In a future release of [your favorite P2P app], an option which presents to peers requesting downloads or file lists one of those pseudo-word-containing images you see on eBay and Ticketmaster to block bots. The requestor has to type in the character string he/she/whatever sees to get the file or list.
This wouldn't stop RIAA scans, but would sure as hell slow them to a crawl by de-automating the scan process, without substantially impacting a normal user. The only serious downside I see is that this method probably busts a patent somewhere. Is there a way to avoid that?
Heavily paraphrasing old memories of Pournelle's A Step Farther Out: With sufficiently cheap energy, we can reduce toxic wastes to their component elements; turn the Sahara into farmland; give everyone on Earth at least the standard of living the US had in the 1950s; mine the asteroids; colonize our solar system and others; move industry into space and turn the Earth into a garden.
And he's right. The cost of producing the vast majority of goods and services is heavily dependent on the cost of energy. Make that energy "too cheap to meter" (as was promised us when the first nuke plants were under construction - sigh -), and the cost of production - including raw materials - drops to essentially the cost of labor. And labor costs drop too: a well-fed, prosperous work force using exotic tools, e.g. diamond-tipped cutters or 8-way Xeon workstations, is much more productive than hungry, unhappy, poorly-equipped workers.
That being said, if this scenario is taken to the extreme, the possibility of global warming from simple waste heat rears its ugly head. There are probably ways of dealing with that, but, given the number of times my power's gone out this week (lots of wicked weather), I'm not sure I'd trust the planet's viability to bleeding-edge tech. So it goes.
as if more were needed, that corporations now consider legal strategies at least as important as those of their product lines. Any day now, I'm expecting archaeologists to unearth documentation of a lawsuit brought by Giuliano deMidici against Leonardo DaVinci on grounds that his later works weren't quite up to Mona Lisa standards, thus depriving his patron of revenue through reduced attendance at his showings.
So this Thoreau-wannabe is in the depths of angst over his realization that not every innovation entering the market has the potential to shake civilization to its roots, the way it was in the Good Ol' Days. Talk about soda-straw-sized tunnel vision. In 1903, there were about 31,000 US patent applications filed. The Wright Flyer aside, you'd be hard-pressed to find one of these having relevance to day-to-day life 100 years later. But then, like now, some of those inventions might have made some peoples' lives better, easier, or simply more interesting, and there's nothing wrong or shameful about that. So we all can't be Thomas Freakin' Edison. So what?
The saddest part of Jeffries' article is that, right in the middle of all the whining, he touches on, and promptly drops, an aspect of modern gadget-mania that is worth getting his shorts in a knot over: Machines (usually) require instruction to use properly, (usually) require routine maintenance, and (always) break, eventually. All of which place a burden on their owner. The more machines one owns, the greater this burden becomes. For those whose interest in technology is in any way practical, imho there's a point of diminishing returns past which the time spent cleaning, tuning, fixing, exchanging, and studying manuals to figure out how to use the damn things simply isn't worth the benefit gained from them. Anyone care to speculate whether billg has at least one person on staff full-time just to keep his super-duper "smart home" running? Given the amount of time I spend just changing batteries in smoke alarms, remote controls, et al, I'd lay money on it.
And yeah, the learning curve is often part of the fun - that's probably why most of us got into computers in the first place. My gripe is over being forced into that mode when my goal is for the thing to just work when I power it on. When a lousy telephone comes with a 150-page user's guide that you must read and understand in order to call someone, imho some fundamental rethinking is in order.
If Jefferies had to vent, this is what he should have vented about.
During his keynote address at the E^3 conference on Ultima Moor, Emperor William Gates XLVIII announced yet another delay in the release of the Windows 3000 operating system. He attributed this latest setback to a "minor security issue" in Hypernet Explorer 159.0. His Supreme Excellency declined to respond to numerous follow-up questions, characterizing the security concerns as "nothing to worry about," and stating that the problem would be resolved prior to release "later this century." He then had the questioners executed.
The problem may, however, be more serious than Emperor Gates was willing to admit. Our source on Microsoft Planet (tm), speaking on condition of anonymity, claims that, under certain conditions, receipt of a Hypernet message containing the "Code Red" worm will cause Hypernet Explorer to open a rift in the space-time continuum, sucking its user into the ninth dimension. Only light casualties among non-sentient developers have been reported thus far.
