When I read the story headline I know there would be a tangent topic about Boy Scouts and their stance on atheists and homosexuality. I had no idea that ALL the comments would be on that topic.
Do you guys see the irony of how intolerants you are being with the BSA's beliefs? Maybe hypocrisy would be a better word. BSA isn't telling anybody they can't be gay or have to believe in God. It's just like the Democratic party saying they only want people who will vote democrats as members. It's one of their defining characteristics. For example, you can't be a girl and join the Boy Scouts. You can't be of 18 years old and join the Boy Scouts. The founders of the BSA felt belief in a higher power was an important principle for the growth of boys, so they made it one of their organizations tenants.
And saying the morons have "infiltrated" the BSA is like saying Bill Gates infiltrated the Red Cross because he donates money to the Red Cross on the condition it is used to help people. You are confusing "infiltrate" with "support"
Commenter thephotoman claims that the BSA showed special treatment of the Mormon troops. Obviously I have no idea what really happened, but I'd suspect the Mormon troops where better funded, allowing them to be better organized.
Even Mormon sponsored scout troops don't require it's members to be Mormons. Any boy of any faith can earn his Faith in God award. When the award is presented to the boy the boy or his parents invite a representative from their faith to give the award and talk about their view of God. There are over 45 different church's recognized, and each church set the requirements for a boy to earn his Faith in God Award in their faith.
I just subscribed to http://emusic.com/. EVERYTHING they sell is DRM free, everything is sold as MP3. You can sign up for a trial and down load 25 songs. If you don't like it and cancel with in 2 weeks you get to keep the 25 songs for free. If you do like it keep your subscription. For $10 a month you get 30 songs. That's less then 35 cents per song, a third that cost of other online stores.
That's the good news. The bad news is that you won't find many major labels because major labels won't allow their songs to be sold in MP3 format. However, from over 2 million songs to look through, it didn't take me long to max out my downloads.
The artilce takes a shot at the BAE Automated Systems used at the Denver International Airport. This program is often sited when people talk about the poor relability of modern day software. The dirty little secret in the world of hardware and software is that all changes in a system must be implemented in software. I was on a couple interdisplicarn teams in collage. The hardware people smuggly talk about how hardware doesn't fail a tenth as much as software. A week before a compotiton the hardware guys would say, "Oh, that sensor didn't come in." Great, it didn't come in so I have to redesign and rewrite code that took months to create. Then it's my fault when something goes wrong.
However, when American Airlines (AA) decided to use DIA as its second-largest hub airport, AA commissioned BAE Automatic Systems to develop an automated baggage-handling system efficient enough to allow AA to turn aircraft around in under thirty minutes. As the construction of the airport progressed, a larger vision emerged "for the inclusion of an airport-wide integrated baggage-handling system that could provide a major improvement in the efficiency of luggage delivery." To accommodate the vision, DIA negotiated a new contract with BAE to develop the airport-wide baggage system. This new plan, however, "underestimated the high complexity of the expanded system, the newness of the technology, and the high level of coordination required among the entities housed at DIA that were to be served by the system" [Montealegre 1996]. Despite the enormous change in the specifications of the project, no one gave any thought to risk assessment. Had the developers considered the risks involved with changing the system requirements radically at a late stage of development, they may have concluded that the expanded plan was infeasible. In the end, DIA had to settle with a much less ambitious plan, and Montealegre reports that "six months after the de-scaling of the system, the airport was able to open and operate successfully."
EXACTLY! Some of the comments seem to think the copyright is an "inalienable right." It is not. It is a law meant to benefit society in the long run by making sure the artist or producer is rewarded in the short run.
How does "Mickey Mouse" law that increases the copy write length from 50 years to 75 years help society? It doesn't.
You say I can't pay someone else to edit my movies? How does that help society? How does that help the artists in the short run or the long run?
