When I was working for Be, Inc. (RIP), I threw together a speculative ad promoting Be's Internet Appliance offering. With very little fiddling, I'm sure it could be repurposed as a pro-UNIX piece.
Okay, fine, having such a gadget on her person might possibly have saved her life. (We'll never know for sure, since we can't fork() a copy of the Universe and test both cases.)
But in all likelihood, it wouldn't have done a damn bit of good. Some possible countermeasures include:
Whack the kid over the head from behind; remove watch at leisure.
Use chloroform/ether/other drug to incapacitate child; remove watch at leisure.
Seize child's wrist, squirt Krazy Glue into controls; 911 call now inoperable.
Seize child's wrist, cut watch off with tin snips (easily concealed, available at any hardware store).
And that's just off the top of my head. Safety is not significantly enhanced by this product.
Now, consider the possible abuses, not by law enforcement, but by psychotic parents. 13-year-old Melissa wakes up one morning to find one of these locked on to her wrist. Her mother, played by Joan Crawford, informs her that she may now go only where Mommy Dearest permits her, and that her movements will be tracked and reviewed daily on the computer. Deviation from the set Plan will be severely punished. Dawdling on the way home from school will be severely punished. Going to the library without permission (hey, there's subversive, Godless trash in there) will be severely punished. Removing the watch will be severely punished.
One day, Melissa comes home to a stern lecture from Mom, who is standing in front of the home PC displaying the tracking log map:
"What were you doing in the school bathroom near the auditorium at 14:37?"
"I was peeing. Duh."
"Don't you dare take that tone with me, young lady. You were fraternizing with those disgusting scum you call friends, weren't you?"
"No, I wasn't. And the Drama club aren't scum."
"No daughter of mine is going to be caught dead around those homosexual freaks."
"None of them is gay, mom..."
"As long as you're living under my roof, you'll obey my rules. You're grounded for a week for lying to me, and you stay away from those Godless freaks."
Yeah, great idea. Instead of one Big Brother, we'll create a million little brothers, all of them unencumbered with such trivialities as regulations and public scrutiny.
Oh, and as for that tired aphorism that goes something like, "Even if it saves the life of just one child, isn't it worth it?" No. No it isn't, because the world that child will grow up in will be a perfectly dreadful place to live.
A new job requires me to use MS development "tools." In a half-hearted effort to get up to speed, I went to Fry's to look at the development offerings. I was, in particular, interested in grabbing a copy of Visual C++ 6.0 Learning Edition, since it was cheap at $100 or so (there's no way I'm spending $500 on the "Professional" version when Linux/*BSD's tools are better and free).
What I found instead was Visual C++.NET for $109. I read the box very carefully, trying to understand what exactly I was looking at, but so far I've been unable to figure out what the package actually is.
So can someone tell me: Is Visual C++.NET a native x86 compiler suite that contains.NET support (which is useful); or does it rather compile C++ code to the.NET Common Language Runtime (which is not useful at all)? Naturally, Micros~1's Web site is of absolutely no help in answering this question.
Feeding the Trolls is rarely a good idea, but I'd just like to offer for your consideration that the impact on Free Speech is the only issue involved. There are no other legitimate arguments that can be brought to bear in favor of spam.
Moreover, the people making these arguments (the spammers) care about the First Amendment precisely to the extent -- and no further -- that it allows them to clog the network with their unwated dross. If I were, in turn, to exercise my First Amendment rights and call a spammer a destructive, sociopathic, polluting rat-bastard, I'm sure I'd find myself on the receiving end of a libel/slander suit.
I find it useful to think of spam as a form of pollution; something that is destructive to the environment (Internet) and universally unwanted. You have the right to Free Speech; you do not have the right to pollute. If we can cast the debate in those terms, I think we'll find a solution more quickly.
Congress expressly gave you the right to make a copy in RAM. But what about that copy on your hard disk [... ]
Actually 17 USC 117 [cornell.edu] allows copying if "such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner", which should cover "copying" to your HD, RAM, cache, etc.
Actually, that may not wash, either. A sufficiently oily IP lawyer could argue that the making of the copy in (for example) the filesystem cache is not an essential step; the software will run just fine without the cached copy. Ergo, infringement. By Napsterian "logic", the OS vendor, by providing the filesystem cache feature, is a knowing contributory infringer and would also be liable.
