Both Google Maps and MSN Virtual Earth are supposedly "beta" products, but MSN VE looks more like a proof-of-concept than a beta. Compare equivalent views of Long Island Sound:
It's not as if the Sound, Long Island's North Shore, or the Connecticut Shoreline areas haven't been photographed countless times by state and Federal agencies. I'm surprised that Microsoft exposed something that looks so slapdash to the public.
There's some place in Eastern Europe where a bear learned to knock on the door and when the humans answered, push it's way in and grab food and then leave.
I had a cat who learned to ring the doorbell when he wanted to come in. Learned behavior, not beyond the realm of what passes for intelligence in cats. It was sort of funny to watch new housemates answer the door, puzzled becuase they didn't see a human standing outside the front door (the cat would be standing on a railing at the edge of the porch, pushing the doorbell with his paw).
But one day the doorbell rang when my cat was inside, and I was just as puzzled because no one was standing outside. It turned out that a stray kitten had rung the doorbell, probably after having seen my cat, Homebrew, do the same thing.
I adopted the kitten temporarily and named him Lucifer. But because I was very allergic to him (the dander of short-haired cats really gets to me -- Homebrew was a long-haired ragdoll) I had to give him away. He ended up with a Christian family who, I suppose, renamed him.
Cats learn from humans and cats learn from cats, but ringing the doorbell of a strange house was something I never expected from a cat. I assume Lucifer saw Homebrew do this, but why did he sense that our house was a safe place for him?
I run a company that provides contract support and administration for small- to medium-sized businesses. We also do some work in the residential sector, but it's not our focus.
In order to test the malware-busting skills of new employees, I would routinely infect a test machine with adware and spyware. I had two methods, based on the two most common scenarios we've encountered:
Bored employee surfing pr0n and online casino sites or downloading free screensavers.
Teenaged child using P2P apps or browsing sites that offer song lyrics or buddy icons for IM apps.
I would use a stopwatch and time myself, stopping at 15 minutes. For Case 1, I'd search Google for "casino" or "sex" and hit those sites. For Case 2, I'd search for "lyrics" or "buddy icons" and hit the top ten or fifteen sites listed.
At no time did I ever click "yes" when prompted to install software. The point was to attract the "drive-by" malware, the ones that didn't put an entry in "Add/Remove Programs", the ones that were the hardest to remove (e.g., randomly named polymorphs, malware that sees if one tries to terminate the process or remove a registry key and re-installs, malware that prevents anti-spyware programs from running, etc.).
In fifteen minutes, I can infect an XP box with between 400 and 600 objects (by AdAware's count). That's the result of hitting between 10 and 15 sites. Often, that's enough to inflate the number of running processes from 30 or so to about 60. Pop-ups appear even if IE isn't explicitly running. Case 1 infections often leave the computer in an unusable state, and by unusable state I mean "tits and ass all over your screen".
I give a prospective employee two hours to disinfect the computer, though I do cut major slack if it takes longer but they've got the right attitude and methodology. If hired, I show them how to get this down to under an hour (AdAware, Spybot, UBCD, manual cleaning, etc.).
Malware removal is about 30% of our billable hours. Since our contracts with our clients call for a certain amount of hours of service and maintenance each quarter, bug hunting is a distraction from the real work of administration: keeping up to date with patches and software updates, implementing our infrastructure upgrade roadmap, and software support and training. In other words, nearly a third of the time we spend doing productive work for our clients is spent whacking malware that targets Windows PCs.
Finally, we do try to come to terms with the fact that sometimes this is a human resources problem and not a technological problem. In Case 1, Employee X should not be surfing pr0n or playing Texas Hold-em on the job. As contractors, we try to block certain sites at the firewall, though that's a game of whack-a-mole, and we encourage all workstations to have monitors that face a common area (knowing someone can randomly shoulder-surf you is a big deterrent). Case 2, the residential case, is more problematic, since the sites that install drive-by malware are pretty innocent (lyrics, IM buddy icons). Permissions/ACLs would help, but there are so many applications that need admin rights to run that it's a joke. I've steered a few residential customers towards Apple Mac Minis and iMacs and have had no complaints after the fact.
Street prices were often a bit lower (even without the 40% Apple educational discount), especially towards the end of a particular model's lifetime.
In March '93, I bought a Classic II 4/80 (like the above) from CompUSA for $899, one of the few sub-$1K computers around at the time. Of course, the model was about to be discontinued, and there was a lot of downward pressure on computer prices between '91 and '93, but still.
The business market is much bigger than the consumer market.
