Actually, Pixar was a spin-off from the computer graphics division at Lucasfilm. It was sold to Steve Jobs at that time in 1986. Disney wasn't involved until 1991 - well after Pixar had made a name for itself.
Thats kinda interesting. When I was responsible for hiring people, a cert was a big strike against you. Most of the people with most certs (and there were a few exceptions - but they were rare and not usually in the field I was hiring. I was looking for programmers at the time.) had gone the route of
Read cert prep book
Take 1 day seminar on cert
Take test
Pass test
and didn't really know anything about the field they had just certified in. Quite honestly, I didn't care about the details of the languages they knew, I needed the following
The ability to learn how to use a programming language
The ability to adapt to the field we were working in
The ability to come up with ideas
The ability to evaluate those ideas for feasability
Certifications offered none of these. Most degrees didn't even equip students to do most of these. I ended up hiring a physics major who knew the basics of programming. And he did better than most of the rest of the team who were CS majors once upon a time.
Of course you can sell your Punch in the Face services. Such services have traditionally gone under names such as
Boxer
Body Guard
Actor
Now, this analogy actually does continue. You, as a sysadmin or someone writing a script that uses DNS, might not really like this service. Just like someone who is trying to take celebrity photographs might not like the Punch-in-the-Face service. But the fact is that this service is provided. And that there are a LOT of people who not only don't see this as a problem - but like it. Or at least think they do.
That is why Verisign thinks they can get away with this - the average person sees a benefit here and sees no drawbacks. The average person watching a boxing match also just sees the benefits and not the drawbacks. Until it is made clear why this isn't as good as it appears, nobody will care. Chances are, nobody will care anyway.
I've been trying to get relatives to fix the Windows DCOM security hole. At least two so far have said "oh! I didn't realize that was a security problem!" They thought the RPC service failing and causing a machine reboot was your everyday "bug", and since it just rebooted the machine (and even gave you 60 seconds to finish up what you were doing!), that it wasn't a big deal.
I think the 60 second thing is seen as a feature - along the lines of "see! Windows knows when its going to crash and lets you save your work first. Like the computer on Star Trek telling you how many seconds until there is a hull breach."
All of them heard the news about a security problem. None of them connected it with the problems they were having.
Finally, to make matters worse, Microsoft's page talks about patching the system, but says nothing about removing the worm. This is problematic since, as noted above, it can sometimes be pretty hard to download the patch if your computer wants to reboot in the middle of the download.
While it was designed for backups, its not exactly designed for restores. I've known a number of people over the years who never realized their backups were failing, and found out the hard way when they needed something in a pinch.
Other media have the advantage that you can access them directly, validate they're actually writing the data correctly, and have more random access to them. Yes, you can do these things with tapes, but its more difficult.
I stand corrected about the details, thank you. But I could certainly imagine Disney being worried about something similar happening again.
Not that DirecTV didn't have their own conflict with Disney about a price hike on a channel (which was resolved after this article was published). Its another example why its in Disney's own best interests to eliminate a middleman that can restrict what they do.
That is why they seem to be on the same side as small data distributors - they see the threat that they can be shut out.
Strangely enough, Disney has been an open source supporter for a while.
The squeak dialect of smalltalk was created at Apple, but run by Alan Kay and his team while they were Disney imagineers. (I never did get an answer if the squeaking mouse was an homage to Apple's mouse or Mickey.)
Their internet group created a set of open source tools used on their webpages called Tea, released it themselves, and now make it available through sourceforge.
You hit it right on the nose at the end. They are afraid that someday AOL will do the same thing that TimeWarner once did - refuse to sign the contract to allow Disney's channels on their cable system. It was about a year or two ago that the two had a standoff, and TimeWarner eventually blinked since they were required to carry ABC.
Disney wants to deal with you directly, since they know how to market to people directly. And they know how to get the money from you directly. They run into problems when they have to deal with a middleman (like AOL-TW) who is also a competitor.
Well, in Houston they did get an
energy boom in the 90's. And they messed it
up same as they did in the '80s. Enron is
the visible example, but all of the energy
companies in Houston are suffering as well.
So to continue your analogy - even if we
start over with a new idea, it won't work,
because we seem to have the infinite capacity
to make messes. Any solution to the spam
problem that involves starting over would
probably also cause one or more of the
following (draw the analogies to Houston and
Enron if you wish):
Raising the price of communications, which
the Internet has forced to drop. Even the
refutable payment schemes would increase
the cost of basic use, which is contrary
to some of the Internet acheivements.
Putting power in the hands of a few large
companies instead of distributing it amongst
everyone, which the Internet has done.
Insert paranoia as appropriate.
Prevent information from getting to the
people who want it. Filters are a good
stop-gap for now, but I think they will
start to cause problems soon.
Resistance to migration. Competing designs.
Lack of adoption due to cost and effort.
IPv6 has been out for how long? Email has
been forgeable for eternity, PGP has been
available for almost as long - and people
largely don't use it.
A very good chance that spammers would find
a way to exploit the new system same as the
old. Consider, for example, that even with
the authentication available in AIM, the
ammount of spam is tremendous. Amazing how
fast they adapt.
Except NASA is forbidden, by law, from doing this.
I'd heard this several times, but
this is the only current reference to the law I can find (see the fourth and fifth paragraphs). Here is an older article about the restriction before it was passed.
