José, Western doesn't mean much. You probably have to take a look first at cultural theorists,as e.g. Geert Hofstede (google for him). Once got yourself familiar with his formal theory, then you might look at other issues. In a paper I published in 1998, I wrote: "Conversation is, in the United States, based on utterances which are always non overlapping. Therefore the dialogue between SMTP servers is structured so that each takes its turn before acknowledging or replying to the other server. Had this been designed by an Italian, coming from a culture where instead a conversation is nearly invariably overlapping, then the exchange between SMTP servers would probably be multi-threaded, with the possibility to pass back and forth simultaneously a certain number of messages." This might indeed be a trivial example, but perhaps it is what you might be looking for.
I am so very sorry, but I do believe this was a particularly silly decision of the slashdot editors. Publishing a non-news, hoping to stir up a debate on a very sad combination of events, is essentially trolling. I am extremely disappointed and will not feed the trolls, not even when they happen to be/. editors.
Because I don't use the subtitles and I am quite familiar with the Finnish culture. As to why I speak Finnish is a long story and probably it would not interest/. readers.
As a non-Finn who speaks fluent Finnish and has an extensive knowledge of the Finnish movie world let me add a few things on this fan movie. The lead character is a sterotyped Finnish youth, i.e. loud, half-drunk, not very subtle nor very polite. The plot is not that clear, but the special FX are not too bad. Should you ever make the mistake to consider that this is a typical Finnish movie, please don't: go look for movies made by Aki Kaurismäki and see by yourself what a master Finnish director can produce. All in all this is neither brilliant nor dreadful. Nothing to write home about either. I recall a Star Wars spoof which was quite more successful at spoofing, but perhaps they got a "cease and desist" letter meanwhile...
May I remind you that BBC shortwave programming began as BBC Empire Service on December 19, 1932, when the UK still had an empire (source: Wikipedia)? As to whether you can chair something and yet be against it, remember that Mrs Thatcher also chaired the EU... Now, as to the EU directives on copyright, I wrote: "there are no directives on this matter". I did not write: "there are no directives on copyright"... This is not a moot point, in that the EU Directives on copyright DO NOT imply that downloading is a crime, only that protection must be afforded to rightful copyright owners. Whether by an ISP shooting illegal bytes passing by or stickers on computer or whatever. The government of the UK may be indeed EU chair at present, but that hardly implies that it wants to develop it or protect it (quite the contrary, see my web site).
Usual Beeb drivel. There are no EU Directives on this matter, fellow slashdotters, no matter what the Beeb says. Just the usual anti-EU propaganda, I am afraid... After the very sad Kelly story they have become a sort of government propaganda office, like Fox News in the US...
While port knocking is by now an established technique, I do not think OS fingerprinting adds anything useful, because the ease of static replay attacks is left unchanged by OS fingerprinting. Though not that easy, OS spoofing is not remarkably labour intensive, and setting up a "OS generator" who will replay the static attack with every known OS is a distinct possibility. In other words, though a nice intellectual possibility, it is perhaps of rather limited application. Now, mixing instead knocking and a cryptographic application seems to me instead more promising.
No, the poster is obvious a time traveller from probably 10 years back in time. Then, the usage of this frequency was controlled in France, but that has no longer been the case for a number of years, now. The other similar hoax usually pulled is that you are supposed to undergo all sorts of testing before getting this class of devices approved for usage in Europe. This is also nonsense, as a mutual recognition agreement(MRA) is now in force between the USA and the European (dis)Union, so that each of the two commercial partners relies upon the certification of the other. In other words, if it is FCC approved, we'll believe them (as to the other way around, let's see...).
Ms Levesque in her article makes good points only if one is willing to oversimplify, as she did. One should perhaps consider two seminal projects: Mozilla and Firefox. Both come from the same [professionally developed] code base, yet one is bloated yet very usable (Mozilla), the other is lean geeks-only [even I use it...] and unintelligible (Firefox), because driven by just 1 (one) core developer on an ego trip. Methinks the problem is not so much the business model, rather the development model. Look at Linux: a swarm of developers, but only one central control (Linus Torvalds) who decides what gets into the kernel and what doesn't, though after reviewing zillions of possibilities. Folks, we are looking at group dynamics, not at software-please go get some brilliant sociologist stat, please... Maybe they can tell us something really useful, not the class inheritance gurus...
Trolling with Europe as bait [slightly offtopic]
on
Cebit 2004 Coverage
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· Score: 0, Redundant
Buddy,
you are really a tiny weeny budding troll, if that's the best you can come up with.
For your enlightenment, here are some successful trolling strategies:
- after some technical nonsense, start piling heaps of dung on (OS, application, development technique, whatever); - argue successfully, using a spelling checker, that some (group, nation, county, race, gender) is superior to ditto; - take a quote out of context from a previous poster and use it to antagonize another poster; - study !!!
