Not really. Particularly in government, truly vast expenditures are made on failed replacement programs for so-called legacy systems. In recent memory, the FAA, the FBI, and the IRS have all spent enormous sums (in the hundreds of millions, for Chrissakes) on efforts to replace existing systems that were doing the job. The U.S. Navy followed suit on its own internal upgrade program, which cost big and delivered little. Those efforts all failed miserably because those in charge simply didn't know what they were doing. You have to understand the sheer scope of such systems: as the GP pointed out, something that took decades to build cannot and should not be replaced without careful research and proper management. Both of those are in short supply in most Federal agencies. Even in smaller organizations, a poorly planned upgrade can be an unmitigated disaster. I've seen it happen... unless you plan and execute your upgrade well, odds are you'll shoot yourself in the foot. And if you aren't willing to do it right, keep using your old stuff until you are.
"School officials are not sure they [know] what has caused so many pregnancies..."
Don't just give them a cluebat... beat the hell out of them with it and then take
it with you. That way, the police won't have the murder weapon and you'll be free to apply
a free cluing-in to some other imbecile. Besides, if said officials are unaware of what
causes pregancies then odds are they will not be reproducing, so hopefully the next
generation will have fewer idiots in charge of their education.
... if you have some of the same problems dealing with things as Ellen
Yeah... like the opposite sex, for example. Seriously though, in spite of Yahoo's size and weight, it sure seems like they're a little bit desperate in the face of Google. Of course, that seems to apply to just about every company connected to the Internet nowadays.
Way back when I was in college in the 70's we had a lot of fun with the school mainframe systems (they had two... IBM 370 and an HP2000): pranks and practical jokes that, today, would have gotten the entire computer science department arrested and/or deported, students and teachers alike. Really, the need for our elected leaders and their appointees to be seen "doing something" about computer crime is overpowering any sense of proportion or justice. Around 1978 or thereabouts my father (who was a physicist and electronics engineer) testified in front of my State's Legislature regarding a new computer crime bill they were about to sign in to law. Many of the activities that my fellow students and I had engaged in would have landed us squarely in prison... it was that kind of law. My father pointed out to these "we need to appear tough on this" politicians that they were, in one swell foop, criminalizing some of the best and brightest minds in the State. Whacked 'em with a cluebat, he did. They had absolutely no idea what they were doing, so far as I'm concerned still do not, and that goes up to the Federal level because we still keep seeing stupid computer and Internet-related laws.
Well, his method of choosing one vendor's product line over another certainly is efficient. Just go with your "gut feeling" and buy whatever your feelings tell you.
Whether you end up with the best tool for the job is another story.
The presumption is that some people are much stupider than they would first appear. No doubt the same reasoning behind the bright red label on my blow dryer's line cord: "WARN CHILDREN OF THE RISK OF DEATH". Of course, it leaves open what the actual cause of death might be... a particularly thickheaded individual might think that simply drying one's hair could be fatal. Probably it's just a disclaimer that their legal staff makes them include, although the fact that such disclaimers are considered necessary is kinda scary in its own right.
As an American myself, a citizen of a nation that gives more than any other in history to other countries and people in need, I could take exception to that remark. But... frankly, I don't know you from Adam and couldn't care less.
The context is the same as it has always been for the RIAA. In other words, every content protection measure (for that's all this is) is aimed at the people who are clueless about the law and the technology, and can be easily intimidated by such means. Unfortunately, that means we are talking about the bulk of the population of most countries... fortunately, because most P2P users are clueless they're pretty hard to intimidate anyway since they have no idea what they're doing.
Depends... if the FBI gets involved they just take every machine they can find, clone the drives before performing any forensics, and if you're lucky they give you a receipt. Even if they do, odds are you'll never see that equipment again (apparently they aren't very good about returning stuff they seize.) So I wouldn't assume that just because you have multiple machines using non-routable IPs that you're even remotely safe.
that if these large corporations can't be trusted to play with their computers safely, maybe they should have them taken away. At the very least, I think some adult supervision should be required by law. And if that doesn't work, send them back to using typewriters and filing cabinets.
My goodness, what a ridiculous comparison: we aren't talking about mass murder. We're talking about diplomatic pressure being applied to nations that want a slice of the American pie, economically speaking. Pressure they would cheerfully apply to us if they had the power (and as China is, I might add... speaking of bullies.) Look, the world has been and always will be full of people and nations that like to throw their weight around. It's a fact of life that isn't going to go away just because you'd very much like it to. Now, you can deal with them in any number of ways: you can tell them to fuck off and pay the price now, or you can follow a policy of appeasement and simply delay the inevitable.
