I think abuses like this need to be more widely publicized and discussed to educated the masses of ignorant users. I find this just as offensive as having my snail mail filtered (even if AOL is a company and not a federal service). The common user needs to understand this situation.
ISPs in my experience have an attitude that it is their service and the users who depend on it are merely 'subs' (subscribers). While this perception may in fact be accurate, most users see it as 'their service' and view the ISP merely as a provider. So on one hand, most users spend their days thinking they are the 'always right' and 'all powerful due to their dollar' consumer. On the other hand ISPs tend to see their users as 'fat dumb and happy till something needs maintenance'.
This dichotomy can exist, because in the end most users are too ignorant about IT to know what they can reasonably demand and not reasonably demand. A user is just as likely to call AOL to demand help with excel as they are about their mail being filtered.
In the end users don't own the service they are renting, but ISPs need to learn to respect the rights of their users. The only way that is going to happen is if somehow, Joe six pack gets as pissed about this, as he would be if someone was filtering his mail.
THEY LIED TO ME!! oh and 500 bux to bid?? arg
on
Buy a Piece of Acclaim
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I live right near there too, but I don't have the 500 for the deposit, just to buy a mac or something.
During the Spring semester at my local Uni I saw a talk given by a few guys from acclaim and they acted as if the rumors of their going under were exaggerated.
I guess not!
I don't know why they were wasting time and money sending someone to talk to us if they were goind under.
The story is basically that Alita is a Cyborg of mysterious origins who looks innocent and harmless, but over time it becomes clear that she is a highly advanced battle cyborg. Much killing ensues.
reading articles such as this always make me feel better about the world. I am already well aware of the misfortunes of it, but it is truly inspirational to read about someone fighting for what they believe in such as 'NJ' is.
It is one thing to read about the various 'rebel without a cause' types who merely want their voice heard, but to read the words of an educated person who is using that education to attempt to make the world a better place is imo the realization of an ideal in a otherwise rather compromised world.
I had no idea this woman existed before now (perhaps I am not all that well read) and knowing she even exists inspires me to press onward and continue.
I wish her the best of luck in this battle and hope to aid the cause some day soon.
Of course, I will have to begin researching more about her to ensure that I am not a complete moron by making the former statements... But at far as I can tell presently she is an awesome human being.
I was hoping for something educational and instead I found a collection of jokes that I don't find very amusing. I mean sure I'm smirking, but shouldn't something that took that many bytes at least make me chuckle?
Re:Now if hackers could just learn to hack the gov
on
Good Bad Attitude
·
· Score: 1
"You can see this at work in real life, when you notice that geeks make bad business men."
I think you are generalizing. If you look at the present list of billionaires quite a few of them seem fairly geeky to me. Two examples?
Mr. Gates Mr. Dell
I'm not saying that the world doesn't need different kinds of people. I am saying that the world is filled with countless sorts of geeks.
The point of this that shouldn't be missed is that this is a tool for communication and information exchange.
Many things are accomplished with greater ease in the flattened down two dimensions of most applications, but talking to someone or trying to express an idea is sometimes cumbersome what all you have is text and flat images at your disposal. THAT is why multimedia is such a big deal.
I think this sort of technology could really take off in terms of person to person idea exchange.
If you set aside the computational usefulness of computers for a moment (not a small aspect I know), then the major purpose of our IT is communication and information exchange.
I think the idea is an old one whose realization should be encouraged and welcomed.
I'm not convinced...
on
The Long Tail
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
It sounds great and I hope it is all true, but how can 'the tail' possibly pay for projects that cost hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars? Many movie, music, game etc depend on the hits to bring in cash to pay for the misses.
I guess we will see how things turn out. I'm not saying the article is wrong, I'm just saying 'the business' will have to change.
I think it is really odd that the RIAA and legislators can't seem to find a way to make this technology help them.
It is so weird how the tools are the problem not the process itself. No one would care if people were copying songs bit by bit, by hand and then after a few hours(days? idk), compiling them back into entire songs.
Its the fact that the tools allows this to happen on a massive, global scale.
That bothers me. We have gone from a time when books were copied by hand (long ago I know) to a time where copying anything copyrighted could send us to jail.
I understand the world has changed, but I just don't like it when other people tell me how to use my technology.
I always thought I was paying for the format I was getting the media in, not the write to own those 0's and 1s, in that particular ordering.
While I did enjoy star wars throughout my childhood, I can't help but think that some people go a bit overboard. If you enjoy that sort of thing then great, but I personally have no use for a review that is that long.
It is a review, which as for as I am aware should be concise.
