Why SHOULD a director have this so-called right to dictate that others view the precise film he made?
Actually, this precedent has been up and running for 30 years in the US, and was set by a 1976 case brought by the Monty Python team, fed up with US networks butchering the early series. Cited in the Slate article on this case. See also VARA.
maybe you're an aspiring photojournalist and need to quickly manipulate 30-50MB image files. A 2001 iBook isn't going to cut it.
Unlikely that journalism or photography courses will regularly or frequently need digital manipulation of high end print quality images. That's still going to focus on traditional darkroom skills at the top quality end, and lower filesize for everything else.
You'd struggle buying a 2001 *anything* even second-hand these days. More likely is a 2003 iBook, but hey, mine handles that size of file fine. Not super zippy, but for photojournalism, you're not messing with multi-multi-layers anyway; more replicated the darkroom setup. If you're manipulating more than that then I'm questioning your journalistic ethics...
Unfortunately there have been rising tensions in our team about the question, how long we should support a development project, which has not yet been made open source by the developer
There's error #1: allowing it to be anything but open source (or at the very least, rights to open source the code assigned to Freedb).
and which is not yet running on freedb servers.
...and error #2: allowing a development to take place elsewhere out of sight (I'm assuming that it's being built sensibly, with interim reviews, unit test results etc to show that it *is* actually being built).
Finally, error #3 is betting the farm on anything without really, really well thought-through backup plan.
While I'm not arguing with your general point, the following need addressing:
They utterly failed to pick up on Bin Laden's little plan;
Apart from the 'knowing a fair amount about it' bit - see the 9/11 Commission report.
they failed to notice Saddams intentions to invade kuwait until hours before it happened;
Again, rubbish. Saddam basically asked permission to invade Kuwait, and as the US didn't object, took that as presumptive permission. But the only reason this was a problem at all (compared to all the other episodes where erstwhile allies invade their neighbours that we don't object to) was that it was the subject of some effective propaganda.
More importantly, they failed to take notice of what their own intelligence analysts were telling them - there was no way that Saddam was even close to effective WMD production. But of course, that didn't fit the political narrative.
What the hell planet do you live on that means that homeless people aren't allowed to get out of their heads, but smug, patronising bastards like you are? Or that homeless people aren't capable of making life choices for themselves?
If you're homeless, living on benches, without access to washing facilities for your clothes or your body, without healthcare, regularly getting the shit kicked out of you by smug bastards, being permanently drunk/high is a completely rational, positive choice, compared to the horror of facing all this sober.
Really, I thought we'd all taken a step forward since the 'rescue' charities of the C19th.
I've been told by a man who received all his promotions from his uncle that political harmony is frequently more important than security ideals. I've had to spend MONTHS collecting data and statistics from external sources to convince a division that Internet email is not an appropriate delivery platform for mission critical communications that absolutely MUST be received, unaltered and unread, within 2 minutes of sending.
You're forgetting something very, very important when you decry political means: Politics is the art of the Possible.
You can have all the expertise you like, but if you can't persuade the decision-makers of your case, you're still SoL. In more situations than you'd believe, you may be forced to accept either a half-assed solution, or nothing at all. And a long-term political game may force you to suck up the less-attractive of those options, to be able to have a hope of improving the situation in the future.
And you want to know something else? Not everyone's decision-making style works by a 30cm high stack of 'evidence', or by delivering messages in meetings. Sometimes you need a bit of nemawashi.
For some perspective, the movie The Da Vinci Code will enter the public domain in 2081. By then, the US will have already celebrated its tricentennial. The last Apollo moon landing will have been 99 years ago, and I will be 98 years old.
That, I think, is a problem.
Not so much, no. Won't someone think of the children? Anything that prevents this pile of elephant droppings from being inflicted on future generations has to be A Good Thing.
Furthermore, many open source projects generate HTML output that is so far from compliant that it's easier to just give up and rely on quirks and conditional comments to make things work
I don't know about the others, but certainly Drupal is entirely template driven. Don't like the default template? Fine, write your own. Every single user-presented element is configurable with fairly simple PHP templates. If the end result is non-compliant, that in no sense is a failing in the CMS, but in the template developer.
And as for the much-discussed "business" buyers - Working in a job where I would play a very significant role in the decision to "Switch", I can say that Microsoft has nothing to worry about (except that almost no one wants to upgrade to Vista, much less to an entirely different OS). If Vista doesn't ship until 2094, very little would make me happier.
