading film is simply more practical, like if it were cheaper, but how much difference could there be? Besides, you called it "special" degrading film, which sounds more expensive. I would have assumed that it was specifically intended to make the original version harder to obtain. You probably meant this, but it was not explicitly clear. Is that right?
By the way, someone else has discussed the legalities of possession of stolen property, statutes of limitations, etc. What about possession of digital copies of stolen property after the statute of limitations for the original theft has run out, and the original stolen property has been destroyed? Might they be able to squeeze through a loop-hole here?
Wouldn't be the one mentioned yesterday on slashdot, would it?
Mentioned here? 'Fraid so, and the other link is still on the front page! (As I write this, anyway) Now, I'm not usually one to complain about repeat posting of stories, but come on! There shouldn't be two copies of the same story on the front page at the same time.
On the other hand, the older story was only about the open-sourcing of Data Explorer, and it didn't mention the Deep Computing Institute (which is the really big news here), even though the page referenced was a subpage of DCI, so this is new content, but it should be noted somehow as a followup article, rather than a new story.
David Gould
Re:Difference between Troll and Flamebait?
on
Slashdot Notes
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· Score: 1
Flamebait is saying something that you know will be offensive to many readers, with the intention of starting a flamewar. Basically, you do it because it amuses you to annoy people and then watch them spluttering indignantly.
Around here, people tend to use trolling to mean pretty much the same thing, which would make these designations redundant, but proper trolling is a lot more subtle: you say something that seems stupid or otherwise flameworthy, but in fact contains some sort of clever trick, so that anyone who flames you only makes himself look [more] stupid. See the Jargon File entry. It can be a real artform, and as such would not deserve to be deprecated, but there's not a lot of that sort around here. The closest example I can think of is when someone says something sarcastic that, if meant seriously, would be flamebait, and someone somehow misses the sarcasm and flames accordingly.
Another designation that might be appropriate in such cases is "Just Plain Stupid", since sometimes it's hard to tell whether a post is flamebait, trolling, or astroturf, and then you realize you're reading too much into it -- the writer is simply a moron. This would be pretty much interchangeable with the earlier suggestion "Waste Of Bandwidth".
They'd sure like us to believe this, but I don't believe anyone can really be that stupid. Hence I suspect the above post of being astroturf. They don't explicitly make this statement on their page, probably because they know it's abusing the truth more than they can get away with, but they try to make it seem implicit.
What am I talking about? They state that "Game copying devices have no legal purpose..." Blah, blah, blah, "internet", blah, blah, blah, "illegal". However, they don't even explicitly claim that the devices have no other purpose, only that they have this "illegal" purpose. They completely ignore the backup/archival copy rule in connection to these devices, i.e., the fact that you might use the device (exclusively) to make your archival copy. They are probably hoping that what they said earlier (regarding downloading ROMs of games you already own) would carry over to this, but there is a difference. In this case, you really would be making a copy for yourself alone, from the physical medium that you own, rather than simply using the rule to justify making a bootleg copy from someone else's original.
They would certainly like us to believe that there's no difference, and IANAL, but they could hardly be dumb enough to have neglected to say it, if they really believe it's true. It seems more likely that they didn't think they could get away with it.
Even if this distinction doesn't do the trick, I for one have a serious problem with the very concept that a device can be illegal simply because it can be used for an illegal purpose. It's not illegal to be capable of doing something illegal, only to actually do it. See Richard Stallman's article "The Right to Read" (which, I see, someone else has also posted a link to a bit further down) for more on where that can lead. It's a very slippery, and very dangerous, slope.
All in all, I'm sorry to say, I am very disappointed at Nintendo's attitude. Even if their position is legally defensible, it is certainly not morally so. (Notice that they keep saying "it's illegal", but they don't really say "it's wrong." The closest they come is whining about how it costs them revenue, but that only makes it wrong if you buy their hidden premise that they are morally entitled to that revenue.) I don't think I can in good conscience buy any more of their products as long as they keep this up. I was probably going to buy a Nintendo 64 just for the new Zelda game, and I've been drooling like everyone else over the specs for their next system, but now I doubt I'll be able to bring myself to buy anything from them.
Slashdot Mirror
Asimov wrote a story about this, the title of which escapes me.
