But it would be nice if, sometimes, people could keep an open mind and realize that when a film sucks, there may be no direct reason. Sometimes they just suck.
Corollary: Sometimes, when a movie is great, there is no direct reason.
Case in point: Star Wars. Widely regarded as one of the best films ever made, I challenge anyone to point to the reason(s) why it's so great.
I came upon this "realization" years ago while watching a screen blanker published by LucasArts which included the script of the movie slowly scrolling by, accompanied by still shots from the final film. Divorced from the actors and cinematography, the story was suddenly cast in a very different light. I read along for a while and finally thought to myself, "My $(GOD), this is really lame." (Try it some time. Read the script to Star Wars in plain text and see what you think.)
Once I had that realization, I started wondering what made the film great (since it clearly wasn't the script). Was it the acting? The art direction/set design? The special effects? The directing? There are reasonable arguments against all of these. So what was it?
You may have misconceptualized how F/OSS deals with hardware compatibility issues.
In Windoze land, Microsoft publishes a list of requirements, and offers testing services to ensure compliance. You code to these requirements and get the thing tested and validated. Once done, Microsoft awards you the right to put "Windows-certified" on your box, and you can consider your product "done" (modulo bug fixes/patches).
In F/OSS circles, no such certification program exists. There is no list of requirements; there is no explicit testing service. Instead, what there is is the complete kernel source code (so that you can determine precise requirements yourself), hundreds of existing drivers (to get you started writing your own), and hundreds of thousands of users who will beat up on your hardware/driver and liberally shower you with bug reports (of highly variable quality).
This may seem like a recipe for complete disaster but, depending on what you want to do, it's really not. Linux's device driver model is almost pathetically simple compared to the byzantine mess that Windows uses. So getting a driver with basic functionality is a fairly simple affair. Depending on your device, you'll probably be able to leverage off of existing infrastructure to handle bookkeeping details (for example, I2C bus devices already have an API layer that handles reference counts and locking; coding to it is dead-simple).
Conversely, there are some areas of Linux driver land that are still evolving. One of the big areas is power management. There are three major competing power management mechanisms for Linux (APM, ACPI, and the lesser-known DPM). None of them really address all power management needs and, while some sleep/suspend modes sorta kinda work, Linux's solution is far from complete. You'll be working with a moving target.
As other posters have already mentioned, publicly-available, complete hardware documentation (register maps, theory of operation, strapping options, clock diagrams, etc.) is absolutely essential. In case you get bored with your product or, heaven forfend, your company dies, the F/OSS community will be able to take up the slack. They'll also be able to add features or enhance kernel compatibility when and where it's needed. (Some lawyers or senior execs will try to veto a documentation release, citing imaginary fears such as "loss" of proprietary information and trade secrets. You are encouraged to nut-punch these knuckleheads until their opinion is changed.)
F/OSS is not as strictly regimented as the Windows camp, so strictly regimented project planning isn't as easy. There's a lot of chaos out there. This is, on balance, widely regarded as a good thing. You may be surprised at how well your engineers cope in such an environment. (Conversely, it will also help you identify more quickly exactly which features your users actually value.)
Schwab
P.S: If you have the ability, tell Microsoft to take their copy protection ("DRM") requirements and cram them.
I suppose next, rather than bother with scanning an existing map or drawing a new one, the GM will simply run NetHack on the laptop with some dressed-up graphics. The players will never know the difference.
We all would have liked for the economy and job market to remain that strong.
Forgive me, but the bitter curmudgeon in me compels me to say no, I wouldn't want the job market and economy to have remained that way.
There was a lot of stoopid stuff happening in the valley. The pundits did not exaggerate -- the exuberance truly was irrational. And not just with the whole swanky laptop, Aeron chair, foosball table thing. People were paying twice the asking price for homes in the area. A home in San Francisco's Noe Valley which was put up for $900K (already overpriced) sold for $1.8 million. Rent for a one-bedroom studio apartment was $1600/month. (Check the long-running series Surreal Estate in the San Francisco Chronicle for more examples.)
