I'm a (mostly-unemployed) book editor. At the moment, I'm working on a paperback edition of a book originally published by Random House in hardback. When doing a routine spellcheck I was shocked to see the number of misspelt words, and especially place names, that had gone to print. I can only guess they pay someone minimum wage to "edit" their books, if they bother at all.
I used to work on a news website too, so I know what's involved here, and I'm disgusted at the low standard (or no standard) of editing at Slashdot -- they publish a few paragraphs a day, and it's an event if they get one completely right. I processed about 80 stories (some up to a page long) each day, by myself. I would have been fired if I'd fucked up the way they do here. Bring on moderation of stories.
How could anyone who's not clinically insane even begin to try to build a case that mining the moon, if it's economically viable at all, is a bad thing?
However, one should consider the impact on the earth. Perhaps literally, if there are regular shipments back, though unless they find some amazingly pure and rare metals the products should remain on the moon or elsewhere.
But otherwise, in any industrialisation of space, there will, at least initally, have to be a LOT of launches from earth to get the equipment there -- and rocket launches spew some very toxic gases (not to mention occasional crashes) into the air.
Personally, I'd be supportive of starting a self-supporting lunar (or L5) colony -- but I don't expect to see it in my lifetime.
Every release of Windows has drivers for LOTS and I do mean LOTS of hardware. The problem is that Windows upgrades happen every couple of years, and it's a new purchase to attain them. Pity Service Packs don't cover that, heh.
If someone sells some PC hardware, you can bet they give you drivers in the box for every recent version of Windows. And/or you can download the latest ones from their website, or any of a dozen "driver library" sites.
I never could get into farscape. It's one thing to have flawed characters, quite another to have a bickering band of characters so self-absorbed and just generally pissy that you can't sympathize with any one of them for more than a scene.
Sounds a lot like Red Dwarf, which was great. (Never had the opportunity to see Farscape.)
Fucking Irwin Allen got so much right (Lost in Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Time Tunnel), with good casts, state-of-the-art effects (for the time), but blew it on the lamest, dumbest, most insulting scripts and concepts that even in primary school i couldn't suspend my incredulity long enough to enjoy them.
Having read TFA, I see "Battlestar Galactica is written by Ronald D. Moore (Roswell, Mission: Impossible II, Star Trek: First Contact) with David Eick (American Gothic, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys) and Moore serving as executive producers.". Well, looks like more of the same. The writer has done derivative crap, the producer some good stuff, so it'll look good but embarrass anyone who actually reads SF rather than consuming TV sci-fi.
. Baywatch was a success for the same reason The Fall Guy and The Dukes of Hazzard were successes.
Though The Fall Guy had more than a few dumb shows, towards the end of its run it went into a lot of parodies (of other TV shows, movies, books)and odd jokey plots. And the whole idea of a show about a stuntman, where it's obvious that the "stuntman's" stunts are being done by a real stuntman, is a cute self-referential idea.
The problem with fanfic is the nature of the copyright laws - if you're made aware of it, you have to take action against it or you may very well lose most of the rights to your work.
That's trademarks, not copyright.
There's apparently a massive confusion between copyright, patents and trademarks in many people's minds, exacerbated by posts like the above.
I still say that a lot of people whom say "the stuff they play on the radio is preprocessed crap", are attempting to be rebels,
It can also be that when something is played on the radio, it's saturated, and what you may like the first or second time, after hearing it on high rotation (and not just on your personal radio, but everywhere you go)for a few weeks, you're heartily sick of it.
Same for movie or TV previews and promos -- after seeing the same scenes a dozen times a day the idea of actually watching the whole thing is abhorrent. Though year later if you catch the rerun without fanfare, you may enjoy it.
