---edit for formatting--- *why doesn't slashdot have a WYSIWYG editor yet? grumble, grumble*
It feels like we're coming to a head here with regards to the government and technology.
At some point, we will have to find a reasonable solution to the problem of something which is strong enough for us, but in some way allows the government (with an appropriate warrant) to access data.
If we (the tech community) don't come up with a solution, at some point an inferior one might be forced on us. Imagine a significant (nuclear) terrorist threat that could be averted if the government could access X or Y. In the aftermath of such a threat (or, in the worst case, attack), public opinion will force a change.
Let's find a solution. Perhaps we need a new way of encrypting things that allows a third "government" key? I know the anti-government types will shy away from this, but, with a warrant, is this so unreasonable?
It feels like we're coming to a head here with regards to the government and technology. At some point, we will have to find a reasonable solution to the problem of something which is strong enough for us, but in some way allows the government (with an appropriate warrant) to access data.
If we (the tech community) don't come up with a solution, at some point an inferior one might be forced on us. Imagine a significant (nuclear) terrorist threat that could be averted if the government could access X or Y. In the aftermath of such a threat (or, in the worst case, attack), public opinion will force a change.
Let's find a solution. Perhaps we need a new way of encrypting things that allows a third "government" key? I know the anti-government types will shy away from this, but, with a warrant, is this so unreasonable?
I'll venture a guess that in 10 years, RIM's fall from grace will probably be a great case study in business schools around the world.
How a successful company managed, through horrible fore-sight, atrocious product management and lousy business management, to squander an insurmountable lead in the enterprise market is amazing.
On to the story at hand: there is no doubt that the wider handset market is in all kinds of trouble. Apple clearly makes most of the profit, and Samsung picks off what is left. What does this leave the other players? Nothing. Clearly there is no competition in the iOS market, and Samsung has a huge lead (and massive fab capabilities). Unless one of the other players steps up and makes a handset that, you know, you'd actually want, then they're dead.
End of story - this isn't that complex. Make a product people want. The competition has showed you the way....
Obviously, electronic devices can't bring down a plane. Millions of fliers every week "forget" to turn off their devices, and nary a plane goes down. Can common sense finally prevail? Arbitrary rules reduce respect for the necessary ones. For example: No headphones during take-off? Makes perfect sense - take-off is one of the most sensitive times of the flight. If someone needs to yell directions, you need to hear them. Reading a book on your Kindle? Not so much.
Having said that, of course, if my plane is going down, I'd probably take off my headphones. YMMV.
You're right, of course. The ethical questions are staggering. I guess the geek side of me went "cool, I want to talk to these guys". Wouldn't it be cool to see if they were really like us? Haven't you always wondered if Neanderthals would see you as a fellow (albeit weird) "person"?
I, for one, think this is absolutely fascinating! The thought that, as recently as 10k years ago, there were other species of human is amazing - that's not far off of written history!
I wonder if we could think about cloning these people - is the DNA "fresh" enough?
Some cynical people might even suspect a plot here - our right wing party would love to bury the NBN and have been claiming that it'll be more expensive than ADSL services - perhaps Telstra wants to give them more ammunition, and muddy the waters at the same time?
I'm not entirely sure how this is a "contradiciton". Would you disagree with the following statement:
Yes, I have no doubt that some innocent people are being caught up unfairly in the process. But I also can't blame New York for having these much-malinged "police".
As much fun as it is to bash Monsanto, if we want to change the patent regime, we must do it ourselves. Monsanto is only doing what is best for their shareholders - protecting their patents. I'm not saying that is good or bad, but not expecting them to do so is silly. Having said that, innocent farmers should obviously not fall prey to this.
So perhaps I'm new to this game - but this is a pretty cool hack. Using the sizes of PNG files over an encrypted channel to locate someone is pretty nifty.
For those who know more: is SSL encryption predictable (size-wise)? If I have the same size payload, will it always generate the same size encrypted result?
Honestly, wouldn't a MacBook of some description be the best choice? You "like the Unix/BSD aspect...", hardware working, good battery life, AppleCare-type support, etc.
Why switch? Are you looking for cheaper hardware? Philosophical leaning towards Linux?
So is it wrong to goatse someone within a day of them being able to see for the first time, ever, in their whole life? They said they can see shapes after all.....
