Hypocrisy has never been a deterrent to accusations (provable or not) that destroy a persons life, career, relationship, whatever.
Scandal works by playing with "public opinion" -- the facts are often irrelevant, and a life can be destroyed regardless of the facts, just from the sensationalism. E.g., gay men in positions of authority in the Boy Scouts -- the guy (in the latest case) may not even be gay, but all the proof in the world isn't going to change the allegation, just as all the proof in the world that the Ryan kid got AIDS from a transfusion (and not homosexuality) didn't change the prejudice against him and his family.
"Facts" still fall under a level of interpretation, and the first to interpret and go public with his interpretation can use that to control public opinion and most people's own interpretations; its already jaded by then -- they'll see what they're "shown", not what is there.
As with the jerks out there who listen to radio shows they don't like (e.g., Howard Stern) just waiting for them to play/say something banned by the FCC to get them fired, there will be those looking at these public cameras just to find a reason to destroy someone's reputation by twisting the interpretation of what the camera showed. This is their only source of "power" because they lead such shitty lives -- they make "soap operas" out of others lives...it happens already -- an "open" society will just make it worse by making it easier for these people. --
You gotta get up real early around here if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
For a limited time...--Neil Peart (though he got the line from someone else, i think...) --
You gotta get up real early around here if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
Like the U.S. would be stupid enough to actually let the Chinese even get that close... --
You gotta get up real early around here if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
Hassles with the telecoms seems to be one of the major problems with the DSL types, both technologically and financially...and its in the telcos best interest for it to stay that way. The DSL types do most of the design work, most of the "public service" work, invest most of the money, then still fail to pay the bills and go under...
And then the telcos can acquire the DSL services (that are already partly theirs anyways and they have all the technical know-how to manage, even if not the customer support), AND (more importantly) a set of customers already...
When they consolidate 2 or 3 different DSLs using their own service, they become a DSL powerhouse with an income stream that's unstoppable...allowing them to increase the pressure on the remaining DSL types still "leasing" their services until they too are ripe for acquisition...
And of course, Hollywood treated THAT forbidden subject just like the current Sex/Violence ones...as if it was something to be praiseworthy and honorable.
Even light-hearted comedies like The Marx Brothers (specifically, Horsefeathers) had Speakeasies, active drinking by all characters, deception of quality (the same large jug was used to fill a bottle of "Scotch" and a bottle of "Rum" (by Chico)), theft of alcohol in large quantity for smuggling to others later (by Harpo), etc...of course, I could be misinterpretting Horsefeathers as a light-hearted comedy; it might have been seen as a very controversial film for the time...
Hollywood basically continued to act likes its promotion of alcohol was not only harmless, but like it was Hollywood's God-Given Right to promote alcohol.
Just as Hollywood today thinks its a God-Given Right to promote sexual promiscuity and open-activity...
b.t.w., these are opinions/observations of the actions of the Movie and TV entertainment industry, and not condemnations of alcohol consumption or sexual activity itself.
The CDs won't become free. The CDs will become "out of print". And we'll have to do semi-underground trading of them just the way we have to do semi-underground trading of "B-Sides" of singles and cdsingles and the like today...
But the point against this cartel is that if you have a "local" station broadcasting over the internet, the station is also broadcasting the adds, and paying MLB for it already. RealNetworks should never have gotten involved -- this should have been directly between MLB and the "Radio Network" that organizes the broadcast of the games through local stations.
E.g., but out of date: WTOP (D.C.) used to broadcast Orioles games (they don't anymore because it kept getting in the way of traffic reports that listeners REALLY wanted), but while they did, they also did over their feed on the internet. The feed on the 'net still gets commercials. In fact, WTOP was able to raise their rates by showing the number of internet listeners. From that improved rating, WTOP has a standard rate that they would pay to the Orioles network (modified by the fact that the rating affects direct sponsors like Eskay hot dogs that go through the network), which in turn paid the Orioles a cut and the rest to MLB to give to the other teams involved in games against the O's.
NOW, what MLB wants is an additional $10.00 per listener per season, ON TOP OF THE FACT that the rates MLB gets paid by the stations ALREADY REFLECTS internet listeners.
That is somthing that doth royally suck the big one...MLB is going to Real for a sense of exclusivity (thinking they might get more) and bypassing the radio stations -- what it does is send more money directly to MLB, at the expense of the local radio stations (that lose that added rating share for internet broadcasting games), and more importantly at the expense of the individual teams that have stronger radio listenerships -- MLB would distribute an even cut of the money to each team, even though some teams like the O's have stronger radio audiences than others (by virtue of being close to 2 major and 4 minor cities within radio-range). Broadcasts through Real would likely go through exclusivities -- local stations that broadcast would be forced to blackout their internet broadcasting during a game, and that would cut into their overall internet listenership, since the reliability of the internet distribution would be shaken in the view of their listeners.