People fresh out of college were starting the most absurd companies, siphoning off capital that could have been used for better things. They hired people still clutching their "Learn Java in 21 Days" book in their hand. People with no evident experience were being given positions in senior management with the letters C?O after their name (where '?' could be 'E', 'O', 'T', 'I', 'F', or just about anything else).
Meanwhile, old hands like me who grind out designs and code for them on a daily basis weren't invited to the party. The result: Housing prices in the San Francisco area have effectively doubled in the last five years, but my salary hasn't, putting home ownership even further out of reach. I was out of work for a year and a half. My sweetie still hasn't found steady work (tech support). Stock options? Worthless. Actual stock grants? Yeah, I made a few extra dollars there, but certainly not enough to buy property.
It is a supremely depressing thought that perhaps the only way I'll have the security of owning a home is when my mother passes away.
So, no, I don't wish those days had continued, where people with no forethought bid up the price of everything like it was a game of M.U.L.E. It also proved to me just how delicate a real economy is, when just a very few ephemerally rich people managed to throw the whole thing out of whack. Actual, hardworking, worthwhile people got left behind.
There should be an anti-spyware organization that gives negative publicity to the companies that benefit in any way from spyware, and positive publicity to their competitors. If they're doing it for money, then you hit them in the wallet and they'll wake up.
And then the spyware/adware companies sue you for libel, slander, and defamation. Who cares if it's not true? You'll still get soaked for the legal bills. Oh, and where is the money for this anti-spyware organization going to come from?
Other than the sound hardware, [the Apple//e] was far more capable than the C64 and comparable Atari computers of the time, in addition to being the most expandable in terms of varied hardware upgrades.
I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to call bullshit.
We will set aside the sound hardware, and compare against other features:
RAM size:
Apple//e: 64K
Commodore-64: 64K
Atari 800: 32K
ROM size:
Apple//e: 32K
Commodore-64: 32K
Atari 800: 10K
Expansion "slots" (this was a very fungible definition at the time):
Apple//e: 8
Commodore-64: 1
Atari 800: 2
CPU Speed:
Apple//e: 1MHz
Commodore-64: 1MHz
Atari 800: 1.70 MHz
Graphics (character):
Apple//e: 40*24 (80-column mode was an expansion option)
This, of course, glosses over a few points: Graphics at that time was far more complex than just resolution and bits per pixel. There were also "sprites" to be considered, as well as whether you could change the underlying color palette (you may only get one bit per pixel, but you may be able to change which colors those represent every scan line, every eight pixels, etc.).
Also, Atari was revamping their home computer line in the face of competition from the Commodore-64. As a result, the 800 was replaced by 1200XL, which was quickly dropped and further replaced by the 600XL and the 800XL, each with different feature sets and different price points. Hence the uncertain pricing.
Although I quote $300.00 for the Commodore-64, it was originally introduced at $600.00. It was reduced to $300.00 about a year later.
And it is also worth pointing out that none of these machines came with a floppy drive. Mass storage was accomplished with an audio cassette recorder.
And, of course, we have not covered the sound capabilities, at which the C64 rocked, and the Atari 800 comported itself very well.
In Apple's favor, it was clearly the most popular machine out there, and had the widest base of support and "mindshare". I just don't think it ever warranted being two to four times more expensive than its competitors.
That was an Apple I which, as I recall, was just the stuffed board. Case, keyboard, and monitor had to be supplied by you.
Then the Apple ][ came out shortly afterward, which retailed for $1200. Even after the Mac got introduced in 1984, the Apple ]['s price never fell below $1000 (despite the fact that the more powerful Atari 800 and Commodore 64 -- also 6502-based systems -- were available for less than half that). And that didn't include the Disk ][ floppy drives, which were another $200 each (IIRC).
The only major technology advance on the ][ line came in the form of the Apple ][GS (widely referred to as the "Apple ][ Gee-Whiz"), which doubled the CPU speed to 2 MHz, increased the pixel depth, and got sampled sound. It sold for around $1500 and tried to portray itself as competitive with the Amiga 1000 (7.1MHz 68000, $1200).