Would you like to pay your fine by cash, check, or major credit card?
The EULA is the only thing that grants him any rights to use the software; [... ]
Absolute horsesh*t.
EULAs are a legal fiction and have no force or validity whatsoever.
The fictitious need for a "license" at all stems from an impossibly boneheaded court decision made in the 1970's which stated that the act of loading the software into memory for the purposes of execution constituted an infringing copy (the copy just made from disk to RAM), and was not covered under Fair Use. Ergo, a license was required.
The merest child could see how stupid this ruling was. Eventually, Congress got around to amending copyright law to expressly allow loading a program into RAM. So the highly specious need for a "license" from the vendor no longer exists. Like books, music, and videos, software is sold.
However, this idiot ruling from the court (which still serves as a crucial reference in the history of IP case law) serves as a jumping-off point to illustrate the unsustainability of the existing copyright regime in the light of modern digital media: Congress expressly gave you the right to make a copy in RAM. But what about that copy on your hard disk, which you copied from the CD-ROM you bought? If you've got enough system RAM, there's probably a complete copy of the work in the filesystem cache. Is that allowed? How about the copy in the read cache of your disk drive and/or disk controller itself? What about those fragments sitting in the L2 cache of the CPU, or those even tinier fragments in the L1 cache?
"Licensing" is not a reasonable or workable model. Copyright law needs to be fundamentally reengineered to live in the modern world.
Personally, have access to raw footage isn't all that appealing. It's not like open source software where i can change the code and actually change the functionality. Just seems rather pointless to me.
Au contraire (French for, "You melonhead":-)). Having the raw footage available to contrast against the "final" edited versions would give us the first real insight into the "bias" that creeps into mass media journalism. It would be absolutely fascinating to watch both edited versions (tech- and business-focused), then watch the raw footage to see what they chose to drop and/or juxtapose.
Moreover, if you feel none of the edited versions properly covers the issues of interest to you, snarf the raw footage and make your own version. You can use only the footage they provide, or add in some of your own.
This idea has amazing promise. I hope Cringely runs with it.
This is, of course, the Holy Grail of the "content" industries: Never even pretend to sell anything again, just rent access to it. Steam looks like it's the first cohesive attempt to do exactly this.
First, the scenario they describe to make Steam seem appealing ("You need to re-install Windows from scratch, but you can't find your Half-Life CD key! What will you do!?") fails on two major points:
The need to re-install Windows at all. This is due to perennially shoddy Microsoft engineering, and it's a damn shame Valve is spending precious R&D dollars trying to compensate for it.
The illusory need for a CD key.
Cut out either of those issues, and Steam's appeal to users is diminished.
Second, I challenge the claim that, with nothing stored on the local disk, Half-Life starts up quickly. Half-Life is fscking enormous. Single maps are at least 1M in size, with 3M being entirely common. Do the math yourself. Even at 1.5Mb/sec saturated, that's still 20 seconds just to download the map. Then you get to download the player models, sound effects, music tracks, etc. etc. Unless they've done some massive engineering to achieve "just-in-time" downloading (this is still a major area of ongoing research), I don't see how they could have made this an acceptable alternative over storing the files locally.
Third, if they're saturating the link to download the content, what's left for actually playing the game over the network? Many people get broadband for the lower ping and higher rate, resulting in smoother, more responsive game play. What happens to that experience when some other process is consuming the lion's share of the link?
Fourth, not having a complete copy of all the bits needed to run the software makes me extremely queasy. What happens when the master index server craps out? What happens when my Steam client gets toasted by the latest Outlook virus?
Having all the bits stored locally is also what's helped bootstrap and maintain the Mod community. There, on your disk, are numerous examples of maps/models/art/music that can be taken apart by users, studied, and used by creative people to come up with new maps and Mods. But what happens to all that when Steam enters the picture? The bits aren't on your disk. Will Steam hand you a copy of the bits, or will it refuse, claiming you're not a, "trusted application?"
Fifth, I don't see the "daily update to thwart cheaters" as a feature at all, much less a realistic goal. The two primary things standing in the way of this are:
Proxies on separate machines can still be written, nullifying local attempts to thwart hacks;
Release testing for Windoze takes at least a month. Regression tests against Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME Harder, Windows NT4, Windows NT5 (2K), Windows XP, and all the various forms of hell that is DirectX practically guarantees that the notion of quick-tweak-and-post-to-server just ain't gonna happen.
