They weren't entirely wrong, they were just weren't thinking long-term enough. According to the FAQ, the Ogg project is currently in its 7th year; it's reasonable to assume that (7 years of audio-geeks developing a codec as their primary hobby == months of full-time Ph.D. research).
In the non-web world, many businesses profit on the backs of others. Consider phone books. The phone company is MAKING A PROFIT by listing your phone number!
Yes, this is true. But that is because THEY are doing the collection and aggregation of phone number data. Tickets.com isn't even doing that much - they are letting someone else collect and aggregate the data, then profiting from their alternate presentation of it.
Your analogy is wrong - tickets.com using Ticketmaster data to populate its site is not like being a phone book; the correct analogy would be that tickets.com is like one company publishing a phone book by reproducing all of the entries in a competitor's phone book.
Is this decision really very good for the Internet? I don't think so. All this will do will encourage Ticketmaster to take its listings offline and make Internet ticket sales non-existent.
Ticketmaster spends a lot of money to convince venues that they should be their ticketing vendor. They go to further expense to aggregate all that data and present it pleasantly on the web. This makes it much easier for me, the consumer, to buy tickets for concerts from home rather than waiting in line outside a record store all night (which I've done) or trying to get through on the phones, only to have a show sold out by the time the busy signals dissipate (which I've also done).
By saying that tickets.com has the right to link to that data and present it as its own and essentially profit from the labor of others (and if you think that statement is incorrect, then look at tickets.com; they *COULD NOT EXIST* without leeching off of Ticketmaster) will be a disincentive for Ticketmaster to do business on the web. And if this trend of providing legal protection to companies who simply copy others' sites and reformat them continues, many other companies will be discouraged from doing business on the web too, further restricting my ability to do whatever I damn well please on the Internet.
This decision is *NOT* good for anyone who actually wants to 'do more' on the Internet.
I don't mean for this to sound like a troll, but I am really stunned at the complete nonsense in this article. Simply put, I think it's very clear that independent music is simply part of the collateral damage done by the RIAA and others seeking to protect their copyrights. Sure, taking out a distribution method rather than the distributors (as is the case with trying to shut down Napster) is overly-broad and therefore unacceptable. But if the RIAA wanted to cut down on the average person's ability to distribute their own music, they'd be targetting mp3.com. I really don't agree with Katz's implication that this is a matter of the RIAA playing the part of culture-gestapo. I guess I'll have to use Katz's words against him; he says "Central to the [DMCA] is a clause making it illegal to thwart copyright protection methods through the use of software or hardware." What's wrong with that? I don't see anyone complaining about the fact that it's illegal to pick the locks on the front door to one's house.
I am very, very concerned with privacy issues and I don't see a problem with the wording or intent of the DMCA. If/when it starts to be abused (which may already be the case) and that abuse is upheld in higher courts, then I will be concerned.
Distraction, as a military tactic, is ancient. Sun-Tzu wrote about it in "The Art of War".
It's no coincidence that Pentagon and other "break-ins" happen in such close proximity to budget cycles. Go back and look through your Congressional record - you can practically set your clock by it, it's so regular.
Recipe for inflating your budget: put some moderately secured machines on the Internet, allow them to be compromised, express some outrage, wait for a while (but not so long that people forget), and then - presto! - money falls from the sky!
The military/industrial complex does this all of the time. In theory, a perfect example of this is Area 51 - if I'm the U.S. Government and I have alien technology, I've got plenty of incentive to fake the establishment of a military base for studying that technology, do a half-assed job of covering it up, and then leak it's existence to the press. That way, no one looks for the place I'm stashing the *real* alien hardware.:)
The issue is that it's not realtime even when the others do it - eBay's main concern is that the 'meta auctions' don't accurately report what's going on at eBay. Hell, half the time eBay doesn't accurately report what's going on at eBay. Meta auctions are just a bad idea in general. Comparison shopping is great for fixed prices, but for auctions it just doesn't make sense, and rarely works properly.