Now, be a good baby troll, brush your teeth and go to bed. This discussion is for grown-ups...
ThufirHawat (from Europe, where we have some 500-pounds trolls)
What should a /. SF book review be like
on
Coalescent
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· Score: 4, Insightful
So around here we are mostly geeky nerds, right? It follows that in order to interest us a review of a fiction book should clearly state at least the following points: 1. Why, if a trilogy, it is worth reading on beyond the first book (this test fails 87% of all SF, hard, soft, or AI-written); 2. What is the unique element distinguishing this book from the approximately 50-60 SF new books being published every month (originals, no translations, USA+UK); 3. Why the reviewer thought worth looking at this particular book rather than documenting the spaghetti code he/she had just written; we want to know a detailed explanation of the urge that assailed him/her, not just the usual fluff; 4. Before using the expression 'hard SF' which should allegedly make the book more attractive to us (though it's true I hate fantasy quests full of orcs and dwarves), submit the book to the Charles Sheffield test (i.e. every scientific deus ex machina may not be based on chemically pure drivel, but should instead be based on at least one unsupported, perhaps daring, assumption).
If it were possible, parent should be modded up again, as he's daring to participate, and say meaningful things, in the usual debate between Americans and non-Americans on what does free market mean. Number portability is against the will of mobile operators. It therefore requires somebody else (this rather weak and politicised FCC?) to shove it down their throats, otherwise they will resist it forever. And yes, in Europe it is already implemented nearly everywhere (a European-wide law ensured it, though phase-in deadline was not identical for all member states), we buy cellphones independently of operators (the US practice of tying a cellphone to a specific operator is rightly considered illegal over here, because it stifles competition) and we have only one standard (GSM) so switching operator with the same cellphone and the same number is a breeze now. No, I am not trying to say that life is a paradise here, but that Americans, as champions of the free market, could possibly do a little bit more to ensure competition.
I think we are forgetting we are (or believe we are or strive to be) geeks. That means that we are mostly well-behaved and controlled schizos, as out of need often we have to do more than one thing at a time.
This is why, while watching a laser sabers duel [Star Wars], we cannot help thinking, though enjoying the fight, that two laser beams crossing will at most generate interference, and start calculating the possible pattern and the dependence of the pattern from the impact geometrical cross-section, not the clanging noise of metal swords [the most perverse among us trying to find the shortest and most effective notation to write this equation]. Or that laser beams, irrespectively of the advanced technology, will not stop at 70 centimeters after the handle, because they are light beams after all, not solid objects...
Also, as to more specialised computer geeks (I am a physicist and a computer scientist) the... laws of Sci-Fi computer science are quite obvious:
1. Aliens don't bother to use firewalls [Independence Day] 2. Artificial intelligence shall harm you [Colossus] 3. Superior computer/telecom design is based mostly upon unbreakable capacitors [This Island Earth] 4. AI agents are not only marginally smart, they also get emotional [Agent Smith in Matrix] 5. Computer neuro-interfaces will interface to all the layers of your mind, according to Freud [Ego, Super-Ego and Id, in Forbidden Planet] 6. Last, but not least, the ultimate computer is a {geek|man} [Mentat in Dune]
There you have it, our unattainable and unconfessed purpose in life... Let's face it, and meanwhile enjoy the stuff they throw at us, when decent!
Before we rejoice and pop off the champagne to celebrate, allow me to pour some water on the fire: - the article was quite vague, and it was clearly aiming to state that releasing for free material is a duty (newly discovered...) of a public broadcaster, while for other endeavours there are commercial broadcasters, who should not be charged huge licence fees (winking to them...); - this is obviously a not particularly bright attempt by the BBC to defend a role which is no longer clear to themselves nor to the spin-based Blair dictatorship, recently torpedoed by the Kelly affair; with the review of the Royal Charter, which provides the conditions under which the BBC operates, due soon (I think in 2005, in any case before Tony the liar gets the boot); it looks like pre-emptive defensive action thus... - as to the format in which stuff will be made available, let's see: recently BBC changed even its teletext format to prevent users who receive spill-over broadcast (like myself in Belgium) to fully access teletext information; I have my doubts on their willingness to make something available for free outside of Little England...
Rather than snippets, here is a reliable translation of the entire article. " CD - R garbage (September issue)
Tuesday 19 August 2003
CD-R unreadable within two years
Random sampling provides worrying results Jeroen Horlings
Imprtant data on a cd-r are in practice not always easy to keep. From our practical test, published in the September issue of PC-Active, it appears that data on a cd-r may become unreadable within two years. It is very likely that by using certain cd-r brands important personal information may be lost.
