I admit I don't use windows so I can't comment on this.
expensive to create
$30 for Quicktime Pro is too expensive? It's not free but it's not exactly going to break the bank.
expensive to view
Free is expensive?
expensive download (large download)
That is true of anything non-microsoft. Fortunately Quicktime also comes bundled with a lot of other software. Particularly software you would be using to create the video you are going to stream.
badly supported (consumer & developer)
Support of Quicktime for and by software developers seems pretty hard to beat. It has been around forever and has been the standard format for the creation of digital video, even when that digital video is eventually delivered via WM or RealVideo (or broadcast, videotape,or film).
Second, Real Server probably has many more features, for one more codec support:
* RealAudio/Video
* QuickTime
* Avi
* Mpeg
* MP3
These are some of the more popular ones, eh?
Umm... QuickTime isn't a codec, perhaps you meant to say Sorensen? Aside from RealAudio/Video the codecs you mention are also supported by Quicktime (as well as many others).
But the protocol VNC uses is just weird -- as near as I can tell, the client sends raw keystrokes & mouse positions and clicks and so on, and the remote server sends raw bitmaps.
I don't really know but I seem to recall remote display was one of the supposed advantages to using Quartz. Since it is a sort of "Display PDF" I would think there must be better ways of doing remote display than simply pushing pixels.
Theres an old article on Quartz/Aqua on Ars Techinica. It doesn't say anything about remote display but it discusses the technology and may provide some clues as to how they might be doing it.
Hence, a suit could appear sandy-yellow when in the desert, white when in the desert, and camoflouge when in the jungle... it is unclear whether there is any real advantage to this concept, especially given the cost.
Even that would have value, as it is now you are in the cammo appropriate for your region/season but it's pretty rare to have an environment that is uniformly just one color. Your light tan desert cammo sticks out like a sore thumb if the rocks you are hiding among are dark brown. Even if it just has the ability to sample some of the colors in your immediate environment and match them in your cammo pattern it would help.
I'd imagine they are probably trying to do even better - more like the part of your torso resting on the rock is dark brown but your legs on the sand are tan - this isn't invisibility but it would be really effective cammoflage.
As for cost, I doubt this is being developed for the average grunt but for snipers and special forces.
I was watching Predator on AMC and they had some interviews and how-they-did-the-FX stuff during commercial breaks. Somebody (the director? can't remember) mentioned that they had a screening for some military guys and a general came up to him after the film and said he "WANTED that!" (speaking of the predators armor). - I guess he had the pull to actually fund his movie inspired techno-lust.
Social engineering is probably *the most* dangerous form of attack, as well as the most often overlooked from a defensive standpoint.
This is good advise to most businesses who don't think about it that much.
BUT, to be fair to the CIA they are one institution that is fully aware of and as far as humanly possible takes into account "social engineering" (or "humint") After all that is what they DO - it is EXACTLY how they gather information themselves and it is exactly how they expect their rivals to gather information on them. Yes, they are still human and as humans WILL still make errors that will disclose information, but then again it is the one institution in the world where you might never be sure whether what you got was real information or disinformation.
I've had trouble with files on the mac that are
bonafide jpegs, opening in simpletext (I didn't have PC exchange set up properly, and the file types werent set to PHSD (or whatever the magic number for photoshop is)).
That magic number is 8BIM
I use two programs to handle file type/creator metadata in the MacOS A Better Finder: Creators & Types which is a contextual menu for changing file types. And Filetyper to create droplets for common changes.
I wish Apple included utilities like this out of the box.
To John's credit he acknowledges this problem with spam and also proposes a solution Grokmail. It looks like it will be an email reader that will use an intelligent agent to filter your mail. But as I see it his solution fails in two ways.
1) It is not yet a reality.
2) it doesn't address the burden on the network of masses of unsolicited mail. His solution will actually make this much, much, WORSE. If his system works and everyone uses it. Then it makes the most sense to send your commercial email to (quite literally) everyone! Those that don't want it won't even see it (though it will have been sent to them), those that do will. Win/win for everyone right? You don't see unwanted spam though occasionally you will get an unsolicited commercial email that actually interests you (hey, it could happen). The spammer gets his message in front of every single interested potential customer in the whole freakin' world! Yay!! But behind the scenes the network is transmitting EVERY SINGLE commercial message to EVERY SINGLE user. Masses of useless data that will never even be seen - probably many orders of magnitude a greater volume of data than that which is actually going to be seen and used. Perhaps technology will make this a viable system (seems outrageously inefficient though)
This guy is dogmatic in his elevation of one freedom to the expense of all others. From his web site (note: TLG is the ISP he founded that Verio bought):
TLG exercises no control whatsoever over the content of the
information passing through TLG. You are free to communicate
commercial, noncommercial, personal, questionable, obnoxious,
annoying, or any other kind of information, misinformation, or
disinformation through our service. You are fully responsible for
the privacy of, content of, and liability for your own communications.
That is how an ISP ought to be run. Unfortunately a set of anti-spam extortionists have been blacklisting ISPs that have policies like this, until
it's very hard to find a network like this that actually connects to the rest of the Internet.
