Lets take a standard, say the 5/16 unc thread, say it is a nut, any 5/16 bolt made anywhere will fit and work, that is a standard.
The closest (improved cos its cheaper) metric size is oing to be 7 or 8 mm, neither of which will work, at all, if you try and force it to work it breaks terminally, that is a standard.
Now take the MS implementation of the TCP/IP stack "standard", instead of being non compliant and not working at all, thus forcing MS to fix it, OR define a NEW standard, it works, and takes priority over all other packets from systems that came before it and obey the standard.
Let me give you an alternative example of standard
on
Bell's Axioms on Standards
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· Score: 4, Interesting
s in action.
As I've said elsewhere, my original trade was engineer, so I'll use an engineering standard that you will ALL have handled, and hopefully it will be distant enough from computing to illustrate some points without getting embroiled in a fanboy flame war.
Lots of people say the original great invention was the wheel, as an engineer I'd have to pick the much more recent lathe bed or screw thread, without the lathe bed NO accurate machining is possible (including screw threads)
What this means in laymans terms is that EVERY SINGLE COMPONENT would be bespoke, hand made, and slightly different, so EVERY mechanical device would have to be ENTIRELY hand made... no going to the shop to buy a gasket, you have to make every one by hand to match whatever you are working on.
When we come to screw threads there are many standards, BSP, JIC, Metric, and variations amongst these.
Each thread has it's own strengths and weaknesses, and included in these is the actual cost of making a given nut or bolt to a certain thread patterm, which depends on the specification and STANDARD of the thread chosen.
BSP is simply the best for hydraulics for example, while BSF and UNC are good for bolting things together, however metric comes along, with it's predisposition (which is an entirely ETHICAL predisposition, eg academic, rather than practical, and likes everything to be in nice multiples of ten) for simplicity, and it has to be said this simplicity makes a metric bolt cheaper to make than say a BSF bolt. (if you think the cost is the same in these days of CNC then you are wrong and you are omitting precision tolerances and cost of metal removed etc etc etc) so of course metric bolts rapidly became extremely popular.
Trouble is metric threads are, to an engineer, shit. They are cheaper, so management selects them over the engineers preference.
Henry Ford went metric on the truck side of things many mnay years ago now, but for many years (and possibly still today, I'm out of the loop) kept some things, notably wheel nuts, on an imperial thread. Why? because the metric threads worked loose.. like I said, metric threads are crap, old imperial threads are far superior.
SO, to the point.
Obviously a standard thread is very useful, a 1/2 inch AF spanner bought in the UK will fit perfectly around the head of a 5/16 bolt made in germany, which will screw perfectly into a 5/16 water pump made in the USA, because of standards.
SO, we have a general trend away from the old, superior, but more expensive, standards, towards the new, inferior but cheaper standards.
This is all great in theory and the halls of academia but in the real world these unequal pressures bring about strange offspring.
About 20 years ago I worked in Spain, which had just thrown off the mantle of a dictatorship, and was working its way towards joining the European Union, so things including the economy were in a flux, although spain was metric lots of the stuff that was used in spain (for example austin had a car assembly plant there) was not metric.
Instead of everyone owning a whitworth tool set, an AF tool set, and so on (remember that thing about costs, imperial spanners were higher precsion than metric too, so cost more) so the spanish came out with a unique solution, which saved EVERYONE money.
When they made a bolt they would make a 5/16 UNC bolt, just like everyone else, except it would end in a METRIC head, so pable with his metric toolkit could work on it.
When you come across this and see a "wrong" size bolt head on say an engine, you ASSUME that some bastards have ruined it in the past and stripped the thread, and drilled to a larger diameter and tapped it to a matric thread, which of course will have an utterly different ideal torque setting, so you sigh and swear.
It is only when you REMOVE the bastard that you discover that it is a 5/16 UNC.
At this point, all the preceding standards are vastly degraded, you cannot as
If you put me in charge of a Mars mission here's the only proper way to do it.
#1 what we did in the sixties, whistle stop one pass visits, are pointless, if you're going to go then go, don't fuck around.
#2 we have the perfect platform for solar system operations right on uor doorstep, Luna, that and the L1 and L2 largrange points in lunar orbit for stuff that the moon's 1/6th gravity will make difficult or expensive.
#3 all space vehicles will need enough delta vee to decelerate to matching velocity with the target, whether that target is Mars, another planet, or an asteroid, that's no big deal we can use MHD which will efficiently generate low braking thrust for long periods.