As you probably know, as a reader of PC-active, we tested quite a few cd-r in 2001 and we then published the results. It appeared then that new cd-r sometimes did not conform to standard quality requirements. We kept the thirty different branded cd-r which we tested in a locked cupboard. Before this article we tested these cd-r again with a professional cd-r analyser which watches to an extreme precision what is the current condition of the cd-r.
On this image you see exactly the same cd-r. On the left you see the result of the test in 2001, on the right the same cd-r in 2003. Colors express the seriousness of the error in the order of white, green, yellow and red. This represents easily readable (white) and unreadable (red).
From the test it appears that a number of cd-r had become completely unreadable and that with other cd-r the data had become partially unreadable. Data which had been put onto the cd-r twenty months ago had become unreadable. These were c-dr of both known and less known manufacturers.
It is assumed in general that cd-r at least remain usable for ten years. Some manufacturers claim even a usability of a century. From our sample testing it seems that there is lot of garbage on the market. We have found cd-r which should have never been placed on the market. These came possibly from unreliable suppliers. It is unacceptable that cd-r content has become, within about two years, totally unusable.
In the September issue of PC-Active, available on 22 August, the shocking results are described in detail. Besides the possible reasons for the data loss with passing of time we provide also a number of useful recommendations to preserve data on a writable cd. On the free cd-rom there is also a program allowing to assess the status of a cd-r.
[ i ] PC-Active September 2003 (available from 22 August)
EUR 6,99 (including free cd-rom)"
I am afraid I don't find this exactly mind-boggling. Perhaps over here in Europe we are more critical of stupid manufacturers' claims...
If possible, please mod up parent-if not, store one point up in some quantum optical RAM for future comments.
How is it possible that even geeks like us have got to dig desperately through the fluff and padding written by entirely illiterate 'journalists' when describing a new product, process or experiment?
Consider for a moment how many organizations try to sell us information (on or off the net) when all we need, as pointed out by parent, are facts and data, not unwarranted speculation, not popular science crap, nor monkey explanations...
Talking of AI, I estimate at 9 mths development the building of a rule-based fake journalist who will digest a press release and come up with the trash that MSN or ZDNET dish us out [hmmm... am I already too late?]. For two mths more I'll throw in fancy graphics a la Ananova(TM)...
Hello folks, there are two different issues here, which got intermingled with the usual religious war.
Issue # 1: Can the European Commission act as it is doing?
Reply: yes, simply because the EC Treaty explicitely empowers it to do so, and naturally, also provides remedies to challenge any Commission decision (taking the case to the European Court of Justice). It can levy a substantial fine too. End of story-no further soul searching required on this branch.
Issue # 2: Is it (ethically, financially, politically, technically, whatever) right to do so?
Reply: Here waters are murkier. Some militants in the USA will claim that M$ is a good company that generates profits, other European militants will claim M$ is pure, concentrated evil (remember the Fifth Element?). As in most cases in life, probably reality is gray, neither black nor white.
What matters to me is that M$ is unquestionably an innovation obstacle, as it attempts continuously to impose proprietary standards by using its de facto OS monopoly.
Any economist will confirm that far from helping innovation, a totally deregulated 'free market' leads to monopoly. In the USA the rule of law depends on the administration, and thus what the Clinton administration had begun to do was undone by the GW administration.
M$ embodies this simple observation and therefore its monopoly should be hampered. It can be done (remember IBM in the '70s? - I know, I was already around).
it would appear that you are reaping the benefits of "no regulation", which only bring profits to big corporations, as every two-bits economist will be happy to explain.
Look what we have in Europe:
- one (not four) technically advanced (at inception) standard (GSM) now being migrated to 3G, which ensures hassle-free roaming over all the territory of the European Union Member states and more; - regulatory authorities which intervene to bring down prices by monitoring tariffs; - one central authority (the European Commission) that will prevent all attempts to move toward price fixing and lower down cell-to-landline abusive charging; - transparent bills, instead of the ridiculous 7-pages bills of US cell operators, where charges are clearly and intelligibly listed in an itemised fashion.
Results: for the same mix of calls (i.e. home and roaming), a European cellphone bill is 65-70% if not less than the equivalent US bill.
Now take a deep breath, sit back and enjoy your land of "(corporate) freedom", where the FCC is a ball-less body run by political appointees.
Would it not be high time to try to regulate at least standards (think of TV standards...) and then rights of passage, to cut down the incredible US roaming (with a US cellphone) charges?
Cheers from "Old Europe"-I am afraid I am quite happy to be here rather than over there.
