Re:These people have no idea what nanotech IS
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Don't Stymie Nanotech
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· Score: 3, Insightful
First, I'm looking for anything in your argument that is specific to nanotech vs. research in general....and I'm not seeing it. Basically your contention is that research has only helped the first world, I believe? That's really not the issue here. You are asking science to solve society's problems, and that won't work. Scientists develop tools that can help OR harm humanity. Think of radiation - killed 200,000 Japanese, but also is used in medical imaging to save lives. Don't kill the messenger.
You can argue all you want about the "benefits" any technology has, and that resistance to the "advances" it has brought are Luddite. That doesn't change the fact that there are more poor, starving, diseased people on this planet RIGHT NOW than there ever have been at any one point in history.
That's only because there are more people alive now than ever PERIOD. As a fraction, the portion of starving and/or diseased people is lower now than ever, as evidenced by the doubling of life spans in the thrid world, and tripling in the indistrialized world. That much is indisputable.
"Science" has had nearly three hundred years to show how it can benefit the bulk of humanity, and yet most people--outside of those who would ever read this forum, sadly, still live lives of quiet desperation, with little or no voice in the direction that "science" is taking them and the rest of us.
First, you assume that someone who doesn't live in your world is miserable, which is not necessarily true. Second, coming to America and studying SCIENCE is a very common way for people to come from very poor areas and learn skills to improve their lives. Frequently these people go back to their homelands, trained, to make their nations better.
Since almost every modern technology emerges out of militarism--whether as an advance of it or in response to it, and since we might be able to agree that killing entities other than ourselves for dubious reasons determined by the upper class is less than optimal, the jump from nanotech being a scientific endeavor to an evil pursuit is not that great of a leap.
That was true 500 years ago but not now. The drug industry (and non-combat related biotech) is the largest growth industry right now. Communications is not far behind. Neither industry arose from military (Alexander Grahm Bell's telephone, germ theory, viral vaccinations all arose from civilian research). As far as nanotech=evil....where is the first world committing genocide? I don't know where these myths come from, but not anytime in the last 50 years.
Nanotech research, in my opinion, should go forward, but it needs to be absolutely open, WITHOUT a market-driven force propelling it (the same applies to genetic engineering, as well.) I realize that is a pie-in-the-sky requirement
Pie in the sky is an understatement. People are inherently lazy, and don't want to do anything unless it will also benefit them at the same time. Does that suck? Yes, but that means if we want things to help people, we have to help the helper at the same time (say, financially). As for open, I agree, and that's the role of the peer-review publication system. But the market driven force has to be there or nothing will come of it.
What is wrong with using the loaded word of evil in describing those who do what they want without consulting me when I am directly affected by what they do?
Well, it's a bit arrogant if you define your sphere of "being affected" so broadly. Other than intellectually, you haven't been harmed in any way that I can see.
(Certainly our President has tossed the word around at least as "carelessly" as I.)
Comparing the nanotech industry to the atrocities committed by the North Korean or Iraqi dictatorships is a bit much. We're talking genocide here.
I used to think that science was the last field which blatant greed had not infested yet, and I am proven wrong yet again...
Yeah...academics used to do their thing for the massive ego gratification, now they do it for profit. Don't know that it's necessarily worse this way.
It's not like scientists were ever this pure group of unbiased, purely objective people who are solely out to benefit the world and increase the knowledge of all. That's the publicity answer. Fact is, we fall to the same weaknesses as everyone else, including the great god Profit, and this shouldn't be surprising.
For what it's worth, the worst example was of a couple of guys, Ziegler and Natta, who invented a class of catalysts while working at a university. They worked really well, so they left the university (who paid for the research) and started a company, without giving the university a dime. They made millions, I believe. It happened in the 50's. So this isn't really new...though more widespread as universities have realized they can make a lot of money that way (patents) without much effort.
These people have no idea what nanotech IS
on
Don't Stymie Nanotech
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I work in a lab where there is some degree of what I suppose would be called nanotech is performed - and I am continually confused by this "debate" over nanotech. So what exactly is the scale where the "evil things" happen? When I make a device that has features smaller than a micron, do the "evil nanotech" gnomes come out and start infusing it with evil spells?
