Not to mention the already linked Kucinich piece. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/16/opinion/ 16KUTT.h tml?pagewanted=print&position=
August 16, 2003 An Industry Trapped by a Theory By ROBERT KUTTNER
n the search for the source of Thursday's blackout, the underlying cause has been all but ignored: deregulation. In principle, deregulation of the power industry was supposed to use the discipline of free markets to generate just the right amount of electricity at the right price. But electric power, it turns out, is not like ordinary commodities.
Electricity can't be stored in large quantities, and the system needs a lot of spare generating and transmission capacity for periods of peak demand like hot days in August. The power system also requires a great deal of planning and coordination, and it needs incentives for somebody to maintain and upgrade transmission lines.
Deregulation has failed on all these grounds. Yet it has few critics. Evidently, even calamities like the Enron scandal and now the most serious blackout in American history are not enough to shake faith in the theory.
Ten years ago, most public utilities were regulated monopolies. They were guaranteed a fair rate of return, based on their capital investment and costs. So the government compensated them for building spare generating capacity and maintaining transmission lines. Regulators, of course, sometimes made mistakes and the industry oversold technologies like nuclear power. Even so, in the half-century before deregulation, productivity in the electric power industry increased at about triple the rate of the economy as a whole.
However, the wave of deregulation that culminated in the late 1990's broke up the integrated utilities like Con Ed that once generated power in its own plants, transmitted it and sold it retail. It ushered in a new breed of entrepreneurial generating and trading companies. However, the prices the local utility companies could charge consumers remained partly regulated. The theory was that local utilities, no longer producing their own power, could negotiate among competing suppliers for the best price and pass the savings along to the consumer.
But deregulation hasn't worked, for three basic reasons. First, there is a fairly fixed demand for electricity and generating capacity is tight, so companies that produce it enjoy a good deal of power to manipulate prices. The Enron scandal, which soaked Californians for tens of billions of dollars, was only the most extreme example. California authorities calculated that a generating company needed to control just 3 percent of the state's supply to set a monopoly price.
Second, the idea of creating large national markets to buy and sell electricity makes more sense as economic theory than as physics, because it consumes power to transmit power. "It's only efficient to transmit electricity for a few hundred miles at most," says Dr. Richard Rosen, a physicist at the Tellus Institute, a nonprofit research group.
Third, under deregulation the local utilities no longer have an economic incentive to invest in keeping up transmission lines. Antiquated power lines are operating too close to their capacity. The more power that is shipped long distances in the new deregulated markets, the more power those lines must carry.
In addition, in the old days of regulation, a utility like Con Ed would be required to regularly submit a resource plan to a state's public service commission. The two organizations would forecast demand and decide how much money should be invested in power plants and transmission lines. Rates would be adjusted to cover costs. Under deregulation, however, nobody plays that crucial planning role.
Much of the Southeast, by contrast, has retained traditional regulation -- and cheap, reliable electricity.
When the blackout hit on Thursday, many of us first thought of terrorists. What hit us may be equally dangerous. We are hostage to a delusional view of economics that allowed much of the Northeast to go dark without an enemy lifting a finger.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and author of "Everything for Sale: The Virtues and Limits of Markets."
The biggest usability problem here on slashdot has to be figuring which link takes you to the actual story. Its not so bad when using a real browser that shows you the full URL in the tray, but its especially annoying when using a mobile browser.
The editors really need to be clear about which is the main link, use alt tags, bold the main link, etc. Right now this is fairly ridiculous.
It sure as heck does. Just because you're dialing in doesn't guarantee you're not calling some outsourcing dial-up that routes packets to your ISPs email server. Consider wide area or nationwide dial-ups.
>only needs to have the encryption cracked.
Only? Good luck with that.
256bit SSL has 1.1579208923731619542357098500869e+77 potential keys to guess from. 128, 168, and 256 are standard and I haven't seen 40-bit in years.
Regardless, unless people are using private/public key encryption at the source it becomes plaintext somewhere (transit, storage) and should be considered compromised. No use splitting hairs over modems and web interfaces, someone can read all your email. I've read a lot of it, you should email your mother more.
Lets face it, the PC is very much a young piece of technology that isn't as much as one piece of equipment and it is dozens of pieces flying in close formation.
Hopefully in a few years there will be a VCR-type appliance PC that's mass-produced and simple to use.
First we'll need some real network security and encryption/authentication.
For the sake of argument lets just say it runs a very locked down version of linux. Think of a mix between Lindows and webTV. I'm sure the faithful have already fainted from reading this last sentence but we're talking Joe User not "I own a linux box Lenny" here. When online it'll automatically upload your documents and settings to some central server. It'll be cheap and small and if lose you just plug it into a broadband connection, type in your passphrase, and everything is restored.
It will certainly not be a gaming machine and development on it will be slow (compared to windows) and controled by a central authority. It'll follow protocols, have an easy to use GUI, and do all the "AOL basics" like Web, email, chat, video chat, office, etc.
