What caused the.com crash was rampant speculation that funded businesses with no business plan, not 19-year-olds. I.e., greed, not inexperience. This is not to say that 19-year-olds always come up with the goods, but at the time of the bubble it was just *stunning* how many dumb business plans got funded.
It wouldn't work unless everybody did it. I think it would take a concerted effort to convince people to register strategically, rather than registering with the party they dislike the least (I don't think many people register with parties they actually *like*, unfortunately).
Re:It's too bad we can't just register republican.
on
Gerrymandering by Computer
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Oh, the idea isn't intentional sabotage. It is, "if the only person who can win in this district is a republican, then I want a chance to choose which republican runs."
The article in the New Yorker points out that in a district that's been gerrymandered, the party for whom that district has been gerrymandered always wins the election, so the real election is the primary, not the general election. So really only about 1/6 of the voters in the district actually choose, and they're the most polarized voters.
So the point is, if your district has been gerrymandered, you should register as a member of the party for which the district has been gerrymandered, so that you get to be one of the 1/6th that vote. If everybody did this, the primary would be the general election, and the candidate would be accountable to the voters despite the gerrymandering.
It's too bad we can't just register republican...
on
Gerrymandering by Computer
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· Score: 4, Interesting
...and get our licks in in the primary. Really, to me, what this article says is that political parties really have become obsolete bodies whose only purpose is to disenfranchise the voters, and that we voters should simply ignore parties and vote pragmatically.
I don't register with a party affiliation because I find both parties so distasteful. I think it would be very wise for us independents to figure out for what party our district has been gerrymandered and register in that party, and if we run, run in that party.
It would be cool if the supremes solved this by ruling that all voters have to be able to vote in all primaries.
...not to kill Linux FAT support. The prices they've set are for a very specific set of items, and are low enough that I suspect the manufacturers will just pay them. I suppose they might decide to try to license FAT for use in Linux and the BSDs later, but if they do they risk triggering antitrust litigation again, and regardless of how easily they got off this time, I doubt they want to go through that again.
Re:He wants an "internet tax" to support artists
on
Interview with Jim Griffin
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· Score: 3, Interesting
It seems like what you're objecting to here is the idea that government would choose who would get payment, not to any givernment involvement at all, right? Correct me if I am wrong, but it looks like you want the government, wether through passage of laws or through its capacity as the enforcer of contracts, to make sure that people pay.
One of the big objections that I see to BMI/ASCAP/RIAA is that regardless of what's played, most of the money goes to the record companies, then the big artists get their cut, and the little artists get nothing. But the little artists don't have the right to opt out. At first blush, it seems like a non-obnoxious micropayment system would be fairer. How do you make your statistics-based system fair to small artists? And what about opting out?
I know, I know, just what you'd expect a Buddhist to say. I have too much junk around, and what I do to get it organized is to do triage. Do I really need this? If not, it goes. Have I used this in the last six months? No? Out it goes.
My wife has a set of stacking drawers in a closet, which were pretty cheap, and we put stuff we can't toss in those. But there's probably someone who can use that boat anchor computer you're tripping over every day on the way to the bathroom, so find them and give it to them, and enjoy the extra floor space!
Re:What are you talking about?
on
Effective XML
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· Score: 1
That's a really good point. The work I've been doing with XML at work has involved using XML as the outer representation, which is compiled to an internal representation.
So we have the advantage of being able to use generic tools to search the master data representation, and we can explode the internal representation back into XML, but we generally work with the internal representation.
And actually, because we have the master copy of the data in XML, we can (and do) generate specialized binary databases from the XML for particular applications, each of which just contains the data we need.
Personally, I think sexprs are niftier (and smaller, and definitely geekier!), but XML has proven really valuable in this particular application, and we do not have to suffer from performance problems as a result of using it, because we are (IMHO) making good strategic use of it.
Re:What are you talking about?
on
Effective XML
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· Score: 1
Have you ever tried to grep a DBM file? See the previous comment, which boils down to "XML's win is that it's a well-known format that can be easily searched and manipulated."
Re:What are you talking about?
on
Effective XML
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· Score: 2, Interesting
This is by no means assured. When you store data in a binary format, you generally have to have code to deal with byte-swapping and other format conversions. Also, generally speaking, the limitation on character parsing is memory bandwidth - if you are using a modern CPU, it is going to spend most of its time waiting for bits to come out of memory, and it doesn't care whether they're an ASCII (or utf8) byte stream or binary words.