I used to think that was true, but it really isn't. The latest numbers I could find for the US are from 2001 (Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics), and they cast the business sector as being only slightly larger (73.2 million vs. 61.4 million).
Now, these figures represent number of people who use a computer at work and number of households with a computer, so they might not reflect multiple computer homes and businesses with large server farms, or people who share PCs at work or who have two workstations on their desk, but in the end I think it all evens out.
At first, it's a process of trial and error, like brute forcing a password. After banging your head against that wall for a while, you run across people who have the same forehead bruises as you do. You compare notes, seeing what works, what doesn't. Now you have a network. Do a favor, get a marker you can call in later.
For the basic business skills, it helps to find a mentor, someone who's make mistakes you can learn from. A family member helped me write my first business plan twenty years ago. If no one you know has this skill, there are other resources out there, like CORE (an organization of retired executives in the US).
I left music school after 5 semesters to go full time with a band. It wasn't uncommon there, since the freshman class numbered 1500 and there were usually about 150 to 200 graduates, mostly music education majors who needed the sheepskin.
Two years later, I was driving a cab. I did that until I saved enough money to build a small recording studio, which I ran while playing in another band and doing live sound on the side. By the mid-'90s, I had a gig as a 3D animator and graphic artist, skills that had previously been hobbies for me. That led to a partnership in a media services company that also did software development. We sold out before the bubble burst.
Right now, I'm vice president of a company that does system administration on a contract basis. Small company in a small market, but profitable nonetheless.
Not having a degree pretty much precludes working for a large corporation, but I've never wanted to work for a big company. I do regret not getting a liberal arts education, and it's something I'd like to pursue soon, even though I'm in my forties. I'm looking to retire in about five years anyway, so I'll have the time.
To make it without a degree, it helps to be in a field that doesn't require one (like the arts), to be willing to do menial jobs now and then (like driving and dispatching taxis), and to be able to teach yourself the skills you need (technical, entrepreneurial, etc.). I can't stress the last one enough: without the support of a company behind you, sending you to training seminars and paying your way, you have to be your own teacher.
I recall seeing still shots of a speed-of-light visualization in a brochure from Carnegie-Mellon's supercomputing center, back in the early '90s.
I can't find the brochure online (this was pre-WWW), but I think the stills came from this paper, from 1990.
Not that I think that this sort of thing is redundant. As technology advances, this is the type of visualization that's worth repeating on new hardware and new software.
I see a glaring flaw in this plan: unavailable from the owner doesn't work across all media. For software, yes: you can make a case that a particular program has been absent from store shelves or download for a year.
But consider a movie, particularly one based on a book. What if the movie is no longer available but the book is still in print and sold in bookstores? The movie could not become public domain (this is pretty much what happened with It's a Wonderful Life: the movie's copyright lapsed but the soundtrack had been renewed regularly).
Consider a book of poetry that has gone out of print. Is the work still "available" if the poet regularly gives readings? Similarly, consider that songs and recordings are copyrighted separately. A recording could be "no longer available" from the label (who holds the Form SR copyright), yet not fall into the public domain if the songwriter (who holds the Form PA copyright) re-records (or even publically performs) the song.
My contention is that this "no longer available from the owner" concept is solely meant to address the abandonware issue, but does not map well to the majority of copyrighted works: music, literature, motion pictures, and television.
I went to a Catholic high school where we learned about the Bible and one thing I learned is that in the first chapter, there are TWO creation stories. If you take one to be literally true, then you cannot take the other one to be true since they're mutually contradictory. Logically then, they CANNOT both be true.
I've heard a couple of explanations for the contradictory Creation stories in Genesis (as well as the two parallel accounts of the Flood). The first explanation posits that there were two versions of Scripture, one in the Kingdom of Judea, the other in the Kingdom of Israel. After the Babylonian Exile and the destruction of the first Temple, the Deuteronomists sought to create a unified Torah. That there are two Creation accounts and two Flood accounts (one involves a dove, another a raven) results from a compromise between exiles from the two kingdoms.
The other explanation is that the Biblical Creation stories are based on two different Mesopotamian creation myths. The patriarch Abraham was originally from Ur (now in present day Iraq), and much of ancient Hebrew law and lore is based on Mesopotamian practices (c.f. Code of Hammurabi).
A good book that explores these contradictions is Richard Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible.
The Committee for the Liberation of Information Technology, also known as CLIT, released a communique on videotape today, broadcast simultaneously on Al-Jazeera and TechTV. This mysterious organization had claimed responsibility in the past for numerous acts of techno-terrorism, including the replacement of the install media in retail boxes of Windows XP with CDs of Ubuntu Linux and Free BSD, as well as the infamous Intel Pentium floating-point bug, the first known use of a weapon of math destruction.
