To sum up the article: sending email would still be free, if you're on your recipient's white list. But if you're contacting somebody out of the blue, then you're going to need to have a "charity stamp" -- whether it costs 1/10 of a penny, a penny, or a dime isn't made clear.
This approach means that spammers have to pay for a charity stamp for every single spam they send out. And that would undoubtedly eat into their profits, and prevent the most ineffective spams from being sent.
But here, I think the developer of the idea pushes the logic too far. He says, "The whole spam industry depends on spam being free to the sender," Fahlman says. "If we change the social rules of E-mail just a tiny bit, I think the whole problem of spam goes away."
I think it's far more logical to conclude that the problem won't go away at all. But it might become more manageable, because it will force spammers to only launch campaigns that can return a profit after charity stamp expenses. In essence, spamming will become more like bulk mail. It costs Land's End a dollar a catalog for their postal mailings, and they probably get a 3% response rate, but the profits they make on that clothing is worth continued and highly targeted mailings. The same dynamic may one day be true with spam. And I'd rather get 30 emails a year from reputable companies like Land's End than 3000 emails a year from Viagra pushers.
I've heard a variation of this idea, and I think it might in fact be Fahlman's work, and that the Internet Week article sort of missed the boat on this reporting. In the variation I've heard, the "charity stamp" is expensive, say a couple of dollars. This system would create a social agreement that redeeming a charity stamp is sort of a slap in the face. Your best friend from elementary school could email you, and you'd be perfectly entitled to redeem his charity stamp since he's not on your whitelist. No reasonable person would burn friends and family like this. But what fun it would be to burn spammers this way, having each unwanted email result in a dollar being sent to your favorite charity!
I think this kind of optional redeeming of charity stamps is the core of what would make this idea work. But we'd need to set up a new email/micropayment infrasture to make it possible, and couple it with strict laws that spammers trying to evade the charity stamp face criminal penalties. Creating a new system like this would pose enormous problems, but it sounds workable. I think the bottom line is that the spam problem can almost certainly be reigned in, but whatever approach is used, it's going to take big money, government intervention, and a partial redesign of how email servers currently operate.
As for me, I recently started using the Bayesian filters in Mozilla 1.3's email client. I can't say enough good things about how well this has worked--I've reclaimed my email box. It used to take me ten minutes or more a day to delete spam. But Mozilla does it with uncanny accuracy, and probably with fewer mistakes than I would make if I'm hurrying.
I bought an Interplak toothbrush about five years ago, that I think uses the same kind of technology seen here. It worked great, and I was able to use that toothbrush every day until I dropped it on the floor last week. This kind of charging solution is ideal for something like a toothbrush, which is likely to get wet and be a supreme electrocution hazard if plugged directly into a wall.
Anyway, this technology worked so well that I'd think this is almost an obvious idea for recharging electronic items, especially if it's not going to screw up hard drives and electronic media. So the question is, why haven't other companies taken this technology beyond toothbrushes?
Overall, I was disappointed by the BBC article. It would have been great if the author had sought out an EE authority, and had her/him mention the disadvantages of this charging approach. I have a feeling that this charging solution is likely incredibly wasteful of electricity. But maybe this waste doesn't matter much if you're talking about minor charging needs like cellphones. Anyway, surely there's somebody on here with a EE background who can speak to whatever shortcomings are inherent in this technology.
So I'm Asking Slashdot : What should companies be doing to prevent the loss of income from pirating while leaving inviolate the right of the consumer to make copies of materials to which we own legal license?
I know, I know, we talk about this all the time...
And the reason we talk about it all the time is that these two desirable things can't be reconciled without ever-greater levels of technological evil stuff materializing (Paladium, anyone?). Give me the technological ability to have my fair use rights, and I've also got the technological ability to pirate.
If you think about it, most 1950s guesses about the future centered around dreams of mechanical engineering. Jet-packs, personal helicopters, etc.
It turns out that complex mechanical stuff is harder to design and mass-manufacture than formerly believed. So today's reality in terms of mechanically oriented consumer items in no way measures up to 1950s hopes.
At the same time, while 1950s soothsayers dreamt too big in regard to mechanical developments, they dreamt way too small in regard to communications developments. And, if given the choice, I'd much rather have email and web broadband access for $45/month than my own personal $20,000 helicopter. I suppose I'd rather fly to Mars than own a cell phone, but the technology behind a cell phone is in many ways more miraculous than anything that's been developed for affordable space flight.
