There were recurring anamolies in both tragedies...
O-ring erosion was not part of the design... NOTHING is supposed to hit the Shuttle during launch and there had been repeated damage to thermal tiles in earlier flights do to foam.
This is part of what Vaughan talks about when she talks about "normalization of deviance"... unpredicted anamolous behaviour of the craft that is not in line with engineering requirements and the deviant behavior being accepted as routine. If both of these problems were given the attention they deserved--especially realizing that they could be very serious if mangified--then we would not have had these particular launch failures.
The only organizational failure was (perhaps) an insufficient emphasis on eliminating the foam shedding problem.
That's a doosey of an organizational failure and exactly what happened with the O-rings on Challenger. There are definitely signs of production pressures in Columbia as well... and the Shuttle is always an R&D effort.
I know this might be hard for the Slashdot crowd but the Rep. is right.
Columbia and Challenger were not destroyed because of an O-ring or a piece of foam... they were destroyed because NASA as an organization failed [astron.berkeley.edu]. We need to fix NASA before we continue to launch shuttles... which have become glorified construction and grocery delivery vehicles as opposed to exploratory or R&D craft.
What about things that aren't myths? Like the Blue Screen... I think many enterprise-system customers would love to rid themselves of the blue screen altogether.
I totally agree... it's rather symptomatic in a sense... they are unable to embrace and antagonistic towards digital technology... this manifests in their inability to hire technical staff that can protect their shit.
Rosen on Streamcast Networks/Grokster Summary Judgment Decision
4/25/03
Hilary Rosen, Chairman and CEO, Recording Industry Association of America
(RIAA):
"We are pleased with the Court's affirmation that individual users are
accountable for illegally uploading and downloading copyrighted works off
of publicly accessible peer-to-peer networks. This is precisely the issue
we have been seeking to focus the public's attention on, and yesterday's
decision in the Verizon matter makes clear that individual infringers
cannot expect to remain anonymous when they engage in this illegal activity.
"We also note that the District Court in the Grokster matter recognized
that the Defendants 'may have intentionally structured their businesses to
avoid secondary liability for copyright infringement, while benefitting
financially from the illicit draw of their wares.'
"Businesses that intentionally facilitate massive piracy should not be able
to evade responsibility for their actions. We disagree with the District
Court's decision that these services are not liable for the massive illegal
piracy that their systems encourage and we will immediately appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals."
This can still be over-ridden by an executive order of the president... which sounds likely in the "name of national security" and our orange alert level.
"Okay, the odds that this legislation would get passed right now is really slim. I mean, without the pressing fear of imminent terrorism, there's no motivation for it."
That's just it... my prediction is that they will introduce this legislation after a major (or moderate) terrorist event and claim that they could have stopped that last one if they would have had a law like this. Ugh...
The Center for Public Integrity has intercepted a sequel to the Patriot Act that is being called the "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003". Here are a few mirrors to the document... (we will need more): one, two, and three. A notable part of the prospective legislation is that a new federal felony is created for willfully using encryption during the comission of a felony and that a judge in a different part of the country can issue a search warrant for another part of the country for terrorism or "computer crime". Why should you care if this isn't even close to law yet? 1) It's written by John Ashcroft and 2) The Bush administration is great at getting these things passed during emergencies (wasn't the homeland color just kicked up a notch?)
This thing is so expensive and time-consuming that it would be impractical to just stop construction. I do believe a moratorium on STS launches while an investigation is undertaken is appropriate.
Yes, the risks are huge in manned spaceflight. Just the reason why we shouldn't be spending such risk on a politically motivated project like the ISS.
It is important to realize that this tragedy happens in the middle of an intensive International Space Station (ISS) construction schedule.
I don't think that NASA will be able to ground the space shuttle fleet like it did in 1986. First, ISS is a very costly endevour with many international partners that has taken (and will take) years to complete. This is not the kind of thing you abandon.
We couldn't de-orbit it without some de-construction considering it won't burn up entirely as smaller objects do.