If people want to debate specific techniques, that's fine, but the huge variety of techniques unfortunately clustered as "nanotech" share only one common thread: they have small, well-controlled features. Is small inherently evil? Should we fear dwarves and chihuahuas? I mean, this is honestly ridiculous. Many of these evil "nanotech" research pursuits are nothing more than attempting to make stronger materials and more efficient solar cells, for example. No one would fear this if you didn't call it nanotech.
On the other hand, if you ban it, then (not to be trite or anything, but...) "only criminals will have nanotech."
Would that be the criminals with multi-billion dollar research AND development laboratories? Right. This is exactly the view shared by the non-tech world, and it shows a lack of understanding of what nanotech IS (no offense). I can't just go to the garage, make some nanotech, and kill someone with it.
People outside (and many in) the scientific community simply have no real idea of what nanotech is. For a few years there, the best way to get a research grant approved was to make sure that the word nanotech was somewhere in there. That was just as dumb as saying "ban nanotech." Banning specific techniques perhaps makes sense, but again, why ban something because it's small? Don't throw out the solar cell with the self-sharpening bullet.
No, Microsoft are using their own document format. It's not a "version of XML", XML is a specification for writing document formats. It isn't a format in its own right.
That's true, and for that reason I don't expect their file formats to be any more visible to the outside world than they are now. But I do think it will be at least a bit easier to reverse engineer. And I would be frankly thrilled if the XML tags made it clear enough so that Word for Mac and Word for PC were actually 100% compatible....because they sure as hell aren't now. If XML only reduces MS's sloppy coding, that's enough benefit right there.
I don't know...supposedly (big if) they have to hand over their proprietary file formats anyway. But really...if the only way for them to hang on to their dominance with office is an anticompetitive technique, they deserve to fail. Maybe if they attempted to make the product simply better than the rest they'd be fine. Quite frankly, I use excel because it's a great spreadsheet. So I think there are other roadblocks other than just good converters. Though admittedly their market share would decline somewhat with better converters.
Publishing trade secrets are exactly the same as distributing a copyrighted work without permission.... we're arguing over a disctiction without a difference here.
I wouldn't go that far....while both may be illegal, the important distinction is that different specific laws apply. DMCA *can't* apply to something that hasn't been copyrighted, unless they've also re-defined copyright. This becomes particularly important with the "Safe Haven" portion of the DMCA law. If they decide to fight this, what laws apply will determine their legal strategy.
....how are they breaking copyright? It isn't copyrighted until it's published externally. It also means that they didn't COPY anything - they received information, but not in printed form (even if a printed form existed). Thus, it seems like DMCA doesn't apply, because there's no copyright.
As mentioned, this becomes a "trade secret" argument. At most, they are guilty of receiving trade secrets, and I have no idea what the penalty is for that, if any.
I'm getting really tired of people equating copying information with 'theft.' Copyright breach it may be (an entirely different kettle of fish, as anyone who understand copyright knows [slashdot.org]), but theft it is not.
Unfortunately, you seem to have no legal leg to stand on, though you might find a lot of like-minded geeks here. You are confusing the difference between legality and morality. Is it morally wrong to copy a CD? That's pretty much for you to decide. Is it illegal? Yes, it is. And "theft" is the legal definition to describe the situation.
The confusion people have is theft of service vs. theft of property. Let's say that instead of ripping off a copy of a CD, you go to supercuts, get a haircut, and run out without paying. Are you guilty of theft? Yes. Have you taken anything? No. Have you removed the hair-stylist's ability to cut hair? No. So you have not technically stolen anything tangiable. However, it is "theft of service," and that is a crime. Look at it that way and it is easier to see copyright infringement as theft.
As soon as they solve the pigeon effect clogging the rotors, I can't see this thing being hard to service at all. It's as simple as can be, and as mentioned in the article, not terribly susceptible to the properties of the wing. Reminds me of the old A-10 Warthog - damned ugly, but flew home once after getting half its wing shot off.
Yes, they have made it clear that they will go after component manufacturers, but there are a few problems. First, industry standards are non-DRM. For a sound card manufacturer to be Dolby compliant, I don't know how they will accomplish this without crippling hardware. Second, component hardware manufacturers have been a lot less willing than Intel. Assuming that they will ALL go along is questionable - and your link didn't have a firm commitment from Creative.
