> [I wonder what effect]...this will have on the piracy of Adobe products?
>
I am under the impression that English-language versions will just be pirated instead of the localized
Chinese/Korean/whatever versions.
And this impacts Adobe's bottom line... how?
Frankly, I think Adobe's doing the right thing here -- if sales don't justify the cost of porting/localizing, don't port/localize.
Adobe's recognized that they don't have the right to force people to buy their products -- they've merely stated that, in response, nobody has the right to force Adobe to write the products in the first place.
If you want Asian-language Adobe products, support those who create them by purchasing them. I applaud Adobe for being honest enough to pick up its bat and ball and go home.
Contrast that with RIAA's hining about how "If we allow people to copy Titney Spheres CDs, she won't make any more music" -- I dare Hilary Rosen to make good on that threat.
(Of course, every time I turn on the radio, I pray Ms. Rosen makes good on that threat;-)
> Yeah, but you're mixing two different streams of thought; paying for the media and packaging ($5) and paying for the man hours to produce the product and to provide support and updates for the product ($600).
> >
So paying $5 for Adobe's products means you pay for the physical cost, even the distribution cost, but not
for the labor cost.
To play Devil's Advocate, if you've got a pirated copy, you're not exactly consuming much in the way of support costs!
(Of course, that doesn't apply to the labor cost - the developers and QA people who built it, and that's probably a larger cost than the support costs.)
But to carry your argument one step further, suppose it's bad to pirate Photoshop 6.0, because you're not paying for the labor that went into 6.0.
What about 5.0, which isn't being offered for sale?
Or 4.0? 3.0?
Yes, I'm going down the slippery slope to abandonware -- at some point, the money that went to the developers ought to be "fully depreciated".
Consider - if you incur a capital expense to buy a new building, you get to write it off against income over the life of the building, say, 20 years. If you incur a capital expense to buy something like a computer, many jurisdictions allow you to write the cost of the computer off over a shorter timeframe, say, 5 years, because computers decline in value faster than buildings.
The money you pay a programmer to write software is an expense -- you "write it off" in the same year as you pay it out. If we think of it as another form of capital expenditure (intellectual capital; the brainpower of a developer), and we write it off in the same year, we're basically saying what the tech industry already knows -- software depreciates instantly;-)
Paying $5 for a 2-year-old game in the "bargain bin" at your local retailer is legal. Why can't paying your friendly neighborhood pirate $5 for a 5-year-old game, or Photoshop 3.0, neither of which can be found even in bargain bins anymore, be legal?
> So they can put DRM stuff in my CD burner, I'm cool with that. But the trade off for them doing so is that they have to release their choke hold on creative works. I want copyrights that last for an absolute maximum of 10 years before the work goes into the public domain.
You raise an interesting point.
Patent protection is ~17 years.
Copyright protection is over 75 years.
The limitation on patent protection is essentially the tradeoff you described. If Pfizer develops a wonder-drug, in exchange for telling everyone how to make it, they get the exclusive right to make it or license its manufacture.
I'd argue the 'net has turned copyright into exactly the same deal as patents, and that therefore, the length of time for copyright protection ought to be no longer than that afforded patents.
In the Bad Old Days, the act of publishing a dead-tree book, or a wax cylinder or vinyl recording, didn't "tell the world how to create their own copies". It was a physical object, and you invested a lot of money in the printing presses and pressing plants used to create the objects. Creating and distributing the physical object didn't give anyone the ability to create one for themselves.
But now, the act of pressing bits onto aluminum, whether in DVD or CD form, does place the instructions for reproducing the work into the public sphere. Just as Pfizer's patent application for Viagra tells anyone how to make a happy little blue pill, the little plastic discs you buy at the movie or music store tell anyone how to reproduce a work of music or film.
And yet, someone would have you believe that patents are only worthy of 17 years' protection, after which enough economic value should have been wrung out that anyone can make "generics".
...and these same someones (we call 'em legislators) tell us, in the same breath, that copyrights ought to apply for 75 years after the creator's death. (And no doubt, 95 years when Eisner decides the Rat's time is almost up).
It's time a judge realized that the act of releasing a copyrighted work on a digital medium is fundamentally no different than filing a patent -- it's a way of telling the world how to create something neat -- and that the protections afforded copyrighted works should be cut back, at a minimum to the 17 years currently afforded patents.
> Hollywood: If you don't put your own goods online now, where people want them, then someone else will do it for you. (which is
already occurring.)
Precisely.
What's more use to the country's long-term economic prospects?
A $20B/year industry (MPAA+RIAA) being able to enforce copy control so that next year it's a $22B/year?
A $600B/year industry (telecom) being forced, by customer demand, to deliver last-mile solutions and broadband to the home, so that consumers can use P2P solutions to copy music and movies at will? Every home will have on-demand access to every movie and every song ever recorded, ever. (Remember the old Qwest commercials?)
