Re:BTW: ozone problem is political not enviromenta
on
Ozone As Pesticide
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· Score: 2, Interesting
You would do well to look around the various publications about CFC effects on Ozone.
CFC's are chlorine and fluorine containing hydrocarbons that were used as refrigerants, wlectronic cleaners, etc. A common CFC is Freon 12, C(F)2(Cl)2. In the atmosphere, C(F)2(Cl)2 undergoes the following reaction:
The Cl then reacts with O3(Ozone):
Cl + O3 -> ClO + O2 k6 = 2.1 x 10^-11 cm^3 molecule^-1 sec^-1
ClO + O -> Cl + O2 k7 = 3.8 x 10^-11 cm^3 molecule^-1 sec^-1
In short, a Chlorine breaks off of the Freon, and then just hangs around in the ozone layer, converting Ozone into Oxygen. As Chlorine is just a catalyst in this reaction, it continues breaking down Ozone as long as it is present.
It should be noted, for the sake of anyone at least somewhat versed in chemistry, that these Cl-O3 reactions may be slow, but they are still orders of magnitude faster than the O3 production reactions, which are about 10^-33 cm^6 molecule^-2 sec^-1.
As I understand the system, it is meant for those receiving spam, not those unwittingly relaying it. The basic idea is that the laggier the network, the longer it takes to send a message. So if your mailserver pretends to be laggy, it will take more time for a computer to send Spam. Thus, less spam is sent. It has the added advantage of since it accepts every message (though it takes longer if it thinks the message is spam), there is no cost to the user for false positives.
Nope - you missed what the article was saying. The mailserver being used by the spammer would be slowed down.
I propose that the running probability from the classifier be used to throttle the connection with the offending server. If an incoming message looks like spam [1], the connection could be slowed dramatically, consuming the spammer's resources and wasting their time [2].
"Throttling" is when you send ICMP choke packets to a sender, which in turn tells the connection to stop sending so many packets. It's generally used to tell a sender that you cannot handle the number of messages it is sending.
Now, what this article proposes is that mailservers use software that statistically analyzes messages, and based upon the likelihood of a message being spam, may send choke packets to the sender. You essentially spam the smammer with choke packets until the spammer's SMTP connection slows to a crawl.
At this point, the spammer can either deal with sending *maybe* a small handful of emails at a time, or give up on spamming. For those businesses that make money off spamming, this would destroy their ability to make any decent money.
This all depends on whether there are both state and federal laws against what they are trying you for. For example, the copyright laws used in the US during IP trials are federal laws. However, I know that my state, KS, has very little in the way of copyright law (Chapter 57). I would imagine many states are similar.
Civil suits are an entirely different matter, though. Chances are, the guy would be in worse shape if he lived in the US - the recording industry would sue him to death. Battling one suit after another, this guy would probably be on welfare for the rest of his life. I hope he fares better in Norway.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but while it's illegal, I was under the impression it's still the de facto standard.
If they can run a program that will reliably tell them if song A is more likely to be a hit than song B...
That's a pretty big if. You have to make the assumption that in general, music tastes don't change, and that all hit music sounds the same. You also have to make the assumption that music tastes are not affected by the geopolitical situation or the economy. New genres never become popular and every generation likes the same thing.
If it turns out that the program actually works, what does that say about music? Are we as listeners *really* that predictable? Is music really *that* formulaic? I'm not sure you could even call it art after this realization - there would be nothing to stop another program being written that uses the hit calculation formula to spit out cookie-cutter hit music.
I really hope I don't have to mourn creativity's death at the hands of the knuckle-dragging masses and the "bottom-line."
You really oughtta take a look at some of the anti-plagiarism software out there. They do far more than simply check for cut-and-paste jobs, as you seem to presume.
Generally, you patent a process (as ideas are copyrighted). There are only finitely many ways you can reword a process and still be talking about the same thing, much like there are only so many ways to reword a plagiarized section of text without losing its original meaning. This would quite easily be handled by a modern plagiarism detection tool.
The quantification of the database was perhaps unnecessary, but the idea was really just to point out that this would hardly be a small undertaking. There are millions, if not billions, of patents sitting around in the patent office. Most patents are hardly short, so in the end, you're talking about putting together a database that may be on the order of magnitude of the Library of Congress, if you want to include all issued patents.