Finally, I'm concerned about all the stuff they're not telling you. There are obvious privacy/security concerns here:
How is billing performed? Can I pay in advance by cash or check? Who will have access to my credit card number?
How does Steam know it's "me"? Are login sessions encrypted so no one can obtain my password without my permission?
Once I'm logged in, how much data is Steam gathering about me in the background? Are they sniffing around in my machine? Are they tracking which games I'm playing, when, and for how long? What will Steam do with that information once they obtain it? (Any why do they imagine this would be any of their damn business?)
Personally, I'm all for developing new facilities that help cut out the middleman and get more dollars directly to the creators of digital works. Perhaps it's my aging, cynical brain but, as a software consumer, I just don't see any advantage Steam provides for me.
can you imagine spending hours of your time every day trying to convince people that the sky is blue?
The trouble is, people keep telling him that the sky can be grey, white, or almost black. Yet he refuses to believe them.
See, it's this kind of imprecise thinking that, I would venture to say, frustrates RMS no end.
The sky is blue. When you look up and see grey or white, you are not seeing the sky; you are seeing clouds, which are obscuring the sky. (You may argue that clouds are part of the sky; we would then need to get from you your precise definition of what you think the 'sky' actually is.)
Further claiming the sky can be black (at night, obviously) is another example of imprecise thinking. The sky is actually clear, showing you outer space (which is only mostly black).
Stallman knows how to identify and keep separate unrelated concepts and facts, so that they can be studied independently. Indeed, you need this skill if you want to have any hope of being a competent software designer. So rather than bash the man as "blind to the flagrantly obvious; everyone knows the sky changes color," ask him to walk you through his thought processes sometime. The man is anything but a fool.
This change in temperature could have had several causes, but the simplest explanation is that the power output of the sun fluctuates over time. We are most likely seeing the same sort of effect now. Will it get so hot that human civilization suffers? Possibly. Is there anything we can do about it? Probably not.
Then again, maybe we can.
At a conference I attended recently, there was a presentation for a possible solution to global warming and climactic stabilization. Observing that Sol's power output has risen by 0.25%, they propose placing a giant "parasol" at the L1 Lagrange point between Earth and Sol, blocking 0.25% of the sunlight.
This approach would be simple, effective, and reversible. The station could also house solar observatories and power collection facilities. You could also throw up more stations later to block more light or collect more power.
Unlike Dyson Spheres, these stations would only surround a small fraction of the sun. They have therefore dubbed these proposed stations, "Dyson Dots."
Sorry that I don't have a reference handy for the presenter/designer of this proposal.
If you're interested in gaining control of an airliner, the last thing you want to do is attract the attention of security personnel. As such, you have to look normal. Since Prof. Mann looked anything but normal, there's a fairly low probability that he's a hazard to air travel safety (although one could legitimately question the RFI radiated by his equipment if it couldn't safely take an X-ray). A quick check of his ID -- hell, even a quick Web search on his name -- would have quickly confirmed that the man was absolutely no trouble at all.
Prof. Mann was detained not for being a potential threat, but because he questioned The Rules.
Believe me, the guy you want to keep off the plane doesn't look or act like Mann. The Bad Guys will be appear very normal. That's why Congressmen are being detained and strip-searched in airports, because they're acting normal; very suspicious these days.
Cable companies did it with all their own pennies. They get jack from the government; it's all from subscriber fees.
This is not precisely correct. Nearly all cable TV providers operate under municipally-granted monopolies. No other cable company is allowed to come in and offer competing service. (This is what telecomm deregulation was ostensibly supposed to enable but, rather than go through the arduous process of actually competing on an open playfield, all the telecomm companies simply merged.)
So yes, cable companies did build themselves with their own pennies, but they obtained those pennies from a government-maintained captive audience.
Well, a 23-second kernel compile is impressive and all, but the most important question I would have of such a machine is: How fast can it run Quake-3?
If it can do 1280 * 1024 * 32bpp at 300 frames/second, then I'm getting one.
One way to handle this better would be to not restrict copying at all; instead, embed the identity of the original buyer into the content. [... ]
You're close. Very very close.
