I'll buy your melons, if they're reasonably priced. I take every chance I can to support the Chosen.
What's with the moderators? Are they all members of the KKK, or merely Nazis? Bah, their clear anti-Semitic bias sickens me. Better smarten up before the samurai calls down the Moussad on your ass.
Thankfully, fellow Canadian, that's not quite so (I'm quite an Iron Chef fan). If your cable package includes the Food Network, then you can see it Friday at 7:00 PM and 10:00 PM (same episode), Saturday at 7:00 PM and 10:00 PM, and I think Sunday's at 4:00 PM. Those times are on the West Coast, so convert accordingly.
I may be wrong here, but I seem to recall that consuming extremely large daily doses of vitamin C can cause kidney stones to develop later in life. I've heard they can be quite the painful experience.
I wholeheartedly agree. Like you said, most scientists are more interested in the intellectual pursuits that their fields afford them than potential monetary gains. I once contemplated (and trained for) a career in physics and would have been quite happy to receive moderate pay and a nice, fat research budget without strings attached.
Unfortunately, there's a fundamental clash between money and research that usually ends up getting in the way. Most research costs quite a bit of money, which doesn't just come out of thin air. The public is more interested in seeing their hard earned tax dollars go to something more tangible (to them, at least) than scientific research, so government funding has declined over the years. Someone has to pony up the dough for researchers to do what they love, and the private sector's got loads of it.
There's also the internal politics of universities and such than can get in the way. They can be quite irratating, especially in a place that should ideally be apolitical. Having to put up with that AND a shrinking budget can be too much for many researchers to handle. At least in private industry they're likely to be paid well and have access to equipment they need to perform their research.
Anyways, I realized this while in school and decided to bail out of science. The prospect of working in private industry doesn't really appeal to me (as a researcher, anyways), and I don't want to end up stuck in a dull research position at some university where I have to scramble to get a measly few bucks for my research. Now I'm working for a software company, and though I know it's not what I really want to do, it is quite challenging, I enjoy it, and there's no ambiguity about what I'm here for: better cash for my trouble.
I totally agree with you: it's about rights. See my reply to 1010011010 above for a clarification of what I meant by "exact copy." Basically, I was wondering if quality has anything to do with my right to make a back-up. I think I should have the right to make a lossless (i.e. no quality degradation) copy of all my CDs (and DVDs, if I were ever to start buying them), but I'm curious what the law says.
Perhaps I didn't express myself well enough. What I was trying to say was do I have the right to make archival copies of my software, music, etc., without loss of quality if it is in theory possible to do so? If they introduced something similar to CSS for audio CDs, would I have the right to decrypt the data and make a bit for bit copy of the decrypted audio stream? To do so, it would likely be necessary to circumvent their copy-protection scheme. Or is it sufficient that I can make an analog recording of the CD and too bad for me if I'm a stickler for sound quality?
Of course, he is denying us our rights by disallowing private backup copies -- including copies to another media type -- which the courts have said is legal.
I agree, and forgive me for asking if this has already been adressed somewhere else, but do the laws governing legal back-up copies state that the individual is must be able to make *exact* copies? I'm just curious, since if the answer is no then doesn't decrypting DVDs for the purpose of archival back-up become an invalid argument (though the play-back argument is still quite valid)? Dave
> what should they do the next time they release a new standard and want to prevent piracy?
Well, to prevent piracy, perhaps the recording industries should start looking at pirates as a business rival rather than a big bad force out to get them.
What makes you go out and pay for food when you can get plenty of scraps in the dumpsters for free? The answers obvious in this situation, and I think it's obvious in the case of DVDs. Making it difficult to pirate material is certainly necessary, but no matter what they do, the pirates will be able to circumvent their "clever" schemes. The key to curtailing piracy in the future is not in anti-piracy technology, but in convincing the consumer that an authentic recording is worth more to them.
Think about it. If Joe Cheapskate is presented with a $23.99 DVD of the Matrix and a significantly cheaper (possibly free) rip of the Matrix, he's definately going to go for the cheaper one if he doesn't view the extra money he'd pay for the legal copy as "worth it." How one defines "worth it" is dependent on the individual, but for the most part it means better quality, more features, etc. If MPAA et al. spent more time convincing the public that their product is superior to illegal copies rather than cracking down on the evil pirates, I think they'd be better off.
Of course, this raises further questions, like how exactly do you convince the public that a legal CD is worth the extra money over a virtually identical CD-R (same goes for DVDs a few years down the road when the media becomes cheaper)? I don't think pure propaganda will work, so how do you include non-copyable features into the genuine product? Perhaps someone else has an idea.