Reading through the responses, I see plenty of complaints but no one seems to have a plan for reforming the patent office.
Okay, I'll take you up on that one.
Take all the patents issued since the beginning of the patent system and put them in a large database(and yes, this would take years). Once that's done, simply install comparison software to check for prior art. You could use similar software to what's used by teachers/professors to check for plagiarism in term papers.
Using the results from the above search (results being a list of prior patents with percent matches), you could select a certain threshold to have patent clerks visually compare patents.
Overall, once you get past the initial setup time/costs, prior art checks would take orders of magnitude less time and money to perform, and in all likelihood, these checks would be FAR more accurate.
There's prior CVS, too. That didn't stop the USPO from awarding the patent to Interwoven.
The thing to note, though... were Interwoven to try using its patent to press liscence fees, a defendent in court could simply show that CVS existed long before the patent was awarded.
...is that their 64-bit solution requires a completely different instruction set. It's painful to switch to an Itanium from an x86 platform. On the other hand, AMD's 64-bit solution(x86-64) should be about as painless a transition as the move from 16-bit to 32-bit processors.
Of *course* Intel is going to argue that 64bit isn't required for desktop computers. If users make the leap to AMD's x86-64, Intel will have to scramble to build a chip of their own to support it. Also, if you start getting $100, $200, $300 64-bit chips out there, I'm sure the server market's gonna stop and ask "why the hell are we spending $10k per Itanium?"
Intel stands to lose if we move to 64-bit on desktops.
MP3 could have (and should have), revolutionized the way the record industry did business.
Music stores should have had burning kiosks with 80+GB drives running by now, with software that allowed you to pick and choose what went on your CD.
Think about it: you'd have both near-infinite variety and infinite resellability. No 2 customer-selected CDs would be the same, and I bet you many customers would end up buying some songs 2, 3, 4, or more times to put on various mix albums.
It would be dirt cheap to burn CDs. You wouldn't have to pay for shelf space for each CD. Packaging would be cheaper, as you'd only have to pay for blank jewel cases and paper to print on.
Had the RIAA jumped on the mp3 bandwagon and truly utilized the format for the good of consumers, I'd probably still be paying for music. Had the RIAA immediately embraced online sales of high-quality mp3s, I'd gladly have subscribed to the service.
Instead, they shun the idea of these kiosks, chastize anyone who chooses to keep their music in mp3 format, and proclaims every customer a theif. By all rights, this industry should be dead by now.
No business should be able to survive the criminalization of its customer base.
The thing that worries me most about tagging personality to genes is that it gives some scientific justification for being racially prejudiced.
At the same time, it would also make possible the prospect of eliminating racial prejudice in the future via gene therapy.
As to whether or not prejudice is genetic or not - I would have to lean towards the idea that prejudice in general is genetic. It's a survival trait. Ugg Caveman was more likely to live longer if he was predisposed to determine "rabbit = food" and "lion = stay away."
However, how you discriminate would have to be social, I would imagine. Everyone immediately classifies others as "white," "black," "asian," etc... but not everyone classifies them along with the same assumptions.
I'm not quite sure whether eliminating prejudice is a good idea, though. There are still forms of prejudice that are useful. For example, if I'm walking down a street at night, and I see a group of shady-lookin characters wearing gang apparel, it's probably better I'm able to think to myself "it's best I steer clear," instead of a simple "hey, look... it's some other people!"
Interestingly enough, prejudice is actually directly related to the article. Prejudice allows us to classify foods as well, and our sense of taste is our main vehicle to provide the "how" part of the equation. If something tastes good, people generally will tag it as "good to eat" subconsciously. If you are predisposed to like fatty and sugary foods, you're going to be more likely to eat those foods.
However, don't ignore the fact that human beings are sentient, thinking beings. I can say to myself "I like ice cream, but it's probably better I not have it all the time."
We can alter how we categorize foods just like we can for anything else. The whole concept of "acquired taste" should be proof enough of this. For some people(including myself), coffee tastes terrible. We can train ourselves to tolerate the taste, and if we do this long enough, we may even like it. These alterations may take quite some time, though. If you're predisposed to like fatty and sugary foods, for example... you can't expect to change at the drop of a hat. Altering any kind of prejudice isn't easy.
