While I agree that Nintendo is probably way out of line in any possible suit, it's not as open and shut as you trumpet here.
From my reading of the letter, Nintendo's claim could be that SG was using "Metroid", "Zelda" etc within the meta tags for the page, or perhaps more extensive terms like "Zelda: Wind Waker" "Metroid video game" and so forth... terms obviously constructed to generate hits to the page that were NOT searches for the actual content of the page.
I don't know if this was the case with the SG page, but imagine that it was. Is that legal? It's a business practice. It's a business practice that is predicated on an odd use of someone else's trademark. Can I put up a billboard that says "My tree clearing business is just as good as Link in the Legend of Zelda video game series!" ?
Perhaps I can, perhaps I can't, the fact that Nintendo is questioning it isn't the problem, imo... and it's not "clearly" fair use. This being said, if SG just used the terms Metroid and Zelda in the text of a web page, I think they should be entirely in the clear... but was that all they were doing?
Off the top of my head, acts that I listen to nowadays that I would never have heard of otherwise:
Cursive Jazzanova Dredg Denali
From these bands I've heard of other bands:
Eastern Youth Murder By Death Minus The Bear The Statistics Darkest Hour Decahedron The Good Life, Desparedecidos (Basically the saddle creek label) Stereolab
I attend these band's shows (seeing Dredg next week), I buy their merchandise (on Sunday I bought the Cursive/Eastern Youth split, and a Cursive t-shirt for my girlfriend).
As it happens, as I've grown older, and as they've grown more dangerous, I've used filesharing applications less. I have to be much more active in my pursuit of more music (it's very easy to browse someone's collection who likes stuff you like online... not always so much in person [and then they only usually stump for a couple of their favorite artists;]). I still do, however, browse the newsgroups for electronic and other more niche music genres.
In my non-researched, lazy consumer opinion, I think that the solution is very very very low cost music options, and if possible, a one-fee sort of thing. E.g. Ultra-Napazaa, where you pay 5$ a month to download whatever the hell you want at 128kbps. If you really like it, you can buy CD-quality download or shipment for some nominal fee (another 5 dollars, say). Very few if any of the bands I list above sell huge amounts of records. I don't imagine that they would make less if such a distribution channel existed in parallel to classic retail.
I do C# development, for ASP.NET, where I work. I do php development (hacking phpbb), for my personal website.
For large scale projects (e.g. a messageboard), I would greatly prefer to use C# over ASP.NET... I strongly dislike IIS, and I suppose that's a stumbling block, but on the other hand, C# is a strongly typed, compilable language. I'm not clear on how all the benefits of scripting (faster output from looser coding) apply to large scale projects, or projects where things like OOP and Exception handling are useful.
OOP and Exceptions rely on, you know, strong, well concieved design. If you're going to take the time to design your large project, why the hell would you throw away the benefits of strong types and compile time debugging (incredibly useful in a large and/or shared project), not to mention things like unit testing and automatic documentation (things C# has).
The code example in the article makes little sense to me. For one, they use VB... which looks ugly no matter how you slice it. C# would have been more directly comparable, and it should be available in MSDN... but regardless, the code looks almost identical. Is the point that there really is little difference, or that PHP is better? In both languages, it seems you could abstract away the Oracleness of the behavior (negative on both fronts), and you'd be at square one regardless.
Eh, I don't see any real useful comparison in this article. Yes, it sucks that ASP.NET only works with IIS. I'll be happy to run mono when the opportunity presents itself. But this article was pretty useless.
After having used Outlook for quite a while, I've gone through the same thing with Thunderbird. In fact, I still can't seem to switch between HTML and plaintext email composition without changing my overall composition preferences, which is buried at least four or five clicks away from the composition window.
I'm not sure if it's a config design issue as much as it is a familiarity issue. I dumped Outlook because of the unease I had with its security, and Outlook 2002's spotty compatibility with Windows XP. Thunderbird is better in some ways, but it definitely has its downsides, not the least of which is the painful configuration of multiple accounts and general preferences.
I use GIMP here at work because I can't really justify the cost of Photoshop. It's useable but it's nothing compared to the usability and "fit and finish" factor of Photoshop. Further (at least in the stable windows port), there are plenty of little annoying bugs that are typical of software that hasn't been very well QAed.
Example that I ran into this morning: enlarging the canvas size on an image. If you unlock the X/Y ratio, the offset interface widget doesn't work. You can still set the offset manually (not too tough), but you can't do it as easily as intended.
I personally would love to spend between 100$ or 200$ on Photoshop. It's at least that much better than GIMP, and not in terms of "power" (though from first hand experience I do find Photoshop to be more powerful and therefore more useful). Would that be the price point if they weren't inserting gov't approved tech? Somehow I doubt it. =)
In my experience they Juno is awful nowadays. I used Juno's free dial-in-email back in, gee, 1996? It was great... toll free national access numbers, very minimal if any advertising. It was very helpful to have a static email account as I cast around for a good dialup provider. However, I've had to coach internet-unaware relatives through their now-awful software and service. If you use Juno's low-cost service, you have to endure ads that run when you log in (regardless of the time it takes to make a connection, you must watch the full-motion-video and sound ad), run during the entirety of your session, and their web-spam that they try to force upon you. This seems to have the effect of totally destroying the already low available bandwidth for, wonder of wonders, WHAT THE USER WANTS TO DO. I don't know if this is United Online's doing, or what... but it's atrocious.
