Pacific Bell was in the process of providing fiberoptic cable to residents here about six years ago. Where I live (downtown San Jose near San Jose State) they had the network boxes on street corners and all the fiber layed. Then they were taken over by SBC. One of the first things SBC did after the takeover was to cancel the project. Then they dug out the cable to make sure no one could ever use it.
According to the article he is. At least his answer to the business applications of smart mobs question, "nobody really has a clue" was probably accurately quoted. I think his answer could also be applied to the editors of that article.
What I've seen in other topics on/. as well as Dan Gilmors blog is that online poll results don't matter (by implication BBS postings too) because you have a self selected sample and the results don't generalize to the population as a whole. Also see the disclaimer on the New York Times version of opinion polls.
The percentage of the population that knows (or cares) about the ins and outs of copyright law is a minority for sure, but how much of a minority ?
The Pew Foundation had a chance to find out this in a supposedly scientifically and statistically valid way. All they came up with was what everybody knew already. More detail could have been interesting and valuable.
It would have been a better study if they had delved more into the reasons why most people don't care.
For example, do people not care because they don't even think about it, because they think they won't get caught, or because they think a monopoly is abusing both copyright law and the campaign finance system? Some of the above ? None of the above ?
My only reaction to the study in its current form is like "well duh-uh !!!".
Uh, Redhat ? Linuxcare ? Suse ? Support BBS ?
on
Linux Usage in the UK
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Could many of the people who responded that they didn't have Linux because of lack of support just be uninformed types who haven't done their homework and wouldn't use linux anyway ?
If I can't sit around the swimming pool getting high and waiting for the royalty check to come why should you ?
If programmers and engineers have to deal with technological change and a changing job market why do you deserve special protection ? If many of us make alot less than we used to, why do you expect us to feel sorry for you and keep on paying $20US for a crappy CD with one or two good songs on it ?
Why don't you guys try making your money the old fashioned way by giving live performances ?
The current monopoly system deserves to die. If that could actually happen alot of "artists" (or stoners with guitars, or thugs or whatever) would be better off too.
The article was short on implementation details but let me hypothesize a bit. Imagine if the law was changed to require Koreans (or others) to sign on to their isp in a fashion that positively verified their identify. Now imagine that this system is normally about 99 percent effective (yeah right). Doesn't this correct the reasons that online opinion polling is assumed to not work ? Couldn't this (hypothetically folks) allow a polling system to restrict votes to one per person, and allow any user entered profile data (with the users permission) to be verified ?
I realize there are many ways a positive id system could be abused, but if online opinion polling could be made accurate and easy to implement, some govts might wind up getting more than they'd bargained for.
If the average person had their hard drive trashed by the RIAA would they be more likely to spend more money on CDs or would they be more likely to boycot CDs and spend their money elsewhere ?
In my case I've already made the switch. After Audio Galaxy shut down I was so disgusted that I quit buying CDs and switched to anime video. Other people might not be so extreme but its hard to believe they'd increase their spending in the way the RIAA would like.
Another possible side effect might be that more people would discover the greater security of linux or the bsds. Imagine your average high school student suddenly getting interested in unix permission bits and file ownerships...
Apple deserves credit for realizing that monthly charges are a formula for failure.
In order for downloadable music to be a success I think 99 cents a track is still too high. If they could get it down to more like 10 cents a track maybe people wouldn't bother with Kazaa anymore.
I noticed in some other articles that some "analysts" considered the profit margins very slim at 99 cents a track. If that's actually true it's only because the old fashioned business model of spending lots of money on promotional costs. If they'd just rely on good quality music and word of mouth (this is the internet after all) I think they could make alot of money at 10 cents a track, and make piracy a less attractive option in the process.
that extend well beyond whatever the law was intended to accomplish.
A recent example is the Computer Decency Act. The reason the US Supreme Court shot it down was not because pornography is good but because they didn't want to turn the internet into a reading room for kindergartners.
I wasn't happy with the wording of the article even though I agree that throwing people in prison doesn't actually work. Better wording would have been that companies should take responsibilty for their own security.
Blocking doubleclick didn't stop it but produced a blank popup window. I was able to copy the page source listing and verify that removing this clause stopped the popup window.
Anybody have any ideas on how to turn this off with a mozilla macro ? I should email the mozilla team and see if they're aware of this.
I'm not against advertising by the way, just obnoxious stuff like unrequested popups.
