These are some of the podcasts to which I listen on a regular basis:
Coverville: Nothing but covers of songs. Good commentary; takes listener requests.
Firesign Theatre: Snippets of FT albums and commercials they've done. I don't know if the commercials are serious or not, but they're for real companies, and are typical FT.
On the Media: A weekly NPR program. Since I'm rarely in the house Saturday when it's broadcast, I love the ability to listen to it during the week as I have time.
The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd: The serialized (and funny) adventures of Dr. Floyd as he travels through time battling his nemesis Dr. Steve.
Safe Digressions: Your daily dose of poetry, and a refreshing break during a day of techie nonsense.
Science @ NASA: Brief reports on various NASA activities. The stories about the Huygens probe have been particularly interesting, especially the description of methane rainbows on Titan.
Unfortunately, they don't. There was a bit of a stir last year around here (Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina) because Tift Merritt, a local product and a fairly big name in alt country circles (I don't hang in those circles, so forgive me if I get the exact genre wrong), couldn't get airplay on the local country station because, as an independent, she wasn't on the Clear Channel approved list.
Of course, anyone in the U.S.A. still listening to FM stations above 91.9 for music deserves the dreck they get.
I thought it was a sentence fragment as well, until I considered the possibility that claims, in this instance, is being used as a verb. In that case, the sentence is complete and logical, as it refers to the claim being made by the story (three years worth of...).
A spokesperson for Earth First! called for an immediate boycott of Japanese products. "We cannot stand idly by and watch the further enslavement and oppression of our green brothers and sisters by chlorophyll-challenged bipeds. We call on right-thinking people everywhere to send a clear message to the profiteering corporate lackeys of Japan that we shall not accept their careless attacks on the other lifeforms that allow us to share Gaia with them."
This is not unusual practice at all. Have you been to an airport lately? First Class passengers generally have their own line at the ticket counter. If you are a frequent buyer at many stores, you'll receive invitations for special events/sales. It makes sense to reward your best customers, though I would agree this can be abused.
The argument is valid now because both the 9/11 Commission and senior members of the Justice Department have said the FBI needs to consider dropping some of its traditional crime investigating to focus on counterterrorism. In an environment of shifting FBI priorities, what focus/resources should be committed to enforcing IP law as opposed to other crimes, which are, apparently, going to be turned over to local authorities. Are we looking at a world in which the FBI deals solely with terrorists and IP offenders?
I'd be willing to bet the service has a minimal amount of classical music in their database. Of course, it could simply be they don't have room for such an obscure piece of music as the "Moonlight Sonata."
The sad part is that there are many times I hear a piece of classical music on the radio and would gladly pay $0.99 to find out what it is, especially when I'm on the road and likely to be out of range of the station before it's finished. I suspect there are other classical listeners in the same boat, and with disposable income for such a service.
"millios are paid" -- how on earth does anyone objectively measure that?
It's fairly simple for companies to measure the cost of viruses, et. al., by adding the direct cost of the staff required to clean machines and an estimate of the indirect cost of time lost by employees while computers and email are down. It can be significant: the multinational company with which I was associated during the Melissa attack lost email for two days. The direct costs alone (of people to clean up machines) was documented at over $1,000,000.
Here is the real trap in proprietary standards: if a vendor's product cost a company over $1MM because of a flaw, you can bet that vendor would be gone in a heartbeat. However, because mission critical systems are tied to proprietary standards for which there is no practical substitute, companies are, for the most part, stuck.
The sad reality is this: when a company is locked into your product, for any reason, your motivation for spending money on enhancements/customer service is greatly reduced. This is true for many companies, not just Microsoft. It's called human nature and greed.
Er, yes....using the Internet creatively will get you where you want to be...ask Howard Dean. And why did he flame out so spectacularly? I wonder if it was a Truman-Dewey situation.
For those who don't remember President Truman (probably 99% of the people here), he was an incumbent underdog running for reelection against Thomas Dewey in 1948. The polls showed Dewey winning by a large margin, to the point that one of the New York papers preprinted their post-Election Day issue with the now-infamous headline Dewey Beats Truman. Truman won the election. It turned out the pollsters were doing their work by telephone, at a time when a significant number of voters still didn't have them. Because their polling methodology was flawed, the results were, as well.
What does this have to do with Dean? Simply this: the people who get out and vote, especially in primaries, are not the high tech Meet Upsters that drew so much attention. While the techsters are more than willing to contribute online (just another form of online shopping), fewer are willing to get out and talk to their neighbors and fellow voters (as opposed to taking a field trip to another state for a day or two), much less actually do the grunt work involved in actually going out and voting.