Using NetZero for free, that's one thing. But paying 5 or 10 bucks a month for ad-driven, low quality connection is mindboggling. Unfortunately there aren't always price-competitive locals... a major problem here is attrition from major-ISP buyouts. Local, small companies provide great service, and within a year or two, seem to be absorbed by Earthlink or some other behemoth. Service goes through the toilet. Email becomes spotty (because the larger ISPs absorb so much, they have problems advising users as to the proper format for the old/new emails).
My grandmother was ready to go to RoadRunner (for 45$/month) just to get away from Earthlink. She uses her internet connection to browse stocks on Yahoo roughly once every month, so I set her up for dialup with a regional ISP for $5/month. She thanks me everytime I see her (when I come over to show her how to use her new DVD player, for instance;).
That's true, I hadn't really considered that. Still, I would be worried as much as about small but significant differences in production models versus the store show models that might be 6 months old. I suppose a 90% certainty is better than relying on newskoollinuxlappies.com though =)
Frankly, I can't imagine that anyone fully aware of and capable to use Knoppix would be buying a personal machine off the shelf (business machines are another story). The only reason I would imagine would be to take advantage of the price point or warranty... but even still. In that case I would imagine you'd be buying it online to reduce the CompUSA/Circuit City/etc middleman... and in that case you wouldn't be guaranteed same hardware would ship from Dell/Gateway/whomever as is in the shop. Any information freely available online (from other enthusiasts, perhaps) would seem to be as reliable as an in-store Knoppix boot.
I haven't bought an off the shelf computer for myself for, gee, 7 years? I quite enjoy putting together the pieces myself, and building a computer that totally meets my own needs, and not the "Smart Business User" or "X-Treme Gamer!" mold. I'm quite capable at building my own computers, I buy and build (usually off the shelf, though) computers for my workplace, and am more computer capable than 99% of the people I know, but I don't use Linux on the desktop. I am slowly but surely acquiring UNIX-like skills by using FreeBSD as a server at home and at work, but I don't have the time nor patience to learn a new desktop OS. It therefore surprises me that users who are confident enough that they will be running a relatively insider-OS (Knoppix as opposed to Redhat/Slackware/whatever) will not be building their own rigs, with full knowledge of the compatibility therein.
Obviously it is so, but it's weird to me. As a programmer, I would definitely recommend you girls get your hands in some hardware (ground yourselves first, of course;)!
By your spelling, are you sure you're not drunk already?
And further, could there possibly be a more antisocial/borderline alcoholic drinking game? Drinking (and damn heavily by the rules of the game)... in front of your computer... reading slashdot... alone.
Nevermind, if you're tempted, you probably need it;)
If the availability of free music causes people to buy music, the studios shouldn't try to stop it because it's helping them. The opposite of that is "If the availability of free music causes people NOT to buy music," not "If buying lots of music causes downloading lots of music." If free music causes people NOT to buy music, the industry should do everything it can to stop free music. If buying lots of music causes downloading lots of music, they shouldn't try to stop it, because they're attacking their best customers. On the other hand, if buying lots of music cases no downloading, the only people who they're attacking are the ones who aren't making them any money!
I can't argue either point, because, like nearly every other person blathering on about this, I haven't studied the market trends based on real, objective data, nor do I have any good way to get honest data on who downloads what versus who buys what. If the studios have any indication that filesharing is going to hurt their bottom line, they're going to go after it. The simplest interpretation of the facts seems to be that getting a copy free will beat out getting a copy for 15+USD. However, as the article hints at, and as is my personal experience, the reality is far removed from this simple interpretation, and again, in my experience, filesharing promotes music patronage.
This being said, filesharing without the permission of the copyright holder is wrong, just like abusing GPLed code is wrong. I fully believe in fair use, but I do not think that "giving away as many copies as you please" is fair as "broadcasting in an educational context", "making an archival copy just in case", or "time-shifting" is fair use. If you don't agree with the legal restrictions, go to Congress, don't buy the stuff, or whatever, but don't pretend like the industry shouldn't try to protect itself or that what you're doing is fair. It's wrong ethically, moreso than the disgusting practices of the RIAA in recent months (not that I approve of that either).
Claiming this is useless because it falls to man in the middle attacks is totally false.
Firstly, noone is saying QKD is perfect, or secure from highly sophisticated MITM attack, or anything of the sort. It claims to be secure from what amounts to a wiretap, which it entirely is. It is also secure from anything but the most sophisticated and perfectly executed MITM attack, because of the fragile nature of the quantum communication.
The only way the BB84 protocol can be subverted by a man in the middle attack is by totally fooling Alice and Bob into thinking they are talking to each other, when in fact they are talking to Eve.
