In the long run, the result of the pure market system advocated by some here is that once supplies start running short, prices will increase as the supplies become scarce relative to demand. However, at that point we will already have frittered away 99% of our helium reserves, and it may be that many worthwhile usages will no long be economically feasible
I think you've got some basic facts wrong here, though I'm not sure if I disagree with at least some of your conclusions. We aren't really "running out of helium". There's still huge amounts of it captured in natural gas, most of which we're not even capturing. What's being depleted is the "strategic helium reserve" that the United States created in the 20s.
As far as the helium shortage is concerned, it's not because we've reached "peak helium", far from it. It's not even really caused by "wasteful helium usage", though I suppose you could make an argument this might help alleviate the problem. It's because some companies have gotten out of the business, and others haven't replaced it yet. The other companies haven't replaced them because the people who own the natural gas and the natural gas processing facilities already make so much money off it that trying to make money off helium offers nothing much more than a risk with a small return. They figure, why bother?
It may well still be a failing of capitalism, and "market forces" might not give a very optimum solution here. But this just isn't a case of "we used up all the helium, and now we're screwed". It's more of a case of capitalism not being as fluid and free-flowing as some people assume that it is.
when President Bush championed swithgrass in his State of the Union speech a couple of years ago, and the news folks sorta laughed at him, he was actually right
Well, the news folks were kind of right to laugh at him, as switchgrass isn't really a short term solution to the problem, and we don't really know if it's one of the long term solutions.
The thing no one here is talking about is the fact that cellulosic ethanol just isn't really economically viable with current technology. It may be some day if we can find better enzymes to convert cellulose into sugar and ultimately ethanol or some other fuel.
So no, I think championing a solution that's still at a research stage is not very accurate. Not entirely wrong to be sure, but not he definitely wasn't right.
So really, Bush saying "don't worry, we'll use switchgrass" is a bit like Bush saying "don't worry, we'll just use hydrogen". It's a bit pie-in-the-sky at this particular time. That could change in 5 or 10 years, or it might not.
But, most computers that are accessing things wirelessly will sometimes be taken elsewhere (laptops, etc.)
I'm not referring to the laptop, I'm referring to all the other devices on your network that aren't wireless. Those are often accessible as well over an open WAP, even if they're plugged into the wired network.
So he's saying that this minor increase in risk
My point is these risks AREN'T minor, because it's difficult for the vast majority of people to do what Schneire can do in securing each node.
Everything Schneire says is true.. for Bruce Schneire. Not everyone is as adept as he is in configuring a computer to be secure. I'm OK, but I'm likely not vigilant enough to keep everything as secure as it should be (and thus I have WPA encryption on in my wireless network). The vast majority of the public is just plain terrible, and has no clue how to configure their computers to be secure in an open network.
Securing your wireless network with encryption isn't like flipping a switch, but it's a HELL of a lot easier and more accessible than knowing how to secure each and every device accessible on your network. Having ONE point of entry and configuring that properly is a lot easier to maintain than having multiple, different, changing points that take continued vigilance to remain secure. Is it better to keep each device secure on any network? Sure.. but how many people have the time, patience, knowledge, and ability to do that? Not many.
(it's already begun with Comcasts anti bittorent filtering.)
If AT&T wants to try to start separating the "traffic they like" from the "traffic they don't like", I hope they've got a lot of money to invest in high powered routers, programmers, and experts. The "other side" will just start making that "traffic they don't like" look like "traffic they like". This is basically an un-winnable situation where that the ISPs will lose quite handily.
$2000 per year for some kind of basic support for an application server is *cheap*.
Maybe it is for a fortune 500 company, or maybe it is compared to the expensive non-free app-servers, but for a small business, it's not "cheap". It's "affordable", but it IMO it doesn't make the value proposition.
Jboss already has a free version, and the issues I have with it are pretty minimal. I just don't see getting $2000 of value out of a support option. I was expecting the support options to be in the neighborhood of RHEL, starting at $250 or so. That's supporting an entire enterprise Linux distribution. Especially when you take into account that the open source software (JBoss in this case) has little or no revenue from software sales, and thus the support revenue has to cover both the development cost and the cost of support.