How many of you who email Congress at the drop of a hat have taken the time and postage to mail a letter to your local Congresscritter (snail mail is taken more seriously by Congressional staffers)? How many of you who went to a Meet Up actually went to the polls and voted?
Until folks understand that technology is an enabling tool, not a magic bullet, politics as usual will continue to be the norm. And, until folks understand that the vast majority of voters in this country are not looking at who's using the sexiest technology, but who's pushing the right buttons, the techogeeks will continue to be confined to the infrastructure, rather than the policy making area.
You left out a; in your sig. If you're going to use a semi-obscure language in your sig, at least get the punctuation right! Can you tell I haven't had my second cup of tea yet? And, yes, it is possible for me to be even more anal retentive than this.
There are several very good note taking/notebook products available for the Mac. One that I use and enjoy trememendously is NoteTaker. It even includes a module to support Microsoft products. Audio note taking seems to be a standard feature for these products in the Mac world (check VersionTracker for a more complete selection. Keep in mind that, in the OSX world, services allows the level of integration MS is trying to provide as a base capability for just about any piece of software that wants to take advantage of it.
A dictionary definition of terrorism is, sadly, irrelevant to this discussion. The only definition that matters, for better or worse, is the definition in the relevant law. If Patriot XII defines cyberterrorism as disagreeing with government policy (see the Alien and Sedition Acts), then disagreeing with government policy will constitute terrorism. It's one side effect of a government based on the rule of law: definitions are sometime ambiguous and counterintuitive.
I wonder how long it will be before Homeland Security decides this technology is too terrorist-friendly. After all, imagine a gym full of terrorists networking their laptops to engineer a deadly pathogen or a nuclear device? The horror!
This may sound like a joke (and I'm writing it as one), but I expect to see this kind of response from our current administration shortly after this experiment succeeds.
The tivo is recording shows I might like to watch on channels I don't get! Great movie, Tivo! I love the way you mock my poverty by recording two hours of black screen!
The reason this is happening is that you haven't removed these channels from your list of Channels I Receive (that's what it's called on my DirecTiVo). The trick is to set Channels I Receive to show only the channels you want to see/actually have. Once you do that, you should have no more trouble with phantom recordings.
I can go one better: at a previous job, I sat in on a pre-conference call conference call, whose participants were the same people who would be taking part in the conference call. The only thing that saved my sanity was the plate of muffins.
Was anyone else concerned about the poor quality of the transcript. Harper and Roe? Their for they're? Come on...doesn't anyone proof these things?
There is a serious side to this. The transcript is the official record of what happened in the case, and is quoted in appeals, future cases, etc. If this is an example of the quality of such things, how long before a substantive error of fact makes its way into one and becomes a part of our law.
I'd be embarrassed by this relase if I was the judge (or the transcriptionist).
...it's a standard product offering from IBM for MVS and, IIRC, VM. The point is that this level of security is not new and it's certainly available commercially. While it may not be available on NT, almost every robust OS has an acceptable level of access control.
What I'm wondering is how this type of requirement isn't part and parcel of every RFP for voting machines. Perhaps our government no longer considers voting as important as commerce...a sad day, indeed.
I can't believe the Diebold folks actually said this:
Note however that even if we put a password on the file, it doesn't really prove much. Someone has to know the password, else how would GEMS open it. So this technically brings us back to square one: the audit log is modifiable by that person at least (read, me). Back to perception though, if you don't bring this up you might skate through Metamor.
There might be some clever crypto techniques to make it even harder to change the log (for me, they guy with the password that is). We're talking big changes here though, and at the moment largely theoretical ones. I'd doubt that any of our competitors are that clever.
I seem to recall that, back in the Dark Ages of the 70s, RACF was able to handle this kind of access control quite nicely. To say a log file can't be protected from the sysadm is either dishonest or incompetent. Either reason should be enough to disqualify a company employing someone like that in that position from anything requiring the public trust.
Unfortunately, this is about much more than Internet privacy. There are at least two major issues that are going to make solutions especially difficult:
Whose ox is being gored? There is little consistency in the positions and posturings of those involved in the privacy debate. For example, we believe in freedom of expression on the Internet...except for those who promulgate hate speech (which is defined as speech I find offensive). We believe in respecting the privacy of those on the Net...except for those who I believe are abusing the Net (they're fair game for any abuse I choose to heap on them).