I'm pretty sure you're talking about the good doctor's story "Franchise", in which an election consists of Multivac interviewing a single randomly-selected individual and extrapolating "the will of the people".
Maybe I should reread it (been a really long time), but I don't remember it having much of this sort of political cynicism. That is, it seemed more like a spoof, carrying the mathematical foundation of polls to its absurd extreme. The claim, at least, was that this system really did produce the outcome that an ideal democracy would have chosen, but even better due to the lack of dirty political campaigning. That's not to say that it didn't have a subtle point: I would say the moral of the story (expressed mainly when the elector reflects afterward on how good it felt to have his voice heard...) was to emphasize the importance of voting, but in a poetic way, rather than by evoking fear of a possible future.
He wasn't describing a Brave New World, or a Big Brother. That wasn't his style -- he seemed to be generally optimistic, and more interested in the technological possibilities. Even though in this and other stories, Multivac did seem to take on a Big-Brotherish role, it usually seemed like it really was a benevolent one -- I think it even took into account the effect that it was having on humanity (freedom and self-reliance vs. safety, etc.) and carefully weighed the results. When he did get cynical, it was usually regarding humanity's dependence on technology, e.g., in "The Feeling of Power", where nobody remembered that it was even possible to do arithmetic without a calculator, and this (re)discovery had a profound impact. Again, though he was (hyperbolically) expressing a fear, the real point was to emphasize, to us, here and now, the importance of such things.
David Gould
This always gets to me. People talk about the "webbiness" of some new thing that comes along, completely ignoring its other uses, even if the web connection is really only a side note.
Is this thing in any way even remotely specific to web stuff, or is it a general-purpose tactile-feedback interface? I didn't see anything that would make it web-specific, even though that's all they talk about. In fact, I can't even imagine how it possibly could be. It would almost have to have a driver API that any application could write to, including a web browser specially modified to take cues from the web content (requiring special tags?) and trigger the device accordingly.
This could be pretty cool as an augmentation to an entire GUI, as well as games, 3D modelling and graphic design apps, etc. I would suspect that, due to bandwidth limitations if nothing else, the web part would actually be among the least impressive applications for this thing.
But then, for anything to be exciting these days, it has to say "web", right?
David Gould
Sorry, appearently I failed to avoid being unclear: I love the Gates quote because it makes him sound stupid. Right: either 1 and p don't "count", and there are no factors, or they do, and they're the only ones. Either way, it's not the intractable problem that it is often mistaken for, and on which RSA encryption is based.
I wasn't referring to the Gates quote, however, even though I mentioned it in passing. What I am amazed, amused, and a bit depressed at is how often people here make the same mistake in their
>>>>>[...] how to factor large prime numbers [...]
>>>>I can factor large prime numbers in my head, instantly. Try me.
>>>Oh yeah? Factor [some large number].
>>One, and [the large number], assuming it's actually prime.
>Doh!
See what I mean?
David Gould
It's amazing, amusing, and kind of depressing how many people get this wrong, especially on /., and especially on a page where I've already seen a sig of Bill Gates' immortal quote on the matter.
Once again: factoring primes is meaningless as a problem, since the factors of a prime p are 1 and p. Factoring numbers in general is more interesting. You could even say it's easy, since factoring a number n is O(n*log(n)). It's only exponential in the number of bits, and I've always thought it was a bit weird to be impressed at the fact that the value of n is O(2^(log(n))). However, since log(n), i.e., the number of bits needed to represent n, can be set arbitrarily, it is hard to factor large numbers, but only because they are really large numbers.
It's easy to write down a number that's so big you can't count to it -- try it.
I know this is simple stuff, but people keep saying it wrong. They probably know it and are just speaking carelessly, but it really is a dumb mistake to make. Just say "factor large numbers".
David Gould
Shoot, if we're worried about harming the children's delicate sensiblities [...]
Interjection: my mother runs a computer program at an elementary school, including lots of internet stuff with fifth- and sixth-graders (~11-12 years old) -- just about the age where "inappropriate material" is most worrisome: old enough to be interested in looking for it and young enough that there is actually (arguably) some harm that it could do to them.
This is how she handles the issue: she tells them, point blank, "Don't do anything in here that you wouldn't want to show and explain to: (1) me, (2) the Principal, and (3) your mother." There's a very strongly-implied "...because that's exactly what's going to happen if I catch you" hanging from the end of that. As far as I know, she hasn't had any "incidents", so apparently the combination of showing a little respect for their judgement and making them imagine the embarrassment that they would be in for actually works.