I do think that it's a long way from assuming this is dead. I don't think it's at all clear, yet, that they will get output-level protection - though they do want it.
...will kill any attempt for DRM. DRM stops being effective at the component output level. But at the point where it has to pass a digital signal, DRM loses. So my computer won't let me access the section of memory with the "movie," fine. I'll just use two computers. One has a "movie" I can't touch, but ultimately I can get my hands on the digital video feed from my vid card and the digital sound feed from my sound card. How hard is it to then have a second computer, with the sound feed going into the "line in" and the digital video feed going into a video capture card? Then just splice the sound and video together. And since the pirating scene depends on really a few groups, soon after release on DVD a big MPEG will go up, DRM or no, in near-DVD quality. So I don't know who they're fooling.
Hate to say it, but this is a band-aid problem. Spammers evolve, we evolve. What we need are flexible tools that let us evolve as quickly to keep ahead. Spam assassin is AMAZING. Maybe I'm lucky, but in the last month, since I started using it, I have had neither a false positive or false negative. Can't beat that. It has a great rule structure to which new rules can be added as needed.
I think the future is something like the current antivirus solution for spam. A big company, maybe even Norton, would create a spam blocking plugin for email clients (or maybe a front-end between the server and your client). They would make money from subscriptions to spam "definitions." You wouldn't need to update as often as for AV software, and it would work.
Alternatively, these Bayesian learning filters are VERY intriguing. That would solve the problem potentially without band-aids.
As can be clearly seen, BIFAD is NOT an oversight board. They have NO power. All they do is advise the head of some other group on international food aid. I can think of no greater waste of time. And I'd rather have this organization be used for paybacks than something that isn't a figurehead position. Bush deserves credit for getting this Laos idiot out of the way, if anything.
This is obviously a political payback, where some irrelevant organization is created or filled with the intent of making contributors feel important while not having them actually do anything. This goes on all the time.
And if you want to talk wrong person for the job, I have a Jocelyn Elders for you...and that WASN'T a Bush appointee.
Great post. The only part I'd quibble with is the credit rating bit, a la...
Sprint decided to charge some of its PCS wireless customers -- primarily those with poor credit ratings who were on a special price plan...The less money you have, the more expensive everything is for you. The more expensive everything is for you, the less money you have.
I will say that good credit != rich. If you pay your bills on time, regardless of how much money you have, you will have good credit. Maybe not exceptional credit, since the ability to have a big CC helps, but good credit. I'm by NO means wealthy (I'm in grad school for Chrissakes), but I have great credit because I always pay my bill on time, and fully. I haven't paid an interest charge in years.
I've known rich people with terrible credit. It's all about living within your means and being smart.
Also, I'm intrigued by this CRM stuff. I've suspected this for some time, but have never seen anything on it. Have a link, by any chance? I couldn't find anything more than industry-side stuff on google.
Yeah, that 3% sucks. But it sucks more to be stuck with alternatives, namely A) adding it to the bill, or B) only taking checks and cash. The first makes your place look cheap (and violates merchant agreements, as mentioned). The second will cost more in the long run - it loses you customers if you only take cash, and bounced checks hurt quite a bit. Ultimately, it's just the cost of doing business in a place where bills are generally over $10.
See, this is getting ridiculous. Posting process on slashdot:
1. Slashdotter finds distuirbing article.
2. Slashdotter doesn't read it closely.
3. Slashdotter makes gross oversimplifications, including specifically some sort of doomsday scenario.
4. Slashdotter assumes there must be some GW Bush conspiracy going on.
The sad thing is that there is potential for harm here, but the overstated claims and conspiracy theories really hurt the credibility of the posted story, which itself was good.
The difference here is power. The RIAA has absolutely no obligation to maintain the same pricing scheme for different customers. Do you think it's wrong that Nike gives Tiger Woods free golf clubs, but charges me? BASTARDS!!!
This is simply how the world works. The RIAA makes more money when 90% of their sales is accounted for by like 30 albums a year. They maintain this by getting radio stations to play a list containing like 50 songs, and they pay for the privelege.
Webcasters, on the other hand, want freedom, and the RIAA is within their rights not to pay them for the privelege! If any webcaster shows an ability to shape the music scene in terms of what people buy, to a significant degree, then the RIAA will likely pay them (or co-opt them). Until then, don't expect it.