It'll be the volkswagon beetle of computers in a micro-laptop format. Power users and corporate can stick to Windows, Unix, and OSX, but home users will have their easy to use, limited scripting, non-user programmable device.
Its a lot like the thin-clients from a few years back, but I think those failed for a few reasons: they were weak and slow, there was no such thing as broadband or wifi everywhere (or GPRS), they couldn't run office apps, and few were portable.
The proper mix between thick and thin client and a locked down simple computer could really revolutionize everything.
Meanwhile, we've got people calling their techie friends to remove this blaster thing, install drivers, edit their registry, show them how to stop pop-ups, explain to them what networking is, etc when all they really want to do is edit some documents, surf the web, and chat with friends.
1. Companies may still be evaluating it before putting it on their production servers. So if their e-commerce site went down because of this patch would you also say "screw them for not testing properly?"
2. "Road Warrior" laptop users who tech support hasn't had a chance to update yet.
3. Home users who dutifully update their virus scanners, pay Norton, and are careful not to open wacky attachment but have no idea about how remote exploits worked.
4. Failed patches and false positives.
5. New computers straight from dell or whomever that bundle and auto-setup everything except autoupdate. Hmmm, that sounds like a big problem to me.
6. "Early victims" who were infected well before the patch was available or before their computers could download it automatically.
7. The technical clueless that have no idea what a virus is or let alone a worm is. Who's job is it to teach them the ins and outs of security? Maybe MS could make a more secure product or at least put as much effort into alerting the user about security as it does trying to break competitors. Crazy, I know./insert obrant about how Windows is a poor system in regards to security and how patches and virus scanners are post-attack fixes. Someone has to get infected first you know.//or insert obrant how how Bush's DOJ let MS off and now we are sowing the seeds of cronyism.
At least in the consumer edition of their OS's. There's someting to be said about abusing this power for marketshare, but that's best left to the courts.
I love how a MSN Messenger can't be disabled without disabling it in outlook AND in the app itself, yet autoupdate wants you to configure it before it runs. I'm sure most users go "wha?" and click cancel.
I really don't understand the gap-jawed complaints some people are expressing. Its a fourty dollar device compared to a TWO HUNDRED dollar device. Please, lets not act too surprised.
This all reminds me of the DustBuster craze in the 80s. They all plainly sucked, or failed to suck dirt, yet they sold by the millions. Even the heavy-duty Black & Deckers did little then make an annoying whine and create a weird smell.
Will it take another 20 years to perfect the Roomba? Its not all raves you know. It easily gets confused when encountering wiring and cramped spaces, you know the traditional shelters of geeks worldwide.
Another thing to consider is the law of diminishing returns. $200 is a lot of money for most people and if this RobotVac works half as well it will undercut the Roomba in marketshare.
Yes, its cheesy and a cheap knock-off but then again so are most components in the PCs people are using to view this message.
This country is badly in need of compulsory patent licensing like they have in Europe. This isn't just important in the tech industry but in pharmecutical industry as well.
What really gets me about the RIM patents (and other wireless patents) is that there's nothing there. Any wired technology can be made wireless, its no biggie. Running out and getting a patent on "wireless email" is the equivalant of getting a patent out on progress.
In the end, this patent nonsense hurts the consumer and hurts business. I hope more cases like this keep happening to show the public, patent lawyers, and politicians that the "patent everything" mentality just doesn't work.
How about the opposite?
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>The process the researchers have come up with probably uses the same effect to produce a current.
I wonder if this research can lead into the electricity in -> ATP/Glucose out.
People powering PDAs with a little blood or spit is cute, people running on electricity no farms, no food, no obesity, etc would be revolutionary.
There is an bothersome and fairly intimidating phenonemon which is widespread among mathematics teaching and textbooks. For want of a better term, we might call it "Mathematical Macho". Now, when in the grip of this mysterious phenomenon, it seems that people get the idea that it is necessary that a deep subject like mathematics be really difficult to learn, and that there should be an effect of "weeding out the weaker students" alongside that of actually teaching the stuff.
To be fair, I should mention that, over the years, I have observed an impressive number of attempts (whether or not these were made wholly in earnest will be left to the reader) by numberless (pun somewhat intended) and often quite well-esteemed authors and, even, a whole venerable organization (this called the Mathematical Association of America), to make the subject more palatable, and perhaps even interesting, to a wider audience than yet before.
Nope, sorry, fellas. Thus far things just haven't worked out all that well.
Yup, I've seen 'em come and go, alright. Witness the sometimes abysmally constructed explanations in "Calculus Made Simple" by Silvanius Thompson, the scarifying "rigorous" language purveyed by most MAA textbooks, the quite awful wording and quite annoying imbedding of mathematical syntax within text to be found in Boas' celebrated "A Primer of Real Functions", the spotty development in Schey's "Div, Grad, and All That", et cetera. We won't even go into that astonishing and original artfulness (arguably for the delectation of brilliant student and scholarly peer, not for the now-terrified beginning reader) made of the subject in Apostol's highly-regarded two-volume masterpiece.