When you get right down to it, a good part of why this has come to pass is because of the (dare I say it) bullying tactics used against American industry. Japanese dumping practices, which decades ago effectively destroyed the U.S. electronics industry. Blatant industrial espionage and (gasp!) theft of intellectual property performed by China and used to build their military-industrial complex, while simultaneously eroding a substantial portion of America's remaining industrial base. Bullying goes on at many levels, and if we're applying a little pressure in return, it's not entirely undeserved. A lot of the world doesn't operate by Western rules when it comes to business... and it is our fault for not recognizing that sooner. If we had, American workers might still be making television sets. There was a good reason why America remained pretty insular and kept to itself up 'til World War II... our Founders believed that a nation that was beholden to other nations could not remain free for very long. As frequently happens, they were once again proven correct.
And as I mentioned previously, some nations don't even have to be bullied: the European Union seems to think this is all a grand idea. Well, most of it does, anyway. There are a few holdouts.
In a perfect world. This is not a perfect world, and is one in which laws which are determined by the people to be unreasonable, irrational or simply irrelevant are generally ignored. Downloading, speed limits, guns... you name it. That's by otherwise law-abiding citizens as well as criminals, and you know perfectly well that there is absolutely no way to completely eliminate any product from any society. It simply cannot be done, and because the criminal element always has access to black-market sources denied to ordinary people, any attempt to significantly restrict legitimate gun ownership by definition shifts the demographic to criminals. Regardless, there's no real way to eliminate something that people want. Prohibition taught us that, and then in typical government "let's forget history" fashion billions of dollars were poured into a War on Drugs in a vain attempt to staunch the flow of recreational contraband into this country, with the end result that people can still get any drug they want with relative ease. Frankly, presuming that it will be any easier to get rid of firearms is just a crack-pipe-dream. No matter... the right to get stoned wasn't enshrined in our Constitution.
Comments like "sorry, but a gun doesn't make anyone safe" are, unfortunately, not supported by reality. Too many successful defensive uses of a firearm (which range from merely displaying the weapon in order to discourage an attacker, to actually firing at said attacker) occur every year for legal gun ownership to be dismissed in so cavalier a manner. There are many women who are not alive today because their lives were threatened and they were not permitted to purchase a gun in time to defend themselves when their ex-boyfriend came back to beat them with a tire iron. I realize that this is one of those topics (like religion and politics) which are generally not amenable to logic and reason and where most people operate upon feelings rather than facts, but it would help if you researched this a little. Some of Gary Kleck's works might prove enlightening to you, for example. Personally, I don't own a gun and with any luck won't ever feel the need... but if I do, I still want that right. Period. And without the government looking over my shoulder since they don't have that right. Furthermore, the distaste with which many self-described "civilized" individuals look upon firearms (a distaste often borne of ignorance) is not sufficient cause to deny me access to something which might very well save my life. It simply is not your call, or anyone else's. I, as a Citizen of these United States, will make that determination for myself, thank you very much.
On the other hand, I don't see any particular reason why some minimum of training shouldn't be required to own a gun. We don't just hand out driver's licenses to all comers, we expect drivers to be able to meet a certain standard (of course, that standard has been lowered in recent years to the point where many drivers are more dangerous than a psychopath with an AK-47 on full auto.) When the Constitution was drafted, it was a period in our history where firearms were relatively common among the population, and knowing how to shoot one (and when!) was sort of taken for granted.
In the long run, individual power guarantees personal freedom. That's why our Constitution guarantees we have the right to bear arms. And if America had remained a heavily-armed society... ask yourself just how far those 9/11 terrorists would have gotten with those box-cutter knives.
Or make it easy on yourself and buy a copy of Slysoft's AnyDVD and get it over with. Well, maybe not... I have no idea if that product will work on Vista.
Signing the Digital Millenium Copyright Act would probably be one of them. Congress has been raping the American people for so long that I think it's past time for a few of them to get similar treatment.