I say torpedo Hollyweird, and let the chips fall where they may. And the fiber light up where it may. And the hard drives spin. And the PC upgrades flourish.
Never mind the long-term, what's likely to cause a short-term pickup in telecom capital expenditures? Demand, that's what.
Content drives demand. The content's out there - in the form of CDs and DVDs. The tools are out there - MP3 encoders, DiVX encoders, PCs. The leading edge of P2P users can do all the "work" of encoding and uploading it. Your Grandmother only needs to know she wants to download it.
All that's missing is Congress passing one simple bill - that would release artists and end-users from the MPAA's yoke by limiting copyright protection to 5 years.
To Congress: Abandon the $20B/year dinosaurs and spur economic growth by turning to the $600B/year tech industry. Don't forego building the interstate highway system in order to appease buggy-whip manufacturers.
> However, movies don't make a lot of money in the box office. From the MPAA's 2000 US Economic review [mpaa.org], they
state the new high is only $7.66 billion. Videocasette sales [mpaa.org], at an average of say (guessing) $20 each, were only
$12.4B (rental casettes are charged differently thanks to Blockbuster's efforts.)
> >
Compared to telecom, Internet, autos, pharmecuticals(sp), etc, at $20B this is a *very* small industry. It's simply amazing how
much control they wield.
Agreed. The only conclusion I can draw is that Hollywood lobbyists must be able to procure better-quality cocaine and/or bigger-titted hookers for the relevant Congressmen.
Personally, I'd like to see the tech industry fight back on this one. "Please don't jeopardize the $500B-1T/year tech economy for the sake of the $20B/year in chickenfeed produced by the entertainment yokels."
> With the recent advent of the "motor car", the horse and cart industry is seeing a new and
fundamental threat. [...] > >We propose that all motor cars be limited to 5 mph, redesigned to eat horse-nuts [...]
You do realize that to this day, taxi drivers in London are required by law to have a bale of hay in the trunk, so that they may feed their horse?
> Can we not talk about this while I am stuck at work far from my girlfriend?
You need a partner to have the fun-part? Dude, they figured out a fix for that problem millennia before they figured out how to separate the baby-part from the fun-part:-)
Oh yeah - it was. I wasn't disagreeing with the facts - merely expanding on the points you made to show that the restrictions (again, self-imposed or otherwise) aren't as unreasonable in the context of certain.gov/.mil jobs as they would be in the context of most private-sector work.
> Others thinking about "the clearance route" should think hard about what they are giving up.
Agreed. It's not something that one should undertake lightly.
> Some companies are so tight with their money that they'd never see the benefit of buying upgrades (and keeping BillG happy by using only the latest Windows OS) because the app they're using is still working fine with the old OS.
And as long as we're on the subject, Win 3.1 runs fast on a fully-depreciated Pentium-class machine;-)
I can think of a lot of dedicated applications where moving from 3.1 to 95 or NT wouldn't add value. Yes, Windows has changed a lot in the past 10 years. But has your corner store?
> Why would someone be afraid to post a commentary critical of US govt' crypto export policies
on their person Web page? Be concerned about possessing a copy of 2600 magazine? Refuse to go to a
rowdy (though very legal) nightclub? I've run into all of these. Are these folks are paranoid, or are your
non-work activities really scrutinized this closely?
I can think of decent reasons for all of the above.
Publicly criticizing crypto policies:...you might accidentally let slip something about those policies that they aren't supposed to let slip. Why take the risk?
Owning a copy of 2600:...on occasion, its authors advocate doing things that are contrary to a government employee's boss's interests. Sorta like having an Emacs manual at a vi-lovers' convention.
Rowdy nightclub:...afraid of getting "picked up" by the "wrong sort of person", or (say, a brawl breaks out) accidentally tossed into the drunk tank -- and having to explain it to their superiors. Or worse, drinking too much and talking about things they shouldn't.
I'm not disputing the original author's point - which was that the restrictions (whether real or imaginary) that come with a clearance can be nasty.
My point was merely that the privilege of being entrusted with information comes with a price tag, and sometimes the price tag is high. On the other hand, the rewards of having that privilege -- being able to work on cutting-edge stuff, solving problems the rest of the world may never have heard of -- aren't chicken feed either.
It, like everything else in the career world, is a tradeoff. Those who go the clearance route (and to clarify things - I'm not one of 'em) have made the tradeoff voluntarily.
> Several Ann Arundel County cops (where NSA is locatated and many employees live) have told me hauling off foaming-at-the-mouth-nuts NSA crypto geeks is not unusual, especially when the moon is full...