Also, a lot of stuff that goes around in packets is free-form text anyway, not binary data. So in the case where you're just passing numbers around, yes, XML is going to be a bit slower simply because there are more bits to pull out of the buffer. But in the case of plain text, the difference is probably not going to be very significant. In cases where it is significant, you probably don't want to use XML.
You are right that XML is not a panacea - I wouldn't use it for every application. I think a lot of the anti-xml rhetoric we hear is because so many people do use it for the wrong applications, and then other people see what they've done and start retching.
A couple more points - XML::Twig allows you to parse XML in PERL without sucking the whole file in at once. Also, the article to which I was replying was talking about SQLXML, which I presume is already plain text. It's tough to imagine that XML is really going to make that significantly slower - if it is, it's probably because of a poor implementation, not increased data size.
Re:What are you talking about?
on
Effective XML
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· Score: 1
ROTFL! I wish I could mod this up!:')
Er, you were kidding, right?:')
What are you talking about?
on
Effective XML
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· Score: 5, Insightful
XML is just text! If the XML parser is slow, write a faster one! Figure out where the bottlenecks are! Don't give me this XML is slow crap. This is slashdot - you're supposed to be a geek. If you don't like XML, fine, but come up with a geeky reason not to like it, not some problem whose solution is just to roll up your sleeves and do some hacking!
More to the point, if Microsoft's source repository were compromised, what do you think the chances are that they would tell anybody if they could avoid it? Not saying they're bad people - just that it wouldn't be in their interests to do so. Unlike with regular Microsoft security problems, this sort of problem wouldn't be seen outside of Microsoft.
I think it's a bit ridiculous to assume that this is actually happening. The original story asserts that it is, but frankly, it sounds like an unsubstantiated rumor to me.
Also, just because the government is "in the business" doesn't mean they should be.:)
That was my point, actually. Although realistically I don't see the government getting out of this business, and I therefore feel gleefully justified in haggling over the structure of the deal.:')
The mere fact that the government is in the business of enforcing copyright means that they are in the business of supporting the arts. As the joke goes, we know what they are. Now we're just haggling over the structure of the deal.
Urk. You're right - I should have looked before I leapt. However, the point is still the same - iTunes has its own way of formatting the iPod, and it would be a major hassle to switch to MusicMatch's way of formatting the iPod - a hassle that would project out into the forseeable future, since then Apple would have to continue to maintain compatibility to MusicMatch's resource formats. My argument is a bit weaker because of my mistake about HFS, but I think it's still essentially correct. Of course, I *would* think that...:')
Lots of people have complained that if you have an iPod for Windows, and you have a Mac, when you plug the iPod into the Mac, the Mac wants to reformat it. And when you have an iPod for Mac and you plug it into your Windows machine, MusicMatch doesn't work with it without reformatting.
This is because the iPod looks like a disk drive. On the Mac, it's formatted as an HFS volume. On Windows, it was formatted as a Windows volume.
Now, with iTunes for Windows, you can share your iPod between Windows and Mac. This is because iTunes for Windows knows how to deal with HFS volumes. But unfortunately, MusicMatch for Windows does not know how to do this.
So you lose something, and you get something. Depending on what you want, you may prefer one solution or the other. If you prefer MusicMatch, stick with it. If you prefer iTunes, stick with it.
The point is that this was not just an arbitrary attempt to shut MusicMatch out of the business. It was done for a good reason. If MusicMatch wants to maintain iPod compatiblity after you install iTunes, this is doable, because HFS+ is a documented standard, and the source code to read and write HFS+ filesystems is available from Apple - it's part of Darwin, which is open source.
So yes, Apple did make an incompatible change. And it sucks for people who really like MusicMatch. But there was a good reason for making the change, and I personally think the end result is a significant improvement. YMMV.
No, it's not going to save anybody any money, and it's not going to replace MacOS in the enterprise. But NetBSD does have some advantages over MacOS - better VM, for instance. With MacOS, I routinely find that if I do anything memory-intensive, my interactive performance goes to hell. NetBSD's VM system does much better in similar circumstances.
So I'm always jonesing for NetBSD because, for me, it performs better. I am sure there are other good reasons to do this, and of course there are good reasons to stay the heck away from it if it's not what you need. But it's still a cool hack, and I'm happy that Emmanuel is working on it.
