...I want to ring someone to tell them, say, the time I'll be meeting them at. Say they're on another network - here in the UK, although I get billed per second, the minimum charge is 1 minute. I'm on PAYG, so calling them to tell them the info costs me around 40p.
Whereas texting the info costs 10p.
Now, I'm sure phone companies push texting because it brings in extra revenue, but in my case I only use it when I want to pass on brief info without spending money on a phone call.
"The only way to discover the truth of the situation is via presenting all of the facts in an open forum. That's how our Court system works."
I'm pretty sure the implication there is that Groklaw is an open forum.
Except it's not.
It's a heavily biased forum - I don't think anyone would try to refute the claim that the majority of Groklaw contributers are anti-SCO. A court is, in theory, unbiased. The judge should weigh the case up on a fact by fact, argument by argument basis.
Groklaw doesn't quite work like that, and that's what The Register is trying to say. New facts produced on Groklaw are jumped upon by the majority, and elevated above the level of relevance they actually have.
So, whereas a small piece of information that could be used against SCO may have a negligable effect in court, on Groklaw the majority of users are already very anti-SCO, and so leap on to it.
Groklaw is simply not an open forum, and that's the point The Register tries to make.
Perhaps I didn't understand the article entirely, but the point Orlowski seems to be making is that sites like Groklaw can take the facts and place them entirely out of context.
In an effort to undermine the "FUD", even minor facts become revalations.
...I thought the major point was pretty easy to see - that forums such as Groklaw (and Slashdot) exist so that many users can have their beliefs confirmed or backed up by the majority, the "echo chamber" described...
The article is trying to put across the point that on single-sided sites such as Groklaw (and that's really what it is), context is lost completely.
...this Slashdot story is a case in point, particularly with the mod point system used.
As Orlowski says, "commenters who pointed out the shortcomings of the argument were lost in the Groklaw noise [...] They're lost amidst comments such as "Absolutely fascinating", and "Doesn't this just about blow the whole of SCOG's case out of the water?"
The same is perfectly true here - I'm sure there are far more of the latter on Slashdot, and being a "democratic" mod system the latter wield the greater "power".
Thus, those who post comments such as "This article is wrong", "Groklaw is right", "PJ is right" etc. etc. will in general be moderated far higher than those posting "...perhaps Andrew Orlowski has a point".
Now, the big question is whether that's a bad thing. The point of the Slashdot mod system is that only after repeated moderation by severak different people does a comment become noticed. The system is, in it's own idiosyncratic way, a democracy. But as a result of this, some opinions that may actually have some merit but are disagreed with by the majority are left behind.
The echo chamber exists right here - when this article was at around 75 comments posted, I'd say I saw many more pro-Groklaw posts modded up to 5 than criticisms...there were critical posts there, but they had yet to be moderated up.
...with these new human brains, the sheep could join up with other human modded animals - for the sake of argument, lets say pigs, forming some sort of idealistic communist regime that turns incredibly sour?
Of course, the fatal flaw in that logic is no human beings would ever mindlessly follow and never question their leaders? Right?
...in the UK, this is already happening, region by region - even though the official switchover isn't until 2008 or so. The first switchover was to a small area of Wales (with a smallish population), who decided by public vote (around 95% in favour) to switch off the analogue transmissions completely. I think my area (south west england/south wales) is scheduled next, although not for a year or so. Obviously, it's a lot easier to provide digital signals to the whole of the UK than it is to the entire of the US.
Of course, it's also to the UK (and I guess the US's) government's benefit, since by switching off early they can sell of the frequencies earlier, and get cash sooner.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Target Disc Mode is standard on all Mac OS X releases, not just Tiger. Certainly my 10.1 iBook can be turned into a firewire drive by holding down "t" during startup.
...I've only ever had one computer optical drive fail on me, and that was an external CD-RW, that died after about two years. Even my 486 1x CD-ROM is still going pretty strong. That said, I do take great care of my discs, cleaning them, making sure they're not dusty when I put them in and so on.
However, when it comes to portable CD players, my experience is completely the opposite. Normally (I'm still using a portable CD player, even though I have digital copies of my music collection on my PC...more to do with bad experiences with MP3 players and battery life) - they tend to die ever year or so. I guess this is a combination of cost (I tend to buy pretty cheap players) and rough handling / ease of dust entering the lens casing.
