That said, Bujold's latest, The Sharing Knife, wasn't nearly as good as most of the rest of her stuff. I've not even read the second book, and I'm not sure I will.
But in my experience, Christopher Tolkien has always taken a good, cautious approach when it comes to his father's work so here's to hoping.
I'd go so far as to say that he's taken an overly cautious approach to his father's work. The point at which I became frustrated with him was the point at which I found out that J. R. R. had written a translation of Beowulf, that the translation was pretty much a final draft, and that Christopher was blocking its publication. I honestly can't think of any rationale for blocking the work's publication that justifies his hesitancy. This, combined with his very public argument with his son, Simon, has made me look at his stewardship of J. R. R.'s work with a fairly critical eye.
Regarding the TOS change to ban ad blocking software:
Totally our bad.
We didn't catch that the ad-blocker restriction made it into the final TOS changes. From what I can make of the series of events which led to its inclusion was that we basically passed off our TOS to some lawyers and said, "Update it for advertising". They then mimiced some other sites' advertising policies (which said no ad blockers), and then all the right people who were supposed to review it didn't and it made it live onto the site.
So this is a pre-announcement that a more user-friendly TOS change is on its way.
(After all, we can't even detect that you're even using ad blockers to begin with, so there's no point in us saying you can't. Plus you might not even have control over what's installed on your computer, etc.)
Here is another concern. I just went to the Hamilton article, as I was fairly certain that it would be modified to address the issues that Mr. McHenry brought to light concerning Alexander Hamilton's birth date. I took a look at the footnote that had been entered next to Hamilton's birth date. It reads (at the moment):
While the day and month of Hamilton's birth are known, there is some uncertainty as to the year, whether it be 1755 or 1757. Hamilton himself used, and most contemporary biographers prefer, the latter year.
...but this is exceedingly close to what Mr. McHenry said in his article, so much so that it borders on plagiarism:
While the day and month of Hamilton's birth are known, there is some uncertainty as to the year, whether it be 1755 or 1757. Hamilton himself used, and most contemporary biographers prefer, the latter year; a reference work ought at least to note the issue.
Academic honesty is not the first thing that an encyclopedia should concern itself with, but it is among the most important. Even apart from the issues of academic honesty, the publishers of the Wikipedia should be quite concerned with the copyright concerns associated with their endeavor.
...which goes to show, I suppose, that Wikipedia, however useful as a tool, is perhaps less than perfect.
I'm being pedantic. I know. It's horrible....but I'm getting sick of people thinking that broadband simply means "fat pipes."
In reality, the distinction is between "broadband" and "baseband." Broadband sends the data signal over a carrier frequency. In most cases, this frequency is your cable television information. Baseband is sent directly over the wires as spikes in signal, much in the same way that old-style telegraphs were sent, as with Morse Code.
Having said that, I suppose it's inevitable that "broadband" will eventually become a codeword for "high-speed, generally residential, Internet access," but I'm fighting that trend every step of the way.:)
7.4 The Internet contains unedited materials that may be
offensive or objectionable to you. You access these materials
at your own risk. Sprint has no control over and accepts no
responsibility for these materials. Customer may wish to utilize
software designed to limit access to certain material on the
Internet.
The rest of the TOS, while somewhat harsh-sounding, appears to be fairly standard legalese, saying that you aren't allowed to use Sprint to break laws; the only bit that somewhat distressess me is the following. You are not allowed to
7.1.2 post or transmit any unlawful, threatening, abusive,
libelous, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, indecent, profane,
hateful, bigoted or otherwise objectionable information of any
kind, including without limitation any transmissions, constituting
or encouraging, conduct that would constitute a criminal
offense, give rise to civil liability, or otherwise violate any local,
state, national or international law, including without limitation
U.S. export control laws and regulations;
...but I suspect that this is merely to give them carte blanche to "kick ban" harrassing folk. Same with their policy of port scans and the like (as they probably don't want to have people contacting their sysadmins saying that there are script kiddies trying to break into their networks).
They also have provisions limiting bandwidth consumption and servers that you can run from home, but most broadband services limit those these days, especially by forcing lease refreshes every month or so (or sooner).
Yeah, it seems somewhat fascist, I'll agree....but it's broadband. It's not a T1 or even DSL. You get what you pay for, and from what I see, this isn't that bad.