Yeah, but you (Hi, Roblimo!) of all people oughta know from experience that all crypto geeks are, well, a little foamy-at-the-mouth. All that number theory, must, like, do stuff to your brain;-)
(Either that, or all the crypto geeks I've ever encountered are also working for NSA. Feeling paranoid yet?;-)
> > If there was enough interest in this project I would love to make a small batch of boards to sell to
those interested. But I would need at least 10 orders, and it may be hard to find 10 people interested
in something like this
> >
Looks like you spoke too soon pal, bet you'll wish you hadn't asked in a few hours;-)
In a few hours, it'll be "I need to sell at least 100 to pay my bandwidth bill!"
> The funny thing is that this is considered mass storage for the ][e. For those that still put their
old apples through the motions, this could save them a lot of disk swapping, as they could more than likely fit their
entire software and data library onto a single 64meg card. neat!
I've been looking for a good use for an old 8M CF card.
Having 128 64K memory images of a ][+ (or 64 128K//e images with the bank-switching) would be great for retro-gaming. Get tired of playing one game, save the RAM image and continue tomorrow!
Having about 57 floppy images on an 8M card wouldn't hurt either, especially for Wizardry V, which came on something like 5 double-sided floppies.
Plus, for "hack value alone", this is one hell of a cool hack.
> However, it seemed the worst offense wasn't to have done something wrong, but to be untruthful to the investigators.
This is consistent with the purposes of a background check for a security clearance.
Remember - the risk isn't that "Joe hung out with the goatse.cx guy in college", it's "Joe might give up secrets to Ivan if Ivan finds out about it and threatens Joe with exposure."
If Joe says, at clearance time, up-front, "Yeah, I was into goats back then, so what?", Joe's boss is likely to think Joe's a little weird, but he's not likely to be "turned" by an adversary.
But if Joe's so embarassed about his past that he's willing to lie under oath to conceal it from his boss before he even gets the job, his boss has every right to ask "Gee, what else would Joe be willing to do, especially when Joe's continued employment would then be contingent on keeping it secret?"
> So you agree that a security clearance is not a trivial matter (as some prior posters have implied)?
Yup. (That is, getting one ought not to be trivial, and holders of clearances -- as I'm sure the vast majority of clearance-holders do -- ought to take seriously the responsibilities that come with their clearance.)
By way of analogy - if we inculate a culture of responsibility and security in end-users, we reduce the probability of social engineering resulting in leaked passwords. If we inculate a culture of responsibility and security in programmers, we reduce the probability of buffer overflows being introduced to code.
The one good thing about the "culture of secrecy" that surrounds high-level.mil and.gov projects is that at least there's an awareness of the responsibilities that go with Knowing Stuff. (And while I sometimes mock the Gummint for its bureaucracy, there are places where it's useful in keeping secrets secret. Putting up with the red tape to build funky aircraft is one thing. Putting up with it to push paper for the DMV or Social Security Agency is another thing altogether;-)
> And you also agree that people wishing a clearance should submit recognize that they may no longer be able to exercise the full range of legal, constitutionally protected activities that citizens are permitted?
Note that some of these issues aren't about the issues per se, but about disclosure and the possibility of compromise.
Consider that a closeted gay man in a stereotypically-conservative town is a security risk, in that his desire to keep his sexuality concealed from others could be used against him. When Ivan walks up to him with those nasty bathhouse photos, he's compromised. ("Oh my god, I'll do anything to keep my friends and neighbors from finding out!")
The exact same guy, in the exact same conservative town, but out of the closet, is not a risk. When Ivan pulls the same stunt, the response is "So? Everybody knows about that. Your Russian accent is cute... you want a date or something?"
> Having to live your life so that you always need to be concerned whether an associate, organization, or legal spare-time activity may result in your clearance being revoked is a very sad way to live in my opinion.
If you believe that your activities or politics (for instance, the same guy in the 1950s, when his bedroom antics were illegal, well, unless your last name was Hoover;-) are fundamentally incompatible with a clearance, then be honest with yourself and your potential employer, and don't ask for one, nor expect to work on projects that require one.
> I do not have a clearance myself, but folks I know with high level clearances are very careful about their activities, who they associate with, etc. It seems a very guarded life.
Pardon my arrogance here, but it bloody well should be.
If you do a job that requires a clearance, and you're given information that Bad Guys would be able to use against us, well, you're a security risk.
More to the point, when it entrusts with such information, the Government is taking a risk, and the process of evaluating someone for a clearance is all about limiting that risk.
For instance, that part about credit history and bad debts -- plenty of "normal, upstanding folks" have "turned" (that is, spied on us for other governments) because they "needed/wanted the money". If you've got a lot of debts, you're a higher risk than someone who isn't, because you're more likely (all other things remaining equal) to say "Yes, I'll send the Russians that list of agents for $60,000, because I need to make my mortgage payments before the bank forecloses".
