It suddenly occured to me to wonder what would happen if you actually put out a bad review about something. Do I really believe that these guys will assist in moving such negative information around?
Somehow I doubt it.
This has been attracting a fair amount of attention recently but it doesn't look to me like they've done more build an XML schema for sharing meta-information.
It really just looks like they've found a way that they think will work to reduce their advertising costs.
This does not address in any way the real problems of the music industry, the copyright issues and the like, but has been hyped recently as exactly that - probably to distract the public attention from those issues.
We need to understand, of course, that this is a question of fundamental rights. That is, the recording industry has the right to make as much money as they think they deserve and the artists have the right to sell their work to the recording industry and the consumer has the right, nay! obligation to buy it.
And if the industry isn't getting what it thinks is its due, well, time to tax and spend. Tax the consumer and spend the profits for the benefit of those in the boardrooms.
UPS's !!!! The power in much of the third world is unreliable and inconsistent - brown outs, spikes and all that.
Cases, power supplies, monitors tend to be larger and will ship more slowly - but once they're there it may (?) be easier and faster to send in smaller components like disk drives, motherboards and so on. Pack them well. You might find some people in airline/travel jobs are willing to carry an occasional package of this sort.
Hardware tools (low tech where alternatives exist). Get lots of the right sized screwdrivers, needle nosed pliers, socket pullers, digital multi-meters and all that fun stuff. If its easily available in-country, don't send a lot, but it may be a good idea to send at least one.
Get a good collection of books on how to diagnose and repair your hardware. If people are motivated enough they'll do their best to try to fix them when they break and having literature on how to do it would be a good thing. And clearly if your computer isn't working you can't look it up online.
Network connectivity may be a problem so setting up local discussion groups (maybe even based on uucp or something similar, so it could be regional/national) would be a good thing. Also
if you run a caching proxy with aggressive rules about not-refetching unless needed, it can make things rather faster.
A server with a good sized disk could be used to mirror commonly used sites (at least if the site allows it). Say things like project gutenberg, wikipedia and so on.
Run Unicks of some sort (linux, bsd...). Many of the people will have a learning curve anyway, if they learn how to run unix they'll learn more skills having to do with actually programming and systems stuff than if they run windows. Network connectivity is a Good Thing, but it may be as important to grow local experts in both hardware and software. I think that bears repeating in its own paragraph :
One of the potential benefits (and perhaps the greatest one) would be growing local experts in both hardware and software.
Not really a "gather round the table" kind of game, but incredible complexity for a fairly simple set of rules. Well worth learning, and very worth learning young.
There are computer versions so you can play against a program and IGS so you can play over the net against humans.
Not as immediately attractive to 10 year olds as some games, but will pay off for many over a much longer period.
I think Monty Python has established all kinds of prior art in terms of "entering a room in a wacky manner".
Though since it wasn't patented, only broadcast on tv, the USPTO would probably issue a new patent on it anyway.
Hmm, I wonder if I could just patent John Cleese?
The list of claims would probablyfill quite a large volume.
Claim 1: A silly walk. This walk consists walking stiff legged with legs raised to an angle of at least 20 degrees from the vertical. See diagram 1 and enclosed video. This claim applies to all silly walks involving stiff legs. Optionally the Silly Walker may make a faux moustache with horizontally held fingers - however this addition is not a Fundamental part of this Claim.
Claim 2: A silly turn. In conjunction with Claim 1, the Silly Turn involves pivoting on a stiff leg and turning the body more or less rigidly about any turn of any number of degrees ranging from 0 to 720 (both left and right terms falling within the scope of this Claim.)
Claim 3: A Silly Walk.....
Claim 976 : The Spanish Inquisition
Right, but suppose that most legitmate ISPs do this. Then the "willing ISP" with its IP in the header of
the email will find itself flooded with all these error messages.
It would be possible for the spammer's ISP to ignore the incoming mail. But then a legit ISP that couldn't deliver mail to such an address could then refuse all further incoming mail from the spammer ISP for some predefined time interval (say 4 hours). This would help to limit spammers but not legitimate mail hosts that might have got somehow used.
Spammers using viruses or worms on other machines won't do much better - they'll have to at least enable incoming smtp on the machines and any firewall along the way would need to be set to allow incoming smtp, or the outgoing mail would be refused (by the above).
