Safes only need to be sufficiently secure that their contents aren't worth stealing; they needn't be any more secure than that. You don't buy a million dollar safe to keep your petty cash in, or for holding cheap costume jewelry. Likewise, DRM only needs to be sufficient secure that people don't bother getting around it. What the recording industry provides is not infinitely valuable, so DRM needn't be infinitely strong.
The key difference is, if I can break the safe, I've broken one safe and I'll have to work somewhat less on the next one. If I make a program that can crack a particular DRM, I can distribute that algoritm/application and anyone can do it just as well as I can. So the DRM has to protect it like it's invaluable, because the value is equivalent to EVERY sale out there. Or you can just accept that there is no amount of DRM that will stop a sufficiently motivated group of people who are allowed to actually use the content.
If these people would still have been alive had the US not acted, the US bears a responsibility. It might be true that this was the best of the available alternatives, but this case has not been seriously made at this point. "It's not our fault" is a pretty pathetic substitute.
But we also have indications of massmurder and purges by the previous government, so that's already a moot point. Or do you think the mere idea of reprisals instantly converted the individuals in what was clearly a brutal regime into a more pacifist and even-handed one? Don't get me wrong. I think the previous government had no better reasons to attack Iraq than they did when they were actually helping Hussein. But that doesn't mean the people in charge were angels.
It's a damned good thing it wasn't this bad in the old days. All the patents you'd see for the most absurdly obvious things. "Well, my cart's different because it's pushed by a person instead of pulled by an ox." "Well, my cart's different because it has three wheels instead of four." "Well, my cart's different because it only has two wheels instead of three or four, and it's balanced on the common axis of those two wheels." "Well, my cart only has two wheels, but it's the wheels are at one end and the user carries the other end." "Well, my cart only has one wheel on one end and the user carries the other end." "Well, my cart has two wheels, but they don't have a common axis and the load is carried between them." "Well, my cart is like any other variation of a cart, but it's internet-enabled!" We have way too many patents where the solution is obvious once you encounter the problem. Some problems just haven't been encountered. This doesn't mean the solution is worthy of a patent! Patents are for those solutions where everyone saw the problem, but it took some unique perspective to achieve the solution.
I was in Germany where it is not against the law for 19 year olds to consume alcohol.
This is my big issue with some laws that are held in certain countries, my own for one, that legislate your behaviour while abroad. The specific one here is child exploitation, generally for those east Asian countries where child prostitutes are commonplace, and the legality is ambiguous or on the side of the john. While I don't disagree with laws against child exploitation, I DO have a problem with laws that follow you when you leave the jurisdiction of the lawmakers. The really ugly part about these laws are when they conflict, such as what happened with Dimitri Skylarov and his DMCA-based arrest for breaking Adobe's ultra-modern ROT13 pdf encryption, among other things. A Russian law requires that it be possible to unencrypt files, an American one criminalizes the act. And he gets charged for doing it by the Americans while he did it on Russian soil. This leaves people in the quandary of not only not knowing if they're breaking the law somewhere, but possibly having to choose which law they're going to break in a given circumstance. At least the Canadians only charge their own citizens with breaking the child exploitations laws of their country while abroad, and not foreigners who happen to pass through. I think. I hope.
People function very, very poorly in relation to very infrequent (once a generation?), catastrophic events.
I'd say we function very well at these things. After all, we seem to do this particularly well every generation or so. But we've always done poorly preparing for statistically reliable but infrequent events. When is that next comet/asteroid due to impact, anyway? And will we even know more than a week or a month before it happens? Or perhaps you just prefer to live in a nice flood plain. No? How about on an unstable fault line?
You sound like my kind of doctor. I certainly wouldn't describe myself as the type to go for unnecessary treatments. One time, I broke my toe - I think. I took it to the urgent care hospital (the not-quite-emergency ward), and the nurse said "It's either sprained or broken, but we can't tell for sure without an X-ray, which will take about half an hour." I responded with, "What's the treatment if it's sprained?" She said, "Well, we tape it to the toe next to it and tell you to take it easy." "And for the broken toe?" "We tape it to the toe next to it and tell you to take it easy." So I took the faster route, assumed it was broken (or sprained), and had them deal with it. I don't need to waste my time or money on a test that isn't going to change the outcome. Now my friend who thought she might have broken her toe went through the hassle of confirming it was just sprained. So I see where you're coming from.