If you've got drugs in your past, or a history of mental illness, or an oddball sexual habit, or have belonged to Naughty Organizations you're another type of risk -- blackmail. You're more likely to say "Yes, I'll send the Taliban those structural blueprints for the nuke plant, otherwise the guy with the scraggly beard will tell the world about the thing I did in college with my best friend's goat, and send copies of my NAMBLA membership card to the New York Times".
> In any event, this is far beyond what private employers require (or can even legally ask),
In any event, people applying for clearances are asking to be entrusted with access to information where leaks can do damage far beyond what leaks at private organizations can.
When your company's next quarterly earnings report gets leaked, some shareholders get ripped off, and some unsavory elements make a bundle. When classified information leaks, people can can be killed.
> > While this is a tragedy in our lifetimes, in the near future, all children will be genetically engineered to be what we would consider geniuses " > >
Nope, it's just too damned much fun making babies the old fashioned way.
Y'know, science has found out how the baby-making part works, and how the fun-part works, and that you can have the fun part any time you want without the baby part, and how you can have the baby part at your leisure. Happened a few decades ago.
The decades-old separation of the baby part from the fun part already means that all we need to do is the engineering. Then you get the benefits of the better baby product without diminishing the "fun part" at all.
> The masses are a sleeping giant. Most people may not be very ambitious by your standards, but if
you push too hard, if you make them angry, they may just get up off their collective butts and decide
they've had enough. No matter how superior you may think you are, when you're outnumbered 1000
to 1, you're toast.
"If there is hope, it lies in the proles."
- Smith, 6079-W.
> Nothing beats having what I want, when I want, for how much I want it!
Yes, you said it with irony, but you're right!
> Seriously, thats the kind of selfish approach that inhibits the adoption of technologies that would make the world better for people less fortunate than you; nevermind the evironment, noise pollution... yadda yadda.
When I'm given the choice between two modes of transport to get from A to B, I'll take the one that makes the world better for me, not everyone else at my expense. Sorry if that disappoints you.
> Yes, I'm pragmatic, but it bothers me when people are quick to shoot down new ideas because they're too damn lazy/comfortable with what they already have.
You must have a definition of pragmatism with which I was previously unaware:)
If my 4-wheeled, gas-guzzling mode of transport is more comfortable than your mode of transport, well... yeah, I'll shoot your mode down until you can come up with something better.
Problem is, I, as end user, am the one who gets to define "better". Your mode might be more efficient. Might be a more "equitable" distribution of resources (in your eyes), but unless it gives me the same protection from the elements as my car, the same door-to-door service as my car, and ability to avoid close personal contact with strangers ("privacy", "not hanging around smelly people", call it what you like:), as my car, the same on-demand accessibility as my car, I still won't think it's "better", and I still probably won't use it.
> With western technology and population desities being what they are, people have the ability to
isolate themselves via technology. [... ] once you get out on the road, it's You vs Them. But Them are your friends and
neighbours once you get outta the car..
Now you're getting somewhere -- but the underlying sociological problem is that we've already isolated ourselves by technology to the point that "They" are not friends and neighbors once we get out of the car.
If I get out of the car at work, the few "Them" in my office are friends and co-workers. The rest of the guys in my parking lot are competitors or complete strangers.
If I get out of the car at home, the guys on my street are total strangers. The bigger the city (ironically, as it's in large cities with high population densitites that public transit would offer the greatest efficiency gains), the more likely it is that I don't even know my neighbors' names, let alone anything about them.
Any geek worth his salt has read Neal Stephenson's description of "Fedland" in Snow Crash.
Any geek who's ever seen the work processes in place in the real government (either through knowing someone who works there, or by morbid curiosity and reading policy/procedure manuals that describe to government workers how to process forms filled out by the public, for instance) has realized that Neal Stephenson's imaginary "Fedland" wasn't an exaggeration.
NEW TP POOL REGULATIONS
I've been asked to distribute the new regulations regarding office pool displays. The enclosed memo is a new
subchapter of the EBGOC Procedure Manual, replacing the old subchapter entitled PHYSICAL
PLANT/CALIFORNIA/LOS ANGELES/BUILDINGS/OFFICE AREAS/PHYSICAL LAYOUT
REGULATIONS/EMPLOYEE INPUT/GROUP ACTIVITIES.
The old subchapter was a flat prohibition on the use of office space or time forr "pool" activities of any kindm
whteher permanent (e.g., coffee pool) or one-time (e.g., birthday parties).
This prohibition still applies, but a single, one-time exception has now been made for any office that wishes to
pursue a joint bathroom-tissue strategy. [... ]
FSIS streamlined the system in a final rule
issued on December 29, 1995, (60 FR 67444) that became effective July
1, 1996, by expanding the categories of products for which labeling can
be approved generically by industry. For example, the rule allows
Federal establishments to design and use labeling that conforms to the
regulatory requirements for meat, poultry, and egg products that have
standards of identity and composition defined in the regulations (9 CFR
319 and 381) or in the Food Standards and Labeling Policy Book.