Gamespot's list seems to be heavily skewed toward titles which sold very well and managed in the same breath to be influential. All of the games are personal computer games, meaning that console and stand-up arcade games are completely ignored. Because of the factor of sales, they are of course going to be limited to the last decade, by and large, since the computer gaming industry didn't really become a huge playing field until then.
All the same, they do give a nod to the 80's with "SimCity" and "Ultima III." By both of their apparent criteria, they wouldn't really be able to avoid these games.
They completely ignore some of the biggest genres of the past, however. Some are because they were primarily console games, but they completely ignore some of the most influential titles in favor of flashier, more recent games.
Text adventure games, from the simple "Hunt the Wumpus" to "ADVENT" to "Zork" and Infocom's entire line are given the shaft, despite their contribution in showing the possibility of translating a rich world (and in many cases, complex plot) into a computer game. To my knowledge, no game company has developed a text parser which even comes close to matching the sophistication of Infocom's earliest engines.
They also ignore the hybrid text-adventure games pioneered by Sierra, such as the early "King's Quest" line and such classics as "Leisure Suit Larry" (which showed the viability of an adult-only game).
Early turn-based strategy games, such as the ASCII "Starbase" and its clones are likewise ignored, along with "Rogue," "Nethack," and its (still maintained) successors in the "Angband" line.
Early first-person adventure games, such as "Wizardry" and "Bards Tale" were left off completely, as were their predecessors in the table-top RPG world ("Tunnels and Trolls," "AD&D," and the like).
The shareware craze of the late-80s and early-90s is also left off, despite the fact that folks like Apogee and id Software brought the entire gaming industry kicking and screaming into the world of "this demo is more than a guided walkthrough for the first five minutes of the game; it's actually the first quarter of the game, uncut." What game reviewer worth their salt could ignore this craze?
They also completely ignore ganes which were influential in their development on the computer, such as ChessMaster, its predecessors, and its successors. The AIs developed for chess have shaped our perception of Man vs. Machine indelibly, especially recently, with the defeat of Kasparov.
All these (and many other genres) aside, of the list they selected, there are many games I would have chosen from other deveopers. They give - in my opinion - sufficient props to id Software for Doom and Quake, but they seem to ignore other game developers that deserve kudos. Blizzard they credit only with Diablo, and they don't mention Looking Glass at all. While Dune II might have been the formative stages for real-time strategy games, Blizzard's XxxxCraft line defined it.
I could go on, but it has been better covered in other posts, and I have to do some actual work today.:)
As a UNIX system administrator myself, I have to say that I have used the Red Book countless times, and it's saved me almost every time. I rarely have to look in another book (except perhaps the Frisch book, aka the "Blue Book," aka the "Armadillo Book"). What distressed me about this newest edition of the book is that they focus only on four OSs: FreeBSD, RedHat 6.2, Solaris 7, and HP-UX 11.00. While these are perhaps representative of the most popular UNIXes out there presently (with the exception of perhaps AIX), the authors made the conscious decision not to cover all of the OSs they had done before. The second edition, for instance, went over Solaris 2.4, HP-UX 9.0, IRIX 5.2, SunOS 4.1.3, DEC's OSF/1 2.0 (which is now Compaq Tru64), and BSD/OS 1.1.
For system administrators who are interested in supporting legacy systems, the Red Book (or, more specifically, the Second Edition) is still useful. I, for instance, needed to know how IRIX set up their/etc/exports or/etc/dfs/dfstab equivalent, and I was able to find it in seconds in the Red Book. No longer.
Otherwise, having now read the Purple Book cover to cover, I can recommend it heartily. It has the same style, flavor, and philosophy which has made the Red Book invaluable to me in the past, and I suspect that I'll be carrying around the Purple Book for years to come. Go buy it.
Note also that you can find/.'s review of the Red Book here, if you're curious.
I find Dr. Brin's arguments to be cogent and well thought-out. In fact, I agree with almost every conclusion he has made here, although I do disagree with some of his logic.