I certainly hope we're not doomed to live out our genes.
At this point, I think it's inevitable. Watch Gattaca for a glimpse of the future.
My guess is that genes provide the interface to the world, but the mind interprets it based on experience.
I would submit that our genes provide the interface and the initial frame of reference, and that our minds can mold this preference as necessary or desired. This isn't altogether different from your idea, except that it argues the possibility that we may not be born a blank slate.
Obviously even with such a change, there would be openings for abuse, but they would be greatly limited by also eliminating the right to sell or transfer IP rights.
The disturbing thing to me is that no one looks at the obvious - creators don't generally own the rights to what they create.
Companies bitch and whine about how copyrights and patents are required. They need the ability to own their creations to make innovation worthwhile. Wait a sec, here - there's a glaring problem with this: Michael Eisner didn't create Mickey Mouse. Neither did the entity we call Disney. Some schmoe cartoonist working for Disney created Mickey Mouse.
Let's assume for a second that the current common premise about copyright and patent is correct. Let's say that monopoly power over innovations are required to drive further innovation. Why do programmers write programs? Why to researchers in pharmaceutical companies do any research? Why do musicians make music?
If I were to write some ground-breaking code while employed for a corporation, I sure as hell wouldn't get rich. I'd get paid my normal wage, and I might get a promotion for doing good work. Where's my incentive to create? I can get the same paycheck by mindlessly doing what I'm told, and I can get the same promotion by brown-nosing well enough.
I suppose the main point I'm making is: Corporations, and particularly CEOs of corporations, don't create anything. Individuals or groups of individuals, perhaps employed by corporatoins, do. By their own assumptions, corporations that own IP instead of the individuals that created the IP destroy the drive to innovate.
I'm not quite sure it's worth comparing China's music industry situation with the possible future of the industry here in the US. Arguably, the piracy in China has far different causes than piracy here has.
To me, that says that piracy is probably as prevalent as it is because people simply cannot afford music at the prices they'd be with a legitimate album sales market in place. Perhaps I'm wrong - it could very well just be a social issue, stemming form differing cultures.
Here in the US, though, there are probably a number of factors for music piracy.
Price may be an issue for some. As a college student, I can't really afford to spend $20 a pop on CDs when my school is sucking me dry.
For others, downloading music may simply be a way to preview music. The radio stations play nothing but top 40 crap unless an artist pays the station to get their stuff on air. Sometimes the only way to expose yourself to new music is find it online and download it.
Still others pirate music because of a philosophical disagreement with the industry's treatment of artists - money from albums goes almost entirely to the labels. If we want to support our favorite bands, we would be better off going to concerts.
On top of this, typical record contracts state that the label owns the music. To me, this is a travesty, and totally contradictory of the whole point of intellectual property and copyright. Who was the most successful band in history? The Beatles. Who owns the rights to all the music produced by The Beatles? The Beatles? No. Why not? Their contract gave the rights to their label, and when the copyright came up for renewal, someone else (Michael Jackson) renewed it. Personally, this part bothers me the most.
Many artists get stuck in contracts that give ownership of their music to their label, and if they wish to perform their music after their contract expires, they have to pay their old label to do it(assuming the label even allows them to play it). However, this isn't limited to the music industry, and the rant is best saved for a "why copyright law needs to be gutted and rewritten" topic.
Other people dislike how the record labels treat music consumers. Price fixing, filler music, bogus copy protection schemes, DMCA, DRM, and to top it all off, big, rich executives telling me how, when, and where I can listen to music I bought... doesn't make me think fondly upon the prospect of supporting the music industry. It seems that with every RIAA-related press release, I find myself more determined never to buy CDs again.
In spite of all this, though... I genuinely want to pay for the music I have, so long as I could guarantee that the artists get a decent share of the money. I like the feel of owning things, and I like the feel of giving money to people who make things I like to use. I would imagine many people feel like I do. As a result, I can't really see the Chinese model happening here. There's a certain pride embedded in the idea of owning something in our particular culture. Instead of seeing pirate booths lining the streets, I can forsee labels finally getting the clue and changing how they sell their music or the artists breaking free of labels and finding a better way to distribute music...