May I point out that the biggest user for this, if it works, are unlikely to be secret services (US or not) or religious folks? The European Union will have 25 members on the 1 May 2004, if all goes well, and European legislation will then have to be translated into 21 different languages (not 25, some Member States share the same language). Can you begin to imagine how many battalions of translators we're going to need? There hasn't been a substantial breakthrough in automatic (i.e. unaided) translation in at least 15 years, and, if Moore's law holds, I'll take this with thanks, as I would be but too happy to throw processing power at it... I have seen it all: SYSTRAN, originally used to read Russian confidential messages, EUROTRA (sort of son-of-SYSTRAN), METAL (the Siemens system, good if the writer is a cyborg who uses standard building blocks-maybe the oilman in the White House might fancy it...), whatever. There might be some promise in this approach, as the problems in parsing weird languages (Estonian, for instance) seem at present unsolvable. This fellow deserves watching, methinks...
Troll signs (à la "worm signs" in Dune): - dogmatic offensive pseudotruths (1st line); - meaningless insult, liberally sprinkled with swear words (2nd line); - main troll bait, hoping that mozilla users will feed him (3rd line); - deadbrain conclusion (4th line).
Leave him alone and do not feed him, please. I believe that if people want to experiment, they should.
Recapping it - for lazy /.ers
on
Cashless Society
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· Score: 4, Funny
OK, so here's the rundown on it.
Postings belong to one of these categories: a. Parochial bum Std posting: " Here in Upper Slobbovia (or Ruritania, or whatever) we used this for well-nigh seven centuries, but not everybody(or everybody) uses it". b. Yank yokel Std posting: "How can it work if it doesn't do a central DB query every time? What if the DB is down? [after the slammer crashing of the Bank Of America ATM network]" (Because of the very primitive US banking system, yank yokels believe that the rest of the planet is as backward as they are). c. Turbonerd Std posting: "Goodness, in order to work properly and be anonymous one has obviously to do a QCM triple encoding for every non-null challenge in any transaction. You see?" d. Impatient twit Std posting (by the 300th time that somebody wonders how can you know how much money you have left on the card): " We have this device, see, where you put the bloody card and it will tell you how much bloody cash you have still left". e. Know-it-all clown Std posting: this one...
As a result, I don't know anything I didn't know before. I only know now that we live in a far more parochial and chauvinist world than I previously thought... And yes, I live in Belgium and I have used the useless stupid thing which increases banks' profits zillions of time...
It seems that sql*kitten may have some sight troubles, as s/he doesn't read what s/he quotes. The "open skies" agreement article on Reuter s/he quotes does not prove at all that "EU Courts" disagree with national courts. On the contrary, it refers to a ruling that declared illegal separate agreements concluded by the EU Member States with the US. There is case law aplenty that proves that EU Law takes precedence over national law (beginning with the Costa v ENEL landmark ruling]. This is not a matter of voters. The European Union is not Texas, it is a union where there is the rule of law... Member states may be fined astronomical amounts for non compliance with the European Court of Justice rulings(and some, like Greece, have, in the past). Fining MS would not be hard at all, and they would have to pay. So, does sql*kitten write from Redmond, confusing his/her wishful thinking with reality? Or does s/he really believe what the propaganda zombies of the BBC write on behalf of the British and US governments?
John, I hear you. Hopefully I may be forgiven for believing, possibly because of my wobbly English, that you were actually being unfair to him. This is what I thought deserved a dissenting voice. Your vivid description of an "American icon" seems to me quite truthful-being an "American icon" does not seem anything to write home about, though... [And yes, it looks like your pals are more powerful than mine, as your karma gets bumped up so much, whilst I have to struggle to get a miserly 2...]. Also, I believe that caffeine is a basic nutrient, but it might be considered a food group on the sole condition that the user be a night-prowling hardcore geek. Unfortunately I don't qualify...
Re:The nice thing about Slashdot's slowness
on
RIP: Charles Sheffield
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· Score: 2, Informative
You're not heretical-you probably lacked many basic nutrients in your diet. I am not an American, but not to consider a man who was a renowned scientist and science-fiction writer an American icon means that you must have been abducted by aliens 40 years ago, forced to watch only US commercials, Tony Blair footage and Ally McBeal having a romantic fit, to see how long would your neuronal structures survive to this onslaught!!! He was so kind to grant me a special authorisation to copy an out of print book of his, Trader's World, as I was using it in a graduate course I was teaching in an American university. Had more Americans read this book, probably there would be by now a different administration in the White House, as it is a novel that furthers tolerance and understanding, rather than sending in the Special Forces to solve international conflicts... Of my 18 bright graduates students not a single one thought he was not a very good writer [and they didn't even know what he had achieved as a scientist an a technologist].
In most European countries shooting on a thief is not only not allowed, unlike Texas, but is actually a criminal offense, and carries severe penalties. This because while property rights are safeguarded in Europe as well as in the USA, the psychotic obsession with property which characterizes Americans is unknown. The matter at hand is similar. Making obvious that you might take advantage of your neighbour's bandwidth is an unspeakable crime for Yanks, whilst in Europe we don't give a thermonuclear fuck, whether it is Nokia, Dubya or Saddam the unlikely Demon who says it.