(The only argument I've read is that the quality may be low and tarnish the reputation of the artist. I've rented and bought movies from Flicks. They have added a note at the beginning and end of every show that they edited and refer you to a website for questions. They have their name on the DVD and the DVD case. Trust me, you have to have an IQ under 85 to not know you are watching an edited movie.)
Tell me this, at what point below have I broken the law? That is, at what point have my actions hurt the artists or society?
1. I buy a DVD and skip through sections of the movie I don't like.
2. I get tired of skipping every time, so I edit the DVD.
3. I get tired of editing every movie, so I ask a friend to edit for me. (for free so far)
4. My friend gets tired how much time it's taking him to edit movies. I agree to compensate him for his time by paying him.
5. I get tired of buying movies and running them over to my friend. So he buys the movie, edits for me, and I pay him back for the DVD, plus the compensation for his time.
6. Another friend finds out what we are doing, and arranges to also buy edited movies from my friend.
How is any of that different then what Flicks is doing?
How does any of that in any way hurt the copy write holder, or society?
I to am currently going through the process of weaning my family from free tech support from me. The final straw was when I installed a 2nd hard drive on my parents computer, only to find out that not only did they not know how to use it, they struggled with the whole "folders" concepts.
Here are some things I've found helpful to stop or at least slow down the calls. I think you will find these easier to do then the "cold turkey" methods some people have suggested:
Never sit down in front of their computer. Always make them type everything, click on all the "next" and "I agree buttons".
Slowly start the process of asking them to look things up in manuals. Eventually stop looking anything up for them.
When they ask for advice on buying hardware and software always suggest mainstream. I could have saved my parents a couple hundred dollars if I had built their system, but I've saved myself hours of trouble suggesting they buy a Dell with the service plan. This goes for hard drives, modems, everything. The extra price will also slow them down when it comes to making changes that they will inevitably need help with.
Stop answering questions right away. Tell them you'll have to look it up, or check the web site. Slowly increase the time it takes to answer the questions. Move from the next day to the next week.
Every time they ask a question ask to see the manual and the installation disk for the hardware or software. WHEN (not if) they can't produce one or the other, say "oh, uhmmm." And turn and look at the monitor for a couple minutes. Then say "I guess I'll have to find it on the internet." Then proceed to check your email and read Slashdot. If they leave the room while you do this, turn off the computer and leave. When they catch up with you ask them to look for the manual and installation disk again.
I know these seem underhanded and sneaky, but when they do ask questions now I know they have at least tried. And if I can't give them an answer right away, instead of trying to get me to spend hours on research they find it easier to fork out the bucks for professional help.
Fun facts: My dad has used a computer for 15 years. Last year he learned what scroll bars are for. My mom bought a new scanner because hers "broke." I reinstalled the drivers and it worked great. Free scanner for me, Yea! My dad buys a new printer ever year because the previous one "breaks." I'm thinking of starting a used printer store. My brother bought a new laptop because his old one "had sound and video problems." A reinstallation of Windows and it works great. My dad also doesn't understand "folders." I installed a 160 GB hard drive in his computer. It sits their empty because he doesn't know how to save his work to it.
So you are saying that it is ok for them to store and use biometric data because they aren't doing it very well? Who cares? I care. Have you ever read 1984 or The Crucible?
What is wrong with showing a photo id? It must have been expensive set up enough of these scanners to scan every person who enters Disneyland.
The only reason I can see for not using a photo id is because they want to track their customers in a way that ID cards or season tickets could not.
In 1984 they never tell us who Big Brother is. I guess it was Walt Disney all along. But we already knew that, didn't we?
I have to disagree. Lately I've started running the protein folding screen saver from http://folding.stanford.edu/ on the 3 computers I have (Mine, my wife's, and the Smoothwall box). I've noticed that my computer (NON-overclocked AMD 2100+ with 3 big fans on the stock case) is blowing pretty dang hot air.
I think this article will help me mod the case and cool of my CPU so I don't shorten the life expectancy of any of my hardware.
An alternate to zone alarm for windows is Outpost (http://www.agnitum.com/products/outpost). Just another suggestion because as I'm sure we all know, when it comes to security other options help, for example running Firefox instead of Internet Explorer.