...that, or the RIAA/MPAA will successfully lobby Congress to enact further legislation that effectively limits our consumption of intellectual property to what the RIAA and MPAA want us to consume. If (when) that happens, I'll start practicing my "eh?" and move north.
actually, I'm sure they'll fix the vulnerability anyhow -- lest they risk lawsuits.
Straight from the article:
Curiously enough, Citi was also the bank in the case that set US law on phantom withdrawals from ATMs (Judd v Citibank). They lost. I hope that's an omen, if not a precedent...
The legal precedent is that you're outta luck, should someone exploit these vulnerabilities. Citibank knows this. Without the vulnerabilities becoming public knowledge, Citibank has zero reason to fix them. Over time or all at once... it takes money and effort to fix problems, and so long as they're immune to the ill effects of the vulnerabilities, why would they spend the resources to fix it? From Citibank's point of view, it's not a problem.
The emphasis was more on the fact that they had to drop out of college as a result. These were girls that had their sights set on continued education, but had to give it up because they got pregnant. It's a shame school doesn't give common sense to students.
Some of the smartest people in my high school were NOT nerds. True, they didn't take some of the ridiculous college math courses that we nerds did. However they did get straight-As and took AP courses in the natural sciences, history, calculus, languages, etc.
Don't confuse good grades with intelligence. Many people in my school's top 10% or even top 5% were dumb as bricks. For example, perhaps half the girls I knew in my honors/AP classes got pregnant immediately after starting college and had to drop out.
At the same time, though... I must admit that my high school didn't have near the "if nerd then pariah else jock" aspect to it as some other schools. Many of the genuinely smart people were very social, even if most of the jocks were... well... stereotypical jocks.
But the sad fact is that America has historically been willing to give up these "rights" and "privacies" for temporary security. and this I think may be part of the result.
When I read this, I am reminded of the following: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin
Oh and before anyone jumps on me, I meant to say Intel and x86 clones.
Well... in that case, there are nothing but Intel chips on the Desktop PC CPU market right now:P
BTW, was the point of this article to put the fastest ram possible in each computer? If Tom wanted to be true to the spirit of benchmarking each computer against one another as you would have had them, the Pentium 100 machine and probably the Pentium MMX machines would have to use EDO DRAM, which would likely drop their scores a bit lower still.
I'm so sick of people on slashdot talking about "the market" and how it will cure all of these ills. The market can very well be what creates monopolies. The market is full of externalities that will never be corrected for without legislation or some other non market action.
Exactly.
Whether or not the market actually creates monopolies is no longer of interest when it comes to Microsoft. I'm not sure how easy to prove it would be, either. However, I think the case can be made successfully that the market perpetuates monopolies. Let's just look at the situation:
Developers write software for Windows because it is the most popular OS. The more software that it written exclusively for Windows, the more popular it becomes.
You can only accept the possibility of the market fixing things if you ignore this principle.
There's a obviously a *market* for Windows software and with 90%+ of market penetration, I'd say that Windows is excellent (there's not many products and industries with marketshare like that).
Windows is hardly on top because it's the best product. It's on top now simply because it was on top before. It was on top before because Microsoft successfully leveraged Windows onto virtually every new computer sold. As far as I can tell, there was no point at which Windows success was ever affected by consumer choice. At no point has Windows ever been the best OS on the market. Microsoft simply forced itself onto computers and the cycle took over from there.
Don't turn everything into a political statement.
This is more a consumer statement. Whenever you buy a product, you are in effect "voting for" it. You tell the market that you wanted that particular product and allow company X to produce more of their product Y.
If you knowingly buy Windows, you are telling the market "I like Windows!" Whether or not you actually like the OS is irrelevant - you are voting with your money. When you can no longer buy computers without Windows, you have lost the most basic right of a consumer - the ability to choose what product you spend your money on.
I would have hoped in a "Democratic" society, this idea would be abhorrent at best. The loss of the basic freedom to buy what you like should anger you.
Heil Microsoft, I guess.
Slashdot Mirror
You would do well to look around the various publications about CFC effects on Ozone.
