For those who didn't read the article: the bill does say...Americans should enjoy the right to share recorded broadcast TV over their home networks, make "short excerpts" available over the Internet, and that news programming generally should not be flagged...
Holy Crap! They actualy agree that I should be able to share recorded TV shows over my home networks? That has got to be the most reasonable thing I've seen from the gov't in AGES. It's got to be a mistake on their part right?
I can't find a reference to it anywhere, so it may just be urban legend, but I heard that there was a very real attempt to kidnap Bill Gates mother about 10 years ago, that was broken up at the last moment by the police. Even if it's just rumor, I don't resent these guys needing to feel secure -- and it's obviously not just themselves. Is it fair for Jeff Bezos' siblings to think that they might be targetted?
You'd have to think that with money like the extremely wealthy and extremely popular have, they have very legit security concerns. That's why I didn't like the pie episode. Hate the guy all you want (and in my professional life, I really do despise Bill and MSFT), but whatever you might think of a person, there's no reason to make hi, fear for his life. And for me, when I saw the pie movie, there's a second on Bills face when it looks like he's has the epiphany "Fuck, I'm a potential target for [terrorists | anarchists | crazed anti-indutrialists | ELFers | PETA | someone who thinks I'm a symbol], and this person is about to hit me with something." I saw a real fear of anticipated violence.
Ok, you LIKE this one better, but do you understand the point of the OP was about google and censorship and the countries? I think you actually could be agreeing with the OP -- Waco was indeed a complete FU and violation of the rights of the indivuduals -- but it was publicized and things have changed (although not enough for me). Certainly the US government is not telling Google not to display search results for david koresh waco.
So if your point was that it's cool to live in a place where the gov't fuck-up make front page news, I completely agree with you -- but then why compare it to the US version of the Tienamen search?
I have recently begun to think about the coming crisis in bandwidth. You correctly point out people serving their own content. With Apple putting AVChat in every computer, and other computer makes about to follow suit, everyone who WAS IMing is about to be chatting live. More video on demand, ipod downloads, you name it. There is about to be a bandwidth shortage. And hording won't do you any good.
Listen, if you say a treo sucks, that's FUD. The Treo 650 obviously does not suck -- check out any of the gazillion websites with treo users -- there is a fanatical support base out there -- who feel as strongly about the Treo as you do about your blackberry. You think the Blackberry is better? Cool, talk about how it does X, Y and Z well. To say the Treo crashes all the time is obviously a personal experience.
I can tell you I love my Treo, and I also had both for a while, but I always had to have my Palm with me for the things it did, and though I agree, email is superior on the blackberry, it's not good enough that I want to lug around another device. With my 4g SD card it's a better mp3 player than an Ipod Nano (well, better for me because I think ITunes is the devil). I have a a kickass GPS on it, so I can fly from city to city, and be able to rent a car and get to wherever the heck I need to be. With pssh I can take care of things I need to on servers anywhere, and with the browser (which also is not the best in the wireless space, but good enough for me) I can read my bloglists while riding in on the train
...Ubuntu has in excess of 25% of the Linux desktop market which compares to number two SUSE with 11.4% of the market....
Have there been any really good studies showing this? I'm aware of a few very small samplnigs that show something like this, but nothing that was statistically significant. I'd be grateful if anyone knows of a good study showing usages. Anecdotally, Red Hat dominates my group of friends -- if we knew about a survey, we'd probably skew it pretty good too.
...When the axis of maximum profits kills a muslim over there, ALL that guys relatives want revenge...
Firstly, you are a bigot to imply that noone who lives in the middle east can be reasonable, and that they are only savages who can only understand the idea of an eye for an eye.
Secondly, you are forgetting our secret weapon -- Jessica Simpson. Seriously. Our culture is so attractive and appealing, and that's what fundamentalist islam is afraid of. We want to bring women's sufferage to the world, (and we will) and fundamentalist islam is directly opposed to this. The problem for the islamists is that their women as a whole want to vote and not be 2nd ckass citizens. Once women have power in the middle east, the middle east will have harmonius relations with the west.