The future we live in is in some respects a disappointment compared to 1950s hopes, but in other respects it's infinitely cooler than anyone could have dreamed of.
I think we'd all agree that an e-mail address isn't worth much, by itself. Spam prevention has become one of the best ways to add value to an email address, and make it more worth paying for. Filters work with varying success, and to the extent that filters are effective, an email account becomes more worth paying for. But filters will only take you so far; I use a Yahoo account for my personal email. Once upon a time, I never got spam there. But now I get hundreds of spams a month, and at least three or four a day slip past the filter.
Hotmail's filters have always been poor compared to Yahoo's (insert obligatory anti-ms joke here.) But I have to say, that if Microsoft is going to start aggressively suing spammers who send email to Hotmail accounts, it's going to make their Hotmail service a whole lot more desirable. Microsoft has been desperately trying to get people to pay money for their Hotmail accounts (which, back in the DotCom boom, once promised "free email for life."), and I think suing spammers might be their best possible strategy. Not only does will it reduce Microsoft's storage and bandwidth costs, it will differentiate Hotmail from the slew of freemail providers, and make the service much more worth paying for.
Until we get aggressive federal anti-spam legislation, this new strategy from Microsoft will be great for Hotmail users and good for the Internet in general. If the lawsuits actually frighten spammers away from Hotmail, I might indeed finally pay for my Hotmail account, which I now use only as one of those disposable junkmail accounts for registering on sites I don't trust.
On top of the $2000 he stole, it appears he must have invaded the privacy of thousands of people. Scumbags who do this kind of stuff need to be made an example of. This is loathsome behavior, and I hope the judge throws the book at him.
Maccentral has an excellent summary of the new Macs. To me, the most interesting part of the story isn't the incrementel improvements in the desktops, but the extremely steep price cuts surrounding Apple's flat panel displays. You can now get a 20" widescreen flat panel from Apple for $1299. That's just $300 more than Apple was charging yesterday for a 17" standard aspect model.
I make a point of reading slashdot a couple times a day, and it seems the duplications lately have gotten totally out of hand. I recall three duplicate posts in the same day not so long ago, which is inexcusable. As somebody who runs a website with near-daily content, I completely understand. I think Taco and the gang are developing a bad case of burnout, and some new blood might help fix things.
The exact same thing happens with magazine editors, who generally burn out and leave within three years of taking the top job. There's just something in the nature of publishing new stuff all the time that, for most people (Lewis Lapham and the top-shelf magazine editors excepted), seems to create all kinds of problems.
Well, enough griping--a solution would be easy. Either:
1) Taco and the other burnouts concentrate on creating a viable business model, and allow some enthusiastic fresh blood in to post stories. This would be harder than it sounds, as finding smart people you can trust to post relevant stuff isn't easy.
or
2) A small group of daily readers is assembled, whose job is to check stories for possible dupes before they get posted on the main page.
A solution to Slashdot's increasing lack of professionalism would be easy. And it's well past time.
that if somebody held you down and drilled holes in your skull without your consent, you would not consider this an act of cruelty?
What time can we schedule your appointment?:P
Interesting how the press seems to dismiss the cruelty issue by reporting the researcher's point of view at face value. Here's the last sentence from the National Geographic article:
And, Talwar said, "there is no cruelty" involved in operating robo-rats because the animals are never intentionally killed or harmed.
And here's an excerpt from the BBC piece:
"Our animals were completely happy and treated well and in no sense was there any cruelty involved," he said.
Nope, no cruelty at all. Aside from drilling holes in the rat's skull, attaching wires into his brain, and mounting a control box permanently behind his head.
I think it's a lot of inhumanity for a little gee-whiz. Especially since there's no critical look at whether full-fledged robots could be developed to perform these functions. Yet another example of brutality done to animals with no clear payoff. Surely, research in small-scale robotics is producing, or will soon produce, devices with the mobility and functional characteristics of rats.
The sad thing is that I'm probably going to be modded down for raising these concerns. Time and again, a sizable portion of Slashdot posters seems to stick up for animal research, no matter how cruel and no matter how pointless. Now I'll stand back and give people a chance to post all about lifesaving animal research, ignoring the fact that so much of what's done is useless fluff, much like these remote controlled rats.