Huh? There's plenty of top quality open source software packages that manage to flourish for decades without end users ponying up large sums of money. Sure, you have to do the support yourself, and that's not costless. I have no problem with paying for support, updates, etc. I've recommended that multiple companies pay for the cheap RHEL support/update cost. I just think starting at $2000 a year for one application that has a "support it yourself" option is ridiculous.
I looked into buying the RH supported version of JBoss recently. The LOWEST priced supported version is $2000 per year! I'm not exactly sure what market RH is going for here, maybe the Fortune 500 and large institutions, but it sure as hell isn't me.
I'll stick with the unsupported free version, thanks. I just can't see getting $2000/year value for just some extra support I'll likely never use anyway.
If you are stupid enough to buy stock in a company, especially a foreign company, based on unsolicited e-mail you received, you deserve to get screwed.
Maybe so, but that doesn't make a scam like this any less of a crime. Even stupid, greedy people have rights. I'm really tired of the attitude a lot of people seem to have on slashdot that anything "stupid" people do is deserving of no sympathy, no protection of the law, etc.
What about the legitimate investors in this company? Do they deserve to have the stock do a roller coaster just because some two bit hood can send out a lot of email? There's more people affected by this sort of scam than a few greedy people trying to make a quick buck off an anonymous stock tip.
Y'know, I liked Altavista a great deal. It was a rare case of a great product getting its block knocked off by an even better one.
I liked Altavista too, and had a similar reaction about it being better than Google until about 2000.
The only quibble I have is that AltaVista died because they started thinking they were a portal like Yahoo, and not a search engine. They didn't figure out targeted ads, turned their site into a Yahoo clone, and did a "me too!" with email. If they'd done what Google did, focus on the search technology, give away better email than Yahoo was giving away at the time, and stop trying to beat Yahoo at being Yahoo, I think Google would still mean "a really big number".
Given that Apple seem to end support after 6-7 years, and there's no evidence that any OSS offering will extend support that far back, why is there suddenly an outcry with Microsoft stopping support file formats which are now over a decade old?
A whole decade eh?
I'm not sure what file format OSS and Apple have dropped that are older than 1997. But just off the top of my head I'd guess that plain old ascii format with CR/LF is 25 years old at least. GIF is more than 20 years old. There's plenty of OSS, closed source software, even Microsoft software that supports these formats.
Your excuse that these formats are "over a decade old" is pretty lame. Do you really think people don't have old files they want to read 5-10 years later?
I've had the idea to use all this wondrous DSP technology and massive amounts of CPU power and storage to recreate the phone network circa 1982 - a phreaker's version, as close to the real thing as possible, where you'd use a blue box to get around, and find loops, etc. Think of it as an audio adventure game. I don't have the DSP talent to make it happen though.
It doesn't sound all that difficult. You wouldn't really need to know anything about DSPs, just take some code from Asterisk, or another free PBX software to detect DTMF. Build some infra-structure around it, and make your game.
The article I read was about the second case you're talking about. Unreasonable discrimination based on legal activities outside the workplace.
You seem to have made up your own article entirely. I didn't read anything about convicted fraudsters, or teacher pornstars. Can you point us towards the article to which you're responding too?
Engineers are trained to build on experience, and they expect their experiences to add to their value synergistically as the years pass. The idea that past experience could have negative value was a threat to their personal credos and their career strategy.
In general I agree. I just think too many people aren't trained to think of the environment constantly changing, and having to adapt to a new environment. The thing to get really good at is adaption, rather than getting really good at one particular belief that "memory is expensive", or "the network is unreliable" etc. I do tend to think there's still SOME credo's that change in the environment doesn't affect. Like say "complexity is to be avoided". I just think one needs to take a few steps back from the problem and not assume knowledge is bad, just that knowledge and experience are based upon assumptions, and to constantly challenge those assumptions.
Every time a bridge collapses or some other engineering disaster occurs, the public demands that we learn lessons and never ever commit that error again. After 2,000 years of that, how much innovation can you expect?
People have differing (and often times opposing) goals. People want bridges safer, but they also want them cheaper. The 35W bridge in Minneapolis is a good example of this. It was built during a time when engineers thought they could build bridges with less steel, lower costs, etc and still have the bridge be safe. Obviously that didn't work out so well.