Firstly, Nader isn't an entirely poor choice for some people. Liberals in states which Gore is almost certain to win (such as Massachusetts) might do well to consider him. The Democratic Party has drifted toward the middle of the political road in the past few decades, such that there are few young, vibrant, liberal leaders within the party proper. Voting for Nader such that the Greens get more than 5% of the vote gives them federal funds to get their message out and sends a message to the Democratic leadership that they have been neglecting some of their core constituency. A little revolution has never been a bad thing, and it's produced some of this century's most dynamic leaders....
Nader has been roundly criticized within his own party for not running a campaign which is designed to attract women voters while both Gore and Bush have been actively courting them for the past several months.
With regard to estate tax, I'd just like to mention that it has a viable role in today's world - one which justifies its existance quite admirably, but it might be helpful to understand where it came from. Medeival European feudal lords would grant their vassals land in exchange for services, but it wouldn't by default pass to their heirs. In exchange for a tax (what amounted to a bribe), the ruler would grant that land to the heir for their lifetime with the understanding that the land was actually the lord's. This has translated to our country (via the doctrine of eminant domain), based on the idea that we each need to give back to the nation in exchange for our prosperity. Republicans have labelled it a "Death Tax," whereas our Founding Fathers probably would have thought of it instead as the government's due for giving an individual the security needed to prosper.
Another poster made mention of Dr. Brin's implicit assumption that our government knows better than we do and quoted Jefferson to try to debunk this. Unfortunately, Jefferson didn't live in a nation which was as complex as our own with issues as diverse as the ones our leaders have to deal with. I try to take an informed approach to citizenship, but I don't pretend that I understand everything as well as would be needed to govern myself. More importantly, I don't want to. To do so would take up the majority of my time, both work and free. I vote for politicians who share my general fiscal and social views and have the native intellect to appoint folks who will carry out their policies. That's why Hell will freeze over before I vote for Bush, as he fails both tests.
Lastly, I would like to point out again that Dr. Brin's highlighting of the upcoming Supreme Court nominees will be of critical import to the next several decades of our country's policymaking. A vote for Bush would, unsurprisingly, be a vote for a socially conservative Supreme Court, which is almost certainly what we want to avoid in the near future if we want privacy and free speech to continue on the Internet.
I'd like to further thank Dr. Brin and Hemos for a provocative and interesting commentary....and I'd like to urge all of the disaffected cynics out there to get off your duffs and vote in November. It might not seem like much, but it adds up....
While I agree with Platinum Dragon's basic premise, I do have to say that the nature of the presidential election itself has contributed significantly to the dominance of the Two Party Sustem. Individual candidates not only need the widespread legitimacy to overcome the "throwing your vote away" stigma, but they need to do it in each and every state.
After all, we're technically not voting for a single candidate. We're technically voting for the group of electors who will vote in the actual presidential election. If I cast a vote "for Gore," I'm actually casting my vote for the "electors which have been chosen for my state by the Democratic party."
So it's all or nothing....in each state. This is why presidents can technically be elected even if they don't have a popular majority. They just need to win in the high-electoral-vote states, and they can come away with a victory no matter what the voters in Rhode Island think of them.
...and third party candidates thus need as much legitimacy spread across the nation as one of the Two Biggies to stand a chance.
Ludicrous, if you ask me.
Of course, my cynicism won't stop me from voting for Nader. I'm too bloody-minded.:)
What impressed me most was that Frank Miller, arguably one of Batman's most amazing writers over the years, has also signed on to write this baby.
Miller's The Dark Knight Returns (which explores Batman returning after a ten-year hiatus), and Batman: YO are amazing pieces of gritty, realistic fiction. He's also written a bunch of other great stuff, including Sin City and a great run of Daredevil, including most of the sequence with Elektra.
Those who are interested in the MIT event should probably check out the flyer.
It's a relatively well-attended event, although the hardware (and software) available ranges from antique (vacuum tubes and all) to the relatively new (PII-range tech). Decent prices, however, and you can generally get whatever you're looking for.
Fair enough; point taken. I suppose that you hit one of my pet peeves in the way that you phrased your response, then.
I guess I really just feel that cynicism shouldn't be taken to an extreme, even in jest or reducto-ad-absurdium arguments. When read without a good amount of thought, it can be more harmful than good.
Good to see that you are reading these posts, however. That's one of the nicest things I've found about Slashdot's interviews....and otherwise, I find your arguments lucid and quite convincing.