What you actually want to embed in the content is the identity of the creator.
You see, it'a all about reputation. If you come across a cool thing on KaMorphSter, you want to know who created it. Maybe they've done other cool stuff you'd like to have. Extracting the embedded creator information will tell you this; you won't give a damn about who bought that particular copy.
Where copying is ubiquitous and cheap, reputation becomes a chief unit of currency. The MPAA and RIAA understand this. That's why the Internet terrifies them; it completely shuts them out of the reputation-brokering business.
Trouble is, The Press is uninterested in intelligent, clear-thinking speakers. They want a show. (And someone who doesn't offend the oh-so-delicate sensibilities of their advertiesers.) This is why you get PR flaks from Microsoft, and not representatives of the EFF.
So, yeah, if you can get NightLine to call me up for an interview, I'd be honored to do it.
As for charismatic... Well, it's an old photo, but you be the judge.
Most of the previous comments are spot-on, so I'll only suggest one addition (which would likely make the document too long, so feel free to ignore it):
Lack of Compelling Need: Mr. Eisner is on record as saying that the protections mandated by the proposed Bill are absolutely necessary to facilitate healthy, sustainable commerce in digital works. Yet this is demonstrably untrue. The computer game industry -- whose gross earnings have exceeded that of the motion picture industry for the last two years -- has achieved this result selling digital works without any such legislation in place. Surely it is possible for The Walt Disney Company and other motion picture studios to achieve similar results absent this legislative burden.
Contracting Parties shall provide adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures that are used by performers or producers of phonograms in connection with the exercise of their rights under this Treaty and that restrict acts, in respect of their performances or phonograms, which are not authorized by the performers or the producers of phonograms concerned or permitted by law.
Note the language here: Everything is forbidden unless the government or the "content" provider grants express permission.
This default configuration setting is incorrect, because it is socially oppressive. It is the setting used by totalitarian regimes, both public and private; republican and monarchical. It is an evolutionary dead-end.
The correct configuration setting would be that all uses and actions are permitted unless expressly forbidden by law, or by a contract signed by both parties (none of this shrinkwrap/clickwrap horsesh*t). This setting makes it hard to oppress the populace, which is what you want.
...Unless you're a greedy, power-mongering, little tinpot dictator.
Chuck Jones took the overture to Rossini's Barber of Seville and, with Carl Stalling's virtuoso arrangement, created an absolute cinematic masterwork.
Music videos today are just a jumble of images assembled nearly at random. Chuck Jones rose to the challenge and gave Rabbit of Seville an actual plot, while still remaining almost perfectly true to Rossini's original score. Not only that, but Stalling's spirited orchestration makes you want to go out and track down Rossini's other works. (The overtures to Semiramide and The Thieving Magpie are just begging for cartoons of their own.)
It's a damn shame it doesn't get broadcast much anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, well. Congratulations, Tom.
Schwab
When I was working for Be, Inc. (RIP), I threw together a speculative ad promoting Be's Internet Appliance offering. With very little fiddling, I'm sure it could be repurposed as a pro-UNIX piece.
Offered herewith to seed new ideas.
Schwab
Okay, fine, having such a gadget on her person might possibly have saved her life. (We'll never know for sure, since we can't fork() a copy of the Universe and test both cases.)
But in all likelihood, it wouldn't have done a damn bit of good. Some possible countermeasures include:
And that's just off the top of my head. Safety is not significantly enhanced by this product.
Now, consider the possible abuses, not by law enforcement, but by psychotic parents. 13-year-old Melissa wakes up one morning to find one of these locked on to her wrist. Her mother, played by Joan Crawford, informs her that she may now go only where Mommy Dearest permits her, and that her movements will be tracked and reviewed daily on the computer. Deviation from the set Plan will be severely punished. Dawdling on the way home from school will be severely punished. Going to the library without permission (hey, there's subversive, Godless trash in there) will be severely punished. Removing the watch will be severely punished.
One day, Melissa comes home to a stern lecture from Mom, who is standing in front of the home PC displaying the tracking log map:
"What were you doing in the school bathroom near the auditorium at 14:37?"
"I was peeing. Duh."
"Don't you dare take that tone with me, young lady. You were fraternizing with those disgusting scum you call friends, weren't you?"
"No, I wasn't. And the Drama club aren't scum."