True, but that would make MS deeply unhappy for two reasons:
The markets expect the major sales bump from corporates upgrading. Even if (because of Software Assurance reducing the license cost to $0) this doesn't translate into actual revenue, MS are evaluated on number of licenses sold. If MS misses its predicted targets by any significant amount (like, say, delaying an announced release date within the next year), stock price will take a dive. Which is really, really bad news for a publically traded company.
With the amount of money put into Vista, and the related revenue (MSN advertising for example) that hang on it, MS really are betting the farm on this. And the markets know it.
So yes, a continually revised release date may not translate into actual loss of market share to Linux/Apple, but it's still extremely bad news.
We'll eventually upgrade only because Microsoft will leave us no choice
Once MS start withdrawing support for currently/recently shipping products, that's when you'll start seeing evaluation of whether sticking with them is A Good Thing
Keep in mind that a lot of fortune-500s (dare I say "the majority of them"?) still run NT4 servers and Win98 desktops, and you'll get the general idea.
I'm sorry, I didn't realise you lived in such a technologically backward country. Here in the developed world (Europe), I generally find Win200x servers & Win2k/XP desktops when I visit FTSE100 clients.
Actually, I'm currently working in the EMEA head office for one of the world's largest Consumer Goods companies (global HQ in the US). Everyone here has XP on the desktop, and I think any Win servers are 2003.
Shneier starts with a bunch of wrong assumptions: he assumes that national ID cards are needed for fighting terrorism and he assumes that they require a central database. Both of those are bogus assumptions.
Indeed they are bogus assumptions. But they're not Shneier's. They're the assumptions of Governments (or rather, they're the assumptions they've been most recently using to get the legislation through). So Bruce is entirely correct in working from the same set of assumptions and proving that it's still a pile of crap.
Multiple forms of ID mean multiple databases, many of which duplicate sensitive data. Having it all in a central database does permit it to be searched from one source, but that does not mean that you are any more exposed.
You can't spell honeypot?
(Actually, for Merkins, this is already the case with your SSNs, so for you, you're already in that shit. For those of us who can spell 'colour' correctly, we'd rather not join you, thanks.)
Go ahead and try to buy a house without providing all kinds of details about yourself. Even if you are NOT going through a bank for a loan.
Actually, this one is reasonably sound - it's there to prevent money laundering, and paying for a house with cash is a lot more suspicious than you'd think. I can't speak for other countries, but the regulations here in the UK are reasonably tight, and banks' (congenitally risk-averse) compliance departments are fine without an ID Card.
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with your general argument, but on a point of information, the speed limit was brought in at 55, and later, states were allowed to relax it a little on rural highways. It was brought in to reduce consumption of (particularly foreign) oil when the global market price of crude rocketed all the way from $3 a barrel to the dizzying heights of $11/barrel.
Checked it lately?
I'd say those controls were more needed now (for the original purpose) than ever.
I think for many people (myself included), the problem is not the ID card but the gigantic government-run database that backs them. What we don't want is for the government to amass so much data on us that they can manipulate us.
Bing! We have a winner!
That's exactly the point. And taking the UK ID Card scheme as an example, in the list of data elements scheduled for inclusion on the database (according to Clause 4(i) of the Schedule to the Act) is:
the number of any designated document which is held by him and is a document the number of which does not fall within any of the preceding sub-paragraphs;
Do I need to spell it out? That's Foreign Keys to every single other government database.
And quite besides the Civil Liberties argument, the UK Scheme is going to cost upwards of UKP19bn in setup costs on current scope (and we're already getting feature creep), and no-one's yet come up with a genuine reason for it that can't be achieved through other means, or frankly isn't worth the money (of the financial benefits predicted, only UKP35m is robust).
How many corporate environments as well as universities (and students, too) are still using older versions of IE?
Don't know about universities, but as I get around rather a lot of corporate client sites, I'd have to say damned few are running anything other than IE6, kept pretty much up to date with patches. At least, the ones with fulltime IT staff with any sort of clue.
True, I mostly work in Financial Services, where security is a bit of a hot potato, but even the clients on Win2k are running IE6.
It's just another aspect of the great computer devide [sic] that's gradually starting.
On the one hand, unix geeks who run their own systems and software, spec their own hardware, believe in open source, try to make personal backups of media, won't buy DRM and want control of their own boxes.
On the other, the average consumer who doesn't give a damn about anything aside from getting a system that just works with as little management and maintanence as possible.