Microsoft is said to be looking into this phenomenon as a possible anti-piracy measure.
A/V and computers, that is. Do the fundraisers, etc. to set up a Linux-based digital media lab. As an earlier poster noted, starting a computer club won't get you chicks.
Producing funny CGI shorts and kickass videos for the local garage bands, otoh, will.
A virtual +1 Insightful, since I have no mod points today.;)
I've been through a couple of team-building processes. Both failed miserably, imho because they concentrated on New Age-ish "bonding" exercises while failing to address the unprofessionalism and interpersonal issues rampant in both groups at the time.
Other than this, I have nothing to add. Good post.
I agree. To me, the Yahoo people seem completely different from the Google people. Google people respect the needs of others. Google cooperates with the needs of their customers. Google people care for themselves and me at the same time.
My experience is that Yahoo managers are abusers, basically. For me, the feeling of Yahoo is that they think they are more intelligent than me, and that it is entirely acceptable for them to take advantage of some shortcoming or weakness that I might have so that they can make more money.
Agreed, and here's a good example: The links from Yahoo's search result pages, both old and new, are referers which appear to contain session IDs; i.e., Yahoo has at least the capability of tracking your search activity, and the links you select. Google's, for the most part, are direct links. (The paid listings and such are referers, which I suppose they must be in order for Google to get paid.;) Not that any of this is surprising. Yahoo's directors need a little abuse with the Almighty Clue Stick (tm) to the effect that, in addition to its technological prowess, integrity and class play a substantial role in Google's success. It's quite refreshing to see a corporation make money (last I heard, anyway,) without having to whore itself and/or pimp its customers to hit its quarterly earnings targets. Long may it reign.
It's my desicion if I want to melt my processor or not... isn't it?
Yep. But it's Intel who has to eat the cost of a warranty replacement. That's the only reason I can think of that would justify working this hard to alienate hobbyists.
Assuming that they care about that in the first place, one wonders whether they put any of what must have been considerable effort into finding a win-win solution. It seems (to my unknowledgable mind) that it wouldn't be difficult to build in an overclocking "fuse" (most likely logic, not an actual fusible link) to record seriously out of spec voltages or temps or clock rates. Overclock as you please, but the instant the "fuse" pops, your warranty is void. It seems as though something like this might actually be simpler than continually re-engineering the chip to defeat the latest OC hack.
I like how they try to *train* the associates on how to politely say that the merchandise is great buy WILL break after the manufacturer warranty runs out.
The appropriate response (used by yours truly several years ago in an appliance store): "My last fridge lasted 20 years. Why am I about to lay out $900 for one that you're so damn sure is going to fall apart in 13 months?" Salesdroid had little to say thereafter.
Then there was the cashier who tried to sell me an extended warranty on a shredder that carried a lifetime guarantee. . .
While we're on the subject, a question for any industry insiders out there: I've heard vicious rumors to the effect that some retailers cut deals with manufacturers / distributors to get product packaged with shortened mfgr warranties, to give them more leverage in selling service plans. BS, or no?
So if we had a process that produced severely b0rked products currently, getting to CMM level 4 or 5 would just mean we would consistently have b0rked products...
[g] Well, not really. This is an interesting statement, though, in light of an e-mail exchange I just had with a colleague whose co. outsourced to an offshore-heavy consulting firm about a year ago. Turning the floor over to her via copy/paste, slighly edited & with names redacted for job-preservation purposes:
"[Consultant co] claims their offshore operation is CMM 5. You wouldn't notice from here. Project timeliness, quality, and budget targeting aren't noticably better than before, when we were about CMM 1. I think [employer] is realizing some ROI from run of the mill maintenance and such, but for any new work needing a little innovation or [industry] knowledge, forget it. We have to spec practically down to pseudocode to get useable apps back, so all the savings from coding go right back into design.
"True, once the hand-holding is out of the way they usually deliver as promised. More often than not, anyway. Maybe more often than we could beforehand, but it still isn't a dramatic difference. Cripe, with 60% of the budget going into analysis & design, it's hard NOT to hit late-phase milestones. (We used to feel lucky to get a third of that.) "I have to wonder though if the difference is CMM 5, or if it's because they're away from the politics and constant priority juggling, or if they can just afford to throw bodies at the task as necessary. It still seems like a lot of work is late and/or buggy and/or out of spec and/or all but unmaintainable. And guess who gets blamed when that happens!
