Overall, this is an extremely well-elaborated and accurate article. However, here are some links to what Duke's Chronicle has been saying, in case you were curious:
Also, you can go to The Chronicle and search the archives for "iPod" and get any number of negative student editorials on the topic. Basically, all of us at Duke agreed that the project was a marketing campaign, plain and simple; on the other hand, you won't see us complaining. We got free (as in, paid for by a fund accumulated from previous years) iPods, and next year's freshmen will get them if they take the appropriate classes.
In addition, Carolina can go to hell. Go Devils:-P
This products ARE NOT the Lite XP versions that Microsoft is about to release on certain countries like Brazil
I appreciate that Microsoft releases Windows "on" South American countries, as if it were unleashing a pack of diseased wolverines upon poor Brazilian villagers. (Jokes about diseased wolverines being faster than XP are not encouraged at this point.)
The anti-MS sentiment seethes around here on so many levels.
I think it's a pity that parent could not be modded up any higher. This Linux fanboyism has got to stop.
And anyway, I don't see a problem with running security apps in the background as a benefit. Sure, it's not a motivation for spending the extra grand per se, but it's definitely a sweet little perk.
I knew/. tended to be slightly slower in posting stories than many of the the smaller, more agile blogs out there, but a year and a month late is just a bit much.
The headline seemed to indicate that Mark Cuban was funding the destruction of the Betamax shield. Someone should make it clear that he is actually helping the EFF to defend Grokster against the RIAA.
Throughout the patent, the process by which a software copy and a person's identity are linked is discussed. Suddenly, with claim 21, it changes from coverage of software to financial verification in general:
21. A method for verifying identity of a user of a data processing apparatus, comprising the steps of:
receiving, by said data processing apparatus, information specific to a user and necessary for accessing an account of said user;
verifying said account being valid, by an electronic transaction system by use of said information received by said data processing apparatus;
using by said data processing apparatus, a positive result of said verification as a precondition for providing user access to at least a part of the functionality of said data processing apparatus;
wherein said method is being performed without charging said account and said at least a part of functionality being not related to said validity status of said account.
This does, actually, mean that iTunes, eBay, and nearly every other e-commerce company infringes this patent. This also includes pretty much every bank in the United States.
I would never consider myself elderly, but I'm pretty sure ATM's existed before 1998. You can verify through an ATM without getting charged.
It might be interesting if, by some incredible twist of fate, Prior Art doesn't take these guys down instantly. They will get rich off of the entire United States economy, without products or services.
Well I know if I were an individual owning one of these patents, I would be beside myself. But clearly, I would have gotten those issues out of the way by, oh, the second-generation iPods. At least the third. There's that difference between clearly leveraging the US patent system for money and protecting one's IP.
I, like a number of/.ers, am reminded of that guy who ran SCO.
On the bright side, it appears that the Pat-Rights guy has patented the entire structure of modern networked software DRM. You'd think the Cory Doctorow fans would be rejoicing. But it looks like the Lessig and Apple fans are being more fully represented at the moment.
Consider the popularity of sites like Newgrounds.com in high school computer labs (maybe you haven't had the opportunity to witness this first hand, but you might want to trust me). Content that might be considered unsuitable for children are making their way onto kids' computers all the time, and the parents/teachers may not always be capable of catching everything.
I remember personally going through religious newsgroups as a twelve-year-old and engaging in and absorbing these debates without the capability to judge statements by people who had no real expertise on the subject matter. My beliefs and values were being shaped by people who didn't know what they were talking about in general. As a consequence, I almost became disillusioned from my religion at a time when I wasn't truly capable of making an educated decision.
Perhaps one can separate the religious from the moral here, but very rarely do kids go to websites that foster moral growth. Who does? The Internet is not that kind of a place, for better or for worse. That's what churches, schools, and parents are for.
Let's step back a little bit. They call it immoral net use, and there are disagreements. What, then, is the degree of morality displayed on the Internet?
Spam, porn, viruses, marketing, etc. And I can assure you that few children will go searching for MIT OpenCourseWare philosophy notes, Confician ethics, Maoist doctrine, etc. on their own. They will look for their favorite new music artists, information on the latest cartoon series, get on IM with their friends, or will just sit there and play flash games for the whole time.