Internet or no Internet, your individual vote is mathematically meaningless in determining the outcome of an election anyway, and exit polls already exist to remind you of this fact.
While I understand the idea behind this comment, I take some offense to its implied message. Yes... individual votes don't matter a hell of a lot in this world. Yeah, that idea is reenforced. Informed votes who are overtaken by the malaise of "I shouldn't bother voting," end up becoming members of the saddest group in existance: people who could have made a chance but didn't.
I don't pretend to think that my vote is really that important, but I know that people like me - reasonably well-educated people - are quite likely to be driven off by the apparent futility of the electoral process. I force myself to vote because I know that my individual vote might not mean much, but the aggregate of my demographic's vote does....and if my demographic is apathetic, then people like me will be underrepresented.
You present a cynical view of the political process. Don't make it worse by reenforcing that particular perception.
First off, I'd like to make the comment that Lars's answers were obviously a transcript of an oral conversation. For anyone who still thinks that he was being incoherent and grammatically incorrect, I recommend that you tape a conversation between you and a friend for a few minutes, transcribe it, and read it back. It really does look horrible.
Secondly, I'm curious about Lars's assertion that they were able to monitor downloads. My understanding of napster is that the individual clients queried a centralized database of "libraries," which would then act as an intermediary between clients so that one might download from the other.
If NetPD actually did manage to monitor downloads, then that means one of two things:
Napster has horrible security, broadcasting the actions of any client attached to the central server (which I doubt, frankly), or
NetPD broke into Napster's computers for the information, which is blatantly illegal.
What I find infinitely more likely is that NetPD was in fact monitoring the contents of Napster's databases for instances of files with "metallica" in the title, noting the user names of anyone who had such an mp3 in their library. Thus, the claim that they only saw one unsigned artist is either misleading or an outright lie.
Further, this leads to the question about the nature of the libraries. It is possible to configure napster to not allow your computer to upload files to another client. If your client were set in such a fashion and you happened to have a metallica mp3 on your computer, you wouldn't actually be infringing on copyright, as you aren't actually granting anyone permission to download the file from you.
One wonders about the nature of this NetPD firm....and the nature of their tools.
It's only libel if you can prove (beyond a reasonable doubt) that Metallica's accusations resulted in damages. This is going to be very difficult.
"Yes, judge. I suffered irreperable harm to my name when Metallica had my Napster account cancelled. My friends and associates ridiculed me. I am now outcast."
I wonder if they actually tried downloading from each individual "offering" Metallica mp3s. I know that I, for instance, will often set "simultaneous uploads" to 0 when I'm behind a firewall. In doing that, I'm only allowing other people to look at my mp3 collection. Showing someone what you have is not the same as copyright infringement....
I'll accept that this is an interesting development, and perhaps even a good one, but in truth, it really scares me.
Perhaps I'm being old-fashioned here or even a classic trained-monkey consumer, but... I really want to own it, rather than rent it.
Our economy today seems to be moving more and more away from individual ownership to centralized ownership where our rights to use an item or a service are doled out on a per-item basis. Consider the fact that almost no one leased a car twenty years ago; it was something of a right of passage to own one....but these days, it's far more likely that one of us will lease rather than buy....and consider the new "hot area" of the Internet: ASP (application service providers, that is) and thin clients. Will I be able to buy my proprietary software in the future, or will I have to rent a timeshare in a server?
I think this is certainly a cool development, but every time I think about the possibility of not actually owning something that is a significant part of my life, I get chills. Am I alone here, folks?
RMS may not be the most... diplomatic... individual alive today, and his viewpoints are far from popular. His diatribes may indeed drive the mainstream users and corporations away from the FSF and away from Open Source as a movement, both as users and contributors.
...but he does fight for what he believes in, unabashedly and boldfacedly. In doing so, he's winning a few friends and more enemies, but he's also pushing for political and social change for what he perceives as the greater good.
I don't agree with everything that Stallman says, and I don't believe that he's taking the most reasonable path to his goal (or even pushing for moderate change), but in being inflexable and combative, he's pushing for freedoms and benefits which benefit us all, ultimately....or at least the proletariat, as it were.
I think that RMS is extreme and abrasive, but I'm damn glad he's there, fighting for what he believes in. If he weren't doing it, then I might have to....or one of you. Pragmatism shouldn't always take a back seat to principles.