This is not to say I like the RIAA. I think they're a bunch of jackasses. But that's not relevant to the discussion at hand, which is to say they can certainly screw anyone who depends on their copyrights for a living, and are well within their rights to do so.
Linux and Windows have about equal font difficulties.
That seems a bit generous. Out of the box, Linux (X) has the ugliest damned fonts I've ever seen. Admittedly, with some treaking, this can be alleviated, but that shouldn't be necessary. All things graphical have always been an afterthought with linux.
Who are you arguing is harmed by this plan: Adults and their right for free speech, or children and their right to see smut?
If you are concerned about free speech, don't be. Under plan, does anyone have less of a free-speech right than they do now? Is my ability to register goatse2.cx lessened? No. All of the domains currently in existence are allowed to be free. This seems to be one of those rare instances in which a law is passed that gives a group rights without taking away from another. That's a good thing.
Or are you arguing that kids have the right to see smut, which they won't under plan? Realize that this isn't mandatory - ie, there is no penalty if parents decide not to use it. So, under plan, kids are allowed to see what their parents let them - exactly as it is now. The only difference is the efficiency with regard to how parents control what their children see.
Admittedly, plan is a bit coarse - it's either kid friendly, or not. I might like to see it divided up a bit, with increasingly restrictive definitions. For example, example.kids14yrs.com might have more than example.kids8yrs.com. But again, this is nitpicking.
Ultimately, this is the BEST CASE scenario for us. You can still get your smut, and the Christian Coalition will stop being nazi's because they have no excuse. Embrace this plan because it won't get any better.
There are *months* before it goes mainstream -- more than enough time for userland apps to adapt.
Maybe simple, small apps, but I'm sure there are companies that would NOT be able to port over large, custom software in "months." Even if they could, that would be damned expensive. I'd hate to have to choose between tanking my software or not getting the new kernel. Not an acceptable situation.
If you wanna build a case for the immorality of copying content without paying for it, at least respect that a majority of peoples' behaviours dictate the morality.
You're right, and that's exactly why if you say you're a thief, decent people won't hang around with you, but if you admit to downloading things off Kazaa, peolpe don't care. But does that make it OK?
Personally, I think that the general public has such a crappy understanding of copyright that they can almost be excused for their ignorance. But you should know better,/. reader. So you're basically hiding behind the ignorance of others and using their ill-defined morality as a crutch for your own theft. Not good, I think.
Morality has historically shifted. If you were around a bunch of idiots in Deutschland in 1942, you would probably get a medal for shooting a Jew. But you'll have a hard time convincing anyone now that it's ok (and with reason!). The difference is we know better. And your arguments for rationalizing piracy don't work much better.
That said, you could make a fair case that the music industry is so damned corrupt, and use their influence in Congress to stifle fair use rights, to feel a bit more legitimate about it. I feel like I've gotten gouged for enough CD's that ripping off a few songs doesn't even make us even yet. But what the hell.
So I'm using kmail right now...kind of annoying in ways...but not too bad. I'm very receptive to using a new email client. Their site wasn't incredibly clear - does anyone consider evolution to be be significantly better than kmail? Anyone used both?
Linux and Apache may well perform 10% faster, but an existing company typically has to hire a Linux admin to do that. Instead they can just throw money at buying a Windows Server License, IIS, and make a couple support calls to Microsoft to get it all up and running properly.
I guess I can go ahead and thank you for Nimda, Klez....et al. Yes, MS is just easy enough to get going...with swiss cheese security, a trillion buffer-overflow explots and general weaknesses. If you want to have any degree of security, I do believe apache is cheaper. In the short term, in the medium term, and in the long term. How soon until your network is melted from all the script kiddies and viruses killing it? A month?
First, I'm sure MIT had a few politicians in a few banana republics. But it's not a politician factory like Yale, Harvard, Princeton, etc. Not a criticism, just a statement of fact. That you can find 4 politicians, and are actually able to name one, seems to prove the general thesis.
Second, you are right - no institution seems immune. However, MIT does seem to set the standard for places not named Bell Labs or Livermore.
As for grad school, I'm at Caltech. Yeah, we have our issues, but nothing like that.