Think about it: if a company had developed software that could aggregate and keep multiple databases synchronized over the Internet in realtime, would they be in the meta auction business?
"But the process of getting the energy out of the glucose is a lot more complicated than getting it out of ATP"...
The process of getting energy out of glucose is by converting it into ATP.
Yes, adenosine triphosphate (ATP) easily breaks down into adenosine diphosphate (ADP), and in so doing, releases energy. But that's not an argument against using for fuel - just the contrary. The fact that it can so easily be "coaxed" into releasing energy is what makes it so good at being the basic energy source for humans.
Also, it's worth noting that using instability as the basis for a power source isn't new to science - nuclear power is a pretty good example.
I thought it was about 36 or so maybe I am just thinking of the wrong thing?
Actually, a typical Krebs cycle yields ~34 ATP from phosphorylation (~30 of that from the chemiosmotic variety), but the cycle burns ~2 ATP in active transport. 34 + (-2) = 32. Er something.
One of the things that I didn't see mentioned in the ABC article (and is only briefly mentioned in the BBC article) is that the machine runs on ATP. ATP is the fuel generated by the human biological process known as the "Krebs cycle". (You get ~32 ATP from one glucose molecule.) This means, then, that we're building machines that can use humans as batteries... now where have I heard that story before?
Do you receive karma for using moderator points (when you're given them) or when you meta-moderate? (Should you?) Also, karma is listed as being the sum of the points given to your posts by moderators (more or less). What other factors can/should contribute to your karma? Contributing stories? Other stuff? If you don't post for a while, can your karma dwindle (i.e. expire)?
Even if this were true, it wouldn't mean the end of 3rd party hardware. Apple likes to control their hardware - and why not? It allows them to take shortcuts in their OS. Apple would (and does, I've had several friends intern/work for Apple) call this level of control "assuring a high-quality customer experience".
When Apple couldn't keep up with demand and was strapped for cash, it licensed its hardware technology out and Mac clones started to appear. The most successful of these companies was Power Computing. When Apple had some money again and decided that they couldn't get MacOS to run "just so" on the souped-up Power Computing hardware, well, this press release speaks for itself.
Bottom line - Apple will let people make compatible hardware when/if they have to. They never want to.
I'm a little concerned with this "hey, let's track everything by IP" attitude. Not only can people who are dialing into a modem pool change their IP addresses frequently (and easily), but people like me, who are behind a firewall (with several dozen other/. readers) that masquerades all outbound traffic as a single IP, could be punished unfairly.
Let's all just participate in a little reality check here, folks - just because something is named "NSA" it automatically means it has to do with the United States National Security Agency? As any Windows programmer can tell you, "LSA" in Microsoft parlance means "Local System Authority" - the subsystem that validates your logons. Why the heck shouldn't "NSA" stand for "Network System Authority"? And this is just one possibility... Geeze, the article offers ABSOLUTELY NO PROOF that the key named "NSA" stands for National Security Agency. Think before you fly off the handle.
Since the synopsis mentions making Linux more credible in enterprise environments, there's one enterprise-level feature that wasn't in Linux the last time I looked (which, admittedly, was early 1998): >16bit UIDs. Does any distro currently support more than 65536 users?
This rant points out the fact that Microsoft's "Support Online" site uses six servers and contrasts that with the fact that, according to the ZD benchmarks, they should only need one webserver.
First of all, there's nothing to say that the boxes MS uses for "Support Online" are the have the same CPU, amount of memory, et al. used in the benchmarking.
Secondly, who's silly enough to put up a production website with only one webserver? Redundancy == good.
Lastly, the link that's given says that the site is made up of six SERVERS, *not* WEBSERVERS. Don't ya think one or more of those is a database server? Maybe?