Maybe you are thinking of smart robots, or maybe I am completely overestimating where robotics is. I'm worried about the dumb robots. So if someone could answer this, I'd appreciate the knowledge. Could today's technology create a robot that could shoot a rifle and hit a moving target? If a computer can shoot down an artillery shell with a laser I wonder if we could make a machine that could navigate to a lat/long coordinate and shoots at everything that moves. Make it the size of a truck, load it with 1,000,000 bullets.
Are you guys telling me that such a machine could not be built in the next 5 years?
The thing is, if you read Why the future doesn't need us, or if you even think about it a little bit -- the possibility of killing machines being a real threat to humanity is not that far fetched.
We have done a good job (IMHO) of keeping our nuclear power plants relatively safe, but that's mainly because the kid down the street can't build a nuclear power plant. But he can build a robot.
And imagine the robot you could build now with the resources of a rogue state. Or even a "good" state worried about it's security. Now imagine what they'll be able to build in 20 years. I could easily imagine Taiwan thinking that a deployable, independant (not remotely controlled) infantry killing robot might make a lot of sense for them in a conflict with China. And Taiwan's clearly got the ability to build state of the art stuff.
I'm not a Luddite, I'm not even saying don't make killer robots. I'm just saying that just as the guys working on The Manhatten Project were incredibly careful -- In fact alot of their genius is in the fact they did NOT accidentally blow themselves up. Programmers working on the next generation devices need to realize that there is a very credible threat that mankind could build a machine that could malfunction and kill millions.
There is no doubt in my mind that within 20 years, the U.S. Military will deploy robots with the ability to kill in places that infantry used to go. Robots would seem very likely to be incredibly effective as fighter pilots as well. Given these things as inevitable, isn't it prudent to be talking NOW about what steps are going to be taken to make sure that we don't unleash a terminator? I personally don't trust governments to be good about this either -- I'd like to make sure that the programmers are at least THINKING about these issues.
From the article..."Island Def Jam offered a discount to
retailers who stocked the album, allowing it to sell at stores like
Target for $7.98 last week" This
is a great example of someone making up stupid numbers. The fact
that more CD's were sold because there no downloads sold makes
complete sense. If these people, who were going to legitimately buy
a CD could not buy it online, then they would buy it in the store.
If they were allowed to buy it online, would they buy it TWICE? The
important figure (which are not revealed in this meticulously
researched article) is which way did they make more money or which
way did they move more units. The fact that they sell less CD's when
there is another format to buy the media should not be a surprise to
anyone (except for record execs, who can't count).
...Information doesn't want to be free, the law of supply and demand just dictates that it will eventually be free in a digital world...
I agree with you completely here, but I disagree on your premise that there will continue to be a market for big budget films. Films are going to get copied and distributed -- as much as people want to complain -- it's inevitable -- as long as technological advances continue, people will put those advances to the usages they want.
And the theater environment is rapidly losing it's appeal for me -- I'd MUCH rather watch a movie at home on my projector than in a theater with people who can't keep quiet during a movie, can't keep their cellphones off inspite of all the warnings and can't control their bladders for 90 mins. So, for me, the incentive to find a version of a movie that I can watch at home has little to do with $$$ and much to do with convenience. And (imho) that's going to be true for everyone as home entertainment centers become cheaper and better. It used to be that there was something to going to the theater for the big screen experience. With that going away, I can't see people really interested in the cinema much at all. Someone let me know if they think people will still be "going" to the movies in 25 years in Japan or the US.
So with the Cinema viewers prefering to watch at home, home distribution is the wave of the future -- and I agree with you again, that will lead to inevitable copyright infringement. So, there's really a window of opportunity for the creators of a film to make money. In the first weeks of a movie's life -- they'll have the best version of it, and that's their chance to make money on it -- as you said, supply and demand. It will eventually be cracked though, and then they'll have to compete against the crack -- agani supply and demand. Certainly the studios will find ways to monetize their product -- that's what they do best -- but if the end sum figure is going to be what a movie can make in a competetive market -- people will not be willing to invest big $$$. These movies have these huge budgets because they have a hope of return on nivestment. Without that hope, the investments will go away, and with them the big budgets.
Fortunately for Hollywood, there are easy places to trim costs. Salaries are crazy, as you mentioned. The entertainment unions are going to be broken because the studios will have to break them. And there will be no more $30M paydays for an actor for one movie. Which is fine by me -- once again, it's supply and demand.