> People at the very top of the income, education, and internal self-direction scales tend to make claims of
this nature ["will create a new kind of global
citizen, one who is better informed, more communicative and civically"]. Sure, if you have a degree from Oxford/MIT/Tokyo, or rank very high in ambition or
self-motivation, this type of world is a great place to live. Lose your job in New York? No problem - lots
of openings in Sydney. I'll just call my college roommate in the AU Foreign Office and get the ball rolling.
Very true.
I rather like Ian Angell's take on it - in "The New Barbarian Manifesto", he says that yes, today's technological elite will remain mobile and today's middle class will vanish into the underclass.
The difference between Angell and Beck is that Angell (correctly, IMO) scoffs at the idea that the technological elite will be a "more communicative and civically-involved" citizen. Acting in their own (enlightened or otherwise) self-interest, such citizens may be more "global" and "better-informed", but they'll likely just relocate to wherever taxes are lowest and the underclass is kept at a safe distance.
The "hard problem" (if you're a government) will be retaining your knowledge workers (on whom your economy depends) while retaining the voting support of your service workers. Problem is, if your service workers vote themselves benefits to the point that it becomes more profitable for your global knowledge workers to leave, the knowledge workers will take off for more friendly markets, leaving your service workers with nothing to do, because nothing's being produced in your country anymore. Either way, the welfare state is toast.
Recommended Reading: PDFs of "The signs are clear: the future is inequality" and "Winners and Losers in the Information Age".
Representative quotation: "Democracy will degenerate to being the means of governing the immobile and dependent service workers."
I point out here that Angell doesn't see this as a "good thing" (as his admirers often do) or a "bad thing" (as do his detractors). His point, as an economist, is merely that such a change is inevitable, and that governments and individuals had better get ready for it.
Slashdot Mirror
> I am under the impression that English-language versions will just be pirated instead of the localized Chinese/Korean/whatever versions.
And this impacts Adobe's bottom line... how?
Frankly, I think Adobe's doing the right thing here -- if sales don't justify the cost of porting/localizing, don't port/localize.
Adobe's recognized that they don't have the right to force people to buy their products -- they've merely stated that, in response, nobody has the right to force Adobe to write the products in the first place.
If you want Asian-language Adobe products, support those who create them by purchasing them. I applaud Adobe for being honest enough to pick up its bat and ball and go home.
Contrast that with RIAA's hining about how "If we allow people to copy Titney Spheres CDs, she won't make any more music" -- I dare Hilary Rosen to make good on that threat.
(Of course, every time I turn on the radio, I pray Ms. Rosen makes good on that threat ;-)
>
> So paying $5 for Adobe's products means you pay for the physical cost, even the distribution cost, but not for the labor cost.
To play Devil's Advocate, if you've got a pirated copy, you're not exactly consuming much in the way of support costs!
(Of course, that doesn't apply to the labor cost - the developers and QA people who built it, and that's probably a larger cost than the support costs.)
But to carry your argument one step further, suppose it's bad to pirate Photoshop 6.0, because you're not paying for the labor that went into 6.0.
What about 5.0, which isn't being offered for sale?
Or 4.0? 3.0?
Yes, I'm going down the slippery slope to abandonware -- at some point, the money that went to the developers ought to be "fully depreciated".
Consider - if you incur a capital expense to buy a new building, you get to write it off against income over the life of the building, say, 20 years. If you incur a capital expense to buy something like a computer, many jurisdictions allow you to write the cost of the computer off over a shorter timeframe, say, 5 years, because computers decline in value faster than buildings.
The money you pay a programmer to write software is an expense -- you "write it off" in the same year as you pay it out. If we think of it as another form of capital expenditure (intellectual capital; the brainpower of a developer), and we write it off in the same year, we're basically saying what the tech industry already knows -- software depreciates instantly ;-)
Paying $5 for a 2-year-old game in the "bargain bin" at your local retailer is legal. Why can't paying your friendly neighborhood pirate $5 for a 5-year-old game, or Photoshop 3.0, neither of which can be found even in bargain bins anymore, be legal?
You raise an interesting point.
Patent protection is ~17 years.
Copyright protection is over 75 years.
The limitation on patent protection is essentially the tradeoff you described. If Pfizer develops a wonder-drug, in exchange for telling everyone how to make it, they get the exclusive right to make it or license its manufacture.
I'd argue the 'net has turned copyright into exactly the same deal as patents, and that therefore, the length of time for copyright protection ought to be no longer than that afforded patents.