These extortionists claim that what they want is to control their own computers. But their approach is to disconnect from any ISP that refuses
to impose THEIR SET OF TERMS on the ISP's customers. This was merely an annoyance when they were 1% of the Internet. Now they are
40% or more, turning a cut-off-our-nose-to-spite-our-face policy into a "refusal to deal" antitrust issue.
It all sounds loverly, idyllic and wonderful. But abstract rights are expressed in and sometimes have practical limits in concrete realities. Our rights, even our most fundamental rights, end up conflicting with one another. As was famously said: your right to free speech does not extend to yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. But why not? Because then it is trampling the rights of the other theater goers. This guy has a right to say whatever he likes but he has no particular right to oblige other people to provide him a soap box. Let him go out and buy his own soapbox. He started an ISP before - let him do it again. Those that freely choose to enjoy listening to all the free speech they want can sign on up. Those who just want to enjoy private conversations with their friends and co-workers can opt for services that provide some protection from Gilmore's friends interrupting all the time.
If spam was only an occasional annoyance then I would agree with Gilmore that it is not worth "limiting free speech" to reduce. But spam has gotten to the point where it is itself a significant barrier to, if not free speech, let's say free communication.
Except they don't "own" the code. They hold the copyright to the code, an entirely different thing. Once you accept the fallacy that you can "own" code -- or music or literature, or what have you -- than it makes no sense for there to be any expiration of copyright. That, after all, would be a taking.
In some senses you are wrong. The creator DOES own his work until it is available in a form that can by duplicated by others. A painter owns his painting, an author his manuscript, an inventor the contents of his brain, notes and the working model of his invention. And all of them own these things very securely until the voluntarily make them available to somebody else (usually by being paid).
We don't have to imagine a world without IP - it exited. The inventor often sold the product of his invention yet still keep it a tightly held secret. The Zildjian family has kept their metalurgical inventions secret since 1618 (before patent laws arose in the Ottoman Empire) and have enjoyed a near monopoly on cymbal making for much of that time. This is how it worked before patents. Patents are not a deal where the public/government "owns" the intellectual product (which it simply doesn't posess) and grants a license to it's creator but where the public/government acknowledges the inventors ownership and makes a deal - give up your secret (an unguaranteed but unlimited ownership) and we will guarantee your ownership for a limited time ("face it your secret probably would have come out sooner or later"). The inventor need not fear losing his livelyhood by his secret being discovered by a competitor. He can also engage in more direct business methods not dominated by the need to maintain his ownership through secrecy. The public benefits by those more efficient, less secretive business methods and by the guarantee that the inventions WILL eventually enter the public domain (some secrets can be kept for a VERY long time - just look at Zildjian, or they can be lost with the death of those initiated into the secret, or by a fire at the factory, etc.)
Some inventions covered by patents and most creations covered by copywrite don't have the kind of advantages that inventors like Avedis Zildjian had but they would still attempt to secure their livelyhood from the excersice of their craft by limiting the publics ability to duplicate it without compensation. This wasn't such an issue before the advent of printing, recording etc. that copywrite laws grew up alongside. A musician can profit from public performances, an artist can sell original paintings. Movies would ONLY be available in theaters. Software would be available custom written, on a secure server or with incredible copy-protections. And screw "fair-use" that is a concept belonging to "IP" the physical product (disks, dongles etc.) is IT - take the physical object as is or leave it. And forget "open-source" software - it's all public domain now, if a commercial vendor wants to take your source code and use it in his binary only, copy-protected product - who are you to protest, he "owns" it as much as you do.
I am not arguing that the current looooong time afforded to copywrites is good. Far from it. I'm merely pointing out that as a practical matter the creator DOES own his creations. His "IP" rights are a method to make the creations he indisputably owns available in ways he no longer individually controls, for both his and the "publics" mutual benefit.
Not a hell of a lot of justice in killing thirty innocent bystanders because THEY were in the middle of the slick while molotov-boy stayed on the edges.
the "mob mentality" defense is bullshit- crimes are committed by individuals, acting alone or in groups.
OK, as you said "acting in groups" AKA "a mob".
If you are indeed perfectly innocent and the guy next to you is throwing rocks at a line of police AND you are stupid enough to REMAIN standing next to him... Well don't blame the police for your suffering. The whole world, from the laws of physics to the dynamics of human interaction, can be unforgiving of stupidity.
the problem with this is that your "mob" is generally made up of a few criminal individuals and a lot of innocent individuals.
<sarcasm> Yes, we have often seen protestors turn in horror at the violent criminals in their midst, and asist the police by wrestling them to the ground and handing them over</sarcasm>
Seriously, many protesters are perfectly innocent and are indeed apalled by the rock throwers. Perhaps they just lack the courage to stop them. Many others are relatively innocent and while they didn't throw a rock themselves have no problem with those that do. But what do you want the police to do about it? Whether or not there is such a thing as "mob mentality" there is certainly such a thing as mob violence - which throughout history has done a great deal of damage and gotten a great many people killed. If you are "innocent" but are allowing yourself by your continued presence to voluntarily act as a human sheild for those "few criminal individuals" be glad there is a non-lethal method to controlling the mob. Because even if the only option was more severe it would be warranted.
of course, if you're an american, this is probably ok with you, given america's actions in afganistan and the fact that you're not all out in the streets protesting.