I'd certainly expect a £20 DVD player to die earlier than a £200 one...but I'd say a combination of keeping discs free of dust and cleaning the lens every couple of weeks would go a long way to extending life - I've got a 15 year old CD player that handles everything I throw at it.
I actually heard a report on BBC Radio today about Apple's image, which touched upon the whole rumour site issue - they had an interview with the EFF lawyer who defended the sites. The basic point was Apple had slightly tarnished it's "little kid taking on the world" image.
It seems to me the reviewer has some trouble distinguishing between bad films and badly written films.
I'm pretty sure the film is not "bad" bad. I doubt it's cinimatography is as bad as some of the stuff seen on MST3K. I'm sure the acting isn't as bad either.
Perhaps the script totally sucks. But consider this - would someone who had never read the books in their life enjoy this film? Probably. Would someone expecting the same as the books enjoy this film? Probably not.
But I don't think you can it "an abomination", especially when compared to the really bad films produced over the years. Seems to me the reviewer is a little bit stuck up trying to be a critic.
...people who want to see a film that consists solely of material recylced word for word from something else.
A film should be different. There should be new things. It's suppossed to be a retelling of a story, not a carbon copy. I'd be pretty dissapointed if I went to see a film that consisted only of dialogue ripped from the existing novel. I don't see people up in arms when films are produced that transplant Jane Austen into Indian culture (Bride and Prejudice), or reinvent Shakespeare...
Anyone who goes to see a film adapation of a book expecting a word for word and scenario for scenario copy is, in my mind, slightly odd.
"I personally, with no intention to troll, feel that this is what happens when you let an American write English humour."
Because you'll never find an American writing that kind of humour - I mean, there wasn't an American on Monty Python team was there? And surely that's "English" humour if anything.
OK - so maybe P2P doesn't have much of an effect of record sales. But does that mean you should just ignore the millions of instances of copyright infringment that occur daily using P2P software? Should you ignore crime?...because that's what it is. I'm not saying it should be a crime, but complain all you like - downloading a song via a P2P network that you havn't already bought it almost always illegal.
I'm not putting this forward as my view, but just pointing out that maybe P2P has no effect on record sales, but does that mean we should ignore the crime that is taking place?
The Guardian already does something like this - it's called "The Editor", and appears daily in their paper. It's a full page spread which details columns, letters, and news coverage in papers and media around the world. Obviously you can't cover that much in a single page, but I'm pretty sure the Guardian also produces a weekly version of The Editor (although it might be printed under a different name) which you can buy.
I'd imagine their online service would use "The Editor" namesake.
Here in the UK the online provider MultiMap lets you do the same thing, just with aerial photography rather than sattelite imagery (it obivously takes a lot less time to photo the UK with a plane than the US, so planes are more feasible).
How is this really "new" - in fact, MultiMap has an even cooler feature, which uses a Java applet to overlay the photos with the map, so the area your mouse is over gets a photo superimposed over it.
The only advantage Google has that I can see is a higher free resolution - if you want high res photos on Multimap, you have to pay.
This seems like a good time to ask a question that's been bugging me since I bought a new release DVD a few days ago - as well as some copy propaganda video that came up, I also got a FACT (the UK copy protection "federation") warning which in very bold letters told me "It is illegal to copy this DVD".
It didn't say anything about distribution - merely "It is illegal to copy this DVD". But I thought under UK (and US) law I was allowed to copy physical media for my own personal use, or if not that for my use as a backup copy.
If I'm right, does that mean someone could actually have some sort of legal case against FACT, seeing as they are wrongly informing consumers of their legal rights?
I'm obviously not a lawyer, and I only ask this out of curiousity...
Not mentioned in the CNN article (but mentioned on the NASA website - http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/ - is that a GPS antenna was installed to help guide the European Automated Transfer Vehicle...what kind of accuracy do you get from a GPS system at that kind of altitude?
Slashdot Mirror
...I want to ring someone to tell them, say, the time I'll be meeting them at. Say they're on another network - here in the UK, although I get billed per second, the minimum charge is 1 minute. I'm on PAYG, so calling them to tell them the info costs me around 40p.
Whereas texting the info costs 10p.
Now, I'm sure phone companies push texting because it brings in extra revenue, but in my case I only use it when I want to pass on brief info without spending money on a phone call.
