I'm an avid newspaper reader. Yet I'm also a newspaper hater. Reading a newspaper is like taking drugs: you look forward to it because you think you'll get something out of it, that it's somehow good for you, or otherwise solves some problem, but you realise too late that it's just a load of shite.
I mean, really - most new stories I read, even in respected broadsheet papers, are just inconsequential babbling about nothing. President Obama may be doing this, he might do that, somebody flew in a balloon, a movie star has offered an opinion on global warming, a European head of state has been fined for corruption, how to make a quick and easy omlette from 14 ingredients I would have to go out and buy specially...
Big friggin' deal. I don't think I've ever put down a newspaper and thought "Now I feel really informed and stimulated - I can go into the world and act as a better person because of it." Mostly I just feel disappointed, or bored, and slightly soiled, because I find myself thinking whether any of it is true, or how much of it is half-true, or how much stuff I'm not being told, etc. etc.
I don't really know if it's a very good solution technically, but I proxy all my tracker communications through I2P (and encrypt my transport). I tried using I2P's native BitTorrent client, but the network is pretty slow (about the half the speed of normal BT).
Not that I'm a BitTorrent guru in any way, but it strikes me that as I live in the UK, I need to proxy all my trackers communications through I2P. As far as I understand, that won't hurt my download speeds, but will present a non-traceable IP address to anyone who looks at my communications with the tracker. And if I turn on transport encryption as well, the contents of my P2P communications are at least obscured, even though my use of BitTorrent isn't.
Perhaps a BitTorrent guru can put me straight on this, but if I'm right, then a one-click install of I2P, and a couple of easy config changes in Azereus, seemed to do the trick for me.
I think it's more likely that copyright will become irrelevant and that contracts (eg Sony BMG have a contract with YouTube that says XYZ) will become the norm. Contract wins over copyright already, and seeing as copyright is plainly stupid in the digital age (it was meant to protect the owners of printing presses for god's sake), it's just going to have to go away.
Well, when I'm forced to go to court, I'll b sure to bring a small boombox so the judge can be liable for copyright infringement too.
That's a good point. Of course I've not RTFA, but how is YouTube different from traditional radio in this respect? After all, if I am painting my house while listening to my radio, and the radio plays Britney Spears, and my neighbour hears that track, Sony don't sue the radio station, much less us. What gives? Is there some subtlety in the fact that the songs are part of videos that is the issue here?
Really - I remember everyone having orgasms about the fact that the PlayStation II was going to have a browser and that was going to take over the world. If you are going to buy a Kindle you are not thinking about surfing the Internets, you're thinking about reading books in the same way as you're thinking about playing games on the PSII.
No photos is a bit sucky though.
And the high price thing - meh. Ve Europeans vill nevargh geev oop our reediculous high prices! It is ze mark of civilization!
Everyone I know who visits the USA these days tells me what a pain in the ass it is to travel here now. I'm sure everyone on the IOC knows all about that.
-jcr
I flew 8 hours from London to Dallas this year. On arrival, I then waited 2 hours at the airport, along with about 300 other aliens, while sullen border guards slowly checked passports, took photos and fingerprints (this often took several attempts per person), and asked seemingly innocent questions in slow, menacing voices. If I didn't know better, I would have thought they'd been trained in military interrogation techniques.
I live in London, where just about anyone you ask who lives here will tell you they don't want the games, never wanted the games, and are angry that money to fund the building of venues and facilities is being taken from National Lottery funds and (possibly) direct taxation.
Mileage varies considerably in the short and long-term economic and social effects of hosting an Olympics. London doesn't need it, and Chicago may well not have done either.
Wireless power (at least not one with such a limited range) is not something that has any serious uses.
Well, I can think of at least one scenario in which is may completely revolutionise our lives: data storage. Imagine a world in which the Internet as we now know it has been sewn up by governments and their corporate masters. A bit like TV is today. Now imagine that the *real* net is made up of millions of tiny, sub-pinhead sized "servers" containing data that you can access when you come in proximity to it. Remotely power up these devices as you sit in a cafe, a field, a car as you stop by the lights. Sure, it may be a bit disjointed and messaging would be tough, but it's possible.