I've never used zone alarm, but I've heard that its real-time bandwidth meter slows down bandwidth.
I agree with the above post. I also don't block Google ads and for the same reasons. If print ads are as non-obtrusive I don't have a problem with them. I am in charge the web campaign for a company, and I've decided that Googles ads and Yahoo's similar targeted ads are the only ones worth paying for.
From the article:
He said if a similar tool could be produced for newspapers, it would not be accepted by consumers.
He is not comparing apples to apples. With a newspaper everything is the same color and stays in one place. I block the flashing "smash the monkey" advertisements, or the advertisements that lay over the content of the page (ie morningstar.com). As long as an ad doesn't interrupt my reading I don't mind it being there, and I might even look at it. A good example of annoying ads in print is the Readers Digest. The first thing I do when it arrives in the mail is rip out all the mail-in-cards and throw them away because they interfere with my reading. As far as I'm concerned it's exactly the same thing as online ad-blocking.
Unfortunately annoying your customers really does sell, or nobody would do it. But in my opinion it's a cheap trick used by simple minds. For example, people can use Tivo or their VCR to skip commercials. So, Coke and other companies pay to have their products right in the TV shows. They get their "impressions" and we are less annoyed.
Hopefully ad-blocking will bring more innovative and less annoying ads to the web. Everybody will benefit I think.
For me a mouse is important for programming as well. Several times I've gotten tendentious so bad from using hot keys (Alt-Tab, Ctrl-C, Alt-M, and so on) all day that I could not move my left wrist. I've been forcing myself to use the mouse shortcuts more often. It does slow down my programming speed a little, but I can still type the next day.
Your program looks good, but I have to say I think my system is better. Every I get a new AOL CD in the mail. Then I just change my password to the one on the back of the CD used to activate AOL.
I've stopped telling people I have a masters degree in Computer science. Now I tell them I have a degree in "Software Engineering." Some of the more persistence ones will still ask for help getting AOL to work, but it has helped.
I'm one of those poor suckers still stuck on a dial-up. Flash ads really slow down my web surfing.
Would it be possible to add to Firefox the ability to block Flash except on allowed pages, just like the popup blockers do? I'm afraid I don't know anything about the programming of Firefox, but I imagine it could refuse to "GET" a Flash object a page requested.
Then I could still watch Home Star Runner but save myself some time waiting for advertisements to load.
If you're not out there ripping people off and distributing copyrighted material, you shouldn't have a problem, yes?
Of course not. And if you are not doing anything wrong you would not mind if we monitored you through your TV.
I have a suggestion, read 1984 and The Crucible.
I did my part. I've emailed both Orrin Hatch and Robert Bennett. I'm sure I'll be luck if I get another form letter from some intern that stapms "Orrin Hatch" on the letter, but I've tried.
They don't care how you spell when they are asking for your vote.
Amen! I've been burned so many times, I here a good song, buy the album and find out that the one song I like is completely different then the bands usually style. For example, besides the one hit song the rest of the CD by Cold Play sucks. From now on I don't buy unless I've heard more then a couple of songs. The last two albums I bought where from They Might Be Giants and Five for Fighting. Check out their websites, they have previews of the music. And this isn't a new thing. Back in the day for records you could go into a record store, pick out a record and listen to it in a sound booth before you decided to pay. With the internet we can do it in our own homes.
Ya, I think this story must be old. I have been pinging doubleclick for a while now and they seem to be doing fine...Any body else pinging them? Now? For a while?
Can you honestly tell me that the government is going to hire a panel of people to check in in-depth source changes on OSS projects? People who are familiar enough that they can catch an exploit that may only take 3-4 lines of code to perform?
I can honestly tell you that at least with Linux they will have the option. It would take less work to run test cases on code then to write the code and run the same test cases. Don't reinvent the wheel.