But I must admit it is nice to see people being enthusiastic about something benign.
I have used livejournal for some time to communicate and record various things with the lady in my life and I think it is very valuable as an imperfect effort to learn from.
When I initially started using it I found it to be relatively responsive, but over the past year years things seem to be getting slower and slower.
It is clear that his design isn't scaling well without reading the presentation, but after reading it I know see it as a sort of 'case study' to learn from.
But beyond that it has reminded me why any blog you actually want people to read should be elsewhere. Then again the quality of LJ blogs infamous...
When I was maybe 7 years old my parents put a board into one of our computers the wrong way. The smoking mess was left pretty much useless. Since then I have learned from their mistake and avoided such errors.
Unless you count the time I spell a soda into my keyboard, but that is a pretty lame case.
I'm sure I will do something very stupid one of these days (its just a matter of probabilities), its just that I can't afford to make such mistakes right now (no cash to replace things) so I am very careful.
I am merely pointing out the way that the discussion seems to be ignoring the fact that our (or any) culture does not exist in a bubble, despite what us Americans might like to think.
I didn't see the need for examples, it is like stating "people are influenced by other people". I figured it a 'no brainer'.
Cleary our legal system is less likely to be influenced than say art, fashion, food and popular culture, but stranger things have happened.
The people making these legal rulings are PEOPLE, since people are influenced by the world around them I thought it would be fair game to say that the larger system could feel some of this.
Finally I asked that we hope this happen because in the end, here in the USA everyone knows dollars hold sway not logic or other 'fleeting trends'.
The world can influence the US believe it or not..
on
Injunction to Enforce GPL
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
As someone who is considering writing software under the GPL I hope to see it upheld in court around the world.
Also while this case is in Germany and the US often does its own thing, there is something to be said about how the world can influence the US. The US and its citizens like to think they are the ones calling the shots, but the simple fact is that America is influenced by trends around the globe.
So/. readers, please hope with me that the GPL wins out it Germany and around the globe.
While I understand the low amount of attention this story is getting since most/. readers are not African and don't care too much about the continent or its people except in the standard humanitarian fashion, I find what is being posted here borders on appalling.
A few here have actually mentioned the fact that people across the world have a love of technology and communication and therefore Africa Source 2004 is a very cool happening.
I personally look at events like this with keen interest. The people of the world all deserve a chance to learn and explore, hardship in a land does not mean the people of that land should be denied any form of education; education is a necessity not a luxury for the elite. Tragically virtually all American's are rather rich compared to many of the worlds citizens, and this is coming from someone who has spend quite a bit of his lifetime in America living below the poverty level. My point is, even if you are dirt poor you still have access to some basic utilities and resources unless you are on the very lowest 'rungs of the social ladder' in the USA.
I am an American by birth but have had many teachers who either visited or are natives of Africa and I can tell you that events like this are wonderful and deserve our full support.
These sorts of efforts deserve our support because of what the African people think about them, NOT because of our judgments of them. Who the hell are we to tell the Africans whether or not they can learn about computer science before their nation is perfect?
The United States, Europe and Asia are far from perfect...
Hurray for African technological growth.
In response to a comment about the greatness of south africa I read, I write: The nation is great, but not for the reasons the writer mentioned.
I have always found these sorts of economies very odd. They also tend to be rather unstable.
I wonder if this system will endure or eventually collapse.
Also how do you handle fraud incases like this, where the only person who determines value is the individual selling the item. What I mean by this, is how value is a digital file that can be trivially replaced. Does its actual cost related to bandwidth or harddrive space etc?
Who should legally determine value in systems like this?
I said it was hypocritical and that it was a bad (meaning poor or low in quality) argument.
I don't think hypocrisy is necessarily morally wrong, merely inconsistent. I personally prefer my leaders being consistent; otherwise they are by definition hard to predict.
This is a cool idea for small scale networks
on
Mobile Wifi Backpack
·
· Score: 1
I dont see what the big problem is or why people think this is so lame. It seems like a cool way to setup a little wifi network whenever and wherever one might like.
OK I will admit the backpack part is mostly marketing and perhaps somewhat lame, but the technology inside is still somewhat novel (if not truly 'new') and I applaud any effort to give amateurs new tools.
This grants us all an additional technological freedom. Sure it seems odd and useless to some at the moment, but uses will pop up; that is what clever people do for us. Much like rumba in the realm of robots, I don't personally see an immediate use, but I wont shoot it down for that; Someone is going to make me proud with that little pack of wifi.
Maybe Im wrong, but better to be optimistic when discussing technophiles.
I agree that the WTO is off base, but not for the reasons I quoted.