In an excerpt of the tape released to mainstream news media, the leader of CLIT stated the following:
I AM MASTER OF THE CLIT! Remember this fucking face! Whenever you see CLIT, you see this fucking face! I make that shit work! No one rules a CLIT like me! Not this little fuck, none of you little fucks out there! I AM THE CLIT COMMANDER!
A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security declined comment on the tape, stating that they were still trying to determine the authenticity of the communique, while an anonymous source at software giant Microsoft reportedly stated "See? See what I mean? They're nuts, I tells ya! Nuts!!".
In 2003, my rented house got sold from under me, so I decided it would be a good opportunity to travel for a while. Towards that end, I bought a Toshiba laptop and a Sony-Ericsson cell phone (T-Mobile). Both were pretty cheap, even cheaper with the rebates.
The fine print on the laptop rebate stated that the check could not be mailed to a post office box. Seeing as that would be my address for a few months, I put down a friend's address. Three months later, the rebate still hadn't arrived. Five letters and seven phone calls later, I got my $100 rebate. Toshiba hadn't sent it because the address I'd used to register my warranty had been different from the rebate address and they thought I was a rebate scammer.
The cell phone rebate was another story: it wasn't until I filled out the paperwork that I found out that the rebate was incompatible with the monthly plan I had applied for. In the long run, I was better off with the cheaper plan than with the cash rebate, but I didn't find this out until I had purchased the phone and activated the account.
Yes, it was CrapUSA...err, CompUSA in both cases.
For the record, I've had no problems with Staples and Breast Buy rebates.
2 B OR NOT 2 B TAHT IS DA QU3STION WHETHER TIS NOBLAR IN DA MIND 2 DA SLNGS AND AROWS OF OUTRAEGOUS FORTUNA OR 2 TAEK ARMS AGANEST A SEA OF TROUBLAS AND BY OPOSNG 3ND TH3M?!!???!! LOL 2 DEI 2 SLEP NO MOR3 AND BY A SLEP 2 SAY W3 TEH H3ART-ACHE AND DA THOUSAND NATURAL SHOKS TAHT FLESH IS H3IR 2 TIS A CONSUMATION D3VOUTLY 2 B WISHD!1!11 OMG WTF 2 DEI 2 SLEP 2 SLEP P3RCHANCE 2 DREM AY THEIR TEH RUB FOR IN TAHT SLEP OF DEATH WUT DR3MS MAY COM3 WH3N WE HAEV SHUFLAD OF THIS MORTAL COIL MUST GIEV US PAUS3 THEIR TEH RESPACT TAHT MAEKS CALMITY OF SO LONG LIEF FOR WHO WUD BAR TEH WHIPS AND SCORNS OF DA OPRESORS WRONG TEH PROUD MANS DA PANGS OF D3SPIESD LOVA TEH LAWS DA INSOLENC3 OF OFIEC AND TEH SPURNS TAHT PATEINT MARIT OF TEH UNWORTHY TAEKS WHEN H3 HIMSELF MIGHT HIS QUEITUS WIT A R BODKIN??????! OMG WHO WUD FARD3LS BAR 2 GRUNT AND SW3AT UND3R A WEARY LIEF BUT TAHT DA DRAAD OF SOMATHNG AFT3R DA UNDISCOVERD COUNTRY FROM WHOSE BOURN NO TRAEVLER RETURNS PUZLES DA WIL AND MAEKS US RATHER BAR THOSA ILS WA HAEV THAN FLY 2 OTHERS TAHT WA KNOW NOT OF THUS?!!?!! OMG CONSCEINCE DOES MAEK COWARDS OF US AL AND THUS TEH NATIEV HUE OF RASOLUTION IS SIKLEID OAR WIT DA PAEL CAST OF THOUGHT AND 3NTARPRIESS OF GRAAT PITH AND WIT THIS RAGARD THERE CUR3NTS TURN AWRY AND LOSE TEH NME OF ACTION111!!1 WTF LOL - SOFT U TEH1111!1 OMG WTF LOL FARE OPH3LIA1111 NYMPH IN THY ORISONS B AL MAH SINS R3M3MBRD
It's true that trademark holders have to actively defend them in the US (c.f. Lanham Act of 1934), but that's not what happened to aspirin.