All of which is a long-winded way of saying, Apple's machines were always overpriced.
I sent a note to eBay's fraud/abuse feedback channel about this on January 30th. So they can't claim they only just now found out about it.
Below is a copy of what I sent them. The fraudulent email appears before my comment. (For some reason, it was reformatted to all lower-case.)
_________________________________
email header:
from aw-confirm@ebay.com sun jan 30 14:42:29 2005
email body:
<html>
<body>
dear ebay community member,<br><br>
<!--uee-->
it has come to our attention that your ebay billing information records
are out of date.<br>
that requires you to update the billing information if you could please
take 5-10 minutes out of your online experience and update your<br>
billing records, you will not run into any future problems with ebay's
online service.<br>
however, failure to update your records will result in soon account
termination. once you have updated your account records, your ebay<br>
session will not be interrupted and will continue as normal. failure to
update will result in cancellation of service, terms of service<br>
(tos) violations or future billing problems.<br><br>
to update and login to your ebay account, click on the link
below:<br><br>
<!--xr-->
<a href=3d"http://cgi4.ebay.com/ws/ebayisapi.dll?mfci sapicommand=3dredirecttodomain&domainurl=3dhttp%3a %2f%2f%32%31%31%2e%32%33%33%2e%33%38%2e%37%3
2%2fupdatecenter%2flogin%2f%3fmfcisapisession%3daa jbaqqzehaaemwzlhhlwxs2albxvshqahqrfhgtdrferhcurstp aisnrqahqrfhgtdrferhcurstpaisnrpaisnrqahqrfhgtdrfe rhcuqrfqzehaaemwzlhhlwxh">http://cgi4.ebay.com/ws/ </a><br>
<br>
thank you for using ebay!<br><br>
**this is no-reply message. please do not reply to this email, as you
will receive no response**
<!--i36-->
</body>
</html>
------=_nextpart_000_0068_01c44e5d.dbc9229e--
message: if i'm interpreting the url in the message correctly, it looks
like you have a vulnerable redirector running somewhere. if so, you'll
probably want to fix that.
the above appears to be redirecting to the ip address 211.233.38.72,
which 'whois' says is in korea.
Whose Voice Work do You Enjoy?
on
Ask mc chris
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Your work on the Adult Swim lineup is much appreciated in our household. But I wondered whose voice work you enjoyed (not necessarily restricted to Williams Street). Who's fun to listen to? Who's fun to work with?
The precise nature of his illness was an open secret, but disclosure of such details should probably be left to the family. But trust me, it's the kind of cancer you probably least want to have.
May you find the perfect interface you have dreamt of for so long in the hereafter.
Are you kidding? Raskin would have no compunction whatsoever against lecturing God him/herself. He's probably out there right now talking God's ear off, saying, "This whole arrangement you have here -- angels, archangels, cherubim, seraphim... Strict heirarchical systems tend to break down when they get too large. When new things don't fit, they either get placed randomly or in a giant 'misc' pile, and people can't find things anymore. And I noticed your giant 'misc' pile as I was walking in, so..."
(Disclaimer: I do not actually know Mr. Raskin's professed faith.)
Frankly, I'm not really interested in paying $699.00 for a TiVo in translucent blue plastic.
Besides, it doesn't seem all that great a fit. TiVo is based on Linux, and Apple has spent the last half decade working on Mach/BSD. "Apple-izing" the TiVo would take an enormous amount of parallel engineering, during which time no new TiVo products would come out.
It's almost a cool idea, but I don't see it working.
There is an important issue behind standing, the idea is to avoid wasting court time and to also make sure that a party can't establish a bogus precedent by bringing a case and deliberately putting up a poor case.
Really? Word is, they do it in civil suits all the time.
Companies have been known to sue themselves in order to establish a precedent if/when the class action suit finally shows up. In such an instance, rather than go through a lot of wrangling with the plaintiff(s), the company produces the decision already rendered, and sends them on their way.
Does anyone know what the status of the DeCSS lawsuits are, and whether this applies?
It does not apply. Indeed, DVD-CCA cannot sue for copyright violation, since they did not write DeCSS.