Why should we be out in the streets protesting? If the government did nothing THEN there would be protesting. As it is the people are quite satisfied with america's actions in afghanistan and rightly so! It is gratifying to have a government that doesn't have Vichy water running through it's veins.
Another scenario: lubricant sprayed, protestor slips trying to throw molatov,
This would be tragic for any innocents that may be standing (or rather sliding about) near the guy. But it is simply justice for the guy throwing the molotov himself.
Whatever you may think of the anti-WTO protesters for whom this invention is clearly made, i hope you will agree that people like them have the right to criticize the government, and make their voices heard.
I agree 100% with this. They have a right, even a responsibility to criticize their government and to make their voices heard.
That being said the moment their "protest" violates some other groups freedom of speech and/or association the police should with as little force as possible (but as much as is necessary) prevent their doing so. Breaking up or preventing meetings by forming "human chains" accross roads or entryways is not "protest" or "speech" but a violation of some other groups rights regardless of the justness of the cause motivating that violation.
Even more obviosly: should a peaceful protest devolve into a violent riot (as large and passionate crowds are prone to do regardless of their initial peacableness and despite the best intentions of their organizers). Throwing rocks, breaking windows, overturning cars are not free speech, they are crimes and they are commited not by protesters but by a mob. Such mobs are so destructive and dangerous that almost ANY level of force necessary to quell such a mob is justified - The goal of non-lethal methods like this "slime" is to make available a method less severe than a "whiff of grapeshot"
You also seem to be under the naive impression that protestors by necessity occupy the moral high-ground so by extension any attempt to establish order must be unjust probably motivated by fascism. Sadly this is not the case, there is nothing particularly morally elevating about the act of protest itself. Protesters are just as likely to be blocking Elizabeth Elsford's access to the schoolhouse door or breaking windows on kristalnacht as they are to be (presumably morally justified?) blocking international diplomats access to WTO meetings or breaking the windows of Starbucks in Seattle or Milan.
Why is it such a big news that Adobe finally decided to write a native version of Photoshop for OSX, but noone ever mentioned that Corel's Draw and PhotoPaint have been available for OSX quite some time now.
Because the professional graphics market that is key to Apple's success makes their living using Photoshop and was not even aware that Corel made a 'competing' product.
Apple is absolutely a software company. iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, DVD Studio Pro, Final Cut Pro, iPhoto, AppleWorks...
Apple's a 60/40 hardware-software company, I'd say.
In terms of money its more like 91/9 hardware-software (At least for this last quarter - $114 Million software revenue; $1.261 Billion hardware revenue) In terms of effort you may be right but that 40% effot in software is done to drive that 90% in hardware revenue.
Most of the software is given away for free with a hardware purchase. Even the software they sell is part of a strategy to sell hardware. Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, etc are intended to be "Killer Apps" that drive hardware sales in a particular niche market. The 9% of revenues is just a nice bonus. The only software that doesn't fit this bill (though it used to) is Filemaker, which for that reason is not part of Apple but was spun off as a subsidiary.
Oh, you mean like the impact from using fluorescent lights instead of incandescents?...
There are individual "greenie" measures (as you put it) that may even be postive economically. But it is not even controversial to state that the economic impact of enacting the sum total of the environmentalist agenda would be negative. Saving a little bit of energy through more efficient cars, light bulbs and houses helps and often doesn't even cost more to implement than what it saves due to greater efficiency (win, win, yipee!!). But in terms of environmental or economic impact these conservation measures are NOT where the impact is. The REAL impact on both comes on the energy production side - emmissions regulations, the Kyoto accords. "alternative" energy sources. Sadly, energy sources that pollute are simply much cheaper than those that don't. The decisions before us are about the benefits and costs of cleaner energy - How clean and at what cost? Where is the line? If we are dishonest about this equation, if we disragard or deny the reality of the cost, we will make bad decisions.
This gets back to my point and what I meant by the word "impact". "Economic cost" is an abstract term for a concrete reality of lost jobs, unemployment, and poverty and the human suffering associated with the same. This is the reality of the cost we are measuring the benefits against. In many cases the cost is worth it - Avoiding pollution on an East European scale is certainly worth a pretty high economic cost. If global warming is as bad as the worst scenarios then the cost that is worth paying is quite high.
But if we draw the line at too extreme a point the "economic cost" could even produce a negative environmental impact that could counter or even overwhelm the postive impact of the initial regulations. Poverty striken nations may impact the environment in different ways but loss of topsoil, clear cutting, wood smoke and conflicts caused by economic instablity have arguably had a greater impact on the environment than many (not all, but many) of the environmental issues we are concerned about in the developed world.
The concerns about DDT use aren't from environmental "fears", but from demonstrated environmental catastrophe.
I did not say the fears weren't legitimate. I acknowledged the real environmental damage in the conclusion of my post. My point was that even in that case where there is a real and known environmental danger there is a real cost, in the case of DDT it is a cost measured in human lives. As a counter-example to the disaster in Borneo look at at the case of Sri-Lanka which used DDT in an anti-malaria campaign that brought the death rate due to malaria to as low as 17 deaths in 1963 when they stopped using DDT. By 1968-69 malaria deaths were back up to 600,000 in 1968.
Regulations lead to lower profits for some campaign contributors, like Enron.