Slashdot Mirror
First, I'm looking for anything in your argument that is specific to nanotech vs. research in general....and I'm not seeing it. Basically your contention is that research has only helped the first world, I believe? That's really not the issue here. You are asking science to solve society's problems, and that won't work. Scientists develop tools that can help OR harm humanity. Think of radiation - killed 200,000 Japanese, but also is used in medical imaging to save lives. Don't kill the messenger.
You can argue all you want about the "benefits" any technology has, and that resistance to the "advances" it has brought are Luddite. That doesn't change the fact that there are more poor, starving, diseased people on this planet RIGHT NOW than there ever have been at any one point in history.
That's only because there are more people alive now than ever PERIOD. As a fraction, the portion of starving and/or diseased people is lower now than ever, as evidenced by the doubling of life spans in the thrid world, and tripling in the indistrialized world. That much is indisputable.
"Science" has had nearly three hundred years to show how it can benefit the bulk of humanity, and yet most people--outside of those who would ever read this forum, sadly, still live lives of quiet desperation, with little or no voice in the direction that "science" is taking them and the rest of us.
First, you assume that someone who doesn't live in your world is miserable, which is not necessarily true. Second, coming to America and studying SCIENCE is a very common way for people to come from very poor areas and learn skills to improve their lives. Frequently these people go back to their homelands, trained, to make their nations better.
Since almost every modern technology emerges out of militarism--whether as an advance of it or in response to it, and since we might be able to agree that killing entities other than ourselves for dubious reasons determined by the upper class is less than optimal, the jump from nanotech being a scientific endeavor to an evil pursuit is not that great of a leap.
That was true 500 years ago but not now. The drug industry (and non-combat related biotech) is the largest growth industry right now. Communications is not far behind. Neither industry arose from military (Alexander Grahm Bell's telephone, germ theory, viral vaccinations all arose from civilian research). As far as nanotech=evil....where is the first world committing genocide? I don't know where these myths come from, but not anytime in the last 50 years.
Nanotech research, in my opinion, should go forward, but it needs to be absolutely open, WITHOUT a market-driven force propelling it (the same applies to genetic engineering, as well.) I realize that is a pie-in-the-sky requirement
Pie in the sky is an understatement. People are inherently lazy, and don't want to do anything unless it will also benefit them at the same time. Does that suck? Yes, but that means if we want things to help people, we have to help the helper at the same time (say, financially). As for open, I agree, and that's the role of the peer-review publication system. But the market driven force has to be there or nothing will come of it.
What is wrong with using the loaded word of evil in describing those who do what they want without consulting me when I am directly affected by what they do?
Well, it's a bit arrogant if you define your sphere of "being affected" so broadly. Other than intellectually, you haven't been harmed in any way that I can see.
(Certainly our President has tossed the word around at least as "carelessly" as I.)
Comparing the nanotech industry to the atrocities committed by the North Korean or Iraqi dictatorships is a bit much. We're talking genocide here.
I used to think that science was the last field which blatant greed had not infested yet, and I am proven wrong yet again...
Yeah...academics used to do their thing for the massive ego gratification, now they do it for profit. Don't know that it's necessarily worse this way.
It's not like scientists were ever this pure group of unbiased, purely objective people who are solely out to benefit the world and increase the knowledge of all. That's the publicity answer. Fact is, we fall to the same weaknesses as everyone else, including the great god Profit, and this shouldn't be surprising.
For what it's worth, the worst example was of a couple of guys, Ziegler and Natta, who invented a class of catalysts while working at a university. They worked really well, so they left the university (who paid for the research) and started a company, without giving the university a dime. They made millions, I believe. It happened in the 50's. So this isn't really new...though more widespread as universities have realized they can make a lot of money that way (patents) without much effort.
I work in a lab where there is some degree of what I suppose would be called nanotech is performed - and I am continually confused by this "debate" over nanotech. So what exactly is the scale where the "evil things" happen? When I make a device that has features smaller than a micron, do the "evil nanotech" gnomes come out and start infusing it with evil spells?
If people want to debate specific techniques, that's fine, but the huge variety of techniques unfortunately clustered as "nanotech" share only one common thread: they have small, well-controlled features. Is small inherently evil? Should we fear dwarves and chihuahuas? I mean, this is honestly ridiculous. Many of these evil "nanotech" research pursuits are nothing more than attempting to make stronger materials and more efficient solar cells, for example. No one would fear this if you didn't call it nanotech.