Sure they're being arm-twisted and don't misunderstand me... I'm not defending our government's current practices. But if our arm-twisting is successful, well, any nation that knuckles under deserves what it gets, which will ultimately be greater concentration of wealth, lower productivity, and a decreasing standard of living. My point is that the entire planet is full of major assholes, and that whining about it simply isn't a solution. If you're being bullied, either take it or don't. Why is it an issue whether Australia or China or India or any other nation should implement US-style IP law? Why? Because we have something everyone wants: wealth and power. And in order to get a slice of that, our government says you have to change your legal system to suit our need to protect our oh-so-valuable intellectual property. So... to all our international friends looking for a bigger handout, I say this: the choice is yours. Maintain the integrity of your legal system, or sell your collective souls to the United States and get "harmonized". Your lawyers will get rich, even if nobody else does.
And, actually, while MAD (indeed, the entire Cold War) was hideously expensive for both sides, it was a remarkably successful military and diplomatic strategy. To this day, no ICBMs have fallen upon unsuspecting populations, no thermonuclear flowers have blossomed on either side. The answer to your question is: it made the world a substantially safer place. Once nuclear weapons tech was out of the bag, it was handled about as well as it could be handled given the nature of the Cold War combatants. And if you look at the BIG picture, you will find that since the fall of the Soviet Empire, and the concomitant loss of global stability that resulted, the world is now a much more dangerous place. Fact is, as a variant of the Doomsday Device principle, Mutual Assured Destruction is a wonderful way to assure peace when you know that neither side will ever use those weapons. That's no longer the case... there are a number of governments that either have nukes, or soon will have, to whom the risk of Assured Destruction (mutual or otherwise) is a viable option. Even the paranoid Russian mindset and the equally-unreasoning American anti-Communist sentiment never perceived that outcome as reasonable... can you say the same about North Korea? Iran? Pakistan?
Like it or not, M.A.D. worked. I realize this has nothing to do with copyrights in Australia... sorry for drifting off-topic.
Slashdot Mirror
Nobody posts because RAMBus memory chips aren't bright and shiny, and don't attract attention. The parakeet syndrome at work.
Yes but unfortunately they will all be region-coded.
Not really. Particularly in government, truly vast expenditures are made on failed replacement programs for so-called legacy systems. In recent memory, the FAA, the FBI, and the IRS have all spent enormous sums (in the hundreds of millions, for Chrissakes) on efforts to replace existing systems that were doing the job. The U.S. Navy followed suit on its own internal upgrade program, which cost big and delivered little. Those efforts all failed miserably because those in charge simply didn't know what they were doing. You have to understand the sheer scope of such systems: as the GP pointed out, something that took decades to build cannot and should not be replaced without careful research and proper management. Both of those are in short supply in most Federal agencies. Even in smaller organizations, a poorly planned upgrade can be an unmitigated disaster. I've seen it happen ... unless you plan and execute your upgrade well, odds are you'll shoot yourself in the foot. And if you aren't willing to do it right, keep using your old stuff until you are.
BOMB #20: In the beginning there was darkness, and the darkness was without form and void.
PINBACK: Yoo hoo, bomb.
Dark Star, am I right?
"School officials are not sure they [know] what has caused so many pregnancies..."
... beat the hell out of them with it and then take
it with you. That way, the police won't have the murder weapon and you'll be free to apply
a free cluing-in to some other imbecile. Besides, if said officials are unaware of what
causes pregancies then odds are they will not be reproducing, so hopefully the next
generation will have fewer idiots in charge of their education.
Don't just give them a cluebat
... if you have some of the same problems dealing with things as Ellen
... like the opposite sex, for example. Seriously though, in spite of Yahoo's size and weight, it sure seems like they're a little bit desperate in the face of Google. Of course, that seems to apply to just about every company connected to the Internet nowadays.
Yeah
Way back when I was in college in the 70's we had a lot of fun with the school mainframe systems (they had two ... IBM 370 and an HP2000): pranks and practical jokes that, today, would have gotten the entire computer science department arrested and/or deported, students and teachers alike. Really, the need for our elected leaders and their appointees to be seen "doing something" about computer crime is overpowering any sense of proportion or justice. Around 1978 or thereabouts my father (who was a physicist and electronics engineer) testified in front of my State's Legislature regarding a new computer crime bill they were about to sign in to law. Many of the activities that my fellow students and I had engaged in would have landed us squarely in prison ... it was that kind of law. My father pointed out to these "we need to appear tough on this" politicians that they were, in one swell foop, criminalizing some of the best and brightest minds in the State. Whacked 'em with a cluebat, he did. They had absolutely no idea what they were doing, so far as I'm concerned still do not, and that goes up to the Federal level because we still keep seeing stupid computer and Internet-related laws.