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Monday November 18, @12:00AM from the you-gotta-be-kidding dept. NeoCode writes "There were rumours and speculations first. Now it looks like its a done deal. Harry Knowles, of AintItCool.com has reports on an animated version of Star Wars set after AOTC but before episode 3. This series is produced by Genndy Tartakovsky (Dexter's Lab, Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack). The cartoons will be a series of short films. Could this infuse Star Wars with a new life or is this just another merchandising plot? Nevertheless, this could be quite interesting."
Yeah look what good Ewoks & Droids did for the SW universe;)
Actually, it is quite common in law to punish crimes for which it is more difficult to catch the criminal more harshly than crimes in which it is easier, even if the damage/injury is the same. The reason for this is there is a greater need for deterence, when the likelihood of detection/capture is lower.
This may be in some laws, but even so it, in my opinion, is not just. The article is talking about the apparent injustice of current penalties imposed, and having other unjust penalties is not a great justification.
In this specifc case, fraud in general is a crime very hard to detect, as it's often committed by insiders clever enough to cover their tracks. More or less so than computer crimes in general? Arguing which crimes have a greater proportion undetected obviously is guesswork.
Deterrence is often used as a justification for the death penalty, invading Iraq, etc, but personally I am not symapthetic.
If someone is hacking into a corporate network, the punishment should send a message to others who would attempt such an endevour that the risk it not worth the potential return.
If they suffered a loss, let them document it and then charge the "hacker" with criminal damage, fraud, or whatever. Why should "hacking a corporate network" be such a heinous crime in itself?
There was a story Asimov used to tell. He went to see 2001 a Space Odyssey with Carl Sagan. When he realised that Hal was killing the astronauts, he rose in his seat and shouted: "HAL's breaking First Law! He's breaking First Law!" Sagan replied: "So, strike them with lightning, Isaac."
My opinion is, if you keep the punishment higher, people are less likely to do it. In other countries, people are shot by a firing squad if they get caught DUI. Therefore, less people drive drunk and no accidents. Same principal applies here. Not saying we should shoot hackers:-), but that if the punishment is steep, maybe it would detere illegal hacking.
If that logic is pursued, just make every crime, from littering and jaywalking on up, a capital offence. That would deter ALL crime. Sounds idyllic, doesn't it?
The point the lawyers are making is that the penalty should be in relation to the harm caused, not multiplied merely because it somehow involved a computer. Whether you defraud using a fountain pen or a PC, the penalty should be the same.
State and Federal law states that people can request information over the phone if it is going directly to them and *I* feel that it is really that person. Problem here is that I cannot verify if it is really them and the social engineering thing comes into play. So basically I won't accept any phone requests. I feel that I cannot safely determine who the person is if I don't see a handwritten request.
I applaud your attitude, but on the phone/note issue, I'd reverse the trust. Surely you have, or can easily obtain, a phone directory of contacts for all the agencies you'd accept requests from. Someone calls, you get their name, position and location and call them back via their organisations offical reception number, NOT any number they may give you. As for hand-written notes, what security is that? None. Letterheads: you can make passable currency with top end printers now.
They can use the same technology American companies have developed to censor the web in China. Apparently now it has much finer granularity, not blocking entire domains, but only specific pages. Even Google searches on naughty terms (in China, "Falun Gong"; in Pennsylvania, "Lolitas") cause your connection to go down for half an hour). Yes, the Ministry of Truth is here.
This wouldn't be news if the court had listed the sites it wants blocked.
In the F.A.: "the state's effort, which already has forced Internet providers to block subscribers from at least 423 Web sites around the world," which sounds like they have made a little list.
People never forget the "640K ought to be enough for anybody" line, do you really think they would have let this stuff slip.
The "640k" quote is bogus. It appeared out of nowhere a few years ago and has lived on in sig lines ever since. Poor Bill has denied saying it a few times, and he's not stupid enough to do that if there was any chance of someone documenting it.
Actually, I heard from Bill himself that he was misquoted on that and he basically said the opposite, that computers would not survive on a small amount of ram.
Interesting... do you have any link for that?