I do believe it is wrong for an organization (or nation) to force its beliefs or desires on another, but the USA does not have the right to cry 'I've been wronged' with its history and vast powers.
A more correct argument would be something similar to 'I think gambling is immoral and do not think it should be endorsed or even tolerated by the state. Therefore I urge our nation to not submit to this decision regardless of threats and bullying'
But the way it looks now is that USA is a bully crying out when the tables are turned.
'It cannot be allowed to stand that another nation can impose its values on the U.S. and make it a trade issue.' Pot/Kettle black?"
Setting the issue of morality aside this is an issue of hypocrisy incarnate.
The United States is the big brother of the world and that is quite possibly the weakest argument I could possibly imagine. It seems to me that our governing body in the US needs massive replacement if the best persuasive arguments they can make sound like this.
If the United States is really the leader of the free world it should really start leading by example and drop this 'do as I say not as I do' attitude. It is utter crap and my vote at the polls will reflect this.
We use economics threats as a diplomatic tool and if we can dish it out we should be able to take it right back!
I personally think having alternative means of interacting with our software is important.
For a user such as myself a keyboard and mouse is presently more intuitive, but eventually this sort of software should prove very useful, especially as computers become more fully integrated into our lives.
This technology might also be useful with a couple of modifications, for the blind if it was coupled with one of those applications that reads the text from the screen for you.
I hope the next step would be interfacing more easily with computers through gestures or non-standard spoken communication for those who are speech impaired and for some reason can't use a keyboard or mouse.
I suppose this is just my personal agenda shining through, but I think diverse means of interfacing with our information is essential to enriching the lives of those who are different as well as making the majorities life easier.
Slashdot Mirror
I think abuses like this need to be more widely publicized and discussed to educated the masses of ignorant users. I find this just as offensive as having my snail mail filtered (even if AOL is a company and not a federal service). The common user needs to understand this situation.
ISPs in my experience have an attitude that it is their service and the users who depend on it are merely 'subs' (subscribers). While this perception may in fact be accurate, most users see it as 'their service' and view the ISP merely as a provider. So on one hand, most users spend their days thinking they are the 'always right' and 'all powerful due to their dollar' consumer. On the other hand ISPs tend to see their users as 'fat dumb and happy till something needs maintenance'.
This dichotomy can exist, because in the end most users are too ignorant about IT to know what they can reasonably demand and not reasonably demand. A user is just as likely to call AOL to demand help with excel as they are about their mail being filtered.
In the end users don't own the service they are renting, but ISPs need to learn to respect the rights of their users. The only way that is going to happen is if somehow, Joe six pack gets as pissed about this, as he would be if someone was filtering his mail.
I live right near there too, but I don't have the 500 for the deposit, just to buy a mac or something.
During the Spring semester at my local Uni I saw a talk given by a few guys from acclaim and they acted as if the rumors of their going under were exaggerated.
I guess not!
I don't know why they were wasting time and money sending someone to talk to us if they were goind under.
If bittorrent works off many users sharing bandwidth at once, I fail to see how this would help most blogs that don't have huge readerships.
Any retorts?
One of my favorite manga's but I am biased because I was first introduced to it through the anime:/ qid%3D1101421387/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr_11_1/102-09325 97-7737745/
9 310033/qid=1101421291/sr=8-3/ref=pd_csp_3/102-0932 597-7737745?v=glance&s=books&n=507846/ o rm/102-0932597-7737745/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000031EG6
It is excellent anime even if it is short. I highly recommend it. Classic anime with awesome animations.
The story is basically that Alita is a Cyborg of mysterious origins who looks innocent and harmless, but over time it becomes clear that she is a highly advanced battle cyborg. Much killing ensues.
here is a link to one of my favorites
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/156
and an amazon search:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-f
reading articles such as this always make me feel better about the world. I am already well aware of the misfortunes of it, but it is truly inspirational to read about someone fighting for what they believe in such as 'NJ' is.
It is one thing to read about the various 'rebel without a cause' types who merely want their voice heard, but to read the words of an educated person who is using that education to attempt to make the world a better place is imo the realization of an ideal in a otherwise rather compromised world.
I had no idea this woman existed before now (perhaps I am not all that well read) and knowing she even exists inspires me to press onward and continue.
I wish her the best of luck in this battle and hope to aid the cause some day soon.
Of course, I will have to begin researching more about her to ensure that I am not a complete moron by making the former statements... But at far as I can tell presently she is an awesome human being.
I was hoping for something educational and instead I found a collection of jokes that I don't find very amusing. I mean sure I'm smirking, but shouldn't something that took that many bytes at least make me chuckle?
