"via a rider on the session ending omnibus appropiations bill."
via a rider
A rider gets latched on to larger bills that everyone wants to sign, but the rider itself is usually either pork or in the benefit of some idiot trade group (RIAA, MPAA, NAB).
session ending
Congress wants to get out of town. Only problem is that they never got the appropriations passed (see next item). So this is the last thing they have to clear up before going home.
omnibus appropriations bill
If everyone agrees, you'll usually see one large bill that provides funding to a large number of departments. So one bill may fund Treasury and Justice, and another may fund Interior and Defense.
I thought that Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash were great at teaching concepts like crypto and how the Internet works. My (mostly) non-technical wife read it and understood much of what Stephenson was saying.
Wrong analogy. The 10,000 Marvel Comics are exactly the same. Marvel also gets to choose the price based on what the market will bear.
NSI's domains are all unique - they must be. turdburglar.com and burglarturd.com (if they exist) are two completely different sites. The fact that one is held does not mean that the value of all other domains increase.
NSI advertises their domain pricing at $35/year. It's not "ask us for a quote for turdburglar.com". It's $35. Microsoft pays $35 for microsoft.com, just like Taco pays $35 for slashdot.org, and I pay $35 for each of my domains. I could care less if MS paid $2,000 for microsoft.com. It will not influence my cost ($35).
GIF encoders/decoders
MP3 encoders (are decoders covered?)
RSA encryption (expired, but that's besides the point)
DeCSS probably doesn't fit, as it wasn't a patent.
Is CueCat patented? Probably not.
Based on the ratings that NBC is getting, they may wind up losing money on this deal. You can be sure what when the next contract gets written, it will probably be less in today's dollars.
Anyway, this winds up being less than a billion per game (there's 4 games between now and then). So say NBC gives up their exclusivity but pays only $250-$500 mln per game, but gets TV exclusive. Then have 100+ web sites, each for a particular event. Low speed feeds (28.8k?) are free, but ad-supported. Higher-speed feeds (DSL/Cable/etc) are low cost. Maybe some sharing agreement between the web sites so you can get multiple feeds for one price or something.
Would that make up the missing $500mln? You're now looking at each site paying $5 million. 100,000 people paying $50 would do it. Or 1 million people paying $5. Or 2 million people paying $2.50. Make it still $5 to cover equipment cost and other. Would you pay $5.00 to watch all the bobsled events? In their entirety? No crappy special-interest stories, just bobsleding? How about paying $100 to get access to 50 events?
>these companies (who have their stockholders' interests in mind, *and no one else's*, not you, not me, certainly not the artists who they hide behind)
Err....a few things here.
First, there's nothing preventing you from buying shares of sony, time warner, etc. They're listed on the US stock exchanges, and also on the exchanges where the company is based (Tokyo, Toronto, etc.).
Second, anyone with a retirement account (401(k), IRA, and so on) may own shares in these companies already.
To turn this into a "us vs. shareholders" thing is not really the point. You're probably already a shareholder.
So now what?
If you're a direct shareholder, contact investor relations. Find some financial why maintaining their relationship with the RIAA will hurt the company and its share price.
If you're indirect (401(k)) contact the investor relations of the mutual fund company that you're going through. Do the same thing.
With stock prices being real crappy these days, some solid reasons why a particular company's plan to extort money from consumers will backfire could be of help.
Way back when (in the mid '60s) there was a bunch of records from Firestone during the Christmas season. I grew up listening to these. Unfortunately, records are no longer being made, record players are almost as hard to find, and the media itself has been degrading for 30+ years.
As a present to my parents this year, I've purchased a set of records from Ebay, recorded them to my machine, filtered out the pops/clicks, and then burned them onto a CD.
Let's advance this to 20+ years from now when my kids want to make me a copy of the special edition of "Army of Darkness". It isn't being made on [insert future technology], and DVD players have gone the way of the dinosaur. What if my kids wanted to copy the DVD to [insert future technology] so I can enjoy the movie in my old age? I still own legal copies, and in the case of music, this is perfectly legal under the home recording act.
As it turned out, the first time I read SIASL I was at a religious retreat. For those who have a history of religion in their lives, I think SIASL says a lot about faith, beliefs, and other things that religion tries to address. I view "us" as the non-religious type, so much of what he says is lost since it's hard to relate to what he's saying.