The German pharmaceutical company Bayer held the patent and trademark on Aspirin® (as well as Heroin®) until 1919. When the US entered WWI in 1917, Bayer's US assets were frozen and then sold to Sterling Pharmaceuticals. After the war this forfeiture was formalized as part of the Treaty of Versailles (war reparations). In every country except the US, France, UK, and Russia, Bayer still holds the Aspirin® trademark.
I never said anything about creationism. I simply suggested that we should keep an open mind for other theories. When somebody questions evolution, the knee jerk reaction is to become guarded and dismiss the other person as being some religious nut, which runs contrary to the objectivity science is supposed to have.
What other scientifically credited theories are there? There's evolution and there's...what? And no, I don't accept creationism or intelligent design as theories per se.
It's like you're asking one to accept that the Earth revolves around the Sun but we should also be open to the possibility that it's really the movement of Apollo's chariot across the heavens that makes that big light in the sky move every day.
You've made the mistake of drawing a false equivalence between evolution and religion. That's wrong, though it's a common tactic used by creationists. You even use a made-up word ("evolutionalism" which returns but 82 results in Google) that drags the theory of evolution down to the level of an "ism".
There's no equivalence. Here's why: on one hand, you have a theory formed from observation of the physical world over the last 150 years, subject to constant change and revision. On the other hand, you have the story of the Creation, which is held to be true because God said so (well, because His followers and a certain Book said so, and the Book actually has two Creation stories which contradict each other).
We run the risk of being just as bad as they are.
When we start burning bibles, then we'll be as bad as they are.
The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
Quite apropos, I think.
When the Inquisition persecuted Galileo for postiting that the Earth moved around the Sun, he was forced under pain of death to recant his theories. Legend has it that he muttered "Eppur si muove" ("And yet it moves") under his breath.
The point is that this, the disconnect between faith and science, has been going on for centuries. You would think that humanity would have made some tangible progress since the 1600s, but, over the last 100 years, there's been a resurgence of Christian fundamentalism, a "literal" reading of the Bible (I use "literal" loosely, considering all of the Old Testament cherry-picking that takes place).
Of course, American politics have gotten into the mix, souring any chance for a rational debate. Anyone who tries to rebut fundamentalist dogma is accused of being an anti-Christian bigot. Suddenly, the debate turns on whether the rebutter is racist or not and not about whether teaching creationism in a publicly funded school is a violation of the First Amendment. The best defense is a good offense, of course.
Now, demographics will eventually win out. I don't know of anyone who still maintains that the Earth is the center of the Universe (though I could be wrong). But do we have to wait another 400 years before evolution is accepted by all? And what about the ancilliary issues (e.g., stem cell research)?
I have a proposal, a modest proposal if you will. I believe that it's time to start discrediting fundamentalist leaders, conservative opinion makers, and anyone who stands in the way of progress and rational thought. Out the gay ones, blackmail the ones who are having extramarital affairs, and make the rest see the light of Truth and Reason with a Louisville Slugger.
The next time Rev. Fred Phelps brings his "God Hates Fags" crowd out to picket the funeral of a gay bashing victim, run them all over with a dump truck.
Start a Project Mayhem operation on the most right-wing churches: replace their hymnals with Darwin's Origin of the Species. Swap Scraping Foetus off the Wheel tapes for their pre-recorded liturgical music cassettes.
If that doesn't work, then kill them all. God will sort them out.
Seriously, I still keep two P-III class PCs running Win98SE for one reason: DOS compatibility, supporting a single application -- Autodesk 3D Studio R4.
Like most 3DS users, I eventually migrated to 3DS Max (on Windows). But for basic modelling and some animation tasks, I kept going back to 3DS4 (DOS), mostly because it was faster and more efficient. Actually, I was faster and more efficient. I'd spent so much time with this program that the keyboard shortcuts were second nature. And it didn't have the 64K limit on DXF importing that Max had.
With no model loaded, the total RAM footprint of 3DS4 and DOS is under 4MB. With no model loaded, the total footprint of Win2K and 3DSMax is around 200MB. On a system with 512MB RAM, this is a significant amount of overhead, though Moore's Law and the price of RAM makes this increasingly irrelevant.
I'm not doing much modelling and animation these days, so these systems don't get much use, but I still fire them up to keep my skills sharp.
I still keep an old Mac Quadra 700 around, running System 7, because it's got an Audiomedia II digital audio card in it, my choice for digitizing audio from analog sources. It's like the old, careworn pair of vise grips that lives in the bottom of the toolbox...
Yeah, when I read that line my first thought was that the congressman's district included Dearborn, Michigan. Actually, Ralph Hall is from Texas. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a Ford subconractor located in his district.