What scares me about digital signatures is a combination of insecure cryptography, lack of privacy, and the nature of proof in today's court system.
A good friend of mine recently pointed out to me that in the case of - say - credit card purchases, the credit card companies have the burden of proof that you actually made the purchase they are charging you for. If you didn't do so, then they need to refund your money, assuming that you made a good faith effort to dispute their claim. This is not the case with signatures.
If the House bill makes digital signatures the equivalent of physical signatures, then the burden of proof is shifted to the supposed signatory. Didn't sign that promissory note for $150,000? Well, who did? It's got your digital signature on it! Meanwhile, some cracker's run off with your money and put it in a Swiss bank account.
Hardly what I want to see.
I, for one, will avoid digital signatures until it's fairly clear that the technologies are in place to certify that what bears my digital signature actually was signed by me. With all the nonsense that has been going on these days, I'm not sure I'd even trust biometrics for digital signatures.
I find it a shame that the post I am replying to (and my post, for that matter) are not on topic of this thread. This really was a very amusing story, and I think it's kind of a shame that it will be (rightly) moderated down because of its topic. I kind of wish that there were an archive of random amusing stories posted to Slashdot. Perhaps Mr. Malda might implement this at some later date; if so, I would be quite happy to see this post there.
I like the idea, but I think you're missing one, although you could argue that this falls under the "repetitive" category: the ones that chronicle their own lives. "For Better or For Worse," is one such. The kids actually grow up. The situations are often the same, but they actually change.
I do like the premise of your idea, however.
Tickets for the IgNobel Awards
on
Project Grizzly
·
· Score: 1
If you are interested, I suggest looking at the ticket information section of the IgNobel Awards page. From what I've heard from friends who have tickets, they may be gone by now. The ceremony is the 30th of September this year, although if you really want to see Troy, I suggest going to the talk he is giving tomorrow night at 7pm. Details are here. It is worth it, I think....and the awards are certainly worth seeing at least once. Occasionally juvinile humor, but it's good stuff.
As a side-note, they will also be live web-casting the presentation, although I sincerely hope it won't be slashdotted. I don't have tickets.:)
The IgNobel people don't think so
on
Project Grizzly
·
· Score: 3
I've actually been involved with the IgNobel people for several years now, and Marc Abrahams - the heart and soul of the Awards - genuinely respects him. Troy is leaps and bounds more scientifically respectable than the inventor of the plastic lawn flamingo or some guy who puts Barney dolls in formaldehyde (both of whom have received awards).
What Marc and the others were stunned at was the fact that Troy tests all of this stuff on himself. He doesn't much around with testing equipment; rather, he measures the real-world implications of the armor.
I, for one, think that there is something to all this. He's not someone to be snickered at and dismissed, even if he has won an IgNobel.
Microsoft owns FASA Interactive, which was a subset of FASA - the subset that produced all the computer games. FASA themselves got bought out shortly after selling FASA Interactive. The buyer, as the other responder to this post mentioned, was Decipher.
Slashdot Mirror
That said, Bujold's latest, The Sharing Knife, wasn't nearly as good as most of the rest of her stuff. I've not even read the second book, and I'm not sure I will.
At least according to Brad FitzPatrick. Basically, the lawyers went a bit bonkers, and the people who were supposed to review it didn't.
For those who don't want to click through:
Here is another concern. I just went to the Hamilton article, as I was fairly certain that it would be modified to address the issues that Mr. McHenry brought to light concerning Alexander Hamilton's birth date. I took a look at the footnote that had been entered next to Hamilton's birth date. It reads (at the moment):
...which goes to show, I suppose, that Wikipedia, however useful as a tool, is perhaps less than perfect.
I'm being pedantic. I know. It's horrible. ...but I'm getting sick of people thinking that broadband simply means "fat pipes."
In reality, the distinction is between "broadband" and "baseband." Broadband sends the data signal over a carrier frequency. In most cases, this frequency is your cable television information. Baseband is sent directly over the wires as spikes in signal, much in the same way that old-style telegraphs were sent, as with Morse Code.