Exactly -- the BBB is an organization that one is meant to trust. The BBB exists to praise companies with sound and fair (and honest publically, if not totally open) business practices, and as such, maintains a hit-list also of those that continually lie, deceive, perpetuate frauds, etc.
Having a link to the BBB is tantamount to trying to give the impression that your company is on the BBB's "praiseworthy list". If you are not on that list, you're piggybacking your company in quite an unethical fashion...which of course immediately puts you on their list of "deceptive" companies.
Getting rid of the link is really the better approach...from an ethical standpoint.
Of course, ethics can sometimes be something a company has little of...
Well, not quite, but tts an old problem, a stastical brain teaser, that (if you watch your James Burke) is partly responsible for the application of statistics to the French census durin the Napoleanic era.
The original is "how many [black|red] cards are there in three face down cards; does the number seem to "change" when one of the cards is revealed?" The problem is from the 16th century (about the time of the application of color to what became the "standard" deck), and the solution came in the 18th century...with no computers involved. The solution uses basic probability mathematics that's still taught as-is in today's Prob&Stats classes for Math and CS Majors.
Yes, wishful thinking. Because all the technologically superior wizz-bang of open source can't out market the most blindingly obvious tactic of AIM (and while we're at it, I.E.): Bundling. AIM is #1 because it was included with every version of netscape (at the time, the number one browser) since version 3.something, maybe even 2.x (my memory is fading). Similarly, its the only IM for AOL users (all xx MILLION of them). They would rather keep things simple (that's why they're on AOL in the first place, right), so they continue to use AIM (and the same accounts) even when they are connected to the 'net by a real service.
You are NEVER going to be able to replace that. All the open-source in the world can't beat that. If I want to talk to my friends, I have to use AIM protocols (gaim w/ TOC, b.t.w.). I don't have a choice. I (and nobody I personally know) don't have enough clout to suddenly tell 95 of my friends and family that they need to switch to something else just to talk to me.
If I were to say "talk to me via jabber; its a better service anyways", I would get a lot of email. And next to no messages.
All the "Blair Witch", in the long term, proved was that "Grass Roots" couldn't do it more than once (re: the major flop that BWP2 was).
Fake "fan" sites might used to artificially create a Grass Roots campaign because they know a real one will never happen again. Soon, the people will come to realize this, the studios will stop and try something new...and go on suing everybody in site for "Intellectual" property when intelligence wasn't even remotely used to make the crap they shove down our throats in the first place.
Patent applications aren't necessarilly "public". If a patent isn't granted, the company would still want the document protected, since they would continue to use the technique and enforce its protection as a "trade secret". A patent is public. An application isn't.
"Obviousness" might also be shown by how many other indepentent implementations were underway at the same time as the filing of the patent application itself. If 5 or 6 companies were all working on the same thing, and none of them got the "idea" by talking with any of the other 5 companies, then there's a chance that it was pretty damn "obvious" to 5 or 6 people.
The trouble with the Obviousness test is that what is obvious to an insider, in our case anybody with brains at all and a college degree in C.S., isn't necessarilly obvious to an outsider (e.g., the ignorant patent clerk). If the patent office could hire a C.S. grad with some experience in this, it would be great...
but a C.S. grad with some experience in this would make 10 times more working for a company to make patents than working for the PTO to refute them.
Depends on how many other "claims" you violate. The patent is a list of claims, and each claim may or may not be "valid". Only a court case or an out-of-court agreement can determine what claims are valid for a particular potential licensee or potential violator. A court case decision will refute a claim for all. Otherwise, a claim refuted for one in an out of court agreement remains valid for everybody else not subject to that agreement.
How can a reverse auction, something in existance in the "Real World" for over a century, be something that Priceline has the one and only legal online implementation of.
Software patents cover ALL implementations of a particular concept, not just the one that company w/ the patent implemented. This is one of the major problems with software patents. Its not exclusive use of their invention, meaning their code. Their "invention" is the entire concept.
Yeah, that thought just crossed my mind. You can use the apache module API to make a module, in C, C++ (recommended), or Perl (using mod_perl as the means) so that requests don't leave Apache's memory space. The CGI slowdowns are 1) starting a new process (if needed), 2) passing data to the process, or 3) "interpretation" of a scripting language (whether in a separate process/memory space or embedded in apache).