Interestingly, Ralph Hall was a Democrat until 2004, when he switched parties. The Repubs allowed him to retain his seats on his various committees. Also, the Family Research Council gave him their "True Blue" award. Here's a choice quote from his website:
Rep. Hall is an ardent supporter of legislation benefiting the oil and gas industry in the Fourth District and the State of Texas.
Taken out of context, to be sure. But this is a guy who voted for a balanced budget amendment ten years ago, yet now features a photo of him with President George "$521 Billion Deficit" Bush on his web site's Flash splash page.
Congressman Hall: are you now or have you ever been a smoker of two dollar crack?
Slashdot Mirror
...but how does fare against the pusher robots?
k.
It's not as if the Sound, Long Island's North Shore, or the Connecticut Shoreline areas haven't been photographed countless times by state and Federal agencies. I'm surprised that Microsoft exposed something that looks so slapdash to the public.
Oh, wait...
k.
I had a cat who learned to ring the doorbell when he wanted to come in. Learned behavior, not beyond the realm of what passes for intelligence in cats. It was sort of funny to watch new housemates answer the door, puzzled becuase they didn't see a human standing outside the front door (the cat would be standing on a railing at the edge of the porch, pushing the doorbell with his paw).
But one day the doorbell rang when my cat was inside, and I was just as puzzled because no one was standing outside. It turned out that a stray kitten had rung the doorbell, probably after having seen my cat, Homebrew, do the same thing.
I adopted the kitten temporarily and named him Lucifer. But because I was very allergic to him (the dander of short-haired cats really gets to me -- Homebrew was a long-haired ragdoll) I had to give him away. He ended up with a Christian family who, I suppose, renamed him.
Cats learn from humans and cats learn from cats, but ringing the doorbell of a strange house was something I never expected from a cat. I assume Lucifer saw Homebrew do this, but why did he sense that our house was a safe place for him?
In humans, we would call this a leap of faith.
Cats? Well, I just don't know.
k.
In order to test the malware-busting skills of new employees, I would routinely infect a test machine with adware and spyware. I had two methods, based on the two most common scenarios we've encountered:
I would use a stopwatch and time myself, stopping at 15 minutes. For Case 1, I'd search Google for "casino" or "sex" and hit those sites. For Case 2, I'd search for "lyrics" or "buddy icons" and hit the top ten or fifteen sites listed.
At no time did I ever click "yes" when prompted to install software. The point was to attract the "drive-by" malware, the ones that didn't put an entry in "Add/Remove Programs", the ones that were the hardest to remove (e.g., randomly named polymorphs, malware that sees if one tries to terminate the process or remove a registry key and re-installs, malware that prevents anti-spyware programs from running, etc.).
In fifteen minutes, I can infect an XP box with between 400 and 600 objects (by AdAware's count). That's the result of hitting between 10 and 15 sites. Often, that's enough to inflate the number of running processes from 30 or so to about 60. Pop-ups appear even if IE isn't explicitly running. Case 1 infections often leave the computer in an unusable state, and by unusable state I mean "tits and ass all over your screen".
I give a prospective employee two hours to disinfect the computer, though I do cut major slack if it takes longer but they've got the right attitude and methodology. If hired, I show them how to get this down to under an hour (AdAware, Spybot, UBCD, manual cleaning, etc.).
Malware removal is about 30% of our billable hours. Since our contracts with our clients call for a certain amount of hours of service and maintenance each quarter, bug hunting is a distraction from the real work of administration: keeping up to date with patches and software updates, implementing our infrastructure upgrade roadmap, and software support and training. In other words, nearly a third of the time we spend doing productive work for our clients is spent whacking malware that targets Windows PCs.
Finally, we do try to come to terms with the fact that sometimes this is a human resources problem and not a technological problem. In Case 1, Employee X should not be surfing pr0n or playing Texas Hold-em on the job. As contractors, we try to block certain sites at the firewall, though that's a game of whack-a-mole, and we encourage all workstations to have monitors that face a common area (knowing someone can randomly shoulder-surf you is a big deterrent). Case 2, the residential case, is more problematic, since the sites that install drive-by malware are pretty innocent (lyrics, IM buddy icons). Permissions/ACLs would help, but there are so many applications that need admin rights to run that it's a joke. I've steered a few residential customers towards Apple Mac Minis and iMacs and have had no complaints after the fact.
Bottom line: it's a fucking jungle out there.
k.
Street prices were often a bit lower (even without the 40% Apple educational discount), especially towards the end of a particular model's lifetime.