Anyway, to address your second assertion "how much innovation can you expect" follows from an incorrect premise. That there's some finite quantity of "innovation" that's depleted by the iterative process. That's just not true. As we learn more, we accomplish more. We may not get EVERYTHING we want, but innovation and abilities do increase.
Yeah, leave it to science to try to replace the one part of my life that I really, unconditionally adore.
"Science" isn't trying to replace that, people are trying to do that. Science is just the tool used to accomplish it.
If you want to blame anything, blame the motivation people have to sleep less and less. The research is funded by the military for pilots, but the interest from the rest of the public comes from that.
The average screen writer makes very little money in the first place, then to deny them any of the profits from redistribution in a digital form on the internet is just stealing.
Actually from what I understand, the average writer for television, movies, or cable makes a LOT of money when they're working. But the work is usually not steady, with large periods of unemployment. I'd bet residuals help pay the bills during those times of unemployment. (Which makes them all the more important)
I find it funny that the article makes it sound like Bitdefender is the greatest anti-virus software. About a year ago I found it caused at least 3 separate problems at two different businesses. It wound up costing one of the businesses about a thousand dollars to discover it was the anti-virus software causing a problem. No anti-virus software is perfect.. but that's quite a bad track record in my experience.
I think the different systems, operated by different countries' militaries, will NOT cheerfully work together to give you a better fix on your position.
I fail to see how it would be possible for the two systems to be made to not work together. More data points is always going to give you better information. If I measure the length of something using three different methods, each giving me a 10% error, I can always combine the three readings and obtain a better answer than just one. If I remember my statistics correctly, the errors can be made to cancel each other out.
The fact that someone has already made a receiver that does exactly this makes your statement hard to understand.
Unfortunately, while hard-hitting investigative journalism is very necessary to the continued functioning of society, it is not something which is profitable.
This is simply not true. It IS profitable. It's simply not as profitable as some people would like.
No, it's NOT a free market, nor has it ever been. There's the Sherman anti-trust laws for one, and FCC restrictions on ownership of newspapers and television stations in the same market for another. We can argue about whether that's "good" or "bad", but the market sure as hell ain't free. Why should there be some kind of welfare state for newspapers where they have to be supported externally
Huh? Who's proposing that? You I guess. It's pretty easy to knock down ideas that you invented for that sole purpose. Stop trying to control the conversation by inventing it. You're essentially trolling, just in a much more sophisticated way that most trolls.
Who wants to go outside and dig their paper out of the snow to read yesterday's news when they can go online and get what's happening right now?
People who don't want to have to sit in front of a computer to do so? Paper isn't such a bad technology.
All the news media in recent times has become, frankly, a laughing stock, but newspapers it seems have held onto the most integrity (not that that's saying much). More importantly, we need someone who can pay reporters to investigate the government, and bloggers just aren't going to cut it.
And that's why newspapers will survive. We need paid people that are going to do the legwork and investigation. Where do you go to get news on the internet? As you say, the print media are the ones with the best stories. Not everyone might subscribe the the paper edition, but they'll still go to the website. Newspapers really make money off advertising anyway, not subscriptions.
The real problem with newspapers is just what Craig said. Investors expect really high profit margins of 10-30%. They aren't going out of business, but the business is certainly changing.
But if you had pictures hanging on your wall depicting child pornography then yes you would be reported
What if I was writing a fictional story about a child pornographer, and the plumber decided to read my novel? The plumber assumes it's a journal entry, calls the cops, and my house is raided. Is that an invasion of privacy? Was the raid legal? The plumber had no reason to read the journal, it wasn't in plain site, etc.
My point isn't really to talk about this specific case, but to address what I think the OP was totally incorrect about. That we have no expectation of privacy when bringing in a PC to a tech to repair.
There seems to be a belief on slashdot that if you're an idiot, you deserve whatever fate has befallen you. I have a basic problem with this attitude. The guy may not have been too bright about this, and he's definitely a criminal. But being dumb doesn't make you any more guilty, or any more deserving of punishment. I have no expectation of privacy when I drop my computer off with a tech.