Writing your own Apache module will get rid of 2 of those three, and the third if you stick with C/C++ for your module. Note that you should still follow good design principles; the mod_whatever should just be a mechanism for getting data into and out of apache and the code that implements your application. The module is not the application; its the means to get apache to exchange data with your application.
It all depends on what you're serving. If there's a lot of static pages, or pages in different languages, then Apache is the best mediator involved. This is certainly true of serving unchanging images.
But if everything you do is going through the equiv of "CGI", then forget Apache. HTTP is far too easy a protocol to implement (hell, its the protocol used for lots of "embedded" servers in stuff like Napster and Shoutcast). Implement your own HTTP server where you automatically can have all requests go to an engine for processing directly, and take Apache and all that configuration out of the loop. You'd effectively have two servers running -- an apache server to handle throwing images and static pages around, and a second home-grown server that directly serves up the application data. Doing this won't change that your database engine is your primary bottleneck, but it will reduce all other bottlenecks by quite a bit.
Apache is a general purpose system, and does it pretty damn fast, but for a true special-purpose system, its best to implement your own special-purpose server.
The "embedded server" for Java follows the same principle. Maybe W3C has some implementation code in C that may prove useful.
Parts are, parts aren't. Its more a template mechanism -- the "main" parts of a book's page are static, but the whole page is still "assembled" because it needs your personalization factors which all come either directly from a database or are cached in memory. This includes thinks like the "one-click" section, or "this is in your wish list", etc...
CPU time is still cheap for 1 or two pages, maybe. But slashdot gets several thousand hits a minute, several hundred a second; more when a Napster or M$ story comes along. When was the last time you got your own linux box to compress 100 SEPARATE files in a second. Try it sometime. (Yes, I acknowledge that file-io is the primary bottleneck, but hopefully you get my drift).
I suppose the surprise was just how quickly the growth curves levelled off. Just as development and expansion were all on "internet-time", so was complacency and death.
Growth comes from making enough money to expand, not expanding fast enough to keep up with expenses.
Nice quote. Trouble is that the "imagination" got away with the CEOs and VCs out there. They got their initial "hits" of advertising dollars and eyeballs and "customers" in many cases, saw a growth curve, and then expanded as if that growth curve would remain constant or even exponentially explode. After all, that's what happened to Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Compaq, Dell...
Only it didn't. It levelled off. In order to keep "growing", the.coms took part in major acquisitions (yahoo, altavista, excite) or expanded their categories of merchandise to the point of redicule (amazon). Yet the curves continued to level off. There just weren't all THAT many buyers out there for stuff they could get even easier the old-fashioned way.
Then the dumb competitors entered (did we really need 12,15,30 different online music stores, all dealing in the same stuff? Did amazon really have to enter that market as well?). Instant saturation to the point of uselessness. The entire world turned into shoeshops.
The only successes are the ones that stayed small, in terms of content and customer base -- "The Artist Shop", e.g., a speciality music store for discerning prog-rock listeners. Other successes are those for which the online catalog was merely that -- an online mail-order storefront that was an add-on to their real storefront.
Good point. But I think that Server suppliers out there will start seeing an alternate "bump" in usage -- yes, their bandwidth will be reduced, but at the expense of CPU usage going through the roof with the compression algorithms. No, its nothing like mp3 enconding, but it is a busy algorithm, and doing 100 at a time will be a significant hit on the CPU, especially when they're competing with the database, the O/S, etc...
Compressing on the fly will increase CPU usage to the point that it will likely slow the site down to the point of uselessness. Moving the compression to a second box will continue the slowdown, because now the second box has to re-assemble the original packets in order to get optimized compression ratios, then retransmit. Its just not a viable solution.
Slashdot Mirror
Scandal works by playing with "public opinion" -- the facts are often irrelevant, and a life can be destroyed regardless of the facts, just from the sensationalism. E.g., gay men in positions of authority in the Boy Scouts -- the guy (in the latest case) may not even be gay, but all the proof in the world isn't going to change the allegation, just as all the proof in the world that the Ryan kid got AIDS from a transfusion (and not homosexuality) didn't change the prejudice against him and his family.
"Facts" still fall under a level of interpretation, and the first to interpret and go public with his interpretation can use that to control public opinion and most people's own interpretations; its already jaded by then -- they'll see what they're "shown", not what is there.