DVD-CCA are suing under the auspices of trade secret law, not copyright law. In other words, DVD-CCA's pleading is that DeCSS incorporates technologies that were obtained through "improper reverse-engineering" in violation of the so-called software "license," which claims trade secret rights over the software. As such, claims DVD-CCA, all work proceeding from this reverse-engineering is tainted, including DeCSS, and people trafficking in DeCSS knew, or should have known, that the work was protected.
Though DVD-CCA is losing the case, it's still before the courts, and taking a bloody long time to resolve.
They have found a niche market where they can make a lot of money. If it works, fine. Nobody's being harmed or spoiled - they are not breaking any law, so what's all the fuss about that?
Sounds disquietingly like the morality of a spammer.
We have been upstanding, forthright, honest, open, and respectful. And what has it gotten us? Embedded and desktop platform OEMs are brainlessly flocking to Microsoft's Windows Media and oppressive copy protection "solutions", even though they know that Microsoft is going to screw them. Again.
The situation in the embedded space is considerably better than in desktop space -- nearly everyone in the embedded sector is studying or actively working on Linux solutions. But even people pursuing Linux are inexplicably lining up in front of Microsoft to buy their codecs and copy protection crap. Now, fast forward four years: Just how do you think embedded OEMs offering non-PocketPC platforms are going to be treated by Microsoft?
We have a damn fine mousetrap. And yet we're being assiduously ignored. "They" say that engineering quality doesn't matter; it's all to do with image management and marketing. Fine. Maybe it's time we did some image management of our own. 'Cause being consistent, direct, honest, and respectful seems to be getting us laughed at behind our backs.
See the message subject -- I am trying to propogate a meme. In this case, I am trying to build in the minds of readers an association between Windows Media and cheap, toy-like audio quality. If this association can successfully be built, it is considerably less likely that Windows Media will be considered for "serious" or "pro-sumer" audio applications.
Or, to put it another way:
MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AAC -- Technics, Denon, Onkyo
Windows Media -- Radio Shack
Nokia recognized that phones are not exactly what you'd call "high-end audiophile" equipment. Further, there is a lot of downward price pressure on phone manufacturing costs (mostly from the service providers, whose heavy discounts on phone handsets are easily noticed on their books by Wall Street analysts). Hence, you're not likely to see quality audio coming out of a phone soon, since few organizations will be willing to pay the extra engineering and manufacturing costs to put that quality into the phone in the first place.
So, realizing this, Nokia understood that putting in support for AAC or MP3-Pro or Ogg Vorbis or any other high-quality audio standard was fairly pointless, since phones are physically incapable of reproducing their dynamic range. They wanted an audio format equal to the platform on which it would be running. Hence, Windows Media.
Everyone knows Windows Media looks and sounds very poor but, on a cheap phone with low-quality sound hardware, you'd never be able to tell. So Windows Media is the obvious choice for "toy" audio applications.
If you want quality audio, however, then you'll have to get a decent piece of audio hardware that supports quality codecs.
The policy on The Well, an online conferencing system that's been around since 1984, established a policy to address this issue long ago:
You own your own words.
That is, you retain complete ownership of -- and therefore responsibility and liability for -- whatever you write. This relieves The Well of any liability for the actions/writings of their posters, and the posters can rest assured that neither The Well nor any other user will turn around and sell their writings to someone else without permission. This policy, referred to by Well members with the acronym YOYOW, has been in place and has worked fairly well for the last 20 or so years.
While I can see a role for EROS and other capability-based systems in places where security is not just important, it's the product (banks, the military, intelligence agencies), I become deeply suspicious when someone suggests placing such systems in the consumer marketplace (desktop computers, media servers, etc.).
The reason I become suspicious is because capability-based systems are designed to distrust the person using them, including the machine's owner. Again, in environments where security is paramount, this is a reasonable thing to do -- you don't want personal or sensitive information getting in the hands of an unauthorized person, even if they own the machine it's stored on. But in all other environments, the machine should treat the owner as God and obey all commands and yield up any and all data He/She demands.