Rather than:
C:A--E--B Q:A--E--B
It would be:
C:A---E E---B Q:A---E E---B
Certainly this is possible. But with this kind of scheme, Diffie-Hellman, or whatever else you want to pimp as "better" cause you're more familiar with it, would fail as well. At the current moment, with current technology, quantum key distribution is secure as any other key distribution method. There is no MORE secure pure KD method to my knowledge. There certainly may be more practical, but in terms of feasibility of breaking, QKD via BB84 is just about as good as it gets.
Sure, it has flaws... sure, it may be useless to 90% of people and inappropriate for 5% of the remainder, but it is not "worthless."
On one hand, most of the pieces I've read on the RIAA/Rosen have either directly indicated, or been chimed in upon, that Rosen was just a mouthpiece for the big bad record labels, who don't want you to be able to copy your CDs. She's been more or less a scapegoat/forerunner for a lot of negative ideas about what you can and can't do with your licensed recordings.
On the other hand, this story is posted with the question "Maybe this is going to signal a change in the way record companies think about file sharing?"
This seems rather silly, also noting that Rosen is stepping down to become a news commentator, aka a talking head, aka a mouthpiece. I have very little inclination to believe that Rosen has had, or will have any large influence on RIAA policy. Am I wrong?
Personally, I found the TouchStream ST mentioned in the article much more attractive. Essentially a big touchpad that functioned as keyboard, mouse, and gesture pad. Gestures seem fun, useful, and productive, as Minority Report confirmed for me mentally. The TouchStream seems a bit limited, and restrictive due to its small size. However, an entire section of a desk, or true keyboard size pad would be a blast to use, I think. The only major problem is sensory response (none).
Perhaps a gelpad type material would be appropriate? It would provide interesting sensory feedback, and it would allow you to rest your hands comfortably on the surface without triggering.
The simple fact is that upgrading from NT4 is waaaaaaaay too hazardous to try.
This seems like a joke, but it's not.
My workplace upgraded from NT4 Terminal Server and some version of Citrix to Win2K and a newer version of Citrix, and it took us weeks and a ton of downtime to come even close to finished, because of conflicts with applications that had worked fine under NT4 TS, but now were crashing/running into permission blocks/etc under the new config. Not to mention the issues we had with upgrading profiles, and everything else.
This is literally why our webserver is still NT4 SP6a, and our SQL server is MS SQL 7 on NT4. We're too afraid of the possible downtime associated with the upgrades of these absolutely critical boxes. True, the security risks could be just as bad, but when in doubt, my boss wants the status quo.
My boss would love to go to a Unix, because it's free... but we've dumped an insane amount of money into licenses. So that's also impossible at this point.
Good strangehold MS has, now that I think about it. =)
-Greg
I went out to my local mall as well as my local Target (Central Florida)!
NO DICE!!!
This damnable article got me all hyped up for front-lit action, and the stores had none! Planet X and Electronics Boutique were both sold out, and Target said it didn't come out til tomorrow. So I blew 60 bucks on random crap at Target instead (Jackass DVDs, Transplants CD, Floetry CD, Tatu CD [teenage lesbians can't go wrong]).
Damn you Slashdot! My impulsive monetary expenditure went to the RIAA instead of Japan!!
While I am definitely pleased that space flight is resuming, it certainly seemed to me that the program was on a downhill slide to budget reduction.
If they don't innovate and expand their horizons, it truly seems to me that NASA is a marked program, especially after ANOTHER catastrophic failure. I doubt the politicians have any concept of MTBF, or the statistical risks involved... but BIG PLANE GO BOOM probably scared the crud out of them.
NASA needs to take this opportunity to explore programs ala Russia's "Send Rich People Out of the Atmosphere", and all the space planes we've been hearing about for the past 20 years. I really appreciate the ISS effort, but it seems unlikely that the general populace or the general representative government will hop on. With the anti-internationalism/pro-isolationism trend we're slowly riding (Freedom Fries?!), the "International" Space Station is in danger of becoming unnecessary overhead.
This is a silly attitude, as are all of the "you're wasting your time" posts...
People are allowed to do what they please. It's less INTERESTING to them to donate their cycles to folding or UD than to SETI (I would posit it's hardly glamourous). If we're arguing practical likelihood of finding an answer, foldingathome isn't actually solving anything, it's just testing the efficacy of an algorithm that may one day be employed to possibly solve a problem. An undefined biology problem. Cosmetics perhaps. I'm sure what the UD Cancer research actually does, either. Something for Oxford if I recall, but regardless: the "keyspace" for these projects (if they are even actually searching a worthwhile keyspace) is just as large as SETI's, and in all cases, we don't even know if a solution exists. At least with distributed.net you know a solution is out there.;)
If we're talking altruism-worth, how much money have you spent on your computer gear? Why aren't you spending it on the humanitarian efforts against AIDS in Africa? Why aren't you a UN peace officer getting ready for the likely humanitarian efforts in Iraq? I mean, <whatever charity you may support> being the first one you ran into an all, may have earned your money, but there are plenty of MORE IMPORTANT causes that may actually make a difference. If it wasn't so GLAMOUROUS to donate to the <whatever> fund, maybe you'd be kissing babies in Namibia. Or not.