Well, his method of choosing one vendor's product line over another certainly is efficient. Just go with your "gut feeling" and buy whatever your feelings tell you.
Whether you end up with the best tool for the job is another story.
The presumption is that some people are much stupider than they would first appear. No doubt the same reasoning behind the bright red label on my blow dryer's line cord: "WARN CHILDREN OF THE RISK OF DEATH". Of course, it leaves open what the actual cause of death might be ... a particularly thickheaded individual might think that simply drying one's hair could be fatal. Probably it's just a disclaimer that their legal staff makes them include, although the fact that such disclaimers are considered necessary is kinda scary in its own right.
And, actually ... a heat sink that gets almost too hot for a person to touch isn't particularly hot by silicon standards anyway.
... it's an unweildy, ill-conceived, ill-executed beast that seems to actually hate its users.
Are you talking about Windows XP or the XBox?
As an American myself, a citizen of a nation that gives more than any other in history to other countries and people in need, I could take exception to that remark. But ... frankly, I don't know you from Adam and couldn't care less.
The context is the same as it has always been for the RIAA. In other words, every content protection measure (for that's all this is) is aimed at the people who are clueless about the law and the technology, and can be easily intimidated by such means. Unfortunately, that means we are talking about the bulk of the population of most countries ... fortunately, because most P2P users are clueless they're pretty hard to intimidate anyway since they have no idea what they're doing.
Depends ... if the FBI gets involved they just take every machine they can find, clone the drives before performing any forensics, and if you're lucky they give you a receipt. Even if they do, odds are you'll never see that equipment again (apparently they aren't very good about returning stuff they seize.) So I wouldn't assume that just because you have multiple machines using non-routable IPs that you're even remotely safe.
Humph, 99% of the world population is outside the USA & could not care less.
And the other 1% is in the USA and still could not care less.
13.6 gigs of MP3s now.
That's all?
No, but odds are this guy will never need any whistleblower protection.
No ... that's the built-in biomarker test for your olfactory nerves.
Ha. How many Slashdotters could understand all that terminology with an explanation?
that if these large corporations can't be trusted to play with their computers safely, maybe they should have them taken away. At the very least, I think some adult supervision should be required by law. And if that doesn't work, send them back to using typewriters and filing cabinets.
... victims of genocide ...
... speaking of bullies.) Look, the world has been and always will be full of people and nations that like to throw their weight around. It's a fact of life that isn't going to go away just because you'd very much like it to. Now, you can deal with them in any number of ways: you can tell them to fuck off and pay the price now, or you can follow a policy of appeasement and simply delay the inevitable.
... and it is our fault for not recognizing that sooner. If we had, American workers might still be making television sets. There was a good reason why America remained pretty insular and kept to itself up 'til World War II ... our Founders believed that a nation that was beholden to other nations could not remain free for very long. As frequently happens, they were once again proven correct.
My goodness, what a ridiculous comparison: we aren't talking about mass murder. We're talking about diplomatic pressure being applied to nations that want a slice of the American pie, economically speaking. Pressure they would cheerfully apply to us if they had the power (and as China is, I might add
When you get right down to it, a good part of why this has come to pass is because of the (dare I say it) bullying tactics used against American industry. Japanese dumping practices, which decades ago effectively destroyed the U.S. electronics industry. Blatant industrial espionage and (gasp!) theft of intellectual property performed by China and used to build their military-industrial complex, while simultaneously eroding a substantial portion of America's remaining industrial base. Bullying goes on at many levels, and if we're applying a little pressure in return, it's not entirely undeserved. A lot of the world doesn't operate by Western rules when it comes to business
And as I mentioned previously, some nations don't even have to be bullied: the European Union seems to think this is all a grand idea. Well, most of it does, anyway. There are a few holdouts.
Bully for them.
In a perfect world. This is not a perfect world, and is one in which laws which are determined by the people to be unreasonable, irrational or simply irrelevant are generally ignored. Downloading, speed limits, guns ... you name it. That's by otherwise law-abiding citizens as well as criminals, and you know perfectly well that there is absolutely no way to completely eliminate any product from any society. It simply cannot be done, and because the criminal element always has access to black-market sources denied to ordinary people, any attempt to significantly restrict legitimate gun ownership by definition shifts the demographic to criminals. Regardless, there's no real way to eliminate something that people want. Prohibition taught us that, and then in typical government "let's forget history" fashion billions of dollars were poured into a War on Drugs in a vain attempt to staunch the flow of recreational contraband into this country, with the end result that people can still get any drug they want with relative ease. Frankly, presuming that it will be any easier to get rid of firearms is just a crack-pipe-dream. No matter ... the right to get stoned wasn't enshrined in our Constitution.