I suggest we all recognize that this is a huge personal and institutional loss by wearing black arm-bands in the coming week.
We have to weather this tragedy... more so, we need to emphasize to the public that space flight has always harbored substantial risk and always will. This doesn't mean that it shouldn't be undertaken or encouraged... it does mean that we shouldn't waste such a substantial risk on something as politically motivated as the ISS. ISS should have real goals... not just political manned space flight bullshit.
...until they extend copyright protection to databases like they've done in the EU with the European Database Directive.
The European plan not only extends copyrights to protect databases (which are large assemblages of facts... which have been the one thing you can't copyright here in the U.S. ever since copyright was written into our laws) but it also creates a new protection (that is not a copyright) that they term "sui generis" (in a class of its own). This protection is beside that of copyright and is renewable with olny a modest updating of the database... and, yes, this does mean that all you have to do is update your database every 15 years to get your protection extended another 15 years!!! This is truly perpetual copyright!!!
Our poster left out the recently formed Alliance for Digital Progress with giants like MS, Intel, Cisco, etc. that also aims to fight anti-piracy policy initiatives in the name of protecting innovation. Here's the recent news on the ADP. They have no site yet, it appears...
This means that the (MP|RI)AA can serve as many goddamn subpoenas as they want and the ISP's lawyers will advise them to comply in light of this decision. The next logical step is for the (MP|RI)AA to serve cease and desist letters to individuals... then lawsuits will result if they don't comply.
Many people involved in this will agree that it's probably time for the (MP|RI)AA to start working on consumer dis-satisfaction... if they start to sue individuals, things will get very bad.
such behavior is not legal here in the US. If we could get more information about the worm this guy was distributing (and maybe one that the record company's are supposedly distributing), we could sue the individual companies.
Nope... the interoperability defense only applies to computer programs... not hardware. Check out 17 USC section 1201 (f). In short it says, "a person who has lawfully obtained [...] a computer program may circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a particular portion of that program [...] to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, [...]" (emphasis added)
I think everyone is missing a fundamental point here: The dam that is technological content protection or access control can be easily burst... as shown by this case (especially if any infringing technology shows up) and the DeCSS case. The development of DeCSS allowed content to be copied by the end-user (even if poorly) and, once the program was out, there was no going back... In this light, it doesn't seem that hard to imagine the entertainment industry advocating draconian legislation like the DMCA, CBDTPA, and the Berman Bill. Yikes...
One of the benefits is a "gratis copy" of RMS' new book... I've got the whole damn thing scanned into PDF files if you want some holiday reading.
Joebeone
Remember everyone that trusted computing specifically aims to not allow emulation anymore... that's what it's designed to kill. As this article indirectly points out, the death of emulation could very well mean the death of archivists and archiving.
Micropayments are the future...
on
Cringely on P2P
·
· Score: 1
(this is going to be music-specific)
We need a micropayment system... this is the one crucial piece of infrastructure that is needed before a whole slew of neat business models open up. I realize that the major record labels are probably going to shed a lot of weight in jobs and shitty artists, but let's think about smaller independent labels for a second. A micropayments system would allow independent labels (indie labels) to change "(c) 2002 All rights reserved." to "You are free to copy and distribute this album as long as you support the artist by going to http://micropayments.indieband.com/ and giving a couple bucks. Please take a second and write 'http://micropayments.indieband.com/' on any copied version of this album to encourage others to support the band."
The advantanges here would be that a good chunk of marketing would be done by word of mouth. Bad artists wouldn't survive and good ones would have the resources that they need to keep going (assuming that listeners donate). Granted, once again, that such a micropayment system would not support the obese state of the major labels... but it would get $$$ to artists that actually do get royalty checks (most artists on major labels don't see royalty checks until they go platinum as marketing and promotion is taken as an advance and then charged against royalty payments... it's in the contracts and the majors have a virtual monopoly with respect to who gets recording contracts).
Slashdot Mirror
alright... all we need is some volunteer IAALs...
O-ring erosion was not part of the design... NOTHING is supposed to hit the Shuttle during launch and there had been repeated damage to thermal tiles in earlier flights do to foam.