Ahh, the ad hominem/guilt by association bogey man of the moment. Just to clear things up - Enron SUPPORTS environmental regulations, specifically the Kyoto Accords. It gave 1.5 million to environmental groups and lobbied the Clinton administration hard for Kyoto. (does guilt by association work both ways?) To quote the Washington Post:
The Clinton administration's interest in an international agreement to combat global warming also dovetailed with Enron's business plans. Enron officials envisioned the company at the center of a new trading system, in which industries worldwide could buy and sell credits to emit carbon dioxide as part of a strategy to reduce greenhouse gases. Such a system would curtail the use of inefficient coal-fired power plants that emitted large amounts of carbon dioxide, while encouraging new investments in gas-fired plants and pipelines -- precisely Enron's line of business...
On Aug. 4, 1997, Lay and seven other energy executives met with Clinton, Gore, Rubin and other top officials at the White House to discuss the U.S. position at the upcoming conference on global warming in Kyoto, Japan. Lay, in a memo to Enron employees, said there was broad consensus in favor of an emissions-trading system.
Enron officials later expressed elation at the results of the Kyoto conference. An internal memo said the Kyoto agreement, if implemented, would "do more to promote Enron's business than almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States."
But please explain how having more energy efficiency LOWERS economic growth?
Umm... It usually costs more. This is most likely in those cases where it must be imposed by government regulation. If it made sense financially (energy cost savings made up for higher initial costs) then businesses and individuals would transition over without government coercion. And it's not just efficient consumption of energy but clean production, which also costs more. There are also issues that have nothing to do with energy production or consumption. CFC emmission controls mean that refridgeration equipement is more expensive. Refridgeration is a seriously life-enhancing technology that most people in the third-world already suffer by not being able to afford. Making it much more exensive not only has significant negative impact on the economy but a significant negative impact on health and life-span. Which in turn can ironically have a negative impact on the environment.
This is not to say that many environmental regulations aren't beneficial - just that there is almost always a cost and in some cases that cost in some cases can be quite high. If government doesn't attempt to evaluate these costs and weigh them in the balance with the projected benefit we are likely to make some very poor choices. It is probable that we may even do more environmental harm than good. Wealthier nations have far lest environmental impact than poor nations. If overzealous regulations trap developing nations below a certain threshold their net impact would be negative.
Yes, it can. Even if it was only $$ it would still have an impact on human suffering. Perhaps to an American or European a few percentage points of lost GDP is no big deal but to the developing world it can literally be the difference between life and death. Sometimes the cost in human suffering is even more direct. Malaria was essentially wiped out in southern Europe and America and there was initial progress in the third world due to the use of the pesticide DDT. The third world programs were curtailed (though some third world countries still use DDT) because of the environmental fears of people who had already benefited from it's use. The direct result is millions of deaths in Africa. Also many programs had already started but were stopped before wiping out infected mosquito populations, as with any "non-lethal" dose the result is a strain of mosquitos that have a higher resistance to DDT. Because of this the third world may now NEVER achieve the success combating malaria that America and Europe already enjoy. The environmental threat was quite real (though exagerated) but the human cost was also very real, indeed catastrophic.
I can't imagine my parents enabling their root account to reconfigure folder permissions as I had to do recently. Heck, my dad can barely figure out his email.
I can't imagine your dad having to enable root or reconfigure folder permissions. You didn't have to enable root to do that either - Apple wants you to use sudo for that kind of thing rather than enable root.
That being said, Apple really should integrate these things in the GUI even if the average user will almost never run into the problem. I don't have the most up-do-date version but last time I looked I had to change permissions from the command line. There should be a GUI way to do it (from get info perhaps?) and EVERY time you try to do something you don't have sufficient permissions to do a dialog box should pop up to enter your administrator username and password so you can do it anyway.
That's the whole point you idiot. We can't just abitrarily decimate a species without affecting ourselves in some way.
Well DUH! Of course that is the whole point! Why do you think we want to get rid of the Tetse fly? Not because it is arbitrary but because the "some way" it will affect us is that we will stop dying in massive numbers every year.
It is very easy for wealthy Americans that HAVE and DO control insect and rodent populations to prevent epidemics to advocate OTHER people dying by the hundreds of thousands because we think that is the "natural way." As long as it's someone else dying, far away in another country so we don't have to see it. Or if we see it on TV we can feel good about ourselves by putting some nickels in the UNICEF box
Name one attempt to do this that has not had disasterous results.
We control (or attempt to control) diseased populations of insects and rodents all the time with very few ill effects. Even the very few disasters (such as the effect of DDT on bird eggs) were arguably worth it considering the hundreds of thousands of human lives saved and the fact that after being discontinued we've found other less harmful insecticides and bird populations have rebounded. Beyond that we have not only decimated one species we have eradicated it (smallpox). I suppose since there is still a little left in the lab we could reintroduce it for the sake of the environment (any volunteers?) We are planning to eradicate another species: Polio (start agitating for it's survival now!) Who knows what ill effects the eradication of these species has had on the environment? Nobody knows but we are quite certain about it's positive effects.
I wonder why it was put in, and even more why it was never used.
I'm sure it was put in as a check to judicial power. The founders did not consider the court to be the only guardians of the constitution; the oath to "uphold the constitution" is the same for a legislator and the President as it is for the justices. The Courts role as the final arbiter of the correct interpretation of the constitution is NOT explicit in the constitution. If anything the founders through this clause and expressed in Madisons phrase calling the Judiciary "the least dangerous branch" indicate that they concieved of the court as inferior to the congress.