In March '93, I bought a Classic II 4/80 (like the above) from CompUSA for $899, one of the few sub-$1K computers around at the time. Of course, the model was about to be discontinued, and there was a lot of downward pressure on computer prices between '91 and '93, but still.
k.
Well, *BSD is dying! So there!
Nyah!
k.
I used to think that was true, but it really isn't. The latest numbers I could find for the US are from 2001 (Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics), and they cast the business sector as being only slightly larger (73.2 million vs. 61.4 million).
Now, these figures represent number of people who use a computer at work and number of households with a computer, so they might not reflect multiple computer homes and businesses with large server farms, or people who share PCs at work or who have two workstations on their desk, but in the end I think it all evens out.
k.
At first, it's a process of trial and error, like brute forcing a password. After banging your head against that wall for a while, you run across people who have the same forehead bruises as you do. You compare notes, seeing what works, what doesn't. Now you have a network. Do a favor, get a marker you can call in later.
For the basic business skills, it helps to find a mentor, someone who's make mistakes you can learn from. A family member helped me write my first business plan twenty years ago. If no one you know has this skill, there are other resources out there, like CORE (an organization of retired executives in the US).
And whatever you do, get a lawyer you can trust.
k.
I left music school after 5 semesters to go full time with a band. It wasn't uncommon there, since the freshman class numbered 1500 and there were usually about 150 to 200 graduates, mostly music education majors who needed the sheepskin.
Two years later, I was driving a cab. I did that until I saved enough money to build a small recording studio, which I ran while playing in another band and doing live sound on the side. By the mid-'90s, I had a gig as a 3D animator and graphic artist, skills that had previously been hobbies for me. That led to a partnership in a media services company that also did software development. We sold out before the bubble burst.
Right now, I'm vice president of a company that does system administration on a contract basis. Small company in a small market, but profitable nonetheless.
Not having a degree pretty much precludes working for a large corporation, but I've never wanted to work for a big company. I do regret not getting a liberal arts education, and it's something I'd like to pursue soon, even though I'm in my forties. I'm looking to retire in about five years anyway, so I'll have the time.
To make it without a degree, it helps to be in a field that doesn't require one (like the arts), to be willing to do menial jobs now and then (like driving and dispatching taxis), and to be able to teach yourself the skills you need (technical, entrepreneurial, etc.). I can't stress the last one enough: without the support of a company behind you, sending you to training seminars and paying your way, you have to be your own teacher.
k.
I recall seeing still shots of a speed-of-light visualization in a brochure from Carnegie-Mellon's supercomputing center, back in the early '90s.
I can't find the brochure online (this was pre-WWW), but I think the stills came from this paper, from 1990.
Not that I think that this sort of thing is redundant. As technology advances, this is the type of visualization that's worth repeating on new hardware and new software.
k.
I see a glaring flaw in this plan: unavailable from the owner doesn't work across all media. For software, yes: you can make a case that a particular program has been absent from store shelves or download for a year.
But consider a movie, particularly one based on a book. What if the movie is no longer available but the book is still in print and sold in bookstores? The movie could not become public domain (this is pretty much what happened with It's a Wonderful Life: the movie's copyright lapsed but the soundtrack had been renewed regularly).
Consider a book of poetry that has gone out of print. Is the work still "available" if the poet regularly gives readings? Similarly, consider that songs and recordings are copyrighted separately. A recording could be "no longer available" from the label (who holds the Form SR copyright), yet not fall into the public domain if the songwriter (who holds the Form PA copyright) re-records (or even publically performs) the song.
My contention is that this "no longer available from the owner" concept is solely meant to address the abandonware issue, but does not map well to the majority of copyrighted works: music, literature, motion pictures, and television.
k.
I've heard a couple of explanations for the contradictory Creation stories in Genesis (as well as the two parallel accounts of the Flood). The first explanation posits that there were two versions of Scripture, one in the Kingdom of Judea, the other in the Kingdom of Israel. After the Babylonian Exile and the destruction of the first Temple, the Deuteronomists sought to create a unified Torah. That there are two Creation accounts and two Flood accounts (one involves a dove, another a raven) results from a compromise between exiles from the two kingdoms.
The other explanation is that the Biblical Creation stories are based on two different Mesopotamian creation myths. The patriarch Abraham was originally from Ur (now in present day Iraq), and much of ancient Hebrew law and lore is based on Mesopotamian practices (c.f. Code of Hammurabi).
A good book that explores these contradictions is Richard Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible
k.