CFC's are chlorine and fluorine containing hydrocarbons that were used as refrigerants, wlectronic cleaners, etc. A common CFC is Freon 12, C(F)2(Cl)2. In the atmosphere, C(F)2(Cl)2 undergoes the following reaction:
C(F)2(Cl)2 + hv -> C(F)2(Cl) + Cl
k5 = 1.0 x 10^-7 sec^-1
The Cl then reacts with O3(Ozone):
Cl + O3 -> ClO + O2
k6 = 2.1 x 10^-11 cm^3 molecule^-1 sec^-1
ClO + O -> Cl + O2
k7 = 3.8 x 10^-11 cm^3 molecule^-1 sec^-1
In short, a Chlorine breaks off of the Freon, and then just hangs around in the ozone layer, converting Ozone into Oxygen. As Chlorine is just a catalyst in this reaction, it continues breaking down Ozone as long as it is present.
It should be noted, for the sake of anyone at least somewhat versed in chemistry, that these Cl-O3 reactions may be slow, but they are still orders of magnitude faster than the O3 production reactions, which are about 10^-33 cm^6 molecule^-2 sec^-1.
Nope - you missed what the article was saying. The mailserver being used by the spammer would be slowed down.
"Throttling" is when you send ICMP choke packets to a sender, which in turn tells the connection to stop sending so many packets. It's generally used to tell a sender that you cannot handle the number of messages it is sending.
Now, what this article proposes is that mailservers use software that statistically analyzes messages, and based upon the likelihood of a message being spam, may send choke packets to the sender. You essentially spam the smammer with choke packets until the spammer's SMTP connection slows to a crawl.
At this point, the spammer can either deal with sending *maybe* a small handful of emails at a time, or give up on spamming. For those businesses that make money off spamming, this would destroy their ability to make any decent money.
This all depends on whether there are both state and federal laws against what they are trying you for. For example, the copyright laws used in the US during IP trials are federal laws. However, I know that my state, KS, has very little in the way of copyright law (Chapter 57). I would imagine many states are similar.
Civil suits are an entirely different matter, though. Chances are, the guy would be in worse shape if he lived in the US - the recording industry would sue him to death. Battling one suit after another, this guy would probably be on welfare for the rest of his life. I hope he fares better in Norway.
Payolla (sp) is now illegal.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but while it's illegal, I was under the impression it's still the de facto standard.
If they can run a program that will reliably tell them if song A is more likely to be a hit than song B...
That's a pretty big if. You have to make the assumption that in general, music tastes don't change, and that all hit music sounds the same. You also have to make the assumption that music tastes are not affected by the geopolitical situation or the economy. New genres never become popular and every generation likes the same thing.
If it turns out that the program actually works, what does that say about music? Are we as listeners *really* that predictable? Is music really *that* formulaic? I'm not sure you could even call it art after this realization - there would be nothing to stop another program being written that uses the hit calculation formula to spit out cookie-cutter hit music.
I really hope I don't have to mourn creativity's death at the hands of the knuckle-dragging masses and the "bottom-line."
You really oughtta take a look at some of the anti-plagiarism software out there. They do far more than simply check for cut-and-paste jobs, as you seem to presume.
Generally, you patent a process (as ideas are copyrighted). There are only finitely many ways you can reword a process and still be talking about the same thing, much like there are only so many ways to reword a plagiarized section of text without losing its original meaning. This would quite easily be handled by a modern plagiarism detection tool.
The quantification of the database was perhaps unnecessary, but the idea was really just to point out that this would hardly be a small undertaking. There are millions, if not billions, of patents sitting around in the patent office. Most patents are hardly short, so in the end, you're talking about putting together a database that may be on the order of magnitude of the Library of Congress, if you want to include all issued patents.
Reading through the responses, I see plenty of complaints but no one seems to have a plan for reforming the patent office.
Okay, I'll take you up on that one.
Take all the patents issued since the beginning of the patent system and put them in a large database(and yes, this would take years). Once that's done, simply install comparison software to check for prior art. You could use similar software to what's used by teachers/professors to check for plagiarism in term papers.
Using the results from the above search (results being a list of prior patents with percent matches), you could select a certain threshold to have patent clerks visually compare patents.
Overall, once you get past the initial setup time/costs, prior art checks would take orders of magnitude less time and money to perform, and in all likelihood, these checks would be FAR more accurate.