IBM could just open an office next door, send in cdrom's and punch the results out to cards. Then hire a bunch of those guys who sit next to the highways "willing to work for food" to deliver them in person - preferably in weak cardboard boxes. I'd suggest that the files be tarred, encrypted (for security and as an effective digital signature, of course) and uuencoded then punched to cards. Probably a couple million boxes eventually.
Oops, a few decks got dropped....
Sequence numbers? We don't need no steeking sequence numbers. Assemble those uuencoded, encrypted tar files by hand.
"Creative people should be compensated for the use and exploitation of their music... We're obviously in a struggle right now trying to figure out the best techniques to ensure that they are compensated appropriately."
The RIAA at least is already ensuring that "creative people" are compensated for the "exploitation" of ther music. Compensated poorly for the most part, compensated ridiculously well in some (few) cases.
But what bothers me most about this is that, as usual, the artists are the ones mentioned as losing out on file sharing and the like, where its really the big corporations that are losing the most. And to be fair, if file sharing goes up and revenues drop, that President or CEO or "VP in charge of Procuring" will probably find their salaries cut, perhaps enough (Horrors!) so they can no longer afford (insert favorite absurd luxury item here). Or maybe corporate slush funds will dry up a bit so that those 72 hour orgies (er, um, "corporate retreats") will no longer be an option.
Nope, on second thought, probably not. They'll just find better ways to soak the artists and pass more "Entitlement" laws with themselves as beneficiaries and find ways to generate music without any real creative input.
Man and info are aiming at rather different targets. Info seems to want to be all things to all people. Man pages are (or evolved to be) concise, accurate information for those who are at least minimally technically savvy.
I'd like to see something like a docbook variant that would allow man, info style, and html all to be documented in the same place (not necessarily the same file) and with a kind of "gendoc" command that would produce a man page, info for those who like it, and html all from the same source.
And I'll admit I've always found the info comment about how man is obsolete and all to be rather condescending (in the most icky sort of way) - especially when the info files that took the place of the man pages are often next to impossible to navigate.
I use firebird with the tab extensions and it doesn't seem (to me) to slow things down much at all.
However, if you set up the tab groups and set it so that it reopens the current group of tabs when the browser crashes, I've seen reports that that does slow things down considerably. So try unsetting that option.
If you use the tab extensions you might also want to check and see if you have the "auto-reload" enabled. In the options under tabs there is a "frequency of auto-reload". Make that 1 or you can end up with tabs reloading and reloading and reloading for pages set to expire immediately.
...permit a discussion topic that implies we are slaves to Microsoft is just plain offensive....
1) You have no right not to be offended
2) Nobody can offend you without your consent
...
Did you ever once consider we might feel liberated to use Microsoft products? It's like looking out into the ocean, seeing a swarm of sharks feeding in the surf, and then choosing to paddle out to ride the waves. It's an adrenaline rush....
Now there's a metaphor that lost me halfway through. Is slashdot the ocean? In which case you imply that being a microserf on slashdot is an adrenaline rush. But then why are you whining about being offended?
Using Microsoft products is not genetics or how we were raised. It's a choice and we're damn proud of it.
"Sing it now and sing it loud, I owe soul to MS and I'm proud."
OK, so that didn't scan. Still the idea that there are these poor abused MS fans on slashdot who somehow need help to be protected from all those nasty linux/bsd/macos/... users is an amusing one.
And I'm still trying to figure out just how anyone can derive pride from having selected a specific product line (whatever that product line might be).
I can see the marketing opportunities now:
"I eat Big Macs and I'm proud!"
"I shop at Safeway and I'm proud!" "I drink Pepsi and I'm proud!".
Nope, sorry, still doesn't make sense to me. Why not be proud of an accomplishment that actually took you some work, instead of a marketing decision made for you? "I installed gentoo on a C64 and I'm proud!" (Now that would be something to be proud of.)
So, suppose my job involves a pile of web browsing and my PHB wants me to use IE and refuses to let me use mozilla or firebird. Now I'm less effective as a worker because I can't use the tabbed browsing, because I get piles of popups and the like.
In a reasonable job, I'm being paid to do the job, not to use some product the boss wants me to use.
(Unless the use of the product is itself the job.)
And if I'm an expert in the domain in question, or even just a very knowledgeable person in that area, and I want to use a specific tool that will make me more productive and costs no more than the tool the boss wants, the boss is being a fool, an incompetent and a petty dictator to impose his notions of whats good on me.