Math textbooks are, by and large, among the most ineffective and downright stupidly-done works of humankind. That said, the following should hopefully present a fairly helpful list of books on the subject which should serve as an exception to the aforementioned curses of Mathematical Macho, meaning to really teach the reader, this without intimidating, confusing, or otherwise impressing him or her.
I think the AC more or less nails it. The snopes people have very limited expertise and limited funding, and as it seems from the above email limited patience.
>That said, they are doing a good job at a herculean task.
This is spot-on. Any site that deals with countering disinformation on a wide scale has to contend with its own bias, laziness, and limitations. Look at the skeptdic or straightdope.com, they often revise after someone presents them with more information and some of the conclusions reached can be best described as "dunno."
Wow, a malicious worm. I'm completely bewildered by the fact that melissa, code red, etc didn't have a seriously nasty payload. It seems like the virus authors just wanted propagation for bragging rights. It wouldn't be so tough to write a function that will corrupt the registry or start formatting important parts of the disk after x amount of hours.
Windows has yet to see a serious threat by a popular worm and when it does there will be a lot of heat on Microsoft, whether they deserve it or not. "Wintel everywhere" is a classic eggs in one basket gambit and heads are going to roll if 1/3rd of all computers on the internet suddenly refuse to boot up again. Something like 40% (?) of all computers on the net are not behind a firewall and who knows how many are patched.
What I'm afraid of is that if something this bad and on this scale happens then DRM will go from controversial content protection to a Tom Ridge mandated upgrade. Your computer WILL download the newest patch and you will not rip MP3s from the newest Shania Twain CD or face the consequences (ISP banning you, fines, etc).
In fact I recently replaced the drive on mine and noticed the motherboard is really simple. There's the CPU, there's the MPEG2 chip, there's the card reader, the hard drive, and little else.
In fact you cannot re-encode the stream because the hardware isn't even there.
If you're a directv subscriber you'd know that the quality isn't that hot. Its better and more consistant than typical analog cable, but you'll see lots of artifacting. The bitrate is low especially compared to a DVD.
So lets assume I'm getting 70 hours on my 80 gig drive (the truth may be closer to 60 hours but I'm too lazy too look it up). That's 4,200 minutes of programming. 252,000 seconds. 83886080 kbytes/252,000 seconds = 332 kilobytes per second. Or around 3.4 mbps. Not exactly firewire speeds there. DVDs are typically double that bitrate and they go through a much more sophisticated analog to digital conversion and scene optimization to reduce the artifacts.
>I thought for sure that would be one thing. I thought that they would restrict the speed so you were forced to watch commercials.
Call me cynical, but it would seen suicidal to wake up the sleeping DRM right now. Wait till Tivo et al are out of business and then push the new licensing agreement on them. I mean, why *wouldn't* they do that. The cable industry isn't exactly really into ethics or competition. They have a history of signing exclusive municipal deals, fighting off shared access, and a few months ago comcast told all its cable modem subscribers that unless they order their video service then the cable modem service will cost 10 dollars more.
Heh, just wait to see what they've got in store for him, especially when HBO, TBS, or whoever says, "We wont do business with you unless you stop skipping our commercials." Tivo and Replay would be immune to that, the cable companies aren't.
You really don't want your content provider to also be your hardware provider.
I don't think this project had any merits at all. The people who have been defending it in the press have been using domestic examples as success stories like the Iowa Electronic Market. Well, considering how small a sample size that is and the nature of the two party system AND the more or less predictable workings of the electoral college, prediciting the president is a lot easier than dealing with dozens of governments, rogue organizations, etc.
Also, these traders would mostly be Americans. Pardon my french here, but most traders I know couldn't find Iraq if I fucking pointed it out to them on a map. Not to mention anyone with any insider info could easily be targeted (as in for being killed) for spilling the beans too early.
The truly scary part is the eventually the government would be making decisions on these "trends" that are more or less expressing the lowest common denominator's opinion. That's hardly informative and a recipe for disaster.
Take a look at the Iowa Electronic Market's current state. There is no clear winner this early in the game and it looks like its doing nothing but reflecting the polls.
I call bullshit laisze-faire ideology on this and good riddance to Poindexter. Really now, if the market noosphere truly was that precognitive then Enron and WorldCom would not have been such a surprise.
If you're into indie stuff, then emusic looks like quite a bargain. Something around $15 a month for unlimited MP3 downloads. This sounds like a win-win situation, at least for me. I'm planning on subscribing this week.
Don't like indie? Get a Mac or just pay tower records the $18 they want for the new Britney.
At least there are *some* choices today that weren't here just a year ago.
Oh come on, this project has no saving graces. The Bush administration is full of nutcase ideologues, ever read the PNAC site?, and this just the high priests of the religion of the market trying to have mass.