Well, I have to wonder how many pages of throwaway magazines and newspapers a single kindle could replace. 100, 1000, 10000, more? Perhaps it is more eco-friendly. And cheaper. Sure, it won't change the number for those things that are collectible (novels, good magazines, references), but the kindle sure is more portable.
Oh, and having all signs in public have French larger than English, even though it's been ruled unconstitutional (not that our constitution means anything - can you say 'notwithstanding clause'?). And having pretty much the only airports in the world that use French in their communications with their pilots (I know a pilot who has flown to both Quebec and France, guess which region uses French?). Vive la difference!
It changes how people perceive you, which is different. Trust me, putting an asshole in an Armani suit isn't going to make him a nicer person. Which gets back to the point. If some fool is going to pay you twice as much for wearing a costume while you work, why not? And if your boss recognizes that far too many of their clients are going to have these same, possibly faulty, preconceptions, then what's wrong with them demanding that you wear a costume to improve the company's bottom line? And as far as those women who like an asshole in a nice suit, the assholes can have them.
It would be the same thing if you had keys to the building, company credit cards and cell phone.. If you quit, you would give them all back.. If fired you would be asked for them.
Ah, but the question that Childs asked is, "Who am I authorized to give the keys to?" Should he just give them to Bob the Janitor, or someone who actually has the authority to take them. He clearly had a breach of trust with his supervisor, and possibly the CIO (if that wasn't his supervisor). After the secret audit, and him reacting reasonably to someone unauthorized removing equipment he was responsible for, the expectation that he should relinquish sensitive information to them is laughable. So he picked someone with sufficient authority (although not necessarily qualifications) to hand the information to. I don't see what he did wrong. Perhaps he handled it poorly, but that's a different thing altogether.
This always amuses me. There are comfortable suits out there (although you may have to find a style that doesn't include a tie). So what's the big deal about what clothes are required? Especially from a group that is willing to wear authentic medieval (read, uncomfortable) gear for kicks, refusing to wear decent-quality clothing for money leaves me baffled. As far as I'm concerned, it's just another costume that's required to play a game. It also happens that that game has some nice financial rewards involved. Besides, who really believes that your clothing changes who you REALLY are?
...watch out for our planet because it's the frickin' right thing to do...
This reasoning is suspect because, aside from global warming effects, green house gas emissions aren't very harmful...Your strategy would have us fix only the easy to see problems even if there are more important environmental matters that require advanced scientific techniques to understand.
So, he says to not mess things up because it's the right thing to do, and you respond with "that doesn't make sense because it's not demonstrably that bad"? From his statement, he clearly believes it's bad enough to be dealt with, otherwise he wouldn't say what he said. Some people really do just want to minimize their impact on the world, not because they're certain that people are harming it, but because they aren't certain they aren't.
Yep, the more I think about this, the better an idea it seems. Add an electric assist motor with a relatively small battery to smooth out the energy flow, and you have a system where the simple fact that the terrain is less than perfect saves you energy. Of course, if the terrain is perfect, you'll be saving that energy anyway. Far better than using that energy to slosh a gas around to keep you from bouncing. And as far as a physical failure in the electrical system, that's something we've been designing against for the better part of a century. I hope we see more innovation like this in the future.
Well, the first time I used Vista, it took me about 30 minutes to figure out how to change the display settings (gamma, resolution, etc.). This hasn't changed significantly since Win3.1 IIRC, certainly not since Win95. What's the purpose of changing it? And if you're going to change things that people deal with on a regular basis, you'd think the help would have how-to's for those tasks linked by keyword. I didn't get any value from attempting to use help, and just muddled through until I hit the right combination. I have no problem with changing things so they make more sense, but needlessly shuffling things around, hiding things that used to be easily accessible, and not having a simple method for getting directions to things if you know the 'old name' or a general term for that task is simply bad design.
Might last longer due to the nature of the energy absorbtion, but you're right. A lot of cost and durability issues need to be resolved.
Think along the lines of the shake-charged flashlights. The only things added to a regular shock are a coil and a magnet. The magnet isn't going to wear out in any reasonable time-frame, and a properly insulated and protected coil won't either (unless the temperature starts to affect the insulator - unlikely, and can be mitigated with engineering). I suspect they would last about as long as regular shocks unless they completely replace the standard shock-absorption part. That seems unlikely - a wire breaks (or nothing needs to be powered) and your shocks turn into springs. The mechanical parts will wear out faster than the electrical parts. The other thing the GP forgot to mention is, current-technology shocks aren't free. They can be more expensive than current shocks, so long as they pay for themselves in a reasonable time-frame, say 2 to 5 years or their lifespan, whichever is shorter.