The constitution outlines the three branches and preserves it's integrity through each checking the others not by having one superior to the others. Sadly the Executive and the Legislature have both deferred completely to the Judiciary as the final and only arbiter. It has reached the point where legislators will pass bills and the President will sign them even though (and despite their oath) they believe the bill to be unconstitutional. As a case in point the McCain-Fiengold campaign finance law. Many legislators believe that at least some, even most of it's provisions do not pass constitutional muster. The President very clearly stated that as his belief. But they will pass it and he will sign it believing that the court will (or should) strike down those portions that violate the constitution. It is not supposed to work that way. It puts all of our eggs in one basket and that "basket" is the one least accountable to the people.
As for why it has never (to my limited knowledge) been used; I imagine it never really came up early on in our history and sort of atrophied. Nobody thinks twice about the President vetoing a bill nor about congress rejecting Presidential appointments or overriding a veto. The excercise of such check is non-controversial (though the specific intanceas almost always are;) But for congress to use such a sweeping power that has never been used in the past would provoke a crisis. We have it too firmly in our mind that the court has the final word on what the constitutions says - no matter what the consitution DOES actually say.
Slashdot Mirror
poor performance on windows (80% market share)
I admit I don't use windows so I can't comment on this.
expensive to create
$30 for Quicktime Pro is too expensive? It's not free but it's not exactly going to break the bank.
expensive to view
Free is expensive?
expensive download (large download)
That is true of anything non-microsoft. Fortunately Quicktime also comes bundled with a lot of other software. Particularly software you would be using to create the video you are going to stream.
badly supported (consumer & developer)
Support of Quicktime for and by software developers seems pretty hard to beat. It has been around forever and has been the standard format for the creation of digital video, even when that digital video is eventually delivered via WM or RealVideo (or broadcast, videotape,or film).
Second, Real Server probably has many more features, for one more codec support:
* RealAudio/Video
* QuickTime
* Avi
* Mpeg
* MP3
These are some of the more popular ones, eh?
Umm... QuickTime isn't a codec, perhaps you meant to say Sorensen? Aside from RealAudio/Video the codecs you mention are also supported by Quicktime (as well as many others).
But the protocol VNC uses is just weird -- as near as I can tell, the client sends raw keystrokes & mouse positions and clicks and so on, and the remote server sends raw bitmaps.
I don't really know but I seem to recall remote display was one of the supposed advantages to using Quartz. Since it is a sort of "Display PDF" I would think there must be better ways of doing remote display than simply pushing pixels.
Theres an old article on Quartz/Aqua on Ars Techinica. It doesn't say anything about remote display but it discusses the technology and may provide some clues as to how they might be doing it.
Hence, a suit could appear sandy-yellow when in the desert, white when in the desert, and camoflouge when in the jungle... it is unclear whether there is any real advantage to this concept, especially given the cost.
Even that would have value, as it is now you are in the cammo appropriate for your region/season but it's pretty rare to have an environment that is uniformly just one color. Your light tan desert cammo sticks out like a sore thumb if the rocks you are hiding among are dark brown. Even if it just has the ability to sample some of the colors in your immediate environment and match them in your cammo pattern it would help.
I'd imagine they are probably trying to do even better - more like the part of your torso resting on the rock is dark brown but your legs on the sand are tan - this isn't invisibility but it would be really effective cammoflage.
As for cost, I doubt this is being developed for the average grunt but for snipers and special forces.
I was watching Predator on AMC and they had some interviews and how-they-did-the-FX stuff during commercial breaks. Somebody (the director? can't remember) mentioned that they had a screening for some military guys and a general came up to him after the film and said he "WANTED that!" (speaking of the predators armor). - I guess he had the pull to actually fund his movie inspired techno-lust.
Social engineering is probably *the most* dangerous form of attack, as well as the most often overlooked from a defensive standpoint.
This is good advise to most businesses who don't think about it that much.
BUT, to be fair to the CIA they are one institution that is fully aware of and as far as humanly possible takes into account "social engineering" (or "humint") After all that is what they DO - it is EXACTLY how they gather information themselves and it is exactly how they expect their rivals to gather information on them. Yes, they are still human and as humans WILL still make errors that will disclose information, but then again it is the one institution in the world where you might never be sure whether what you got was real information or disinformation.
I've had trouble with files on the mac that are bonafide jpegs, opening in simpletext (I didn't have PC exchange set up properly, and the file types werent set to PHSD (or whatever the magic number for photoshop is)).
That magic number is 8BIM
I use two programs to handle file type/creator metadata in the MacOS A Better Finder: Creators & Types which is a contextual menu for changing file types. And Filetyper to create droplets for common changes.
I wish Apple included utilities like this out of the box.
To John's credit he acknowledges this problem with spam and also proposes a solution Grokmail. It looks like it will be an email reader that will use an intelligent agent to filter your mail. But as I see it his solution fails in two ways.
1) It is not yet a reality.