Why is anyone wasting any time on useless technology like this? Is it based on consumer demand? If so then consumers need some basic physics and electronics lessons. This is not Star Trek, people, we can't "beam" your power to you via subspace, the inverse-square law fully applies, this is not ever going to be efficient or practical! Electrically powered things require power cords, get over it!
Let me be the first to congratulate you on an opinion that would make even my grandfather look forward-thinking.
There's the old(er) way where rich people payed people commission to do a myriad of art. That doesn't help the people (video game makers/novelists/programmers/all of the tv and movie industry) who need/want many people to pay a pittance. There's the make money off concerts (and I guess merchandise) route, which might work for some form of media like music, but doesn't help the aforementioned groups. And of course there's open source which has a few examples of profitability. Have I missed any?
No, you have not missed any.
The fact that hardly anyone, on either side of this debate seems able to grasp, is that the production of art (and by which I include music and games) is not some holy necessity that affords anyone who should undertake it the right to make gazillions of dollars, or even a living for that matter.
Furthermore, if you as an artist produce something that few people want to buy or even consume in any way: tough titties. This law applies in free commerce - why not art?
That's not to say that popular artists, or those who uphold a noble cultural tradition, etc. should not make gazilions if people (or governments) want to pay them in recognition of a rare skill. I'm all for that. If you can sell your records for $12 a pop to 10 million people then you get the rewards for that in exactly the same way as if you can sell 10 million self-warming coffee cups. And what's more, all the usual rules of business should apply: shares, investments, recruitment, diversification, acquisitions etc.
In my opinion there are far, far too many "artists" in existence today who are expected to feed vast amounts of cash into a ridiculously bloated "entertainment industry." This situation has been brought about by the total and utter abuse of the copyright system since the 1950s. If we swept all that abuse way, I have no doubt that the number of artists in commercial existence would be decimated. And we would not notice a damn bit of difference because the arts will still carry on, there will be good music, and in the existence of a free and ubiquitous distribution system call the Internet, we will still be able to listen and optionally pay for it either directly or indirectly via various business models that have nothing to do record labels.
Sure - many sculptors, pianists, mimes, actors and the people who fill out their tax returns and collect their royalties MAY disappear. But so what?
The same thing happend in the UK with Vodafone when they launched MMS: people give it a go, send a couple to their friends, then never send any more ever again once the short-lived novelty wears off.
This is the reason traditional antivirus scanning will not work.
I've come to realise that antivirus scanning of any kind does not, and has never - really - worked. A combination of human factors, poor design and general stupidity makes it so.
Lemme let you in to a little MSFT secret here: what you witnessed was eyewash to make you feel better about your job.
The people that matter at Microsoft know the truth
Are you a "person that matters" at Microsoft? If not, then how do you know the "truth"?
Why do I have to work for MSFT to know the truth when the truth is self evident from MS's products? If you don't think that's the case, then please provide examples of good usability brought about by user-centred design at Microsoft.
Bitching that the clipboard preserves formatting is a little silly. It's normal, expected behavior
That's like saying the QWERTY keyboard layout is best because everyone expects that layout on the keyboard. Think about the clipboard issue objectively: under what believable circumstance would you want BY DEFAULT to preserve the referring format in the target?
The usability research described by the GP is designed to make sure that the product is usable to the extent that the poor human sat at the screen doesn't commit suicide. "Can they find the word count feature? Yes - Check. We're done on that one. Next!" There is a LOT more to usability than this kind of "user engineering" approach that treats humans like machines and design as something that only people running Photoshop do.
But in any case, I was making this point in the context of saying that MSFT has a monopoly. Monopolies distort markets, behaviour and history. You appear not to understand that what you thinks is "normal, expected behaviour" is in fact just dumb expected behaviour brought into existence by a convicted and largely unchallenged monopolist.
Unless you, like the GP, believe that America has made no strides whatsoever in that regard, is full of hateful people who dislike everyone who isn't like us,
I don't believe that, but what I am trying to point out is that the GP was making a statement about what they felt America was like *today*, which you defended by using an example from the past that is in my opinion irrelevant today.
In using that example, you invite people to ask you to provide an example from *American* history that shows things have progressed from being "hateful people who dislike everyone who isn't like us."