As long as it mostly looks right, that's all that really matters.
In fact, mostly right may be an improvement. Remember when CGI first came out in movies, and one of the main flaws was that things looked too smooth, too perfect? Imagine things being less than 'perfect' as a function of the rendering as well as a function of the texture mapping?
A tree will explode if it freezes rapidly. If the tree doesn't have time for the sap to go to the roots, this is a risk. Of course, trees that have a higher sap content or lower sugar content will explode easier (greater expansion and less cold tolerance). Calgary, Alberta, Canada has this problem due to chinooks. You can find a number of trees there with massive splits on the sides from sap rising from the roots during a chinook and then freezing just days later.
This is also the perfect side-product for wireless companies. They have the towers, they have the uplink to the network at large, most of the infrastructure is already there. Add in a new antenna, connect it to the network uplink, and all of a sudden you can provide something better than cellular internet access without having to lay down fibre like landline-based providers would have to. For low-population-density areas, it's an easy win, especially if you already have half the hardware in place.
Also, are you getting some sort of price break when my usage is capped? I mean, if the point of this is to save you money (in the form of a lack of subsidization), where are those savings?
Ultimately, yes. The alternative to placing caps is to place more bandwidth, which is a huge capital cost. If they have to lay more fibre, they WILL raise prices to cover this, which will raise the rates for everyone. The alternative is to have capped tiers, or a single tier. I personally prefer multiple tiers. I will agree that that's no reason to bill capped plans as unlimited. OTOH, if the current business plan is losing the company money, they have no obligation to continue doing it, even if that was the original plan. As long as they allow you to cancel without penalty, I think they've met their obligations.
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Safes only need to be sufficiently secure that their contents aren't worth stealing; they needn't be any more secure than that. You don't buy a million dollar safe to keep your petty cash in, or for holding cheap costume jewelry. Likewise, DRM only needs to be sufficient secure that people don't bother getting around it. What the recording industry provides is not infinitely valuable, so DRM needn't be infinitely strong.
The key difference is, if I can break the safe, I've broken one safe and I'll have to work somewhat less on the next one. If I make a program that can crack a particular DRM, I can distribute that algoritm/application and anyone can do it just as well as I can.
So the DRM has to protect it like it's invaluable, because the value is equivalent to EVERY sale out there. Or you can just accept that there is no amount of DRM that will stop a sufficiently motivated group of people who are allowed to actually use the content.
If these people would still have been alive had the US not acted, the US bears a responsibility. It might be true that this was the best of the available alternatives, but this case has not been seriously made at this point. "It's not our fault" is a pretty pathetic substitute.
But we also have indications of mass murder and purges by the previous government, so that's already a moot point. Or do you think the mere idea of reprisals instantly converted the individuals in what was clearly a brutal regime into a more pacifist and even-handed one?
Don't get me wrong. I think the previous government had no better reasons to attack Iraq than they did when they were actually helping Hussein. But that doesn't mean the people in charge were angels.
It's a damned good thing it wasn't this bad in the old days. All the patents you'd see for the most absurdly obvious things. "Well, my cart's different because it's pushed by a person instead of pulled by an ox." "Well, my cart's different because it has three wheels instead of four." "Well, my cart's different because it only has two wheels instead of three or four, and it's balanced on the common axis of those two wheels." "Well, my cart only has two wheels, but it's the wheels are at one end and the user carries the other end." "Well, my cart only has one wheel on one end and the user carries the other end." "Well, my cart has two wheels, but they don't have a common axis and the load is carried between them." "Well, my cart is like any other variation of a cart, but it's internet-enabled!"
We have way too many patents where the solution is obvious once you encounter the problem. Some problems just haven't been encountered. This doesn't mean the solution is worthy of a patent! Patents are for those solutions where everyone saw the problem, but it took some unique perspective to achieve the solution.
I was in Germany where it is not against the law for 19 year olds to consume alcohol.
This is my big issue with some laws that are held in certain countries, my own for one, that legislate your behaviour while abroad. The specific one here is child exploitation, generally for those east Asian countries where child prostitutes are commonplace, and the legality is ambiguous or on the side of the john. While I don't disagree with laws against child exploitation, I DO have a problem with laws that follow you when you leave the jurisdiction of the lawmakers.