It seems like what this can do now is to say to Coke "yes, your branding scheme has worked." But Coke already knows that - that's why they're beating Pepsi in the market. This is also unhelpful because it's a test of what *has worked over time*, not what *will work over time*. What is being measured is the impression Coke has made over the people in the test over the course of their lives.
The problem with this is that it doesn't tell Pepsi what to do to get the same results. Pepsi can't sit in the lab and tweak their image until they get the same results, because what's being measured isn't the effectiveness of a new image, but the degree of recognition of a well-known image.
This is a funny idea, but filing a false report of a crime is itself a crime. So you really don't want to play this game. However, I agree that using the term "spammer" is a bad idea - you can just call it "for the purposes of distributing fraudulent messages," or some other accurate statement that doesn't mention the word "spammer."
However, getting law enforcement to take you seriously on something like this might be a real challenge anwyay - they don't know you from Jack, and so why should they trust you?
I don't mean you're not trustworthy - I'm just pointing out that there's no trust relationship there, and you're putting yourself forth as an investigator, not a crime victim. It will be very hard for you to get them to think of you as legitimate.
I think this actually makes things better for you. Right now many DSL addresses are blacklisted, because they are major sources of spam. With this system, you can set up the name server from your domain to say that your DSL IP address is a valid relay for your domain, and then it should just work.
Not at all! The ACLU frequently rights against civil rights. In California, they led the opposition against racist university admissions (arguing that it is OK to punish individuals for their skin color in the name of "diversity"). They have an entire division devoted to punishing people for having the wrong skin color. (shows how the ACLU opposes due process)
Overt racial quotas to fight covert racism. A case can be made either way. If you don't like it, join the EFF or something. I said "organizations." I happen to think that the ACLU is a great example. If you don't, vote with your feet.
Elsewhere, the ACLU fights to censor the speech of individuals who happen to use religious terminology in their speech. (shows how the ACLU opposes the first amendment).
Here you get no sympathy from me. The ACLU fights to prevent government-sponsored religious speech, particularly when it favors a particular religion. If you are serious about your religion, you should be all in favor of this.
Chances are that 300 years ago, it was illegal in most parts of Europe for you to practice whatever religion you practice. It's still probably illegal to talk about it in many countries around the world, or if not, it'll get you on surveillance lists here in the states.
For example, I know of several countries, some of which you might even otherwise enjoy visiting, where merely discussing Christianity in a positive light with a citizen of that country can land you in jail for five years.
When municipalities here in the U.S. use government facilities to promote religion, they are stepping to the edge of the slippery slope that leads to just that sort of law. If you enjoy the freedom to practice your religion, you might want to think twice about getting upset about people who fight to prevent that.
Slashdot Mirror
What caused the .com crash was rampant speculation that funded businesses with no business plan, not 19-year-olds. I.e., greed, not inexperience. This is not to say that 19-year-olds always come up with the goods, but at the time of the bubble it was just *stunning* how many dumb business plans got funded.
It wouldn't work unless everybody did it. I think it would take a concerted effort to convince people to register strategically, rather than registering with the party they dislike the least (I don't think many people register with parties they actually *like*, unfortunately).
Oh, the idea isn't intentional sabotage. It is, "if the only person who can win in this district is a republican, then I want a chance to choose which republican runs."
The article in the New Yorker points out that in a district that's been gerrymandered, the party for whom that district has been gerrymandered always wins the election, so the real election is the primary, not the general election. So really only about 1/6 of the voters in the district actually choose, and they're the most polarized voters.
So the point is, if your district has been gerrymandered, you should register as a member of the party for which the district has been gerrymandered, so that you get to be one of the 1/6th that vote. If everybody did this, the primary would be the general election, and the candidate would be accountable to the voters despite the gerrymandering.
...and get our licks in in the primary. Really, to me, what this article says is that political parties really have become obsolete bodies whose only purpose is to disenfranchise the voters, and that we voters should simply ignore parties and vote pragmatically.
I don't register with a party affiliation because I find both parties so distasteful. I think it would be very wise for us independents to figure out for what party our district has been gerrymandered and register in that party, and if we run, run in that party.
It would be cool if the supremes solved this by ruling that all voters have to be able to vote in all primaries.
...not to kill Linux FAT support. The prices they've set are for a very specific set of items, and are low enough that I suspect the manufacturers will just pay them. I suppose they might decide to try to license FAT for use in Linux and the BSDs later, but if they do they risk triggering antitrust litigation again, and regardless of how easily they got off this time, I doubt they want to go through that again.