"GRRRRR!!! Aren't you glad you asked?:-P "
Yet another idiotic assertion that Everything's All Right...
The jobs that were lost last year in technology, construction, manufacturing, and so on were almost entirely offset by gains in other sectors.
...while failing to note that your average laid-off tech worker is going to need two or three of these "offseting" McDonalds, Gap, et al, jobs to approach his/her former salary. Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
You see, this isn't a social problem, it's an economic one.
And a political one. This is one of the few areas over which the Constitution explicitly gives Congress authority. Since they've rarely held back in regulating other areas of commerce over which they (arguably) have no authority whatsoever, one has to wonder why they're so reluctant to rein this one in...
I'd like to meet this person. Anyway, as far as making the case for acceptance: Show the board MS License 6.0. Highlight the "good" parts, and append some of the better industry commentary about them. Make it clear that, if whatever academic licensing MS offers doesn't already include these provisions, it will soon. (A reasonable assumption.) Run some numbers on the projected TCO of M$ software over those ten years. Be sure to include some reasonable extrapolation of past losses due to viruses & such. Then run the same numbers for Linux. With a reasonable effort, you might well be able to demonstrate to the board a lower ten-year expenditure for a Linux environment before taking the donation into account. Might not succeed (esp. now that MS knows about the proposal - thanks/. [G]), but at worst you'll certainly get a cost-conscious board thinking about open source.
He truly grasps the technology, understands the issues we face, and tries to improve the situation in the company.
Seconded. The common thread running through my best work experiences has been a manager who has at least working knowledge of the technology, and who understands that effective leadership is a lot more than juggling numbers in MS Project.
Slashdot Mirror
Sanity check, anyone?
Heavily paraphrasing old memories of Pournelle's A Step Farther Out: With sufficiently cheap energy, we can reduce toxic wastes to their component elements; turn the Sahara into farmland; give everyone on Earth at least the standard of living the US had in the 1950s; mine the asteroids; colonize our solar system and others; move industry into space and turn the Earth into a garden.
And he's right. The cost of producing the vast majority of goods and services is heavily dependent on the cost of energy. Make that energy "too cheap to meter" (as was promised us when the first nuke plants were under construction - sigh -), and the cost of production - including raw materials - drops to essentially the cost of labor. And labor costs drop too: a well-fed, prosperous work force using exotic tools, e.g. diamond-tipped cutters or 8-way Xeon workstations, is much more productive than hungry, unhappy, poorly-equipped workers.
That being said, if this scenario is taken to the extreme, the possibility of global warming from simple waste heat rears its ugly head. There are probably ways of dealing with that, but, given the number of times my power's gone out this week (lots of wicked weather), I'm not sure I'd trust the planet's viability to bleeding-edge tech. So it goes.
http://home.europa.com/~ruralite/energy%20topics/l aundry.html
Scroll to the bottom of the page.
Sheesh.
Mr. Garrison's working for Apple now?
The saddest part of Jeffries' article is that, right in the middle of all the whining, he touches on, and promptly drops, an aspect of modern gadget-mania that is worth getting his shorts in a knot over: Machines (usually) require instruction to use properly, (usually) require routine maintenance, and (always) break, eventually. All of which place a burden on their owner. The more machines one owns, the greater this burden becomes. For those whose interest in technology is in any way practical, imho there's a point of diminishing returns past which the time spent cleaning, tuning, fixing, exchanging, and studying manuals to figure out how to use the damn things simply isn't worth the benefit gained from them. Anyone care to speculate whether billg has at least one person on staff full-time just to keep his super-duper "smart home" running? Given the amount of time I spend just changing batteries in smoke alarms, remote controls, et al, I'd lay money on it.
And yeah, the learning curve is often part of the fun - that's probably why most of us got into computers in the first place. My gripe is over being forced into that mode when my goal is for the thing to just work when I power it on. When a lousy telephone comes with a 150-page user's guide that you must read and understand in order to call someone, imho some fundamental rethinking is in order.
If Jefferies had to vent, this is what he should have vented about.
[ISN NewsBeam Wed 9/22/3115]
During his keynote address at the E^3 conference on Ultima Moor, Emperor William Gates XLVIII announced yet another delay in the release of the Windows 3000 operating system. He attributed this latest setback to a "minor security issue" in Hypernet Explorer 159.0. His Supreme Excellency declined to respond to numerous follow-up questions, characterizing the security concerns as "nothing to worry about," and stating that the problem would be resolved prior to release "later this century." He then had the questioners executed.