The really ugly part about these laws are when they conflict, such as what happened with Dimitri Skylarov and his DMCA-based arrest for breaking Adobe's ultra-modern ROT13 pdf encryption, among other things. A Russian law requires that it be possible to unencrypt files, an American one criminalizes the act. And he gets charged for doing it by the Americans while he did it on Russian soil.
This leaves people in the quandary of not only not knowing if they're breaking the law somewhere, but possibly having to choose which law they're going to break in a given circumstance.
At least the Canadians only charge their own citizens with breaking the child exploitations laws of their country while abroad, and not foreigners who happen to pass through. I think. I hope.
People function very, very poorly in relation to very infrequent (once a generation?), catastrophic events.
I'd say we function very well at these things. After all, we seem to do this particularly well every generation or so.
But we've always done poorly preparing for statistically reliable but infrequent events. When is that next comet/asteroid due to impact, anyway? And will we even know more than a week or a month before it happens? Or perhaps you just prefer to live in a nice flood plain. No? How about on an unstable fault line?
Or, to quote Einstien, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." And that is the critical flaw.
Mod parent -1: Too fucking old.
You sound like my kind of doctor. I certainly wouldn't describe myself as the type to go for unnecessary treatments. One time, I broke my toe - I think. I took it to the urgent care hospital (the not-quite-emergency ward), and the nurse said "It's either sprained or broken, but we can't tell for sure without an X-ray, which will take about half an hour." I responded with, "What's the treatment if it's sprained?" She said, "Well, we tape it to the toe next to it and tell you to take it easy." "And for the broken toe?" "We tape it to the toe next to it and tell you to take it easy." So I took the faster route, assumed it was broken (or sprained), and had them deal with it. I don't need to waste my time or money on a test that isn't going to change the outcome.
Now my friend who thought she might have broken her toe went through the hassle of confirming it was just sprained. So I see where you're coming from.
This is idle. People are allowed, nay encouraged, to talk about sex with even the slightest indication of relevance.
...Kindles do not like the sand. It still works, but i was very cautious with it.
I wonder how readable it is through a ziploc bag.
Well, I have to wonder how many pages of throwaway magazines and newspapers a single kindle could replace. 100, 1000, 10000, more? Perhaps it is more eco-friendly. And cheaper.
Sure, it won't change the number for those things that are collectible (novels, good magazines, references), but the kindle sure is more portable.
Oh, and having all signs in public have French larger than English, even though it's been ruled unconstitutional (not that our constitution means anything - can you say 'notwithstanding clause'?). And having pretty much the only airports in the world that use French in their communications with their pilots (I know a pilot who has flown to both Quebec and France, guess which region uses French?). Vive la difference!
It changes how people perceive you, which is different. Trust me, putting an asshole in an Armani suit isn't going to make him a nicer person. Which gets back to the point. If some fool is going to pay you twice as much for wearing a costume while you work, why not? And if your boss recognizes that far too many of their clients are going to have these same, possibly faulty, preconceptions, then what's wrong with them demanding that you wear a costume to improve the company's bottom line? And as far as those women who like an asshole in a nice suit, the assholes can have them.
It would be the same thing if you had keys to the building, company credit cards and cell phone.. If you quit, you would give them all back.. If fired you would be asked for them.
Ah, but the question that Childs asked is, "Who am I authorized to give the keys to?" Should he just give them to Bob the Janitor, or someone who actually has the authority to take them. He clearly had a breach of trust with his supervisor, and possibly the CIO (if that wasn't his supervisor). After the secret audit, and him reacting reasonably to someone unauthorized removing equipment he was responsible for, the expectation that he should relinquish sensitive information to them is laughable. So he picked someone with sufficient authority (although not necessarily qualifications) to hand the information to.
I don't see what he did wrong. Perhaps he handled it poorly, but that's a different thing altogether.
It still beats having to wear a suit to work.
This always amuses me. There are comfortable suits out there (although you may have to find a style that doesn't include a tie). So what's the big deal about what clothes are required? Especially from a group that is willing to wear authentic medieval (read, uncomfortable) gear for kicks, refusing to wear decent-quality clothing for money leaves me baffled. As far as I'm concerned, it's just another costume that's required to play a game. It also happens that that game has some nice financial rewards involved.
Besides, who really believes that your clothing changes who you REALLY are?
...watch out for our planet because it's the frickin' right thing to do...