It seems like what you're objecting to here is the idea that government would choose who would get payment, not to any givernment involvement at all, right? Correct me if I am wrong, but it looks like you want the government, wether through passage of laws or through its capacity as the enforcer of contracts, to make sure that people pay.
One of the big objections that I see to BMI/ASCAP/RIAA is that regardless of what's played, most of the money goes to the record companies, then the big artists get their cut, and the little artists get nothing. But the little artists don't have the right to opt out. At first blush, it seems like a non-obnoxious micropayment system would be fairer. How do you make your statistics-based system fair to small artists? And what about opting out?
I searched the web page pretty carefully, and found nothing at all on this topic! :'}
Hm. That's a good point. Plus, those older computers can really keep a room warm come winter...
I know, I know, just what you'd expect a Buddhist to say. I have too much junk around, and what I do to get it organized is to do triage. Do I really need this? If not, it goes. Have I used this in the last six months? No? Out it goes.
My wife has a set of stacking drawers in a closet, which were pretty cheap, and we put stuff we can't toss in those. But there's probably someone who can use that boat anchor computer you're tripping over every day on the way to the bathroom, so find them and give it to them, and enjoy the extra floor space!
That's a really good point. The work I've been doing with XML at work has involved using XML as the outer representation, which is compiled to an internal representation.
So we have the advantage of being able to use generic tools to search the master data representation, and we can explode the internal representation back into XML, but we generally work with the internal representation.
And actually, because we have the master copy of the data in XML, we can (and do) generate specialized binary databases from the XML for particular applications, each of which just contains the data we need.
Personally, I think sexprs are niftier (and smaller, and definitely geekier!), but XML has proven really valuable in this particular application, and we do not have to suffer from performance problems as a result of using it, because we are (IMHO) making good strategic use of it.
Have you ever tried to grep a DBM file? See the previous comment, which boils down to "XML's win is that it's a well-known format that can be easily searched and manipulated."
This is by no means assured. When you store data in a binary format, you generally have to have code to deal with byte-swapping and other format conversions. Also, generally speaking, the limitation on character parsing is memory bandwidth - if you are using a modern CPU, it is going to spend most of its time waiting for bits to come out of memory, and it doesn't care whether they're an ASCII (or utf8) byte stream or binary words.
Also, a lot of stuff that goes around in packets is free-form text anyway, not binary data. So in the case where you're just passing numbers around, yes, XML is going to be a bit slower simply because there are more bits to pull out of the buffer. But in the case of plain text, the difference is probably not going to be very significant. In cases where it is significant, you probably don't want to use XML.
You are right that XML is not a panacea - I wouldn't use it for every application. I think a lot of the anti-xml rhetoric we hear is because so many people do use it for the wrong applications, and then other people see what they've done and start retching.
A couple more points - XML::Twig allows you to parse XML in PERL without sucking the whole file in at once. Also, the article to which I was replying was talking about SQLXML, which I presume is already plain text. It's tough to imagine that XML is really going to make that significantly slower - if it is, it's probably because of a poor implementation, not increased data size.
ROTFL! I wish I could mod this up! :')
:')
Er, you were kidding, right?
XML is just text! If the XML parser is slow, write a faster one! Figure out where the bottlenecks are! Don't give me this XML is slow crap. This is slashdot - you're supposed to be a geek. If you don't like XML, fine, but come up with a geeky reason not to like it, not some problem whose solution is just to roll up your sleeves and do some hacking!
:')
Oy!
More to the point, if Microsoft's source repository were compromised, what do you think the chances are that they would tell anybody if they could avoid it? Not saying they're bad people - just that it wouldn't be in their interests to do so. Unlike with regular Microsoft security problems, this sort of problem wouldn't be seen outside of Microsoft.
I think it's a bit ridiculous to assume that this is actually happening. The original story asserts that it is, but frankly, it sounds like an unsubstantiated rumor to me.
That was my point, actually. Although realistically I don't see the government getting out of this business, and I therefore feel gleefully justified in haggling over the structure of the deal. :')
The mere fact that the government is in the business of enforcing copyright means that they are in the business of supporting the arts. As the joke goes, we know what they are. Now we're just haggling over the structure of the deal.