Authors should definitely recieve royalties - just not from a public library that my tax dollars went to fund.
I'm an author, and I don't object at all to my books ending up on library shelves. When it happens, it means I'm probably "relieved" of 97% of my royalty for each time the book is read -- given that I suppose the average library book is checked out 30 times. But I don't care that this is such a bad deal for me, since I think it's great that people are reading my book.
But I bristle at your notion that libraries ought to be entitled to distribute recently created copyrighted works, with no compensation whatsoever to the author. On what basis do you feel that government should essentially engage in intellectual theft?
I'm trying to understand your point of view, but I can't make any sense of it. It seems totally selfish and poorly thought out.
I run a marginally profitable website that makes use of banner ads. And I resented your comment, which seems to be targetted at web publishers like me:
>>>>>Be creative, and try to make information about your product visible to those who actually want it, don't cast it scattergun style in front of millions of people for whom it just represents an annoyance. Browsers such as Mozilla now have pop-up blocking because users want it, and that means that the users don't want to read your add for X-10 cameras or you've won a free prize while trying to access their bank accounts. Listen to your customers, and develop a business based upon respecting them, not on blanketing them with crap everytime they log in.
Please take a look at how I do ads on Vegan.com. I'd prefer to do fewer ads, or none at all, but this is the money I spend to keep the site hosted and updated regularly. I am not putting up banners for X-10 cameras. My ads are specifically targetted to Vegans, and many of my readers make use of them. If a good portion of my site's readers start using blocking software, I could not afford to keep my site going the way it is now. And why, exactly, would that be a good thing?
The question of whether people who use blocking software should be called thieves is stupid and irrelevant. Blocking software would undoubtedly harm my site's ability to attract the revenue I need to keep it going. I resent admonishments like yours to "be creative." Many of us small-site publishers are being as creative and unobtrusive as we can possibly be.
-Erik Marcus
The big questions have yet to be answered:
1) Is it more stable?
I hate XP with a passion, and I'm hopefully replacing my Wintel box with a Mac after Christmas, but how much more stable do you want? I've been running XP for six months now, since I needed it for a special app I couldn't get on the Mac platform, and have never once had a crash that required me to reboot.
I think for a typical user, both XP and OSX have reached the point that they can be considered essentially crash-proof.
Yeah, the key word in DRM is "management". Management is work -- work that gets foisted onto the consumer. Maybe I'm willing to accept stuff with DRM, but it better be priced a whole lot lower than non-DRM stuff given that one day I might well lose ability to "manage" my ownership of it.
I checked out the audible site, and it looks like they have their act together. But there's no way I want my various audiobooks locked up in some proprietary format that I have to "manage" -- and one that might well go *POOF* if a longterm cash-flow for audible.com fails to materialize.
At the risk of being moderated as a troll, axis-techno-geek's review wasn't a review at all, but just a summary of the book's contents. Except for the second to last paragraph, there was absolutely no analysis of the book.
It wouldn't be a bad idea for Slashdot to make informal arrangements with a couple contributors who are widely read in science fiction, and who are able to write reviews worthy of what quality sites Salon.com can muster.
So either both sides pay the local Baby Bell for its protection racket, or you just pass a law and the problem goes away.
I went to nynocall.com about nine months ago, and ever since I think I've gotten one, count 'em, one telemarketing call. And after I got it, I went back to the friendly nynocall.com site, and filled out a report so they could nail the bastards.
It's amazing what a great piece of legislation, plus a little enforcement, can do to solve the problem. Wish other states would follow New York's lead.
I'm not a "real entrepreneur" at least by your definition, but it's worth mentioning that the cost of having comfortable and reliable office equipment is downright cheap. I'm not arguing for $900 leather chairs (especially since I'm vegan; ) but these days, the cost of equiping an office appropriately amounts to maybe a thousand bucks. I've got a great computer worth no more than $750, a super comfortable chair from Staples for $90, plus some other odds and ends. The bottom line is it helps my productivity and I don't feel like hell at the end of the day. Yeah, I suppose I could do my work on a folding chair and a 486 I scrounged from the Salvation Army, but why? My time and comfort is worth something, particularly when it can now be bought so cheaply.
If U of Md wants to spend a bit of money so these students have a great working environment, that's terrific. It's a super-cheap investment, which amounts to a tiny gamble. Now, let's see if it pays off.