On the other hand, if you ban it, then (not to be trite or anything, but...) "only criminals will have nanotech."
Would that be the criminals with multi-billion dollar research AND development laboratories? Right. This is exactly the view shared by the non-tech world, and it shows a lack of understanding of what nanotech IS (no offense). I can't just go to the garage, make some nanotech, and kill someone with it.
People outside (and many in) the scientific community simply have no real idea of what nanotech is. For a few years there, the best way to get a research grant approved was to make sure that the word nanotech was somewhere in there. That was just as dumb as saying "ban nanotech." Banning specific techniques perhaps makes sense, but again, why ban something because it's small? Don't throw out the solar cell with the self-sharpening bullet.
No, Microsoft are using their own document format. It's not a "version of XML", XML is a specification for writing document formats. It isn't a format in its own right.
That's true, and for that reason I don't expect their file formats to be any more visible to the outside world than they are now. But I do think it will be at least a bit easier to reverse engineer. And I would be frankly thrilled if the XML tags made it clear enough so that Word for Mac and Word for PC were actually 100% compatible....because they sure as hell aren't now. If XML only reduces MS's sloppy coding, that's enough benefit right there.
I don't know...supposedly (big if) they have to hand over their proprietary file formats anyway. But really...if the only way for them to hang on to their dominance with office is an anticompetitive technique, they deserve to fail. Maybe if they attempted to make the product simply better than the rest they'd be fine. Quite frankly, I use excel because it's a great spreadsheet. So I think there are other roadblocks other than just good converters. Though admittedly their market share would decline somewhat with better converters.
Publishing trade secrets are exactly the same as distributing a copyrighted work without permission.... we're arguing over a disctiction without a difference here.
I wouldn't go that far....while both may be illegal, the important distinction is that different specific laws apply. DMCA *can't* apply to something that hasn't been copyrighted, unless they've also re-defined copyright. This becomes particularly important with the "Safe Haven" portion of the DMCA law. If they decide to fight this, what laws apply will determine their legal strategy.
....how are they breaking copyright? It isn't copyrighted until it's published externally. It also means that they didn't COPY anything - they received information, but not in printed form (even if a printed form existed). Thus, it seems like DMCA doesn't apply, because there's no copyright.
As mentioned, this becomes a "trade secret" argument. At most, they are guilty of receiving trade secrets, and I have no idea what the penalty is for that, if any.
I'm getting really tired of people equating copying information with 'theft.' Copyright breach it may be (an entirely different kettle of fish, as anyone who understand copyright knows [slashdot.org]), but theft it is not.
Unfortunately, you seem to have no legal leg to stand on, though you might find a lot of like-minded geeks here. You are confusing the difference between legality and morality. Is it morally wrong to copy a CD? That's pretty much for you to decide. Is it illegal? Yes, it is. And "theft" is the legal definition to describe the situation.
The confusion people have is theft of service vs. theft of property. Let's say that instead of ripping off a copy of a CD, you go to supercuts, get a haircut, and run out without paying. Are you guilty of theft? Yes. Have you taken anything? No. Have you removed the hair-stylist's ability to cut hair? No. So you have not technically stolen anything tangiable. However, it is "theft of service," and that is a crime. Look at it that way and it is easier to see copyright infringement as theft.
As soon as they solve the pigeon effect clogging the rotors, I can't see this thing being hard to service at all. It's as simple as can be, and as mentioned in the article, not terribly susceptible to the properties of the wing. Reminds me of the old A-10 Warthog - damned ugly, but flew home once after getting half its wing shot off.
Yes, they have made it clear that they will go after component manufacturers, but there are a few problems. First, industry standards are non-DRM. For a sound card manufacturer to be Dolby compliant, I don't know how they will accomplish this without crippling hardware. Second, component hardware manufacturers have been a lot less willing than Intel. Assuming that they will ALL go along is questionable - and your link didn't have a firm commitment from Creative.
I do think that it's a long way from assuming this is dead. I don't think it's at all clear, yet, that they will get output-level protection - though they do want it.