I'm using Mozilla 1.3 in both Linux and XP with the popup blocker turned on and the scripts and plugins options set to don't allow apps to raise windows.
Mozilla does stop most of the popups in the New York Times by the way but definitely not all of them. For other sites it does appear to work 100 percent of the time.
I see the popups when going in the first time through my bookmarks or typing www.nytimes.com in the url area. Sometimes it happens when it hit the "New York Times" text in the upper left hand corner to get back to the home page. I just tested it in a tab window while entering this response and it happened again. It was the Orbitz add that they always run. I don't recall seeing any add except for Orbitz doing this.
I have a hard time believing that the internet is the sole reason for declining readership. Other reasons may include the ever lower quality of the reporting, ie. the increasing coverage of the entertainment industry and the decreasing coverage of old fashioned "hard news" and investigative reporting. Diminishing faith in the objectivity of the coverage could be a reason also.
Although the internet is obviously partially to blame, I think most of the newspaper industries problems are self inflicted.
The Mandrake distribution provides the Grsecurity package in 9.1. Prior to that they had the openwall patch with some others. These aren't in the standard kernel but you can compile them in yourself or use the kernel-secure rpm. The libsafe package has been provided at least since 8.1, all you have to do is type "urpmi libsafe". Libsafe used to break the hardware clock reset feature in the shutdown scripts but they may have fixed it.
I used all this stuff in Mandrake 8.1 and there was a noticeable performance hit in some situations but I left in it anyway.
I don't think it's fair to say that plastic has failed. They still have daily posts with a good number of responses. Probably the reason plastic is less popular than/. and kuro5hin is due to its generalist nature. Basically I could do what they do sitting in the break room with a newspaper and my coworkers. Even back in the 80s specialization was viewed as the formula for BBS success. Although kuro5hin is more general than/. I would say that its high percentage of user written content makes it unique. For example, the user written science fiction short story a few days ago.
Although blogging/BBSing/cmc/etc is journalism in some instances, mostly its just conversation. Since I don't believe that the letters to the editor page is the ultimate in public discourse, I consider this a good thing and not a bad thing.
If you're a home user with dsl this is a very common problem. It's not just BitTorrent, you may notice that if you are running a fserve on irc that uploads are killing your download speed.
If you're a windows user get the experimental BitTorrent client at http://ei.kefro.st/projects/btclient and set the upload rate way down, then be polite and set it back up when you're done downloading.
If you are a linux user get wondershaper from http://lartc.org/wondershaper. This site also has an explanation of why dsl users have this problem sometimes.
The site www.TSOExtreme.com mentioned in the article is a pay service that costs $24.99 to join and $1.50 a month after that. This is much more compelling than the virtual designer jeans mentioned in yesterdays article about There.com.
My concern with that big moneymaking idea is how long does it take a cheater to post the pay cheats on usenet ?
I don't see virtual wardrobes as a big moneymaker, especially since alot of people are going to want to design their own or just download free stuff. This article reminded me of the punditry of ten years ago when authors like Joshua Quitner wrote in the New York Times about how people could get rich selling sports scores for 5 cents a mouse click.
So what would I be willing to pay for ? A telepresence that accurately conveyed my voice and facial expression in a setting with real world level of detail. And low low flat rate pricing with no hidden charges or extra fees. I don't expect it to be easier to make money in a virtual world than it is on the web.
"Sometimes it takes the shock value of someone actually being punished," Carter said. "In this particular instance it might also send a message to these kids that are operating on these networks that, 'Hey, I better stop.'"
Boycotts are a good idea but imagine the shock value of millions of students registering to vote in order to "send a message" back to Congressman Carter. Fighting corruption while simultaneously keeping your butt out of jail would be cool too.
I've worked with H1Bs since the 80's and my experience says that you would win that bet easily. Every H1B I ever met viewed their visa as a foot in the door type situation and not a temporary thing at all. Many felt that their employer had an obligation (or had promised them) to sponsor them for US citizenship. They were all appalled when they found out that things didn't work that way.
I don't think its "the US" that doesn't want them though. I thinks its that the employers want disposable employees with use once and throw away job skills.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm really curious about that one.
Also, does it play other codecs like xvid or lavc, or files with features like b-frames, qpel, and gmc ?
Pacific Bell was in the process of providing fiberoptic cable to residents here about six years ago. Where I live (downtown San Jose near San Jose State) they had the network boxes on street corners and all the fiber layed. Then they were taken over by SBC. One of the first things SBC did after the takeover was to cancel the project. Then they dug out the cable to make sure no one could ever use it.