In the Bad Old Days, the act of publishing a dead-tree book, or a wax cylinder or vinyl recording, didn't "tell the world how to create their own copies". It was a physical object, and you invested a lot of money in the printing presses and pressing plants used to create the objects. Creating and distributing the physical object didn't give anyone the ability to create one for themselves.
But now, the act of pressing bits onto aluminum, whether in DVD or CD form, does place the instructions for reproducing the work into the public sphere. Just as Pfizer's patent application for Viagra tells anyone how to make a happy little blue pill, the little plastic discs you buy at the movie or music store tell anyone how to reproduce a work of music or film.
And yet, someone would have you believe that patents are only worthy of 17 years' protection, after which enough economic value should have been wrung out that anyone can make "generics".
It's time a judge realized that the act of releasing a copyrighted work on a digital medium is fundamentally no different than filing a patent -- it's a way of telling the world how to create something neat -- and that the protections afforded copyrighted works should be cut back, at a minimum to the 17 years currently afforded patents.
Precisely.
What's more use to the country's long-term economic prospects?
A $20B/year industry (MPAA+RIAA) being able to enforce copy control so that next year it's a $22B/year?
A $600B/year industry (telecom) being forced, by customer demand, to deliver last-mile solutions and broadband to the home, so that consumers can use P2P solutions to copy music and movies at will? Every home will have on-demand access to every movie and every song ever recorded, ever. (Remember the old Qwest commercials?)
I say torpedo Hollyweird, and let the chips fall where they may. And the fiber light up where it may. And the hard drives spin. And the PC upgrades flourish.
Never mind the long-term, what's likely to cause a short-term pickup in telecom capital expenditures? Demand, that's what.
Content drives demand. The content's out there - in the form of CDs and DVDs. The tools are out there - MP3 encoders, DiVX encoders, PCs. The leading edge of P2P users can do all the "work" of encoding and uploading it. Your Grandmother only needs to know she wants to download it.
All that's missing is Congress passing one simple bill - that would release artists and end-users from the MPAA's yoke by limiting copyright protection to 5 years.
To Congress: Abandon the $20B/year dinosaurs and spur economic growth by turning to the $600B/year tech industry. Don't forego building the interstate highway system in order to appease buggy-whip manufacturers.
>
> Compared to telecom, Internet, autos, pharmecuticals(sp), etc, at $20B this is a *very* small industry. It's simply amazing how much control they wield.
Agreed. The only conclusion I can draw is that Hollywood lobbyists must be able to procure better-quality cocaine and/or bigger-titted hookers for the relevant Congressmen.
Personally, I'd like to see the tech industry fight back on this one. "Please don't jeopardize the $500B-1T/year tech economy for the sake of the $20B/year in chickenfeed produced by the entertainment yokels."
>
>We propose that all motor cars be limited to 5 mph, redesigned to eat horse-nuts [...]
You do realize that to this day, taxi drivers in London are required by law to have a bale of hay in the trunk, so that they may feed their horse?
You mean they don't like the partnerless fun-part in your cube at work, but they're OK with you doing the partnered fun-part in your cube?
So, like, is your company hiring? ;-)
You need a partner to have the fun-part? Dude, they figured out a fix for that problem millennia before they figured out how to separate the baby-part from the fun-part
Oh yeah - it was. I wasn't disagreeing with the facts - merely expanding on the points you made to show that the restrictions (again, self-imposed or otherwise) aren't as unreasonable in the context of certain .gov/.mil jobs as they would be in the context of most private-sector work.
> Others thinking about "the clearance route" should think hard about what they are giving up.
Agreed. It's not something that one should undertake lightly.
And as long as we're on the subject, Win 3.1 runs fast on a fully-depreciated Pentium-class machine ;-)
I can think of a lot of dedicated applications where moving from 3.1 to 95 or NT wouldn't add value. Yes, Windows has changed a lot in the past 10 years. But has your corner store?
I can think of decent reasons for all of the above.
Publicly criticizing crypto policies: ...you might accidentally let slip something about those policies that they aren't supposed to let slip. Why take the risk?
Owning a copy of 2600: ...on occasion, its authors advocate doing things that are contrary to a government employee's boss's interests. Sorta like having an Emacs manual at a vi-lovers' convention.
Rowdy nightclub: ...afraid of getting "picked up" by the "wrong sort of person", or (say, a brawl breaks out) accidentally tossed into the drunk tank -- and having to explain it to their superiors. Or worse, drinking too much and talking about things they shouldn't.
I'm not disputing the original author's point - which was that the restrictions (whether real or imaginary) that come with a clearance can be nasty.
My point was merely that the privilege of being entrusted with information comes with a price tag, and sometimes the price tag is high. On the other hand, the rewards of having that privilege -- being able to work on cutting-edge stuff, solving problems the rest of the world may never have heard of -- aren't chicken feed either.
