At around 10:25 in the video Chris St. Amand, who runs Microsoft's website and data center, types in his password, which the camera recorded. And the video is hosted off of Microsoft's website...although I don't know how long that'll still be operational.
"Of the top 10 software engineers in my organization, up until about a year ago, 6 of them had no degree at all....None of us are far from getting them"
This seems to be an example of the merits of formal education. All of the top software engineers had gone to school long enough to get the core courses.
In the end, a degree is just an easy way to demonstrate proof of formal education. It would be nice, though, if universities were less like cable companies selling you a single education plan and more like grocery stores. You should be able to put on your resume: "x hours of computer science courses" and have that mean just as much as "C.S. degree" (which equals x hours of computer science courses, plus the fine arts, government, history, english, and science courses the other guy didn't feel like dealing with).
I'm assuming that you intend to distribute songs that the artists don't own the rights to when using this system. If the artist doesn't own the rights to the song, then this form of distribution will be illegal. If it's illegal, then you're going to have the same distribution problems as Napster (centralized server) (although being non-profit might help), and Napster died before the RIAA even really got into prosecuting individuals (I haven't checked, but bittorrent is not anonymous, as I recall)
An interesting idea would be for the artists to release separate versions of the songs which aren't commercially mastered (thus not using the equipment that RIAA-backers pay for), but I'm not sure their contracts allow independently releasing music like this. These songs could then be distributed via this system. However, such a system already existed on mp3.com where independent artists released their music and asked for donations (although, granted, mp3.com closed down as I recall, probably due to lack of profitability, which might be changed in a system where the users shoulder the cost of the bandwidth; still this runs into the same problems as Kazaa in terms of making sure there are enough distributors of the music)
Ignoring the part of this post dealing with distribution, what you're really talking about is an organized way to donate to bands so that we can feel better about pirating their music. I've wanted something like this too, but it seems there are several problems. In fact, if we could set this part of your suggestion up, even without the rest of it, then that would handle the main void that currently exists. (Get the music through whatever mechanism you want, and then have one place where you can go to donate.)
First of all, the bands' labels will probably not look too kindly on their signing up for this. Their contracts might even explicitly forbid this as some sort of exlusivity clause in who can distribute their songs. I've gone to several bands' websites in the hopes that they would even have a "Donate" thing on there just to show extra appreciation (with the implicit understanding that many people are donating in order to feel better about pirating music), but I have yet to find a band website that has such an option to donate.
Secondly, I think an issue arises in terms of authentication. So, we set up an account for a song (or, a band) and let people donate. Then you have this money sitting around. And some guy e-mails you to tell you he's the band leader and to ask for the money; how do you make sure that he's really the guy that deserves the money? This might be less of an issue for national bands than it would be for smaller bands. Now you could rely on several volunteers who are enthusiasts of the band to track down the people and figure things out, but the point is that you'll have a lot of money floating around and you need to make sure that people feel safe donating money and knowing that it's going to who it's supposed to go to. This gets even more complicated if two bands (or band members from different bands) cooperate on a song. The thing about distribution of a physical medium like a CD is that the distributor takes the time to lay out the royalty agreements ahead of time. If you get e-mails from both bands demanding the money, how do you divide it up? There are probably various ways to handle these things, but the more time/human-intensive it is, the more volunteers that are going to be required for this thing to really work. It seems like most other major donation agencies (and I think something on this scale classifies as major) hire employees. I guess that's what would need to be done here.
Just set up some voice recognition software so can nap through the lecture without feeling guilty.
The real question is how to get the prof to train the voice recognition.
Option 1: Ask him outright.
Umm...no.
Option 2: Try to get him to do it in class without knowing it, "Sneakers"-style. "Umm, professor, since that memory chip's port passes data, I guess you might call it a...'passport', huh?" (The more I think about this, the more I'm certain this must be the explanation for some of the bizarre questions people have asked in the past. e.g. "Professor, what color is a transistor?")
A new virus has taken the internet by storm....
In unrelated news, radio stations have apparently predicted a comeback of the Spice Girls and are playing it non-stop.
This was my initial assessment as well. I guess the FBI has always been able to do that (so they probably already have) and now they're just making sure that companies know they're willing to do it.
But I also think we're overlooking a more reasonable usage of this. Namely, the FBI encourages companies to come forward and share log files, etc. so that the FBI can track down the hacker. Then once they've found him, they can may arrest him on other charges where the original company is never involved and thus never mentioned (for example, if they've already amassed enough evidence against a hacker to charge him, but they haven't been able to find him). The statement:
"When we've got individuals (as witnesses) we want to keep off the stand, we just won't use them"
seems to imply that's what they have in mind.