Have you been in a high school computer lab? All kids do on the Internet is waste time and expose themselves to information that they are generally not morally equipped to interpret. When they need to do research for a school assignment, they will probably find that the restrictions will allow them to get the info they need fairly conveniently. So perhaps the totalitarian government is doing the children a service by keeping them focused.
On the other hand, I do not agree with the restrictions on adult consumption of the Internet. Clearly, at that point the government is perpetuating ignorence.
Also notice how loose the copyright philosophies are in China. IIRC piracy is allowed, even encouraged in there. We have the RIAA, the MPAA, the DMCA, and media corporations with the nearly full backing of the U.S. government. Perhaps one should consider whether the lawsuits going around would count as oppression/repression to a communist.
Did anyone else think Spirited Away was overrated?
Let's start with the box and the liners. Miyazaki praises himself for introducing a plot with no good or evil. Supposedly, this is some kind of revolutionary step in anime development, or at least that's how it's portrayed. It isn't.
Also, though most anime I've been introduced to has themes appealing to a broad range of age groups, Spirited Away is clearly made only for children. I sat there, searching for absolutely anything that would appeal to people over the age of twelve, but I found nothing besides some blood. A little girl grows up and falls in love with this dragon river spirit thing. Does love that young/cross-species even make any sense? Contrast this with most Disney and Pixar films, which not only contain fanciful settings and characters for the kids, but highly emotional and challenging moral situations that manage to appeal to adult audiences. I doubt whether any academic exegesis of this film (besides artistic/historical) will be worth writing, because of the appearent simplicity of the plot. Contrast this with the fantastic Princess Mononoke, and again, most Disney and Pixar films.
File sharing is illegal, and if your taste in music a good enough, whatever you pay for your music would be worth it, wouldn't it? For Chrissake, you can download songs for $1 these days from any among a growing number of competing services. And it's faster than combing the web for decent, complete copies of songs.
I'm a recovering filesharer and I've been on iTunes for about six months. Usually, I find that people who share their music are either totally oblivious to the fact that it's illegal and there's a war going on over it, or they just resent the cost and inconvenience of going out and buying a CD.
Excuses for stealing:
Lack of alternatives (taken care of, already lots of services and competition)
Cost (negated, only $1 per song or $10 per album)
Try before you buy (services tend to have preview clips)
Convenience (services are more convenient)
Online music stores won't work because things will get stolen anyway (terrible argument, laws work because of a societal agreement to follow the laws of the society, stopping piracy "should" lower prices (well, maybe, we can hope))
Selection (admittedly, many stores are lacking in rare genres, but then the record companies would be at fault for not offering the goods and thus stealing would not cut too drastically into profits. This would be stealing no one would care about)
Really, at this point in time, the only people stealing are the apathetic, the stingy, and the pretending revolutionaries. (And if you're using file-sharing to get rare files the RIAA doesn't allow selling over OMS, is it really stealing?) Supporting the legality of a bare-faced crime defies logic. Considering other things like the disorganization of the effort, the utter apathy of much of the rank-and-file, and the rhetoric without action, this is a losing effort.
By the way, I'm a paying EFF member, so I'm doing more for your effort than any one of you who is just spouting rhetoric. (Though I'm in it for the overall EFF cause of protecting valid digital rights; my position on file sharing versus RIAA is to stop the slippery slope of the RIAA litigating against legal uses.) If you want to fight the good fight, put your money where your mouth is, then we can talk.
Haha hey guys, sorry for the offensive web design, I'm aware of all the nonstandard crap I pulled off. But get this: personal blog. All the stuff on there is par for the course when it comes to the usability wasteland that is Xanga, and trust me, I have seen much worse. Thanks for the insight though, but Xanga already offers actual standard and relatively usable designs and you know how kids like me go, with our predisposition towards this "customization" bullshit. I'm not a web design person, but I know about the readability against the background problem and you have no idea how long it took to try to darken the whole thing just right. But I think it's a good call to get rid of or change the bg though, thanks to those of you old folks with terrible monitors and crap eyes. Just realize that for the most part, with all due respect, you are not the intended audience.