Hang on just a second. Does the AFPA (the plaintiffs) own the copyright on the GPLd source?
This is the thing that many, many people do not remember when debating issues of intellectual property: contract trumps copyright. Plain and simple. It may not be right, but it's the law in just about every country I can think of.
And in the end we still didn't do enough of usability testing (IMO), but such is life in commercial software development - you work against an arbitrary schedule.
Lemme let you in to a little MSFT secret here: what you witnessed was eyewash to make you feel better about your job.
The people that matter at Microsoft know the truth: that when you have a monopoly, all that's needed is to make sure the software doesn't crash on the launch presentation and that it supports as much hardware as possible. Achieve that, and you have achieved your annual bonus because even if MS released a C# horse's butt, billions of corporate slaves would still buy it and sign up for the upgrades. MS don't care about usability, because they have no reason to.
Remember that next time you open an attachment in Outlook, edit it, then try to work out where's it's been saved. Remember that when something you are writing in Word suddenly decides to turn into a bulleted list. Remember that when the format of the text you copy from one document is preserved in the target document and you have to do it again using "paste special." Above all, remember that these problems have been around in MS's products for over 20 years in some cases.
having to use strange numbers to get around its weaknesses (especially in cooking, who wants to deal with 1.25ml of oregano, and 0.625ml of freshly ground black pepper.
I'm not sure if you're trying to funny, but you do realise how ridiculous that statement is, don't you? You're complaining that you get unfriendly numbers that result from not being able to calculate ratios. WHAT ON EARTH does that have to do with the metric system??
Sub-dividing the shilling (or nickle) into 12 pieces is consistent with the idea of dividing a dozen into 12 units, although probably too small to be of any use today.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm an avid newspaper reader. Yet I'm also a newspaper hater. Reading a newspaper is like taking drugs: you look forward to it because you think you'll get something out of it, that it's somehow good for you, or otherwise solves some problem, but you realise too late that it's just a load of shite.
I mean, really - most new stories I read, even in respected broadsheet papers, are just inconsequential babbling about nothing. President Obama may be doing this, he might do that, somebody flew in a balloon, a movie star has offered an opinion on global warming, a European head of state has been fined for corruption, how to make a quick and easy omlette from 14 ingredients I would have to go out and buy specially ...
Big friggin' deal. I don't think I've ever put down a newspaper and thought "Now I feel really informed and stimulated - I can go into the world and act as a better person because of it." Mostly I just feel disappointed, or bored, and slightly soiled, because I find myself thinking whether any of it is true, or how much of it is half-true, or how much stuff I'm not being told, etc. etc.
Your wish is my command
I don't really know if it's a very good solution technically, but I proxy all my tracker communications through I2P (and encrypt my transport). I tried using I2P's native BitTorrent client, but the network is pretty slow (about the half the speed of normal BT).
Not that I'm a BitTorrent guru in any way, but it strikes me that as I live in the UK, I need to proxy all my trackers communications through I2P. As far as I understand, that won't hurt my download speeds, but will present a non-traceable IP address to anyone who looks at my communications with the tracker. And if I turn on transport encryption as well, the contents of my P2P communications are at least obscured, even though my use of BitTorrent isn't.
Perhaps a BitTorrent guru can put me straight on this, but if I'm right, then a one-click install of I2P, and a couple of easy config changes in Azereus, seemed to do the trick for me.
I think it's more likely that copyright will become irrelevant and that contracts (eg Sony BMG have a contract with YouTube that says XYZ) will become the norm. Contract wins over copyright already, and seeing as copyright is plainly stupid in the digital age (it was meant to protect the owners of printing presses for god's sake), it's just going to have to go away.
That don't mean our lives get any easier though.
Well, when I'm forced to go to court, I'll b sure to bring a small boombox so the judge can be liable for copyright infringement too.
That's a good point. Of course I've not RTFA, but how is YouTube different from traditional radio in this respect? After all, if I am painting my house while listening to my radio, and the radio plays Britney Spears, and my neighbour hears that track, Sony don't sue the radio station, much less us. What gives? Is there some subtlety in the fact that the songs are part of videos that is the issue here?