Folks, the difference between the two sides of the pond grows by the minute, methinks...
Slashdot Mirror
José, Western doesn't mean much.
You probably have to take a look first at cultural theorists,as e.g. Geert Hofstede (google for him).
Once got yourself familiar with his formal theory, then you might look at other issues.
In a paper I published in 1998, I wrote:
"Conversation is, in the United States, based on utterances which are always non overlapping. Therefore the dialogue between SMTP servers is structured so that each takes its turn before acknowledging or replying to the other server.
Had this been designed by an Italian, coming from a culture where instead a conversation is nearly invariably overlapping, then the exchange between SMTP servers would probably be multi-threaded, with the possibility to pass back and forth simultaneously a certain number of messages."
This might indeed be a trivial example, but perhaps it is what you might be looking for.
I am so very sorry, but I do believe this was a particularly silly decision of the slashdot editors. /. editors.
Publishing a non-news, hoping to stir up a debate on a very sad combination of events, is essentially trolling.
I am extremely disappointed and will not feed the trolls, not even when they happen to be
Because I don't use the subtitles and I am quite familiar with the Finnish culture. /. readers.
As to why I speak Finnish is a long story and probably it would not interest
Cheers,
As a non-Finn who speaks fluent Finnish and has an extensive knowledge of the Finnish movie world let me add a few things on this fan movie.
The lead character is a sterotyped Finnish youth, i.e. loud, half-drunk, not very subtle nor very polite.
The plot is not that clear, but the special FX are not too bad.
Should you ever make the mistake to consider that this is a typical Finnish movie, please don't: go look for movies made by Aki Kaurismäki and see by yourself what a master Finnish director can produce.
All in all this is neither brilliant nor dreadful. Nothing to write home about either.
I recall a Star Wars spoof which was quite more successful at spoofing, but perhaps they got a "cease and desist" letter meanwhile...
May I remind you that BBC shortwave programming began as BBC Empire Service on December 19, 1932, when the UK still had an empire (source: Wikipedia)?
As to whether you can chair something and yet be against it, remember that Mrs Thatcher also chaired the EU...
Now, as to the EU directives on copyright, I wrote:
"there are no directives on this matter".
I did not write: "there are no directives on copyright"...
This is not a moot point, in that the EU Directives on copyright DO NOT imply that downloading is a crime, only that protection must be afforded to rightful copyright owners. Whether by an ISP shooting illegal bytes passing by or stickers on computer or whatever.
The government of the UK may be indeed EU chair at present, but that hardly implies that it wants to develop it or protect it (quite the contrary, see my web site).
Usual Beeb drivel.
There are no EU Directives on this matter, fellow slashdotters, no matter what the Beeb says.
Just the usual anti-EU propaganda, I am afraid...
After the very sad Kelly story they have become a sort of government propaganda office, like Fox News in the US...
While port knocking is by now an established technique, I do not think OS fingerprinting adds anything useful, because the ease of static replay attacks is left unchanged by OS fingerprinting.
Though not that easy, OS spoofing is not remarkably labour intensive, and setting up a "OS generator" who will replay the static attack with every known OS is a distinct possibility.
In other words, though a nice intellectual possibility, it is perhaps of rather limited application.
Now, mixing instead knocking and a cryptographic application seems to me instead more promising.
No, the poster is obvious a time traveller from probably 10 years back in time.
Then, the usage of this frequency was controlled in France, but that has no longer been the case for a number of years, now.
The other similar hoax usually pulled is that you are supposed to undergo all sorts of testing before getting this class of devices approved for usage in Europe. This is also nonsense, as a mutual recognition agreement(MRA) is now in force between the USA and the European (dis)Union, so that each of the two commercial partners relies upon the certification of the other.
In other words, if it is FCC approved, we'll believe them (as to the other way around, let's see...).
Ms Levesque in her article makes good points only if one is willing to oversimplify, as she did.
One should perhaps consider two seminal projects: Mozilla and Firefox. Both come from the same [professionally developed] code base, yet one is bloated yet very usable (Mozilla), the other is lean geeks-only [even I use it...] and unintelligible (Firefox), because driven by just 1 (one) core developer on an ego trip.
Methinks the problem is not so much the business model, rather the development model. Look at Linux: a swarm of developers, but only one central control (Linus Torvalds) who decides what gets into the kernel and what doesn't, though after reviewing zillions of possibilities.
Folks, we are looking at group dynamics, not at software-please go get some brilliant sociologist stat, please... Maybe they can tell us something really useful, not the class inheritance gurus...
Buddy,
you are really a tiny weeny budding troll, if that's the best you can come up with.
For your enlightenment, here are some successful trolling strategies:
- after some technical nonsense, start piling heaps of dung on (OS, application, development technique, whatever);
- argue successfully, using a spelling checker, that some (group, nation, county, race, gender) is superior to ditto;
- take a quote out of context from a previous poster and use it to antagonize another poster;
- study !!!