On a Windows bashing note I liked this line from the story:
Even if Linux were as secure as Windows, Windows is the wrong benchmark. Defense systems should be held to a higher standard.
You have to be a foreign government if you want to check Windows for bugs. See the old slashdot story
Microsoft Opens Source to China.
Holy Shit! Back in time, I didn't see that in the article! I didn't realize that time travel had been involved.
From what I'd read I thought they had taken his degree away because he had caused "the biggest data fabrication scandal in physics in the last 50 years", which would tarnish the name of the University and was conclusive evidence that Mr. Schoen wasn't fit to be a scientist.
Slashdot Mirror
When I read the story headline I know there would be a tangent topic about Boy Scouts and their stance on atheists and homosexuality. I had no idea that ALL the comments would be on that topic.
Do you guys see the irony of how intolerants you are being with the BSA's beliefs? Maybe hypocrisy would be a better word. BSA isn't telling anybody they can't be gay or have to believe in God. It's just like the Democratic party saying they only want people who will vote democrats as members. It's one of their defining characteristics. For example, you can't be a girl and join the Boy Scouts. You can't be of 18 years old and join the Boy Scouts. The founders of the BSA felt belief in a higher power was an important principle for the growth of boys, so they made it one of their organizations tenants.
And saying the morons have "infiltrated" the BSA is like saying Bill Gates infiltrated the Red Cross because he donates money to the Red Cross on the condition it is used to help people. You are confusing "infiltrate" with "support" Commenter thephotoman claims that the BSA showed special treatment of the Mormon troops. Obviously I have no idea what really happened, but I'd suspect the Mormon troops where better funded, allowing them to be better organized.
Even Mormon sponsored scout troops don't require it's members to be Mormons. Any boy of any faith can earn his Faith in God award. When the award is presented to the boy the boy or his parents invite a representative from their faith to give the award and talk about their view of God. There are over 45 different church's recognized, and each church set the requirements for a boy to earn his Faith in God Award in their faith.
I just subscribed to http://emusic.com/. EVERYTHING they sell is DRM free, everything is sold as MP3. You can sign up for a trial and down load 25 songs. If you don't like it and cancel with in 2 weeks you get to keep the 25 songs for free. If you do like it keep your subscription. For $10 a month you get 30 songs. That's less then 35 cents per song, a third that cost of other online stores.
That's the good news. The bad news is that you won't find many major labels because major labels won't allow their songs to be sold in MP3 format. However, from over 2 million songs to look through, it didn't take me long to max out my downloads.
If you do sign up you can also find free tracks. For example, this 2 disk album with 38 songs will not count against your downloads http://www.emusic.com/album/10992/10992865.html/
http://courses.cs.vt.edu/csonline/SE/Lessons/Spira l/Lesson.html
However, when American Airlines (AA) decided to use DIA as its second-largest hub airport, AA commissioned BAE Automatic Systems to develop an automated baggage-handling system efficient enough to allow AA to turn aircraft around in under thirty minutes. As the construction of the airport progressed, a larger vision emerged "for the inclusion of an airport-wide integrated baggage-handling system that could provide a major improvement in the efficiency of luggage delivery." To accommodate the vision, DIA negotiated a new contract with BAE to develop the airport-wide baggage system. This new plan, however, "underestimated the high complexity of the expanded system, the newness of the technology, and the high level of coordination required among the entities housed at DIA that were to be served by the system" [Montealegre 1996]. Despite the enormous change in the specifications of the project, no one gave any thought to risk assessment. Had the developers considered the risks involved with changing the system requirements radically at a late stage of development, they may have concluded that the expanded plan was infeasible. In the end, DIA had to settle with a much less ambitious plan, and Montealegre reports that "six months after the de-scaling of the system, the airport was able to open and operate successfully."