Having said that, I suppose it's inevitable that "broadband" will eventually become a codeword for "high-speed, generally residential, Internet access," but I'm fighting that trend every step of the way. :)
From the TOS:
The rest of the TOS, while somewhat harsh-sounding, appears to be fairly standard legalese, saying that you aren't allowed to use Sprint to break laws; the only bit that somewhat distressess me is the following. You are not allowed to
...but I suspect that this is merely to give them carte blanche to "kick ban" harrassing folk. Same with their policy of port scans and the like (as they probably don't want to have people contacting their sysadmins saying that there are script kiddies trying to break into their networks).
They also have provisions limiting bandwidth consumption and servers that you can run from home, but most broadband services limit those these days, especially by forcing lease refreshes every month or so (or sooner).
Yeah, it seems somewhat fascist, I'll agree. ...but it's broadband. It's not a T1 or even DSL. You get what you pay for, and from what I see, this isn't that bad.
Gamespot's list seems to be heavily skewed toward titles which sold very well and managed in the same breath to be influential. All of the games are personal computer games, meaning that console and stand-up arcade games are completely ignored. Because of the factor of sales, they are of course going to be limited to the last decade, by and large, since the computer gaming industry didn't really become a huge playing field until then.
All the same, they do give a nod to the 80's with "SimCity" and "Ultima III." By both of their apparent criteria, they wouldn't really be able to avoid these games.
They completely ignore some of the biggest genres of the past, however. Some are because they were primarily console games, but they completely ignore some of the most influential titles in favor of flashier, more recent games.
Text adventure games, from the simple "Hunt the Wumpus" to "ADVENT" to "Zork" and Infocom's entire line are given the shaft, despite their contribution in showing the possibility of translating a rich world (and in many cases, complex plot) into a computer game. To my knowledge, no game company has developed a text parser which even comes close to matching the sophistication of Infocom's earliest engines.
They also ignore the hybrid text-adventure games pioneered by Sierra, such as the early "King's Quest" line and such classics as "Leisure Suit Larry" (which showed the viability of an adult-only game).
Early turn-based strategy games, such as the ASCII "Starbase" and its clones are likewise ignored, along with "Rogue," "Nethack," and its (still maintained) successors in the "Angband" line.
Early first-person adventure games, such as "Wizardry" and "Bards Tale" were left off completely, as were their predecessors in the table-top RPG world ("Tunnels and Trolls," "AD&D," and the like).
The shareware craze of the late-80s and early-90s is also left off, despite the fact that folks like Apogee and id Software brought the entire gaming industry kicking and screaming into the world of "this demo is more than a guided walkthrough for the first five minutes of the game; it's actually the first quarter of the game, uncut." What game reviewer worth their salt could ignore this craze?
They also completely ignore ganes which were influential in their development on the computer, such as ChessMaster, its predecessors, and its successors. The AIs developed for chess have shaped our perception of Man vs. Machine indelibly, especially recently, with the defeat of Kasparov.
All these (and many other genres) aside, of the list they selected, there are many games I would have chosen from other deveopers. They give - in my opinion - sufficient props to id Software for Doom and Quake, but they seem to ignore other game developers that deserve kudos. Blizzard they credit only with Diablo, and they don't mention Looking Glass at all. While Dune II might have been the formative stages for real-time strategy games, Blizzard's XxxxCraft line defined it.
I could go on, but it has been better covered in other posts, and I have to do some actual work today. :)
As a UNIX system administrator myself, I have to say that I have used the Red Book countless times, and it's saved me almost every time. I rarely have to look in another book (except perhaps the Frisch book, aka the "Blue Book," aka the "Armadillo Book"). What distressed me about this newest edition of the book is that they focus only on four OSs: FreeBSD, RedHat 6.2, Solaris 7, and HP-UX 11.00. While these are perhaps representative of the most popular UNIXes out there presently (with the exception of perhaps AIX), the authors made the conscious decision not to cover all of the OSs they had done before. The second edition, for instance, went over Solaris 2.4, HP-UX 9.0, IRIX 5.2, SunOS 4.1.3, DEC's OSF/1 2.0 (which is now Compaq Tru64), and BSD/OS 1.1.
For system administrators who are interested in supporting legacy systems, the Red Book (or, more specifically, the Second Edition) is still useful. I, for instance, needed to know how IRIX set up their /etc/exports or /etc/dfs/dfstab equivalent, and I was able to find it in seconds in the Red Book. No longer.