Don't judge other people's efforts to be charitable. Be thankful they're doing anything out of the kindness of their hearts, and try to be a better person yourself. Word.
It must be because they screwed Wil Wheaton... Wait a minute... what the hell am I saying? His blog might have made me realize he's a nice guy and doesn't deserve to be hated for his portrayal of that whelp Crusher, but that doesn't mean that Wesley didn't suck like Courtney Love all hopped up on goofballs. It must have been the curse of that awful character being committed to film, even if they did cut him. Shudder.
And it took me all of 10 minutes in store, no hassle, I'm listening to em right now.
I can copy, rip, whatever I please. I'm willing to pay an extra 10 bucks per disc for a) good music and b) missing out on the hassle that you went through.
My time is certainly valuable. The only benefit of online downloading was saving me the 15 minute drive to the store. The downside is no cover art, no reliable copy, and no fun unwrapping process.
For those interested:
The Roots - Phrenology (w/ DVD) Thievery Corporation - The Richest Man in Babylon The Lenny White Collection
LUCKILY, proofreading in this case is mainly comparing the difference between Image and Interpretation of Image (Source and OCR Text). Grammatical and spelling errors are intended to be left in text, because in many cases they may have been intended by the authors (stylistic choice, or to imply dialect, etc).
EVERYONE knows Slashdot readers are the best people on the planet to tell the difference between reality and image! Hell, every time we're warned about it, it seems 300 people let us know that the warning of FUD is in fact FUD. And then another 50 to warn us that the warning of FUD warning of FUD is in fact FUD.
So, in summary, proofread on, oh ye paragons of insight and watchfulness.
I, in general, see this man's point, and agree that an eventual trusted networking system is necessary and proper to the development of the internet.
However, he attaches solutions to problems that a) have nothing to do with the US alone, and b) are not attached to secured networks.
Personal data would be protected by law, and those who abused the information provided to them by individuals would be prosecuted. Data flows into and out of Europe would be properly regulated and controlled to ensure that neither spam nor viruses came in, and that no personal data went out without explicit consent.
As far as I knew, personal data, to a degree is protected by law in financial situations, and in many other situations. But regardless, customer information in the form of call lists, subscription lists, etc are going to be shared between companies regardless of a secure communications system.
I can just as easily burn a CD, or, say, print a copy, of my customer database as send it over the magical internet.
Further, the examination of incoming and outgoing data he describes requires more than a secured comm system. It requires Big Brother viewing the data flow. Unless, JUST LIKE WE DO IT NOW, when someone complains, the offending party gets cut off. Which becomes EASIER in a secured system, but it's certainly not impossible now.
In Europe our copyright laws allow lending of material, and so media players licensed for use within the dataspace would not restrict personal copying or lending, although they would respect other rights.
This has nothing to do with a secured alternate internet. This has to do with DRM, machine rights, copyright control tech, etc. Which have been examined and set not only by the companies, which exercise the power given to them by consumers, but also the IEEE, I believe. If the EU wants to levy economic sanctions on copyright-abusive content providers and equipment manufacturers, hell, I'll move to the UK. But a secured internet will have little to do with it.
In Europe community standards for freedom of speech differ substantially from those of the United States, where any sensible discussion is crippled by the constitution and the continued attempts to decide how many Founding Fathers can stand on the head of a pin.
This is just a cheap shot, little material behind it. If there's beef, bring it, otherwise STFU.
Over here, human rights legislation, interpreted by judges who are able to use their intelligence instead of just relying on textual analysis of the Bill of Rights, gives us a much better chance of tying online action to the real world and integrating cyberspace with real space in way that benefits both.
It's true, a secured, trusted network would allow content providers to lock down sites that aren't approved. I guess that's what he means by human rights, although his use of the term is a bit confusing.
However, I would assume that there's enough variation over the surface of the European community, that this will still be a problem, and what you'll end up with is governmental censorship agencies, filtering through visited "securenet" sites. An interesting idea. I wouldn't like it. I'll stick with the current version.
If I recall correctly, Howard Stern + Howard Stern's radio audience have been raising holy hell about similar treatment of his E! Television show.
Apparently E! runs a news banner during his show, which obviously distorts the picture, and is in effect pretty blasted annoying. People (at least used to) complain very loudly about this. It's very visually distracting. This seems to indicate that networks will have significant problems with this ad format.
On the other hand, E! still runs the banner, from what I've seen. Further, from my memory of network Sports programming, it's common to run score tickers during programming. Obviously, the benefits in this case must outweigh the loss of quality, but I know those tickers drive me up a wall.
But I only watch the Mole 2 on ABC anyway. Or the Sopranos... sooooooo my degree of caring will be minimal! =)
Well, after the disappointment (to my mind) that was GTA3, I really don't hold out much hope for the extras the article seems to portend.
GTA3 did have the mp3 thing, but performance/quality were really not much better than the PS2 version... there was no new content... how long after the PS2 version was released?