Several people have pointed out disadvantages to up-only moderation. Many thought that too many decent (but not particlarly special) posts would be left with the trolls. That got me thinking "Well, how about down-only moderation?" This would, ideally, keep all readable posts at about the same level while pushing the trolls and flamers down below the signal threshold.
Unfortunately, one-way (up or down) moderation leaves no room for correction. If a moderator decided to bump up a "M$ sux!" post, it would forever remain moderated up. Similarly, in a down-only scheme, a well thought out pro-patent post could be moderated down to forever live with the trolls.
A one-way moderation scheme would work with absolutely perfect moderators (whatever that might mean), but since that's an impossibility, moderators have to have the ability to correct for unfairly moderated posts.
IIRC, your divx player had to contact a master server somewhere via your phone line to get the key to decrypt the video data. This, in my mind, was the WORST part of divx. It made all sorts of nasty possibilities come to mind, like central tracking of when and what divx releases you watched. Not to mention that if the master server in your area went down, you'd be out of luck (imagine building a divx library of a hundred or so discs while the format was popular only to watch the format fall into disuse, leaving you with a hundred crappy coasters). Oh, there were other bad things about divx, too, but this one stuck out in my mind as *really* bad.
Thanks for pointing that out. It seemed to me to be crazy for any organization to bad mouth the classics, and I'm glad that's the case. I don't agree with the AFA, or the FFL for that matter, on a great many of their issues, but I do agree that libraries often spend too much money on books far less worthwhile than Pricipia and others. Books I would prefer libraries spend less money on are not the same as the AFA's list (my reasons are on intellectual grounds, not moral), but the end result is the same: libraries could stand to spend more of their money on quality intellectual material.
I grabbed the PDF and had a read through it. What I find scariest about it is that it seems to imply the following:
1) The ALA is bad. 2) Libraries that have "fallen under the influence of the ALA" have a good selection of classic works such as "Principia Mathematica" 3) Therefore books such as "Principia Mathematica" are bad.
When a "concerned citizen" fills out the AFA's pamphlet, just what is he or she supposed to circle if their library has a fine selection of classic literature, the thumbs up or the thumbs down? Outside the context of the AFA's pamphlet, which would you (or even a right-wing conservative) choose?
I'm sure I'm not alone in my disgust that a fundamental work in physics or economics or history or (you get the picture)... can somehow be bad for a library to have. I mean, isn't this exactly the sort of thing a library is for?!?
Perhaps I've taken the pamphlet the wrong way, but that's the impression I was left with. Wrong or not, if I was given that impression, than others will too. There's just something so wrong with inferrring that the presence of classic works is an indicator of a "corrupted" library.
There's a difference between simply saying something and saying it well. A more intelligently written post stands a better chance of being moderated up than a post that essentially makes the same point but in broken English and with excessive profanity. Besides, as Plasmic pointed out, the moderators didn't flame the author of the post you refer to. They merely didn't moderate it up as much. You have to admit that the root post of this node was written in a more thoughtful manner than that other post, so perhaps the moderators don't have anything "the fuck wrong" with them.
I graduated in '95 and have nearly forgotten all of my high school experiences. However, I seem to recall emphasis on current events in my social studies classes (kind of like history, I guess) from grade 9 or 10 through 12. I didn't have an entire course devoted to the media, but we did analyze media presentations of the world's goings-ons.
I don't think it's the FBI warnings that keep people from copying tapes, but the fact that you need TWO VCRs to make a copy. For the average home user, this will be a problem with DVDs as well.
I work for a small software company and that's more or less how things are: I'm payed on salary, but if they see I've been putting in significant overtime they'll pony up the dough. A few weeks ago I was pleasantly surprised to find and extra two weeks pay tacked on to my regular pay cheque for most of the overtime I had worked over the last couple of months. Not to mention that they also pay out bonuses, too.
Of course, if I worked for a big-ass company full of PHB's, I wouldn't expect the same treatment I get now. I'd probably prefer hourly in that case.
What you described is essentially the way real virii evolve. Thus an immediate solution comes to mind: evolve some kick ass anit-virus software. Every computer would necessarily require an immune system that's capable of evolving "antibodies" capable of detecting and destroying invading virii.
I like this idea. Next thing you know, system administration will become more like being a zookeeper.:)
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He's probably a lobbyist for Big Pickle.
I'll buy your melons, if they're reasonably priced. I take every chance I can to support the Chosen.
What's with the moderators? Are they all members of the KKK, or merely Nazis? Bah, their clear anti-Semitic bias sickens me. Better smarten up before the samurai calls down the Moussad on your ass.
Dude! Br0wn135 RuL3!
0y v3y!
Whatever it is that you're selling, I'll buy it!
I'm just a crazy goy, but I tell you his web resources are so fantastic you could plotz!