According to the article he is. At least his answer to the business applications of smart mobs question, "nobody really has a clue" was probably accurately quoted. I think his answer could also be applied to the editors of that article.
I agree that the majority think like that.
/. as well as Dan Gilmors blog is that online poll results don't matter (by implication BBS postings too) because you have a self selected sample and the results don't generalize to the population as a whole. Also see the disclaimer on the New York Times version of opinion polls.
What I've seen in other topics on
The percentage of the population that knows (or cares) about the ins and outs of copyright law is a minority for sure, but how much of a minority ?
The Pew Foundation had a chance to find out this in a supposedly scientifically and statistically valid way. All they came up with was what everybody knew already. More detail could have been interesting and valuable.
It would have been a better study if they had delved more into the reasons why most people don't care.
For example, do people not care because they don't even think about it, because they think they won't get caught, or because they think a monopoly is abusing both copyright law and the campaign finance system? Some of the above ? None of the above ?
My only reaction to the study in its current form is like "well duh-uh !!!".
Could many of the people who responded that they didn't have Linux because of lack of support just be uninformed types who haven't done their homework and wouldn't use linux anyway ?
If I can't sit around the swimming pool getting high and waiting for the royalty check to come why should you ?
If programmers and engineers have to deal with technological change and a changing job market why do you deserve special protection ? If many of us make alot less than we used to, why do you expect us to feel sorry for you and keep on paying $20US for a crappy CD with one or two good songs on it ?
Why don't you guys try making your money the old fashioned way by giving live performances ?
The current monopoly system deserves to die. If that could actually happen alot of "artists" (or stoners with guitars, or thugs or whatever) would be better off too.
The article was short on implementation details but let me hypothesize a bit. Imagine if the law was changed to require Koreans (or others) to sign on to their isp in a fashion that positively verified their identify. Now imagine that this system is normally about 99 percent effective (yeah right). Doesn't this correct the reasons that online opinion polling is assumed to not work ? Couldn't this (hypothetically folks) allow a polling system to restrict votes to one per person, and allow any user entered profile data (with the users permission) to be verified ?
I realize there are many ways a positive id system could be abused, but if online opinion polling could be made accurate and easy to implement, some govts might wind up getting more than they'd bargained for.
If the average person had their hard drive trashed by the RIAA would they be more likely to spend more money on CDs or would they be more likely to boycot CDs and spend their money elsewhere ?
In my case I've already made the switch. After Audio Galaxy shut down I was so disgusted that I quit buying CDs and switched to anime video. Other people might not be so extreme but its hard to believe they'd increase their spending in the way the RIAA would like.
Another possible side effect might be that more people would discover the greater security of linux or the bsds. Imagine your average high school student suddenly getting interested in unix permission bits and file ownerships...
Apple deserves credit for realizing that monthly charges are a formula for failure.
In order for downloadable music to be a success I think 99 cents a track is still too high. If they could get it down to more like 10 cents a track maybe people wouldn't bother with Kazaa anymore.
I noticed in some other articles that some "analysts" considered the profit margins very slim at 99 cents a track. If that's actually true it's only because the old fashioned business model of spending lots of money on promotional costs. If they'd just rely on good quality music and word of mouth (this is the internet after all) I think they could make alot of money at 10 cents a track, and make piracy a less attractive option in the process.
that extend well beyond whatever the law was intended to accomplish.
A recent example is the Computer Decency Act. The reason the US Supreme Court shot it down was not because pornography is good but because they didn't want to turn the internet into a reading room for kindergartners.
I wasn't happy with the wording of the article even though I agree that throwing people in prison doesn't actually work. Better wording would have been that companies should take responsibilty for their own security.
They don't use javascript to raise this popup window. They use an image loading facility which mozilla apparently doesn't check for.
g if" onLoad="window.open('http://ad.doubleclick.net/adi /N2870.ny/B961809;sz=720x300;ord=2003.04.21.01.58. 39','MyWindow','toolbar=no,directories=no,status=y es,menubar=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,width=7 20,height=300, top=0');window.focus();" BORDER=0"
The code is as follows:
img src="http://graphics7.nytimes.com/ads/usga/blank.
Blocking doubleclick didn't stop it but produced a blank popup window. I was able to copy the page source listing and verify that removing this clause stopped the popup window.
Anybody have any ideas on how to turn this off with a mozilla macro ? I should email the mozilla team and see if they're aware of this.