This is part of what Vaughan talks about when she talks about "normalization of deviance"... unpredicted anamolous behaviour of the craft that is not in line with engineering requirements and the deviant behavior being accepted as routine. If both of these problems were given the attention they deserved--especially realizing that they could be very serious if mangified--then we would not have had these particular launch failures.
That's a doosey of an organizational failure and exactly what happened with the O-rings on Challenger. There are definitely signs of production pressures in Columbia as well... and the Shuttle is always an R&D effort.
Columbia and Challenger were not destroyed because of an O-ring or a piece of foam... they were destroyed because NASA as an organization failed [astron.berkeley.edu]. We need to fix NASA before we continue to launch shuttles... which have become glorified construction and grocery delivery vehicles as opposed to exploratory or R&D craft.
What about things that aren't myths? Like the Blue Screen... I think many enterprise-system customers would love to rid themselves of the blue screen altogether.
I totally agree... it's rather symptomatic in a sense... they are unable to embrace and antagonistic towards digital technology... this manifests in their inability to hire technical staff that can protect their shit.
http://www.riaa.com/PR_story.cfm?id=633
Rosen on Streamcast Networks/Grokster Summary Judgment Decision
4/25/03
Hilary Rosen, Chairman and CEO, Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA):
"We are pleased with the Court's affirmation that individual users are accountable for illegally uploading and downloading copyrighted works off of publicly accessible peer-to-peer networks. This is precisely the issue we have been seeking to focus the public's attention on, and yesterday's decision in the Verizon matter makes clear that individual infringers cannot expect to remain anonymous when they engage in this illegal activity.
"We also note that the District Court in the Grokster matter recognized that the Defendants 'may have intentionally structured their businesses to avoid secondary liability for copyright infringement, while benefitting financially from the illicit draw of their wares.'
"Businesses that intentionally facilitate massive piracy should not be able to evade responsibility for their actions. We disagree with the District Court's decision that these services are not liable for the massive illegal piracy that their systems encourage and we will immediately appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals."
Isn't the problem in this story that they're too high-tech?
The poster should have pointed you guys to this Berkeleyan article where the whole debate is fleshed-out...
... Planemos, KPOs, 'super-Plutos' [berkeley.edu]
An orb by any other name
This can still be over-ridden by an executive order of the president... which sounds likely in the "name of national security" and our orange alert level.
What's this crap about a Rama Theme Park and Rama Collectibles?
"Okay, the odds that this legislation would get passed right now is really slim. I mean, without the pressing fear of imminent terrorism, there's no motivation for it."
That's just it... my prediction is that they will introduce this legislation after a major (or moderate) terrorist event and claim that they could have stopped that last one if they would have had a law like this. Ugh...
The Center for Public Integrity has intercepted a sequel to the Patriot Act that is being called the "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003". Here are a few mirrors to the document... (we will need more): one, two, and three. A notable part of the prospective legislation is that a new federal felony is created for willfully using encryption during the comission of a felony and that a judge in a different part of the country can issue a search warrant for another part of the country for terrorism or "computer crime". Why should you care if this isn't even close to law yet? 1) It's written by John Ashcroft and 2) The Bush administration is great at getting these things passed during emergencies (wasn't the homeland color just kicked up a notch?)
Well I think the two extremes can be eliminated. That is, the ISS won't be trashed but the launch timeline and construction plan will be substantially affected.
This thing is so expensive and time-consuming that it would be impractical to just stop construction. I do believe a moratorium on STS launches while an investigation is undertaken is appropriate.
Yes, the risks are huge in manned spaceflight. Just the reason why we shouldn't be spending such risk on a politically motivated project like the ISS.
It is important to realize that this tragedy happens in the middle of an intensive International Space Station (ISS) construction schedule.
I don't think that NASA will be able to ground the space shuttle fleet like it did in 1986. First, ISS is a very costly endevour with many international partners that has taken (and will take) years to complete. This is not the kind of thing you abandon.