David Gould
I remember that (but wasn't it more like Junior year?). I think I voted for him too, but I don't remember for sure. You can afford to waste a couple votes on jokes like that. For me, it was mostly a statement against political correctness. I seem to recall that a major factor (possibly the clincher) for me was that he was also handing out free pencils with his slogan printed on them.
I still think the best ASUC slogan was the BECS (Berkeley Engineers and Cal Scientists?) one from a year or so earlier: "Four out of five BECS candidates own crystallized caffeine."
By the way, I've tried growing caffeine crystals but it never quite worked. Any suggestions?
David Gould
And despite what you said, you would have to spin head-per-track. Maybe you're thinking of the obvious extension of head-per-bit, but without motion there is no signal for a magnetic change detector.
More to the point, if you were going to make a head per bit, just use a memory chip: if you're already going to have O(one piece of circuitry) per bit, just make it a flip-flop or a capacitor instead of a magnetic reader/writer.
Actually, I have been thinking that having maybe two or three arm assemblies, instead of just one, would be a good idea: they could each be assigned to a smaller group of cylinders, reducing seeks, or all cover all cylinders but be arranged around the surface to reduce latency, or some combination of these. It would be expensive, and it would make the electronics in the controller a lot more expensive, but that's what these new faster ICs are for, right?
I remember the other day someone was complaining that the drive manufacturers keep concentrating on making the drives bigger instead of making them faster, which is the opposite of what is needed for big RAIDs. I guess the problem is that capacity looks more impressive, and the extra expense for a faster drive of the same size wouldn't impress most normal people, so it wouldn't pay off so well.
David Gould
Does anyone else see a disturbing trend here? "They" seem to be trying to turn the web into television. Bad enough that so much of the web economy is based on advertising (which is at least not as bad as spam), but now these various media systems force you to stream the video. It doesn't seem to be incompetence -- they definitely seem to by doing everything they can to make it so that you can only view it as a stream, without being able to save it to disk. Aside from the control issues (which make this offensive enough), this reduces the quality of the experience in so many ways:
- You can only view the video at the quailty dictated by your internet connection; they (try to) deny you the option of waiting through a long download in order to view it at higher quality.
- Even the fastest internet connection will skip occasionally, so it's impossible to get really perfect playback.
- Playback through browser plug-ins always sucks -- even with a local file, it skips more than with a separate player.
- You can't resize the window or, better yet, put it in full-screen. Someone else said he was impressed that the stream (on a cable modem, of course) was broadcast-TV-quality, but even so, if it's in a little window, you don't get the full TV experience.
- What I assume was |Cozmo|'s point: bandwidth -- even if they had the right to control how the content is used once it's on my system, why would they ever want to make it so that every single viewing has to be streamed from their server? Aside from annoying the hell out of us, all that does is cost them bandwidth.
Now, I think streaming is pretty cool stuff, and I've always been a fan of QuickTime (certainly vs. the other two lame formats on the page), but it should be an option, dammit! A good site would always provide an ordinary link to the actual file as well as the stream, but even more, a good media system would make it so that they wouldn't have to: it would be user-centric, so that by setting a browser option, or at most making a trivially obvious change to the URL, you could get at the file directly.David Gould
I didn't look (and I refuse to give them the hit), but the post said that it's a page full of banner ads. That could mean they're not even really selling anything, just trying to collect hits on the ads that they're carrying for other sites, since they get paid per impression. So even if we all just took one look and closed the window in disgust, they would make money, just not from us. So the actual porn sites lose money by paying for advertising that doesn't get them any customers, but I for one still find the whole thing offensive because they're spamming me and trying to trick me into letting them use my click for their profit.
If they're at all remotely smart, even in their own little paramecium/slime-mold/fungus/spammer way, they are probably not even hoping for us to be actual customers, just to collect hits. That's why it's important for us not to even look at the page, even "just to see for myself what it is, in order to be better-informed, yeah, that's it". Even that would make their attempt successful and hence endorse their spamming practices.
David Gould
Especially in light of the past week's sequence on User Friendly, this is kind of scary. Maybe the local LUG should tag along as bodyguards. Or would they just be falling into the trap too?