Urk. You're right - I should have looked before I leapt. However, the point is still the same - iTunes has its own way of formatting the iPod, and it would be a major hassle to switch to MusicMatch's way of formatting the iPod - a hassle that would project out into the forseeable future, since then Apple would have to continue to maintain compatibility to MusicMatch's resource formats. My argument is a bit weaker because of my mistake about HFS, but I think it's still essentially correct. Of course, I *would* think that... :')
Lots of people have complained that if you have an iPod for Windows, and you have a Mac, when you plug the iPod into the Mac, the Mac wants to reformat it. And when you have an iPod for Mac and you plug it into your Windows machine, MusicMatch doesn't work with it without reformatting.
This is because the iPod looks like a disk drive. On the Mac, it's formatted as an HFS volume. On Windows, it was formatted as a Windows volume.
Now, with iTunes for Windows, you can share your iPod between Windows and Mac. This is because iTunes for Windows knows how to deal with HFS volumes. But unfortunately, MusicMatch for Windows does not know how to do this.
So you lose something, and you get something. Depending on what you want, you may prefer one solution or the other. If you prefer MusicMatch, stick with it. If you prefer iTunes, stick with it.
The point is that this was not just an arbitrary attempt to shut MusicMatch out of the business. It was done for a good reason. If MusicMatch wants to maintain iPod compatiblity after you install iTunes, this is doable, because HFS+ is a documented standard, and the source code to read and write HFS+ filesystems is available from Apple - it's part of Darwin, which is open source.
So yes, Apple did make an incompatible change. And it sucks for people who really like MusicMatch. But there was a good reason for making the change, and I personally think the end result is a significant improvement. YMMV.
No, it's not going to save anybody any money, and it's not going to replace MacOS in the enterprise. But NetBSD does have some advantages over MacOS - better VM, for instance. With MacOS, I routinely find that if I do anything memory-intensive, my interactive performance goes to hell. NetBSD's VM system does much better in similar circumstances.
So I'm always jonesing for NetBSD because, for me, it performs better. I am sure there are other good reasons to do this, and of course there are good reasons to stay the heck away from it if it's not what you need. But it's still a cool hack, and I'm happy that Emmanuel is working on it.
It seems like what this can do now is to say to Coke "yes, your branding scheme has worked." But Coke already knows that - that's why they're beating Pepsi in the market. This is also unhelpful because it's a test of what *has worked over time*, not what *will work over time*. What is being measured is the impression Coke has made over the people in the test over the course of their lives.
The problem with this is that it doesn't tell Pepsi what to do to get the same results. Pepsi can't sit in the lab and tweak their image until they get the same results, because what's being measured isn't the effectiveness of a new image, but the degree of recognition of a well-known image.
This is a funny idea, but filing a false report of a crime is itself a crime. So you really don't want to play this game. However, I agree that using the term "spammer" is a bad idea - you can just call it "for the purposes of distributing fraudulent messages," or some other accurate statement that doesn't mention the word "spammer."
However, getting law enforcement to take you seriously on something like this might be a real challenge anwyay - they don't know you from Jack, and so why should they trust you?
I don't mean you're not trustworthy - I'm just pointing out that there's no trust relationship there, and you're putting yourself forth as an investigator, not a crime victim. It will be very hard for you to get them to think of you as legitimate.
I think this actually makes things better for you. Right now many DSL addresses are blacklisted, because they are major sources of spam. With this system, you can set up the name server from your domain to say that your DSL IP address is a valid relay for your domain, and then it should just work.
Overt racial quotas to fight covert racism. A case can be made either way. If you don't like it, join the EFF or something. I said "organizations." I happen to think that the ACLU is a great example. If you don't, vote with your feet.
Here you get no sympathy from me. The ACLU fights to prevent government-sponsored religious speech, particularly when it favors a particular religion. If you are serious about your religion, you should be all in favor of this.
Chances are that 300 years ago, it was illegal in most parts of Europe for you to practice whatever religion you practice. It's still probably illegal to talk about it in many countries around the world, or if not, it'll get you on surveillance lists here in the states.
For example, I know of several countries, some of which you might even otherwise enjoy visiting, where merely discussing Christianity in a positive light with a citizen of that country can land you in jail for five years.
When municipalities here in the U.S. use government facilities to promote religion, they are stepping to the edge of the slippery slope that leads to just that sort of law. If you enjoy the freedom to practice your religion, you might want to think twice about getting upset about people who fight to prevent that.