While I know that a tech can look at any file on the computer he/she wishes, this doesn't mean there's no expectation of privacy. If I let someone into my house to fix the drain, that doesn't mean it's OK for them to go searching through my house, read my private journals and look through my medical records.
In you scenario, would it be legally OK for a tech to reveal your client details to a 3rd party? What if I have medical test results on my computer, would it be legal for a tech to reveal my medical records on his/her blog? I'd say both those things should have some expectation of privacy.
Don't assume that just because someone committed a crime, or "is an idiot" that they have no expectation of privacy. The "I needed to burn some files" excuse is pretty lame. The tech was probably looking through the files for his own purposes, not to burn something.
Most likely this statement is just a weak attempt to save face.
No, most likely this is a statement as part of the legal agreement. It might contain something like "ThinkSecret will not make any deragatory or defamatory remarks regaring Apple Computer Inc."
I on the other hand am under no such legal obligation. What Apple fans need to remember is that Apple is a big corporation that'll do whatever they like to defend what they see as their interest. That includes silencing critics when they're able to. In many ways Microsoft has been a better player in terms of free speech. I don't recall them suing anyone over spoiling the CEO's "big surprise". (Which is really what this is all about, Steve Jobs personal vendetta). That doesn't mean Microsoft doesn't exert the same controls over their product.. they just tend to take the "keep your friends close, and your enemies closer" approach.
I'm not a datacenter kind of guy, so help me out. If you've got 10 G Ethernet, then why would you want to run FC rather than iSCSI?
I'm not a datacenter guy either, but I am a programmer.
My guess is simply just avoiding the IP stack. I'd guess an IP stack would add some latency, definitely adds some overhead, and most implementations are unlikely to be well optimized for extremely high bandwidth links (10 Gbit/sec).
FCoE avoids the IP stack entirely. If done properly, it can avoid all of the above problems. It would limit you to a single LAN of course, so you won't be crossing any subnets. But then most routers don't really have the capability of delivering extremely high throughput anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
In the long run, the result of the pure market system advocated by some here is that once supplies start running short, prices will increase as the supplies become scarce relative to demand. However, at that point we will already have frittered away 99% of our helium reserves, and it may be that many worthwhile usages will no long be economically feasible
I think you've got some basic facts wrong here, though I'm not sure if I disagree with at least some of your conclusions. We aren't really "running out of helium". There's still huge amounts of it captured in natural gas, most of which we're not even capturing. What's being depleted is the "strategic helium reserve" that the United States created in the 20s.
As far as the helium shortage is concerned, it's not because we've reached "peak helium", far from it. It's not even really caused by "wasteful helium usage", though I suppose you could make an argument this might help alleviate the problem. It's because some companies have gotten out of the business, and others haven't replaced it yet. The other companies haven't replaced them because the people who own the natural gas and the natural gas processing facilities already make so much money off it that trying to make money off helium offers nothing much more than a risk with a small return. They figure, why bother?
It may well still be a failing of capitalism, and "market forces" might not give a very optimum solution here. But this just isn't a case of "we used up all the helium, and now we're screwed". It's more of a case of capitalism not being as fluid and free-flowing as some people assume that it is.
But cut him some slack on this one: he said sawgrass, he was mocked. Turns out his point was viable.
Not really. The truth is it's not yet viable and may never be. Sorry if you like definitive answers, but those don't exist yet.
when President Bush championed swithgrass in his State of the Union speech a couple of years ago, and the news folks sorta laughed at him, he was actually right
Well, the news folks were kind of right to laugh at him, as switchgrass isn't really a short term solution to the problem, and we don't really know if it's one of the long term solutions.
The thing no one here is talking about is the fact that cellulosic ethanol just isn't really economically viable with current technology. It may be some day if we can find better enzymes to convert cellulose into sugar and ultimately ethanol or some other fuel.
So no, I think championing a solution that's still at a research stage is not very accurate. Not entirely wrong to be sure, but not he definitely wasn't right.
So really, Bush saying "don't worry, we'll use switchgrass" is a bit like Bush saying "don't worry, we'll just use hydrogen". It's a bit pie-in-the-sky at this particular time. That could change in 5 or 10 years, or it might not.