The spyware monger is Xupiter , not Jupiter Research.
k.
Godzilla?
k.
In an excerpt of the tape released to mainstream news media, the leader of CLIT stated the following:
A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security declined comment on the tape, stating that they were still trying to determine the authenticity of the communique, while an anonymous source at software giant Microsoft reportedly stated "See? See what I mean? They're nuts, I tells ya! Nuts!!".
k.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just Google.
k.
Smallest ass ever.
k.
A couple of examples:
In 2003, my rented house got sold from under me, so I decided it would be a good opportunity to travel for a while. Towards that end, I bought a Toshiba laptop and a Sony-Ericsson cell phone (T-Mobile). Both were pretty cheap, even cheaper with the rebates.
The fine print on the laptop rebate stated that the check could not be mailed to a post office box. Seeing as that would be my address for a few months, I put down a friend's address. Three months later, the rebate still hadn't arrived. Five letters and seven phone calls later, I got my $100 rebate. Toshiba hadn't sent it because the address I'd used to register my warranty had been different from the rebate address and they thought I was a rebate scammer.
The cell phone rebate was another story: it wasn't until I filled out the paperwork that I found out that the rebate was incompatible with the monthly plan I had applied for. In the long run, I was better off with the cheaper plan than with the cash rebate, but I didn't find this out until I had purchased the phone and activated the account.
Yes, it was CrapUSA...err, CompUSA in both cases.
For the record, I've had no problems with Staples and Breast Buy rebates.
k.
2 B OR NOT 2 B TAHT IS DA QU3STION
WHETHER TIS NOBLAR IN DA MIND 2 DA SLNGS AND AROWS OF OUTRAEGOUS FORTUNA
OR 2 TAEK ARMS AGANEST A SEA OF TROUBLAS
AND BY OPOSNG 3ND TH3M?!!???!! LOL 2 DEI 2 SLEP
NO MOR3 AND BY A SLEP 2 SAY W3 TEH H3ART-ACHE AND DA THOUSAND NATURAL SHOKS
TAHT FLESH IS H3IR 2 TIS A CONSUMATION
D3VOUTLY 2 B WISHD!1!11 OMG WTF 2 DEI 2 SLEP
2 SLEP P3RCHANCE 2 DREM AY THEIR TEH RUB
FOR IN TAHT SLEP OF DEATH WUT DR3MS MAY COM3
WH3N WE HAEV SHUFLAD OF THIS MORTAL COIL
MUST GIEV US PAUS3 THEIR TEH RESPACT
TAHT MAEKS CALMITY OF SO LONG LIEF
FOR WHO WUD BAR TEH WHIPS AND SCORNS OF DA OPRESORS WRONG TEH PROUD MANS DA PANGS OF D3SPIESD LOVA TEH LAWS DA INSOLENC3 OF OFIEC AND TEH SPURNS
TAHT PATEINT MARIT OF TEH UNWORTHY TAEKS
WHEN H3 HIMSELF MIGHT HIS QUEITUS WIT A R BODKIN??????! OMG WHO WUD FARD3LS BAR
2 GRUNT AND SW3AT UND3R A WEARY LIEF
BUT TAHT DA DRAAD OF SOMATHNG AFT3R DA UNDISCOVERD COUNTRY FROM WHOSE BOURN
NO TRAEVLER RETURNS PUZLES DA WIL
AND MAEKS US RATHER BAR THOSA ILS WA HAEV
THAN FLY 2 OTHERS TAHT WA KNOW NOT OF
THUS?!!?!! OMG CONSCEINCE DOES MAEK COWARDS OF US AL
AND THUS TEH NATIEV HUE OF RASOLUTION
IS SIKLEID OAR WIT DA PAEL CAST OF THOUGHT
AND 3NTARPRIESS OF GRAAT PITH AND WIT THIS RAGARD THERE CUR3NTS TURN AWRY
AND LOSE TEH NME OF ACTION111!!1 WTF LOL - SOFT U TEH1111!1 OMG WTF LOL FARE OPH3LIA1111 NYMPH IN THY ORISONS
B AL MAH SINS R3M3MBRD
111!!1 OMG
k.
It's true that trademark holders have to actively defend them in the US (c.f. Lanham Act of 1934), but that's not what happened to aspirin.
The German pharmaceutical company Bayer held the patent and trademark on Aspirin® (as well as Heroin®) until 1919. When the US entered WWI in 1917, Bayer's US assets were frozen and then sold to Sterling Pharmaceuticals. After the war this forfeiture was formalized as part of the Treaty of Versailles (war reparations). In every country except the US, France, UK, and Russia, Bayer still holds the Aspirin® trademark.
k.