David Gould
A. One of those people that store up a huge number of blocks for a month or so, then send them all in, and bask in the glory of seeing themselves as #1 in the daily rankings.
This seems the most likely by far. He just had better luck than I did the day a couple months back when I checked in a bit over 100K blocks, but:
a) the last 8K missed the stat run so I only showed 92K (Doh!), and
b) some other guy in Japan had to pick the same day to check in his 160K, so I was #2 (Arrghh!)
Is there anything wrong with that? It's harmless and it makes this more competitive and hence more fun and leads to higher key rates. Sure, it's at least a little bit silly, maybe even immature, but anyone who says that the resultant "spiking" of the stat distribution does some kind of real harm is just showing that he takes this even more seriously than I, when I'm already acknowledging that I'm taking it way too seriously and need a life. The only real harm I can think of is the possibility that hoarding the blocks could cause duplicate work, but that is so remote as to be insignificant.
As for SlashDot losing the #1 spot, AnandTech checked in half a million blocks yesterday, but they've only done 38 million total, to our 140 million in the same 600 days, so unless they've got a new key-cracking supercomputer or otherwise massively increased their horsepower, it must also have been a matter of saving them up. I think it's kinda cool that they managed to do it, even though it knocked us down a rung, which, of course, means war. Like I said, competition is fun.
Hey, wait, it looks like they were also #2 the previous day. Maybe they have got the horsepower to keep this up. Do something! Let's see, how many more clients can I install here at work?
David Gould
Without having read the book, I can imagine that her theory is similar to Daniel Dennett's "Multiple Drafts" model of consciousness, which he presents in Consciousness Explained as an alternative to what he calls the "Cartesian Theater".
If that's correct, I would say the claim that the mind is entirely composed of memes is a matter of definition -- it sounds like she extends the definition of memes to encompass all those things that make up our "inner lives" (with or without giving a better explanation than anyone else has of exactly what those things are). I guess that makes sense, in that the concepts from "Selfish Genes and Selfish Memes" (IIRC, the relevant chapter from Dawkins' The Selfish Gene) can be applied to these things as well as to the more discrete memes. Dawkins' central idea (or one of them) was the application of the concepts of evolution beyond their traditional domain of genes, right? This is just taking it further.
I think where this would cause trouble is if you fail to keep the extended definition of "meme" in mind: if you still think of it as referring to the relatively large, discrete ideas, then it would certainly sound wrong to say that that is all the mind consists of, but I think you would be misunderstanding the theory.
Though again, I haven't read the book, and maybe this is not what she is saying at all. This is a theory that I could agree with, but if it's not the one she is suggesting, then I may or may not agree with whatever it is that she does mean.
David Gould
As I recall, you and I debated for a few rounds on the legitimacy of anonymous posting last time this came up, which I think was around the time that scores appeared, effectively filtering out anonymous posts (since, before moderation, it was AC gets 0, login gets 1). User accounts had only been here for a little while; I had held out for a few months on general principles (though I always signed my posts with my full name and real e-mail address, not even spam-proofed, just not through an account), but I had just recently created my account at the time.
/dev/null ~/.netscape/cookies" is irrelevant: not everyone uses Unix, and more to the pont, he didn't say he doesn't want a cookie file, he said he refuses to log into a site that requires a cookie. The argument that he should use cookies is even worse. The answer is "Sez who?". He said he doesn't want to, and I for one can respect that without necessarily agreeing. Should that eliminate him from SlashDot?
I was and still am very much in favor of the right to post anonymously. I respect those people who feel even more strongly than I about those general principles.
Some object for technical reasons, such as refusing to use cookies, and the argument that you can "ln -s
Even if it were implemented without cookies (or any objectionable technology du jour), some just object to being required to yield any personal information in order to use a site. Why should they have to?
I think you should have the right to have that filtering button that you ask for, because you want it, even though I think you're wrong to want it. See how this works? People have the right to post anonymously, but you have the right not to read what they say, or even see it, since you find it so offensive.
But now, we're talking about whether people have the right to speak anonymously at all, not just whether or not their posts can or should assault your eyeballs. You emphasize the importance of people standing behind their words:
How strongly can you feel about your company, government, or other local opressive body if you're too afraid to say it yourself?