2) it doesn't address the burden on the network of masses of unsolicited mail. His solution will actually make this much, much, WORSE. If his system works and everyone uses it. Then it makes the most sense to send your commercial email to (quite literally) everyone! Those that don't want it won't even see it (though it will have been sent to them), those that do will. Win/win for everyone right? You don't see unwanted spam though occasionally you will get an unsolicited commercial email that actually interests you (hey, it could happen). The spammer gets his message in front of every single interested potential customer in the whole freakin' world! Yay!! But behind the scenes the network is transmitting EVERY SINGLE commercial message to EVERY SINGLE user. Masses of useless data that will never even be seen - probably many orders of magnitude a greater volume of data than that which is actually going to be seen and used. Perhaps technology will make this a viable system (seems outrageously inefficient though)
If spam was only an occasional annoyance then I would agree with Gilmore that it is not worth "limiting free speech" to reduce. But spam has gotten to the point where it is itself a significant barrier to, if not free speech, let's say free communication.
We don't have to imagine a world without IP - it exited. The inventor often sold the product of his invention yet still keep it a tightly held secret. The Zildjian family has kept their metalurgical inventions secret since 1618 (before patent laws arose in the Ottoman Empire) and have enjoyed a near monopoly on cymbal making for much of that time. This is how it worked before patents. Patents are not a deal where the public/government "owns" the intellectual product (which it simply doesn't posess) and grants a license to it's creator but where the public/government acknowledges the inventors ownership and makes a deal - give up your secret (an unguaranteed but unlimited ownership) and we will guarantee your ownership for a limited time ("face it your secret probably would have come out sooner or later"). The inventor need not fear losing his livelyhood by his secret being discovered by a competitor. He can also engage in more direct business methods not dominated by the need to maintain his ownership through secrecy. The public benefits by those more efficient, less secretive business methods and by the guarantee that the inventions WILL eventually enter the public domain (some secrets can be kept for a VERY long time - just look at Zildjian, or they can be lost with the death of those initiated into the secret, or by a fire at the factory, etc.)
Some inventions covered by patents and most creations covered by copywrite don't have the kind of advantages that inventors like Avedis Zildjian had but they would still attempt to secure their livelyhood from the excersice of their craft by limiting the publics ability to duplicate it without compensation. This wasn't such an issue before the advent of printing, recording etc. that copywrite laws grew up alongside. A musician can profit from public performances, an artist can sell original paintings. Movies would ONLY be available in theaters. Software would be available custom written, on a secure server or with incredible copy-protections. And screw "fair-use" that is a concept belonging to "IP" the physical product (disks, dongles etc.) is IT - take the physical object as is or leave it. And forget "open-source" software - it's all public domain now, if a commercial vendor wants to take your source code and use it in his binary only, copy-protected product - who are you to protest, he "owns" it as much as you do.
I am not arguing that the current looooong time afforded to copywrites is good. Far from it. I'm merely pointing out that as a practical matter the creator DOES own his creations. His "IP" rights are a method to make the creations he indisputably owns available in ways he no longer individually controls, for both his and the "publics" mutual benefit.
Only if that molotov happens to kill HIM.
Not a hell of a lot of justice in killing thirty innocent bystanders because THEY were in the middle of the slick while molotov-boy stayed on the edges.
Um... Yes, that is what I said.
the "mob mentality" defense is bullshit- crimes are committed by individuals, acting alone or in groups.
OK, as you said "acting in groups" AKA "a mob".
If you are indeed perfectly innocent and the guy next to you is throwing rocks at a line of police AND you are stupid enough to REMAIN standing next to him... Well don't blame the police for your suffering. The whole world, from the laws of physics to the dynamics of human interaction, can be unforgiving of stupidity.
the problem with this is that your "mob" is generally made up of a few criminal individuals and a lot of innocent individuals.
<sarcasm> Yes, we have often seen protestors turn in horror at the violent criminals in their midst, and asist the police by wrestling them to the ground and handing them over</sarcasm>
Seriously, many protesters are perfectly innocent and are indeed apalled by the rock throwers. Perhaps they just lack the courage to stop them. Many others are relatively innocent and while they didn't throw a rock themselves have no problem with those that do. But what do you want the police to do about it? Whether or not there is such a thing as "mob mentality" there is certainly such a thing as mob violence - which throughout history has done a great deal of damage and gotten a great many people killed. If you are "innocent" but are allowing yourself by your continued presence to voluntarily act as a human sheild for those "few criminal individuals" be glad there is a non-lethal method to controlling the mob. Because even if the only option was more severe it would be warranted.
of course, if you're an american, this is probably ok with you, given america's actions in afganistan and the fact that you're not all out in the streets protesting.
Why should we be out in the streets protesting? If the government did nothing THEN there would be protesting. As it is the people are quite satisfied with america's actions in afghanistan and rightly so! It is gratifying to have a government that doesn't have Vichy water running through it's veins.
Another scenario: lubricant sprayed, protestor slips trying to throw molatov,
This would be tragic for any innocents that may be standing (or rather sliding about) near the guy. But it is simply justice for the guy throwing the molotov himself.
You may not have intended to support the notions of absolute right and wrong,
Why not? would that be wrong?
Whatever you may think of the anti-WTO protesters for whom this invention is clearly made, i hope you will agree that people like them have the right to criticize the government, and make their voices heard.
I agree 100% with this. They have a right, even a responsibility to criticize their government and to make their voices heard.