What other scientifically credited theories are there? There's evolution and there's...what? And no, I don't accept creationism or intelligent design as theories per se.
It's like you're asking one to accept that the Earth revolves around the Sun but we should also be open to the possibility that it's really the movement of Apollo's chariot across the heavens that makes that big light in the sky move every day.
k.
There's no equivalence. Here's why: on one hand, you have a theory formed from observation of the physical world over the last 150 years, subject to constant change and revision. On the other hand, you have the story of the Creation, which is held to be true because God said so (well, because His followers and a certain Book said so, and the Book actually has two Creation stories which contradict each other).
When we start burning bibles, then we'll be as bad as they are.
k.
This is the current Slashdot page footer MOTD:
Quite apropos, I think.
When the Inquisition persecuted Galileo for postiting that the Earth moved around the Sun, he was forced under pain of death to recant his theories. Legend has it that he muttered "Eppur si muove" ("And yet it moves") under his breath.
The point is that this, the disconnect between faith and science, has been going on for centuries. You would think that humanity would have made some tangible progress since the 1600s, but, over the last 100 years, there's been a resurgence of Christian fundamentalism, a "literal" reading of the Bible (I use "literal" loosely, considering all of the Old Testament cherry-picking that takes place).
Of course, American politics have gotten into the mix, souring any chance for a rational debate. Anyone who tries to rebut fundamentalist dogma is accused of being an anti-Christian bigot. Suddenly, the debate turns on whether the rebutter is racist or not and not about whether teaching creationism in a publicly funded school is a violation of the First Amendment. The best defense is a good offense, of course.
Now, demographics will eventually win out. I don't know of anyone who still maintains that the Earth is the center of the Universe (though I could be wrong). But do we have to wait another 400 years before evolution is accepted by all? And what about the ancilliary issues (e.g., stem cell research)?
I have a proposal, a modest proposal if you will. I believe that it's time to start discrediting fundamentalist leaders, conservative opinion makers, and anyone who stands in the way of progress and rational thought. Out the gay ones, blackmail the ones who are having extramarital affairs, and make the rest see the light of Truth and Reason with a Louisville Slugger.
The next time Rev. Fred Phelps brings his "God Hates Fags" crowd out to picket the funeral of a gay bashing victim, run them all over with a dump truck.
Start a Project Mayhem operation on the most right-wing churches: replace their hymnals with Darwin's Origin of the Species. Swap Scraping Foetus off the Wheel tapes for their pre-recorded liturgical music cassettes.
If that doesn't work, then kill them all. God will sort them out.
k., tounge in cheek, more or less.
Um, my name is Karlo and I'm a DOSaholic.
Seriously, I still keep two P-III class PCs running Win98SE for one reason: DOS compatibility, supporting a single application -- Autodesk 3D Studio R4.
Like most 3DS users, I eventually migrated to 3DS Max (on Windows). But for basic modelling and some animation tasks, I kept going back to 3DS4 (DOS), mostly because it was faster and more efficient. Actually, I was faster and more efficient. I'd spent so much time with this program that the keyboard shortcuts were second nature. And it didn't have the 64K limit on DXF importing that Max had.
With no model loaded, the total RAM footprint of 3DS4 and DOS is under 4MB. With no model loaded, the total footprint of Win2K and 3DSMax is around 200MB. On a system with 512MB RAM, this is a significant amount of overhead, though Moore's Law and the price of RAM makes this increasingly irrelevant.
I'm not doing much modelling and animation these days, so these systems don't get much use, but I still fire them up to keep my skills sharp.
I still keep an old Mac Quadra 700 around, running System 7, because it's got an Audiomedia II digital audio card in it, my choice for digitizing audio from analog sources. It's like the old, careworn pair of vise grips that lives in the bottom of the toolbox...
k.
Yeah, when I read that line my first thought was that the congressman's district included Dearborn, Michigan. Actually, Ralph Hall is from Texas. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a Ford subconractor located in his district.
Interestingly, Ralph Hall was a Democrat until 2004, when he switched parties. The Repubs allowed him to retain his seats on his various committees. Also, the Family Research Council gave him their "True Blue" award. Here's a choice quote from his website:
Taken out of context, to be sure. But this is a guy who voted for a balanced budget amendment ten years ago, yet now features a photo of him with President George "$521 Billion Deficit" Bush on his web site's Flash splash page.
Congressman Hall: are you now or have you ever been a smoker of two dollar crack?
k.