The self righteous crowd got let out of its cage today. Lets address some concerns:
Humanitarianism:
The computer you're typing youre typing on was most likely made in a place you would describe as a horrible sweatshop if you would ever get to see it. Same goes for all sorts of computer related goods.
Lots of goods in general are clearly marked Made in China yet its this chip some people seem so focused on.
Also, please take into account the US and its own allies record on human rights before entering the morally ambigious grounds of "Bad country vs. Good country."
Propping up the industry
All countries do this. Corporate welfare, sweetheart deals, tariffs, etc. Look in your own backyard before you accuse the neighbors of being a nuscience.
"Its only a pentium II"
Lets see the PII burns very little energy, had almost 10 million transistors and 64 gigabytes of addressable memory. Not a bad chip to be compared to. I used to run Mandrake on a PII-350 and it would play Divx movies without a frame skip. We're not talking a 8086 chip here.
I'm not even going to go into how no one really needs a P4 at 2ghz to run Office and all the energy that wastes.
"Tibet!"
Whatever your thoughts on Tibet buying not not buying a Dragon chip will make no difference. Its like people refusing to drink French wine because of their position regarding Iraq. The French will not notice or care.
Also, Tibet was a theocratic slave state with no concept of civil rights either. Pot meet Kettle.
"China Bad, must punish."
Maybe not. By entering into normal trade relations we make their economy dependent on the world economy, i.e. it becomes a political check, do bad things, watch your economy collapse through sanctions. I'm no lassieze-faire globalisation nutcase, but this certainly beats isolationism by a wide margin. Business doesnt exist in a vacuum, there have been cultural exchanges for quite some time and I would rather see a positive bend on westernism than trans-atlantic namecalling and useless boycotts.
I'm an idealist too, but I know that I have bigger problems domestically and if I want to impose my view of the world onto other countries I'd rather be able to point to my backyard and say "this is how its done" as opposed to "you are bad, go away."
I want to also chime in on using VPN, vonage, gaming, etc on NAT. Works well enough.
NAT at best is a stop-gap solution. What needs to be done is a smart re-allocation of unused IPv4 addresses. How many does Apple, Microsoft, IBM, MIT, etc have that they will never use in a million years?
One day IPv6 will be here, but we'll need to break up the huge IPv4 blocks fist.
Sure, but look at the mess that windows XP activation is. It randomly goes off at work and even something as trivial as a NIC change makes it go into "piracy mode." Hell, all they need to do now is make the speakers yell out, "Step away from the box, this is in unlicensed version of windows," and their journey to the dark side will be complete.
Users are locked into Microsoft - equipment, mindshare, software, etc - so they really don't have a choice.
If the government stood up to the obvious monopolies and cartels like Microsoft (tried - failed) or the RIAA and MPAA then it would be a different story, but right now we're going to do as we're told. Its either that, no content, or losing your life savings because you dared to download Police Academy 6.
I think you make excellent points, but the other side also has some good points to make too. Me? I'm just glad someone is doing something. Its hardly resource intensive (theyre not tying up aricebo for months and people leave their PCs on anyway) and in many ways it can be seen as baby steps towards *some* understanding of potential alien contact.
>They don't get much radio time, and they can't cover much of the sky.
Granted, but that could change tomorrow with funding.
>Now chances of actually recognizing the signal as intelligent life are unknown
I wouldn't say that. Primes in binary would be pretty obvious. Even a something trivial that isn't a pulsar but repeats could be seen as meaningful communication i.e. someone is saying "I exist!"
>Ok, maybe you see it and you recognize it. Can you decode it?
Even if they cant or if its just numbers, the proof that life exists off our sphere is revolutionary and will change humanity forever. That's something to take seriously even if we don't know what we're being told.
> Great, someone's actually listening and gets the signal. You've just had the century-long equivalent of the 20 second bar conversation
I don't think the consensus at SETI or SETI-like projects is to build a conversation. Its about discovery. The proof that intelligent life is abound in the universe, like I mentioned above, is more than justification for the projects.
I think people with your kinds of criticisms have a very high expectation of a very limited project. That doesn't mean that the project isn't worthwhile or can't deliver goods. It just wont deliver the goods you seem to want - a "telephone" like conversation with aliens. A verified signal is more than enough to bowl the world over. Who knows how it will affect us. Will space exploration get a second boom? Will people take global disarmament more seriously? Will the religious scream bloody murder?
Who knows. Like I wrote above, its not an expensive project and I hope to see more SETI stuff in the future, especially powerful wholesale transmissions to likely candidates.
>You need to do research on the labels that signed the bands you listened to if you're on a quest to avoid suppoting the RIAA.
There are already a couple search engines that do this. Also, the RIAA lists its subsidiary labels on its site.
If the label is owned by the RIAA its a subsidiary label not an indie label. Though, some indie labels do engage in dealings with RIAA labels for distribution, but are not owned by them.