I've been trying for years to send mail to the post office that Apollo 15 left on
the moon. Although this was a notable achievement for the newly reorganized USPS, it doesn't seem to have a ZIP code...
The first mouse had zero buttons. Later refinements from the NLS team added three buttons to the mouse, however. The mouse was originally supposed to have a chording keyboard for the other hand which could have multiple uses.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, Pixar was a spin-off from the computer graphics division at Lucasfilm. It was sold to Steve Jobs at that time in 1986. Disney wasn't involved until 1991 - well after Pixar had made a name for itself.
Official Pixar History
Thats kinda interesting. When I was responsible for hiring people, a cert was a big strike against you. Most of the people with most certs (and there were a few exceptions - but they were rare and not usually in the field I was hiring. I was looking for programmers at the time.) had gone the route of
- Read cert prep book
- Take 1 day seminar on cert
- Take test
- Pass test
and didn't really know anything about the field they had just certified in. Quite honestly, I didn't care about the details of the languages they knew, I needed the followingCertifications offered none of these. Most degrees didn't even equip students to do most of these. I ended up hiring a physics major who knew the basics of programming. And he did better than most of the rest of the team who were CS majors once upon a time.
Of course you can sell your Punch in the Face services. Such services have traditionally gone under names such as
Now, this analogy actually does continue. You, as a sysadmin or someone writing a script that uses DNS, might not really like this service. Just like someone who is trying to take celebrity photographs might not like the Punch-in-the-Face service. But the fact is that this service is provided. And that there are a LOT of people who not only don't see this as a problem - but like it. Or at least think they do.
That is why Verisign thinks they can get away with this - the average person sees a benefit here and sees no drawbacks. The average person watching a boxing match also just sees the benefits and not the drawbacks. Until it is made clear why this isn't as good as it appears, nobody will care. Chances are, nobody will care anyway.
I've been trying to get relatives to fix the Windows DCOM security hole. At least two so far have said "oh! I didn't realize that was a security problem!" They thought the RPC service failing and causing a machine reboot was your everyday "bug", and since it just rebooted the machine (and even gave you 60 seconds to finish up what you were doing!), that it wasn't a big deal.
I think the 60 second thing is seen as a feature - along the lines of "see! Windows knows when its going to crash and lets you save your work first. Like the computer on Star Trek telling you how many seconds until there is a hull breach."
All of them heard the news about a security problem. None of them connected it with the problems they were having.
Finally, to make matters worse, Microsoft's page talks about patching the system, but says nothing about removing the worm. This is problematic since, as noted above, it can sometimes be pretty hard to download the patch if your computer wants to reboot in the middle of the download.
While it was designed for backups, its not exactly designed for restores. I've known a number of people over the years who never realized their backups were failing, and found out the hard way when they needed something in a pinch.
Other media have the advantage that you can access them directly, validate they're actually writing the data correctly, and have more random access to them. Yes, you can do these things with tapes, but its more difficult.
I stand corrected about the details, thank you. But I could certainly imagine Disney being worried about something similar happening again.
Not that DirecTV didn't have their own conflict with Disney about a price hike on a channel (which was resolved after this article was published). Its another example why its in Disney's own best interests to eliminate a middleman that can restrict what they do.
That is why they seem to be on the same side as small data distributors - they see the threat that they can be shut out.
Strangely enough, Disney has been an open source supporter for a while.
The squeak dialect of smalltalk was created at Apple, but run by Alan Kay and his team while they were Disney imagineers. (I never did get an answer if the squeaking mouse was an homage to Apple's mouse or Mickey.)
Their internet group created a set of open source tools used on their webpages called Tea, released it themselves, and now make it available through sourceforge.
You hit it right on the nose at the end. They are afraid that someday AOL will do the same thing that TimeWarner once did - refuse to sign the contract to allow Disney's channels on their cable system. It was about a year or two ago that the two had a standoff, and TimeWarner eventually blinked since they were required to carry ABC.
Disney wants to deal with you directly, since they know how to market to people directly. And they know how to get the money from you directly. They run into problems when they have to deal with a middleman (like AOL-TW) who is also a competitor.
Well, in Houston they did get an energy boom in the 90's. And they messed it up same as they did in the '80s. Enron is the visible example, but all of the energy companies in Houston are suffering as well.
So to continue your analogy - even if we start over with a new idea, it won't work, because we seem to have the infinite capacity to make messes. Any solution to the spam problem that involves starting over would probably also cause one or more of the following (draw the analogies to Houston and Enron if you wish):
Except NASA is forbidden, by law, from doing this.
I'd heard this several times, but this is the only current reference to the law I can find (see the fourth and fifth paragraphs). Here is an older article about the restriction before it was passed.
I've been trying for years to send mail to the post office that Apollo 15 left on the moon. Although this was a notable achievement for the newly reorganized USPS, it doesn't seem to have a ZIP code...
And then... while looking for something unrelated, I ran into this:
StupidaMouse by StupidaWorks.
Looks like someone has modernized the original mouse designs and found a new marketing niche for it.
Mice are supposed to have three buttons, right?
Well, yes and no.
The first mouse had zero buttons. Later refinements from the NLS team added three buttons to the mouse, however. The mouse was originally supposed to have a chording keyboard for the other hand which could have multiple uses.
See a history in pictures from Douglas Engelbart's Bootstrap Alliance for details and more info.