It's a neat idea. Traditionally, college students who create viable businesses in their dorms have done so in spite of their surroundings. This project sounds like a way to give students an environment and a set of expectations that's conducive to starting up a business.
For that matter, most people outside of college can and should upgrade their surroundings in ways that would boost productivity. One post-college insight I've gotten is the huge difference in the working environments that successful people choose to set up for themselves. Good chairs and whiteboards should be seen as a necessity, not a luxury.
One potential pitfall of this venture, not mentioned in the article, is how U of M is going to avoid potential liabilities and lawsuits arising from student startups that go sour. The average failed startup has nothing left to sue, whereas a state university has deep pockets for disgruntled investors.
As pointed out in a discussion a couple days ago, this RedWolves2 guy is embedding his associates ID into his amazon links, in order to make a profit. And he's not telling anybody about it. He's done this a dozen or more times, and seems to be using Slashdot primarily for posting these Amazon ads. Moderators don't seem to be catching onto why this is a bad thing, and are modding up his posts. A user named Schlach had a couple great posts about why this is sleazy behavior. One's here, and the followup is here. Both are worth reading. Incredibly, I've been modded down for pointing out this questionable behavior on the part of RedWolves2. Read Schalch's comments and judge for yourself.
Unethical Behavior: RedWolves2's Amazon Link
on
Slack
·
· Score: 1, Flamebait
Please don't click on this RedWolves2 guy's link to Amazon. He's embedded his Amazon.com affiliate code into the link without telling anyone, and it would be a shame to see profit from such sleazy behavior. Slashdot should have a policy allowing moderators to discard posts from people who pull this kind of crap.
I respectfully disagree, unless those settop boxes are capable of receiving software updates that would make them able to play new video codec formats. I think the 3-4 times reference was solely meant for playing of movies on PC's and Macs.
The new codec requires 3 to 4 times as much CPU power than MPEG-2 to process the video.
Talk about lazy, noninformative writing. Rather than say that it requires 3-4 times more processing power, how about just giving a minimum 86 or powerpc processor speed that would support this format?
The fault here isn't with the person who wrote the summary. That vital piece of information isn't contained in the source article, either. Appalling.
It's Gorf, not Gorp. Gorp is trail mix, and stands for Good Old Raisins and Peanuts. Gorf, the videogame, might have received its name because it's frog spelled backwards. And the lead character bounced around like a jumping space frong. Gorf was a great game, breaking new ground by being at least three space-oriented games in one. Even today, I'd happily while away an hour eating gorp and playing Gorf.
If Linux spreads, Microsoft could see the first real challenge to its dominance of the operating-system software market.
It would be nice if the writer suggested why Linux has the potential spread where others, most notably MacOS, have so far been steamrolled. Instead, MacOS isn't touched on, and we aren't given any new arguments why Linux could succeed on the desktop.
It's great to see Linux being taken seriously by the Times but it would be better still to see this editorial add something fresh to the pro-Linux argument.
Slashdot Mirror
This approach means that spammers have to pay for a charity stamp for every single spam they send out. And that would undoubtedly eat into their profits, and prevent the most ineffective spams from being sent.
But here, I think the developer of the idea pushes the logic too far. He says, "The whole spam industry depends on spam being free to the sender," Fahlman says. "If we change the social rules of E-mail just a tiny bit, I think the whole problem of spam goes away."
I think it's far more logical to conclude that the problem won't go away at all. But it might become more manageable, because it will force spammers to only launch campaigns that can return a profit after charity stamp expenses. In essence, spamming will become more like bulk mail. It costs Land's End a dollar a catalog for their postal mailings, and they probably get a 3% response rate, but the profits they make on that clothing is worth continued and highly targeted mailings. The same dynamic may one day be true with spam. And I'd rather get 30 emails a year from reputable companies like Land's End than 3000 emails a year from Viagra pushers.
I've heard a variation of this idea, and I think it might in fact be Fahlman's work, and that the Internet Week article sort of missed the boat on this reporting. In the variation I've heard, the "charity stamp" is expensive, say a couple of dollars. This system would create a social agreement that redeeming a charity stamp is sort of a slap in the face. Your best friend from elementary school could email you, and you'd be perfectly entitled to redeem his charity stamp since he's not on your whitelist. No reasonable person would burn friends and family like this. But what fun it would be to burn spammers this way, having each unwanted email result in a dollar being sent to your favorite charity!