There's prior CVS, too. That didn't stop the USPO from awarding the patent to Interwoven.
The thing to note, though... were Interwoven to try using its patent to press liscence fees, a defendent in court could simply show that CVS existed long before the patent was awarded.
See here.
This patent about as effective as Microsoft security.
Intel is a single entity, not a Star-Trek race.
Are you sure?
...is that their 64-bit solution requires a completely different instruction set. It's painful to switch to an Itanium from an x86 platform. On the other hand, AMD's 64-bit solution(x86-64) should be about as painless a transition as the move from 16-bit to 32-bit processors.
Of *course* Intel is going to argue that 64bit isn't required for desktop computers. If users make the leap to AMD's x86-64, Intel will have to scramble to build a chip of their own to support it. Also, if you start getting $100, $200, $300 64-bit chips out there, I'm sure the server market's gonna stop and ask "why the hell are we spending $10k per Itanium?"
Intel stands to lose if we move to 64-bit on desktops.
Gotta pluck 'em. Awful things, they are :o
No, but they're physical. Mp3's and Ogg's are generally stored as nothing but 0's and 1's, where CDs are cute little plastic coasters.
MP3 could have (and should have), revolutionized the way the record industry did business.
Music stores should have had burning kiosks with 80+GB drives running by now, with software that allowed you to pick and choose what went on your CD.
Think about it: you'd have both near-infinite variety and infinite resellability. No 2 customer-selected CDs would be the same, and I bet you many customers would end up buying some songs 2, 3, 4, or more times to put on various mix albums.
It would be dirt cheap to burn CDs. You wouldn't have to pay for shelf space for each CD. Packaging would be cheaper, as you'd only have to pay for blank jewel cases and paper to print on.
Had the RIAA jumped on the mp3 bandwagon and truly utilized the format for the good of consumers, I'd probably still be paying for music. Had the RIAA immediately embraced online sales of high-quality mp3s, I'd gladly have subscribed to the service.
Instead, they shun the idea of these kiosks, chastize anyone who chooses to keep their music in mp3 format, and proclaims every customer a theif. By all rights, this industry should be dead by now.
No business should be able to survive the criminalization of its customer base.
The thing that worries me most about tagging personality to genes is that it gives some scientific justification for being racially prejudiced.
At the same time, it would also make possible the prospect of eliminating racial prejudice in the future via gene therapy.
As to whether or not prejudice is genetic or not - I would have to lean towards the idea that prejudice in general is genetic. It's a survival trait. Ugg Caveman was more likely to live longer if he was predisposed to determine "rabbit = food" and "lion = stay away."
However, how you discriminate would have to be social, I would imagine. Everyone immediately classifies others as "white," "black," "asian," etc... but not everyone classifies them along with the same assumptions.
I'm not quite sure whether eliminating prejudice is a good idea, though. There are still forms of prejudice that are useful. For example, if I'm walking down a street at night, and I see a group of shady-lookin characters wearing gang apparel, it's probably better I'm able to think to myself "it's best I steer clear," instead of a simple "hey, look... it's some other people!"
Interestingly enough, prejudice is actually directly related to the article. Prejudice allows us to classify foods as well, and our sense of taste is our main vehicle to provide the "how" part of the equation. If something tastes good, people generally will tag it as "good to eat" subconsciously. If you are predisposed to like fatty and sugary foods, you're going to be more likely to eat those foods.
However, don't ignore the fact that human beings are sentient, thinking beings. I can say to myself "I like ice cream, but it's probably better I not have it all the time."
We can alter how we categorize foods just like we can for anything else. The whole concept of "acquired taste" should be proof enough of this. For some people(including myself), coffee tastes terrible. We can train ourselves to tolerate the taste, and if we do this long enough, we may even like it. These alterations may take quite some time, though. If you're predisposed to like fatty and sugary foods, for example... you can't expect to change at the drop of a hat. Altering any kind of prejudice isn't easy.
I certainly hope we're not doomed to live out our genes.
At this point, I think it's inevitable. Watch Gattaca for a glimpse of the future.
My guess is that genes provide the interface to the world, but the mind interprets it based on experience.