The thing that strikes me most about Heinlien is his dialog between characters. Most authors use it to prove that the characters are actually relating to each other. Heinlien uses it to describe the plot and what's going on. I think he relies on the dialog more than some omnipotent view of the world.
Why do people insist on using KVM switches? Linux and most other UNIX(es) systems support serial consoles. Run the serial port to a concentrator, then those who need to can get DIRECT access to the system console from their desktops. Some motherboards support this and let you get into the BIOS via the serial port.
There's only two times where you actually NEED a KVM switch:
1) You have to do something at the machine that requires you to be there, like an OS install. Even that can be worked around. Pop CD in drive, walk back to desk, install while reading/. and drinking coffee.
2) You're using NT. No serial console support there. The less said about this, the better.
Seriously, look at the rack space used up by kvm switching gear and monitor and keyboard and mouse, the problems involved with having only one crash cart in a cage, or having to shlep your butt into work at 3AM to reboot a machine you could have done from home.
(Yes, there are monitors and keyboards that will fit in a 1U space. $$$ and still has the limitation that you can't get direct access remotely.)
It is the ham's problem if their equipment is cheap and unshielded.
>As a favour, not because it's required.
Just wait till the FCC van starts driving around the neighborhood. There are limits on broadcasting, especially if they interfere with people a few houses away.
Happened in MA 4 years ago. An electrinic count showed that one person won, but a hand recount showed that the punch cards were not counted properly, and it turns out the opponent won. Punch cards were then made illegal in MA for elections, and we use the "fill in the circle with the marker" method. This year's ballot was very clearly written.
What happens the first time Red Hat (for example) gets sued for something like their update daemon? What if one of the *BSD gets sued because of a unknown security lapse? If a company is responsible for all the code it ships, does this mean Caldera is respinsible if there's a bug in xbill? Is Debian responsible for bugs in their unstable release? If I can't install SuSE on my laptop, should they fly someone out here to install it for me?
It's all nice and good to say that companeis should stand behind their products and provide a warranty, but also look at how that will affect the companies you *do* care about.
Yea, like thermonuclear devices will discriminate based on who paid their yearly "missile defense fee".
I know! We can let private enterprise handle missile defense on a town-by-town basis. I mean, it works for cable TV and telephone service, right? Right?? RIGHT???
Okay, so Mr. Browne wants to abolish the IRS and the Income Tax (yay!). But then he wants to offer $25 or $50b to whomever comes up with the first working missile defense system.
If not for the income tax, where will the money come from? National Sales Tax? Propery taxes? What? Are there other "necessary" projects that would be funded this way? If so, how will those get money?
I believe e-mail and internet usage can be monitored by US employers, but only if they notify the employees that montoring is taking place.
However, I seem to remember the outcome of the Steve Jackson Games case was that the govt. treats e-mail just like postal mail (i.e. court order required), but since the machine that sends/stores e-mail is owned by the company, they have the right to do with the contents as they please. This allows companies to monitor e-mail.
No, really. Wireless is still being developed, whereas landline networking is already established. Get wireless working with IPv6, get any of the remaining bugs out of the protocols and implementations, then get it going with landline. The chicken-and-egg problem will already be solved.
Plus, IPv6 gives all the advantages that wireless requires such as encryption and easier routing.
I dunno. When they revived Poole, I just started to lose it. And that was very early on. The whole virus thing was kinda strange too.
His books of late have been rather poor (3001 and the Rama series comes to mind). Disappointing, as his earlier works were *excellent*.
Unfortuntely, the same was starting to happen to Asimov before his death (see Foundation's Edge and Foundataion & Earth). They weren't *bad* but definately not up to par with his earlier works.
I hate to say it, but I don't agree with that commentary.
Noone recommended the stock to us. Red Hat offered, E*Trade was just the middleman. The investment amount was relatively small. $1400 for 100 shares? We're not talking IBM or AOL here. I went into this process having enough cash set aside for the shares I wanted to purchase.
If anything, those in the high tech industry are more familar with IPOs than other industries.
To top it off, I didn't buy shares to make a mint of money. That I did is a side issue. I bought the shares so that I would be a shareholder of RedHat. I have bought their products in the past, and will continue to do so in the future.
First, I own RedHat stock. Second, I'm looking to certify my company's hardware with RedHat.