We couldn't de-orbit it without some de-construction considering it won't burn up entirely as smaller objects do.
I suggest we all recognize that this is a huge personal and institutional loss by wearing black arm-bands in the coming week.
We have to weather this tragedy... more so, we need to emphasize to the public that space flight has always harbored substantial risk and always will. This doesn't mean that it shouldn't be undertaken or encouraged... it does mean that we shouldn't waste such a substantial risk on something as politically motivated as the ISS. ISS should have real goals... not just political manned space flight bullshit.
jhall@astron.berkeley.edu
...until they extend copyright protection to databases like they've done in the EU with the European Database Directive.
The European plan not only extends copyrights to protect databases (which are large assemblages of facts... which have been the one thing you can't copyright here in the U.S. ever since copyright was written into our laws) but it also creates a new protection (that is not a copyright) that they term "sui generis" (in a class of its own). This protection is beside that of copyright and is renewable with olny a modest updating of the database... and, yes, this does mean that all you have to do is update your database every 15 years to get your protection extended another 15 years!!! This is truly perpetual copyright!!!
Our poster left out the recently formed Alliance for Digital Progress with giants like MS, Intel, Cisco, etc. that also aims to fight anti-piracy policy initiatives in the name of protecting innovation. Here's the recent news on the ADP. They have no site yet, it appears...
This means that the (MP|RI)AA can serve as many goddamn subpoenas as they want and the ISP's lawyers will advise them to comply in light of this decision. The next logical step is for the (MP|RI)AA to serve cease and desist letters to individuals... then lawsuits will result if they don't comply.
Many people involved in this will agree that it's probably time for the (MP|RI)AA to start working on consumer dis-satisfaction... if they start to sue individuals, things will get very bad.
such behavior is not legal here in the US. If we could get more information about the worm this guy was distributing (and maybe one that the record company's are supposedly distributing), we could sue the individual companies.
Nope... the interoperability defense only applies to computer programs... not hardware. Check out 17 USC section 1201 (f). In short it says, "a person who has lawfully obtained [...] a computer program may circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a particular portion of that program [...] to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, [...]" (emphasis added)
I think everyone is missing a fundamental point here: The dam that is technological content protection or access control can be easily burst... as shown by this case (especially if any infringing technology shows up) and the DeCSS case. The development of DeCSS allowed content to be copied by the end-user (even if poorly) and, once the program was out, there was no going back... In this light, it doesn't seem that hard to imagine the entertainment industry advocating draconian legislation like the DMCA, CBDTPA, and the Berman Bill. Yikes...
And the content industry's broadcast flag whining could still happen... read the EFF's comments to the FCC here.
One of the benefits is a "gratis copy" of RMS' new book... I've got the whole damn thing scanned into PDF files if you want some holiday reading. Joebeone
Remember everyone that trusted computing specifically aims to not allow emulation anymore... that's what it's designed to kill. As this article indirectly points out, the death of emulation could very well mean the death of archivists and archiving.
(this is going to be music-specific)
We need a micropayment system... this is the one crucial piece of infrastructure that is needed before a whole slew of neat business models open up. I realize that the major record labels are probably going to shed a lot of weight in jobs and shitty artists, but let's think about smaller independent labels for a second. A micropayments system would allow independent labels (indie labels) to change "(c) 2002 All rights reserved." to "You are free to copy and distribute this album as long as you support the artist by going to http://micropayments.indieband.com/ and giving a couple bucks. Please take a second and write 'http://micropayments.indieband.com/' on any copied version of this album to encourage others to support the band."
The advantanges here would be that a good chunk of marketing would be done by word of mouth. Bad artists wouldn't survive and good ones would have the resources that they need to keep going (assuming that listeners donate). Granted, once again, that such a micropayment system would not support the obese state of the major labels... but it would get $$$ to artists that actually do get royalty checks (most artists on major labels don't see royalty checks until they go platinum as marketing and promotion is taken as an advance and then charged against royalty payments... it's in the contracts and the majors have a virtual monopoly with respect to who gets recording contracts).