You would think that the code should be reasonably portable as the XBox is effectively a computer? Why wouldn't Microsoft just write an XBOX->DX8 wrapper?
-d
Slashdot Mirror
While I agree that Nintendo is probably way out of line in any possible suit, it's not as open and shut as you trumpet here.
From my reading of the letter, Nintendo's claim could be that SG was using "Metroid", "Zelda" etc within the meta tags for the page, or perhaps more extensive terms like "Zelda: Wind Waker" "Metroid video game" and so forth... terms obviously constructed to generate hits to the page that were NOT searches for the actual content of the page.
I don't know if this was the case with the SG page, but imagine that it was. Is that legal? It's a business practice. It's a business practice that is predicated on an odd use of someone else's trademark. Can I put up a billboard that says "My tree clearing business is just as good as Link in the Legend of Zelda video game series!" ?
Perhaps I can, perhaps I can't, the fact that Nintendo is questioning it isn't the problem, imo... and it's not "clearly" fair use. This being said, if SG just used the terms Metroid and Zelda in the text of a web page, I think they should be entirely in the clear... but was that all they were doing?
100% agreed.
;]). I still do, however, browse the newsgroups for electronic and other more niche music genres.
Off the top of my head, acts that I listen to nowadays that I would never have heard of otherwise:
Cursive
Jazzanova
Dredg
Denali
From these bands I've heard of other bands:
Eastern Youth
Murder By Death
Minus The Bear
The Statistics
Darkest Hour
Decahedron
The Good Life, Desparedecidos (Basically the saddle creek label)
Stereolab
I attend these band's shows (seeing Dredg next week), I buy their merchandise (on Sunday I bought the Cursive/Eastern Youth split, and a Cursive t-shirt for my girlfriend).
As it happens, as I've grown older, and as they've grown more dangerous, I've used filesharing applications less. I have to be much more active in my pursuit of more music (it's very easy to browse someone's collection who likes stuff you like online... not always so much in person [and then they only usually stump for a couple of their favorite artists
In my non-researched, lazy consumer opinion, I think that the solution is very very very low cost music options, and if possible, a one-fee sort of thing. E.g. Ultra-Napazaa, where you pay 5$ a month to download whatever the hell you want at 128kbps. If you really like it, you can buy CD-quality download or shipment for some nominal fee (another 5 dollars, say). Very few if any of the bands I list above sell huge amounts of records. I don't imagine that they would make less if such a distribution channel existed in parallel to classic retail.
I do C# development, for ASP.NET, where I work. I do php development (hacking phpbb), for my personal website.
For large scale projects (e.g. a messageboard), I would greatly prefer to use C# over ASP.NET... I strongly dislike IIS, and I suppose that's a stumbling block, but on the other hand, C# is a strongly typed, compilable language. I'm not clear on how all the benefits of scripting (faster output from looser coding) apply to large scale projects, or projects where things like OOP and Exception handling are useful.
OOP and Exceptions rely on, you know, strong, well concieved design. If you're going to take the time to design your large project, why the hell would you throw away the benefits of strong types and compile time debugging (incredibly useful in a large and/or shared project), not to mention things like unit testing and automatic documentation (things C# has).
The code example in the article makes little sense to me. For one, they use VB... which looks ugly no matter how you slice it. C# would have been more directly comparable, and it should be available in MSDN... but regardless, the code looks almost identical. Is the point that there really is little difference, or that PHP is better? In both languages, it seems you could abstract away the Oracleness of the behavior (negative on both fronts), and you'd be at square one regardless.
Eh, I don't see any real useful comparison in this article. Yes, it sucks that ASP.NET only works with IIS. I'll be happy to run mono when the opportunity presents itself. But this article was pretty useless.
After having used Outlook for quite a while, I've gone through the same thing with Thunderbird. In fact, I still can't seem to switch between HTML and plaintext email composition without changing my overall composition preferences, which is buried at least four or five clicks away from the composition window.
I'm not sure if it's a config design issue as much as it is a familiarity issue. I dumped Outlook because of the unease I had with its security, and Outlook 2002's spotty compatibility with Windows XP. Thunderbird is better in some ways, but it definitely has its downsides, not the least of which is the painful configuration of multiple accounts and general preferences.
I use GIMP here at work because I can't really justify the cost of Photoshop. It's useable but it's nothing compared to the usability and "fit and finish" factor of Photoshop. Further (at least in the stable windows port), there are plenty of little annoying bugs that are typical of software that hasn't been very well QAed.
Example that I ran into this morning: enlarging the canvas size on an image. If you unlock the X/Y ratio, the offset interface widget doesn't work. You can still set the offset manually (not too tough), but you can't do it as easily as intended.