Right. Now on to "why RedHat?" The answers are pretty straightforward. They have a high publicity factor and they have a real way of certifying hardware.
If your company announces support for Debian, it won't get the publicity that support for RedHat does. It's just the way the media works.
The "Cool it works with Linux" is self-certifying and there's no way to back it up.
Getting back to "what doesn't work with Debian et all", that doesn't mean that it doesn't work. It's pretty reasonable to assume that hardware that works with Red Hat works with Debian, Caldera, Mandrake, etc. But what this means is that Red Hat was able to test the hardware in their labs and they certify that it works with Linux. Not being stupid, they say "Red Hat Linux" There's nothing from preventing you from saying from that point "Works with Linux".
Your computer case is already a Faraday cage. The gaps in the machine (I/O brackets and the like) are small enough to prevent the RF from getting out, and it prevents most RF from coming in.
PCs that pass FCC A have to be able to accept bursts up to 4X the highest frequency in the device (i.e. 1-2Ghz range). Class B (residential) is harder to get, as the bursts are of more strength.
I didn't see anything about the machines themselves. Were they plain 'ol PCs with their covers on and everything, or were they open in any way?
Sure. Some of what I'll say is kinda pulled from what I read in a PGP release many moons ago.
You don't write letters to people on postcards, do you? No. Why? Anyone can read what's on the postcard. If you want to write a private letter to someone, you write it on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope. You may even use a security envelope so you can't see what's inside the envelope.
Encryption is (in one sense) the envelope. It makes sure that no casual reader can see what the contents are. It may be credit card information, or it may be happy birthday wishes. It doesn't matter.
Encryption (as PGP/GPG uses) also provides authentication. It makes sure that when you get a letter from a friend, it really came from them and not someone who happened to break into Hotmail and fake e-mail.
Side note: Hrm. This could be a good way at advertising GPG (Hotmail cracked again? Don't worry, GPG keeps you safe!)
Slashdot Mirror
...and if you ask Apple, you get exactly the opposite. It's the classic "point fingers everywhere but here".
Mmmm...doublespeak.
"via a rider on the session ending omnibus appropiations bill."
via a rider
A rider gets latched on to larger bills that everyone wants to sign, but the rider itself is usually either pork or in the benefit of some idiot trade group (RIAA, MPAA, NAB).
session ending
Congress wants to get out of town. Only problem is that they never got the appropriations passed (see next item). So this is the last thing they have to clear up before going home.
omnibus appropriations bill
If everyone agrees, you'll usually see one large bill that provides funding to a large number of departments. So one bill may fund Treasury and Justice, and another may fund Interior and Defense.
I thought that Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash were great at teaching concepts like crypto and how the Internet works. My (mostly) non-technical wife read it and understood much of what Stephenson was saying.
Wrong analogy. The 10,000 Marvel Comics are exactly the same. Marvel also gets to choose the price based on what the market will bear.
NSI's domains are all unique - they must be. turdburglar.com and burglarturd.com (if they exist) are two completely different sites. The fact that one is held does not mean that the value of all other domains increase.
NSI advertises their domain pricing at $35/year. It's not "ask us for a quote for turdburglar.com". It's $35. Microsoft pays $35 for microsoft.com, just like Taco pays $35 for slashdot.org, and I pay $35 for each of my domains. I could care less if MS paid $2,000 for microsoft.com. It will not influence my cost ($35).
Lessee..:
GIF encoders/decoders
MP3 encoders (are decoders covered?)
RSA encryption (expired, but that's besides the point)
DeCSS probably doesn't fit, as it wasn't a patent.
Is CueCat patented? Probably not.
-Mark
Based on the ratings that NBC is getting, they may wind up losing money on this deal. You can be sure what when the next contract gets written, it will probably be less in today's dollars.
Anyway, this winds up being less than a billion per game (there's 4 games between now and then). So say NBC gives up their exclusivity but pays only $250-$500 mln per game, but gets TV exclusive. Then have 100+ web sites, each for a particular event. Low speed feeds (28.8k?) are free, but ad-supported. Higher-speed feeds (DSL/Cable/etc) are low cost. Maybe some sharing agreement between the web sites so you can get multiple feeds for one price or something.