The problem may, however, be more serious than Emperor Gates was willing to admit. Our source on Microsoft Planet (tm), speaking on condition of anonymity, claims that, under certain conditions, receipt of a Hypernet message containing the "Code Red" worm will cause Hypernet Explorer to open a rift in the space-time continuum, sucking its user into the ninth dimension. Only light casualties among non-sentient developers have been reported thus far.
Microsoft is said to be looking into this phenomenon as a possible anti-piracy measure.
- - - snip - - -
Producing funny CGI shorts and kickass videos for the local garage bands, otoh, will.
I've been through a couple of team-building processes. Both failed miserably, imho because they concentrated on New Age-ish "bonding" exercises while failing to address the unprofessionalism and interpersonal issues rampant in both groups at the time.
Other than this, I have nothing to add. Good post.
Wow.
Not that any of this is surprising. Yahoo's directors need a little abuse with the Almighty Clue Stick (tm) to the effect that, in addition to its technological prowess, integrity and class play a substantial role in Google's success. It's quite refreshing to see a corporation make money (last I heard, anyway,) without having to whore itself and/or pimp its customers to hit its quarterly earnings targets. Long may it reign.
Assuming that they care about that in the first place, one wonders whether they put any of what must have been considerable effort into finding a win-win solution. It seems (to my unknowledgable mind) that it wouldn't be difficult to build in an overclocking "fuse" (most likely logic, not an actual fusible link) to record seriously out of spec voltages or temps or clock rates. Overclock as you please, but the instant the "fuse" pops, your warranty is void. It seems as though something like this might actually be simpler than continually re-engineering the chip to defeat the latest OC hack.
Assuming they care in the first place.
Then there was the cashier who tried to sell me an extended warranty on a shredder that carried a lifetime guarantee. . .
While we're on the subject, a question for any industry insiders out there: I've heard vicious rumors to the effect that some retailers cut deals with manufacturers / distributors to get product packaged with shortened mfgr warranties, to give them more leverage in selling service plans. BS, or no?
"[Consultant co] claims their offshore operation is CMM 5. You wouldn't notice from here. Project timeliness, quality, and budget targeting aren't noticably better than before, when we were about CMM 1. I think [employer] is realizing some ROI from run of the mill maintenance and such, but for any new work needing a little innovation or [industry] knowledge, forget it. We have to spec practically down to pseudocode to get useable apps back, so all the savings from coding go right back into design. :-P "
"True, once the hand-holding is out of the way they usually deliver as promised. More often than not, anyway. Maybe more often than we could beforehand, but it still isn't a dramatic difference. Cripe, with 60% of the budget going into analysis & design, it's hard NOT to hit late-phase milestones. (We used to feel lucky to get a third of that.)
"I have to wonder though if the difference is CMM 5, or if it's because they're away from the politics and constant priority juggling, or if they can just afford to throw bodies at the task as necessary. It still seems like a lot of work is late and/or buggy and/or out of spec and/or all but unmaintainable. And guess who gets blamed when that happens!
"GRRRRR!!! Aren't you glad you asked?
Imagine a Beowolf clus. . .never mind.
Ain't no such animal. Imho the closest thing online is BBCi and that's where I'll be spending my bandwidth over the next (hopefully very) few weeks.
have your PGP sigs laser-engraved into it. When you give her the ring, include a jeweler's loupe on a matching necklace.
I'd like to meet this person. Anyway, as far as making the case for acceptance: Show the board MS License 6.0. Highlight the "good" parts, and append some of the better industry commentary about them. Make it clear that, if whatever academic licensing MS offers doesn't already include these provisions, it will soon. (A reasonable assumption.) Run some numbers on the projected TCO of M$ software over those ten years. Be sure to include some reasonable extrapolation of past losses due to viruses & such. Then run the same numbers for Linux. With a reasonable effort, you might well be able to demonstrate to the board a lower ten-year expenditure for a Linux environment before taking the donation into account. Might not succeed (esp. now that MS knows about the proposal - thanks /. [G]), but at worst you'll certainly get a cost-conscious board thinking about open source.
Damn you, Bill Clinton.