National sovreignty: There seems to be two approaches to this: national sovreignty applies to every nation, except, of course, those nations with policies I don't like; and national sovreignty applies to no one, except, of course, those evil transnationals (and any other organization I don't like) who need to be under the sovreignty of every country.
Emerson said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds." It would appear that consistency of any kind is the hobgoblin of all of us. What this means is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution, just as there is no one-size-fits-all ideologies. We are going to have struggle together to arrive at workable solutions. We're going to have to listen to those with whom we disagree and work together to create the best compromise we can.
If I still had my mod points from yesterday, I would mod this up. The writer raises the same concern I have: ripping a CD constitutes making a copy. A copy may not be shared with others. Hence, any files on a P2P network are, de facto, illegal. Of course, if you wanted to set up a CD jukebox on your machine and share that...
Slashdot Mirror
Coverville: Nothing but covers of songs. Good commentary; takes listener requests.
Firesign Theatre: Snippets of FT albums and commercials they've done. I don't know if the commercials are serious or not, but they're for real companies, and are typical FT.
On the Media: A weekly NPR program. Since I'm rarely in the house Saturday when it's broadcast, I love the ability to listen to it during the week as I have time.
The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd: The serialized (and funny) adventures of Dr. Floyd as he travels through time battling his nemesis Dr. Steve.
Safe Digressions: Your daily dose of poetry, and a refreshing break during a day of techie nonsense.
Science @ NASA: Brief reports on various NASA activities. The stories about the Huygens probe have been particularly interesting, especially the description of methane rainbows on Titan.
Of course, anyone in the U.S.A. still listening to FM stations above 91.9 for music deserves the dreck they get.
I thought it was a sentence fragment as well, until I considered the possibility that claims, in this instance, is being used as a verb. In that case, the sentence is complete and logical, as it refers to the claim being made by the story (three years worth of...).
A spokesperson for Earth First! called for an immediate boycott of Japanese products. "We cannot stand idly by and watch the further enslavement and oppression of our green brothers and sisters by chlorophyll-challenged bipeds. We call on right-thinking people everywhere to send a clear message to the profiteering corporate lackeys of Japan that we shall not accept their careless attacks on the other lifeforms that allow us to share Gaia with them."
This is not unusual practice at all. Have you been to an airport lately? First Class passengers generally have their own line at the ticket counter. If you are a frequent buyer at many stores, you'll receive invitations for special events/sales. It makes sense to reward your best customers, though I would agree this can be abused.
The argument is valid now because both the 9/11 Commission and senior members of the Justice Department have said the FBI needs to consider dropping some of its traditional crime investigating to focus on counterterrorism. In an environment of shifting FBI priorities, what focus/resources should be committed to enforcing IP law as opposed to other crimes, which are, apparently, going to be turned over to local authorities. Are we looking at a world in which the FBI deals solely with terrorists and IP offenders?
And I bow to your choice of a good Lovecraftian place name. May your dream quests be always successful.
At this moment, the channel on Live365 to which I'm listening is playing Cage's 4'33". I wonder if the service would recognize that.
Of course, this being /., I suspect the majority of people reading this would need to use the service to identify Beethoven's Piano Sonata in c#.
The sad part is that there are many times I hear a piece of classical music on the radio and would gladly pay $0.99 to find out what it is, especially when I'm on the road and likely to be out of range of the station before it's finished. I suspect there are other classical listeners in the same boat, and with disposable income for such a service.
Here is the real trap in proprietary standards: if a vendor's product cost a company over $1MM because of a flaw, you can bet that vendor would be gone in a heartbeat. However, because mission critical systems are tied to proprietary standards for which there is no practical substitute, companies are, for the most part, stuck.
The sad reality is this: when a company is locked into your product, for any reason, your motivation for spending money on enhancements/customer service is greatly reduced. This is true for many companies, not just Microsoft. It's called human nature and greed.
For those who don't remember President Truman (probably 99% of the people here), he was an incumbent underdog running for reelection against Thomas Dewey in 1948. The polls showed Dewey winning by a large margin, to the point that one of the New York papers preprinted their post-Election Day issue with the now-infamous headline Dewey Beats Truman. Truman won the election. It turned out the pollsters were doing their work by telephone, at a time when a significant number of voters still didn't have them. Because their polling methodology was flawed, the results were, as well.
What does this have to do with Dean? Simply this: the people who get out and vote, especially in primaries, are not the high tech Meet Upsters that drew so much attention. While the techsters are more than willing to contribute online (just another form of online shopping), fewer are willing to get out and talk to their neighbors and fellow voters (as opposed to taking a field trip to another state for a day or two), much less actually do the grunt work involved in actually going out and voting.