It's essentially the difference between having systems as interesting in their own right, and systems that are useful to carry out tasks (work, play, whatever). As long as the user is getting their service from someone trustworthy, then unless you actually do care about knowing what's happening for the sake of knowing (rather than the sake of it working) it doesn't matter a damn, and you can take your DRM FUD elsewhere.
But I'm not sure those are as mutually exclusive as you might think. What's strange with wanting a system that works with as little management and maintenance as possible, and yet is fully accessible? Or gives you rights over the content stored on it? It's just a different model of ASP. Think about hosting companies that offer Plesk consoles, but on a different deal, offer a root ssh login (to a virtualised server I presume).
And most geeks with their own boxes still rely on others to help them manage their systems - unless you really are (yes, yes: I'm an insensitive clod) downloading source code for all apps, patches and upgrades, inspecting it, compiling it and so on, rather than relying on package management systems, then this means you too.
Most branded laptops are made by a few companies : Asus, Quanta, Chembook(?) and a couple of others. Asus just got a large order to make Apple laptops. What makes you think Asus won't apply the same high standards to Asus brand laptops ?
Because Apple margins are greater (what, you think they're more expensive just to fill Steve's pockets?), and they're not playing the As cheap as possible game, they are able to devote some extra cash to buying more time and care in production. Yes, they'll still be pushing hard on costs. But I'll bet you any currency you like that Asus build Apple laptops with more time and care than Dell (or any high volume, low cost) laptops, and charge Apple more per laptop to cover it than they charge Dell.
But 'Quality' is more than just care taken in the build process - it's down to design, component/materials choices and so on. And here again, those higher Apple prices pay for this.
And why do Apple do this? Because they're chasing a different market segment, using a different branding strategy.
Why won't they apply the same standards when they assemble Higher end laptops for Dell, HP, Sony and others ? Is Asus retarded ? Or is Dell/HP/etc stupid that they ask Asus to make their stuff of a lower quality compared to Apples ?
Because Dell (etc)'s strategy is to build high volumes of absolutely minimum cost machines. And that's what they pay Asus to do for them - make laptops to a spec and a budget. Which (given a similar spec for the key components) translates primarily into time spent per machine. Apple also pays Asus to make laptops to a spec, but the budget is higher.
Look, it's the same in automotive. There are plants that turn out both Lotus and GM vehicles. And the same group owns Skoda (yes, much better than they used to be) and Bentley. And they're made in the same factory in some places. Which do you think gets more time? The vehicle that costs UKP10k, or the one that costs UKP100k?
Apple's strategy is to be a relatively low volume, high brand value and high cost brand - BMW, not Ford (that's Ford's own brand, not Ford Corp's high end brands like Jaguar). They realised a *long* time ago that you can't compete long term and consistently win in the price game, or the performance game - it's all commoditised (read: low margin) and from time to time you're going to be behind, at which point there's no brand loyalty and you lose sales. So you do something *different*. True, you can't get absolutely killed in price/performance (and you've got to give current customers a reason to trade up), so you pay lipservice to it, but that's as far as it goes.
The OS is only a small part of the story; from the original iMac on, the game has been differentiation through brand, and that starts with something that looks distinctively different and consumer (ie non-business type and non-geek) friendly in stores. Interestingly, Sony's Vaio positioning is very similar... If you want to see where Jobs' ambitions lie, look at Sony Consumer Electronics in their heyday (ie before it got mugged by Sony Entertainment Division), not Dell. High brand values, leading to high margins.
The American court system in particular was essentially of British design, and most of the early judges and lawyers had read the a lot of British common law to pass the Bar.
You're probably not wrong, except that, like far too many people, you're conflating "English" and "British", which as we're dealing with distinct and very different legal systems north and south of the Tweed is particularly heinous.
A journalist friend of a friend once made up an entire story about a library in Essex having its book budget cut just so he could use the headline (altogether now...):
BOOK LACK IN ONGAR
While a student, working on the campus newspaper, some anarchists invaded the stage at the student theatre, the Bedlam. This let me write the priceless (to my 20 yo ears) headline:
Local Apple Centres are neither owned, nor controlled, by Apple. Think of them as the equivalent of "Microsoft Partners". They pay a fee, get enough of their tech staff certified, and that's it.
Here in Scotland, our main 'Apple Center' owners, Scotsys, suck absolute donkey.
If Apple are about controlling the end to end customer experience (and they are, just like the high end motor manufacturers), this just isn't enough. No wonder Apple are expanding their own store network...