I'm not against advertising by the way, just obnoxious stuff like unrequested popups.
I'm using Mozilla 1.3 in both Linux and XP with the popup blocker turned on and the scripts and plugins options set to don't allow apps to raise windows.
Mozilla does stop most of the popups in the New York Times by the way but definitely not all of them. For other sites it does appear to work 100 percent of the time.
I see the popups when going in the first time through my bookmarks or typing www.nytimes.com in the url area. Sometimes it happens when it hit the "New York Times" text in the upper left hand corner to get back to the home page. I just tested it in a tab window while entering this response and it happened again. It was the Orbitz add that they always run. I don't recall seeing any add except for Orbitz doing this.
I have a hard time believing that the internet is the sole reason for declining readership. Other reasons may include the ever lower quality of the reporting, ie. the increasing coverage of the entertainment industry and the decreasing coverage of old fashioned "hard news" and investigative reporting. Diminishing faith in the objectivity of the coverage could be a reason also.
Although the internet is obviously partially to blame, I think most of the newspaper industries problems are self inflicted.
The New York Times has even figured out a way around the Mozilla popup blocker.
Isn't that the legislation Mr. Godwin is talking about in the article ?
The Mandrake distribution provides the Grsecurity package in 9.1. Prior to that they had the openwall patch with some others. These aren't in the standard kernel but you can compile them in yourself or use the kernel-secure rpm. The libsafe package has been provided at least since 8.1, all you have to do is type "urpmi libsafe". Libsafe used to break the hardware clock reset feature in the shutdown scripts but they may have fixed it.
I used all this stuff in Mandrake 8.1 and there was a noticeable performance hit in some situations but I left in it anyway.
I don't think it's fair to say that plastic has failed. They still have daily posts with a good number of responses. Probably the reason plastic is less popular than /. and kuro5hin is due to its generalist nature. Basically I could do what they do sitting in the break room with a newspaper and my coworkers. Even back in the 80s specialization was viewed as the formula for BBS success. Although kuro5hin is more general than /. I would say that its high percentage of user written content makes it unique. For example, the user written science fiction short story a few days ago.
Although blogging/BBSing/cmc/etc is journalism in some instances, mostly its just conversation. Since I don't believe that the letters to the editor page is the ultimate in public discourse, I consider this a good thing and not a bad thing.
If you're a home user with dsl this is a very common problem. It's not just BitTorrent, you may notice that if you are running a fserve on irc that uploads are killing your download speed.
If you're a windows user get the experimental BitTorrent client at http://ei.kefro.st/projects/btclient and set the upload rate way down, then be polite and set it back up when you're done downloading.
If you are a linux user get wondershaper from http://lartc.org/wondershaper. This site also has an explanation of why dsl users have this problem sometimes.
The site www.TSOExtreme.com mentioned in the article is a pay service that costs $24.99 to join and $1.50 a month after that. This is much more compelling than the virtual designer jeans mentioned in yesterdays article about There.com.
My concern with that big moneymaking idea is how long does it take a cheater to post the pay cheats on usenet ?
I don't see virtual wardrobes as a big moneymaker, especially since alot of people are going to want to design their own or just download free stuff. This article reminded me of the punditry of ten years ago when authors like Joshua Quitner wrote in the New York Times about how people could get rich selling sports scores for 5 cents a mouse click.
So what would I be willing to pay for ? A telepresence that accurately conveyed my voice and facial expression in a setting with real world level of detail. And low low flat rate pricing with no hidden charges or extra fees. I don't expect it to be easier to make money in a virtual world than it is on the web.
Just curious, based on previous experience I haven't even bothered to look at the ftp mirrors yet.
"Sometimes it takes the shock value of someone actually being punished," Carter said. "In this particular instance it might also send a message to these kids that are operating on these networks that, 'Hey, I better stop.'"
Boycotts are a good idea but imagine the shock value of millions of students registering to vote in order to "send a message" back to Congressman Carter. Fighting corruption while simultaneously keeping your butt out of jail would be cool too.
No that's not what I said dumbshit. :)
I've worked with H1Bs since the 80's and my experience says that you would win that bet easily. Every H1B I ever met viewed their visa as a foot in the door type situation and not a temporary thing at all. Many felt that their employer had an obligation (or had promised them) to sponsor them for US citizenship. They were all appalled when they found out that things didn't work that way.
I don't think its "the US" that doesn't want them though. I thinks its that the employers want disposable employees with use once and throw away job skills.