"You can see this at work in real life, when you notice that geeks make bad business men."
I think you are generalizing. If you look at the present list of billionaires quite a few of them seem fairly geeky to me. Two examples?
Mr. Gates
Mr. Dell
I'm not saying that the world doesn't need different kinds of people. I am saying that the world is filled with countless sorts of geeks.
The point of this that shouldn't be missed is that this is a tool for communication and information exchange.
Many things are accomplished with greater ease in the flattened down two dimensions of most applications, but talking to someone or trying to express an idea is sometimes cumbersome what all you have is text and flat images at your disposal. THAT is why multimedia is such a big deal.
I think this sort of technology could really take off in terms of person to person idea exchange.
If you set aside the computational usefulness of computers for a moment (not a small aspect I know), then the major purpose of our IT is communication and information exchange.
I think the idea is an old one whose realization should be encouraged and welcomed.
It sounds great and I hope it is all true, but how can 'the tail' possibly pay for projects that cost hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars? Many movie, music, game etc depend on the hits to bring in cash to pay for the misses.
I guess we will see how things turn out. I'm not saying the article is wrong, I'm just saying 'the business' will have to change.
I wasn't belittling anything. Some people here are just oversensitive and too worried about their own preferences and agenda's.
I made light of it because the notion is amusing to me, that doesn't mean I don't realize that it is a quality product.
I would honestly probably use it in the games I am working on to avoid having to get an entire crew of people together to play each instrument etc.
But at the time the irony of machines making art was more prominent in my mind.
I guess we all don't realize that a name like 'Apple Loops' was probably intended to be amusing...
Just calm down and grow up folks
science has increased the average lifespan but not the max by very much.
e rit.html
http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/sciam.inh
Minsky (no expert on the topic I will admit) sites a couple sources and discusses it a bit.
For example it is thought that Archimedes lived to be about 75.
That is pretty cool.
The Jam Packs are a laugh, but I imagine they could actually be useful in theory. I have never seen them in action myself.
I also can't help but notice that the software is quite pretty, silly apple always worrying about esthetics.
I think it is really odd that the RIAA and legislators can't seem to find a way to make this technology help them.
It is so weird how the tools are the problem not the process itself. No one would care if people were copying songs bit by bit, by hand and then after a few hours(days? idk), compiling them back into entire songs.
Its the fact that the tools allows this to happen on a massive, global scale.
That bothers me. We have gone from a time when books were copied by hand (long ago I know) to a time where copying anything copyrighted could send us to jail.
I understand the world has changed, but I just don't like it when other people tell me how to use my technology.
I always thought I was paying for the format I was getting the media in, not the write to own those 0's and 1s, in that particular ordering.
I guess that is changing too.
Weird world we have.
While I did enjoy star wars throughout my childhood, I can't help but think that some people go a bit overboard. If you enjoy that sort of thing then great, but I personally have no use for a review that is that long.
It is a review, which as for as I am aware should be concise.
But I must admit it is nice to see people being enthusiastic about something benign.
And it did make me smile to read the headline.
So carry on, I guess.
I have used livejournal for some time to communicate and record various things with the lady in my life and I think it is very valuable as an imperfect effort to learn from.
When I initially started using it I found it to be relatively responsive, but over the past year years things seem to be getting slower and slower.
It is clear that his design isn't scaling well without reading the presentation, but after reading it I know see it as a sort of 'case study' to learn from.
But beyond that it has reminded me why any blog you actually want people to read should be elsewhere. Then again the quality of LJ blogs infamous...
When I was maybe 7 years old my parents put a board into one of our computers the wrong way. The smoking mess was left pretty much useless. Since then I have learned from their mistake and avoided such errors.
Unless you count the time I spell a soda into my keyboard, but that is a pretty lame case.
I'm sure I will do something very stupid one of these days (its just a matter of probabilities), its just that I can't afford to make such mistakes right now (no cash to replace things) so I am very careful.
I am merely pointing out the way that the discussion seems to be ignoring the fact that our (or any) culture does not exist in a bubble, despite what us Americans might like to think.
I didn't see the need for examples, it is like stating "people are influenced by other people". I figured it a 'no brainer'.
Cleary our legal system is less likely to be influenced than say art, fashion, food and popular culture, but stranger things have happened.
The people making these legal rulings are PEOPLE, since people are influenced by the world around them I thought it would be fair game to say that the larger system could feel some of this.
Finally I asked that we hope this happen because in the end, here in the USA everyone knows dollars hold sway not logic or other 'fleeting trends'.