Now, be a good baby troll, brush your teeth and go to bed. This discussion is for grown-ups...
ThufirHawat (from Europe, where we have some 500-pounds trolls)
So around here we are mostly geeky nerds, right?
It follows that in order to interest us a review of a fiction book should clearly state at least the following points:
1. Why, if a trilogy, it is worth reading on beyond the first book (this test fails 87% of all SF, hard, soft, or AI-written);
2. What is the unique element distinguishing this book from the approximately 50-60 SF new books being published every month (originals, no translations, USA+UK);
3. Why the reviewer thought worth looking at this particular book rather than documenting the spaghetti code he/she had just written; we want to know a detailed explanation of the urge that assailed him/her, not just the usual fluff;
4. Before using the expression 'hard SF' which should allegedly make the book more attractive to us (though it's true I hate fantasy quests full of orcs and dwarves), submit the book to the Charles Sheffield test (i.e. every scientific deus ex machina may not be based on chemically pure drivel, but should instead be based on at least one unsupported, perhaps daring, assumption).
With thanks to all reviewers, though...
ThufirHawat
If it were possible, parent should be modded up again, as he's daring to participate, and say meaningful things, in the usual debate between Americans and non-Americans on what does free market mean.
Number portability is against the will of mobile operators. It therefore requires somebody else (this rather weak and politicised FCC?) to shove it down their throats, otherwise they will resist it forever.
And yes, in Europe it is already implemented nearly everywhere (a European-wide law ensured it, though phase-in deadline was not identical for all member states), we buy cellphones independently of operators (the US practice of tying a cellphone to a specific operator is rightly considered illegal over here, because it stifles competition) and we have only one standard (GSM) so switching operator with the same cellphone and the same number is a breeze now. No, I am not trying to say that life is a paradise here, but that Americans, as champions of the free market, could possibly do a little bit more to ensure competition.
Hmm...
... laws of Sci-Fi computer science are quite obvious:
I think we are forgetting we are (or believe we are or strive to be) geeks.
That means that we are mostly well-behaved and controlled schizos, as out of need often we have to do more than one thing at a time.
This is why, while watching a laser sabers duel [Star Wars], we cannot help thinking, though enjoying the fight, that two laser beams crossing will at most generate interference, and start calculating the possible pattern and the dependence of the pattern from the impact geometrical cross-section, not the clanging noise of metal swords [the most perverse among us trying to find the shortest and most effective notation to write this equation].
Or that laser beams, irrespectively of the advanced technology, will not stop at 70 centimeters after the handle, because they are light beams after all, not solid objects...
Also, as to more specialised computer geeks (I am a physicist and a computer scientist) the
1. Aliens don't bother to use firewalls [Independence Day]
2. Artificial intelligence shall harm you [Colossus]
3. Superior computer/telecom design is based mostly upon unbreakable capacitors [This Island Earth]
4. AI agents are not only marginally smart, they also get emotional [Agent Smith in Matrix]
5. Computer neuro-interfaces will interface to all the layers of your mind, according to Freud [Ego, Super-Ego and Id, in Forbidden Planet]
6. Last, but not least, the ultimate computer is a {geek|man} [Mentat in Dune]
There you have it, our unattainable and unconfessed purpose in life...
Let's face it, and meanwhile enjoy the stuff they throw at us, when decent!
Before we rejoice and pop off the champagne to celebrate, allow me to pour some water on the fire:
- the article was quite vague, and it was clearly aiming to state that releasing for free material is a duty (newly discovered...) of a public broadcaster, while for other endeavours there are commercial broadcasters, who should not be charged huge licence fees (winking to them...);
- this is obviously a not particularly bright attempt by the BBC to defend a role which is no longer clear to themselves nor to the spin-based Blair dictatorship, recently torpedoed by the Kelly affair; with the review of the Royal Charter, which provides the conditions under which the BBC operates, due soon (I think in 2005, in any case before Tony the liar gets the boot); it looks like pre-emptive defensive action thus...
- as to the format in which stuff will be made available, let's see: recently BBC changed even its teletext format to prevent users who receive spill-over broadcast (like myself in Belgium) to fully access teletext information; I have my doubts on their willingness to make something available for free outside of Little England...
Rather than snippets, here is a reliable translation of the entire article.
"
CD - R garbage (September issue)
Tuesday 19 August 2003
CD-R unreadable within two years
Random sampling provides worrying results
Jeroen Horlings
Imprtant data on a cd-r are in practice not always easy to keep. From our practical test, published in the September issue of PC-Active, it appears that data on a cd-r may become unreadable within two years. It is very likely that by using certain cd-r brands important personal information may be lost.