Yeah its an old joke, but if memory serves he did fix it but Gilligan managed to sink it or lose it at sea. If they really wanted to get off the island they should have just shot Gilligan with a bamboo gun.
"Whatcha building there Professor?"
"Err, something that'll get us off the island and you're going to be the first to leave."
"Gee, that sounds great Professor! When am I leaving?"
Slashdot Mirror
Not to mention the already linked Kucinich piece./ 16KUTT.h tml?pagewanted=print&position=
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/16/opinion
August 16, 2003
An Industry Trapped by a Theory
By ROBERT KUTTNER
n the search for the source of Thursday's blackout, the underlying cause has been all but ignored: deregulation. In principle, deregulation of the power industry was supposed to use the discipline of free markets to generate just the right amount of electricity at the right price. But electric power, it turns out, is not like ordinary commodities.
Electricity can't be stored in large quantities, and the system needs a lot of spare generating and transmission capacity for periods of peak demand like hot days in August. The power system also requires a great deal of planning and coordination, and it needs incentives for somebody to maintain and upgrade transmission lines.
Deregulation has failed on all these grounds. Yet it has few critics. Evidently, even calamities like the Enron scandal and now the most serious blackout in American history are not enough to shake faith in the theory.
Ten years ago, most public utilities were regulated monopolies. They were guaranteed a fair rate of return, based on their capital investment and costs. So the government compensated them for building spare generating capacity and maintaining transmission lines. Regulators, of course, sometimes made mistakes and the industry oversold technologies like nuclear power. Even so, in the half-century before deregulation, productivity in the electric power industry increased at about triple the rate of the economy as a whole.
However, the wave of deregulation that culminated in the late 1990's broke up the integrated utilities like Con Ed that once generated power in its own plants, transmitted it and sold it retail. It ushered in a new breed of entrepreneurial generating and trading companies. However, the prices the local utility companies could charge consumers remained partly regulated. The theory was that local utilities, no longer producing their own power, could negotiate among competing suppliers for the best price and pass the savings along to the consumer.
But deregulation hasn't worked, for three basic reasons. First, there is a fairly fixed demand for electricity and generating capacity is tight, so companies that produce it enjoy a good deal of power to manipulate prices. The Enron scandal, which soaked Californians for tens of billions of dollars, was only the most extreme example. California authorities calculated that a generating company needed to control just 3 percent of the state's supply to set a monopoly price.
Second, the idea of creating large national markets to buy and sell electricity makes more sense as economic theory than as physics, because it consumes power to transmit power. "It's only efficient to transmit electricity for a few hundred miles at most," says Dr. Richard Rosen, a physicist at the Tellus Institute, a nonprofit research group.
Third, under deregulation the local utilities no longer have an economic incentive to invest in keeping up transmission lines. Antiquated power lines are operating too close to their capacity. The more power that is shipped long distances in the new deregulated markets, the more power those lines must carry.
In addition, in the old days of regulation, a utility like Con Ed would be required to regularly submit a resource plan to a state's public service commission. The two organizations would forecast demand and decide how much money should be invested in power plants and transmission lines. Rates would be adjusted to cover costs. Under deregulation, however, nobody plays that crucial planning role.
Much of the Southeast, by contrast, has retained traditional regulation -- and cheap, reliable electricity.
When the blackout hit on Thursday, many of us first thought of terrorists. What hit us may be equally dangerous. We are hostage to a delusional view of economics that allowed much of the Northeast to go dark without an enemy lifting a finger.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and author of "Everything for Sale: The Virtues and Limits of Markets."
The biggest usability problem here on slashdot has to be figuring which link takes you to the actual story. Its not so bad when using a real browser that shows you the full URL in the tray, but its especially annoying when using a mobile browser.
The editors really need to be clear about which is the main link, use alt tags, bold the main link, etc. Right now this is fairly ridiculous.
Its still free and does 2048-bit encryption from hushmail user to hushmail user. Now that's secure webmail. PC mag review here
>because the traffic never gets on the 'net
It sure as heck does. Just because you're dialing in doesn't guarantee you're not calling some outsourcing dial-up that routes packets to your ISPs email server. Consider wide area or nationwide dial-ups.
>only needs to have the encryption cracked.
Only? Good luck with that.
256bit SSL has 1.1579208923731619542357098500869e+77 potential keys to guess from. 128, 168, and 256 are standard and I haven't seen 40-bit in years.
Regardless, unless people are using private/public key encryption at the source it becomes plaintext somewhere (transit, storage) and should be considered compromised. No use splitting hairs over modems and web interfaces, someone can read all your email. I've read a lot of it, you should email your mother more.
Lets face it, the PC is very much a young piece of technology that isn't as much as one piece of equipment and it is dozens of pieces flying in close formation.
Hopefully in a few years there will be a VCR-type appliance PC that's mass-produced and simple to use.