Really - I remember everyone having orgasms about the fact that the PlayStation II was going to have a browser and that was going to take over the world. If you are going to buy a Kindle you are not thinking about surfing the Internets, you're thinking about reading books in the same way as you're thinking about playing games on the PSII.
No photos is a bit sucky though.
And the high price thing - meh. Ve Europeans vill nevargh geev oop our reediculous high prices! It is ze mark of civilization!
Anyone who thinks ID theft and the mechanisms used to achieve it are unsophisticated, badly needs to read this (700K PDF). Badly.
Everyone I know who visits the USA these days tells me what a pain in the ass it is to travel here now. I'm sure everyone on the IOC knows all about that.
-jcr
I flew 8 hours from London to Dallas this year. On arrival, I then waited 2 hours at the airport, along with about 300 other aliens, while sullen border guards slowly checked passports, took photos and fingerprints (this often took several attempts per person), and asked seemingly innocent questions in slow, menacing voices. If I didn't know better, I would have thought they'd been trained in military interrogation techniques.
I live in London, where just about anyone you ask who lives here will tell you they don't want the games, never wanted the games, and are angry that money to fund the building of venues and facilities is being taken from National Lottery funds and (possibly) direct taxation.
Mileage varies considerably in the short and long-term economic and social effects of hosting an Olympics. London doesn't need it, and Chicago may well not have done either.
Wireless power (at least not one with such a limited range) is not something that has any serious uses.
Well, I can think of at least one scenario in which is may completely revolutionise our lives: data storage. Imagine a world in which the Internet as we now know it has been sewn up by governments and their corporate masters. A bit like TV is today. Now imagine that the *real* net is made up of millions of tiny, sub-pinhead sized "servers" containing data that you can access when you come in proximity to it. Remotely power up these devices as you sit in a cafe, a field, a car as you stop by the lights. Sure, it may be a bit disjointed and messaging would be tough, but it's possible.
Why is anyone wasting any time on useless technology like this? Is it based on consumer demand? If so then consumers need some basic physics and electronics lessons. This is not Star Trek, people, we can't "beam" your power to you via subspace, the inverse-square law fully applies, this is not ever going to be efficient or practical! Electrically powered things require power cords, get over it!
Let me be the first to congratulate you on an opinion that would make even my grandfather look forward-thinking.
The 'host' command says TPBay is still in Sweden
N00bs should first read this post before making themselves look silly.
...What slip are you referring to?
There's the old(er) way where rich people payed people commission to do a myriad of art. That doesn't help the people (video game makers/novelists/programmers/all of the tv and movie industry) who need/want many people to pay a pittance. There's the make money off concerts (and I guess merchandise) route, which might work for some form of media like music, but doesn't help the aforementioned groups. And of course there's open source which has a few examples of profitability. Have I missed any?
No, you have not missed any.
The fact that hardly anyone, on either side of this debate seems able to grasp, is that the production of art (and by which I include music and games) is not some holy necessity that affords anyone who should undertake it the right to make gazillions of dollars, or even a living for that matter.
Furthermore, if you as an artist produce something that few people want to buy or even consume in any way: tough titties. This law applies in free commerce - why not art?
That's not to say that popular artists, or those who uphold a noble cultural tradition, etc. should not make gazilions if people (or governments) want to pay them in recognition of a rare skill. I'm all for that. If you can sell your records for $12 a pop to 10 million people then you get the rewards for that in exactly the same way as if you can sell 10 million self-warming coffee cups. And what's more, all the usual rules of business should apply: shares, investments, recruitment, diversification, acquisitions etc.
In my opinion there are far, far too many "artists" in existence today who are expected to feed vast amounts of cash into a ridiculously bloated "entertainment industry." This situation has been brought about by the total and utter abuse of the copyright system since the 1950s. If we swept all that abuse way, I have no doubt that the number of artists in commercial existence would be decimated. And we would not notice a damn bit of difference because the arts will still carry on, there will be good music, and in the existence of a free and ubiquitous distribution system call the Internet, we will still be able to listen and optionally pay for it either directly or indirectly via various business models that have nothing to do record labels.