As with the jerks out there who listen to radio shows they don't like (e.g., Howard Stern) just waiting for them to play/say something banned by the FCC to get them fired, there will be those looking at these public cameras just to find a reason to destroy someone's reputation by twisting the interpretation of what the camera showed. This is their only source of "power" because they lead such shitty lives -- they make "soap operas" out of others lives...it happens already -- an "open" society will just make it worse by making it easier for these people.
--
You gotta get up real early around here if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
For a limited time...--Neil Peart (though he got the line from someone else, i think...)
--
You gotta get up real early around here if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
Like the U.S. would be stupid enough to actually let the Chinese even get that close...
--
You gotta get up real early around here if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
Support for my argument can be found in this ZDNet article
And then the telcos can acquire the DSL services (that are already partly theirs anyways and they have all the technical know-how to manage, even if not the customer support), AND (more importantly) a set of customers already...
When they consolidate 2 or 3 different DSLs using their own service, they become a DSL powerhouse with an income stream that's unstoppable...allowing them to increase the pressure on the remaining DSL types still "leasing" their services until they too are ripe for acquisition...
bastards...
Even light-hearted comedies like The Marx Brothers (specifically, Horsefeathers) had Speakeasies, active drinking by all characters, deception of quality (the same large jug was used to fill a bottle of "Scotch" and a bottle of "Rum" (by Chico)), theft of alcohol in large quantity for smuggling to others later (by Harpo), etc...of course, I could be misinterpretting Horsefeathers as a light-hearted comedy; it might have been seen as a very controversial film for the time...
Hollywood basically continued to act likes its promotion of alcohol was not only harmless, but like it was Hollywood's God-Given Right to promote alcohol.
Just as Hollywood today thinks its a God-Given Right to promote sexual promiscuity and open-activity...
b.t.w., these are opinions/observations of the actions of the Movie and TV entertainment industry, and not condemnations of alcohol consumption or sexual activity itself.
The CDs won't become free. The CDs will become "out of print". And we'll have to do semi-underground trading of them just the way we have to do semi-underground trading of "B-Sides" of singles and cdsingles and the like today...
E.g., but out of date: WTOP (D.C.) used to broadcast Orioles games (they don't anymore because it kept getting in the way of traffic reports that listeners REALLY wanted), but while they did, they also did over their feed on the internet. The feed on the 'net still gets commercials. In fact, WTOP was able to raise their rates by showing the number of internet listeners. From that improved rating, WTOP has a standard rate that they would pay to the Orioles network (modified by the fact that the rating affects direct sponsors like Eskay hot dogs that go through the network), which in turn paid the Orioles a cut and the rest to MLB to give to the other teams involved in games against the O's.
NOW, what MLB wants is an additional $10.00 per listener per season, ON TOP OF THE FACT that the rates MLB gets paid by the stations ALREADY REFLECTS internet listeners.
That is somthing that doth royally suck the big one...MLB is going to Real for a sense of exclusivity (thinking they might get more) and bypassing the radio stations -- what it does is send more money directly to MLB, at the expense of the local radio stations (that lose that added rating share for internet broadcasting games), and more importantly at the expense of the individual teams that have stronger radio listenerships -- MLB would distribute an even cut of the money to each team, even though some teams like the O's have stronger radio audiences than others (by virtue of being close to 2 major and 4 minor cities within radio-range). Broadcasts through Real would likely go through exclusivities -- local stations that broadcast would be forced to blackout their internet broadcasting during a game, and that would cut into their overall internet listenership, since the reliability of the internet distribution would be shaken in the view of their listeners.
Having a link to the BBB is tantamount to trying to give the impression that your company is on the BBB's "praiseworthy list". If you are not on that list, you're piggybacking your company in quite an unethical fashion...which of course immediately puts you on their list of "deceptive" companies.
Getting rid of the link is really the better approach...from an ethical standpoint.
Of course, ethics can sometimes be something a company has little of...
The original is "how many [black|red] cards are there in three face down cards; does the number seem to "change" when one of the cards is revealed?" The problem is from the 16th century (about the time of the application of color to what became the "standard" deck), and the solution came in the 18th century...with no computers involved. The solution uses basic probability mathematics that's still taught as-is in today's Prob&Stats classes for Math and CS Majors.
Not the scenerio I'd like to open up...and you know they'll try it, too...
You are NEVER going to be able to replace that. All the open-source in the world can't beat that. If I want to talk to my friends, I have to use AIM protocols (gaim w/ TOC, b.t.w.). I don't have a choice. I (and nobody I personally know) don't have enough clout to suddenly tell 95 of my friends and family that they need to switch to something else just to talk to me.
If I were to say "talk to me via jabber; its a better service anyways", I would get a lot of email. And next to no messages.