We don't know what they might be providing his wife or relatives. We don't know anything about what they might have promised to do with respect to his opponents in the next election -- they could easily fund a PAC or other interest group set up to destroy the guy. It doesn't take much imagination to think of ways to reward this guy that don't go on the books. How about making sure than when he goes on an "Investigative" trip to Hollywood that lots of pretty girls (or boys) and whatever else turns him on are available in his hotel?
Having a public money trail is not a bad thing - but it can't (ever) show all the benefits that occur to a politician willing to sell himself to a person or group with money and good lawyers available to chart a course around the legal niceities.
The sad fact is that most corporations of any size are, effectively, immune from laws. Look at Enron - it seems unlikely that anyone responsible for the idiocy will be more than slapped on the wrist and the highest execs are likely to walk away fairly well off.
Our favorite corporation Microsoft is clearly immune .
Now the RIAA and MPAA will get legal immunity?
This will start a stampede for major corporations to get laws passed that classify their worst actions as being in line with "market reality".
Be nice to give them a hint or two. Reality aint what you want to have true. Reality is what is true. And if reality means that your company loses money, or (gasp!) doesn't make as much money as it did last year, that can't be legislated away.
I'm not much into copying most music (composers like John Adams don't show up on most of the file sharing networks), or movies. But I'm feeling more and more like starting - just because of the way they seem to want to run things all their way - and because of the way they seem to be able to buy out politicians with impunity. Venal politicians are not news, of course. But the US seems to be doing a great job of elevating greed, stupidity and ignorance to the status of cardinal virtues.
At this point, of course, it is appropriate, perhaps even mandatory, to look back to "The Importance of Being Earnest" for a quick foray into quoteland.
Cecily: This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manners. When I see a spade I call it a spade. Gwendolen: I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade.
Take a look at the xNL standard for specifying names. It's not all that obvious or simple and I even wonder if it is complete - in particular if "MiddleName" might need an "order" attribute in order to specify print order (see below). And while there is no "nee" name specified (for maiden names), there is a "type" specifier for middle name that probably works. Further, there doesn't seem to be
any way to define a date range for the timespan in which the name is applicable (though I suspect that was probably considered and moved out into the broader group of DTDs/schema that now encompass xNL).
As an (extreme but notable) example, Prince Charles has as a full name "Charles Philip Arthur George Windsor". And I suspect the order of the middle names matters.
He is titled "Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales". He is also Earl of Chester, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron Renfrew, Lord of the Isles and Prince of Great Steward of Scotland. He also has the rank of Captain (Royal Navy) and Group Captain (RAF).
But if they use Diebold electronic voting machines (probably TM) the outcome of the elections will probably be determined in odd and interesting ways - potentially leading to electrical... ur, um, electoral lockout.
Boot the idiots from office all you like. The lobbyists, the advisory agencies, the beltway "consulting firms", and the big companies have much (too much) of the real power.
Boot the idiots and you'll just replace these idiots with a whole new set who will get the same bad information and get paid off in the same way.
Boot the idiots and the idiots in the white house will just get more power.
Only if we boot and boot again (reboot, of course) and continue to boot will anything change and that seems less than likely.
Slashdot Mirror
It suddenly occured to me to wonder what would happen if you actually put out a bad review about something. Do I really believe that these guys will assist in moving such negative information around? Somehow I doubt it.
It really just looks like they've found a way that they think will work to reduce their advertising costs.
This does not address in any way the real problems of the music industry, the copyright issues and the like, but has been hyped recently as exactly that - probably to distract the public attention from those issues.
And if the industry isn't getting what it thinks is its due, well, time to tax and spend. Tax the consumer and spend the profits for the benefit of those in the boardrooms.
Cases, power supplies, monitors tend to be larger and will ship more slowly - but once they're there it may (?) be easier and faster to send in smaller components like disk drives, motherboards and so on. Pack them well. You might find some people in airline/travel jobs are willing to carry an occasional package of this sort.
Hardware tools (low tech where alternatives exist). Get lots of the right sized screwdrivers, needle nosed pliers, socket pullers, digital multi-meters and all that fun stuff. If its easily available in-country, don't send a lot, but it may be a good idea to send at least one.
Get a good collection of books on how to diagnose and repair your hardware. If people are motivated enough they'll do their best to try to fix them when they break and having literature on how to do it would be a good thing. And clearly if your computer isn't working you can't look it up online.