I personally would love to spend between 100$ or 200$ on Photoshop. It's at least that much better than GIMP, and not in terms of "power" (though from first hand experience I do find Photoshop to be more powerful and therefore more useful). Would that be the price point if they weren't inserting gov't approved tech? Somehow I doubt it. =)
In my experience they Juno is awful nowadays. I used Juno's free dial-in-email back in, gee, 1996? It was great... toll free national access numbers, very minimal if any advertising. It was very helpful to have a static email account as I cast around for a good dialup provider. However, I've had to coach internet-unaware relatives through their now-awful software and service. If you use Juno's low-cost service, you have to endure ads that run when you log in (regardless of the time it takes to make a connection, you must watch the full-motion-video and sound ad), run during the entirety of your session, and their web-spam that they try to force upon you. This seems to have the effect of totally destroying the already low available bandwidth for, wonder of wonders, WHAT THE USER WANTS TO DO. I don't know if this is United Online's doing, or what... but it's atrocious.
;).
Using NetZero for free, that's one thing. But paying 5 or 10 bucks a month for ad-driven, low quality connection is mindboggling. Unfortunately there aren't always price-competitive locals... a major problem here is attrition from major-ISP buyouts. Local, small companies provide great service, and within a year or two, seem to be absorbed by Earthlink or some other behemoth. Service goes through the toilet. Email becomes spotty (because the larger ISPs absorb so much, they have problems advising users as to the proper format for the old/new emails).
My grandmother was ready to go to RoadRunner (for 45$/month) just to get away from Earthlink. She uses her internet connection to browse stocks on Yahoo roughly once every month, so I set her up for dialup with a regional ISP for $5/month. She thanks me everytime I see her (when I come over to show her how to use her new DVD player, for instance
That's true, I hadn't really considered that. Still, I would be worried as much as about small but significant differences in production models versus the store show models that might be 6 months old. I suppose a 90% certainty is better than relying on newskoollinuxlappies.com though =)
-Greg
Frankly, I can't imagine that anyone fully aware of and capable to use Knoppix would be buying a personal machine off the shelf (business machines are another story). The only reason I would imagine would be to take advantage of the price point or warranty... but even still. In that case I would imagine you'd be buying it online to reduce the CompUSA/Circuit City/etc middleman... and in that case you wouldn't be guaranteed same hardware would ship from Dell/Gateway/whomever as is in the shop. Any information freely available online (from other enthusiasts, perhaps) would seem to be as reliable as an in-store Knoppix boot.
;)!
I haven't bought an off the shelf computer for myself for, gee, 7 years? I quite enjoy putting together the pieces myself, and building a computer that totally meets my own needs, and not the "Smart Business User" or "X-Treme Gamer!" mold. I'm quite capable at building my own computers, I buy and build (usually off the shelf, though) computers for my workplace, and am more computer capable than 99% of the people I know, but I don't use Linux on the desktop. I am slowly but surely acquiring UNIX-like skills by using FreeBSD as a server at home and at work, but I don't have the time nor patience to learn a new desktop OS. It therefore surprises me that users who are confident enough that they will be running a relatively insider-OS (Knoppix as opposed to Redhat/Slackware/whatever) will not be building their own rigs, with full knowledge of the compatibility therein.
Obviously it is so, but it's weird to me. As a programmer, I would definitely recommend you girls get your hands in some hardware (ground yourselves first, of course
-Greg
By your spelling, are you sure you're not drunk already?
;)
And further, could there possibly be a more antisocial/borderline alcoholic drinking game? Drinking (and damn heavily by the rules of the game)... in front of your computer... reading slashdot... alone.
Nevermind, if you're tempted, you probably need it
-Greg
Insightful? What the hell are you on about?
If the availability of free music causes people to buy music, the studios shouldn't try to stop it because it's helping them. The opposite of that is "If the availability of free music causes people NOT to buy music," not "If buying lots of music causes downloading lots of music." If free music causes people NOT to buy music, the industry should do everything it can to stop free music. If buying lots of music causes downloading lots of music, they shouldn't try to stop it, because they're attacking their best customers. On the other hand, if buying lots of music cases no downloading, the only people who they're attacking are the ones who aren't making them any money!
I can't argue either point, because, like nearly every other person blathering on about this, I haven't studied the market trends based on real, objective data, nor do I have any good way to get honest data on who downloads what versus who buys what. If the studios have any indication that filesharing is going to hurt their bottom line, they're going to go after it. The simplest interpretation of the facts seems to be that getting a copy free will beat out getting a copy for 15+USD. However, as the article hints at, and as is my personal experience, the reality is far removed from this simple interpretation, and again, in my experience, filesharing promotes music patronage.
This being said, filesharing without the permission of the copyright holder is wrong, just like abusing GPLed code is wrong. I fully believe in fair use, but I do not think that "giving away as many copies as you please" is fair as "broadcasting in an educational context", "making an archival copy just in case", or "time-shifting" is fair use. If you don't agree with the legal restrictions, go to Congress, don't buy the stuff, or whatever, but don't pretend like the industry shouldn't try to protect itself or that what you're doing is fair. It's wrong ethically, moreso than the disgusting practices of the RIAA in recent months (not that I approve of that either).
-Greg
Claiming this is useless because it falls to man in the middle attacks is totally false.