And about the bg music; for a couple months I had the volume for my music cut in half when I cut it all together, but suddenly decided that lots of people had a mute button within easy reach of their keyboard. Bad assumption I guess, assume makes and ass out of you and me etc., but I can see where you guys are coming from. I have done web work with usability before, bringing a large portion of the NASA National Space Science Data Center website (about 500ish pages) up to government-mandated Section 508 compliance and have felt a small twang of guilt once in a while about all the JavaScript, the bg, the music, and the weird text. Just realize that I believe that certain contexts allow for bending of the usual usability rules (gaming sites, pop culture pages, the personal blog sites of teenagers) when the intended audience is very focused.
Point is, I would much rather have my page look terrible than look like yours. I hope you can understand.
It could be that Duke realized that it's about $2000 more per year than Harvard.
As a member of my high school's class of 2004, I got a Compaq iPaq handheld. Too bad that didn't turn out very well at all. The redneck kids at our school hated the crap out of them and threw them out bus windows, the "normal" kids kept breaking them by doing boneheaded things, and some geeks tried to overclock theirs. People were trading MP3's over IR across rooms, and there were IM convos going on in class. Furthermore, many of the teachers didn't even feel compelled to take advantage of the technology. Only a few tech-savvy students and staff members took advantage of the ability to browse the web over the school's new wi-fi network (now four years old). In the end, we all gave the handhelds back, and the things were packed in crates for the teachers who wanted to use them.
I loved mine and didn't want to let it go. It seems like the technology is only useful in the hands of people who want to eschew old tech and go new-school.
-Selling current third-gen 15 gig iPod to parents
-Member of Duke University Class of 2008, double-majoring in ECE/BME:-)
I spent big bucks on my Logitech 700MX and it has back and forward buttons right next to my thumb. It helps a lot, and it's a whole lot easier that the gestures. Furthermore, I could probably end up doing some of these gestures by accident.
I got a summer job and bought my own PC. So I'm golden on that front.
My parents tend to learn computer stuff from me. Thus I do not discuss History Lists around them.
I get home from school before my parents get home. This leaves me about two hours to do whatever.
I have a brother, and we tend to keep the fappage details secret from each other. It's not good to look at porn when the other brother is in the room; that's just our moral code. I know he looks at lots of crap and he has mostly given up on hiding it; he still closes windows quickly though. And it's not like we rat on each other; he who has not sinned may cast the first stone, I always say. But still, I categorically deny anything that may show up in my History, intentionally or not.
I must be pretty lucky compared to other teens "chaffing under the rules." My parents have recently grown a little concerned after I posted some of my Photoshops of teachers on my blog that got me suspended for ten days and got me kicked out of the National Honor Society. But otherwise it's cool.
Oh crap! I'm starting to think they might not care!
Now "that's" pretty darned "funny" by any "standard." "LOL."
In this case, technology has progressed faster than government. Obsolescence, specifically.
This is probably the wrong direction to go in. We could have all the fancy, awesome weapons out of every sci-fi novel and movie, but it would appear that big, expensive weapons, surgical as they may be, might be going by the wayside. Just take a look at Iraq. I was ecstatic when I saw all of my parents' tax dollars going into weapon systems that proved to be wildly successful in the war at large. However, I am now extremely frustrated that all of our fantastic technology can't protect our boys from suicide bombers or simple ambushes with ak's and rpg's. Somebody out there must be noticing how we can't even put Iraq under control. Lasers do nothing for me now; we need innovation. Serve me up a/. article about miraculous tactics that beat the t's at their own game, and I'll be satisfied. Roger that, enemy down.
Counter-Terrorists Win.
I tried Mandrake 8.1 for a couple of weeks and it aimply toasted 98SE. It was stable. It was faster. It was geekier! I explored the OS, trying to figure out how to do everything I did before in Windows, and was mostly successful. Now all I needed was a way to run Half-Life, and my life would be complete.
Not.
I found a nice website with instructions on how to install Half-Life on Linux and proceeded through step-by-step. The surprising thing was, I hated 98SE enough to follow the incredibly long and painful process. Instead of simply popping in a cd or double-clicking an executable, I had to download the Wine source tree through the console, configure, compile, repeat because I screwed up, reinstall drivers, reconfigure, recompile, edit config files myself, etc until after four days I finally gave up.