Network connectivity may be a problem so setting up local discussion groups (maybe even based on uucp or something similar, so it could be regional/national) would be a good thing. Also if you run a caching proxy with aggressive rules about not-refetching unless needed, it can make things rather faster.
A server with a good sized disk could be used to mirror commonly used sites (at least if the site allows it). Say things like project gutenberg, wikipedia and so on.
Run Unicks of some sort (linux, bsd...). Many of the people will have a learning curve anyway, if they learn how to run unix they'll learn more skills having to do with actually programming and systems stuff than if they run windows. Network connectivity is a Good Thing, but it may be as important to grow local experts in both hardware and software. I think that bears repeating in its own paragraph :
One of the potential benefits (and perhaps the greatest one) would be growing local experts in both hardware and software.
Go
Not really a "gather round the table" kind of game, but incredible complexity for a fairly simple set of rules. Well worth learning, and very worth learning young.
There are computer versions so you can play against a program and IGS so you can play over the net against humans.
Not as immediately attractive to 10 year olds as some games, but will pay off for many over a much longer period.
Though since it wasn't patented, only broadcast on tv, the USPTO would probably issue a new patent on it anyway.
Hmm, I wonder if I could just patent John Cleese? The list of claims would probablyfill quite a large volume.
Claim 1: A silly walk. This walk consists walking stiff legged with legs raised to an angle of at least 20 degrees from the vertical. See diagram 1 and enclosed video. This claim applies to all silly walks involving stiff legs. Optionally the Silly Walker may make a faux moustache with horizontally held fingers - however this addition is not a Fundamental part of this Claim.
Claim 2: A silly turn. In conjunction with Claim 1, the Silly Turn involves pivoting on a stiff leg and turning the body more or less rigidly about any turn of any number of degrees ranging from 0 to 720 (both left and right terms falling within the scope of this Claim.)
Claim 3: A Silly Walk.....
Claim 976 : The Spanish Inquisition
It would be possible for the spammer's ISP to ignore the incoming mail. But then a legit ISP that couldn't deliver mail to such an address could then refuse all further incoming mail from the spammer ISP for some predefined time interval (say 4 hours). This would help to limit spammers but not legitimate mail hosts that might have got somehow used.
Spammers using viruses or worms on other machines won't do much better - they'll have to at least enable incoming smtp on the machines and any firewall along the way would need to be set to allow incoming smtp, or the outgoing mail would be refused (by the above).
Oops, a few decks got dropped....
Sequence numbers? We don't need no steeking sequence numbers. Assemble those uuencoded, encrypted tar files by hand.
Perhaps we should fill the SCO offices with these WMD's (which sound like biological weapons to me) and get Blair and Bush to declare war on them.
The RIAA at least is already ensuring that "creative people" are compensated for the "exploitation" of ther music. Compensated poorly for the most part, compensated ridiculously well in some (few) cases.
But what bothers me most about this is that, as usual, the artists are the ones mentioned as losing out on file sharing and the like, where its really the big corporations that are losing the most. And to be fair, if file sharing goes up and revenues drop, that President or CEO or "VP in charge of Procuring" will probably find their salaries cut, perhaps enough (Horrors!) so they can no longer afford (insert favorite absurd luxury item here). Or maybe corporate slush funds will dry up a bit so that those 72 hour orgies (er, um, "corporate retreats") will no longer be an option.
Nope, on second thought, probably not. They'll just find better ways to soak the artists and pass more "Entitlement" laws with themselves as beneficiaries and find ways to generate music without any real creative input.
I'd like to see something like a docbook variant that would allow man, info style, and html all to be documented in the same place (not necessarily the same file) and with a kind of "gendoc" command that would produce a man page, info for those who like it, and html all from the same source.
And I'll admit I've always found the info comment about how man is obsolete and all to be rather condescending (in the most icky sort of way) - especially when the info files that took the place of the man pages are often next to impossible to navigate.
However, if you set up the tab groups and set it so that it reopens the current group of tabs when the browser crashes, I've seen reports that that does slow things down considerably. So try unsetting that option.
If you use the tab extensions you might also want to check and see if you have the "auto-reload" enabled. In the options under tabs there is a "frequency of auto-reload". Make that 1 or you can end up with tabs reloading and reloading and reloading for pages set to expire immediately.
Not that I'd lot like to see it. But first I'd like the next volume. And then the end of the series.
1) You have no right not to be offended
2) Nobody can offend you without your consent
Now there's a metaphor that lost me halfway through. Is slashdot the ocean? In which case you imply that being a microserf on slashdot is an adrenaline rush. But then why are you whining about being offended?