Sure - many sculptors, pianists, mimes, actors and the people who fill out their tax returns and collect their royalties MAY disappear. But so what?
I think we should take bets now. I've got five bucks that says the "beta" tag will be removed not before 5 years from today.
The same thing happend in the UK with Vodafone when they launched MMS: people give it a go, send a couple to their friends, then never send any more ever again once the short-lived novelty wears off.
This is the reason traditional antivirus scanning will not work.
I've come to realise that antivirus scanning of any kind does not, and has never - really - worked. A combination of human factors, poor design and general stupidity makes it so.
Unless you have proof of this, I have to call this out as bullshit.
I've provided the proof: the products themselves.
Part of the reason that Microsoft is so successful is because of their extensive user testing.
Now you provide the proof of that statement, please.
Lemme let you in to a little MSFT secret here: what you witnessed was eyewash to make you feel better about your job.
The people that matter at Microsoft know the truth
Are you a "person that matters" at Microsoft? If not, then how do you know the "truth"?
Why do I have to work for MSFT to know the truth when the truth is self evident from MS's products? If you don't think that's the case, then please provide examples of good usability brought about by user-centred design at Microsoft.
Bitching that the clipboard preserves formatting is a little silly. It's normal, expected behavior
That's like saying the QWERTY keyboard layout is best because everyone expects that layout on the keyboard. Think about the clipboard issue objectively: under what believable circumstance would you want BY DEFAULT to preserve the referring format in the target?
The usability research described by the GP is designed to make sure that the product is usable to the extent that the poor human sat at the screen doesn't commit suicide. "Can they find the word count feature? Yes - Check. We're done on that one. Next!" There is a LOT more to usability than this kind of "user engineering" approach that treats humans like machines and design as something that only people running Photoshop do.
But in any case, I was making this point in the context of saying that MSFT has a monopoly. Monopolies distort markets, behaviour and history. You appear not to understand that what you thinks is "normal, expected behaviour" is in fact just dumb expected behaviour brought into existence by a convicted and largely unchallenged monopolist.
I'm not talking about bugs.
Unless you, like the GP, believe that America has made no strides whatsoever in that regard, is full of hateful people who dislike everyone who isn't like us,
I don't believe that, but what I am trying to point out is that the GP was making a statement about what they felt America was like *today*, which you defended by using an example from the past that is in my opinion irrelevant today.
In using that example, you invite people to ask you to provide an example from *American* history that shows things have progressed from being "hateful people who dislike everyone who isn't like us."
Hang on just a second. Does the AFPA (the plaintiffs) own the copyright on the GPLd source?
This is the thing that many, many people do not remember when debating issues of intellectual property: contract trumps copyright. Plain and simple. It may not be right, but it's the law in just about every country I can think of.
And in the end we still didn't do enough of usability testing (IMO), but such is life in commercial software development - you work against an arbitrary schedule.
Lemme let you in to a little MSFT secret here: what you witnessed was eyewash to make you feel better about your job.
The people that matter at Microsoft know the truth: that when you have a monopoly, all that's needed is to make sure the software doesn't crash on the launch presentation and that it supports as much hardware as possible. Achieve that, and you have achieved your annual bonus because even if MS released a C# horse's butt, billions of corporate slaves would still buy it and sign up for the upgrades. MS don't care about usability, because they have no reason to.
Remember that next time you open an attachment in Outlook, edit it, then try to work out where's it's been saved. Remember that when something you are writing in Word suddenly decides to turn into a bulleted list. Remember that when the format of the text you copy from one document is preserved in the target document and you have to do it again using "paste special." Above all, remember that these problems have been around in MS's products for over 20 years in some cases.
having to use strange numbers to get around its weaknesses (especially in cooking, who wants to deal with 1.25ml of oregano, and 0.625ml of freshly ground black pepper.
I'm not sure if you're trying to funny, but you do realise how ridiculous that statement is, don't you? You're complaining that you get unfriendly numbers that result from not being able to calculate ratios. WHAT ON EARTH does that have to do with the metric system??
Sub-dividing the shilling (or nickle) into 12 pieces is consistent with the idea of dividing a dozen into 12 units, although probably too small to be of any use today.
Are you a perl programmer by any chance?