And of course the more important question is, how soon after the original "quote" was that statement made? I'm sure he'd love to "clear up" one of his most infamous statements after the fact... revisionist history and all that;)
I researched this a few months ago. Earliest sighting (using Google Groups) was some time in the 90s in people's sigs, though sometimes it was attributed as "Bill Gates, 1981". Bill gave a long explanation of why it's something he wouldn't have said in this NY Times article from last year.
One tends to believe this because no one has ever given any source for this quote.
Ever since I started college, my grandmother never fails to cut out the dave barry column and send it to me
And if this were digital media, it would most likely be ILLEGAL under the DMCA or other such bassackwards legislation. If the newspaper had their way, this would fall under some DRM scheme.
A clipping would be no problem anywhere, but a photocopy or fax probbaly is infiringing. Here, in Hong Kong, last year they introduced a rather draconian copyright ordinance that specifically forbade this -- then they withdrew it when the politicians found their own staff were breaking the law by faxing and copying news clippings, as they do every day to make reports on current events.
The artists had the option to not sign that contract, but they signed it. Therefore they agreed to the terms of the contract, and they are not getting ripped off in any way shape or form, unless the record company is violating that contract.
A farmer in Bangladesh needs money to buy seed, signs a contract with the moneylender that makes his family indentured servants until he pays it back, which he cannot because of the ruinous interest and the low prices the moneylender (who is also the only grain purchaser) pays. He agreed to teh terms, no one was ripped off, justice prevails.
Oh, and for the record, once again:
piracy != theft
Theft=larceny
For that matter:
copyright infringement != piracy
"Piracy" is armed robbery on the high seas. How on earth this word got associated with the wholly non-violent act of copying a digital file is beyond me. At least it isn't called "music terrorism" or possession of "musical weapons of mass destruction" (yet).
I had this spiffy engineer.com email address hosted by first iname.com and then subsequently mail.com. Well, some while ago I noticed that I hadn't gotten any email for a while. So I sent a test email message to myself which subsequently vanished. No "undeliverable" error, nothing... black hole.
I was quite proud of my "permanent" iname.com address several years ago... till mail started to jam or be delayed for days. Then they were bought by mail.com, and it got even worse. The conditions kept deteriorating slow, bounces, no POP mail, and one day ALL my mail folders disappeared during an outage when no mail was delivered fpr several days. They apologised, but it was gone. By then of course I'd gotten a (slightly) more reliable primary address, but it was still galling. At least it still worked well enough for me to set up an auto responder to tell people to telephone me instead (I wasn't going to give my new address to spammers). So I use Yahoo, and then they upped the charge (for POP) to $20/year....
Actually, you don't...that's the whole idea behind an OEM license, it's not to be separated from the computer it came with.
That's debatable. The OEM signed a contract with MS, you didn't. In some places, like Germany, there have been specific rulings allowing resale by "consumers". In other places, sellers include a token piece of hardware (a resistor, a dead PCI card, etc). In any case, I haven't heard of this actually coming to court in the US, though a lot of intimidation (like eBay pulling almost any sale of MS software) and FUD is about.
Sell the install disk. Maybe eBay won't let you, under MS pressure, but people managed to sell things before eBay cam along. You have the right to, and someone who wants Windows can get it without MS getting any (more) money, and remember they will hopefully cost MS as the user demands support. (Of course, a laptop probably has a hardware-specific Windows version, or one of those bogus "restore" rather than "install" disks....)
Slashdot Mirror
I used to work on a news website too, so I know what's involved here, and I'm disgusted at the low standard (or no standard) of editing at Slashdot -- they publish a few paragraphs a day, and it's an event if they get one completely right. I processed about 80 stories (some up to a page long) each day, by myself. I would have been fired if I'd fucked up the way they do here. Bring on moderation of stories.
However, one should consider the impact on the earth. Perhaps literally, if there are regular shipments back, though unless they find some amazingly pure and rare metals the products should remain on the moon or elsewhere.