I fear that capability-based systems will be one of the prongs media companies will use to attack Fair Use and other rights. I worry that "content providers" will demand PCs that distrust their owners and obey their commands, not mine. Capability-based systems are an excellent way to bring this about. Yes, I know capability-based systems can be hacked into obeisance, but it's a lot more trouble. Frankly, I would prefer it didn't happen at all.
How many people *NEED* to put their postal mail in an envelope?
I send postal mail which I wouldn't necessarily want shown to everyone, but very, very few of them really SHOULD be in an envelope. I have a feeling that the vast majority of people who use envelopes for their postal mail really don't need them...
Slashdot Mirror
You don't. Go install QuickTime Alternative instead.
Schwab
Sounds, then, like a reason to agitate for patent reform rather than sticking your head in the sand. I'm not holding my breath, though...
Schwab
Corollary: Sometimes, when a movie is great, there is no direct reason.
Case in point: Star Wars. Widely regarded as one of the best films ever made, I challenge anyone to point to the reason(s) why it's so great.
I came upon this "realization" years ago while watching a screen blanker published by LucasArts which included the script of the movie slowly scrolling by, accompanied by still shots from the final film. Divorced from the actors and cinematography, the story was suddenly cast in a very different light. I read along for a while and finally thought to myself, "My $(GOD), this is really lame." (Try it some time. Read the script to Star Wars in plain text and see what you think.)
Once I had that realization, I started wondering what made the film great (since it clearly wasn't the script). Was it the acting? The art direction/set design? The special effects? The directing? There are reasonable arguments against all of these. So what was it?
Schwab
In Windoze land, Microsoft publishes a list of requirements, and offers testing services to ensure compliance. You code to these requirements and get the thing tested and validated. Once done, Microsoft awards you the right to put "Windows-certified" on your box, and you can consider your product "done" (modulo bug fixes/patches).
In F/OSS circles, no such certification program exists. There is no list of requirements; there is no explicit testing service. Instead, what there is is the complete kernel source code (so that you can determine precise requirements yourself), hundreds of existing drivers (to get you started writing your own), and hundreds of thousands of users who will beat up on your hardware/driver and liberally shower you with bug reports (of highly variable quality).
This may seem like a recipe for complete disaster but, depending on what you want to do, it's really not. Linux's device driver model is almost pathetically simple compared to the byzantine mess that Windows uses. So getting a driver with basic functionality is a fairly simple affair. Depending on your device, you'll probably be able to leverage off of existing infrastructure to handle bookkeeping details (for example, I2C bus devices already have an API layer that handles reference counts and locking; coding to it is dead-simple).
Conversely, there are some areas of Linux driver land that are still evolving. One of the big areas is power management. There are three major competing power management mechanisms for Linux (APM, ACPI, and the lesser-known DPM). None of them really address all power management needs and, while some sleep/suspend modes sorta kinda work, Linux's solution is far from complete. You'll be working with a moving target.
As other posters have already mentioned, publicly-available, complete hardware documentation (register maps, theory of operation, strapping options, clock diagrams, etc.) is absolutely essential . In case you get bored with your product or, heaven forfend, your company dies, the F/OSS community will be able to take up the slack. They'll also be able to add features or enhance kernel compatibility when and where it's needed. (Some lawyers or senior execs will try to veto a documentation release, citing imaginary fears such as "loss" of proprietary information and trade secrets. You are encouraged to nut-punch these knuckleheads until their opinion is changed.)
F/OSS is not as strictly regimented as the Windows camp, so strictly regimented project planning isn't as easy. There's a lot of chaos out there. This is, on balance, widely regarded as a good thing. You may be surprised at how well your engineers cope in such an environment. (Conversely, it will also help you identify more quickly exactly which features your users actually value.)
Schwab
P.S: If you have the ability, tell Microsoft to take their copy protection ("DRM") requirements and cram them.
Schwab
Forgive me, but the bitter curmudgeon in me compels me to say no, I wouldn't want the job market and economy to have remained that way.