Using Microsoft products is not genetics or how we were raised. It's a choice and we're damn proud of it.
"Sing it now and sing it loud, I owe soul to MS and I'm proud."
OK, so that didn't scan. Still the idea that there are these poor abused MS fans on slashdot who somehow need help to be protected from all those nasty linux/bsd/macos/... users is an amusing one.
And I'm still trying to figure out just how anyone can derive pride from having selected a specific product line (whatever that product line might be). I can see the marketing opportunities now:
"I eat Big Macs and I'm proud!"
"I shop at Safeway and I'm proud!"
"I drink Pepsi and I'm proud!".
Nope, sorry, still doesn't make sense to me. Why not be proud of an accomplishment that actually took you some work, instead of a marketing decision made for you? "I installed gentoo on a C64 and I'm proud!" (Now that would be something to be proud of.)
In a reasonable job, I'm being paid to do the job, not to use some product the boss wants me to use. (Unless the use of the product is itself the job.)
And if I'm an expert in the domain in question, or even just a very knowledgeable person in that area, and I want to use a specific tool that will make me more productive and costs no more than the tool the boss wants, the boss is being a fool, an incompetent and a petty dictator to impose his notions of whats good on me.
Is that a Swedish mathematician is a device for turning sea water into theorems?
We don't know what they might be providing his wife or relatives. We don't know anything about what they might have promised to do with respect to his opponents in the next election -- they could easily fund a PAC or other interest group set up to destroy the guy. It doesn't take much imagination to think of ways to reward this guy that don't go on the books. How about making sure than when he goes on an "Investigative" trip to Hollywood that lots of pretty girls (or boys) and whatever else turns him on are available in his hotel?
Having a public money trail is not a bad thing - but it can't (ever) show all the benefits that occur to a politician willing to sell himself to a person or group with money and good lawyers available to chart a course around the legal niceities.
Our favorite corporation Microsoft is clearly immune .
Now the RIAA and MPAA will get legal immunity?
This will start a stampede for major corporations to get laws passed that classify their worst actions as being in line with "market reality". Be nice to give them a hint or two. Reality aint what you want to have true. Reality is what is true. And if reality means that your company loses money, or (gasp!) doesn't make as much money as it did last year, that can't be legislated away.
I'm not much into copying most music (composers like John Adams don't show up on most of the file sharing networks), or movies. But I'm feeling more and more like starting - just because of the way they seem to want to run things all their way - and because of the way they seem to be able to buy out politicians with impunity. Venal politicians are not news, of course. But the US seems to be doing a great job of elevating greed, stupidity and ignorance to the status of cardinal virtues.
At this point, of course, it is appropriate, perhaps even mandatory, to look back to "The Importance of Being Earnest" for a quick foray into quoteland.
Cecily: This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manners. When I see a spade I call it a spade.
Gwendolen: I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade.
<TD BGCOLOR=#ffffff> </TD>
Its interesting to save a large image to this format and see what it does to a browser.
Nonsense.
Take a look at the xNL standard for specifying names. It's not all that obvious or simple and I even wonder if it is complete - in particular if "MiddleName" might need an "order" attribute in order to specify print order (see below). And while there is no "nee" name specified (for maiden names), there is a "type" specifier for middle name that probably works. Further, there doesn't seem to be any way to define a date range for the timespan in which the name is applicable (though I suspect that was probably considered and moved out into the broader group of DTDs/schema that now encompass xNL).
As an (extreme but notable) example, Prince Charles has as a full name "Charles Philip Arthur George Windsor". And I suspect the order of the middle names matters. He is titled "Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales". He is also Earl of Chester, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron Renfrew, Lord of the Isles and Prince of Great Steward of Scotland. He also has the rank of Captain (Royal Navy) and Group Captain (RAF).
And, I feel compelled to note, an "Anonymous Coward".
Probably more of a good spin. So to speak.
But if they use Diebold electronic voting machines (probably TM) the outcome of the elections will probably be determined in odd and interesting ways - potentially leading to electrical ... ur, um, electoral lockout.
Boot the idiots and you'll just replace these idiots with a whole new set who will get the same bad information and get paid off in the same way.
Boot the idiots and the idiots in the white house will just get more power.
Only if we boot and boot again (reboot, of course) and continue to boot will anything change and that seems less than likely.