...will kill any attempt for DRM. DRM stops being effective at the component output level. But at the point where it has to pass a digital signal, DRM loses. So my computer won't let me access the section of memory with the "movie," fine. I'll just use two computers. One has a "movie" I can't touch, but ultimately I can get my hands on the digital video feed from my vid card and the digital sound feed from my sound card. How hard is it to then have a second computer, with the sound feed going into the "line in" and the digital video feed going into a video capture card? Then just splice the sound and video together. And since the pirating scene depends on really a few groups, soon after release on DVD a big MPEG will go up, DRM or no, in near-DVD quality. So I don't know who they're fooling.
Hate to say it, but this is a band-aid problem. Spammers evolve, we evolve. What we need are flexible tools that let us evolve as quickly to keep ahead. Spam assassin is AMAZING. Maybe I'm lucky, but in the last month, since I started using it, I have had neither a false positive or false negative. Can't beat that. It has a great rule structure to which new rules can be added as needed.
I think the future is something like the current antivirus solution for spam. A big company, maybe even Norton, would create a spam blocking plugin for email clients (or maybe a front-end between the server and your client). They would make money from subscriptions to spam "definitions." You wouldn't need to update as often as for AV software, and it would work.
Alternatively, these Bayesian learning filters are VERY intriguing. That would solve the problem potentially without band-aids.
...and it's meaningless. What does BIFAD do? You might have checked that out first, while we're following links...
t er.htm
http://www.hhh.umn.edu/centers/freeman/board/char
As can be clearly seen, BIFAD is NOT an oversight board. They have NO power. All they do is advise the head of some other group on international food aid. I can think of no greater waste of time. And I'd rather have this organization be used for paybacks than something that isn't a figurehead position. Bush deserves credit for getting this Laos idiot out of the way, if anything.
This is obviously a political payback, where some irrelevant organization is created or filled with the intent of making contributors feel important while not having them actually do anything. This goes on all the time.
And if you want to talk wrong person for the job, I have a Jocelyn Elders for you...and that WASN'T a Bush appointee.
Great post. The only part I'd quibble with is the credit rating bit, a la...
Sprint decided to charge some of its PCS wireless customers -- primarily those with poor credit ratings who were on a special price plan...The less money you have, the more expensive everything is for you. The more expensive everything is for you, the less money you have.
I will say that good credit != rich. If you pay your bills on time, regardless of how much money you have, you will have good credit. Maybe not exceptional credit, since the ability to have a big CC helps, but good credit. I'm by NO means wealthy (I'm in grad school for Chrissakes), but I have great credit because I always pay my bill on time, and fully. I haven't paid an interest charge in years.
I've known rich people with terrible credit. It's all about living within your means and being smart.
Also, I'm intrigued by this CRM stuff. I've suspected this for some time, but have never seen anything on it. Have a link, by any chance? I couldn't find anything more than industry-side stuff on google.
Yeah, that 3% sucks. But it sucks more to be stuck with alternatives, namely A) adding it to the bill, or B) only taking checks and cash. The first makes your place look cheap (and violates merchant agreements, as mentioned). The second will cost more in the long run - it loses you customers if you only take cash, and bounced checks hurt quite a bit. Ultimately, it's just the cost of doing business in a place where bills are generally over $10.
See, this is getting ridiculous. Posting process on slashdot:
1. Slashdotter finds distuirbing article.
2. Slashdotter doesn't read it closely.
3. Slashdotter makes gross oversimplifications, including specifically some sort of doomsday scenario.
4. Slashdotter assumes there must be some GW Bush conspiracy going on.
The sad thing is that there is potential for harm here, but the overstated claims and conspiracy theories really hurt the credibility of the posted story, which itself was good.
The difference here is power. The RIAA has absolutely no obligation to maintain the same pricing scheme for different customers. Do you think it's wrong that Nike gives Tiger Woods free golf clubs, but charges me? BASTARDS!!!
This is simply how the world works. The RIAA makes more money when 90% of their sales is accounted for by like 30 albums a year. They maintain this by getting radio stations to play a list containing like 50 songs, and they pay for the privelege.
Webcasters, on the other hand, want freedom, and the RIAA is within their rights not to pay them for the privelege! If any webcaster shows an ability to shape the music scene in terms of what people buy, to a significant degree, then the RIAA will likely pay them (or co-opt them). Until then, don't expect it.