Slashdot Mirror
They weren't entirely wrong, they were just weren't thinking long-term enough. According to the FAQ, the Ogg project is currently in its 7th year; it's reasonable to assume that (7 years of audio-geeks developing a codec as their primary hobby == months of full-time Ph.D. research).
In the non-web world, many businesses profit on the backs of others. Consider phone books. The phone company is MAKING A PROFIT by listing your phone number!
Yes, this is true. But that is because THEY are doing the collection and aggregation of phone number data. Tickets.com isn't even doing that much - they are letting someone else collect and aggregate the data, then profiting from their alternate presentation of it.
Your analogy is wrong - tickets.com using Ticketmaster data to populate its site is not like being a phone book; the correct analogy would be that tickets.com is like one company publishing a phone book by reproducing all of the entries in a competitor's phone book.
Is this decision really very good for the Internet? I don't think so. All this will do will encourage Ticketmaster to take its listings offline and make Internet ticket sales non-existent.
Ticketmaster spends a lot of money to convince venues that they should be their ticketing vendor. They go to further expense to aggregate all that data and present it pleasantly on the web. This makes it much easier for me, the consumer, to buy tickets for concerts from home rather than waiting in line outside a record store all night (which I've done) or trying to get through on the phones, only to have a show sold out by the time the busy signals dissipate (which I've also done).
By saying that tickets.com has the right to link to that data and present it as its own and essentially profit from the labor of others (and if you think that statement is incorrect, then look at tickets.com; they *COULD NOT EXIST* without leeching off of Ticketmaster) will be a disincentive for Ticketmaster to do business on the web. And if this trend of providing legal protection to companies who simply copy others' sites and reformat them continues, many other companies will be discouraged from doing business on the web too, further restricting my ability to do whatever I damn well please on the Internet.
This decision is *NOT* good for anyone who actually wants to 'do more' on the Internet.
I don't mean for this to sound like a troll, but I am really stunned at the complete nonsense in this article.
Simply put, I think it's very clear that independent music is simply part of the collateral damage done by the RIAA and others seeking to protect their copyrights. Sure, taking out a distribution method rather than the distributors (as is the case with trying to shut down Napster) is overly-broad and therefore unacceptable. But if the RIAA wanted to cut down on the average person's ability to distribute their own music, they'd be targetting mp3.com. I really don't agree with Katz's implication that this is a matter of the RIAA playing the part of culture-gestapo.
I guess I'll have to use Katz's words against him; he says "Central to the [DMCA] is a clause making it illegal to thwart copyright protection methods through the use of software or hardware." What's wrong with that? I don't see anyone complaining about the fact that it's illegal to pick the locks on the front door to one's house.
I am very, very concerned with privacy issues and I don't see a problem with the wording or intent of the DMCA. If/when it starts to be abused (which may already be the case) and that abuse is upheld in higher courts, then I will be concerned.
Distraction, as a military tactic, is ancient. Sun-Tzu wrote about it in "The Art of War".
:)
It's no coincidence that Pentagon and other "break-ins" happen in such close proximity to budget cycles. Go back and look through your Congressional record - you can practically set your clock by it, it's so regular.
Recipe for inflating your budget: put some moderately secured machines on the Internet, allow them to be compromised, express some outrage, wait for a while (but not so long that people forget), and then - presto! - money falls from the sky!
The military/industrial complex does this all of the time. In theory, a perfect example of this is Area 51 - if I'm the U.S. Government and I have alien technology, I've got plenty of incentive to fake the establishment of a military base for studying that technology, do a half-assed job of covering it up, and then leak it's existence to the press. That way, no one looks for the place I'm stashing the *real* alien hardware.
The issue is that it's not realtime even when the others do it - eBay's main concern is that the 'meta auctions' don't accurately report what's going on at eBay. Hell, half the time eBay doesn't accurately report what's going on at eBay. Meta auctions are just a bad idea in general. Comparison shopping is great for fixed prices, but for auctions it just doesn't make sense, and rarely works properly.