First we'll need some real network security and encryption/authentication.
For the sake of argument lets just say it runs a very locked down version of linux. Think of a mix between Lindows and webTV. I'm sure the faithful have already fainted from reading this last sentence but we're talking Joe User not "I own a linux box Lenny" here. When online it'll automatically upload your documents and settings to some central server. It'll be cheap and small and if lose you just plug it into a broadband connection, type in your passphrase, and everything is restored.
It will certainly not be a gaming machine and development on it will be slow (compared to windows) and controled by a central authority. It'll follow protocols, have an easy to use GUI, and do all the "AOL basics" like Web, email, chat, video chat, office, etc.
It'll be the volkswagon beetle of computers in a micro-laptop format. Power users and corporate can stick to Windows, Unix, and OSX, but home users will have their easy to use, limited scripting, non-user programmable device.
Its a lot like the thin-clients from a few years back, but I think those failed for a few reasons: they were weak and slow, there was no such thing as broadband or wifi everywhere (or GPRS), they couldn't run office apps, and few were portable.
The proper mix between thick and thin client and a locked down simple computer could really revolutionize everything.
Meanwhile, we've got people calling their techie friends to remove this blaster thing, install drivers, edit their registry, show them how to stop pop-ups, explain to them what networking is, etc when all they really want to do is edit some documents, surf the web, and chat with friends.
> I say screw those who didn't patch
/insert obrant about how Windows is a poor system in regards to security and how patches and virus scanners are post-attack fixes. Someone has to get infected first you know. //or insert obrant how how Bush's DOJ let MS off and now we are sowing the seeds of cronyism.
1. Companies may still be evaluating it before putting it on their production servers. So if their e-commerce site went down because of this patch would you also say "screw them for not testing properly?"
2. "Road Warrior" laptop users who tech support hasn't had a chance to update yet.
3. Home users who dutifully update their virus scanners, pay Norton, and are careful not to open wacky attachment but have no idea about how remote exploits worked.
4. Failed patches and false positives.
5. New computers straight from dell or whomever that bundle and auto-setup everything except autoupdate. Hmmm, that sounds like a big problem to me.
6. "Early victims" who were infected well before the patch was available or before their computers could download it automatically.
7. The technical clueless that have no idea what a virus is or let alone a worm is. Who's job is it to teach them the ins and outs of security? Maybe MS could make a more secure product or at least put as much effort into alerting the user about security as it does trying to break competitors. Crazy, I know.
At least in the consumer edition of their OS's. There's someting to be said about abusing this power for marketshare, but that's best left to the courts.
I love how a MSN Messenger can't be disabled without disabling it in outlook AND in the app itself, yet autoupdate wants you to configure it before it runs. I'm sure most users go "wha?" and click cancel.
I've posted more about this here for those interested.
I really don't understand the gap-jawed complaints some people are expressing. Its a fourty dollar device compared to a TWO HUNDRED dollar device. Please, lets not act too surprised.
:)
This all reminds me of the DustBuster craze in the 80s. They all plainly sucked, or failed to suck dirt, yet they sold by the millions. Even the heavy-duty Black & Deckers did little then make an annoying whine and create a weird smell.
Today, the DustBuster market is more or less dead and the ones that have survived are at Target, are a slightly more costly, are larger than the originals, and have tons more sucking power. I'm willing to bet these actually work. It took 20 years but black & decker did it
Will it take another 20 years to perfect the Roomba? Its not all raves you know. It easily gets confused when encountering wiring and cramped spaces, you know the traditional shelters of geeks worldwide.
Another thing to consider is the law of diminishing returns. $200 is a lot of money for most people and if this RobotVac works half as well it will undercut the Roomba in marketshare.
Yes, its cheesy and a cheap knock-off but then again so are most components in the PCs people are using to view this message.
This country is badly in need of compulsory patent licensing like they have in Europe. This isn't just important in the tech industry but in pharmecutical industry as well.
What really gets me about the RIM patents (and other wireless patents) is that there's nothing there. Any wired technology can be made wireless, its no biggie. Running out and getting a patent on "wireless email" is the equivalant of getting a patent out on progress.
In the end, this patent nonsense hurts the consumer and hurts business. I hope more cases like this keep happening to show the public, patent lawyers, and politicians that the "patent everything" mentality just doesn't work.
>The process the researchers have come up with probably uses the same effect to produce a current.
I wonder if this research can lead into the electricity in -> ATP/Glucose out.
People powering PDAs with a little blood or spit is cute, people running on electricity no farms, no food, no obesity, etc would be revolutionary.
He's certainly opinionated:
I think the AC more or less nails it. The snopes people have very limited expertise and limited funding, and as it seems from the above email limited patience.
>That said, they are doing a good job at a herculean task.
This is spot-on. Any site that deals with countering disinformation on a wide scale has to contend with its own bias, laziness, and limitations. Look at the skeptdic or straightdope.com, they often revise after someone presents them with more information and some of the conclusions reached can be best described as "dunno."