I don't know that I'd call it "Screwing Over" but to be fair, but it is deceptive advertizing. I'm not a huge fan of class action lawsuits, but I do trust them to take care of things like this. Everyone should make sure that they get their piece of the settlement, and feel free to organize and sue again until their practices are actually outlined.
I wonder though if my habits screwed everyone...my general netflix usage is DVDShrinking the disc as soon as I get it (my mail gets delivered about 2:00pm) and then walking it down to the Post Office for the 5:00pm outgoing mail collection. I've wondered if this sets off any flags, and I guess it does. I think maybe I'll throw a 24 hour delay into there.
But seriously, you need to use this internet thing. Get your resume everywhere it can be online. I'm assuming you're not in the tech field, otherwise you'd have people calling you. Consider a head hunter, but don't take one that you have to pay. A good head hunter will take a commision from your future employer.
Network. Email everyone you can (and by can, I mean everyone who won't get mad at you for eamiling them that you need work). Try getting into some networking groups like Friendster and LinkedIn.com.
Get a Blog and start writing in it, and include the fact that your looking for work and your trials and tribulations etc. It worked wonders for Odd Todd and who knows who might read your blog. Of course to advertise you're gonna have to read/post in others blogs. Do so wisely.
Most importantly -- believe that you can make it happen and you will. But the key is you have to make it happen -- otherwise it won't.
My wife is a DBA with a no-shit CS degree. I'm a software guy -- we work for the same giant corporation (60k+ employees) but in completely seperate offices. I was able to get a firewall exception to ssh into one of my servers by filling out the paper work and submitting it. 2 days later, I had my fw exception.
When she applied for a firewall exception for ssh to one of her servers they first told her it was impossible. Then when she told them that KNEW it was possible, they said that she didn't understand how the firewall worked. And this was really just by the first or second line guys in the IT dept, who are low enough on the totem pole that they answer the help desk telephones.
Finally she got through to someone who at least had some technical ability and was willing to listen to her, but then when she wanted the exception on a non-standard port because 22 is just scanned for too much, they again told her she didn't know what she was talking about: "SSH has to be on port 22." And the deputy CIO of our company is a woman. It was nauseating. The sexism women experience in regards to hiring is one thing, but in terms of dealing with their peers it's shocking how much CRAP she gets..."You can't possibly understand how that works."
When she would not be denied, they wanted to create a "SSH Bastion" which would be the only machine that people would be allowed to SSH into. Again complete crap that I did not have to go through. She refused to go along with the bastion, saying that it was crazy to have a central point of access for everyone since that meant only one machine had to be compromised. Finally she got what she wanted--direct SSH into her own server.
And 3 weeks later IT sent out an email saying that someone had been careless with their password to the SSH Bastion and all the accounts on there were compromised.
It's a triple edged sword for a woman, because if you complain about the sexism, you're a whiny bitch. But if you don't, it doesn't get any better
From the article: Nokia includes a holographic seal of authenticity on its batteries, along with a blacked-out area users can scratch off to reveal a serial number they can check online. Our unit had such a seal, but when we scratched off the covering to verify its number, nothing was underneath. Nokia confirmed that the battery was a counterfeit. The company also identified a second battery we purchased as counterfeit; that one's source is still under investigation
To take it a step further -- rather than a file that's online, how about a site that I could store all of MY insecure passwords so then I'd have access to them from any computer! And, if there were a browser plugin so I could just r-click and have the username and password filled out!!! Damn that WOULD be cool!
Slashdot Mirror
would be if they'd remove admin rights from friggin Outlook
Not every business has shares and/or shareholders. And what if I am one of them?
Holy Crap! They actualy agree that I should be able to share recorded TV shows over my home networks? That has got to be the most reasonable thing I've seen from the gov't in AGES. It's got to be a mistake on their part right?
You'd have to think that with money like the extremely wealthy and extremely popular have, they have very legit security concerns. That's why I didn't like the pie episode. Hate the guy all you want (and in my professional life, I really do despise Bill and MSFT), but whatever you might think of a person, there's no reason to make hi, fear for his life. And for me, when I saw the pie movie, there's a second on Bills face when it looks like he's has the epiphany "Fuck, I'm a potential target for [terrorists | anarchists | crazed anti-indutrialists | ELFers | PETA | someone who thinks I'm a symbol], and this person is about to hit me with something." I saw a real fear of anticipated violence.