I think this kind of optional redeeming of charity stamps is the core of what would make this idea work. But we'd need to set up a new email/micropayment infrasture to make it possible, and couple it with strict laws that spammers trying to evade the charity stamp face criminal penalties. Creating a new system like this would pose enormous problems, but it sounds workable. I think the bottom line is that the spam problem can almost certainly be reigned in, but whatever approach is used, it's going to take big money, government intervention, and a partial redesign of how email servers currently operate.
As for me, I recently started using the Bayesian filters in Mozilla 1.3's email client. I can't say enough good things about how well this has worked--I've reclaimed my email box. It used to take me ten minutes or more a day to delete spam. But Mozilla does it with uncanny accuracy, and probably with fewer mistakes than I would make if I'm hurrying.
Anyway, this technology worked so well that I'd think this is almost an obvious idea for recharging electronic items, especially if it's not going to screw up hard drives and electronic media. So the question is, why haven't other companies taken this technology beyond toothbrushes?
Overall, I was disappointed by the BBC article. It would have been great if the author had sought out an EE authority, and had her/him mention the disadvantages of this charging approach. I have a feeling that this charging solution is likely incredibly wasteful of electricity. But maybe this waste doesn't matter much if you're talking about minor charging needs like cellphones. Anyway, surely there's somebody on here with a EE background who can speak to whatever shortcomings are inherent in this technology.
I know, I know, we talk about this all the time...
And the reason we talk about it all the time is that these two desirable things can't be reconciled without ever-greater levels of technological evil stuff materializing (Paladium, anyone?). Give me the technological ability to have my fair use rights, and I've also got the technological ability to pirate.
The world is messy.
It turns out that complex mechanical stuff is harder to design and mass-manufacture than formerly believed. So today's reality in terms of mechanically oriented consumer items in no way measures up to 1950s hopes.
At the same time, while 1950s soothsayers dreamt too big in regard to mechanical developments, they dreamt way too small in regard to communications developments. And, if given the choice, I'd much rather have email and web broadband access for $45/month than my own personal $20,000 helicopter. I suppose I'd rather fly to Mars than own a cell phone, but the technology behind a cell phone is in many ways more miraculous than anything that's been developed for affordable space flight.
The future we live in is in some respects a disappointment compared to 1950s hopes, but in other respects it's infinitely cooler than anyone could have dreamed of.
Hotmail's filters have always been poor compared to Yahoo's (insert obligatory anti-ms joke here.) But I have to say, that if Microsoft is going to start aggressively suing spammers who send email to Hotmail accounts, it's going to make their Hotmail service a whole lot more desirable. Microsoft has been desperately trying to get people to pay money for their Hotmail accounts (which, back in the DotCom boom, once promised "free email for life."), and I think suing spammers might be their best possible strategy. Not only does will it reduce Microsoft's storage and bandwidth costs, it will differentiate Hotmail from the slew of freemail providers, and make the service much more worth paying for.
Until we get aggressive federal anti-spam legislation, this new strategy from Microsoft will be great for Hotmail users and good for the Internet in general. If the lawsuits actually frighten spammers away from Hotmail, I might indeed finally pay for my Hotmail account, which I now use only as one of those disposable junkmail accounts for registering on sites I don't trust.
On top of the $2000 he stole, it appears he must have invaded the privacy of thousands of people. Scumbags who do this kind of stuff need to be made an example of. This is loathsome behavior, and I hope the judge throws the book at him.
Maccentral has an excellent summary of the new Macs. To me, the most interesting part of the story isn't the incrementel improvements in the desktops, but the extremely steep price cuts surrounding Apple's flat panel displays. You can now get a 20" widescreen flat panel from Apple for $1299. That's just $300 more than Apple was charging yesterday for a 17" standard aspect model.
The exact same thing happens with magazine editors, who generally burn out and leave within three years of taking the top job. There's just something in the nature of publishing new stuff all the time that, for most people (Lewis Lapham and the top-shelf magazine editors excepted), seems to create all kinds of problems.
Well, enough griping--a solution would be easy. Either:
1) Taco and the other burnouts concentrate on creating a viable business model, and allow some enthusiastic fresh blood in to post stories. This would be harder than it sounds, as finding smart people you can trust to post relevant stuff isn't easy.
or
2) A small group of daily readers is assembled, whose job is to check stories for possible dupes before they get posted on the main page.