#4 all space vehicles and this includes "materiel" of any kind, including "lego" style construction sets and so on, can be given practically any velocity you like by launching from a lunar linear accelerator, these work REALLY well in a vacuum.
SO top priority will be getting mebbe 500,000 tons of mass up to the moon to buind a nearly self sufficient base.
Best way to do that is a two pronged approach.
1/ Develop REALLY heavy lifters, nuclear salt water is cool as a starting point, first step need to be throw everything at perfecting Fusion until it's as doable as fission power plants.
2/ Develop (materials) for the space elevator.
The united states spends 450 BILLION dollars every year on the military, if that lot was thrown at this project you could adopt a JFK / Apollo sort of timescale and we'd have a viable and working moonbase by 2020 AD easy.
If the USA doesn't do this, there will be a moonbase by 2050 at the latest, and it will be Chinese.
When that happens the entire might of every military on the planet, IN CONJUNCTION, will be as effective as wet toilet paper agauinst a.50 cal browning against a lunar linear accelerator with unlimited megatons of purely ballistic projectiles that could be fired as fast as you could fill the accelerator loader.
I don't have a TV licence, I've never had one, so here is some facts.
Yes, stores must take a name and address if you buy a TV, mostly this isn't an issue to people buying 40 inch plasma screens on credit to keep up with the neighbours, they already have your name and address for the credit agreement.
If you pay cash the sales droid has a simple choice, sell the telly to Mr M Jagger (or whoever) and take the commission or lose the sale to the next shop along.
The state simply assumes that the entire population is comprised of mindless assholes who cannot survive without an "idiot's lantern" in the corner of the room, so they simply compare the database of TV licences with the database of all households and send out licence demands to those without one.
TV Detector vans are bullshit, a parlour trick, sure, there are vans with TV Detector written on them, but all detection is done at the database.
If you live in a household that does not have a TV licence (I do) be advised you do not need a licence to own a TV, only to recieve broadcast telly, eg plugged in to the aerial, use it for playing VCR or PS2 and no worries.
TV licencing send you "to the occupier" letters threatening all sorts, wipe your ass with them and throw them in the bin.
Once every year or two some jobsworth asswipe will come around from TV licencing asking why you don't have a licence and can he come in and check. Abuse the asswipe verbally and don't answer any of his questions, he does not have the legal right to demand answers, laugh in his face when he threatens to go off and get a warrant and return, it will never happen.
TV licencing is one of those "crimes" where you can only get done if you shop yourself.
Now, absolutely true story.
I was up in front of the local beak on minor motoring charges.
The case 2 in front of mine was a young woman who was being charged with wasting police time for making a false accusation of rape, she got off scot free, not even a fine.
Case just in front of me was a blind guy being done for no TV licence, as he said in court, any letters not written in braille he just binned as advertising because he is a state registered blind person, the wankers fined him 400 pounds.
I considered myself lucky not to get a death sentence for my motoring transgression.
People who talk about "Europe" or the "EU" like it was some sort of close of the USA probably don't live here and certainly don't travel.
There is more variety just crossing the channel to france than there is crossing the entire united states from east to west or north to south, just because you can buy a big mac and a coke in japan doesn't mean they are americanised.
Microsoft and Apple are allegedly two utterly different companies making utterly different products, yet both were founded and are still steered by people from the same small socio-economic-geographical area, they both work the same, they both think the same, the both act the same, and the only people who cannot see this are those that come from the same area.
Ask a chinese about the differences between the two, you will get some surprising answers.
But, back to the plot, the EU is far far far from homogenised like the USA, and it is unlikely it ever will be, 2000 years of individual history says so, fuck even Iraq itself, royal shell petroleum, redrawing of borders best part of a century ago and nothing has changed at the people level, and you think the EU rolling over is going to change things in a couple of years???
One thing you all miss about the EU.
NOTHING, but NOTHING, about the modern EU is new, open borders, common currencies, free trade, it has all been done before, just check your history, and that all makes it very easy for a present EU member country to say fuck it, and simply quit the EU....
The UK, which is the USA closest asslicker, is STILL debating this very point in some circles and political parties, so if the country closest to the USA model is feeling unwelcome in the EU I shouldn't be too impressed by a few laws being passed in brussels, especially when there is a strong sense in EU member countries that laws passed in brussels are "optional"...