"No daughter of mine is going to be caught dead around those homosexual freaks."
"None of them is gay, mom..."
"As long as you're living under my roof, you'll obey my rules. You're grounded for a week for lying to me, and you stay away from those Godless freaks."
Yeah, great idea. Instead of one Big Brother, we'll create a million little brothers, all of them unencumbered with such trivialities as regulations and public scrutiny.
Oh, and as for that tired aphorism that goes something like, "Even if it saves the life of just one child, isn't it worth it?" No. No it isn't, because the world that child will grow up in will be a perfectly dreadful place to live.
Schwab
A new job requires me to use MS development "tools." In a half-hearted effort to get up to speed, I went to Fry's to look at the development offerings. I was, in particular, interested in grabbing a copy of Visual C++ 6.0 Learning Edition, since it was cheap at $100 or so (there's no way I'm spending $500 on the "Professional" version when Linux/*BSD's tools are better and free).
What I found instead was Visual C++ .NET for $109. I read the box very carefully, trying to understand what exactly I was looking at, but so far I've been unable to figure out what the package actually is.
So can someone tell me: Is Visual C++ .NET a native x86 compiler suite that contains .NET support (which is useful); or does it rather compile C++ code to the .NET Common Language Runtime (which is not useful at all)? Naturally, Micros~1's Web site is of absolutely no help in answering this question.
Thanks,
Schwab
Feeding the Trolls is rarely a good idea, but I'd just like to offer for your consideration that the impact on Free Speech is the only issue involved. There are no other legitimate arguments that can be brought to bear in favor of spam.
Moreover, the people making these arguments (the spammers) care about the First Amendment precisely to the extent -- and no further -- that it allows them to clog the network with their unwated dross. If I were, in turn, to exercise my First Amendment rights and call a spammer a destructive, sociopathic, polluting rat-bastard, I'm sure I'd find myself on the receiving end of a libel/slander suit.
I find it useful to think of spam as a form of pollution; something that is destructive to the environment (Internet) and universally unwanted. You have the right to Free Speech; you do not have the right to pollute. If we can cast the debate in those terms, I think we'll find a solution more quickly.
Schwab
Actually, that may not wash, either. A sufficiently oily IP lawyer could argue that the making of the copy in (for example) the filesystem cache is not an essential step; the software will run just fine without the cached copy. Ergo, infringement. By Napsterian "logic", the OS vendor, by providing the filesystem cache feature, is a knowing contributory infringer and would also be liable.
Would you like to pay your fine by cash, check, or major credit card?
Schwab
Absolute horsesh*t.
EULAs are a legal fiction and have no force or validity whatsoever.
The fictitious need for a "license" at all stems from an impossibly boneheaded court decision made in the 1970's which stated that the act of loading the software into memory for the purposes of execution constituted an infringing copy (the copy just made from disk to RAM), and was not covered under Fair Use. Ergo, a license was required.
The merest child could see how stupid this ruling was. Eventually, Congress got around to amending copyright law to expressly allow loading a program into RAM. So the highly specious need for a "license" from the vendor no longer exists. Like books, music, and videos, software is sold.
However, this idiot ruling from the court (which still serves as a crucial reference in the history of IP case law) serves as a jumping-off point to illustrate the unsustainability of the existing copyright regime in the light of modern digital media: Congress expressly gave you the right to make a copy in RAM. But what about that copy on your hard disk, which you copied from the CD-ROM you bought? If you've got enough system RAM, there's probably a complete copy of the work in the filesystem cache. Is that allowed? How about the copy in the read cache of your disk drive and/or disk controller itself? What about those fragments sitting in the L2 cache of the CPU, or those even tinier fragments in the L1 cache?
"Licensing" is not a reasonable or workable model. Copyright law needs to be fundamentally reengineered to live in the modern world.
Schwab
Au contraire (French for, "You melonhead" :-)). Having the raw footage available to contrast against the "final" edited versions would give us the first real insight into the "bias" that creeps into mass media journalism. It would be absolutely fascinating to watch both edited versions (tech- and business-focused), then watch the raw footage to see what they chose to drop and/or juxtapose.
Moreover, if you feel none of the edited versions properly covers the issues of interest to you, snarf the raw footage and make your own version. You can use only the footage they provide, or add in some of your own.