A solution to Slashdot's increasing lack of professionalism would be easy. And it's well past time.
that if somebody held you down and drilled holes in your skull without your consent, you would not consider this an act of cruelty? What time can we schedule your appointment? :P
And, Talwar said, "there is no cruelty" involved in operating robo-rats because the animals are never intentionally killed or harmed.
And here's an excerpt from the BBC piece:
"Our animals were completely happy and treated well and in no sense was there any cruelty involved," he said.
Nope, no cruelty at all. Aside from drilling holes in the rat's skull, attaching wires into his brain, and mounting a control box permanently behind his head.
I think it's a lot of inhumanity for a little gee-whiz. Especially since there's no critical look at whether full-fledged robots could be developed to perform these functions. Yet another example of brutality done to animals with no clear payoff. Surely, research in small-scale robotics is producing, or will soon produce, devices with the mobility and functional characteristics of rats.
The sad thing is that I'm probably going to be modded down for raising these concerns. Time and again, a sizable portion of Slashdot posters seems to stick up for animal research, no matter how cruel and no matter how pointless. Now I'll stand back and give people a chance to post all about lifesaving animal research, ignoring the fact that so much of what's done is useless fluff, much like these remote controlled rats.
Authors should definitely recieve royalties - just not from a public library that my tax dollars went to fund.
I'm an author, and I don't object at all to my books ending up on library shelves. When it happens, it means I'm probably "relieved" of 97% of my royalty for each time the book is read -- given that I suppose the average library book is checked out 30 times. But I don't care that this is such a bad deal for me, since I think it's great that people are reading my book.
But I bristle at your notion that libraries ought to be entitled to distribute recently created copyrighted works, with no compensation whatsoever to the author. On what basis do you feel that government should essentially engage in intellectual theft?
I'm trying to understand your point of view, but I can't make any sense of it. It seems totally selfish and poorly thought out.
I run a marginally profitable website that makes use of banner ads. And I resented your comment, which seems to be targetted at web publishers like me:
>>>>>Be creative, and try to make information about your product visible to those who actually want it, don't cast it scattergun style in front of millions of people for whom it just represents an annoyance. Browsers such as Mozilla now have pop-up blocking because users want it, and that means that the users don't want to read your add for X-10 cameras or you've won a free prize while trying to access their bank accounts. Listen to your customers, and develop a business based upon respecting them, not on blanketing them with crap everytime they log in.
Please take a look at how I do ads on Vegan.com. I'd prefer to do fewer ads, or none at all, but this is the money I spend to keep the site hosted and updated regularly. I am not putting up banners for X-10 cameras. My ads are specifically targetted to Vegans, and many of my readers make use of them. If a good portion of my site's readers start using blocking software, I could not afford to keep my site going the way it is now. And why, exactly, would that be a good thing?
The question of whether people who use blocking software should be called thieves is stupid and irrelevant. Blocking software would undoubtedly harm my site's ability to attract the revenue I need to keep it going. I resent admonishments like yours to "be creative." Many of us small-site publishers are being as creative and unobtrusive as we can possibly be. -Erik Marcus
The big questions have yet to be answered:
1) Is it more stable?
I hate XP with a passion, and I'm hopefully replacing my Wintel box with a Mac after Christmas, but how much more stable do you want? I've been running XP for six months now, since I needed it for a special app I couldn't get on the Mac platform, and have never once had a crash that required me to reboot.
I think for a typical user, both XP and OSX have reached the point that they can be considered essentially crash-proof.
Yeah, the key word in DRM is "management". Management is work -- work that gets foisted onto the consumer. Maybe I'm willing to accept stuff with DRM, but it better be priced a whole lot lower than non-DRM stuff given that one day I might well lose ability to "manage" my ownership of it. I checked out the audible site, and it looks like they have their act together. But there's no way I want my various audiobooks locked up in some proprietary format that I have to "manage" -- and one that might well go *POOF* if a longterm cash-flow for audible.com fails to materialize.
One less opportunity to put his Amazon ID into a Slashdot link.
At the risk of being moderated as a troll, axis-techno-geek's review wasn't a review at all, but just a summary of the book's contents. Except for the second to last paragraph, there was absolutely no analysis of the book.