It, like everything else in the career world, is a tradeoff. Those who go the clearance route (and to clarify things - I'm not one of 'em) have made the tradeoff voluntarily.
Yeah, but you (Hi, Roblimo!) of all people oughta know from experience that all crypto geeks are, well, a little foamy-at-the-mouth. All that number theory, must, like, do stuff to your brain ;-)
(Either that, or all the crypto geeks I've ever encountered are also working for NSA. Feeling paranoid yet? ;-)
>
> Looks like you spoke too soon pal, bet you'll wish you hadn't asked in a few hours
In a few hours, it'll be "I need to sell at least 100 to pay my bandwidth bill!"
I've been looking for a good use for an old 8M CF card.
Having 128 64K memory images of a ][+ (or 64 128K //e images with the bank-switching) would be great for retro-gaming. Get tired of playing one game, save the RAM image and continue tomorrow!
Having about 57 floppy images on an 8M card wouldn't hurt either, especially for Wizardry V, which came on something like 5 double-sided floppies.
Plus, for "hack value alone", this is one hell of a cool hack.
This is consistent with the purposes of a background check for a security clearance.
Remember - the risk isn't that "Joe hung out with the goatse.cx guy in college", it's "Joe might give up secrets to Ivan if Ivan finds out about it and threatens Joe with exposure."
If Joe says, at clearance time, up-front, "Yeah, I was into goats back then, so what?", Joe's boss is likely to think Joe's a little weird, but he's not likely to be "turned" by an adversary.
But if Joe's so embarassed about his past that he's willing to lie under oath to conceal it from his boss before he even gets the job, his boss has every right to ask "Gee, what else would Joe be willing to do, especially when Joe's continued employment would then be contingent on keeping it secret?"
Yup. (That is, getting one ought not to be trivial, and holders of clearances -- as I'm sure the vast majority of clearance-holders do -- ought to take seriously the responsibilities that come with their clearance.)
By way of analogy - if we inculate a culture of responsibility and security in end-users, we reduce the probability of social engineering resulting in leaked passwords. If we inculate a culture of responsibility and security in programmers, we reduce the probability of buffer overflows being introduced to code.
The one good thing about the "culture of secrecy" that surrounds high-level .mil and .gov projects is that at least there's an awareness of the responsibilities that go with Knowing Stuff. (And while I sometimes mock the Gummint for its bureaucracy, there are places where it's useful in keeping secrets secret. Putting up with the red tape to build funky aircraft is one thing. Putting up with it to push paper for the DMV or Social Security Agency is another thing altogether ;-)
> And you also agree that people wishing a clearance should submit recognize that they may no longer be able to exercise the full range of legal, constitutionally protected activities that citizens are permitted?
Note that some of these issues aren't about the issues per se, but about disclosure and the possibility of compromise.
Consider that a closeted gay man in a stereotypically-conservative town is a security risk, in that his desire to keep his sexuality concealed from others could be used against him. When Ivan walks up to him with those nasty bathhouse photos, he's compromised. ("Oh my god, I'll do anything to keep my friends and neighbors from finding out!")
The exact same guy, in the exact same conservative town, but out of the closet, is not a risk. When Ivan pulls the same stunt, the response is "So? Everybody knows about that. Your Russian accent is cute... you want a date or something?"
> Having to live your life so that you always need to be concerned whether an associate, organization, or legal spare-time activity may result in your clearance being revoked is a very sad way to live in my opinion.
If you believe that your activities or politics (for instance, the same guy in the 1950s, when his bedroom antics were illegal, well, unless your last name was Hoover ;-) are fundamentally incompatible with a clearance, then be honest with yourself and your potential employer, and don't ask for one, nor expect to work on projects that require one.
Pardon my arrogance here, but it bloody well should be.
If you do a job that requires a clearance, and you're given information that Bad Guys would be able to use against us, well, you're a security risk.
More to the point, when it entrusts with such information, the Government is taking a risk, and the process of evaluating someone for a clearance is all about limiting that risk.
For instance, that part about credit history and bad debts -- plenty of "normal, upstanding folks" have "turned" (that is, spied on us for other governments) because they "needed/wanted the money". If you've got a lot of debts, you're a higher risk than someone who isn't, because you're more likely (all other things remaining equal) to say "Yes, I'll send the Russians that list of agents for $60,000, because I need to make my mortgage payments before the bank forecloses".
If you've got drugs in your past, or a history of mental illness, or an oddball sexual habit, or have belonged to Naughty Organizations you're another type of risk -- blackmail. You're more likely to say "Yes, I'll send the Taliban those structural blueprints for the nuke plant, otherwise the guy with the scraggly beard will tell the world about the thing I did in college with my best friend's goat, and send copies of my NAMBLA membership card to the New York Times".
> In any event, this is far beyond what private employers require (or can even legally ask),
In any event, people applying for clearances are asking to be entrusted with access to information where leaks can do damage far beyond what leaks at private organizations can.