Not everyone has the courage to be John Hancock, but I don't think that makes their opinions completely worthless -- they just get somewhat less respect. You ignore the possibility that the "local opressive body" might really be oppressive, so much so that someone might legitimately fear for his job or his life if he spoke too freely. Should he really not be able to speak unless he is willing to literally risk his life? Protecting the right to anonymous speech weakens the forces of oppression. No, I don't really mean to imply that SlashDot is that important in the scheme of things, but this story is about a Federal Court ruling, so we're talking about stuff with big social consequences.
As for SlashDot, moderation has had an interesting effect: at least some moderators seem to be a little quick on the "Offtopic" and "Troll" triggers, possibly causing some people to censor themselves too much. A certain amount of thread drift is not a bad thing, it's what makes these discussions interesting, and not every expression of a dissenting opinion is a troll. People who care about their cumulative score might want to log out before posting something that is good but may not be well-received, and I think we do want this to be possible -- what fun would this be if we all agreed with each other?
I think this is an example of a good reason for anonymity: It's especially problematic that posts regarding moderation can be moderated, when issues related to SlashDot itself are ones for which completely free discussion is especially important. I think there should be a special area for this in which everything would be anonymous, but with comments automatically tagged indicating whether or not the poster has an account or has ever been a moderator.
David Gould
The way I figure, Palpatine had some sort of master plan for a power play involving Naboo. Something like: the real goal was to become Chancellor. So, he wanted to call attention to the weakness of the system, presenting himself as a new source of strength. By (covertly) encouraging the Trade Federation to make trouble (in general; way before the Naboo embargo), he created a crisis situation, which would call attention to the weak state of things -- no doubt he was vocally opposing the Federation's position all along. Maybe it was going too slowly, or maybe it was the plan all along, but eventually he decided to bring matters to a head by having the Federation do something drastic. Since he was their most vocal opponent, his home planet was their most logical target, so they blockaded it. This made his position in the situation even more prominent. Under the original master plan, the power play was probably still some way off, but the Jedi showed up at Naboo, forcing him to accelerate things.
He wasn't counting on the Queen escaping (not only was he displeased when it happened, he sent Maul to try to catch them), but her arrival as Coruscant made things even better for him: it gave "his" side even more visibility and sympathy, and provided a sooner-than-expected opportunity to depose the old Chancellor and get himself nominated to succeed him ("A surprise, to be sure, but... a pleasant one.")
He was not looking too happy when she announced that she was going back home, but the gears started turning even as he attempted to dissuade her, and did you catch the faintest hint of a smile on one side of his mouth just as the scene faded? He probably figured that at worst, he was back where he started, with her back home as a sympathetic figure, but more so, because the Senate had seen her in person, and with the added bonus of her having helped depose the old Chancellor. Only now, she was leading a hopeless resistance effort, rather than simply being held captive -- hence, an even more sympathetic figure than before. Most likely, she would be killed, letting him play on the guilt of those who refused to help her ("If you'd only done something when I first asked you to..."). Or she could be captured, leaving him back where he started. Or, if the impossible happened and she actually won, he would not only have the moral high ground, but be the representative of the winning side, all but guaranteeing his election.
Basically, everything they did played perfectly into Palpatine's hands, even better than he probably hoped. So, to answer Brin's question --
Uh
-- Naboo was not important, except as a playing piece, because it happened to be Palpatine's homeworld and the world whose Senator he was. The invasion was only a Phantom Menace.
To me, what made the movie good was seeing these little subtleties and trying to figure out what was really going on "between the frames", integrating and reconciling it with what I had seen in, and subsequently theorized about, the original movies. This movie can't be taken in a vacuum. The big picture that is formed when you consider all the movies together and apply some thought -- that is what is really interesting.
Brin missed all this and, as others have pointed out, much of his criticism is based on the mistaken claim that Vader destroyed Alderaan in A New Hope when it was Tarkin, not Vader, who gave the order, so I would say that he didn't really pay close enough attention. However, I have to agree with his criticisms of some of the moral messages, such as judging by appearances, elitism, and the failings of democracy.
David Gould
Interesting that this is an almost-identical repeat of a previous post. Trying to get as much attention as possible, eh?
I can't decide if this is just flamebait or genuine astroturf. (When an MS person writes something like this, posing as an ordinary person, he is trying to create the appearance of grass-roots support for MS. Astroturf is fake grass. ESR seems to thinks it's a verb; I think it's a noun.)