Otherwise, having now read the Purple Book cover to cover, I can recommend it heartily. It has the same style, flavor, and philosophy which has made the Red Book invaluable to me in the past, and I suspect that I'll be carrying around the Purple Book for years to come. Go buy it.
Note also that you can find /.'s review of the Red Book here, if you're curious.
I find Dr. Brin's arguments to be cogent and well thought-out. In fact, I agree with almost every conclusion he has made here, although I do disagree with some of his logic.
I'd like to further thank Dr. Brin and Hemos for a provocative and interesting commentary. ...and I'd like to urge all of the disaffected cynics out there to get off your duffs and vote in November. It might not seem like much, but it adds up....
While I agree with Platinum Dragon's basic premise, I do have to say that the nature of the presidential election itself has contributed significantly to the dominance of the Two Party Sustem. Individual candidates not only need the widespread legitimacy to overcome the "throwing your vote away" stigma, but they need to do it in each and every state.
After all, we're technically not voting for a single candidate. We're technically voting for the group of electors who will vote in the actual presidential election. If I cast a vote "for Gore," I'm actually casting my vote for the "electors which have been chosen for my state by the Democratic party."
So it's all or nothing. ...in each state. This is why presidents can technically be elected even if they don't have a popular majority. They just need to win in the high-electoral-vote states, and they can come away with a victory no matter what the voters in Rhode Island think of them.
...and third party candidates thus need as much legitimacy spread across the nation as one of the Two Biggies to stand a chance.
Ludicrous, if you ask me.
Of course, my cynicism won't stop me from voting for Nader. I'm too bloody-minded. :)
What impressed me most was that Frank Miller, arguably one of Batman's most amazing writers over the years, has also signed on to write this baby.
Miller's The Dark Knight Returns (which explores Batman returning after a ten-year hiatus), and Batman: YO are amazing pieces of gritty, realistic fiction. He's also written a bunch of other great stuff, including Sin City and a great run of Daredevil, including most of the sequence with Elektra.
Very cool, however. I'm looking forward to this.
Those who are interested in the MIT event should probably check out the flyer.
It's a relatively well-attended event, although the hardware (and software) available ranges from antique (vacuum tubes and all) to the relatively new (PII-range tech). Decent prices, however, and you can generally get whatever you're looking for.
I guess I really just feel that cynicism shouldn't be taken to an extreme, even in jest or reducto-ad-absurdium arguments. When read without a good amount of thought, it can be more harmful than good.
Good to see that you are reading these posts, however. That's one of the nicest things I've found about Slashdot's interviews. ...and otherwise, I find your arguments lucid and quite convincing.
For the record....
While I understand the idea behind this comment, I take some offense to its implied message. Yes... individual votes don't matter a hell of a lot in this world. Yeah, that idea is reenforced. Informed votes who are overtaken by the malaise of "I shouldn't bother voting," end up becoming members of the saddest group in existance: people who could have made a chance but didn't.
I don't pretend to think that my vote is really that important, but I know that people like me - reasonably well-educated people - are quite likely to be driven off by the apparent futility of the electoral process. I force myself to vote because I know that my individual vote might not mean much, but the aggregate of my demographic's vote does. ...and if my demographic is apathetic, then people like me will be underrepresented.
You present a cynical view of the political process. Don't make it worse by reenforcing that particular perception.
Secondly, I'm curious about Lars's assertion that they were able to monitor downloads. My understanding of napster is that the individual clients queried a centralized database of "libraries," which would then act as an intermediary between clients so that one might download from the other.
If NetPD actually did manage to monitor downloads, then that means one of two things:
What I find infinitely more likely is that NetPD was in fact monitoring the contents of Napster's databases for instances of files with "metallica" in the title, noting the user names of anyone who had such an mp3 in their library. Thus, the claim that they only saw one unsigned artist is either misleading or an outright lie.
Further, this leads to the question about the nature of the libraries. It is possible to configure napster to not allow your computer to upload files to another client. If your client were set in such a fashion and you happened to have a metallica mp3 on your computer, you wouldn't actually be infringing on copyright, as you aren't actually granting anyone permission to download the file from you.
One wonders about the nature of this NetPD firm. ...and the nature of their tools.
It's only libel if you can prove (beyond a reasonable doubt) that Metallica's accusations resulted in damages. This is going to be very difficult.