EXACTLY! Some of the comments seem to think the copyright is an "inalienable right." It is not. It is a law meant to benefit society in the long run by making sure the artist or producer is rewarded in the short run. How does "Mickey Mouse" law that increases the copy write length from 50 years to 75 years help society? It doesn't. You say I can't pay someone else to edit my movies? How does that help society? How does that help the artists in the short run or the long run? (The only argument I've read is that the quality may be low and tarnish the reputation of the artist. I've rented and bought movies from Flicks. They have added a note at the beginning and end of every show that they edited and refer you to a website for questions. They have their name on the DVD and the DVD case. Trust me, you have to have an IQ under 85 to not know you are watching an edited movie.) Tell me this, at what point below have I broken the law? That is, at what point have my actions hurt the artists or society? 1. I buy a DVD and skip through sections of the movie I don't like. 2. I get tired of skipping every time, so I edit the DVD. 3. I get tired of editing every movie, so I ask a friend to edit for me. (for free so far) 4. My friend gets tired how much time it's taking him to edit movies. I agree to compensate him for his time by paying him. 5. I get tired of buying movies and running them over to my friend. So he buys the movie, edits for me, and I pay him back for the DVD, plus the compensation for his time. 6. Another friend finds out what we are doing, and arranges to also buy edited movies from my friend. How is any of that different then what Flicks is doing? How does any of that in any way hurt the copy write holder, or society?
I to am currently going through the process of weaning my family from free tech support from me. The final straw was when I installed a 2nd hard drive on my parents computer, only to find out that not only did they not know how to use it, they struggled with the whole "folders" concepts.
Here are some things I've found helpful to stop or at least slow down the calls. I think you will find these easier to do then the "cold turkey" methods some people have suggested:
I know these seem underhanded and sneaky, but when they do ask questions now I know they have at least tried. And if I can't give them an answer right away, instead of trying to get me to spend hours on research they find it easier to fork out the bucks for professional help.
Fun facts: My dad has used a computer for 15 years. Last year he learned what scroll bars are for. My mom bought a new scanner because hers "broke." I reinstalled the drivers and it worked great. Free scanner for me, Yea! My dad buys a new printer ever year because the previous one "breaks." I'm thinking of starting a used printer store. My brother bought a new laptop because his old one "had sound and video problems." A reinstallation of Windows and it works great. My dad also doesn't understand "folders." I installed a 160 GB hard drive in his computer. It sits their empty because he doesn't know how to save his work to it.
What is wrong with showing a photo id? It must have been expensive set up enough of these scanners to scan every person who enters Disneyland.
The only reason I can see for not using a photo id is because they want to track their customers in a way that ID cards or season tickets could not.
In 1984 they never tell us who Big Brother is. I guess it was Walt Disney all along. But we already knew that, didn't we?
I have to disagree. Lately I've started running the protein folding screen saver from http://folding.stanford.edu/ on the 3 computers I have (Mine, my wife's, and the Smoothwall box). I've noticed that my computer (NON-overclocked AMD 2100+ with 3 big fans on the stock case) is blowing pretty dang hot air.
I think this article will help me mod the case and cool of my CPU so I don't shorten the life expectancy of any of my hardware.
An alternate to zone alarm for windows is Outpost (http://www.agnitum.com/products/outpost). Just another suggestion because as I'm sure we all know, when it comes to security other options help, for example running Firefox instead of Internet Explorer.
I've never used zone alarm, but I've heard that its real-time bandwidth meter slows down bandwidth.
I agree with the above post. I also don't block Google ads and for the same reasons. If print ads are as non-obtrusive I don't have a problem with them. I am in charge the web campaign for a company, and I've decided that Googles ads and Yahoo's similar targeted ads are the only ones worth paying for.
From the article:
He said if a similar tool could be produced for newspapers, it would not be accepted by consumers.
He is not comparing apples to apples. With a newspaper everything is the same color and stays in one place. I block the flashing "smash the monkey" advertisements, or the advertisements that lay over the content of the page (ie morningstar.com). As long as an ad doesn't interrupt my reading I don't mind it being there, and I might even look at it. A good example of annoying ads in print is the Readers Digest. The first thing I do when it arrives in the mail is rip out all the mail-in-cards and throw them away because they interfere with my reading. As far as I'm concerned it's exactly the same thing as online ad-blocking.