That being said the moment their "protest" violates some other groups freedom of speech and/or association the police should with as little force as possible (but as much as is necessary) prevent their doing so. Breaking up or preventing meetings by forming "human chains" accross roads or entryways is not "protest" or "speech" but a violation of some other groups rights regardless of the justness of the cause motivating that violation.
Even more obviosly: should a peaceful protest devolve into a violent riot (as large and passionate crowds are prone to do regardless of their initial peacableness and despite the best intentions of their organizers). Throwing rocks, breaking windows, overturning cars are not free speech, they are crimes and they are commited not by protesters but by a mob. Such mobs are so destructive and dangerous that almost ANY level of force necessary to quell such a mob is justified - The goal of non-lethal methods like this "slime" is to make available a method less severe than a "whiff of grapeshot"
You also seem to be under the naive impression that protestors by necessity occupy the moral high-ground so by extension any attempt to establish order must be unjust probably motivated by fascism. Sadly this is not the case, there is nothing particularly morally elevating about the act of protest itself. Protesters are just as likely to be blocking Elizabeth Elsford's access to the schoolhouse door or breaking windows on kristalnacht as they are to be (presumably morally justified?) blocking international diplomats access to WTO meetings or breaking the windows of Starbucks in Seattle or Milan.
Why is it such a big news that Adobe finally decided to write a native version of Photoshop for OSX, but noone ever mentioned that Corel's Draw and PhotoPaint have been available for OSX quite some time now.
Because the professional graphics market that is key to Apple's success makes their living using Photoshop and was not even aware that Corel made a 'competing' product.
Apple is absolutely a software company. iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, DVD Studio Pro, Final Cut Pro, iPhoto, AppleWorks...
Apple's a 60/40 hardware-software company, I'd say.
In terms of money its more like 91/9 hardware-software (At least for this last quarter - $114 Million software revenue; $1.261 Billion hardware revenue) In terms of effort you may be right but that 40% effot in software is done to drive that 90% in hardware revenue.
Most of the software is given away for free with a hardware purchase. Even the software they sell is part of a strategy to sell hardware. Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, etc are intended to be "Killer Apps" that drive hardware sales in a particular niche market. The 9% of revenues is just a nice bonus. The only software that doesn't fit this bill (though it used to) is Filemaker, which for that reason is not part of Apple but was spun off as a subsidiary.
Oh, you mean like the impact from using fluorescent lights instead of incandescents?...
There are individual "greenie" measures (as you put it) that may even be postive economically. But it is not even controversial to state that the economic impact of enacting the sum total of the environmentalist agenda would be negative. Saving a little bit of energy through more efficient cars, light bulbs and houses helps and often doesn't even cost more to implement than what it saves due to greater efficiency (win, win, yipee!!). But in terms of environmental or economic impact these conservation measures are NOT where the impact is. The REAL impact on both comes on the energy production side - emmissions regulations, the Kyoto accords. "alternative" energy sources. Sadly, energy sources that pollute are simply much cheaper than those that don't. The decisions before us are about the benefits and costs of cleaner energy - How clean and at what cost? Where is the line? If we are dishonest about this equation, if we disragard or deny the reality of the cost, we will make bad decisions.
This gets back to my point and what I meant by the word "impact". "Economic cost" is an abstract term for a concrete reality of lost jobs, unemployment, and poverty and the human suffering associated with the same. This is the reality of the cost we are measuring the benefits against. In many cases the cost is worth it - Avoiding pollution on an East European scale is certainly worth a pretty high economic cost. If global warming is as bad as the worst scenarios then the cost that is worth paying is quite high.
But if we draw the line at too extreme a point the "economic cost" could even produce a negative environmental impact that could counter or even overwhelm the postive impact of the initial regulations. Poverty striken nations may impact the environment in different ways but loss of topsoil, clear cutting, wood smoke and conflicts caused by economic instablity have arguably had a greater impact on the environment than many (not all, but many) of the environmental issues we are concerned about in the developed world.
The concerns about DDT use aren't from environmental "fears", but from demonstrated environmental catastrophe.
I did not say the fears weren't legitimate. I acknowledged the real environmental damage in the conclusion of my post. My point was that even in that case where there is a real and known environmental danger there is a real cost, in the case of DDT it is a cost measured in human lives. As a counter-example to the disaster in Borneo look at at the case of Sri-Lanka which used DDT in an anti-malaria campaign that brought the death rate due to malaria to as low as 17 deaths in 1963 when they stopped using DDT. By 1968-69 malaria deaths were back up to 600,000 in 1968.
Ahh, the ad hominem/guilt by association bogey man of the moment. Just to clear things up - Enron SUPPORTS environmental regulations, specifically the Kyoto Accords. It gave 1.5 million to environmental groups and lobbied the Clinton administration hard for Kyoto. (does guilt by association work both ways?) To quote the Washington Post: But please explain how having more energy efficiency LOWERS economic growth?
Umm... It usually costs more. This is most likely in those cases where it must be imposed by government regulation. If it made sense financially (energy cost savings made up for higher initial costs) then businesses and individuals would transition over without government coercion. And it's not just efficient consumption of energy but clean production, which also costs more. There are also issues that have nothing to do with energy production or consumption. CFC emmission controls mean that refridgeration equipement is more expensive. Refridgeration is a seriously life-enhancing technology that most people in the third-world already suffer by not being able to afford. Making it much more exensive not only has significant negative impact on the economy but a significant negative impact on health and life-span. Which in turn can ironically have a negative impact on the environment.