But otherwise, in any industrialisation of space, there will, at least initally, have to be a LOT of launches from earth to get the equipment there -- and rocket launches spew some very toxic gases (not to mention occasional crashes) into the air.
Personally, I'd be supportive of starting a self-supporting lunar (or L5) colony -- but I don't expect to see it in my lifetime.
If someone sells some PC hardware, you can bet they give you drivers in the box for every recent version of Windows. And/or you can download the latest ones from their website, or any of a dozen "driver library" sites.
Sounds a lot like Red Dwarf, which was great. (Never had the opportunity to see Farscape.)
I hated it whe I was 12...
Fucking Irwin Allen got so much right (Lost in Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Time Tunnel), with good casts, state-of-the-art effects (for the time), but blew it on the lamest, dumbest, most insulting scripts and concepts that even in primary school i couldn't suspend my incredulity long enough to enjoy them.
Having read TFA, I see "Battlestar Galactica is written by Ronald D. Moore (Roswell, Mission: Impossible II, Star Trek: First Contact) with David Eick (American Gothic, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys) and Moore serving as executive producers.". Well, looks like more of the same. The writer has done derivative crap, the producer some good stuff, so it'll look good but embarrass anyone who actually reads SF rather than consuming TV sci-fi.
Though The Fall Guy had more than a few dumb shows, towards the end of its run it went into a lot of parodies (of other TV shows, movies, books)and odd jokey plots. And the whole idea of a show about a stuntman, where it's obvious that the "stuntman's" stunts are being done by a real stuntman, is a cute self-referential idea.
That's trademarks, not copyright.
There's apparently a massive confusion between copyright, patents and trademarks in many people's minds, exacerbated by posts like the above.
It can also be that when something is played on the radio, it's saturated, and what you may like the first or second time, after hearing it on high rotation (and not just on your personal radio, but everywhere you go)for a few weeks, you're heartily sick of it.
Same for movie or TV previews and promos -- after seeing the same scenes a dozen times a day the idea of actually watching the whole thing is abhorrent. Though year later if you catch the rerun without fanfare, you may enjoy it.
Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday November 18, @12:00AM ;)
from the you-gotta-be-kidding dept.
NeoCode writes "There were rumours and speculations first. Now it looks like its a done deal. Harry Knowles, of AintItCool.com has reports on an animated version of Star Wars set after AOTC but before episode 3. This series is produced by Genndy Tartakovsky (Dexter's Lab, Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack). The cartoons will be a series of short films. Could this infuse Star Wars with a new life or is this just another merchandising plot? Nevertheless, this could be quite interesting." Yeah look what good Ewoks & Droids did for the SW universe
This may be in some laws, but even so it, in my opinion, is not just. The article is talking about the apparent injustice of current penalties imposed, and having other unjust penalties is not a great justification.
In this specifc case, fraud in general is a crime very hard to detect, as it's often committed by insiders clever enough to cover their tracks. More or less so than computer crimes in general? Arguing which crimes have a greater proportion undetected obviously is guesswork.
Deterrence is often used as a justification for the death penalty, invading Iraq, etc, but personally I am not symapthetic.
If they suffered a loss, let them document it and then charge the "hacker" with criminal damage, fraud, or whatever. Why should "hacking a corporate network" be such a heinous crime in itself?
There was a story Asimov used to tell. He went to see 2001 a Space Odyssey with Carl Sagan. When he realised that Hal was killing the astronauts, he rose in his seat and shouted: "HAL's breaking First Law! He's breaking First Law!" Sagan replied: "So, strike them with lightning, Isaac."
If that logic is pursued, just make every crime, from littering and jaywalking on up, a capital offence. That would deter ALL crime. Sounds idyllic, doesn't it?
The point the lawyers are making is that the penalty should be in relation to the harm caused, not multiplied merely because it somehow involved a computer. Whether you defraud using a fountain pen or a PC, the penalty should be the same.