Slashdot Mirror
That's because TFA is insanely poorly written and poorly researched. The precedent is Gilliam v. ABC, which was incorporated into the 1978 Copyright Revision Act.
Actually, this precedent has been up and running for 30 years in the US, and was set by a 1976 case brought by the Monty Python team, fed up with US networks butchering the early series. Cited in the Slate article on this case. See also VARA.
...and then the editors put together an outtakes reel, which will get passed on to their young assistants after their (the editors') deaths.
Sounds good, someone should make a movie of it.
There's error #1: allowing it to be anything but open source (or at the very least, rights to open source the code assigned to Freedb).
...and error #2: allowing a development to take place elsewhere out of sight (I'm assuming that it's being built sensibly, with interim reviews, unit test results etc to show that it *is* actually being built).
Finally, error #3 is betting the farm on anything without really, really well thought-through backup plan.
While I'm not arguing with your general point, the following need addressing:
Apart from the 'knowing a fair amount about it' bit - see the 9/11 Commission report.
Again, rubbish. Saddam basically asked permission to invade Kuwait, and as the US didn't object, took that as presumptive permission. But the only reason this was a problem at all (compared to all the other episodes where erstwhile allies invade their neighbours that we don't object to) was that it was the subject of some effective propaganda.
More importantly, they failed to take notice of what their own intelligence analysts were telling them - there was no way that Saddam was even close to effective WMD production. But of course, that didn't fit the political narrative.
What the hell planet do you live on that means that homeless people aren't allowed to get out of their heads, but smug, patronising bastards like you are? Or that homeless people aren't capable of making life choices for themselves?
If you're homeless, living on benches, without access to washing facilities for your clothes or your body, without healthcare, regularly getting the shit kicked out of you by smug bastards, being permanently drunk/high is a completely rational, positive choice, compared to the horror of facing all this sober.
Really, I thought we'd all taken a step forward since the 'rescue' charities of the C19th.
Ah, yes, that's right, because - as we all know - Photoshop only runs natively on Windows. Even the Windows version only runs on Windows, just like IE.
Yes, but only when you're considering dupes - on the first time around, /. is normally 2 days ahead.
For some perspective, the movie The Da Vinci Code will enter the public domain in 2081. By then, the US will have already celebrated its tricentennial. The last Apollo moon landing will have been 99 years ago, and I will be 98 years old.
That, I think, is a problem.
Not so much, no. Won't someone think of the children? Anything that prevents this pile of elephant droppings from being inflicted on future generations has to be A Good Thing.
Although tbh, I'm not sure it ever was.
True, but that would make MS deeply unhappy for two reasons:
So yes, a continually revised release date may not translate into actual loss of market share to Linux/Apple, but it's still extremely bad news.
Once MS start withdrawing support for currently/recently shipping products, that's when you'll start seeing evaluation of whether sticking with them is A Good Thing
I'm sorry, I didn't realise you lived in such a technologically backward country. Here in the developed world (Europe), I generally find Win200x servers & Win2k/XP desktops when I visit FTSE100 clients.
Actually, I'm currently working in the EMEA head office for one of the world's largest Consumer Goods companies (global HQ in the US). Everyone here has XP on the desktop, and I think any Win servers are 2003.
Indeed they are bogus assumptions. But they're not Shneier's. They're the assumptions of Governments (or rather, they're the assumptions they've been most recently using to get the legislation through). So Bruce is entirely correct in working from the same set of assumptions and proving that it's still a pile of crap.
You can't spell honeypot? (Actually, for Merkins, this is already the case with your SSNs, so for you, you're already in that shit. For those of us who can spell 'colour' correctly, we'd rather not join you, thanks.)
Actually, this one is reasonably sound - it's there to prevent money laundering, and paying for a house with cash is a lot more suspicious than you'd think. I can't speak for other countries, but the regulations here in the UK are reasonably tight, and banks' (congenitally risk-averse) compliance departments are fine without an ID Card.
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with your general argument, but on a point of information, the speed limit was brought in at 55, and later, states were allowed to relax it a little on rural highways. It was brought in to reduce consumption of (particularly foreign) oil when the global market price of crude rocketed all the way from $3 a barrel to the dizzying heights of $11/barrel.
Checked it lately?
I'd say those controls were more needed now (for the original purpose) than ever.
Bing! We have a winner!
That's exactly the point. And taking the UK ID Card scheme as an example, in the list of data elements scheduled for inclusion on the database (according to Clause 4(i) of the Schedule to the Act) is:
Do I need to spell it out? That's Foreign Keys to every single other government database.