This reasoning is suspect because, aside from global warming effects, green house gas emissions aren't very harmful...Your strategy would have us fix only the easy to see problems even if there are more important environmental matters that require advanced scientific techniques to understand.
So, he says to not mess things up because it's the right thing to do, and you respond with "that doesn't make sense because it's not demonstrably that bad"? From his statement, he clearly believes it's bad enough to be dealt with, otherwise he wouldn't say what he said. Some people really do just want to minimize their impact on the world, not because they're certain that people are harming it, but because they aren't certain they aren't.
You're not suggesting that journalists actually do this "research" stuff and produce "informed articles" any more are you???
Yep, the more I think about this, the better an idea it seems. Add an electric assist motor with a relatively small battery to smooth out the energy flow, and you have a system where the simple fact that the terrain is less than perfect saves you energy. Of course, if the terrain is perfect, you'll be saving that energy anyway. Far better than using that energy to slosh a gas around to keep you from bouncing. And as far as a physical failure in the electrical system, that's something we've been designing against for the better part of a century. I hope we see more innovation like this in the future.
Well, the first time I used Vista, it took me about 30 minutes to figure out how to change the display settings (gamma, resolution, etc.). This hasn't changed significantly since Win3.1 IIRC, certainly not since Win95. What's the purpose of changing it? And if you're going to change things that people deal with on a regular basis, you'd think the help would have how-to's for those tasks linked by keyword. I didn't get any value from attempting to use help, and just muddled through until I hit the right combination.
I have no problem with changing things so they make more sense, but needlessly shuffling things around, hiding things that used to be easily accessible, and not having a simple method for getting directions to things if you know the 'old name' or a general term for that task is simply bad design.
Might last longer due to the nature of the energy absorbtion, but you're right. A lot of cost and durability issues need to be resolved.
Think along the lines of the shake-charged flashlights. The only things added to a regular shock are a coil and a magnet. The magnet isn't going to wear out in any reasonable time-frame, and a properly insulated and protected coil won't either (unless the temperature starts to affect the insulator - unlikely, and can be mitigated with engineering). I suspect they would last about as long as regular shocks unless they completely replace the standard shock-absorption part. That seems unlikely - a wire breaks (or nothing needs to be powered) and your shocks turn into springs. The mechanical parts will wear out faster than the electrical parts.
The other thing the GP forgot to mention is, current-technology shocks aren't free. They can be more expensive than current shocks, so long as they pay for themselves in a reasonable time-frame, say 2 to 5 years or their lifespan, whichever is shorter.
As long as it mostly looks right, that's all that really matters.
In fact, mostly right may be an improvement. Remember when CGI first came out in movies, and one of the main flaws was that things looked too smooth, too perfect? Imagine things being less than 'perfect' as a function of the rendering as well as a function of the texture mapping?
A tree will explode if it freezes rapidly. If the tree doesn't have time for the sap to go to the roots, this is a risk. Of course, trees that have a higher sap content or lower sugar content will explode easier (greater expansion and less cold tolerance). Calgary, Alberta, Canada has this problem due to chinooks. You can find a number of trees there with massive splits on the sides from sap rising from the roots during a chinook and then freezing just days later.
This is also the perfect side-product for wireless companies. They have the towers, they have the uplink to the network at large, most of the infrastructure is already there. Add in a new antenna, connect it to the network uplink, and all of a sudden you can provide something better than cellular internet access without having to lay down fibre like landline-based providers would have to. For low-population-density areas, it's an easy win, especially if you already have half the hardware in place.
Also, are you getting some sort of price break when my usage is capped? I mean, if the point of this is to save you money (in the form of a lack of subsidization), where are those savings?
Ultimately, yes. The alternative to placing caps is to place more bandwidth, which is a huge capital cost. If they have to lay more fibre, they WILL raise prices to cover this, which will raise the rates for everyone.
The alternative is to have capped tiers, or a single tier. I personally prefer multiple tiers.
I will agree that that's no reason to bill capped plans as unlimited. OTOH, if the current business plan is losing the company money, they have no obligation to continue doing it, even if that was the original plan. As long as they allow you to cancel without penalty, I think they've met their obligations.
At least on a Windows box, my experience with iTunes has been forcefully installing Quicktime and hogging system resources like a bloated bitch.
MS should sue for IP infringement.
And yes, I was glad when I finally found a decent quicktime video player that wasn't QuickTime.