This idea has amazing promise. I hope Cringely runs with it.
Schwab
This is, of course, the Holy Grail of the "content" industries: Never even pretend to sell anything again, just rent access to it. Steam looks like it's the first cohesive attempt to do exactly this.
First, the scenario they describe to make Steam seem appealing ("You need to re-install Windows from scratch, but you can't find your Half-Life CD key! What will you do!?") fails on two major points:
- The need to re-install Windows at all. This is due to perennially shoddy Microsoft engineering, and it's a damn shame Valve is spending precious R&D dollars trying to compensate for it.
- The illusory need for a CD key.
Cut out either of those issues, and Steam's appeal to users is diminished.Second, I challenge the claim that, with nothing stored on the local disk, Half-Life starts up quickly. Half-Life is fscking enormous. Single maps are at least 1M in size, with 3M being entirely common. Do the math yourself. Even at 1.5Mb/sec saturated, that's still 20 seconds just to download the map. Then you get to download the player models, sound effects, music tracks, etc. etc. Unless they've done some massive engineering to achieve "just-in-time" downloading (this is still a major area of ongoing research), I don't see how they could have made this an acceptable alternative over storing the files locally.
Third, if they're saturating the link to download the content, what's left for actually playing the game over the network? Many people get broadband for the lower ping and higher rate, resulting in smoother, more responsive game play. What happens to that experience when some other process is consuming the lion's share of the link?
Fourth, not having a complete copy of all the bits needed to run the software makes me extremely queasy. What happens when the master index server craps out? What happens when my Steam client gets toasted by the latest Outlook virus?
Having all the bits stored locally is also what's helped bootstrap and maintain the Mod community. There, on your disk, are numerous examples of maps/models/art/music that can be taken apart by users, studied, and used by creative people to come up with new maps and Mods. But what happens to all that when Steam enters the picture? The bits aren't on your disk. Will Steam hand you a copy of the bits, or will it refuse, claiming you're not a, "trusted application?"
Fifth, I don't see the "daily update to thwart cheaters" as a feature at all, much less a realistic goal. The two primary things standing in the way of this are:
Finally, I'm concerned about all the stuff they're not telling you. There are obvious privacy/security concerns here:
Personally, I'm all for developing new facilities that help cut out the middleman and get more dollars directly to the creators of digital works. Perhaps it's my aging, cynical brain but, as a software consumer, I just don't see any advantage Steam provides for me.
Schwab
See, it's this kind of imprecise thinking that, I would venture to say, frustrates RMS no end.
The sky is blue. When you look up and see grey or white, you are not seeing the sky; you are seeing clouds, which are obscuring the sky. (You may argue that clouds are part of the sky; we would then need to get from you your precise definition of what you think the 'sky' actually is.)
Further claiming the sky can be black (at night, obviously) is another example of imprecise thinking. The sky is actually clear, showing you outer space (which is only mostly black).
Stallman knows how to identify and keep separate unrelated concepts and facts, so that they can be studied independently. Indeed, you need this skill if you want to have any hope of being a competent software designer. So rather than bash the man as "blind to the flagrantly obvious; everyone knows the sky changes color," ask him to walk you through his thought processes sometime. The man is anything but a fool.
Schwab
Then again, maybe we can.
At a conference I attended recently, there was a presentation for a possible solution to global warming and climactic stabilization. Observing that Sol's power output has risen by 0.25%, they propose placing a giant "parasol" at the L1 Lagrange point between Earth and Sol, blocking 0.25% of the sunlight.
This approach would be simple, effective, and reversible. The station could also house solar observatories and power collection facilities. You could also throw up more stations later to block more light or collect more power.
Unlike Dyson Spheres, these stations would only surround a small fraction of the sun. They have therefore dubbed these proposed stations, "Dyson Dots."
Sorry that I don't have a reference handy for the presenter/designer of this proposal.
Schwab
No. Not even then.
If you're interested in gaining control of an airliner, the last thing you want to do is attract the attention of security personnel. As such, you have to look normal. Since Prof. Mann looked anything but normal, there's a fairly low probability that he's a hazard to air travel safety (although one could legitimately question the RFI radiated by his equipment if it couldn't safely take an X-ray). A quick check of his ID -- hell, even a quick Web search on his name -- would have quickly confirmed that the man was absolutely no trouble at all.