Stamping out piracy to any meaningful degree here, as opposed to glomming the occasional sensationalist headline about arresting half a dozen "bedroom burner" schoolkids, is pretty much a non starter, sure you can spend millions on it, but you'll never make a dent worth noticing.
Alternative nameservers, nntp traffic, the thousands of miles of still dark backbone fibre, no there are way too many OTHER financial interests at stake here, and too many of them are opposing the motives of DRM, and these big companies are too sprawling themselves, they can't trample on too many toes or they start trampling on their own toes, eg going after backbone providers to stop p2p traffic will result in their own comms bills skyrocketing.
No, the big issue here is too many of these mage companies are american based, which means the board of directors are american, which means the whole company has an american viewpoint, which is fine, but things that are possible inside the borders of the USA simply will not fly in other parts of the world, and more to the point, cannot be made to fly.
If DRM is going to be meaningful or effective in any way, then it has to be global, no choice about it.
So tell me, how are you going to DRM China?
If your plans dont include former soviet states, china, japan, the koreas, the indian subcontinent, africa as well as ALL of europe (not just the EU bits) as well as north and south america then it won't fly.
There's all that dark fibre just waiting for demand to rise, and it will when we all have a choice between DRMed up the ass shit from the USA or ripped and open versions of everything from everywhere else.
Fuck it man, we can only be a few years away from somewhere like north korea being a global power, all they need are a few tea chest nukes to deter the dubyas of this world, and plenty of fat lit fibre running into some big server farms and a total disregard for every other countries copyright laws....
.at least that is the impression I get from reading your replies.
For example, I bought Deep Purple on vynil, several times cos they got fucked at parties, then I bought it several times on cassette, cos the tapes got chewed, then I bought it on an indestructible cd, and it died, then mp3 came along.
The music industry have NEVER EVER EVER been about selling music.
What they have ALWAYS sold and we have ALWAYS bought was the MEDIUM, eg vinyl, cassette, cd red book, whatever.
In the new digital age there is essentially no medium, only the data itself.
DRM in ALL ITS FORMS is quite simply nothing other than a DESPERATE (for failure = bankruptcy) attempt by these companies to impose pseudo medium characteristics onto medium free digital data.
I don't know why nobody gets this.
It's not just the RIAA, it is all big media business, hollywood as well as music biz as well as publishers as well as anyone who'se stuff can be distributed as digital data.
Talk of this version of drm vs that version of encoding versus this methods of copyright protection is all bullshit, because it is missing the point.
NOTHING LESS than imposing pseudo physical properties (the scratched vinyl, the chewed cassette, the skipped cd) onto digital media will satisfy these bastards.
Because anything less means their revenue stream crashes, permanently.
Wake up, this is essentially an American Big Media Corporation tea party vs the rest of the world and its consumers, you cannot afford to give these bastards even a nanometer.
America will end up as a digital cultural backwater, with everything inside its borders DRM'ed up the wazoo, and everyone outside the borders sticking 2 fingers up.
And this shit less than 24 hours after a post about the BBC (or rather hackers at the beeb before their bosses get tech savvy and twig) pushing for a open source codec in the community which by definition is not going to meet the needs of those who seek to make a fat living selling copy after copy after copy of the same thing to you, claiming to be selling you the media, but in fact merely peddling the medium itself.
wake up FFS
Cyclical huh, it's so simple now I see the light.
on
Crossroads for Intel
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· Score: 1
If it's an even year, eg 2004 / 2006 / 2008, the semiconductor industry is waxing, if it's an odd year it must be waning.
Clearly since next year is an odd year, 2005, we can expect a semiconductor slump.
As I understand it our senses of taste and smell are essentially based on detecting the actual physical shape of molecules, because it when a physical shape (say a plug) matches a physical receptor for that shape (say a socket) something goes "bing" and you get x taste or smell.
As an aside there is a known medical condition where people's senses are crosswired in their heads and smells trigger taste reactions, I remember an old case of brain surgery where taste and auditory was crosswired and a drop of vinegar sounded like an explosion.
so, if it's all shape based, we're going to get into levels of accuracy, is it just "sweet" like sugar, or is it the particular sweetness of tate and lyle demerara sugar?
To be honest I'd be more worried about similar molecule shape patents, after all molecule shape is defined by molecule chemical composition and formula, specifically here I'm talking about large corporations patenting chunks of amino acid that happens to occur naturally in my body.
Where do I stand when someone owns a patent that matches a part of my DNA?