It wouldn't be a bad idea for Slashdot to make informal arrangements with a couple contributors who are widely read in science fiction, and who are able to write reviews worthy of what quality sites Salon.com can muster.
From the article summary:
So either both sides pay the local Baby Bell for its protection racket, or you just pass a law and the problem goes away.
I went to nynocall.com about nine months ago, and ever since I think I've gotten one, count 'em, one telemarketing call. And after I got it, I went back to the friendly nynocall.com site, and filled out a report so they could nail the bastards.
It's amazing what a great piece of legislation, plus a little enforcement, can do to solve the problem. Wish other states would follow New York's lead.
I'm not a "real entrepreneur" at least by your definition, but it's worth mentioning that the cost of having comfortable and reliable office equipment is downright cheap. I'm not arguing for $900 leather chairs (especially since I'm vegan; ) but these days, the cost of equiping an office appropriately amounts to maybe a thousand bucks. I've got a great computer worth no more than $750, a super comfortable chair from Staples for $90, plus some other odds and ends. The bottom line is it helps my productivity and I don't feel like hell at the end of the day. Yeah, I suppose I could do my work on a folding chair and a 486 I scrounged from the Salvation Army, but why? My time and comfort is worth something, particularly when it can now be bought so cheaply.
If U of Md wants to spend a bit of money so these students have a great working environment, that's terrific. It's a super-cheap investment, which amounts to a tiny gamble. Now, let's see if it pays off.
It's a neat idea. Traditionally, college students who create viable businesses in their dorms have done so in spite of their surroundings. This project sounds like a way to give students an environment and a set of expectations that's conducive to starting up a business.
For that matter, most people outside of college can and should upgrade their surroundings in ways that would boost productivity. One post-college insight I've gotten is the huge difference in the working environments that successful people choose to set up for themselves. Good chairs and whiteboards should be seen as a necessity, not a luxury.
One potential pitfall of this venture, not mentioned in the article, is how U of M is going to avoid potential liabilities and lawsuits arising from student startups that go sour. The average failed startup has nothing left to sue, whereas a state university has deep pockets for disgruntled investors.
As pointed out in a discussion a couple days ago, this RedWolves2 guy is embedding his associates ID into his amazon links, in order to make a profit. And he's not telling anybody about it. He's done this a dozen or more times, and seems to be using Slashdot primarily for posting these Amazon ads. Moderators don't seem to be catching onto why this is a bad thing, and are modding up his posts. A user named Schlach had a couple great posts about why this is sleazy behavior. One's here, and the followup is here. Both are worth reading. Incredibly, I've been modded down for pointing out this questionable behavior on the part of RedWolves2. Read Schalch's comments and judge for yourself.
Please don't click on this RedWolves2 guy's link to Amazon. He's embedded his Amazon.com affiliate code into the link without telling anyone, and it would be a shame to see profit from such sleazy behavior. Slashdot should have a policy allowing moderators to discard posts from people who pull this kind of crap.
I respectfully disagree, unless those settop boxes are capable of receiving software updates that would make them able to play new video codec formats. I think the 3-4 times reference was solely meant for playing of movies on PC's and Macs.
From the Summary:
The new codec requires 3 to 4 times as much CPU power than MPEG-2 to process the video.
Talk about lazy, noninformative writing. Rather than say that it requires 3-4 times more processing power, how about just giving a minimum 86 or powerpc processor speed that would support this format?
The fault here isn't with the person who wrote the summary. That vital piece of information isn't contained in the source article, either. Appalling.It's Gorf, not Gorp. Gorp is trail mix, and stands for Good Old Raisins and Peanuts. Gorf, the videogame, might have received its name because it's frog spelled backwards. And the lead character bounced around like a jumping space frong. Gorf was a great game, breaking new ground by being at least three space-oriented games in one. Even today, I'd happily while away an hour eating gorp and playing Gorf.
From the article:
If Linux spreads, Microsoft could see the first real challenge to its dominance of the operating-system software market.
It would be nice if the writer suggested why Linux has the potential spread where others, most notably MacOS, have so far been steamrolled. Instead, MacOS isn't touched on, and we aren't given any new arguments why Linux could succeed on the desktop.
It's great to see Linux being taken seriously by the Times but it would be better still to see this editorial add something fresh to the pro-Linux argument.