How many of you who email Congress at the drop of a hat have taken the time and postage to mail a letter to your local Congresscritter (snail mail is taken more seriously by Congressional staffers)? How many of you who went to a Meet Up actually went to the polls and voted?
Until folks understand that technology is an enabling tool, not a magic bullet, politics as usual will continue to be the norm. And, until folks understand that the vast majority of voters in this country are not looking at who's using the sexiest technology, but who's pushing the right buttons, the techogeeks will continue to be confined to the infrastructure, rather than the policy making area.
You left out a ; in your sig. If you're going to use a semi-obscure language in your sig, at least get the punctuation right! Can you tell I haven't had my second cup of tea yet? And, yes, it is possible for me to be even more anal retentive than this.
There are several very good note taking/notebook products available for the Mac. One that I use and enjoy trememendously is NoteTaker. It even includes a module to support Microsoft products. Audio note taking seems to be a standard feature for these products in the Mac world (check VersionTracker for a more complete selection. Keep in mind that, in the OSX world, services allows the level of integration MS is trying to provide as a base capability for just about any piece of software that wants to take advantage of it.
A dictionary definition of terrorism is, sadly, irrelevant to this discussion. The only definition that matters, for better or worse, is the definition in the relevant law. If Patriot XII defines cyberterrorism as disagreeing with government policy (see the Alien and Sedition Acts), then disagreeing with government policy will constitute terrorism. It's one side effect of a government based on the rule of law: definitions are sometime ambiguous and counterintuitive.
This may sound like a joke (and I'm writing it as one), but I expect to see this kind of response from our current administration shortly after this experiment succeeds.
The reason this is happening is that you haven't removed these channels from your list of Channels I Receive (that's what it's called on my DirecTiVo). The trick is to set Channels I Receive to show only the channels you want to see/actually have. Once you do that, you should have no more trouble with phantom recordings.
I can go one better: at a previous job, I sat in on a pre-conference call conference call, whose participants were the same people who would be taking part in the conference call. The only thing that saved my sanity was the plate of muffins.
There is a serious side to this. The transcript is the official record of what happened in the case, and is quoted in appeals, future cases, etc. If this is an example of the quality of such things, how long before a substantive error of fact makes its way into one and becomes a part of our law.
I'd be embarrassed by this relase if I was the judge (or the transcriptionist).
What I'm wondering is how this type of requirement isn't part and parcel of every RFP for voting machines. Perhaps our government no longer considers voting as important as commerce...a sad day, indeed.
Note however that even if we put a password on the file, it doesn't really prove much. Someone has to know the password, else how would GEMS open it. So this technically brings us back to square one: the audit log is modifiable by that person at least (read, me). Back to perception though, if you don't bring this up you might skate through Metamor.
There might be some clever crypto techniques to make it even harder to change the log (for me, they guy with the password that is). We're talking big changes here though, and at the moment largely theoretical ones. I'd doubt that any of our competitors are that clever.
I seem to recall that, back in the Dark Ages of the 70s, RACF was able to handle this kind of access control quite nicely. To say a log file can't be protected from the sysadm is either dishonest or incompetent. Either reason should be enough to disqualify a company employing someone like that in that position from anything requiring the public trust.
Whose ox is being gored? There is little consistency in the positions and posturings of those involved in the privacy debate. For example, we believe in freedom of expression on the Internet...except for those who promulgate hate speech (which is defined as speech I find offensive). We believe in respecting the privacy of those on the Net...except for those who I believe are abusing the Net (they're fair game for any abuse I choose to heap on them).
National sovreignty: There seems to be two approaches to this: national sovreignty applies to every nation, except, of course, those nations with policies I don't like; and national sovreignty applies to no one, except, of course, those evil transnationals (and any other organization I don't like) who need to be under the sovreignty of every country.
Emerson said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds." It would appear that consistency of any kind is the hobgoblin of all of us. What this means is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution, just as there is no one-size-fits-all ideologies. We are going to have struggle together to arrive at workable solutions. We're going to have to listen to those with whom we disagree and work together to create the best compromise we can.
If I still had my mod points from yesterday, I would mod this up. The writer raises the same concern I have: ripping a CD constitutes making a copy. A copy may not be shared with others. Hence, any files on a P2P network are, de facto, illegal. Of course, if you wanted to set up a CD jukebox on your machine and share that...
...I nearly died laughing when I saw the icon next to job # 8. The juxtaposition of Barney with that job....well, check it out for yourself here.