But, most computers that are accessing things wirelessly will sometimes be taken elsewhere (laptops, etc.)
I'm not referring to the laptop, I'm referring to all the other devices on your network that aren't wireless. Those are often accessible as well over an open WAP, even if they're plugged into the wired network.
So he's saying that this minor increase in risk
My point is these risks AREN'T minor, because it's difficult for the vast majority of people to do what Schneire can do in securing each node.
Everything Schneire says is true.. for Bruce Schneire. Not everyone is as adept as he is in configuring a computer to be secure. I'm OK, but I'm likely not vigilant enough to keep everything as secure as it should be (and thus I have WPA encryption on in my wireless network). The vast majority of the public is just plain terrible, and has no clue how to configure their computers to be secure in an open network.
Securing your wireless network with encryption isn't like flipping a switch, but it's a HELL of a lot easier and more accessible than knowing how to secure each and every device accessible on your network. Having ONE point of entry and configuring that properly is a lot easier to maintain than having multiple, different, changing points that take continued vigilance to remain secure. Is it better to keep each device secure on any network? Sure.. but how many people have the time, patience, knowledge, and ability to do that? Not many.
(it's already begun with Comcasts anti bittorent filtering.)
If AT&T wants to try to start separating the "traffic they like" from the "traffic they don't like", I hope they've got a lot of money to invest in high powered routers, programmers, and experts. The "other side" will just start making that "traffic they don't like" look like "traffic they like". This is basically an un-winnable situation where that the ISPs will lose quite handily.
$2000 per year for some kind of basic support for an application server is *cheap*.
Maybe it is for a fortune 500 company, or maybe it is compared to the expensive non-free app-servers, but for a small business, it's not "cheap". It's "affordable", but it IMO it doesn't make the value proposition.
Jboss already has a free version, and the issues I have with it are pretty minimal. I just don't see getting $2000 of value out of a support option. I was expecting the support options to be in the neighborhood of RHEL, starting at $250 or so. That's supporting an entire enterprise Linux distribution.
Especially when you take into account that
the open source software (JBoss in this case)
has little or no revenue from software sales, and thus
the support revenue has to cover both
the development cost and the cost of support.
Huh? There's plenty of top quality open source software packages that manage to flourish for decades without end users ponying up large sums of money. Sure, you have to do the support yourself, and that's not costless. I have no problem with paying for support, updates, etc. I've recommended that multiple companies pay for the cheap RHEL support/update cost. I just think starting at $2000 a year for one application that has a "support it yourself" option is ridiculous.
I looked into buying the RH supported version of JBoss recently. The LOWEST priced supported version is $2000 per year! I'm not exactly sure what market RH is going for here, maybe the Fortune 500 and large institutions, but it sure as hell isn't me.
I'll stick with the unsupported free version, thanks. I just can't see getting $2000/year value for just some extra support I'll likely never use anyway.
If you are stupid enough to buy stock in a company, especially a foreign company, based on unsolicited e-mail you received, you deserve to get screwed.
Maybe so, but that doesn't make a scam like this any less of a crime. Even stupid, greedy people have rights. I'm really tired of the attitude a lot of people seem to have on slashdot that anything "stupid" people do is deserving of no sympathy, no protection of the law, etc.
What about the legitimate investors in this company? Do they deserve to have the stock do a roller coaster just because some two bit hood can send out a lot of email? There's more people affected by this sort of scam than a few greedy people trying to make a quick buck off an anonymous stock tip.
Y'know, I liked Altavista a great deal. It was a rare case of a great product getting its block knocked off by an even better one.
I liked Altavista too, and had a similar reaction about it being better than Google until about 2000.
The only quibble I have is that AltaVista died because they started thinking they were a portal like Yahoo, and not a search engine. They didn't figure out targeted ads, turned their site into a Yahoo clone, and did a "me too!" with email. If they'd done what Google did, focus on the search technology, give away better email than Yahoo was giving away at the time, and stop trying to beat Yahoo at being Yahoo, I think Google would still mean "a really big number".
Given that Apple seem to end support after 6-7 years, and there's no evidence that any OSS offering will extend support that far back, why is there suddenly an outcry with Microsoft stopping support file formats which are now over a decade old?