Slashdot Mirror
At around 10:25 in the video Chris St. Amand, who runs Microsoft's website and data center, types in his password, which the camera recorded. And the video is hosted off of Microsoft's website...although I don't know how long that'll still be operational.
This must be related to the "Dopeler effect", for high density of dopes.
(The Dopeler effect refers to the tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.)
This seems to be an example of the merits of formal education. All of the top software engineers had gone to school long enough to get the core courses.
In the end, a degree is just an easy way to demonstrate proof of formal education. It would be nice, though, if universities were less like cable companies selling you a single education plan and more like grocery stores. You should be able to put on your resume: "x hours of computer science courses" and have that mean just as much as "C.S. degree" (which equals x hours of computer science courses, plus the fine arts, government, history, english, and science courses the other guy didn't feel like dealing with).
An interesting idea would be for the artists to release separate versions of the songs which aren't commercially mastered (thus not using the equipment that RIAA-backers pay for), but I'm not sure their contracts allow independently releasing music like this. These songs could then be distributed via this system. However, such a system already existed on mp3.com where independent artists released their music and asked for donations (although, granted, mp3.com closed down as I recall, probably due to lack of profitability, which might be changed in a system where the users shoulder the cost of the bandwidth; still this runs into the same problems as Kazaa in terms of making sure there are enough distributors of the music)
Ignoring the part of this post dealing with distribution, what you're really talking about is an organized way to donate to bands so that we can feel better about pirating their music. I've wanted something like this too, but it seems there are several problems. In fact, if we could set this part of your suggestion up, even without the rest of it, then that would handle the main void that currently exists. (Get the music through whatever mechanism you want, and then have one place where you can go to donate.)
First of all, the bands' labels will probably not look too kindly on their signing up for this. Their contracts might even explicitly forbid this as some sort of exlusivity clause in who can distribute their songs. I've gone to several bands' websites in the hopes that they would even have a "Donate" thing on there just to show extra appreciation (with the implicit understanding that many people are donating in order to feel better about pirating music), but I have yet to find a band website that has such an option to donate.
Secondly, I think an issue arises in terms of authentication. So, we set up an account for a song (or, a band) and let people donate. Then you have this money sitting around. And some guy e-mails you to tell you he's the band leader and to ask for the money; how do you make sure that he's really the guy that deserves the money? This might be less of an issue for national bands than it would be for smaller bands. Now you could rely on several volunteers who are enthusiasts of the band to track down the people and figure things out, but the point is that you'll have a lot of money floating around and you need to make sure that people feel safe donating money and knowing that it's going to who it's supposed to go to. This gets even more complicated if two bands (or band members from different bands) cooperate on a song. The thing about distribution of a physical medium like a CD is that the distributor takes the time to lay out the royalty agreements ahead of time. If you get e-mails from both bands demanding the money, how do you divide it up? There are probably various ways to handle these things, but the more time/human-intensive it is, the more volunteers that are going to be required for this thing to really work. It seems like most other major donation agencies (and I think something on this scale classifies as major) hire employees. I guess that's what would need to be done here.
The real question is how to get the prof to train the voice recognition.
Option 1: Ask him outright.
Umm...no.
Option 2: Try to get him to do it in class without knowing it, "Sneakers"-style. "Umm, professor, since that memory chip's port passes data, I guess you might call it a...'passport', huh?" (The more I think about this, the more I'm certain this must be the explanation for some of the bizarre questions people have asked in the past. e.g. "Professor, what color is a transistor?")
A new virus has taken the internet by storm. ...
In unrelated news, radio stations have apparently predicted a comeback of the Spice Girls and are playing it non-stop.
This was my initial assessment as well. I guess the FBI has always been able to do that (so they probably already have) and now they're just making sure that companies know they're willing to do it. But I also think we're overlooking a more reasonable usage of this. Namely, the FBI encourages companies to come forward and share log files, etc. so that the FBI can track down the hacker. Then once they've found him, they can may arrest him on other charges where the original company is never involved and thus never mentioned (for example, if they've already amassed enough evidence against a hacker to charge him, but they haven't been able to find him). The statement: "When we've got individuals (as witnesses) we want to keep off the stand, we just won't use them" seems to imply that's what they have in mind.
3 page executive summary 127 page Committee's Report (Appendix F lists the papers in question; Appendix H gives Schon's response)