Firstly, noone is saying QKD is perfect, or secure from highly sophisticated MITM attack, or anything of the sort. It claims to be secure from what amounts to a wiretap, which it entirely is. It is also secure from anything but the most sophisticated and perfectly executed MITM attack, because of the fragile nature of the quantum communication.
The only way the BB84 protocol can be subverted by a man in the middle attack is by totally fooling Alice and Bob into thinking they are talking to each other, when in fact they are talking to Eve.
Rather than:
C:A--E--B
Q:A--E--B
It would be:
C:A---E E---B
Q:A---E E---B
Certainly this is possible. But with this kind of scheme, Diffie-Hellman, or whatever else you want to pimp as "better" cause you're more familiar with it, would fail as well. At the current moment, with current technology, quantum key distribution is secure as any other key distribution method. There is no MORE secure pure KD method to my knowledge. There certainly may be more practical, but in terms of feasibility of breaking, QKD via BB84 is just about as good as it gets.
Sure, it has flaws... sure, it may be useless to 90% of people and inappropriate for 5% of the remainder, but it is not "worthless."
-Greg
I like Firing Squad. They're more hardware focused, but they review the major games.
http://www.firingsquad.com/
-Greg
On one hand, most of the pieces I've read on the RIAA/Rosen have either directly indicated, or been chimed in upon, that Rosen was just a mouthpiece for the big bad record labels, who don't want you to be able to copy your CDs. She's been more or less a scapegoat/forerunner for a lot of negative ideas about what you can and can't do with your licensed recordings.
On the other hand, this story is posted with the question "Maybe this is going to signal a change in the way record companies think about file sharing?"
This seems rather silly, also noting that Rosen is stepping down to become a news commentator, aka a talking head, aka a mouthpiece. I have very little inclination to believe that Rosen has had, or will have any large influence on RIAA policy. Am I wrong?
-Greg
Personally, I found the TouchStream ST mentioned in the article much more attractive. Essentially a big touchpad that functioned as keyboard, mouse, and gesture pad. Gestures seem fun, useful, and productive, as Minority Report confirmed for me mentally. The TouchStream seems a bit limited, and restrictive due to its small size. However, an entire section of a desk, or true keyboard size pad would be a blast to use, I think. The only major problem is sensory response (none).
Perhaps a gelpad type material would be appropriate? It would provide interesting sensory feedback, and it would allow you to rest your hands comfortably on the surface without triggering.
-Greg
The simple fact is that upgrading from NT4 is waaaaaaaay too hazardous to try. This seems like a joke, but it's not. My workplace upgraded from NT4 Terminal Server and some version of Citrix to Win2K and a newer version of Citrix, and it took us weeks and a ton of downtime to come even close to finished, because of conflicts with applications that had worked fine under NT4 TS, but now were crashing/running into permission blocks/etc under the new config. Not to mention the issues we had with upgrading profiles, and everything else. This is literally why our webserver is still NT4 SP6a, and our SQL server is MS SQL 7 on NT4. We're too afraid of the possible downtime associated with the upgrades of these absolutely critical boxes. True, the security risks could be just as bad, but when in doubt, my boss wants the status quo. My boss would love to go to a Unix, because it's free... but we've dumped an insane amount of money into licenses. So that's also impossible at this point. Good strangehold MS has, now that I think about it. =) -Greg
I went out to my local mall as well as my local Target (Central Florida)!
NO DICE!!!
This damnable article got me all hyped up for front-lit action, and the stores had none! Planet X and Electronics Boutique were both sold out, and Target said it didn't come out til tomorrow. So I blew 60 bucks on random crap at Target instead (Jackass DVDs, Transplants CD, Floetry CD, Tatu CD [teenage lesbians can't go wrong]).
Damn you Slashdot! My impulsive monetary expenditure went to the RIAA instead of Japan!!
-Greg
While I am definitely pleased that space flight is resuming, it certainly seemed to me that the program was on a downhill slide to budget reduction.
If they don't innovate and expand their horizons, it truly seems to me that NASA is a marked program, especially after ANOTHER catastrophic failure. I doubt the politicians have any concept of MTBF, or the statistical risks involved... but BIG PLANE GO BOOM probably scared the crud out of them.
NASA needs to take this opportunity to explore programs ala Russia's "Send Rich People Out of the Atmosphere", and all the space planes we've been hearing about for the past 20 years. I really appreciate the ISS effort, but it seems unlikely that the general populace or the general representative government will hop on. With the anti-internationalism/pro-isolationism trend we're slowly riding (Freedom Fries?!), the "International" Space Station is in danger of becoming unnecessary overhead.
-Greg
This is a silly attitude, as are all of the "you're wasting your time" posts...
;)
People are allowed to do what they please. It's less INTERESTING to them to donate their cycles to folding or UD than to SETI (I would posit it's hardly glamourous). If we're arguing practical likelihood of finding an answer, foldingathome isn't actually solving anything, it's just testing the efficacy of an algorithm that may one day be employed to possibly solve a problem. An undefined biology problem. Cosmetics perhaps. I'm sure what the UD Cancer research actually does, either. Something for Oxford if I recall, but regardless: the "keyspace" for these projects (if they are even actually searching a worthwhile keyspace) is just as large as SETI's, and in all cases, we don't even know if a solution exists. At least with distributed.net you know a solution is out there.