Here's a couple hints to Linux programmers: Have end users download, then run an executable that automatically configures/compiles/installs itself, and comes with its own libraries. Make it run in the GUI. If it's so hard, WHY CAN ALMOST EVERY WINDOWS PROGRAM DO IT?
How about letting me into my own system without root? It saves time. Either hackers erase my OS for fun or I erase it out of frustration.
Maybe my mouse should work every time instead of just moving in vertical lines. Maybe I should be able to plug and play my mouse, like in Windows. Perhaps Linux could not crash because of USB switching, like XP. I'm thinkin' that I should be able to reconfigure my mouse, that doesn't work, with a keyboard, that does, by tabbing through an interface.
Needless to say, I am now a happy Windows XP user. I stick in the CD, reformat some partitions, and away it goes. All I need to do is enter codes. How is that hard? Furthermore, I have been using a pirated German version of XP with almost no English in it. I don't know German. Yet it's STILL easier to use than Linux. Linux has given me a nasty taste in my mouth; I hope I never have to go back.
Slashdot Mirror
iPod Experiment
Duke iPod program to continue next year
Also, you can go to The Chronicle and search the archives for "iPod" and get any number of negative student editorials on the topic. Basically, all of us at Duke agreed that the project was a marketing campaign, plain and simple; on the other hand, you won't see us complaining. We got free (as in, paid for by a fund accumulated from previous years) iPods, and next year's freshmen will get them if they take the appropriate classes.
In addition, Carolina can go to hell. Go Devils :-P
I appreciate that Microsoft releases Windows "on" South American countries, as if it were unleashing a pack of diseased wolverines upon poor Brazilian villagers. (Jokes about diseased wolverines being faster than XP are not encouraged at this point.)
The anti-MS sentiment seethes around here on so many levels.
And anyway, I don't see a problem with running security apps in the background as a benefit. Sure, it's not a motivation for spending the extra grand per se, but it's definitely a sweet little perk.
I knew /. tended to be slightly slower in posting stories than many of the the smaller, more agile blogs out there, but a year and a month late is just a bit much.
This is not the editors' best work.
Hindi
I would never consider myself elderly, but I'm pretty sure ATM's existed before 1998. You can verify through an ATM without getting charged.
It might be interesting if, by some incredible twist of fate, Prior Art doesn't take these guys down instantly. They will get rich off of the entire United States economy, without products or services.
I, like a number of /.ers, am reminded of that guy who ran SCO.
On the bright side, it appears that the Pat-Rights guy has patented the entire structure of modern networked software DRM. You'd think the Cory Doctorow fans would be rejoicing. But it looks like the Lessig and Apple fans are being more fully represented at the moment.
I remember personally going through religious newsgroups as a twelve-year-old and engaging in and absorbing these debates without the capability to judge statements by people who had no real expertise on the subject matter. My beliefs and values were being shaped by people who didn't know what they were talking about in general. As a consequence, I almost became disillusioned from my religion at a time when I wasn't truly capable of making an educated decision.
Perhaps one can separate the religious from the moral here, but very rarely do kids go to websites that foster moral growth. Who does? The Internet is not that kind of a place, for better or for worse. That's what churches, schools, and parents are for.
Spam, porn, viruses, marketing, etc. And I can assure you that few children will go searching for MIT OpenCourseWare philosophy notes, Confician ethics, Maoist doctrine, etc. on their own. They will look for their favorite new music artists, information on the latest cartoon series, get on IM with their friends, or will just sit there and play flash games for the whole time.
Have you been in a high school computer lab? All kids do on the Internet is waste time and expose themselves to information that they are generally not morally equipped to interpret. When they need to do research for a school assignment, they will probably find that the restrictions will allow them to get the info they need fairly conveniently. So perhaps the totalitarian government is doing the children a service by keeping them focused.
On the other hand, I do not agree with the restrictions on adult consumption of the Internet. Clearly, at that point the government is perpetuating ignorence.