There was a lot of stoopid stuff happening in the valley. The pundits did not exaggerate -- the exuberance truly was irrational. And not just with the whole swanky laptop, Aeron chair, foosball table thing. People were paying twice the asking price for homes in the area. A home in San Francisco's Noe Valley which was put up for $900K (already overpriced) sold for $1.8 million. Rent for a one-bedroom studio apartment was $1600/month. (Check the long-running series Surreal Estate in the San Francisco Chronicle for more examples.)
People fresh out of college were starting the most absurd companies, siphoning off capital that could have been used for better things. They hired people still clutching their "Learn Java in 21 Days" book in their hand. People with no evident experience were being given positions in senior management with the letters C?O after their name (where '?' could be 'E', 'O', 'T', 'I', 'F', or just about anything else).
Meanwhile, old hands like me who grind out designs and code for them on a daily basis weren't invited to the party. The result: Housing prices in the San Francisco area have effectively doubled in the last five years, but my salary hasn't, putting home ownership even further out of reach. I was out of work for a year and a half. My sweetie still hasn't found steady work (tech support). Stock options? Worthless. Actual stock grants? Yeah, I made a few extra dollars there, but certainly not enough to buy property.
It is a supremely depressing thought that perhaps the only way I'll have the security of owning a home is when my mother passes away.
So, no, I don't wish those days had continued, where people with no forethought bid up the price of everything like it was a game of M.U.L.E. It also proved to me just how delicate a real economy is, when just a very few ephemerally rich people managed to throw the whole thing out of whack. Actual, hardworking, worthwhile people got left behind.
Schwab
And then the spyware/adware companies sue you for libel, slander, and defamation. Who cares if it's not true? You'll still get soaked for the legal bills. Oh, and where is the money for this anti-spyware organization going to come from?
sigh,
Schwab
I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to call bullshit.
We will set aside the sound hardware, and compare against other features:
This, of course, glosses over a few points: Graphics at that time was far more complex than just resolution and bits per pixel. There were also "sprites" to be considered, as well as whether you could change the underlying color palette (you may only get one bit per pixel, but you may be able to change which colors those represent every scan line, every eight pixels, etc.).
Also, Atari was revamping their home computer line in the face of competition from the Commodore-64. As a result, the 800 was replaced by 1200XL, which was quickly dropped and further replaced by the 600XL and the 800XL, each with different feature sets and different price points. Hence the uncertain pricing.
Although I quote $300.00 for the Commodore-64, it was originally introduced at $600.00. It was reduced to $300.00 about a year later.
And it is also worth pointing out that none of these machines came with a floppy drive. Mass storage was accomplished with an audio cassette recorder.
And, of course, we have not covered the sound capabilities, at which the C64 rocked, and the Atari 800 comported itself very well.
In Apple's favor, it was clearly the most popular machine out there, and had the widest base of support and "mindshare". I just don't think it ever warranted being two to four times more expensive than its competitors.
Schwab
That was an Apple I which, as I recall, was just the stuffed board. Case, keyboard, and monitor had to be supplied by you.
Then the Apple ][ came out shortly afterward, which retailed for $1200. Even after the Mac got introduced in 1984, the Apple ]['s price never fell below $1000 (despite the fact that the more powerful Atari 800 and Commodore 64 -- also 6502-based systems -- were available for less than half that). And that didn't include the Disk ][ floppy drives, which were another $200 each (IIRC).
The only major technology advance on the ][ line came in the form of the Apple ][GS (widely referred to as the "Apple ][ Gee-Whiz"), which doubled the CPU speed to 2 MHz, increased the pixel depth, and got sampled sound. It sold for around $1500 and tried to portray itself as competitive with the Amiga 1000 (7.1MHz 68000, $1200).
All of which is a long-winded way of saying, Apple's machines were always overpriced.
Schwab
Below is a copy of what I sent them. The fraudulent email appears before my comment. (For some reason, it was reformatted to all lower-case.)