A whole decade eh?
I'm not sure what file format OSS and Apple have dropped that are older than 1997. But just off the top of my head I'd guess that plain old ascii format with CR/LF is 25 years old at least. GIF is more than 20 years old. There's plenty of OSS, closed source software, even Microsoft software that supports these formats.
Your excuse that these formats are "over a decade old" is pretty lame. Do you really think people don't have old files they want to read 5-10 years later?
I've had the idea to use all this wondrous DSP technology and massive amounts of CPU power and storage to recreate the phone network circa 1982 - a phreaker's version, as close to the real thing as possible, where you'd use a blue box to get around, and find loops, etc. Think of it as an audio adventure game. I don't have the DSP talent to make it happen though.
It doesn't sound all that difficult. You wouldn't really need to know anything about DSPs, just take some code from Asterisk, or another free PBX software to detect DTMF. Build some infra-structure around it, and make your game.
The article I read was about the second case you're talking about. Unreasonable discrimination based on legal activities outside the workplace.
You seem to have made up your own article entirely. I didn't read anything about convicted fraudsters, or teacher pornstars. Can you point us towards the article to which you're responding too?
Engineers are trained to build on experience, and they expect their experiences to add to their value synergistically as the years pass. The idea that past experience could have negative value was a threat to their personal credos and their career strategy.
In general I agree. I just think too many people aren't trained to think of the environment constantly changing, and having to adapt to a new environment. The thing to get really good at is adaption, rather than getting really good at one particular belief that "memory is expensive", or "the network is unreliable" etc. I do tend to think there's still SOME credo's that change in the environment doesn't affect. Like say "complexity is to be avoided". I just think one needs to take a few steps back from the problem and not assume knowledge is bad, just that knowledge and experience are based upon assumptions, and to constantly challenge those assumptions.
Every time a bridge collapses or some other engineering disaster occurs, the public demands that we learn lessons and never ever commit that error again. After 2,000 years of that, how much innovation can you expect?
People have differing (and often times opposing) goals. People want bridges safer, but they also want them cheaper. The 35W bridge in Minneapolis is a good example of this. It was built during a time when engineers thought they could build bridges with less steel, lower costs, etc and still have the bridge be safe. Obviously that didn't work out so well.
Anyway, to address your second assertion "how much innovation can you expect" follows from an incorrect premise. That there's some finite quantity of "innovation" that's depleted by the iterative process. That's just not true. As we learn more, we accomplish more. We may not get EVERYTHING we want, but innovation and abilities do increase.
Yeah, leave it to science to try to replace the one part of my life that I really, unconditionally adore.
"Science" isn't trying to replace that, people are trying to do that. Science is just the tool used to accomplish it.
If you want to blame anything, blame the motivation people have to sleep less and less. The research is funded by the military for pilots, but the interest from the rest of the public comes from that.
The average screen writer makes very little money in the first place, then to deny them any of the profits from redistribution in a digital form on the internet is just stealing.
Actually from what I understand, the average writer for television, movies, or cable makes a LOT of money when they're working. But the work is usually not steady, with large periods of unemployment. I'd bet residuals help pay the bills during those times of unemployment. (Which makes them all the more important)
I find it funny that the article makes it sound like Bitdefender is the greatest anti-virus software. About a year ago I found it caused at least 3 separate problems at two different businesses. It wound up costing one of the businesses about a thousand dollars to discover it was the anti-virus software causing a problem. No anti-virus software is perfect.. but that's quite a bad track record in my experience.
I think the different systems, operated by different countries' militaries, will NOT cheerfully work together to give you a better fix on your position.
I fail to see how it would be possible for the two systems to be made to not work together. More data points is always going to give you better information. If I measure the length of something using three different methods, each giving me a 10% error, I can always combine the three readings and obtain a better answer than just one. If I remember my statistics correctly, the errors can be made to cancel each other out.
The fact that someone has already made a receiver that does exactly this makes your statement hard to understand.
Unfortunately, while hard-hitting investigative journalism is very necessary to the continued functioning of society, it is not something which is profitable.
This is simply not true. It IS profitable. It's simply not as profitable as some people would like.
It's a free market out there.