Would that make up the missing $500mln? You're now looking at each site paying $5 million. 100,000 people paying $50 would do it. Or 1 million people paying $5. Or 2 million people paying $2.50. Make it still $5 to cover equipment cost and other. Would you pay $5.00 to watch all the bobsled events? In their entirety? No crappy special-interest stories, just bobsleding? How about paying $100 to get access to 50 events?
>these companies (who have their stockholders' interests in mind, *and no one else's*, not you, not me, certainly not the artists who they hide behind)
Err....a few things here.
First, there's nothing preventing you from buying shares of sony, time warner, etc. They're listed on the US stock exchanges, and also on the exchanges where the company is based (Tokyo, Toronto, etc.).
Second, anyone with a retirement account (401(k), IRA, and so on) may own shares in these companies already.
To turn this into a "us vs. shareholders" thing is not really the point. You're probably already a shareholder.
So now what?
If you're a direct shareholder, contact investor relations. Find some financial why maintaining their relationship with the RIAA will hurt the company and its share price.
If you're indirect (401(k)) contact the investor relations of the mutual fund company that you're going through. Do the same thing.
With stock prices being real crappy these days, some solid reasons why a particular company's plan to extort money from consumers will backfire could be of help.
What if DVDs aren't around in 20 years?
I'll give a rather timely anecdote:
Way back when (in the mid '60s) there was a bunch of records from Firestone during the Christmas season. I grew up listening to these. Unfortunately, records are no longer being made, record players are almost as hard to find, and the media itself has been degrading for 30+ years.
As a present to my parents this year, I've purchased a set of records from Ebay, recorded them to my machine, filtered out the pops/clicks, and then burned them onto a CD.
Let's advance this to 20+ years from now when my kids want to make me a copy of the special edition of "Army of Darkness". It isn't being made on [insert future technology], and DVD players have gone the way of the dinosaur. What if my kids wanted to copy the DVD to [insert future technology] so I can enjoy the movie in my old age? I still own legal copies, and in the case of music, this is perfectly legal under the home recording act.
As it turned out, the first time I read SIASL I was at a religious retreat. For those who have a history of religion in their lives, I think SIASL says a lot about faith, beliefs, and other things that religion tries to address. I view "us" as the non-religious type, so much of what he says is lost since it's hard to relate to what he's saying.
The thing that strikes me most about Heinlien is his dialog between characters. Most authors use it to prove that the characters are actually relating to each other. Heinlien uses it to describe the plot and what's going on. I think he relies on the dialog more than some omnipotent view of the world.
Why do people insist on using KVM switches? Linux and most other UNIX(es) systems support serial consoles. Run the serial port to a concentrator, then those who need to can get DIRECT access to the system console from their desktops. Some motherboards support this and let you get into the BIOS via the serial port.
/. and drinking coffee.
There's only two times where you actually NEED a KVM switch:
1) You have to do something at the machine that requires you to be there, like an OS install. Even that can be worked around. Pop CD in drive, walk back to desk, install while reading
2) You're using NT. No serial console support there. The less said about this, the better.
Seriously, look at the rack space used up by kvm switching gear and monitor and keyboard and mouse, the problems involved with having only one crash cart in a cage, or having to shlep your butt into work at 3AM to reboot a machine you could have done from home.
(Yes, there are monitors and keyboards that will fit in a 1U space. $$$ and still has the limitation that you can't get direct access remotely.)
>Sorry, that's not the ham's problem.
It is the ham's problem if their equipment is cheap and unshielded.
>As a favour, not because it's required.
Just wait till the FCC van starts driving around the neighborhood. There are limits on broadcasting, especially if they interfere with people a few houses away.
-Mark
Happened in MA 4 years ago. An electrinic count showed that one person won, but a hand recount showed that the punch cards were not counted properly, and it turns out the opponent won. Punch cards were then made illegal in MA for elections, and we use the "fill in the circle with the marker" method. This year's ballot was very clearly written.
What happens the first time Red Hat (for example) gets sued for something like their update daemon? What if one of the *BSD gets sued because of a unknown security lapse? If a company is responsible for all the code it ships, does this mean Caldera is respinsible if there's a bug in xbill? Is Debian responsible for bugs in their unstable release? If I can't install SuSE on my laptop, should they fly someone out here to install it for me?
It's all nice and good to say that companeis should stand behind their products and provide a warranty, but also look at how that will affect the companies you *do* care about.