I applaud your attitude, but on the phone/note issue, I'd reverse the trust. Surely you have, or can easily obtain, a phone directory of contacts for all the agencies you'd accept requests from. Someone calls, you get their name, position and location and call them back via their organisations offical reception number, NOT any number they may give you. As for hand-written notes, what security is that? None. Letterheads: you can make passable currency with top end printers now.
They can use the same technology American companies have developed to censor the web in China. Apparently now it has much finer granularity, not blocking entire domains, but only specific pages. Even Google searches on naughty terms (in China, "Falun Gong"; in Pennsylvania, "Lolitas") cause your connection to go down for half an hour). Yes, the Ministry of Truth is here.
In the F.A.: "the state's effort, which already has forced Internet providers to block subscribers from at least 423 Web sites around the world," which sounds like they have made a little list.
The "640k" quote is bogus. It appeared out of nowhere a few years ago and has lived on in sig lines ever since. Poor Bill has denied saying it a few times, and he's not stupid enough to do that if there was any chance of someone documenting it.
Interesting... do you have any link for that?
And of course the more important question is, how soon after the original "quote" was that statement made? I'm sure he'd love to "clear up" one of his most infamous statements after the fact... revisionist history and all that
I researched this a few months ago. Earliest sighting (using Google Groups) was some time in the 90s in people's sigs, though sometimes it was attributed as "Bill Gates, 1981". Bill gave a long explanation of why it's something he wouldn't have said in this NY Times article from last year.
One tends to believe this because no one has ever given any source for this quote.
And if this were digital media, it would most likely be ILLEGAL under the DMCA or other such bassackwards legislation. If the newspaper had their way, this would fall under some DRM scheme.
A clipping would be no problem anywhere, but a photocopy or fax probbaly is infiringing. Here, in Hong Kong, last year they introduced a rather draconian copyright ordinance that specifically forbade this -- then they withdrew it when the politicians found their own staff were breaking the law by faxing and copying news clippings, as they do every day to make reports on current events.
How about fearing the son of the former Director of the CIA?
A farmer in Bangladesh needs money to buy seed, signs a contract with the moneylender that makes his family indentured servants until he pays it back, which he cannot because of the ruinous interest and the low prices the moneylender (who is also the only grain purchaser) pays. He agreed to teh terms, no one was ripped off, justice prevails.
Legal != just.
piracy != theft
Theft=larceny
For that matter:
copyright infringement != piracy
"Piracy" is armed robbery on the high seas. How on earth this word got associated with the wholly non-violent act of copying a digital file is beyond me. At least it isn't called "music terrorism" or possession of "musical weapons of mass destruction" (yet).
I was quite proud of my "permanent" iname.com address several years ago... till mail started to jam or be delayed for days. Then they were bought by mail.com, and it got even worse. The conditions kept deteriorating slow, bounces, no POP mail, and one day ALL my mail folders disappeared during an outage when no mail was delivered fpr several days. They apologised, but it was gone. By then of course I'd gotten a (slightly) more reliable primary address, but it was still galling. At least it still worked well enough for me to set up an auto responder to tell people to telephone me instead (I wasn't going to give my new address to spammers). So I use Yahoo, and then they upped the charge (for POP) to $20/year....
That's debatable. The OEM signed a contract with MS, you didn't. In some places, like Germany, there have been specific rulings allowing resale by "consumers". In other places, sellers include a token piece of hardware (a resistor, a dead PCI card, etc). In any case, I haven't heard of this actually coming to court in the US, though a lot of intimidation (like eBay pulling almost any sale of MS software) and FUD is about.
Sell the install disk. Maybe eBay won't let you, under MS pressure, but people managed to sell things before eBay cam along. You have the right to, and someone who wants Windows can get it without MS getting any (more) money, and remember they will hopefully cost MS as the user demands support. (Of course, a laptop probably has a hardware-specific Windows version, or one of those bogus "restore" rather than "install" disks....)