No, it's NOT a free market, nor has it ever been. There's the Sherman anti-trust laws for one, and FCC restrictions on ownership of newspapers and television stations in the same market for another. We can argue about whether that's "good" or "bad", but the market sure as hell ain't free.
Why should there be some kind of welfare state for newspapers where they have to be supported externally
Huh? Who's proposing that? You I guess. It's pretty easy to knock down ideas that you invented for that sole purpose. Stop trying to control the conversation by inventing it. You're essentially trolling, just in a much more sophisticated way that most trolls.
Who wants to go outside and dig their paper out of the snow to read yesterday's news when they can go online and get what's happening right now?
People who don't want to have to sit in front of a computer to do so? Paper isn't such a bad technology.
All the news media in recent times has become, frankly, a laughing stock, but newspapers it seems have held onto the most integrity (not that that's saying much). More importantly, we need someone who can pay reporters to investigate the government, and bloggers just aren't going to cut it.
And that's why newspapers will survive. We need paid people that are going to do the legwork and investigation. Where do you go to get news on the internet? As you say, the print media are the ones with the best stories. Not everyone might subscribe the the paper edition, but they'll still go to the website. Newspapers really make money off advertising anyway, not subscriptions.
The real problem with newspapers is just what Craig said. Investors expect really high profit margins of 10-30%. They aren't going out of business, but the business is certainly changing.
But if you had pictures hanging on your wall depicting child pornography then yes you would be reported
What if I was writing a fictional story about a child pornographer, and the plumber decided to read my novel? The plumber assumes it's a journal entry, calls the cops, and my house is raided. Is that an invasion of privacy? Was the raid legal? The plumber had no reason to read the journal, it wasn't in plain site, etc.
My point isn't really to talk about this specific case, but to address what I think the OP was totally incorrect about. That we have no expectation of privacy when bringing in a PC to a tech to repair.
The guy is an idiot
There seems to be a belief on slashdot that if you're an idiot, you deserve whatever fate has befallen you. I have a basic problem with this attitude. The guy may not have been too bright about this, and he's definitely a criminal. But being dumb doesn't make you any more guilty, or any more deserving of punishment.
I have no expectation of privacy when I drop my computer off with a tech.
While I know that a tech can look at any file on the computer he/she wishes, this doesn't mean there's no expectation of privacy. If I let someone into my house to fix the drain, that doesn't mean it's OK for them to go searching through my house, read my private journals and look through my medical records.
In you scenario, would it be legally OK for a tech to reveal your client details to a 3rd party? What if I have medical test results on my computer, would it be legal for a tech to reveal my medical records on his/her blog? I'd say both those things should have some expectation of privacy.
Don't assume that just because someone committed a crime, or "is an idiot" that they have no expectation of privacy. The "I needed to burn some files" excuse is pretty lame. The tech was probably looking through the files for his own purposes, not to burn something.
Most likely this statement is just a weak attempt to save face.
No, most likely this is a statement as part of the legal agreement. It might contain something like "ThinkSecret will not make any deragatory or defamatory remarks regaring Apple Computer Inc."
I on the other hand am under no such legal obligation. What Apple fans need to remember is that Apple is a big corporation that'll do whatever they like to defend what they see as their interest. That includes silencing critics when they're able to. In many ways Microsoft has been a better player in terms of free speech. I don't recall them suing anyone over spoiling the CEO's "big surprise". (Which is really what this is all about, Steve Jobs personal vendetta). That doesn't mean Microsoft doesn't exert the same controls over their product.. they just tend to take the "keep your friends close, and your enemies closer" approach.
I'm not a datacenter kind of guy, so help me out. If you've got 10 G Ethernet, then why would you want to run FC rather than iSCSI?
I'm not a datacenter guy either, but I am a programmer.
My guess is simply just avoiding the IP stack. I'd guess an IP stack would add some latency, definitely adds some overhead, and most implementations are unlikely to be well optimized for extremely high bandwidth links (10 Gbit/sec).
FCoE avoids the IP stack entirely. If done properly, it can avoid all of the above problems. It would limit you to a single LAN of course, so you won't be crossing any subnets. But then most routers don't really have the capability of delivering extremely high throughput anyway.