...so, when did "doing what is right" not include "honoring the law"??? Much as we all hate it, that's what it is...
"The only way to discover the truth of the situation is via presenting all of the facts in an open forum. That's how our Court system works."
I'm pretty sure the implication there is that Groklaw is an open forum.
Except it's not.
It's a heavily biased forum - I don't think anyone would try to refute the claim that the majority of Groklaw contributers are anti-SCO. A court is, in theory, unbiased. The judge should weigh the case up on a fact by fact, argument by argument basis.
Groklaw doesn't quite work like that, and that's what The Register is trying to say. New facts produced on Groklaw are jumped upon by the majority, and elevated above the level of relevance they actually have.
So, whereas a small piece of information that could be used against SCO may have a negligable effect in court, on Groklaw the majority of users are already very anti-SCO, and so leap on to it.
Groklaw is simply not an open forum, and that's the point The Register tries to make.
Perhaps I didn't understand the article entirely, but the point Orlowski seems to be making is that sites like Groklaw can take the facts and place them entirely out of context. In an effort to undermine the "FUD", even minor facts become revalations.
...I thought the major point was pretty easy to see - that forums such as Groklaw (and Slashdot) exist so that many users can have their beliefs confirmed or backed up by the majority, the "echo chamber" described...
The article is trying to put across the point that on single-sided sites such as Groklaw (and that's really what it is), context is lost completely.
...this Slashdot story is a case in point, particularly with the mod point system used.
As Orlowski says, "commenters who pointed out the shortcomings of the argument were lost in the Groklaw noise [...] They're lost amidst comments such as "Absolutely fascinating", and "Doesn't this just about blow the whole of SCOG's case out of the water?"
The same is perfectly true here - I'm sure there are far more of the latter on Slashdot, and being a "democratic" mod system the latter wield the greater "power".
Thus, those who post comments such as "This article is wrong", "Groklaw is right", "PJ is right" etc. etc. will in general be moderated far higher than those posting "...perhaps Andrew Orlowski has a point".
Now, the big question is whether that's a bad thing. The point of the Slashdot mod system is that only after repeated moderation by severak different people does a comment become noticed. The system is, in it's own idiosyncratic way, a democracy. But as a result of this, some opinions that may actually have some merit but are disagreed with by the majority are left behind.
The echo chamber exists right here - when this article was at around 75 comments posted, I'd say I saw many more pro-Groklaw posts modded up to 5 than criticisms...there were critical posts there, but they had yet to be moderated up.
...with these new human brains, the sheep could join up with other human modded animals - for the sake of argument, lets say pigs, forming some sort of idealistic communist regime that turns incredibly sour?
Of course, the fatal flaw in that logic is no human beings would ever mindlessly follow and never question their leaders? Right?
...in the UK, this is already happening, region by region - even though the official switchover isn't until 2008 or so. The first switchover was to a small area of Wales (with a smallish population), who decided by public vote (around 95% in favour) to switch off the analogue transmissions completely. I think my area (south west england/south wales) is scheduled next, although not for a year or so. Obviously, it's a lot easier to provide digital signals to the whole of the UK than it is to the entire of the US.
Of course, it's also to the UK (and I guess the US's) government's benefit, since by switching off early they can sell of the frequencies earlier, and get cash sooner.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Target Disc Mode is standard on all Mac OS X releases, not just Tiger. Certainly my 10.1 iBook can be turned into a firewire drive by holding down "t" during startup.
...I've only ever had one computer optical drive fail on me, and that was an external CD-RW, that died after about two years. Even my 486 1x CD-ROM is still going pretty strong. That said, I do take great care of my discs, cleaning them, making sure they're not dusty when I put them in and so on.
However, when it comes to portable CD players, my experience is completely the opposite. Normally (I'm still using a portable CD player, even though I have digital copies of my music collection on my PC...more to do with bad experiences with MP3 players and battery life) - they tend to die ever year or so. I guess this is a combination of cost (I tend to buy pretty cheap players) and rough handling / ease of dust entering the lens casing.
I'd certainly expect a £20 DVD player to die earlier than a £200 one...but I'd say a combination of keeping discs free of dust and cleaning the lens every couple of weeks would go a long way to extending life - I've got a 15 year old CD player that handles everything I throw at it.
...become a "newspaper"?