This is not to say I like the RIAA. I think they're a bunch of jackasses. But that's not relevant to the discussion at hand, which is to say they can certainly screw anyone who depends on their copyrights for a living, and are well within their rights to do so.
Linux and Windows have about equal font difficulties.
That seems a bit generous. Out of the box, Linux (X) has the ugliest damned fonts I've ever seen. Admittedly, with some treaking, this can be alleviated, but that shouldn't be necessary. All things graphical have always been an afterthought with linux.
Who are you arguing is harmed by this plan: Adults and their right for free speech, or children and their right to see smut?
If you are concerned about free speech, don't be. Under plan, does anyone have less of a free-speech right than they do now? Is my ability to register goatse2.cx lessened? No. All of the domains currently in existence are allowed to be free. This seems to be one of those rare instances in which a law is passed that gives a group rights without taking away from another. That's a good thing.
Or are you arguing that kids have the right to see smut, which they won't under plan? Realize that this isn't mandatory - ie, there is no penalty if parents decide not to use it. So, under plan, kids are allowed to see what their parents let them - exactly as it is now. The only difference is the efficiency with regard to how parents control what their children see.
Admittedly, plan is a bit coarse - it's either kid friendly, or not. I might like to see it divided up a bit, with increasingly restrictive definitions. For example, example.kids14yrs.com might have more than example.kids8yrs.com. But again, this is nitpicking.
Ultimately, this is the BEST CASE scenario for us. You can still get your smut, and the Christian Coalition will stop being nazi's because they have no excuse. Embrace this plan because it won't get any better.
There are *months* before it goes mainstream -- more than enough time for userland apps to adapt.
Maybe simple, small apps, but I'm sure there are companies that would NOT be able to port over large, custom software in "months." Even if they could, that would be damned expensive. I'd hate to have to choose between tanking my software or not getting the new kernel. Not an acceptable situation.
If you wanna build a case for the immorality of copying content without paying for it, at least respect that a majority of peoples' behaviours dictate the morality.
/. reader. So you're basically hiding behind the ignorance of others and using their ill-defined morality as a crutch for your own theft. Not good, I think.
You're right, and that's exactly why if you say you're a thief, decent people won't hang around with you, but if you admit to downloading things off Kazaa, peolpe don't care. But does that make it OK?
Personally, I think that the general public has such a crappy understanding of copyright that they can almost be excused for their ignorance. But you should know better,
Morality has historically shifted. If you were around a bunch of idiots in Deutschland in 1942, you would probably get a medal for shooting a Jew. But you'll have a hard time convincing anyone now that it's ok (and with reason!). The difference is we know better. And your arguments for rationalizing piracy don't work much better.
That said, you could make a fair case that the music industry is so damned corrupt, and use their influence in Congress to stifle fair use rights, to feel a bit more legitimate about it. I feel like I've gotten gouged for enough CD's that ripping off a few songs doesn't even make us even yet. But what the hell.
So I'm using kmail right now...kind of annoying in ways...but not too bad. I'm very receptive to using a new email client. Their site wasn't incredibly clear - does anyone consider evolution to be be significantly better than kmail? Anyone used both?
Linux and Apache may well perform 10% faster, but an existing company typically has to hire a Linux admin to do that. Instead they can just throw money at buying a Windows Server License, IIS, and make a couple support calls to Microsoft to get it all up and running properly.
I guess I can go ahead and thank you for Nimda, Klez....et al. Yes, MS is just easy enough to get going...with swiss cheese security, a trillion buffer-overflow explots and general weaknesses. If you want to have any degree of security, I do believe apache is cheaper. In the short term, in the medium term, and in the long term. How soon until your network is melted from all the script kiddies and viruses killing it? A month?
Wow, that's a killer troll! Never expected a Creationist dogma-head on here. "Monkey-like man creature"? That's just classic.
First, I'm sure MIT had a few politicians in a few banana republics. But it's not a politician factory like Yale, Harvard, Princeton, etc. Not a criticism, just a statement of fact. That you can find 4 politicians, and are actually able to name one, seems to prove the general thesis.
Second, you are right - no institution seems immune. However, MIT does seem to set the standard for places not named Bell Labs or Livermore.
As for grad school, I'm at Caltech. Yeah, we have our issues, but nothing like that.