I would submit that our genes provide the interface and the initial frame of reference, and that our minds can mold this preference as necessary or desired. This isn't altogether different from your idea, except that it argues the possibility that we may not be born a blank slate.
Obviously even with such a change, there would be openings for abuse, but they would be greatly limited by also eliminating the right to sell or transfer IP rights.
The disturbing thing to me is that no one looks at the obvious - creators don't generally own the rights to what they create.
Companies bitch and whine about how copyrights and patents are required. They need the ability to own their creations to make innovation worthwhile. Wait a sec, here - there's a glaring problem with this: Michael Eisner didn't create Mickey Mouse. Neither did the entity we call Disney. Some schmoe cartoonist working for Disney created Mickey Mouse.
Let's assume for a second that the current common premise about copyright and patent is correct. Let's say that monopoly power over innovations are required to drive further innovation. Why do programmers write programs? Why to researchers in pharmaceutical companies do any research? Why do musicians make music?
If I were to write some ground-breaking code while employed for a corporation, I sure as hell wouldn't get rich. I'd get paid my normal wage, and I might get a promotion for doing good work. Where's my incentive to create? I can get the same paycheck by mindlessly doing what I'm told, and I can get the same promotion by brown-nosing well enough.
I suppose the main point I'm making is: Corporations, and particularly CEOs of corporations, don't create anything. Individuals or groups of individuals, perhaps employed by corporatoins, do. By their own assumptions, corporations that own IP instead of the individuals that created the IP destroy the drive to innovate.
I'm not quite sure it's worth comparing China's music industry situation with the possible future of the industry here in the US. Arguably, the piracy in China has far different causes than piracy here has.
From the CIA World Factbook 2002 - China:
GDP - per capita: purchasing power parity - $4,300 (2001 est.)
To me, that says that piracy is probably as prevalent as it is because people simply cannot afford music at the prices they'd be with a legitimate album sales market in place. Perhaps I'm wrong - it could very well just be a social issue, stemming form differing cultures.
Here in the US, though, there are probably a number of factors for music piracy.
Price may be an issue for some. As a college student, I can't really afford to spend $20 a pop on CDs when my school is sucking me dry.
For others, downloading music may simply be a way to preview music. The radio stations play nothing but top 40 crap unless an artist pays the station to get their stuff on air. Sometimes the only way to expose yourself to new music is find it online and download it.
Still others pirate music because of a philosophical disagreement with the industry's treatment of artists - money from albums goes almost entirely to the labels. If we want to support our favorite bands, we would be better off going to concerts.
On top of this, typical record contracts state that the label owns the music. To me, this is a travesty, and totally contradictory of the whole point of intellectual property and copyright. Who was the most successful band in history? The Beatles. Who owns the rights to all the music produced by The Beatles? The Beatles? No. Why not? Their contract gave the rights to their label, and when the copyright came up for renewal, someone else (Michael Jackson) renewed it. Personally, this part bothers me the most.
Many artists get stuck in contracts that give ownership of their music to their label, and if they wish to perform their music after their contract expires, they have to pay their old label to do it(assuming the label even allows them to play it). However, this isn't limited to the music industry, and the rant is best saved for a "why copyright law needs to be gutted and rewritten" topic.
Other people dislike how the record labels treat music consumers. Price fixing, filler music, bogus copy protection schemes, DMCA, DRM, and to top it all off, big, rich executives telling me how, when, and where I can listen to music I bought... doesn't make me think fondly upon the prospect of supporting the music industry. It seems that with every RIAA-related press release, I find myself more determined never to buy CDs again.
In spite of all this, though... I genuinely want to pay for the music I have, so long as I could guarantee that the artists get a decent share of the money. I like the feel of owning things, and I like the feel of giving money to people who make things I like to use. I would imagine many people feel like I do. As a result, I can't really see the Chinese model happening here. There's a certain pride embedded in the idea of owning something in our particular culture. Instead of seeing pirate booths lining the streets, I can forsee labels finally getting the clue and changing how they sell their music or the artists breaking free of labels and finding a better way to distribute music...
...that, or the RIAA/MPAA will successfully lobby Congress to enact further legislation that effectively limits our consumption of intellectual property to what the RIAA and MPAA want us to consume. If (when) that happens, I'll start practicing my "eh?" and move north.