And for me that's over the line.
Holy crap that was funny. Sucks I just blew my mod points! Ah -- someone will get here.
I concider writely the cream of the crop -- which is probably why Google snatched them up.
So if your point was that it's cool to live in a place where the gov't fuck-up make front page news, I completely agree with you -- but then why compare it to the US version of the Tienamen search?
I have recently begun to think about the coming crisis in bandwidth. You correctly point out people serving their own content. With Apple putting AVChat in every computer, and other computer makes about to follow suit, everyone who WAS IMing is about to be chatting live. More video on demand, ipod downloads, you name it. There is about to be a bandwidth shortage. And hording won't do you any good.
I can tell you I love my Treo, and I also had both for a while, but I always had to have my Palm with me for the things it did, and though I agree, email is superior on the blackberry, it's not good enough that I want to lug around another device. With my 4g SD card it's a better mp3 player than an Ipod Nano (well, better for me because I think ITunes is the devil). I have a a kickass GPS on it, so I can fly from city to city, and be able to rent a car and get to wherever the heck I need to be. With pssh I can take care of things I need to on servers anywhere, and with the browser (which also is not the best in the wireless space, but good enough for me) I can read my bloglists while riding in on the train
Ok. So I think those numbers are much to small to actually be significantly important.
Have there been any really good studies showing this? I'm aware of a few very small samplnigs that show something like this, but nothing that was statistically significant. I'd be grateful if anyone knows of a good study showing usages. Anecdotally, Red Hat dominates my group of friends -- if we knew about a survey, we'd probably skew it pretty good too.
Firstly, you are a bigot to imply that noone who lives in the middle east can be reasonable, and that they are only savages who can only understand the idea of an eye for an eye.
Secondly, you are forgetting our secret weapon -- Jessica Simpson. Seriously. Our culture is so attractive and appealing, and that's what fundamentalist islam is afraid of. We want to bring women's sufferage to the world, (and we will) and fundamentalist islam is directly opposed to this. The problem for the islamists is that their women as a whole want to vote and not be 2nd ckass citizens. Once women have power in the middle east, the middle east will have harmonius relations with the west.
Are you guys telling me that such a machine could not be built in the next 5 years?
We have done a good job (IMHO) of keeping our nuclear power plants relatively safe, but that's mainly because the kid down the street can't build a nuclear power plant. But he can build a robot.
And imagine the robot you could build now with the resources of a rogue state. Or even a "good" state worried about it's security. Now imagine what they'll be able to build in 20 years. I could easily imagine Taiwan thinking that a deployable, independant (not remotely controlled) infantry killing robot might make a lot of sense for them in a conflict with China. And Taiwan's clearly got the ability to build state of the art stuff.
I'm not a Luddite, I'm not even saying don't make killer robots. I'm just saying that just as the guys working on The Manhatten Project were incredibly careful -- In fact alot of their genius is in the fact they did NOT accidentally blow themselves up. Programmers working on the next generation devices need to realize that there is a very credible threat that mankind could build a machine that could malfunction and kill millions.
There is no doubt in my mind that within 20 years, the U.S. Military will deploy robots with the ability to kill in places that infantry used to go. Robots would seem very likely to be incredibly effective as fighter pilots as well. Given these things as inevitable, isn't it prudent to be talking NOW about what steps are going to be taken to make sure that we don't unleash a terminator? I personally don't trust governments to be good about this either -- I'd like to make sure that the programmers are at least THINKING about these issues.
From the article..."Island Def Jam offered a discount to retailers who stocked the album, allowing it to sell at stores like Target for $7.98 last week" This is a great example of someone making up stupid numbers. The fact that more CD's were sold because there no downloads sold makes complete sense. If these people, who were going to legitimately buy a CD could not buy it online, then they would buy it in the store. If they were allowed to buy it online, would they buy it TWICE? The important figure (which are not revealed in this meticulously researched article) is which way did they make more money or which way did they move more units. The fact that they sell less CD's when there is another format to buy the media should not be a surprise to anyone (except for record execs, who can't count).