This is not to say that many environmental regulations aren't beneficial - just that there is almost always a cost and in some cases that cost in some cases can be quite high. If government doesn't attempt to evaluate these costs and weigh them in the balance with the projected benefit we are likely to make some very poor choices. It is probable that we may even do more environmental harm than good. Wealthier nations have far lest environmental impact than poor nations. If overzealous regulations trap developing nations below a certain threshold their net impact would be negative.
And to those who don't know, Ken Lay had his own desk at the White House.
Just curious, Are you talking about his lobbying and financial support of the Kyoto Accords during the Clinton Administration?
it cant HURT us to be more eco-friendly.
Yes, it can. Even if it was only $$ it would still have an impact on human suffering. Perhaps to an American or European a few percentage points of lost GDP is no big deal but to the developing world it can literally be the difference between life and death. Sometimes the cost in human suffering is even more direct. Malaria was essentially wiped out in southern Europe and America and there was initial progress in the third world due to the use of the pesticide DDT. The third world programs were curtailed (though some third world countries still use DDT) because of the environmental fears of people who had already benefited from it's use. The direct result is millions of deaths in Africa. Also many programs had already started but were stopped before wiping out infected mosquito populations, as with any "non-lethal" dose the result is a strain of mosquitos that have a higher resistance to DDT. Because of this the third world may now NEVER achieve the success combating malaria that America and Europe already enjoy. The environmental threat was quite real (though exagerated) but the human cost was also very real, indeed catastrophic.
I can't imagine my parents enabling their root account to reconfigure folder permissions as I had to do recently. Heck, my dad can barely figure out his email.
I can't imagine your dad having to enable root or reconfigure folder permissions. You didn't have to enable root to do that either - Apple wants you to use sudo for that kind of thing rather than enable root.
That being said, Apple really should integrate these things in the GUI even if the average user will almost never run into the problem. I don't have the most up-do-date version but last time I looked I had to change permissions from the command line. There should be a GUI way to do it (from get info perhaps?) and EVERY time you try to do something you don't have sufficient permissions to do a dialog box should pop up to enter your administrator username and password so you can do it anyway.
That's the whole point you idiot. We can't just abitrarily decimate a species without affecting ourselves in some way.
Well DUH! Of course that is the whole point! Why do you think we want to get rid of the Tetse fly? Not because it is arbitrary but because the "some way" it will affect us is that we will stop dying in massive numbers every year.
It is very easy for wealthy Americans that HAVE and DO control insect and rodent populations to prevent epidemics to advocate OTHER people dying by the hundreds of thousands because we think that is the "natural way." As long as it's someone else dying, far away in another country so we don't have to see it. Or if we see it on TV we can feel good about ourselves by putting some nickels in the UNICEF box
Name one attempt to do this that has not had disasterous results.
We control (or attempt to control) diseased populations of insects and rodents all the time with very few ill effects. Even the very few disasters (such as the effect of DDT on bird eggs) were arguably worth it considering the hundreds of thousands of human lives saved and the fact that after being discontinued we've found other less harmful insecticides and bird populations have rebounded. Beyond that we have not only decimated one species we have eradicated it (smallpox). I suppose since there is still a little left in the lab we could reintroduce it for the sake of the environment (any volunteers?) We are planning to eradicate another species: Polio (start agitating for it's survival now!) Who knows what ill effects the eradication of these species has had on the environment? Nobody knows but we are quite certain about it's positive effects.
I wonder why it was put in, and even more why it was never used.
;) But for congress to use such a sweeping power that has never been used in the past would provoke a crisis. We have it too firmly in our mind that the court has the final word on what the constitutions says - no matter what the consitution DOES actually say.
I'm sure it was put in as a check to judicial power. The founders did not consider the court to be the only guardians of the constitution; the oath to "uphold the constitution" is the same for a legislator and the President as it is for the justices. The Courts role as the final arbiter of the correct interpretation of the constitution is NOT explicit in the constitution. If anything the founders through this clause and expressed in Madisons phrase calling the Judiciary "the least dangerous branch" indicate that they concieved of the court as inferior to the congress.
The constitution outlines the three branches and preserves it's integrity through each checking the others not by having one superior to the others. Sadly the Executive and the Legislature have both deferred completely to the Judiciary as the final and only arbiter. It has reached the point where legislators will pass bills and the President will sign them even though (and despite their oath) they believe the bill to be unconstitutional. As a case in point the McCain-Fiengold campaign finance law. Many legislators believe that at least some, even most of it's provisions do not pass constitutional muster. The President very clearly stated that as his belief. But they will pass it and he will sign it believing that the court will (or should) strike down those portions that violate the constitution. It is not supposed to work that way. It puts all of our eggs in one basket and that "basket" is the one least accountable to the people.
As for why it has never (to my limited knowledge) been used; I imagine it never really came up early on in our history and sort of atrophied. Nobody thinks twice about the President vetoing a bill nor about congress rejecting Presidential appointments or overriding a veto. The excercise of such check is non-controversial (though the specific intanceas almost always are