So is it wrong to goatse someone within a day of them being able to see for the first time, ever, in their whole life? They said they can see shapes.....
How does checking for iodine and silver check for water safety? Also - proofreading would be nice - "which are to used kill..."? My god what do we pay editors for?
Yeah it does seem a little strange that people worry so much about dirty bombs. Surely the toxins in the environment (or hell, diet coke) do more damage to more people....
Realistically, how was this not blindingly obvious?
If you put a bunch of life forms into a high stress environment, evolution is going to happen quickly. Clearly, the gene for radiation resistance is going to quickly become prevalent in a population exposed to large amounts of radiation....
Well, of course he's going to say that - he's not just going to say "well, we're planning on axing 20,000 jobs and kissing bye-bye to the SPARC line". He has to at least maintain the *illusion* that they're going to keep producing SPARC chips.
I love the line about "even Apple" is designing its own chips. One could say "even Sun" sells Intel.
I'm not sure that your example matches how people buy songs though.
If you go to the bakery and buy, for example, whole grain bread - you can go somewhere else and buy very similar whole grain bread for the same price (or cheaper) for almost the same product (minor differences in quality/taste).
For songs, if you want Song X by Artist Y, no other label sells a product that is the same. No amount of fudging makes them the same. As a result, there really is no competition. Everyone I know (biased sample, etc etc) seems to say "I want song X, let me go buy it" rather than "I want to buy some music, hmmmm, what shall I buy". YMMV.
As a result, I would argue that older songs will probably be even more expensive. If you actually go looking for some song from some obscure 60s band, odds are you really want that song from that band, and are probably less price sensitive as a result.
Does it surprise anybody that the labels would not drop prices when not forced to? There is no competition between different labels to sell the same product (song) so why would they drop the price on a desired product (song) ?
Slashdot Mirror
Seems like a horrible idea - what if the company makes a real loss and can't pay the tax? There's a reason that we tax profits.
---edit for formatting--- *why doesn't slashdot have a WYSIWYG editor yet? grumble, grumble*
It feels like we're coming to a head here with regards to the government and technology.
At some point, we will have to find a reasonable solution to the problem of something which is strong enough for us, but in some way allows the government (with an appropriate warrant) to access data.
If we (the tech community) don't come up with a solution, at some point an inferior one might be forced on us. Imagine a significant (nuclear) terrorist threat that could be averted if the government could access X or Y. In the aftermath of such a threat (or, in the worst case, attack), public opinion will force a change.
Let's find a solution. Perhaps we need a new way of encrypting things that allows a third "government" key? I know the anti-government types will shy away from this, but, with a warrant, is this so unreasonable?
It feels like we're coming to a head here with regards to the government and technology. At some point, we will have to find a reasonable solution to the problem of something which is strong enough for us, but in some way allows the government (with an appropriate warrant) to access data. If we (the tech community) don't come up with a solution, at some point an inferior one might be forced on us. Imagine a significant (nuclear) terrorist threat that could be averted if the government could access X or Y. In the aftermath of such a threat (or, in the worst case, attack), public opinion will force a change. Let's find a solution. Perhaps we need a new way of encrypting things that allows a third "government" key? I know the anti-government types will shy away from this, but, with a warrant, is this so unreasonable?
So is this actually going to catch up to Intel? It'd be great to have meaningful competition in the CPU space again....
I'll venture a guess that in 10 years, RIM's fall from grace will probably be a great case study in business schools around the world.
How a successful company managed, through horrible fore-sight, atrocious product management and lousy business management, to squander an insurmountable lead in the enterprise market is amazing.
On to the story at hand: there is no doubt that the wider handset market is in all kinds of trouble. Apple clearly makes most of the profit, and Samsung picks off what is left. What does this leave the other players? Nothing. Clearly there is no competition in the iOS market, and Samsung has a huge lead (and massive fab capabilities). Unless one of the other players steps up and makes a handset that, you know, you'd actually want, then they're dead.
End of story - this isn't that complex. Make a product people want. The competition has showed you the way....
Obviously, electronic devices can't bring down a plane. Millions of fliers every week "forget" to turn off their devices, and nary a plane goes down. Can common sense finally prevail? Arbitrary rules reduce respect for the necessary ones. For example: No headphones during take-off? Makes perfect sense - take-off is one of the most sensitive times of the flight. If someone needs to yell directions, you need to hear them. Reading a book on your Kindle? Not so much.