Wow, a malicious worm. I'm completely bewildered by the fact that melissa, code red, etc didn't have a seriously nasty payload. It seems like the virus authors just wanted propagation for bragging rights. It wouldn't be so tough to write a function that will corrupt the registry or start formatting important parts of the disk after x amount of hours.
Windows has yet to see a serious threat by a popular worm and when it does there will be a lot of heat on Microsoft, whether they deserve it or not. "Wintel everywhere" is a classic eggs in one basket gambit and heads are going to roll if 1/3rd of all computers on the internet suddenly refuse to boot up again. Something like 40% (?) of all computers on the net are not behind a firewall and who knows how many are patched.
What I'm afraid of is that if something this bad and on this scale happens then DRM will go from controversial content protection to a Tom Ridge mandated upgrade. Your computer WILL download the newest patch and you will not rip MP3s from the newest Shania Twain CD or face the consequences (ISP banning you, fines, etc).
In fact I recently replaced the drive on mine and noticed the motherboard is really simple. There's the CPU, there's the MPEG2 chip, there's the card reader, the hard drive, and little else.
In fact you cannot re-encode the stream because the hardware isn't even there.
If you're a directv subscriber you'd know that the quality isn't that hot. Its better and more consistant than typical analog cable, but you'll see lots of artifacting. The bitrate is low especially compared to a DVD.
So lets assume I'm getting 70 hours on my 80 gig drive (the truth may be closer to 60 hours but I'm too lazy too look it up). That's 4,200 minutes of programming. 252,000 seconds. 83886080 kbytes/252,000 seconds = 332 kilobytes per second. Or around 3.4 mbps. Not exactly firewire speeds there. DVDs are typically double that bitrate and they go through a much more sophisticated analog to digital conversion and scene optimization to reduce the artifacts.
>I thought for sure that would be one thing. I thought that they would restrict the speed so you were forced to watch commercials.
Call me cynical, but it would seen suicidal to wake up the sleeping DRM right now. Wait till Tivo et al are out of business and then push the new licensing agreement on them. I mean, why *wouldn't* they do that. The cable industry isn't exactly really into ethics or competition. They have a history of signing exclusive municipal deals, fighting off shared access, and a few months ago comcast told all its cable modem subscribers that unless they order their video service then the cable modem service will cost 10 dollars more.
Heh, just wait to see what they've got in store for him, especially when HBO, TBS, or whoever says, "We wont do business with you unless you stop skipping our commercials." Tivo and Replay would be immune to that, the cable companies aren't.
You really don't want your content provider to also be your hardware provider.
I don't think this project had any merits at all. The people who have been defending it in the press have been using domestic examples as success stories like the Iowa Electronic Market. Well, considering how small a sample size that is and the nature of the two party system AND the more or less predictable workings of the electoral college, prediciting the president is a lot easier than dealing with dozens of governments, rogue organizations, etc.
Also, these traders would mostly be Americans. Pardon my french here, but most traders I know couldn't find Iraq if I fucking pointed it out to them on a map. Not to mention anyone with any insider info could easily be targeted (as in for being killed) for spilling the beans too early.
The truly scary part is the eventually the government would be making decisions on these "trends" that are more or less expressing the lowest common denominator's opinion. That's hardly informative and a recipe for disaster.
Take a look at the Iowa Electronic Market's current state. There is no clear winner this early in the game and it looks like its doing nothing but reflecting the polls.
I call bullshit laisze-faire ideology on this and good riddance to Poindexter. Really now, if the market noosphere truly was that precognitive then Enron and WorldCom would not have been such a surprise.
>The acoustic versions of Four Horsemen and Motorbreath are well worth getting
I am now depressed that I've lived long enough to here that said sincerely.
How much longer until the headbangers of my childhood/teen years end up in a Moody Blues light-show extravagenza or does a Who-like jump into theater.
The good die young for a reason. They don't have the rest of their lives to screw up what made them good in the first place.
If you're into indie stuff, then emusic looks like quite a bargain. Something around $15 a month for unlimited MP3 downloads. This sounds like a win-win situation, at least for me. I'm planning on subscribing this week.
Don't like indie? Get a Mac or just pay tower records the $18 they want for the new Britney.
At least there are *some* choices today that weren't here just a year ago.
Oh come on, this project has no saving graces. The Bush administration is full of nutcase ideologues, ever read the PNAC site?, and this just the high priests of the religion of the market trying to have mass.
The self righteous crowd got let out of its cage today. Lets address some concerns:
Humanitarianism:
The computer you're typing youre typing on was most likely made in a place you would describe as a horrible sweatshop if you would ever get to see it. Same goes for all sorts of computer related goods.
Lots of goods in general are clearly marked Made in China yet its this chip some people seem so focused on.
Also, please take into account the US and its own allies record on human rights before entering the morally ambigious grounds of "Bad country vs. Good country."