I suspect the latter, but do they really think anyone here is dumb enough to take this seriously? Maybe they're just doing it so they can elsewhere claim to have the support of some
It's pathetically transparent. Why won't they just go away?
David Gould
Put it this way: whatever sort of lossy compression is going on, you have to be storing enough visual information to do some pretty amazing pattern recognition. You can recognize objects based on very small visual clues: you can distinguish similar-looking people's faces by small differences in their eyebrows, cheekbones, noses, etc., including people that you've just met and ones that you haven't seen in years. There are a lot of gold-colored 1997 Toyota Corollas on the road (look around), yet, even, when one is parked right next to me, I can usually tell at a glance which one is mine, probably by almost-subliminally noting differences in trim, scratches on the fender, seat covers, etc. This process has got to involve a lot more than 100 bits per second.
The thing about counting yes/no questions probably means that they were trying to determine hoe many bits it takes to identify a concept, and hence how big the "address space" of concepts is, but this seems pretty ridiculous. The "space" of things that someone might pick in a game of "20 Questions" is surely a tiny portion of that of all human thought. The 100-baud figure has got to be based on the rate of speech, which is far from being our fastest, let alone our only, "I/O device". That said, I do believe in the concept of "mind uploads", and it might even be possible in our lifetime, but not with Jaz disks.
Back to how to fill a 200GB drive: a (probably almost) TV-quality music video in MPEG 1 format is about 40MB, or about 10 MB/minute, or about the same size as uncompressed CD audio. DV format would be even better. Passing those around on the net like mp3s would be kind of prohibitive, but they could be distributed on CDs or DVDs. I could definitely see having a big collection, which would slurp up the disk space pretty fast.
David Gould
From the premise on their story page, this has potential to be one weird game.
...
You probably expect me to say something about causing major historical changes. You're waiting for me
to tell you not to touch anything, talk to anyone, or break anything. Balderdash! Just the opposite. We
want you to attempt to cause rifts in the timestream by any means necessary. Kill whomever you want.
Blow up a building if you can. It's only by testing our technology (and the universe) to it's limits that we
will learn from this experiment. Keep in mind that other historians receive the same advice; it will be just
as important to defend yourself against them, as well as the Chronopolian natives. Since we're a
scientific expedition, we're not licensed to issue weapons of any sort. You will need to find them yourself.
If this means that the game will actually try to keep track of events that happen at different times, and the way they affect each other... Well, it's hard to imagine how they'll manage it, but it could really be something. The problem is, since we can't really time-travel, how would it resolve cases like, "I think I'll beam a BFG-9000 back to the room where I had that fight last week. Then I wouldn't have gotten killed, so I would be able to do it."
They do seem to imply that that's the sort of thing they want to make possible, but it could get ridiculous, like that scene in "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" -- "After I win, I'll go back and put a gun here that I can use to kill you (and win)." "Oh yeah? Well, after we win, we'll go back and make sure your gun isn't loaded, so we'll win."
It'll have to have some way of resolving these things: you can't have something you do take effect before the subjective time that you decide to do it, and even then it needs some way to be sure that you actually will do it before it can take effect.
This is all probably way beyond what it'll actually be, but it looks like they are going for some way of having actions and events affect each other non-sequentially. Maybe like forcing a rematch if you change the circumstances of a previous fight, and cascading the effects if the outcome is different. I hope they can pull it off.
That Crystal Space thing looks pretty interesting, too. I hadn't heard of it before. My #@%*% modem just hung up at 90% on the download, so I won't be trying it out for another few hours, though. (Why can't Netscape continue interrupted downloads instead of starting over? It does so occasionally, but it seems to decide pretty much randomly. I know, I know, read the source and fix it, right?)
David Gould
When I read Stallman's paper ( The URL again), I got the impression that when he removed the obscenities from the GNU Emacs source code, he wasn't really afraid that he'd face a quarter-million-dollar fine and five years in prison if he failed to do so.
I thought it was pretty obvious that he was more making fun of the stupidity of the law, as well as, more seriously, arguing how truly bad it was, by pointing out what anybody, even Senator Exon, must see as an absurd consequence.