Done. These melons better be worth it.
... I'm getting the feeling that I've been ripped off.
Hmmmm
Nothing like Jewish melons in the morning.
I'll match all of that, plus I'll throw in a couple of rabbis I've got lying around.
Perhaps you should try selling them on ebay.
I'll give you twenty pounds of pork for your melons.
but we don't get that in Canada..
Thankfully, fellow Canadian, that's not quite so (I'm quite an Iron Chef fan). If your cable package includes the Food Network, then you can see it Friday at 7:00 PM and 10:00 PM (same episode), Saturday at 7:00 PM and 10:00 PM, and I think Sunday's at 4:00 PM. Those times are on the West Coast, so convert accordingly.
Q
I may be wrong here, but I seem to recall that consuming extremely large daily doses of vitamin C can cause kidney stones to develop later in life. I've heard they can be quite the painful experience.
Dave
I wholeheartedly agree. Like you said, most scientists are more interested in the intellectual pursuits that their fields afford them than potential monetary gains. I once contemplated (and trained for) a career in physics and would have been quite happy to receive moderate pay and a nice, fat research budget without strings attached.
Unfortunately, there's a fundamental clash between money and research that usually ends up getting in the way. Most research costs quite a bit of money, which doesn't just come out of thin air. The public is more interested in seeing their hard earned tax dollars go to something more tangible (to them, at least) than scientific research, so government funding has declined over the years. Someone has to pony up the dough for researchers to do what they love, and the private sector's got loads of it.
There's also the internal politics of universities and such than can get in the way. They can be quite irratating, especially in a place that should ideally be apolitical. Having to put up with that AND a shrinking budget can be too much for many researchers to handle. At least in private industry they're likely to be paid well and have access to equipment they need to perform their research.
Anyways, I realized this while in school and decided to bail out of science. The prospect of working in private industry doesn't really appeal to me (as a researcher, anyways), and I don't want to end up stuck in a dull research position at some university where I have to scramble to get a measly few bucks for my research. Now I'm working for a software company, and though I know it's not what I really want to do, it is quite challenging, I enjoy it, and there's no ambiguity about what I'm here for: better cash for my trouble.
Dave
I totally agree with you: it's about rights. See my reply to 1010011010 above for a clarification of what I meant by "exact copy." Basically, I was wondering if quality has anything to do with my right to make a back-up. I think I should have the right to make a lossless (i.e. no quality degradation) copy of all my CDs (and DVDs, if I were ever to start buying them), but I'm curious what the law says.
Dave
That's precisely what I was getting at.
Perhaps I didn't express myself well enough. What I was trying to say was do I have the right to make archival copies of my software, music, etc., without loss of quality if it is in theory possible to do so? If they introduced something similar to CSS for audio CDs, would I have the right to decrypt the data and make a bit for bit copy of the decrypted audio stream? To do so, it would likely be necessary to circumvent their copy-protection scheme. Or is it sufficient that I can make an analog recording of the CD and too bad for me if I'm a stickler for sound quality?
Dave
Of course, he is denying us our rights by disallowing private backup copies -- including copies to another media type -- which the courts have said is legal.
I agree, and forgive me for asking if this has already been adressed somewhere else, but do the laws governing legal back-up copies state that the individual is must be able to make *exact* copies? I'm just curious, since if the answer is no then doesn't decrypting DVDs for the purpose of archival back-up become an invalid argument (though the play-back argument is still quite valid)? Dave
> what should they do the next time they release a new standard and want to prevent piracy?
Well, to prevent piracy, perhaps the recording industries should start looking at pirates as a business rival rather than a big bad force out to get them.
What makes you go out and pay for food when you can get plenty of scraps in the dumpsters for free? The answers obvious in this situation, and I think it's obvious in the case of DVDs. Making it difficult to pirate material is certainly necessary, but no matter what they do, the pirates will be able to circumvent their "clever" schemes. The key to curtailing piracy in the future is not in anti-piracy technology, but in convincing the consumer that an authentic recording is worth more to them.
Think about it. If Joe Cheapskate is presented with a $23.99 DVD of the Matrix and a significantly cheaper (possibly free) rip of the Matrix, he's definately going to go for the cheaper one if he doesn't view the extra money he'd pay for the legal copy as "worth it." How one defines "worth it" is dependent on the individual, but for the most part it means better quality, more features, etc. If MPAA et al. spent more time convincing the public that their product is superior to illegal copies rather than cracking down on the evil pirates, I think they'd be better off.
Of course, this raises further questions, like how exactly do you convince the public that a legal CD is worth the extra money over a virtually identical CD-R (same goes for DVDs a few years down the road when the media becomes cheaper)? I don't think pure propaganda will work, so how do you include non-copyable features into the genuine product? Perhaps someone else has an idea.