Having said that, of course, if my plane is going down, I'd probably take off my headphones. YMMV.
My apologies. These fossils were clearly placed (rather cleverly) to fool us & test our faith.
You're right, of course. The ethical questions are staggering. I guess the geek side of me went "cool, I want to talk to these guys". Wouldn't it be cool to see if they were really like us? Haven't you always wondered if Neanderthals would see you as a fellow (albeit weird) "person"?
I, for one, think this is absolutely fascinating! The thought that, as recently as 10k years ago, there were other species of human is amazing - that's not far off of written history!
I wonder if we could think about cloning these people - is the DNA "fresh" enough?
Some cynical people might even suspect a plot here - our right wing party would love to bury the NBN and have been claiming that it'll be more expensive than ADSL services - perhaps Telstra wants to give them more ammunition, and muddy the waters at the same time?
I'm not entirely sure how this is a "contradiciton". Would you disagree with the following statement:
Yes, I have no doubt that some innocent people are being caught up unfairly in the process. But I also can't blame New York for having these much-malinged "police".
As much fun as it is to bash Monsanto, if we want to change the patent regime, we must do it ourselves. Monsanto is only doing what is best for their shareholders - protecting their patents. I'm not saying that is good or bad, but not expecting them to do so is silly. Having said that, innocent farmers should obviously not fall prey to this.
So perhaps I'm new to this game - but this is a pretty cool hack. Using the sizes of PNG files over an encrypted channel to locate someone is pretty nifty.
For those who know more: is SSL encryption predictable (size-wise)? If I have the same size payload, will it always generate the same size encrypted result?
Your username implies a bias :-)
Honestly, wouldn't a MacBook of some description be the best choice? You "like the Unix/BSD aspect...", hardware working, good battery life, AppleCare-type support, etc. Why switch? Are you looking for cheaper hardware? Philosophical leaning towards Linux?
So is it wrong to goatse someone within a day of them being able to see for the first time, ever, in their whole life? They said they can see shapes after all.....
So is it wrong to goatse someone within a day of them being able to see for the first time, ever, in their whole life? They said they can see shapes.....
So is it wrong to goatse someone within a day of the operation?
My kingdom for some mod points. This might be the funniest thing I see this week. Kudos, good sir, kudos.
How does checking for iodine and silver check for water safety? Also - proofreading would be nice - "which are to used kill..."? My god what do we pay editors for?
Yeah it does seem a little strange that people worry so much about dirty bombs. Surely the toxins in the environment (or hell, diet coke) do more damage to more people....
Realistically, how was this not blindingly obvious?
If you put a bunch of life forms into a high stress environment, evolution is going to happen quickly. Clearly, the gene for radiation resistance is going to quickly become prevalent in a population exposed to large amounts of radiation....
Somewhere, Darwin smiles quietly.
Well, of course he's going to say that - he's not just going to say "well, we're planning on axing 20,000 jobs and kissing bye-bye to the SPARC line". He has to at least maintain the *illusion* that they're going to keep producing SPARC chips.
I love the line about "even Apple" is designing its own chips. One could say "even Sun" sells Intel.
So does that mean skimpily clad cavewomen really *did* ride around on dinosaurs? mmmm...
I'm not sure that your example matches how people buy songs though.
If you go to the bakery and buy, for example, whole grain bread - you can go somewhere else and buy very similar whole grain bread for the same price (or cheaper) for almost the same product (minor differences in quality/taste).
For songs, if you want Song X by Artist Y, no other label sells a product that is the same. No amount of fudging makes them the same. As a result, there really is no competition. Everyone I know (biased sample, etc etc) seems to say "I want song X, let me go buy it" rather than "I want to buy some music, hmmmm, what shall I buy". YMMV.
As a result, I would argue that older songs will probably be even more expensive. If you actually go looking for some song from some obscure 60s band, odds are you really want that song from that band, and are probably less price sensitive as a result.
Thoughts?
Does it surprise anybody that the labels would not drop prices when not forced to? There is no competition between different labels to sell the same product (song) so why would they drop the price on a desired product (song) ?