I am partly responding to a couple of posts above, which seem to be responding in genuine fear to the possibility that the Linux source code would be banned in Australia. This is obviously absurd, and I got the impression that this article also was using this example to show how awful the law is, but not actually suggesting that it would happen. It's not "When we put in these filters, Linux source will be blocked," but rather "If we were to put in these filters, Linux source would be blocked, so we clearly cannot do that."
Then again, it often happens that just when I think I've become entirely disillusioned, something happens that shocks me anyway, showing that I still had some ideals left -- something that I thought was plain common sense actually turns out to be idealism. Could this be the case here? I mean, what kind of idiots have you got running things down there? Or do I not want to know?
David Gould
Check out Richard Stallman's response to the USA's Communications Decency Act of 1996:
Censoring My Software
He found himself in the same situation. The gist is that the GNU Emacs package includes a copy of Weizenbaum's Eliza program, which has a feature to detect profane and obscene words and admonish the user to "watch your language, please". Of course, in order for this to work, the code has to contain a list of such words, which makes it obscene.
So, RMS distributed a special CDA-compliant version, whose Doctor program had that feature removed. Ironically, this means that if you swear at the new version, it will swear back at you, where the "obscene" version would not.
I suppose this would have applied to Linux source as well, but GNU Emacs is the example that he chose to focus on at the time, and it works for the Australian situation now, as well. In a way, it is an even better example than the Linux source, because in Eliza, the obscenities are actually integral parts of the program's function, and especially because of the irony of the fact that removing them actually makes it possible for the program to output obscenities.
David Gould
What if the encoder embeds a fingerprint into the mp3 file that is tied to the PC (e.g., using the Ethernet card's MAC), and the player is rigged to require a handshake with the PC before downloading, confirming that the fingerprint matches, meaning that the file is being downloaded from the same PC it was created on? That would work, assuming that they could force everybody to use those encoders and players. (yeah, right, though as pointed out above, they can require the handshake on any device that also plays SDMI.)
There's not even any need for the CDs to be watermarked, but maybe the watermark is to distinguish protected material from other audio sources -- that way, even their encoder would make "free" (like speech) mp3s if desired if you use it to encode your own recordings. (That would actually be a "genuine" concession on their part toward the community, though not nearly enough, IMO.) Otherwise, I can't really think what purpose watermarking the CDs would serve -- if the idea were to make watermarked mp3s regardless of the encoder, I don't see how they could be linked to the PC.
Assuming I'm right about the fingerprint tied to the PC, what we need is an argument that even they can't refute (though they'll doubtless ignore it instead) as to why they have no moral right to do this, independent of the moral status of their entire position. How's this:
What happens when I buy a new computer? All my mp3s that I ripped (legally) from my own CDs will suddenly stop working because the fingerprints won't match anymore. The only solution would be for me to re-rip them from the original CDs, right? What if they have gotten irreparably scratched or otherwise damaged, or I've lost them or thrown them away? The whole point of ripping them was that mp3s are more convenient than CDs, as well as being my "backup/archival copy", right? besides, even if I'm able to re-rip, why should I be so inconvenienced by their system, when my use has been completely legal?
David Gould
I don't know about that. We pretty much have to test our web stuff on five separate platforms: both IE and Netscape on both Mac and Windows, plus Netscape on Irix. What with frames, cookies, JavaScript, etc., (I know, yuck, but this is an intranet application) it behaves differently on every single one. IE on (any) Unix would just be one more platform to test for, but it wouldn't really save us from needing to test IE on the other platforms.
As for stability and different versions, I pretty much hated Netscape 3.x (slow and ugly) -- I just stayed with 2.0.2 until skipping to 4. I've been pretty happy since they got to 4.0.4, and I haven't even been tempted to try anything newer than that. That's on the Mac. I guess different versions stack up differently on different platforms. On the Mac, the best ones IMO have been 1.1, 2.0.2, and 4.0.4. Basically, I expect my next browser to be Mozilla.
David Gould
If the movie is to be changed, then the original version would be that much more of a collector's item, wouldn't it? Sure, they have digital copies, but nobody else does, until whoever did this digitizes it. Even if the film degrades (which I heard from you first), if these guys are smart they will have a pretty high-quality digital copy of the movie in its original form. Later, when the movie starts playing on TV and/or becomes available on DVD or whatever, people will go nuts over being able to play them side by side and spot the discrepancies. Even if Lucas also releases the original in a "Collector's Edition", the bootlegged version will have a certain "vintage" appeal to it, I suspect.