Are you suggesting that we actually start paying celebs what the[y]'re worth?
Well... I don't think anyone here is *that* cruel. Besides, we have enough people on welfare in this country already.
actually, I'm sure they'll fix the vulnerability anyhow -- lest they risk lawsuits.
...
Straight from the article:
Curiously enough, Citi was also the bank in the case that set US law on
phantom withdrawals from ATMs (Judd v Citibank). They lost. I hope that's
an omen, if not a precedent
The legal precedent is that you're outta luck, should someone exploit these vulnerabilities. Citibank knows this. Without the vulnerabilities becoming public knowledge, Citibank has zero reason to fix them. Over time or all at once... it takes money and effort to fix problems, and so long as they're immune to the ill effects of the vulnerabilities, why would they spend the resources to fix it? From Citibank's point of view, it's not a problem.
Don't forget this protocol, too.
The emphasis was more on the fact that they had to drop out of college as a result. These were girls that had their sights set on continued education, but had to give it up because they got pregnant. It's a shame school doesn't give common sense to students.
Some of the smartest people in my high school were NOT nerds. True, they didn't take some of the ridiculous college math courses that we nerds did. However they did get straight-As and took AP courses in the natural sciences, history, calculus, languages, etc.
Don't confuse good grades with intelligence. Many people in my school's top 10% or even top 5% were dumb as bricks. For example, perhaps half the girls I knew in my honors/AP classes got pregnant immediately after starting college and had to drop out.
At the same time, though... I must admit that my high school didn't have near the "if nerd then pariah else jock" aspect to it as some other schools. Many of the genuinely smart people were very social, even if most of the jocks were... well... stereotypical jocks.
But the sad fact is that America has historically been willing to give up these "rights" and "privacies" for temporary security. and this I think may be part of the result.
When I read this, I am reminded of the following:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin
It is quite possible to do DVD playback no a Celeron 300A.
:( I still have the Celeron 300A and V3 2k sitting on my desk.
First, make sure the 300A is running at 450MHz (why wouldn't you run those CPUs at 450?).
Then, make sure you're running older versions of your DVD playback software (WinDVD 2.x, for example).
Next, make sure your video card has at least DVD playback assist (a Voodoo3/TNT card will do fine).
NEXT, make absolutely sure you have enough RAM to avoid disk swapping.
Finally, make sure you're running Win95/98, and close out all programs but your DVD playback program.
The truly sad part is: I know this from experience
Oh and before anyone jumps on me, I meant to say Intel and x86 clones.
:P
Well... in that case, there are nothing but Intel chips on the Desktop PC CPU market right now
BTW, was the point of this article to put the fastest ram possible in each computer? If Tom wanted to be true to the spirit of benchmarking each computer against one another as you would have had them, the Pentium 100 machine and probably the Pentium MMX machines would have to use EDO DRAM, which would likely drop their scores a bit lower still.
Exactly.
Whether or not the market actually creates monopolies is no longer of interest when it comes to Microsoft. I'm not sure how easy to prove it would be, either. However, I think the case can be made successfully that the market perpetuates monopolies. Let's just look at the situation:
You can only accept the possibility of the market fixing things if you ignore this principle.
There's a obviously a *market* for Windows software and with 90%+ of market penetration, I'd say that Windows is excellent (there's not many products and industries with marketshare like that).
Windows is hardly on top because it's the best product. It's on top now simply because it was on top before. It was on top before because Microsoft successfully leveraged Windows onto virtually every new computer sold. As far as I can tell, there was no point at which Windows success was ever affected by consumer choice. At no point has Windows ever been the best OS on the market. Microsoft simply forced itself onto computers and the cycle took over from there.
Don't turn everything into a political statement. This is more a consumer statement. Whenever you buy a product, you are in effect "voting for" it. You tell the market that you wanted that particular product and allow company X to produce more of their product Y. If you knowingly buy Windows, you are telling the market "I like Windows!" Whether or not you actually like the OS is irrelevant - you are voting with your money. When you can no longer buy computers without Windows, you have lost the most basic right of a consumer - the ability to choose what product you spend your money on. I would have hoped in a "Democratic" society, this idea would be abhorrent at best. The loss of the basic freedom to buy what you like should anger you. Heil Microsoft, I guess.