As someone who is considering writing software under the GPL I hope to see it upheld in court around the world.
/. readers, please hope with me that the GPL wins out it Germany and around the globe.
Also while this case is in Germany and the US often does its own thing, there is something to be said about how the world can influence the US. The US and its citizens like to think they are the ones calling the shots, but the simple fact is that America is influenced by trends around the globe.
So
While I understand the low amount of attention this story is getting since most /. readers are not African and don't care too much about the continent or its people except in the standard humanitarian fashion, I find what is being posted here borders on appalling.
A few here have actually mentioned the fact that people across the world have a love of technology and communication and therefore Africa Source 2004 is a very cool happening.
I personally look at events like this with keen interest. The people of the world all deserve a chance to learn and explore, hardship in a land does not mean the people of that land should be denied any form of education; education is a necessity not a luxury for the elite. Tragically virtually all American's are rather rich compared to many of the worlds citizens, and this is coming from someone who has spend quite a bit of his lifetime in America living below the poverty level. My point is, even if you are dirt poor you still have access to some basic utilities and resources unless you are on the very lowest 'rungs of the social ladder' in the USA.
I am an American by birth but have had many teachers who either visited or are natives of Africa and I can tell you that events like this are wonderful and deserve our full support.
These sorts of efforts deserve our support because of what the African people think about them, NOT because of our judgments of them. Who the hell are we to tell the Africans whether or not they can learn about computer science before their nation is perfect?
The United States, Europe and Asia are far from perfect...
Hurray for African technological growth.
In response to a comment about the greatness of south africa I read, I write: The nation is great, but not for the reasons the writer mentioned.
I have always found these sorts of economies very odd. They also tend to be rather unstable.
I wonder if this system will endure or eventually collapse.
Also how do you handle fraud incases like this, where the only person who determines value is the individual selling the item. What I mean by this, is how value is a digital file that can be trivially replaced. Does its actual cost related to bandwidth or harddrive space etc?
Who should legally determine value in systems like this?
I said it was hypocritical and that it was a bad (meaning poor or low in quality) argument.
I don't think hypocrisy is necessarily morally wrong, merely inconsistent. I personally prefer my leaders being consistent; otherwise they are by definition hard to predict.
I dont see what the big problem is or why people think this is so lame. It seems like a cool way to setup a little wifi network whenever and wherever one might like.
OK I will admit the backpack part is mostly marketing and perhaps somewhat lame, but the technology inside is still somewhat novel (if not truly 'new') and I applaud any effort to give amateurs new tools.
This grants us all an additional technological freedom. Sure it seems odd and useless to some at the moment, but uses will pop up; that is what clever people do for us. Much like rumba in the realm of robots, I don't personally see an immediate use, but I wont shoot it down for that; Someone is going to make me proud with that little pack of wifi.
Maybe Im wrong, but better to be optimistic when discussing technophiles.
I agree that the WTO is off base, but not for the reasons I quoted.
I do believe it is wrong for an organization (or nation) to force its beliefs or desires on another, but the USA does not have the right to cry 'I've been wronged' with its history and vast powers.
A more correct argument would be something similar to 'I think gambling is immoral and do not think it should be endorsed or even tolerated by the state. Therefore I urge our nation to not submit to this decision regardless of threats and bullying'
But the way it looks now is that USA is a bully crying out when the tables are turned.
Just my two cents.
'It cannot be allowed to stand that another nation can impose its values on the U.S. and make it a trade issue.' Pot/Kettle black?"
Setting the issue of morality aside this is an issue of hypocrisy incarnate.
The United States is the big brother of the world and that is quite possibly the weakest argument I could possibly imagine. It seems to me that our governing body in the US needs massive replacement if the best persuasive arguments they can make sound like this.
If the United States is really the leader of the free world it should really start leading by example and drop this 'do as I say not as I do' attitude. It is utter crap and my vote at the polls will reflect this.
We use economics threats as a diplomatic tool and if we can dish it out we should be able to take it right back!
Am I off base here?
I personally think having alternative means of interacting with our software is important.
For a user such as myself a keyboard and mouse is presently more intuitive, but eventually this sort of software should prove very useful, especially as computers become more fully integrated into our lives.
This technology might also be useful with a couple of modifications, for the blind if it was coupled with one of those applications that reads the text from the screen for you.
I hope the next step would be interfacing more easily with computers through gestures or non-standard spoken communication for those who are speech impaired and for some reason can't use a keyboard or mouse.
I suppose this is just my personal agenda shining through, but I think diverse means of interfacing with our information is essential to enriching the lives of those who are different as well as making the majorities life easier.