Unfortunately annoying your customers really does sell, or nobody would do it. But in my opinion it's a cheap trick used by simple minds. For example, people can use Tivo or their VCR to skip commercials. So, Coke and other companies pay to have their products right in the TV shows. They get their "impressions" and we are less annoyed.
Hopefully ad-blocking will bring more innovative and less annoying ads to the web. Everybody will benefit I think.
For me a mouse is important for programming as well. Several times I've gotten tendentious so bad from using hot keys (Alt-Tab, Ctrl-C, Alt-M, and so on) all day that I could not move my left wrist. I've been forcing myself to use the mouse shortcuts more often. It does slow down my programming speed a little, but I can still type the next day.
Congratulations! You get the honor the first post AND mod points for insightful, and you didn't have any useful information.
Your program looks good, but I have to say I think my system is better. Every I get a new AOL CD in the mail. Then I just change my password to the one on the back of the CD used to activate AOL.
Do you know any good Asterisk?
I've stopped telling people I have a masters degree in Computer science. Now I tell them I have a degree in "Software Engineering." Some of the more persistence ones will still ask for help getting AOL to work, but it has helped.
I'm one of those poor suckers still stuck on a dial-up. Flash ads really slow down my web surfing.
Would it be possible to add to Firefox the ability to block Flash except on allowed pages, just like the popup blockers do? I'm afraid I don't know anything about the programming of Firefox, but I imagine it could refuse to "GET" a Flash object a page requested.
Then I could still watch Home Star Runner but save myself some time waiting for advertisements to load.
If you're not out there ripping people off and distributing copyrighted material, you shouldn't have a problem, yes?
Of course not. And if you are not doing anything wrong you would not mind if we monitored you through your TV.
I have a suggestion, read 1984 and The Crucible.
I did my part. I've emailed both Orrin Hatch and Robert Bennett. I'm sure I'll be luck if I get another form letter from some intern that stapms "Orrin Hatch" on the letter, but I've tried. They don't care how you spell when they are asking for your vote.
Amen! I've been burned so many times, I here a good song, buy the album and find out that the one song I like is completely different then the bands usually style. For example, besides the one hit song the rest of the CD by Cold Play sucks. From now on I don't buy unless I've heard more then a couple of songs. The last two albums I bought where from They Might Be Giants and Five for Fighting. Check out their websites, they have previews of the music. And this isn't a new thing. Back in the day for records you could go into a record store, pick out a record and listen to it in a sound booth before you decided to pay. With the internet we can do it in our own homes.
Ya, I think this story must be old. I have been pinging doubleclick for a while now and they seem to be doing fine...Any body else pinging them? Now? For a while?
Can you honestly tell me that the government is going to hire a panel of people to check in in-depth source changes on OSS projects? People who are familiar enough that they can catch an exploit that may only take 3-4 lines of code to perform?
I can honestly tell you that at least with Linux they will have the option. It would take less work to run test cases on code then to write the code and run the same test cases. Don't reinvent the wheel.
On a Windows bashing note I liked this line from the story: Even if Linux were as secure as Windows, Windows is the wrong benchmark. Defense systems should be held to a higher standard.
You have to be a foreign government if you want to check Windows for bugs. See the old slashdot story Microsoft Opens Source to China.
Holy Shit! Back in time, I didn't see that in the article! I didn't realize that time travel had been involved. From what I'd read I thought they had taken his degree away because he had caused "the biggest data fabrication scandal in physics in the last 50 years", which would tarnish the name of the University and was conclusive evidence that Mr. Schoen wasn't fit to be a scientist.
I tried cutting back on gaming. Now I stay up all night reading slashdot posts.
"I want to get married and be happy for 2 years and miserable for 50, just like everybody else." Chris Rock in "Bad Company"
give-and-take Ya, she keeps on giving, and I keep on taking.
No, than you can never use your computer becuase they won't get off it!