_________________________________
email header:
from aw-confirm@ebay.com sun jan 30 14:42:29 2005
email body:
<html>
<body>
dear ebay community member,<br><br>
<!--uee-->
it has come to our attention that your ebay billing information records
are out of date.<br>
that requires you to update the billing information if you could please
take 5-10 minutes out of your online experience and update your<br>
billing records, you will not run into any future problems with ebay's
online service.<br>
however, failure to update your records will result in soon account
termination. once you have updated your account records, your ebay<br>
session will not be interrupted and will continue as normal. failure to
update will result in cancellation of service, terms of service<br>
(tos) violations or future billing problems.<br><br>
to update and login to your ebay account, click on the linki sapicommand=3dredirecttodomain&domainurl=3dhttp%3a %2f%2f%32%31%31%2e%32%33%33%2e%33%38%2e%37%3a jbaqqzehaaemwzlhhlwxs2albxvshqahqrfhgtdrferhcurstp aisnrqahqrfhgtdrferhcurstpaisnrpaisnrqahqrfhgtdrfe rhcuqrfqzehaaemwzlhhlwxh">http://cgi4.ebay.com/ws/ </a><br>
below:<br><br>
<!--xr-->
<a href=3d"http://cgi4.ebay.com/ws/ebayisapi.dll?mfc
2%2fupdatecenter%2flogin%2f%3fmfcisapisession%3da
<br>
thank you for using ebay!<br><br>
**this is no-reply message. please do not reply to this email, as you
will receive no response**
<!--i36-->
</body>
</html>
------=_nextpart_000_0068_01c44e5d.dbc9229e--
message: if i'm interpreting the url in the message correctly, it looks
like you have a vulnerable redirector running somewhere. if so, you'll
probably want to fix that.
the above appears to be redirecting to the ip address 211.233.38.72,
which 'whois' says is in korea.
schwab
--_----------=_9502205623000--
------=_nextparttm-000-25ddf14b-7467-4642-9e0d-8 cafc918baf3--
Your work on the Adult Swim lineup is much appreciated in our household. But I wondered whose voice work you enjoyed (not necessarily restricted to Williams Street). Who's fun to listen to? Who's fun to work with?
Schwab
The precise nature of his illness was an open secret, but disclosure of such details should probably be left to the family. But trust me, it's the kind of cancer you probably least want to have.
Schwab
Are you kidding? Raskin would have no compunction whatsoever against lecturing God him/herself. He's probably out there right now talking God's ear off, saying, "This whole arrangement you have here -- angels, archangels, cherubim, seraphim... Strict heirarchical systems tend to break down when they get too large. When new things don't fit, they either get placed randomly or in a giant 'misc' pile, and people can't find things anymore. And I noticed your giant 'misc' pile as I was walking in, so..."
(Disclaimer: I do not actually know Mr. Raskin's professed faith.)
Offered in the spirit of good humor,
Schwab
Frankly, I'm not really interested in paying $699.00 for a TiVo in translucent blue plastic.
Besides, it doesn't seem all that great a fit. TiVo is based on Linux, and Apple has spent the last half decade working on Mach/BSD. "Apple-izing" the TiVo would take an enormous amount of parallel engineering, during which time no new TiVo products would come out.
It's almost a cool idea, but I don't see it working.
Schwab
"Would you like to mount unused graphics RAM as a swap device?"
Seriously, what's all that RAM used for when you're not playing games? It's still eating power; you may as well use it for something...
Schwab
Really? Word is, they do it in civil suits all the time.
Companies have been known to sue themselves in order to establish a precedent if/when the class action suit finally shows up. In such an instance, rather than go through a lot of wrangling with the plaintiff(s), the company produces the decision already rendered, and sends them on their way.
Schwab
It does not apply. Indeed, DVD-CCA cannot sue for copyright violation, since they did not write DeCSS.
DVD-CCA are suing under the auspices of trade secret law, not copyright law. In other words, DVD-CCA's pleading is that DeCSS incorporates technologies that were obtained through "improper reverse-engineering" in violation of the so-called software "license," which claims trade secret rights over the software. As such, claims DVD-CCA, all work proceeding from this reverse-engineering is tainted, including DeCSS, and people trafficking in DeCSS knew, or should have known, that the work was protected.