"Yes, judge. I suffered irreperable harm to my name when Metallica had my Napster account cancelled. My friends and associates ridiculed me. I am now outcast."
Ain't going to happen.
I wonder if they actually tried downloading from each individual "offering" Metallica mp3s. I know that I, for instance, will often set "simultaneous uploads" to 0 when I'm behind a firewall. In doing that, I'm only allowing other people to look at my mp3 collection. Showing someone what you have is not the same as copyright infringement....
I'll accept that this is an interesting development, and perhaps even a good one, but in truth, it really scares me.
Perhaps I'm being old-fashioned here or even a classic trained-monkey consumer, but ... I really want to own it, rather than rent it.
Our economy today seems to be moving more and more away from individual ownership to centralized ownership where our rights to use an item or a service are doled out on a per-item basis. Consider the fact that almost no one leased a car twenty years ago; it was something of a right of passage to own one. ...but these days, it's far more likely that one of us will lease rather than buy. ...and consider the new "hot area" of the Internet: ASP (application service providers, that is) and thin clients. Will I be able to buy my proprietary software in the future, or will I have to rent a timeshare in a server?
I think this is certainly a cool development, but every time I think about the possibility of not actually owning something that is a significant part of my life, I get chills. Am I alone here, folks?
RMS may not be the most ... diplomatic ... individual alive today, and his viewpoints are far from popular. His diatribes may indeed drive the mainstream users and corporations away from the FSF and away from Open Source as a movement, both as users and contributors.
...or at least the proletariat, as it were.
...or one of you. Pragmatism shouldn't always take a back seat to principles.
...but he does fight for what he believes in, unabashedly and boldfacedly. In doing so, he's winning a few friends and more enemies, but he's also pushing for political and social change for what he perceives as the greater good.
I don't agree with everything that Stallman says, and I don't believe that he's taking the most reasonable path to his goal (or even pushing for moderate change), but in being inflexable and combative, he's pushing for freedoms and benefits which benefit us all, ultimately.
I think that RMS is extreme and abrasive, but I'm damn glad he's there, fighting for what he believes in. If he weren't doing it, then I might have to.
A good friend of mine recently pointed out to me that in the case of - say - credit card purchases, the credit card companies have the burden of proof that you actually made the purchase they are charging you for. If you didn't do so, then they need to refund your money, assuming that you made a good faith effort to dispute their claim. This is not the case with signatures.
If the House bill makes digital signatures the equivalent of physical signatures, then the burden of proof is shifted to the supposed signatory. Didn't sign that promissory note for $150,000? Well, who did? It's got your digital signature on it! Meanwhile, some cracker's run off with your money and put it in a Swiss bank account.
Hardly what I want to see.
I, for one, will avoid digital signatures until it's fairly clear that the technologies are in place to certify that what bears my digital signature actually was signed by me. With all the nonsense that has been going on these days, I'm not sure I'd even trust biometrics for digital signatures.
My $0.02.
I find it a shame that the post I am replying to (and my post, for that matter) are not on topic of this thread. This really was a very amusing story, and I think it's kind of a shame that it will be (rightly) moderated down because of its topic. I kind of wish that there were an archive of random amusing stories posted to Slashdot. Perhaps Mr. Malda might implement this at some later date; if so, I would be quite happy to see this post there.
I do like the premise of your idea, however.
As a side-note, they will also be live web-casting the presentation, although I sincerely hope it won't be slashdotted. I don't have tickets. :)
I've actually been involved with the IgNobel people for several years now, and Marc Abrahams - the heart and soul of the Awards - genuinely respects him. Troy is leaps and bounds more scientifically respectable than the inventor of the plastic lawn flamingo or some guy who puts Barney dolls in formaldehyde (both of whom have received awards).
What Marc and the others were stunned at was the fact that Troy tests all of this stuff on himself. He doesn't much around with testing equipment; rather, he measures the real-world implications of the armor.
I, for one, think that there is something to all this. He's not someone to be snickered at and dismissed, even if he has won an IgNobel.
Microsoft owns FASA Interactive, which was a subset of FASA - the subset that produced all the computer games. FASA themselves got bought out shortly after selling FASA Interactive. The buyer, as the other responder to this post mentioned, was Decipher.