Also notice how loose the copyright philosophies are in China. IIRC piracy is allowed, even encouraged in there. We have the RIAA, the MPAA, the DMCA, and media corporations with the nearly full backing of the U.S. government. Perhaps one should consider whether the lawsuits going around would count as oppression/repression to a communist.
Let's start with the box and the liners. Miyazaki praises himself for introducing a plot with no good or evil. Supposedly, this is some kind of revolutionary step in anime development, or at least that's how it's portrayed. It isn't.
Also, though most anime I've been introduced to has themes appealing to a broad range of age groups, Spirited Away is clearly made only for children. I sat there, searching for absolutely anything that would appeal to people over the age of twelve, but I found nothing besides some blood. A little girl grows up and falls in love with this dragon river spirit thing. Does love that young/cross-species even make any sense? Contrast this with most Disney and Pixar films, which not only contain fanciful settings and characters for the kids, but highly emotional and challenging moral situations that manage to appeal to adult audiences. I doubt whether any academic exegesis of this film (besides artistic/historical) will be worth writing, because of the appearent simplicity of the plot. Contrast this with the fantastic Princess Mononoke, and again, most Disney and Pixar films.
I'm a recovering filesharer and I've been on iTunes for about six months. Usually, I find that people who share their music are either totally oblivious to the fact that it's illegal and there's a war going on over it, or they just resent the cost and inconvenience of going out and buying a CD.
Excuses for stealing:
- Lack of alternatives (taken care of, already lots of services and competition)
- Cost (negated, only $1 per song or $10 per album)
- Try before you buy (services tend to have preview clips)
- Convenience (services are more convenient)
- Online music stores won't work because things will get stolen anyway (terrible argument, laws work because of a societal agreement to follow the laws of the society, stopping piracy "should" lower prices (well, maybe, we can hope))
- Selection (admittedly, many stores are lacking in rare genres, but then the record companies would be at fault for not offering the goods and thus stealing would not cut too drastically into profits. This would be stealing no one would care about)
Really, at this point in time, the only people stealing are the apathetic, the stingy, and the pretending revolutionaries. (And if you're using file-sharing to get rare files the RIAA doesn't allow selling over OMS, is it really stealing?) Supporting the legality of a bare-faced crime defies logic. Considering other things like the disorganization of the effort, the utter apathy of much of the rank-and-file, and the rhetoric without action, this is a losing effort.By the way, I'm a paying EFF member, so I'm doing more for your effort than any one of you who is just spouting rhetoric. (Though I'm in it for the overall EFF cause of protecting valid digital rights; my position on file sharing versus RIAA is to stop the slippery slope of the RIAA litigating against legal uses.) If you want to fight the good fight, put your money where your mouth is, then we can talk.
Secondly I know the numbers don't match up, but the second I change something, it breaks. Right now it ain't broke. So I ain't fixin'.
Thridly, mute.
Finally, yes, it's pretty well-established that I'm an idiot. Thanks.
And about the bg music; for a couple months I had the volume for my music cut in half when I cut it all together, but suddenly decided that lots of people had a mute button within easy reach of their keyboard. Bad assumption I guess, assume makes and ass out of you and me etc., but I can see where you guys are coming from. I have done web work with usability before, bringing a large portion of the NASA National Space Science Data Center website (about 500ish pages) up to government-mandated Section 508 compliance and have felt a small twang of guilt once in a while about all the JavaScript, the bg, the music, and the weird text. Just realize that I believe that certain contexts allow for bending of the usual usability rules (gaming sites, pop culture pages, the personal blog sites of teenagers) when the intended audience is very focused.
Point is, I would much rather have my page look terrible than look like yours. I hope you can understand.
Peace
As a member of my high school's class of 2004, I got a Compaq iPaq handheld. Too bad that didn't turn out very well at all. The redneck kids at our school hated the crap out of them and threw them out bus windows, the "normal" kids kept breaking them by doing boneheaded things, and some geeks tried to overclock theirs. People were trading MP3's over IR across rooms, and there were IM convos going on in class. Furthermore, many of the teachers didn't even feel compelled to take advantage of the technology. Only a few tech-savvy students and staff members took advantage of the ability to browse the web over the school's new wi-fi network (now four years old). In the end, we all gave the handhelds back, and the things were packed in crates for the teachers who wanted to use them.