And the theater environment is rapidly losing it's appeal for me -- I'd MUCH rather watch a movie at home on my projector than in a theater with people who can't keep quiet during a movie, can't keep their cellphones off inspite of all the warnings and can't control their bladders for 90 mins. So, for me, the incentive to find a version of a movie that I can watch at home has little to do with $$$ and much to do with convenience. And (imho) that's going to be true for everyone as home entertainment centers become cheaper and better. It used to be that there was something to going to the theater for the big screen experience. With that going away, I can't see people really interested in the cinema much at all. Someone let me know if they think people will still be "going" to the movies in 25 years in Japan or the US.
So with the Cinema viewers prefering to watch at home, home distribution is the wave of the future -- and I agree with you again, that will lead to inevitable copyright infringement. So, there's really a window of opportunity for the creators of a film to make money. In the first weeks of a movie's life -- they'll have the best version of it, and that's their chance to make money on it -- as you said, supply and demand. It will eventually be cracked though, and then they'll have to compete against the crack -- agani supply and demand. Certainly the studios will find ways to monetize their product -- that's what they do best -- but if the end sum figure is going to be what a movie can make in a competetive market -- people will not be willing to invest big $$$. These movies have these huge budgets because they have a hope of return on nivestment. Without that hope, the investments will go away, and with them the big budgets.
Fortunately for Hollywood, there are easy places to trim costs. Salaries are crazy, as you mentioned. The entertainment unions are going to be broken because the studios will have to break them. And there will be no more $30M paydays for an actor for one movie. Which is fine by me -- once again, it's supply and demand.
Hear Hear. I started off on a PDP-11 70, playing what is now called Zork, but was then called dungeo, because of the 7.3 convention. Sweet times.
I wonder though if my habits screwed everyone...my general netflix usage is DVDShrinking the disc as soon as I get it (my mail gets delivered about 2:00pm) and then walking it down to the Post Office for the 5:00pm outgoing mail collection. I've wondered if this sets off any flags, and I guess it does. I think maybe I'll throw a 24 hour delay into there.
My Bad.
So I guess Kama Sutra could put some IT professionals in some awkward positions
proofread? edit? proofread again? Hit the road newbie! Yer kind ain't welcome here
Network. Email everyone you can (and by can, I mean everyone who won't get mad at you for eamiling them that you need work). Try getting into some networking groups like Friendster and LinkedIn.com.
Get a Blog and start writing in it, and include the fact that your looking for work and your trials and tribulations etc. It worked wonders for Odd Todd and who knows who might read your blog. Of course to advertise you're gonna have to read/post in others blogs. Do so wisely.
Most importantly -- believe that you can make it happen and you will. But the key is you have to make it happen -- otherwise it won't.
great link. Amazing to see RMS at it even way back then.
When she applied for a firewall exception for ssh to one of her servers they first told her it was impossible. Then when she told them that KNEW it was possible, they said that she didn't understand how the firewall worked. And this was really just by the first or second line guys in the IT dept, who are low enough on the totem pole that they answer the help desk telephones.
Finally she got through to someone who at least had some technical ability and was willing to listen to her, but then when she wanted the exception on a non-standard port because 22 is just scanned for too much, they again told her she didn't know what she was talking about: "SSH has to be on port 22." And the deputy CIO of our company is a woman. It was nauseating. The sexism women experience in regards to hiring is one thing, but in terms of dealing with their peers it's shocking how much CRAP she gets..."You can't possibly understand how that works."
When she would not be denied, they wanted to create a "SSH Bastion" which would be the only machine that people would be allowed to SSH into. Again complete crap that I did not have to go through. She refused to go along with the bastion, saying that it was crazy to have a central point of access for everyone since that meant only one machine had to be compromised. Finally she got what she wanted--direct SSH into her own server.
And 3 weeks later IT sent out an email saying that someone had been careless with their password to the SSH Bastion and all the accounts on there were compromised. It's a triple edged sword for a woman, because if you complain about the sexism, you're a whiny bitch. But if you don't, it doesn't get any better
From the article: Nokia includes a holographic seal of authenticity on its batteries, along with a blacked-out area users can scratch off to reveal a serial number they can check online. Our unit had such a seal, but when we scratched off the covering to verify its number, nothing was underneath. Nokia confirmed that the battery was a counterfeit. The company also identified a second battery we purchased as counterfeit; that one's source is still under investigation
Oh, did I just describe bugmenot?