Dave
Several people have pointed out disadvantages to up-only moderation. Many thought that too many decent (but not particlarly special) posts would be left with the trolls. That got me thinking "Well, how about down-only moderation?" This would, ideally, keep all readable posts at about the same level while pushing the trolls and flamers down below the signal threshold.
Unfortunately, one-way (up or down) moderation leaves no room for correction. If a moderator decided to bump up a "M$ sux!" post, it would forever remain moderated up. Similarly, in a down-only scheme, a well thought out pro-patent post could be moderated down to forever live with the trolls.
A one-way moderation scheme would work with absolutely perfect moderators (whatever that might mean), but since that's an impossibility, moderators have to have the ability to correct for unfairly moderated posts.
IIRC, your divx player had to contact a master server somewhere via your phone line to get the key to decrypt the video data. This, in my mind, was the WORST part of divx. It made all sorts of nasty possibilities come to mind, like central tracking of when and what divx releases you watched. Not to mention that if the master server in your area went down, you'd be out of luck (imagine building a divx library of a hundred or so discs while the format was popular only to watch the format fall into disuse, leaving you with a hundred crappy coasters). Oh, there were other bad things about divx, too, but this one stuck out in my mind as *really* bad.
Thanks for pointing that out. It seemed to me to be crazy for any organization to bad mouth the classics, and I'm glad that's the case. I don't agree with the AFA, or the FFL for that matter, on a great many of their issues, but I do agree that libraries often spend too much money on books far less worthwhile than Pricipia and others. Books I would prefer libraries spend less money on are not the same as the AFA's list (my reasons are on intellectual grounds, not moral), but the end result is the same: libraries could stand to spend more of their money on quality intellectual material.
Dave
I grabbed the PDF and had a read through it. What I find scariest about it is that it seems to imply the following:
... can somehow be bad for a library to have. I mean, isn't this exactly the sort of thing a library is for?!?
1) The ALA is bad.
2) Libraries that have "fallen under the influence of the ALA" have a good selection of classic works such as "Principia Mathematica"
3) Therefore books such as "Principia Mathematica" are bad.
When a "concerned citizen" fills out the AFA's pamphlet, just what is he or she supposed to circle if their library has a fine selection of classic literature, the thumbs up or the thumbs down? Outside the context of the AFA's pamphlet, which would you (or even a right-wing conservative) choose?
I'm sure I'm not alone in my disgust that a fundamental work in physics or economics or history or (you get the picture)
Perhaps I've taken the pamphlet the wrong way, but that's the impression I was left with. Wrong or not, if I was given that impression, than others will too. There's just something so wrong with inferrring that the presence of classic works is an indicator of a "corrupted" library.
Dave
There's a difference between simply saying something and saying it well. A more intelligently written post stands a better chance of being moderated up than a post that essentially makes the same point but in broken English and with excessive profanity. Besides, as Plasmic pointed out, the moderators didn't flame the author of the post you refer to. They merely didn't moderate it up as much. You have to admit that the root post of this node was written in a more thoughtful manner than that other post, so perhaps the moderators don't have anything "the fuck wrong" with them.
I graduated in '95 and have nearly forgotten all of my high school experiences. However, I seem to recall emphasis on current events in my social studies classes (kind of like history, I guess) from grade 9 or 10 through 12. I didn't have an entire course devoted to the media, but we did analyze media presentations of the world's goings-ons.
I don't think it's the FBI warnings that keep people from copying tapes, but the fact that you need TWO VCRs to make a copy. For the average home user, this will be a problem with DVDs as well.
I work for a small software company and that's more or less how things are: I'm payed on salary, but if they see I've been putting in significant overtime they'll pony up the dough. A few weeks ago I was pleasantly surprised to find and extra two weeks pay tacked on to my regular pay cheque for most of the overtime I had worked over the last couple of months. Not to mention that they also pay out bonuses, too.
Of course, if I worked for a big-ass company full of PHB's, I wouldn't expect the same treatment I get now. I'd probably prefer hourly in that case.
What you described is essentially the way real virii evolve. Thus an immediate solution comes to mind: evolve some kick ass anit-virus software. Every computer would necessarily require an immune system that's capable of evolving "antibodies" capable of detecting and destroying invading virii.
:)
I like this idea. Next thing you know, system administration will become more like being a zookeeper.
> Anyone besides me always get those wierd NT problems where all your desktop icons get replaced by other applications?
:)
Yes indeed. That happened to me just the other day. My shut down icon was replaced with the help icon, the help icon with a globe, etc. Very strange.
Oh, and to keep this moderately on topic: I wonder if the same thing would happen on one of those mini-pentiums?