Also, you said:
So using long-lived film doesn't make any sense at this point.
This seems to imply that the degrading film is simply more practical, like if it were cheaper, but how much difference could there be? Besides, you called it "special" degrading film, which sounds more expensive. I would have assumed that it was specifically intended to make the original version harder to obtain. You probably meant this, but it was not explicitly clear. Is that right?
By the way, someone else has discussed the legalities of possession of stolen property, statutes of limitations, etc. What about possession of digital copies of stolen property after the statute of limitations for the original theft has run out, and the original stolen property has been destroyed? Might they be able to squeeze through a loop-hole here?
David Gould
Wouldn't be the one mentioned yesterday on slashdot, would it?
Mentioned here? 'Fraid so, and the other link is still on the front page! (As I write this, anyway) Now, I'm not usually one to complain about repeat posting of stories, but come on! There shouldn't be two copies of the same story on the front page at the same time.
On the other hand, the older story was only about the open-sourcing of Data Explorer, and it didn't mention the Deep Computing Institute (which is the really big news here), even though the page referenced was a subpage of DCI, so this is new content, but it should be noted somehow as a followup article, rather than a new story.
David Gould
Flamebait is saying something that you know will be offensive to many readers, with the intention of starting a flamewar. Basically, you do it because it amuses you to annoy people and then watch them spluttering indignantly.
Around here, people tend to use trolling to mean pretty much the same thing, which would make these designations redundant, but proper trolling is a lot more subtle: you say something that seems stupid or otherwise flameworthy, but in fact contains some sort of clever trick, so that anyone who flames you only makes himself look [more] stupid. See the Jargon File entry. It can be a real artform, and as such would not deserve to be deprecated, but there's not a lot of that sort around here. The closest example I can think of is when someone says something sarcastic that, if meant seriously, would be flamebait, and someone somehow misses the sarcasm and flames accordingly.
Another designation that might be appropriate in such cases is "Just Plain Stupid", since sometimes it's hard to tell whether a post is flamebait, trolling, or astroturf, and then you realize you're reading too much into it -- the writer is simply a moron. This would be pretty much interchangeable with the earlier suggestion "Waste Of Bandwidth".
David Gould
Game copying devices have no legal purpose.
They'd sure like us to believe this, but I don't believe anyone can really be that stupid. Hence I suspect the above post of being astroturf. They don't explicitly make this statement on their page, probably because they know it's abusing the truth more than they can get away with, but they try to make it seem implicit.
What am I talking about? They state that "Game copying devices have no legal purpose..." Blah, blah, blah, "internet", blah, blah, blah, "illegal". However, they don't even explicitly claim that the devices have no other purpose, only that they have this "illegal" purpose. They completely ignore the backup/archival copy rule in connection to these devices, i.e., the fact that you might use the device (exclusively) to make your archival copy. They are probably hoping that what they said earlier (regarding downloading ROMs of games you already own) would carry over to this, but there is a difference. In this case, you really would be making a copy for yourself alone, from the physical medium that you own, rather than simply using the rule to justify making a bootleg copy from someone else's original.
They would certainly like us to believe that there's no difference, and IANAL, but they could hardly be dumb enough to have neglected to say it, if they really believe it's true. It seems more likely that they didn't think they could get away with it.
Even if this distinction doesn't do the trick, I for one have a serious problem with the very concept that a device can be illegal simply because it can be used for an illegal purpose. It's not illegal to be capable of doing something illegal, only to actually do it. See Richard Stallman's article "The Right to Read" (which, I see, someone else has also posted a link to a bit further down) for more on where that can lead. It's a very slippery, and very dangerous, slope.
All in all, I'm sorry to say, I am very disappointed at Nintendo's attitude. Even if their position is legally defensible, it is certainly not morally so. (Notice that they keep saying "it's illegal", but they don't really say "it's wrong." The closest they come is whining about how it costs them revenue, but that only makes it wrong if you buy their hidden premise that they are morally entitled to that revenue.) I don't think I can in good conscience buy any more of their products as long as they keep this up. I was probably going to buy a Nintendo 64 just for the new Zelda game, and I've been drooling like everyone else over the specs for their next system, but now I doubt I'll be able to bring myself to buy anything from them.
David Gould