Though DVD-CCA is losing the case, it's still before the courts, and taking a bloody long time to resolve.
Schwab
Sounds disquietingly like the morality of a spammer.
Schwab
We have been upstanding, forthright, honest, open, and respectful. And what has it gotten us? Embedded and desktop platform OEMs are brainlessly flocking to Microsoft's Windows Media and oppressive copy protection "solutions", even though they know that Microsoft is going to screw them. Again.
The situation in the embedded space is considerably better than in desktop space -- nearly everyone in the embedded sector is studying or actively working on Linux solutions. But even people pursuing Linux are inexplicably lining up in front of Microsoft to buy their codecs and copy protection crap. Now, fast forward four years: Just how do you think embedded OEMs offering non-PocketPC platforms are going to be treated by Microsoft?
We have a damn fine mousetrap. And yet we're being assiduously ignored. "They" say that engineering quality doesn't matter; it's all to do with image management and marketing. Fine. Maybe it's time we did some image management of our own. 'Cause being consistent, direct, honest, and respectful seems to be getting us laughed at behind our backs.
*mutter*, *grumble*, *curmudge*,
Schwab
See the message subject -- I am trying to propogate a meme. In this case, I am trying to build in the minds of readers an association between Windows Media and cheap, toy-like audio quality. If this association can successfully be built, it is considerably less likely that Windows Media will be considered for "serious" or "pro-sumer" audio applications.
Or, to put it another way:
MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AAC -- Technics, Denon, Onkyo
Windows Media -- Radio Shack
Schwab
Nokia recognized that phones are not exactly what you'd call "high-end audiophile" equipment. Further, there is a lot of downward price pressure on phone manufacturing costs (mostly from the service providers, whose heavy discounts on phone handsets are easily noticed on their books by Wall Street analysts). Hence, you're not likely to see quality audio coming out of a phone soon, since few organizations will be willing to pay the extra engineering and manufacturing costs to put that quality into the phone in the first place.
So, realizing this, Nokia understood that putting in support for AAC or MP3-Pro or Ogg Vorbis or any other high-quality audio standard was fairly pointless, since phones are physically incapable of reproducing their dynamic range. They wanted an audio format equal to the platform on which it would be running. Hence, Windows Media.
Everyone knows Windows Media looks and sounds very poor but, on a cheap phone with low-quality sound hardware, you'd never be able to tell. So Windows Media is the obvious choice for "toy" audio applications.
If you want quality audio, however, then you'll have to get a decent piece of audio hardware that supports quality codecs.
Schwab
The policy on The Well, an online conferencing system that's been around since 1984, established a policy to address this issue long ago:
You own your own words.
That is, you retain complete ownership of -- and therefore responsibility and liability for -- whatever you write. This relieves The Well of any liability for the actions/writings of their posters, and the posters can rest assured that neither The Well nor any other user will turn around and sell their writings to someone else without permission. This policy, referred to by Well members with the acronym YOYOW, has been in place and has worked fairly well for the last 20 or so years.
YOYOW: Ask for it by name :-).
Schwab
Thanks, Mr. Williams. Condi will be by later with your check.
While I can see a role for EROS and other capability-based systems in places where security is not just important, it's the product (banks, the military, intelligence agencies), I become deeply suspicious when someone suggests placing such systems in the consumer marketplace (desktop computers, media servers, etc.).
The reason I become suspicious is because capability-based systems are designed to distrust the person using them, including the machine's owner. Again, in environments where security is paramount, this is a reasonable thing to do -- you don't want personal or sensitive information getting in the hands of an unauthorized person, even if they own the machine it's stored on. But in all other environments, the machine should treat the owner as God and obey all commands and yield up any and all data He/She demands.
I fear that capability-based systems will be one of the prongs media companies will use to attack Fair Use and other rights. I worry that "content providers" will demand PCs that distrust their owners and obey their commands, not mine. Capability-based systems are an excellent way to bring this about. Yes, I know capability-based systems can be hacked into obeisance, but it's a lot more trouble. Frankly, I would prefer it didn't happen at all.
Schwab
Search and replace, and we get:
Schwab