Propping up the industry
All countries do this. Corporate welfare, sweetheart deals, tariffs, etc. Look in your own backyard before you accuse the neighbors of being a nuscience.
"Its only a pentium II"
Lets see the PII burns very little energy, had almost 10 million transistors and 64 gigabytes of addressable memory. Not a bad chip to be compared to. I used to run Mandrake on a PII-350 and it would play Divx movies without a frame skip. We're not talking a 8086 chip here.
I'm not even going to go into how no one really needs a P4 at 2ghz to run Office and all the energy that wastes.
"Tibet!"
Whatever your thoughts on Tibet buying not not buying a Dragon chip will make no difference. Its like people refusing to drink French wine because of their position regarding Iraq. The French will not notice or care.
Also, Tibet was a theocratic slave state with no concept of civil rights either. Pot meet Kettle.
"China Bad, must punish."
Maybe not. By entering into normal trade relations we make their economy dependent on the world economy, i.e. it becomes a political check, do bad things, watch your economy collapse through sanctions. I'm no lassieze-faire globalisation nutcase, but this certainly beats isolationism by a wide margin. Business doesnt exist in a vacuum, there have been cultural exchanges for quite some time and I would rather see a positive bend on westernism than trans-atlantic namecalling and useless boycotts.
I'm an idealist too, but I know that I have bigger problems domestically and if I want to impose my view of the world onto other countries I'd rather be able to point to my backyard and say "this is how its done" as opposed to "you are bad, go away."
I want to also chime in on using VPN, vonage, gaming, etc on NAT. Works well enough.
NAT at best is a stop-gap solution. What needs to be done is a smart re-allocation of unused IPv4 addresses. How many does Apple, Microsoft, IBM, MIT, etc have that they will never use in a million years?
One day IPv6 will be here, but we'll need to break up the huge IPv4 blocks fist.
>Consumers will reject excessively onerous DRM.
Sure, but look at the mess that windows XP activation is. It randomly goes off at work and even something as trivial as a NIC change makes it go into "piracy mode." Hell, all they need to do now is make the speakers yell out, "Step away from the box, this is in unlicensed version of windows," and their journey to the dark side will be complete.
Users are locked into Microsoft - equipment, mindshare, software, etc - so they really don't have a choice.
If the government stood up to the obvious monopolies and cartels like Microsoft (tried - failed) or the RIAA and MPAA then it would be a different story, but right now we're going to do as we're told. Its either that, no content, or losing your life savings because you dared to download Police Academy 6.
I think you make excellent points, but the other side also has some good points to make too. Me? I'm just glad someone is doing something. Its hardly resource intensive (theyre not tying up aricebo for months and people leave their PCs on anyway) and in many ways it can be seen as baby steps towards *some* understanding of potential alien contact.
>They don't get much radio time, and they can't cover much of the sky.
Granted, but that could change tomorrow with funding.
>Now chances of actually recognizing the signal as intelligent life are unknown
I wouldn't say that. Primes in binary would be pretty obvious. Even a something trivial that isn't a pulsar but repeats could be seen as meaningful communication i.e. someone is saying "I exist!"
>Ok, maybe you see it and you recognize it. Can you decode it?
Even if they cant or if its just numbers, the proof that life exists off our sphere is revolutionary and will change humanity forever. That's something to take seriously even if we don't know what we're being told.
> Great, someone's actually listening and gets the signal. You've just had the century-long equivalent of the 20 second bar conversation
I don't think the consensus at SETI or SETI-like projects is to build a conversation. Its about discovery. The proof that intelligent life is abound in the universe, like I mentioned above, is more than justification for the projects.
I think people with your kinds of criticisms have a very high expectation of a very limited project. That doesn't mean that the project isn't worthwhile or can't deliver goods. It just wont deliver the goods you seem to want - a "telephone" like conversation with aliens. A verified signal is more than enough to bowl the world over. Who knows how it will affect us. Will space exploration get a second boom? Will people take global disarmament more seriously? Will the religious scream bloody murder?
Who knows. Like I wrote above, its not an expensive project and I hope to see more SETI stuff in the future, especially powerful wholesale transmissions to likely candidates.
>You need to do research on the labels that signed the bands you listened to if you're on a quest to avoid suppoting the RIAA.
There are already a couple search engines that do this. Also, the RIAA lists its subsidiary labels on its site.
If the label is owned by the RIAA its a subsidiary label not an indie label. Though, some indie labels do engage in dealings with RIAA labels for distribution, but are not owned by them.
Yeah its an old joke, but if memory serves he did fix it but Gilligan managed to sink it or lose it at sea. If they really wanted to get off the island they should have just shot Gilligan with a bamboo gun.
"Whatcha building there Professor?"
"Err, something that'll get us off the island and you're going to be the first to leave."
"Gee, that sounds great Professor! When am I leaving?"
"Now."
*bang*