As you probably know, as a reader of PC-active, we tested quite a few cd-r in 2001 and we then published the results. It appeared then that new cd-r sometimes did not conform to standard quality requirements. We kept the thirty different branded cd-r which we tested in a locked cupboard. Before this article we tested these cd-r again with a professional cd-r analyser which watches to an extreme precision what is the current condition of the cd-r.
On this image you see exactly the same cd-r. On the left you see the result of the test in 2001, on the right the same cd-r in 2003. Colors express the seriousness of the error in the order of white, green, yellow and red. This represents easily readable (white) and unreadable (red).
From the test it appears that a number of cd-r had become completely unreadable and that with other cd-r the data had become partially unreadable. Data which had been put onto the cd-r twenty months ago had become unreadable. These were c-dr of both known and less known manufacturers.
It is assumed in general that cd-r at least remain usable for ten years. Some manufacturers claim even a usability of a century. From our sample testing it seems that there is lot of garbage on the market. We have found cd-r which should have never been placed on the market. These came possibly from unreliable suppliers. It is unacceptable that cd-r content has become, within about two years, totally unusable.
In the September issue of PC-Active, available on 22 August, the shocking results are described in detail. Besides the possible reasons for the data loss with passing of time we provide also a number of useful recommendations to preserve data on a writable cd. On the free cd-rom there is also a program allowing to assess the status of a cd-r.
[ i ] PC-Active September 2003
(available from 22 August)
EUR 6,99 (including free cd-rom)"
I am afraid I don't find this exactly mind-boggling. Perhaps over here in Europe we are more critical of stupid manufacturers' claims...
If possible, please mod up parent-if not, store one point up in some quantum optical RAM for future comments.
How is it possible that even geeks like us have got to dig desperately through the fluff and padding written by entirely illiterate 'journalists' when describing a new product, process or experiment?
Consider for a moment how many organizations try to sell us information (on or off the net) when all we need, as pointed out by parent, are facts and data, not unwarranted speculation, not popular science crap, nor monkey explanations...
Talking of AI, I estimate at 9 mths development the building of a rule-based fake journalist who will digest a press release and come up with the trash that MSN or ZDNET dish us out [hmmm... am I already too late?]. For two mths more I'll throw in fancy graphics a la Ananova(TM)...
Hello folks,
there are two different issues here, which got intermingled with the usual religious war.
Issue # 1: Can the European Commission act as it is doing?
Reply: yes, simply because the EC Treaty explicitely empowers it to do so, and naturally, also provides remedies to challenge any Commission decision (taking the case to the European Court of Justice). It can levy a substantial fine too. End of story-no further soul searching required on this branch.
Issue # 2: Is it (ethically, financially, politically, technically, whatever) right to do so?
Reply: Here waters are murkier. Some militants in the USA will claim that M$ is a good company that generates profits, other European militants will claim M$ is pure, concentrated evil (remember the Fifth Element?). As in most cases in life, probably reality is gray, neither black nor white.
What matters to me is that M$ is unquestionably an innovation obstacle, as it attempts continuously to impose proprietary standards by using its de facto OS monopoly.
Any economist will confirm that far from helping innovation, a totally deregulated 'free market' leads to monopoly. In the USA the rule of law depends on the administration, and thus what the Clinton administration had begun to do was undone by the GW administration.
M$ embodies this simple observation and therefore its monopoly should be hampered. It can be done (remember IBM in the '70s? - I know, I was already around).
Dear folks,
it would appear that you are reaping the benefits of "no regulation", which only bring profits to big corporations, as every two-bits economist will be happy to explain.
Look what we have in Europe:
- one (not four) technically advanced (at inception) standard (GSM) now being migrated to 3G, which ensures hassle-free roaming over all the territory of the European Union Member states and more;
- regulatory authorities which intervene to bring down prices by monitoring tariffs;
- one central authority (the European Commission) that will prevent all attempts to move toward price fixing and lower down cell-to-landline abusive charging;
- transparent bills, instead of the ridiculous 7-pages bills of US cell operators, where charges are clearly and intelligibly listed in an itemised fashion.
Results: for the same mix of calls (i.e. home and roaming), a European cellphone bill is 65-70% if not less than the equivalent US bill.
Now take a deep breath, sit back and enjoy your land of "(corporate) freedom", where the FCC is a ball-less body run by political appointees.
Would it not be high time to try to regulate at least standards (think of TV standards...) and then rights of passage, to cut down the incredible US roaming (with a US cellphone) charges?
Cheers from "Old Europe"-I am afraid I am quite happy to be here rather than over there.
May I point out that the biggest user for this, if it works, are unlikely to be secret services (US or not) or religious folks?
The European Union will have 25 members on the 1 May 2004, if all goes well, and European legislation will then have to be translated into 21 different languages (not 25, some Member States share the same language).
Can you begin to imagine how many battalions of translators we're going to need?