I loved mine and didn't want to let it go. It seems like the technology is only useful in the hands of people who want to eschew old tech and go new-school.
-Selling current third-gen 15 gig iPod to parents :-)
-Member of Duke University Class of 2008, double-majoring in ECE/BME
Life is good.
Shared the big 18th with a definitive man-made disaster. Holla back 86ers! Anyway yeah wow that's terrible...
I spent big bucks on my Logitech 700MX and it has back and forward buttons right next to my thumb. It helps a lot, and it's a whole lot easier that the gestures. Furthermore, I could probably end up doing some of these gestures by accident.
I got a summer job and bought my own PC. So I'm golden on that front.
My parents tend to learn computer stuff from me. Thus I do not discuss History Lists around them.
I get home from school before my parents get home. This leaves me about two hours to do whatever.
I have a brother, and we tend to keep the fappage details secret from each other. It's not good to look at porn when the other brother is in the room; that's just our moral code. I know he looks at lots of crap and he has mostly given up on hiding it; he still closes windows quickly though. And it's not like we rat on each other; he who has not sinned may cast the first stone, I always say. But still, I categorically deny anything that may show up in my History, intentionally or not.
I must be pretty lucky compared to other teens "chaffing under the rules." My parents have recently grown a little concerned after I posted some of my Photoshops of teachers on my blog that got me suspended for ten days and got me kicked out of the National Honor Society. But otherwise it's cool.
Oh crap! I'm starting to think they might not care!
Nah.
Now "that's" pretty darned "funny" by any "standard." "LOL." In this case, technology has progressed faster than government. Obsolescence, specifically.
This is probably the wrong direction to go in. We could have all the fancy, awesome weapons out of every sci-fi novel and movie, but it would appear that big, expensive weapons, surgical as they may be, might be going by the wayside. Just take a look at Iraq. I was ecstatic when I saw all of my parents' tax dollars going into weapon systems that proved to be wildly successful in the war at large. However, I am now extremely frustrated that all of our fantastic technology can't protect our boys from suicide bombers or simple ambushes with ak's and rpg's. Somebody out there must be noticing how we can't even put Iraq under control. Lasers do nothing for me now; we need innovation. Serve me up a /. article about miraculous tactics that beat the t's at their own game, and I'll be satisfied. Roger that, enemy down.
Counter-Terrorists Win.
That took seven years? Behold the agility of open source.
I tried Mandrake 8.1 for a couple of weeks and it aimply toasted 98SE. It was stable. It was faster. It was geekier! I explored the OS, trying to figure out how to do everything I did before in Windows, and was mostly successful. Now all I needed was a way to run Half-Life, and my life would be complete.
Not.
I found a nice website with instructions on how to install Half-Life on Linux and proceeded through step-by-step. The surprising thing was, I hated 98SE enough to follow the incredibly long and painful process. Instead of simply popping in a cd or double-clicking an executable, I had to download the Wine source tree through the console, configure, compile, repeat because I screwed up, reinstall drivers, reconfigure, recompile, edit config files myself, etc until after four days I finally gave up.
Here's a couple hints to Linux programmers:
Have end users download, then run an executable that automatically configures/compiles/installs itself, and comes with its own libraries. Make it run in the GUI. If it's so hard, WHY CAN ALMOST EVERY WINDOWS PROGRAM DO IT?
How about letting me into my own system without root? It saves time. Either hackers erase my OS for fun or I erase it out of frustration.
Maybe my mouse should work every time instead of just moving in vertical lines. Maybe I should be able to plug and play my mouse, like in Windows. Perhaps Linux could not crash because of USB switching, like XP. I'm thinkin' that I should be able to reconfigure my mouse, that doesn't work, with a keyboard, that does, by tabbing through an interface.
Needless to say, I am now a happy Windows XP user. I stick in the CD, reformat some partitions, and away it goes. All I need to do is enter codes. How is that hard? Furthermore, I have been using a pirated German version of XP with almost no English in it. I don't know German. Yet it's STILL easier to use than Linux. Linux has given me a nasty taste in my mouth; I hope I never have to go back.