And quite besides the Civil Liberties argument, the UK Scheme is going to cost upwards of UKP19bn in setup costs on current scope (and we're already getting feature creep), and no-one's yet come up with a genuine reason for it that can't be achieved through other means, or frankly isn't worth the money (of the financial benefits predicted, only UKP35m is robust).
Don't know about universities, but as I get around rather a lot of corporate client sites, I'd have to say damned few are running anything other than IE6, kept pretty much up to date with patches. At least, the ones with fulltime IT staff with any sort of clue. True, I mostly work in Financial Services, where security is a bit of a hot potato, but even the clients on Win2k are running IE6.
It's essentially the difference between having systems as interesting in their own right, and systems that are useful to carry out tasks (work, play, whatever). As long as the user is getting their service from someone trustworthy, then unless you actually do care about knowing what's happening for the sake of knowing (rather than the sake of it working) it doesn't matter a damn, and you can take your DRM FUD elsewhere.
But I'm not sure those are as mutually exclusive as you might think. What's strange with wanting a system that works with as little management and maintenance as possible, and yet is fully accessible? Or gives you rights over the content stored on it? It's just a different model of ASP. Think about hosting companies that offer Plesk consoles, but on a different deal, offer a root ssh login (to a virtualised server I presume).
And most geeks with their own boxes still rely on others to help them manage their systems - unless you really are (yes, yes: I'm an insensitive clod) downloading source code for all apps, patches and upgrades, inspecting it, compiling it and so on, rather than relying on package management systems, then this means you too.
Because Apple margins are greater (what, you think they're more expensive just to fill Steve's pockets?), and they're not playing the As cheap as possible game, they are able to devote some extra cash to buying more time and care in production. Yes, they'll still be pushing hard on costs. But I'll bet you any currency you like that Asus build Apple laptops with more time and care than Dell (or any high volume, low cost) laptops, and charge Apple more per laptop to cover it than they charge Dell.
But 'Quality' is more than just care taken in the build process - it's down to design, component/materials choices and so on. And here again, those higher Apple prices pay for this.
And why do Apple do this? Because they're chasing a different market segment, using a different branding strategy.
Because Dell (etc)'s strategy is to build high volumes of absolutely minimum cost machines. And that's what they pay Asus to do for them - make laptops to a spec and a budget. Which (given a similar spec for the key components) translates primarily into time spent per machine. Apple also pays Asus to make laptops to a spec, but the budget is higher.
Look, it's the same in automotive. There are plants that turn out both Lotus and GM vehicles. And the same group owns Skoda (yes, much better than they used to be) and Bentley. And they're made in the same factory in some places. Which do you think gets more time? The vehicle that costs UKP10k, or the one that costs UKP100k?
Apple's strategy is to be a relatively low volume, high brand value and high cost brand - BMW, not Ford (that's Ford's own brand, not Ford Corp's high end brands like Jaguar). They realised a *long* time ago that you can't compete long term and consistently win in the price game, or the performance game - it's all commoditised (read: low margin) and from time to time you're going to be behind, at which point there's no brand loyalty and you lose sales. So you do something *different*. True, you can't get absolutely killed in price/performance (and you've got to give current customers a reason to trade up), so you pay lipservice to it, but that's as far as it goes.
The OS is only a small part of the story; from the original iMac on, the game has been differentiation through brand, and that starts with something that looks distinctively different and consumer (ie non-business type and non-geek) friendly in stores. Interestingly, Sony's Vaio positioning is very similar... If you want to see where Jobs' ambitions lie, look at Sony Consumer Electronics in their heyday (ie before it got mugged by Sony Entertainment Division), not Dell. High brand values, leading to high margins.
A journalist friend of a friend once made up an entire story about a library in Essex having its book budget cut just so he could use the headline (altogether now...):
BOOK LACK IN ONGAR
While a student, working on the campus newspaper, some anarchists invaded the stage at the student theatre, the Bedlam. This let me write the priceless (to my 20 yo ears) headline:
BEDLAM ANARCHY CHAOS
Local Apple Centres are neither owned, nor controlled, by Apple. Think of them as the equivalent of "Microsoft Partners". They pay a fee, get enough of their tech staff certified, and that's it.
Here in Scotland, our main 'Apple Center' owners, Scotsys, suck absolute donkey.
If Apple are about controlling the end to end customer experience (and they are, just like the high end motor manufacturers), this just isn't enough. No wonder Apple are expanding their own store network...