There hasn't been a substantial breakthrough in automatic (i.e. unaided) translation in at least 15 years, and, if Moore's law holds, I'll take this with thanks, as I would be but too happy to throw processing power at it...
I have seen it all: SYSTRAN, originally used to read Russian confidential messages, EUROTRA (sort of son-of-SYSTRAN), METAL (the Siemens system, good if the writer is a cyborg who uses standard building blocks-maybe the oilman in the White House might fancy it...), whatever.
There might be some promise in this approach, as the problems in parsing weird languages (Estonian, for instance) seem at present unsolvable.
This fellow deserves watching, methinks...
Troll signs (à la "worm signs" in Dune):
- dogmatic offensive pseudotruths (1st line);
- meaningless insult, liberally sprinkled with swear words (2nd line);
- main troll bait, hoping that mozilla users will feed him (3rd line);
- deadbrain conclusion (4th line).
Leave him alone and do not feed him, please.
I believe that if people want to experiment, they should.
OK, so here's the rundown on it.
Postings belong to one of these categories:
a. Parochial bum
Std posting: " Here in Upper Slobbovia (or Ruritania, or whatever) we used this for well-nigh seven centuries, but not everybody(or everybody) uses it".
b. Yank yokel
Std posting: "How can it work if it doesn't do a central DB query every time? What if the DB is down? [after the slammer crashing of the Bank Of America ATM network]" (Because of the very primitive US banking system, yank yokels believe that the rest of the planet is as backward as they are).
c. Turbonerd
Std posting: "Goodness, in order to work properly and be anonymous one has obviously to do a QCM triple encoding for every non-null challenge in any transaction. You see?"
d. Impatient twit
Std posting (by the 300th time that somebody wonders how can you know how much money you have left on the card): " We have this device, see, where you put the bloody card and it will tell you how much bloody cash you have still left".
e. Know-it-all clown
Std posting: this one...
As a result, I don't know anything I didn't know before. I only know now that we live in a far more parochial and chauvinist world than I previously thought...
And yes, I live in Belgium and I have used the useless stupid thing which increases banks' profits zillions of time...
It seems that sql*kitten may have some sight troubles, as s/he doesn't read what s/he quotes.
The "open skies" agreement article on Reuter s/he quotes does not prove at all that "EU Courts" disagree with national courts. On the contrary, it refers to a ruling that declared illegal separate agreements concluded by the EU Member States with the US. There is case law aplenty that proves that EU Law takes precedence over national law (beginning with the Costa v ENEL landmark ruling]. This is not a matter of voters. The European Union is not Texas, it is a union where there is the rule of law...
Member states may be fined astronomical amounts for non compliance with the European Court of Justice rulings(and some, like Greece, have, in the past). Fining MS would not be hard at all, and they would have to pay.
So, does sql*kitten write from Redmond, confusing his/her wishful thinking with reality? Or does s/he really believe what the propaganda zombies of the BBC write on behalf of the British and US governments?
John, I hear you.
Hopefully I may be forgiven for believing, possibly because of my wobbly English, that you were actually being unfair to him. This is what I thought deserved a dissenting voice.
Your vivid description of an "American icon" seems to me quite truthful-being an "American icon" does not seem anything to write home about, though...
[And yes, it looks like your pals are more powerful than mine, as your karma gets bumped up so much, whilst I have to struggle to get a miserly 2...].
Also, I believe that caffeine is a basic nutrient, but it might be considered a food group on the sole condition that the user be a night-prowling hardcore geek. Unfortunately I don't qualify...
You're not heretical-you probably lacked many basic nutrients in your diet.
I am not an American, but not to consider a man who was a renowned scientist and science-fiction writer an American icon means that you must have been abducted by aliens 40 years ago, forced to watch only US commercials, Tony Blair footage and Ally McBeal having a romantic fit, to see how long would your neuronal structures survive to this onslaught!!!
He was so kind to grant me a special authorisation to copy an out of print book of his, Trader's World, as I was using it in a graduate course I was teaching in an American university.
Had more Americans read this book, probably there would be by now a different administration in the White House, as it is a novel that furthers tolerance and understanding, rather than sending in the Special Forces to solve international conflicts...
Of my 18 bright graduates students not a single one thought he was not a very good writer [and they didn't even know what he had achieved as a scientist an a technologist].
In most European countries shooting on a thief is not only not allowed, unlike Texas, but is actually a criminal offense, and carries severe penalties. This because while property rights are safeguarded in Europe as well as in the USA, the psychotic obsession with property which characterizes Americans is unknown.
The matter at hand is similar. Making obvious that you might take advantage of your neighbour's bandwidth is an unspeakable crime for Yanks, whilst in Europe we don't give a thermonuclear fuck, whether it is Nokia, Dubya or Saddam the unlikely Demon who says it.
Folks, the difference between the two sides of the pond grows by the minute, methinks...