When your company's next quarterly earnings report gets leaked, some shareholders get ripped off, and some unsavory elements make a bundle. When classified information leaks, people can can be killed.
Oh yeah? Tell that to any government employees in Argentina! ;-)
>
> Nope, it's just too damned much fun making babies the old fashioned way.
Y'know, science has found out how the baby-making part works, and how the fun-part works, and that you can have the fun part any time you want without the baby part, and how you can have the baby part at your leisure. Happened a few decades ago.
The decades-old separation of the baby part from the fun part already means that all we need to do is the engineering. Then you get the benefits of the better baby product without diminishing the "fun part" at all.
"If there is hope, it lies in the proles."
- Smith, 6079-W.
"Yeah, right."
- Big Brother.
Yes, you said it with irony, but you're right! > Seriously, thats the kind of selfish approach that inhibits the adoption of technologies that would make the world better for people less fortunate than you; nevermind the evironment, noise pollution ... yadda yadda.
When I'm given the choice between two modes of transport to get from A to B, I'll take the one that makes the world better for me, not everyone else at my expense. Sorry if that disappoints you.
> Yes, I'm pragmatic, but it bothers me when people are quick to shoot down new ideas because they're too damn lazy/comfortable with what they already have.
You must have a definition of pragmatism with which I was previously unaware :)
If my 4-wheeled, gas-guzzling mode of transport is more comfortable than your mode of transport, well... yeah, I'll shoot your mode down until you can come up with something better.
Problem is, I, as end user, am the one who gets to define "better". Your mode might be more efficient. Might be a more "equitable" distribution of resources (in your eyes), but unless it gives me the same protection from the elements as my car, the same door-to-door service as my car, and ability to avoid close personal contact with strangers ("privacy", "not hanging around smelly people", call it what you like :), as my car, the same on-demand accessibility as my car, I still won't think it's "better", and I still probably won't use it.
> With western technology and population desities being what they are, people have the ability to isolate themselves via technology. [ ... ] once you get out on the road, it's You vs Them. But Them are your friends and
neighbours once you get outta the car ..
Now you're getting somewhere -- but the underlying sociological problem is that we've already isolated ourselves by technology to the point that "They" are not friends and neighbors once we get out of the car.
If I get out of the car at work, the few "Them" in my office are friends and co-workers. The rest of the guys in my parking lot are competitors or complete strangers.
If I get out of the car at home, the guys on my street are total strangers. The bigger the city (ironically, as it's in large cities with high population densitites that public transit would offer the greatest efficiency gains), the more likely it is that I don't even know my neighbors' names, let alone anything about them.
Any geek worth his salt has read Neal Stephenson's description of "Fedland" in Snow Crash.
Any geek who's ever seen the work processes in place in the real government (either through knowing someone who works there, or by morbid curiosity and reading policy/procedure manuals that describe to government workers how to process forms filled out by the public, for instance) has realized that Neal Stephenson's imaginary "Fedland" wasn't an exaggeration.
Stephenson's Demented Imagination: Fedland
Random Excerpt From The Real Thing: Meat, Poultry, Egg Produce Labeling Review Process"
Very true.
I rather like Ian Angell's take on it - in "The New Barbarian Manifesto", he says that yes, today's technological elite will remain mobile and today's middle class will vanish into the underclass.
The difference between Angell and Beck is that Angell (correctly, IMO) scoffs at the idea that the technological elite will be a "more communicative and civically-involved" citizen. Acting in their own (enlightened or otherwise) self-interest, such citizens may be more "global" and "better-informed", but they'll likely just relocate to wherever taxes are lowest and the underclass is kept at a safe distance.
The "hard problem" (if you're a government) will be retaining your knowledge workers (on whom your economy depends) while retaining the voting support of your service workers. Problem is, if your service workers vote themselves benefits to the point that it becomes more profitable for your global knowledge workers to leave, the knowledge workers will take off for more friendly markets, leaving your service workers with nothing to do, because nothing's being produced in your country anymore. Either way, the welfare state is toast.
Classic Angell essays: http://csrc.lse.ac.uk/angell.htm
Recommended Reading: PDFs of "The signs are clear: the future is inequality" and "Winners and Losers in the Information Age".
Representative quotation: "Democracy will degenerate to being the means of governing the immobile and dependent service workers."
I point out here that Angell doesn't see this as a "good thing" (as his admirers often do) or a "bad thing" (as do his detractors). His point, as an economist, is merely that such a change is inevitable, and that governments and individuals had better get ready for it.
(Hey, a pizza doesn't complain when you get tired of eating it and order another one ;-)
Yeah - whaddya wanna bet that one of these days there's a "bug" in the software that just "happens" to delete all MP3s on a hard drive ;-)