Yea, like thermonuclear devices will discriminate based on who paid their yearly "missile defense fee".
I know! We can let private enterprise handle missile defense on a town-by-town basis. I mean, it works for cable TV and telephone service, right? Right?? RIGHT???
Okay, so Mr. Browne wants to abolish the IRS and the Income Tax (yay!). But then he wants to offer $25 or $50b to whomever comes up with the first working missile defense system.
If not for the income tax, where will the money come from? National Sales Tax? Propery taxes? What? Are there other "necessary" projects that would be funded this way? If so, how will those get money?
How is this different from Intel's Speed Step that slows a chip down from 650 to 500?
I believe e-mail and internet usage can be monitored by US employers, but only if they notify the employees that montoring is taking place.
However, I seem to remember the outcome of the Steve Jackson Games case was that the govt. treats e-mail just like postal mail (i.e. court order required), but since the machine that sends/stores e-mail is owned by the company, they have the right to do with the contents as they please. This allows companies to monitor e-mail.
Yeah! Where shcools can prototype new technology, and get high speed, and ...oh wait, that's I2.
No, really. Wireless is still being developed, whereas landline networking is already established. Get wireless working with IPv6, get any of the remaining bugs out of the protocols and implementations, then get it going with landline. The chicken-and-egg problem will already be solved.
Plus, IPv6 gives all the advantages that wireless requires such as encryption and easier routing.
I dunno. When they revived Poole, I just started to lose it. And that was very early on. The whole virus thing was kinda strange too.
His books of late have been rather poor (3001 and the Rama series comes to mind). Disappointing, as his earlier works were *excellent*.
Unfortuntely, the same was starting to happen to Asimov before his death (see Foundation's Edge and Foundataion & Earth). They weren't *bad* but definately not up to par with his earlier works.
I hate to say it, but I don't agree with that commentary.
Noone recommended the stock to us. Red Hat offered, E*Trade was just the middleman. The investment amount was relatively small. $1400 for 100 shares? We're not talking IBM or AOL here. I went into this process having enough cash set aside for the shares I wanted to purchase.
If anything, those in the high tech industry are more familar with IPOs than other industries.
To top it off, I didn't buy shares to make a mint of money. That I did is a side issue. I bought the shares so that I would be a shareholder of RedHat. I have bought their products in the past, and will continue to do so in the future.
First, I own RedHat stock. Second, I'm looking to certify my company's hardware with RedHat.
Right. Now on to "why RedHat?" The answers are pretty straightforward. They have a high publicity factor and they have a real way of certifying hardware.
If your company announces support for Debian, it won't get the publicity that support for RedHat does. It's just the way the media works.
The "Cool it works with Linux" is self-certifying and there's no way to back it up.
Getting back to "what doesn't work with Debian et all", that doesn't mean that it doesn't work. It's pretty reasonable to assume that hardware that works with Red Hat works with Debian, Caldera, Mandrake, etc. But what this means is that Red Hat was able to test the hardware in their labs and they certify that it works with Linux. Not being stupid, they say "Red Hat Linux" There's nothing from preventing you from saying from that point "Works with Linux".
T2?
Your computer case is already a Faraday cage. The gaps in the machine (I/O brackets and the like) are small enough to prevent the RF from getting out, and it prevents most RF from coming in.
PCs that pass FCC A have to be able to accept bursts up to 4X the highest frequency in the device (i.e. 1-2Ghz range). Class B (residential) is harder to get, as the bursts are of more strength.
I didn't see anything about the machines themselves. Were they plain 'ol PCs with their covers on and everything, or were they open in any way?
Sure. Some of what I'll say is kinda pulled from what I read in a PGP release many moons ago.
You don't write letters to people on postcards, do you? No. Why? Anyone can read what's on the postcard. If you want to write a private letter to someone, you write it on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope. You may even use a security envelope so you can't see what's inside the envelope.
Encryption is (in one sense) the envelope. It makes sure that no casual reader can see what the contents are. It may be credit card information, or it may be happy birthday wishes. It doesn't matter.
Encryption (as PGP/GPG uses) also provides authentication. It makes sure that when you get a letter from a friend, it really came from them and not someone who happened to break into Hotmail and fake e-mail.
Side note: Hrm. This could be a good way at advertising GPG (Hotmail cracked again? Don't worry, GPG keeps you safe!)
-Mark