Prof. Mann was detained not for being a potential threat, but because he questioned The Rules.
Believe me, the guy you want to keep off the plane doesn't look or act like Mann. The Bad Guys will be appear very normal. That's why Congressmen are being detained and strip-searched in airports, because they're acting normal; very suspicious these days.
Schwab
He did play by the rules.
The rules are: Unless they have a damn good reason to do otherwise, the authorities are to leave you alone.
Schwab
This is not precisely correct. Nearly all cable TV providers operate under municipally-granted monopolies. No other cable company is allowed to come in and offer competing service. (This is what telecomm deregulation was ostensibly supposed to enable but, rather than go through the arduous process of actually competing on an open playfield, all the telecomm companies simply merged.)
So yes, cable companies did build themselves with their own pennies, but they obtained those pennies from a government-maintained captive audience.
Schwab
May I respectfully suggest adding to your list: Time.
Schwab
And I thought I was predicting usury when I wrote this little ditty a while back.
$21/Gig? I would never have believed anyone could seriously propose such a figure. Even if it is Canadian Dollars, it's still outrageous.
Schwab
Well, a 23-second kernel compile is impressive and all, but the most important question I would have of such a machine is: How fast can it run Quake-3?
If it can do 1280 * 1024 * 32bpp at 300 frames/second, then I'm getting one.
Schwab
You're close. Very very close.
What you actually want to embed in the content is the identity of the creator.
You see, it'a all about reputation. If you come across a cool thing on KaMorphSter, you want to know who created it. Maybe they've done other cool stuff you'd like to have. Extracting the embedded creator information will tell you this; you won't give a damn about who bought that particular copy.
Where copying is ubiquitous and cheap, reputation becomes a chief unit of currency. The MPAA and RIAA understand this. That's why the Internet terrifies them; it completely shuts them out of the reputation-brokering business.
Schwab
Take the shows Blind Date and Survivor, and you've pretty much got ElimiDate . It's an embarrassing guilty pleasure.
Schwab
Who?
Sorry, pretty much all I use my TV for these days is watching The Prisoner, Dr. Who, and -- Lord forgive me -- ElimiDate.
Schwab
I'd be happy to do it, were I asked.
Trouble is, The Press is uninterested in intelligent, clear-thinking speakers. They want a show. (And someone who doesn't offend the oh-so-delicate sensibilities of their advertiesers.) This is why you get PR flaks from Microsoft, and not representatives of the EFF.
So, yeah, if you can get NightLine to call me up for an interview, I'd be honored to do it.
As for charismatic... Well, it's an old photo, but you be the judge.
Schwab
Most of the previous comments are spot-on, so I'll only suggest one addition (which would likely make the document too long, so feel free to ignore it):
Just my two cents...
Schwab
Note the language here: Everything is forbidden unless the government or the "content" provider grants express permission.
This default configuration setting is incorrect, because it is socially oppressive. It is the setting used by totalitarian regimes, both public and private; republican and monarchical. It is an evolutionary dead-end.
The correct configuration setting would be that all uses and actions are permitted unless expressly forbidden by law, or by a contract signed by both parties (none of this shrinkwrap/clickwrap horsesh*t). This setting makes it hard to oppress the populace, which is what you want.
...Unless you're a greedy, power-mongering, little tinpot dictator.
Schwab
"Ho! Ha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!" <*bonk!*>
"Yoiks, and away!" <*bonk!*>
"I'll steal his gold, and give it to some poor unworthy slob. That'll prove I'm Robin Hood!"
"Never send a monster to do the work of an evil scientist." Voiced by -- of course -- Vincent Price.
Don't forget, of course, the monster's particular taste in footwear :-).
Schwab
Chuck Jones took the overture to Rossini's Barber of Seville and, with Carl Stalling's virtuoso arrangement, created an absolute cinematic masterwork.
Music videos today are just a jumble of images assembled nearly at random. Chuck Jones rose to the challenge and gave Rabbit of Seville an actual plot, while still remaining almost perfectly true to Rossini's original score. Not only that, but Stalling's spirited orchestration makes you want to go out and track down Rossini's other works. (The overtures to Semiramide and The Thieving Magpie are just begging for cartoons of their own.)
It's a damn shame it doesn't get broadcast much anymore.
Schwab