I actually heard a report on BBC Radio today about Apple's image, which touched upon the whole rumour site issue - they had an interview with the EFF lawyer who defended the sites. The basic point was Apple had slightly tarnished it's "little kid taking on the world" image.
It seems to me the reviewer has some trouble distinguishing between bad films and badly written films.
I'm pretty sure the film is not "bad" bad. I doubt it's cinimatography is as bad as some of the stuff seen on MST3K. I'm sure the acting isn't as bad either.
Perhaps the script totally sucks. But consider this - would someone who had never read the books in their life enjoy this film? Probably. Would someone expecting the same as the books enjoy this film? Probably not.
But I don't think you can it "an abomination", especially when compared to the really bad films produced over the years. Seems to me the reviewer is a little bit stuck up trying to be a critic.
"So we've got a movie. A piece of shit movie.That Douglas Adams lost is life over."
Yes, that's right. The move killed Douglas Adams. Nothing else. It was just that damn movie. Now go back to sleep.
I can take some random crap, but that's a bit too far.
...people who want to see a film that consists solely of material recylced word for word from something else.
A film should be different. There should be new things. It's suppossed to be a retelling of a story, not a carbon copy. I'd be pretty dissapointed if I went to see a film that consisted only of dialogue ripped from the existing novel. I don't see people up in arms when films are produced that transplant Jane Austen into Indian culture (Bride and Prejudice), or reinvent Shakespeare...
Anyone who goes to see a film adapation of a book expecting a word for word and scenario for scenario copy is, in my mind, slightly odd.
"I personally, with no intention to troll, feel that this is what happens when you let an American write English humour."
Because you'll never find an American writing that kind of humour - I mean, there wasn't an American on Monty Python team was there? And surely that's "English" humour if anything.
Oh wait, there was.
Like that underappreciated great "Batman & Robin"...still brings a tear to my eye.
OK - so maybe P2P doesn't have much of an effect of record sales. But does that mean you should just ignore the millions of instances of copyright infringment that occur daily using P2P software? Should you ignore crime? ...because that's what it is. I'm not saying it should be a crime, but complain all you like - downloading a song via a P2P network that you havn't already bought it almost always illegal.
I'm not putting this forward as my view, but just pointing out that maybe P2P has no effect on record sales, but does that mean we should ignore the crime that is taking place?
The Guardian already does something like this - it's called "The Editor", and appears daily in their paper. It's a full page spread which details columns, letters, and news coverage in papers and media around the world. Obviously you can't cover that much in a single page, but I'm pretty sure the Guardian also produces a weekly version of The Editor (although it might be printed under a different name) which you can buy.
I'd imagine their online service would use "The Editor" namesake.
...yeah - "Oh My God! You Killed Kenny" becomes "Oh My God! You Killed Another Feature!"
Here in the UK the online provider MultiMap lets you do the same thing, just with aerial photography rather than sattelite imagery (it obivously takes a lot less time to photo the UK with a plane than the US, so planes are more feasible).
How is this really "new" - in fact, MultiMap has an even cooler feature, which uses a Java applet to overlay the photos with the map, so the area your mouse is over gets a photo superimposed over it.
The only advantage Google has that I can see is a higher free resolution - if you want high res photos on Multimap, you have to pay.
This seems like a good time to ask a question that's been bugging me since I bought a new release DVD a few days ago - as well as some copy propaganda video that came up, I also got a FACT (the UK copy protection "federation") warning which in very bold letters told me "It is illegal to copy this DVD".
It didn't say anything about distribution - merely "It is illegal to copy this DVD". But I thought under UK (and US) law I was allowed to copy physical media for my own personal use, or if not that for my use as a backup copy.
If I'm right, does that mean someone could actually have some sort of legal case against FACT, seeing as they are wrongly informing consumers of their legal rights?
I'm obviously not a lawyer, and I only ask this out of curiousity...
...Monty Python was merging with Enterprise? Now there's a show I'd like to see... :)
You know, if you just remove "Using Electrons", you'd have the typical government - Big, Complicated, Busy, and full of pornography.
Not mentioned in the CNN article (but mentioned on the NASA website - http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/ - is that a GPS antenna was installed to help guide the European Automated Transfer Vehicle...what kind of accuracy do you get from a GPS system at that kind of altitude?
"Everything is like in the movies, and it's hard to believe.", Sharipov said... ...you mean, everything was faked then? :)