... but if I do, I still want that right. Period. And without the government looking over my shoulder since they don't have that right. Furthermore, the distaste with which many self-described "civilized" individuals look upon firearms (a distaste often borne of ignorance) is not sufficient cause to deny me access to something which might very well save my life. It simply is not your call, or anyone else's. I, as a Citizen of these United States, will make that determination for myself, thank you very much.
... ask yourself just how far those 9/11 terrorists would have gotten with those box-cutter knives.
Comments like "sorry, but a gun doesn't make anyone safe" are, unfortunately, not supported by reality. Too many successful defensive uses of a firearm (which range from merely displaying the weapon in order to discourage an attacker, to actually firing at said attacker) occur every year for legal gun ownership to be dismissed in so cavalier a manner. There are many women who are not alive today because their lives were threatened and they were not permitted to purchase a gun in time to defend themselves when their ex-boyfriend came back to beat them with a tire iron. I realize that this is one of those topics (like religion and politics) which are generally not amenable to logic and reason and where most people operate upon feelings rather than facts, but it would help if you researched this a little. Some of Gary Kleck's works might prove enlightening to you, for example. Personally, I don't own a gun and with any luck won't ever feel the need
On the other hand, I don't see any particular reason why some minimum of training shouldn't be required to own a gun. We don't just hand out driver's licenses to all comers, we expect drivers to be able to meet a certain standard (of course, that standard has been lowered in recent years to the point where many drivers are more dangerous than a psychopath with an AK-47 on full auto.) When the Constitution was drafted, it was a period in our history where firearms were relatively common among the population, and knowing how to shoot one (and when!) was sort of taken for granted.
In the long run, individual power guarantees personal freedom. That's why our Constitution guarantees we have the right to bear arms. And if America had remained a heavily-armed society
Or make it easy on yourself and buy a copy of Slysoft's AnyDVD and get it over with. Well, maybe not ... I have no idea if that product will work on Vista.
Signing the Digital Millenium Copyright Act would probably be one of them. Congress has been raping the American people for so long that I think it's past time for a few of them to get similar treatment.
Sure they're being arm-twisted and don't misunderstand me ... I'm not defending our government's current practices. But if our arm-twisting is successful, well, any nation that knuckles under deserves what it gets, which will ultimately be greater concentration of wealth, lower productivity, and a decreasing standard of living. My point is that the entire planet is full of major assholes, and that whining about it simply isn't a solution. If you're being bullied, either take it or don't. Why is it an issue whether Australia or China or India or any other nation should implement US-style IP law? Why? Because we have something everyone wants: wealth and power. And in order to get a slice of that, our government says you have to change your legal system to suit our need to protect our oh-so-valuable intellectual property. So ... to all our international friends looking for a bigger handout, I say this: the choice is yours. Maintain the integrity of your legal system, or sell your collective souls to the United States and get "harmonized". Your lawyers will get rich, even if nobody else does.
... there are a number of governments that either have nukes, or soon will have, to whom the risk of Assured Destruction (mutual or otherwise) is a viable option. Even the paranoid Russian mindset and the equally-unreasoning American anti-Communist sentiment never perceived that outcome as reasonable ... can you say the same about North Korea? Iran? Pakistan?
... sorry for drifting off-topic.
And, actually, while MAD (indeed, the entire Cold War) was hideously expensive for both sides, it was a remarkably successful military and diplomatic strategy. To this day, no ICBMs have fallen upon unsuspecting populations, no thermonuclear flowers have blossomed on either side. The answer to your question is: it made the world a substantially safer place. Once nuclear weapons tech was out of the bag, it was handled about as well as it could be handled given the nature of the Cold War combatants. And if you look at the BIG picture, you will find that since the fall of the Soviet Empire, and the concomitant loss of global stability that resulted, the world is now a much more dangerous place. Fact is, as a variant of the Doomsday Device principle, Mutual Assured Destruction is a wonderful way to assure peace when you know that neither side will ever use those weapons. That's no longer the case
Like it or not, M.A.D. worked. I realize this has nothing to do with copyrights in Australia