If we're talking altruism-worth, how much money have you spent on your computer gear? Why aren't you spending it on the humanitarian efforts against AIDS in Africa? Why aren't you a UN peace officer getting ready for the likely humanitarian efforts in Iraq? I mean, <whatever charity you may support> being the first one you ran into an all, may have earned your money, but there are plenty of MORE IMPORTANT causes that may actually make a difference. If it wasn't so GLAMOUROUS to donate to the <whatever> fund, maybe you'd be kissing babies in Namibia. Or not.
Don't judge other people's efforts to be charitable. Be thankful they're doing anything out of the kindness of their hearts, and try to be a better person yourself. Word.
-Greg
Open Office does have one of these, nyet?
I suppose it's waisted on the editors.
It must be because they screwed Wil Wheaton... Wait a minute... what the hell am I saying? His blog might have made me realize he's a nice guy and doesn't deserve to be hated for his portrayal of that whelp Crusher, but that doesn't mean that Wesley didn't suck like Courtney Love all hopped up on goofballs. It must have been the curse of that awful character being committed to film, even if they did cut him. Shudder.
And it took me all of 10 minutes in store, no hassle, I'm listening to em right now.
I can copy, rip, whatever I please. I'm willing to pay an extra 10 bucks per disc for a) good music and b) missing out on the hassle that you went through.
My time is certainly valuable. The only benefit of online downloading was saving me the 15 minute drive to the store. The downside is no cover art, no reliable copy, and no fun unwrapping process.
For those interested:
The Roots - Phrenology (w/ DVD)
Thievery Corporation - The Richest Man in Babylon
The Lenny White Collection
-Greg
LUCKILY, proofreading in this case is mainly comparing the difference between Image and Interpretation of Image (Source and OCR Text). Grammatical and spelling errors are intended to be left in text, because in many cases they may have been intended by the authors (stylistic choice, or to imply dialect, etc).
EVERYONE knows Slashdot readers are the best people on the planet to tell the difference between reality and image! Hell, every time we're warned about it, it seems 300 people let us know that the warning of FUD is in fact FUD. And then another 50 to warn us that the warning of FUD warning of FUD is in fact FUD.
So, in summary, proofread on, oh ye paragons of insight and watchfulness.
-Greg
However, he attaches solutions to problems that a) have nothing to do with the US alone, and b) are not attached to secured networks.
As far as I knew, personal data, to a degree is protected by law in financial situations, and in many other situations. But regardless, customer information in the form of call lists, subscription lists, etc are going to be shared between companies regardless of a secure communications system.
I can just as easily burn a CD, or, say, print a copy, of my customer database as send it over the magical internet.
Further, the examination of incoming and outgoing data he describes requires more than a secured comm system. It requires Big Brother viewing the data flow. Unless, JUST LIKE WE DO IT NOW, when someone complains, the offending party gets cut off. Which becomes EASIER in a secured system, but it's certainly not impossible now.
This has nothing to do with a secured alternate internet. This has to do with DRM, machine rights, copyright control tech, etc. Which have been examined and set not only by the companies, which exercise the power given to them by consumers, but also the IEEE, I believe. If the EU wants to levy economic sanctions on copyright-abusive content providers and equipment manufacturers, hell, I'll move to the UK. But a secured internet will have little to do with it.
This is just a cheap shot, little material behind it. If there's beef, bring it, otherwise STFU.
It's true, a secured, trusted network would allow content providers to lock down sites that aren't approved. I guess that's what he means by human rights, although his use of the term is a bit confusing.
However, I would assume that there's enough variation over the surface of the European community, that this will still be a problem, and what you'll end up with is governmental censorship agencies, filtering through visited "securenet" sites. An interesting idea. I wouldn't like it. I'll stick with the current version.
-Greg
If I recall correctly, Howard Stern + Howard Stern's radio audience have been raising holy hell about similar treatment of his E! Television show.
Apparently E! runs a news banner during his show, which obviously distorts the picture, and is in effect pretty blasted annoying. People (at least used to) complain very loudly about this. It's very visually distracting. This seems to indicate that networks will have significant problems with this ad format.
On the other hand, E! still runs the banner, from what I've seen. Further, from my memory of network Sports programming, it's common to run score tickers during programming. Obviously, the benefits in this case must outweigh the loss of quality, but I know those tickers drive me up a wall.
But I only watch the Mole 2 on ABC anyway. Or the Sopranos... sooooooo my degree of caring will be minimal! =)
-D
Well, after the disappointment (to my mind) that was GTA3, I really don't hold out much hope for the extras the article seems to portend. GTA3 did have the mp3 thing, but performance/quality were really not much better than the PS2 version... there was no new content... how long after the PS2 version was released? You would think that the code should be reasonably portable as the XBox is effectively a computer? Why wouldn't Microsoft just write an XBOX->DX8 wrapper? -d