Fake "fan" sites might used to artificially create a Grass Roots campaign because they know a real one will never happen again. Soon, the people will come to realize this, the studios will stop and try something new...and go on suing everybody in site for "Intellectual" property when intelligence wasn't even remotely used to make the crap they shove down our throats in the first place.
Patent applications aren't necessarilly "public". If a patent isn't granted, the company would still want the document protected, since they would continue to use the technique and enforce its protection as a "trade secret". A patent is public. An application isn't.
The trouble with the Obviousness test is that what is obvious to an insider, in our case anybody with brains at all and a college degree in C.S., isn't necessarilly obvious to an outsider (e.g., the ignorant patent clerk). If the patent office could hire a C.S. grad with some experience in this, it would be great...
but a C.S. grad with some experience in this would make 10 times more working for a company to make patents than working for the PTO to refute them.
Depends on how many other "claims" you violate. The patent is a list of claims, and each claim may or may not be "valid". Only a court case or an out-of-court agreement can determine what claims are valid for a particular potential licensee or potential violator. A court case decision will refute a claim for all. Otherwise, a claim refuted for one in an out of court agreement remains valid for everybody else not subject to that agreement.
Software patents cover ALL implementations of a particular concept, not just the one that company w/ the patent implemented. This is one of the major problems with software patents. Its not exclusive use of their invention, meaning their code. Their "invention" is the entire concept.
Writing your own Apache module will get rid of 2 of those three, and the third if you stick with C/C++ for your module. Note that you should still follow good design principles; the mod_whatever should just be a mechanism for getting data into and out of apache and the code that implements your application. The module is not the application; its the means to get apache to exchange data with your application.
http://openejb.exolab.org/ is an opensource EJB2.0 container.
But if everything you do is going through the equiv of "CGI", then forget Apache. HTTP is far too easy a protocol to implement (hell, its the protocol used for lots of "embedded" servers in stuff like Napster and Shoutcast). Implement your own HTTP server where you automatically can have all requests go to an engine for processing directly, and take Apache and all that configuration out of the loop. You'd effectively have two servers running -- an apache server to handle throwing images and static pages around, and a second home-grown server that directly serves up the application data. Doing this won't change that your database engine is your primary bottleneck, but it will reduce all other bottlenecks by quite a bit.
Apache is a general purpose system, and does it pretty damn fast, but for a true special-purpose system, its best to implement your own special-purpose server.
The "embedded server" for Java follows the same principle. Maybe W3C has some implementation code in C that may prove useful.
Parts are, parts aren't. Its more a template mechanism -- the "main" parts of a book's page are static, but the whole page is still "assembled" because it needs your personalization factors which all come either directly from a database or are cached in memory. This includes thinks like the "one-click" section, or "this is in your wish list", etc...
CPU time is still cheap for 1 or two pages, maybe. But slashdot gets several thousand hits a minute, several hundred a second; more when a Napster or M$ story comes along. When was the last time you got your own linux box to compress 100 SEPARATE files in a second. Try it sometime. (Yes, I acknowledge that file-io is the primary bottleneck, but hopefully you get my drift).
I suppose the surprise was just how quickly the growth curves levelled off. Just as development and expansion were all on "internet-time", so was complacency and death.
Nice quote. Trouble is that the "imagination" got away with the CEOs and VCs out there. They got their initial "hits" of advertising dollars and eyeballs and "customers" in many cases, saw a growth curve, and then expanded as if that growth curve would remain constant or even exponentially explode. After all, that's what happened to Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Compaq, Dell...
Only it didn't. It levelled off. In order to keep "growing", the .coms took part in major acquisitions (yahoo, altavista, excite) or expanded their categories of merchandise to the point of redicule (amazon). Yet the curves continued to level off. There just weren't all THAT many buyers out there for stuff they could get even easier the old-fashioned way.
Then the dumb competitors entered (did we really need 12,15,30 different online music stores, all dealing in the same stuff? Did amazon really have to enter that market as well?). Instant saturation to the point of uselessness. The entire world turned into shoeshops.
The only successes are the ones that stayed small, in terms of content and customer base -- "The Artist Shop", e.g., a speciality music store for discerning prog-rock listeners. Other successes are those for which the online catalog was merely that -- an online mail-order storefront that was an add-on to their real storefront.
Compressing on the fly will increase CPU usage to the point that it will likely slow the site down to the point of uselessness. Moving the compression to a second box will continue the slowdown, because now the second box has to re-assemble the original packets in order to get optimized compression ratios, then retransmit. Its just not a viable solution.