Think about it: if a company had developed software that could aggregate and keep multiple databases synchronized over the Internet in realtime, would they be in the meta auction business?
"But the process of getting the energy out of the glucose is a lot more complicated than getting it out of ATP"...
The process of getting energy out of glucose is by converting it into ATP.
Yes, adenosine triphosphate (ATP) easily breaks down into adenosine diphosphate (ADP), and in so doing, releases energy. But that's not an argument against using for fuel - just the contrary. The fact that it can so easily be "coaxed" into releasing energy is what makes it so good at being the basic energy source for humans.
Also, it's worth noting that using instability as the basis for a power source isn't new to science - nuclear power is a pretty good example.
I thought it was about 36 or so maybe I am just thinking of the wrong thing?
Actually, a typical Krebs cycle yields ~34 ATP from phosphorylation (~30 of that from the chemiosmotic variety), but the cycle burns ~2 ATP in active transport. 34 + (-2) = 32. Er something.
One of the things that I didn't see mentioned in the ABC article (and is only briefly mentioned in the BBC article) is that the machine runs on ATP. ATP is the fuel generated by the human biological process known as the "Krebs cycle". (You get ~32 ATP from one glucose molecule.) This means, then, that we're building machines that can use humans as batteries... now where have I heard that story before?
Do you receive karma for using moderator points (when you're given them) or when you meta-moderate? (Should you?) Also, karma is listed as being the sum of the points given to your posts by moderators (more or less). What other factors can/should contribute to your karma? Contributing stories? Other stuff? If you don't post for a while, can your karma dwindle (i.e. expire)?
Just wondering.
Even if this were true, it wouldn't mean the end of 3rd party hardware. Apple likes to control their hardware - and why not? It allows them to take shortcuts in their OS. Apple would (and does, I've had several friends intern/work for Apple) call this level of control "assuring a high-quality customer experience".
When Apple couldn't keep up with demand and was strapped for cash, it licensed its hardware technology out and Mac clones started to appear. The most successful of these companies was Power Computing. When Apple had some money again and decided that they couldn't get MacOS to run "just so" on the souped-up Power Computing hardware, well, this press release speaks for itself.
Bottom line - Apple will let people make compatible hardware when/if they have to. They never want to.
I'm a little concerned with this "hey, let's track everything by IP" attitude. Not only can people who are dialing into a modem pool change their IP addresses frequently (and easily), but people like me, who are behind a firewall (with several dozen other /. readers) that masquerades all outbound traffic as a single IP, could be punished unfairly.
Just a thought.
Let's all just participate in a little reality check here, folks - just because something is named "NSA" it automatically means it has to do with the United States National Security Agency? As any Windows programmer can tell you, "LSA" in Microsoft parlance means "Local System Authority" - the subsystem that validates your logons. Why the heck shouldn't "NSA" stand for "Network System Authority"? And this is just one possibility... Geeze, the article offers ABSOLUTELY NO PROOF that the key named "NSA" stands for National Security Agency. Think before you fly off the handle.
Since the synopsis mentions making Linux more credible in enterprise environments, there's one enterprise-level feature that wasn't in Linux the last time I looked (which, admittedly, was early 1998): >16bit UIDs. Does any distro currently support more than 65536 users?
[PLEASE don't flame me for not knowing this.]
This rant points out the fact that Microsoft's "Support Online" site uses six servers and contrasts that with the fact that, according to the ZD benchmarks, they should only need one webserver.
First of all, there's nothing to say that the boxes MS uses for "Support Online" are the have the same CPU, amount of memory, et al. used in the benchmarking.
Secondly, who's silly enough to put up a production website with only one webserver? Redundancy == good.
Lastly, the link that's given says that the site is made up of six SERVERS, *not* WEBSERVERS. Don't ya think one or more of those is a database server? Maybe?