Do they own a part of me? Do I have to pay them a licence to have kids and reproduce my DNA in part?
Or, far more worryingly, do they have the right to use associated knowledge, eg this bit of DNA that we own the patent to is associated with people who have a specific biochemical makeup in their brains, a biochemical signature that is associated with people who are great to have around in times of great troubles, but who are a real pain in the ass in a modern USA style society where you will conform and obey citizen or else.
Can they use this patented knowledge to deny me legal insurance, limit life and injury insurance, and screen me from having the sorts of jobs where I might cause some shit for big brother?
Can I be pressured to report to level 42 for biochemical "readjustment" or "training", or simply disenfranchised as a citizen otherwise?
It's so fucking easy.
Nowadays you don't need to run the risk of being taken to court for saying "no fucking niggers" because all you have to do is for example check for the presence of the genetic code for sickle cell anaemia, except of course you're testing for your genetic IP, not sickle cell, just so happens the two overlap.
who cares, it's a dead industry and everyone knows it except them.
Why doesn't anyone tell the truth about wireless?
on
WiMax: When, Not If
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· Score: 2, Insightful
For example, just last night on the machine I am typing this on, a dell latitude c840 connected via 802.11b, I thought "I'll copy over the 3 svcd images for man on fire, and watch it later in bed"
start the process abd ooh, 72 minutes to go...
FUCK
plug the RJ45 in and it is done in a couple of minutes.
So the truth? Wireless is OK for web browsing, email, and maybe copying the odd few megabytes, but everything else on the LAN, including the fileserver which is the whole point of a LAN for many people, is limited to cable modem speeds AT BEST.
This was with only ONE active wireless client using my local AP.
You can't increase the bandwidth (significantly) without increasing the frequency significantly, and you lose loads of range when you do that, so you need to up the power significantly, and that is the achilles heel. POWER.
My missus just bought a new mobile phone, as a proportion of volume it is mainly battery, the only significant power consumer inside is the transmit circuit, it will last days on standby, but a couple of hours of talk time and zap.
Laptops proportionally speaking (this includes PDA's etc) must have a much smaller battery, and they also have a bunch of power hungry internal devices (screen, hard disk, cpu, etc) of which the wireless card is just one.
There just ISN'T the spare electrical power to run a fast wireless transmitter to spare, not for any useful period of time.
The ONLY way to get the power to spare is to run it off the mains, then you don't have a portable device, then you might as well just pick up the RJ45, it is one hell of a lot more secure and orders of magnitude faster. (gigabit 802.11 anyone?)
And yet all I see and hear is wireless being touted as the emperors new clothes, you gotta have this or your life will be meaningless, it will make everything so easy for you, blah blah blah.
You know the ONLY real application for wireless in the real world that actually causes it to be used?
I'm typing this on a laptop with ONE cable, the mains power cable, running in to it, as it happens it is a "pull it and it will fall out" not a "pull it and either the cable plug or socket will break" type connection, that and the fact that 2 wires will always tangle themselves no matter what you do, makes it worth using.
UNTIL I want to transfer a gig or two across the network, then I pick up the RJ45.
My contention is this, the more "professional" you are (as opposed to an amateur who uses a PC for home use only, for maybe a couple of hours a day) then the MORE likely you are to want to transfer lots of files, the less use wireless becomes.
I use my laptop at home, as I am now, and "at work" when it functions as a portable personalised computer and mobile hard disk storage system, where I will use it for everything from temporary file backup of clients computer while I do X to clients computer, through network diagnostic tool, to repository of wads of useful files (eg XPsp2 et al) that I might want, to the other benefits of a mobile personal workstation, the "oh, while you're here, I don't suppose you could take a look at" to which the answer is yes because I have my tools in the form of my laptop, to the bottom line which is while you are sat there waiting for some time depemndent process to complete, instead of twiddling your thumbs you can just go online and check your email and poke slashdot.
In those scenarios listed above, you the only use I have for a network card?
To see if they have a wireless network up.
For actually DOING anything it is too slow by orders of magnitude and too insecure by entire paradigms.
Ok it is a film, but the facts behind the film etc etc mean the only way to fake the moon landing would be to send a transmitter to lunar orbit and THEN fake a whole load of other shit, a feat that "might" be possible today but wouldn't have been with the computing power available back then.
I don't find a moon landing the least remarkable.
What absolutely fucking stuns the living shit out of me is that apart from teflon frying pans we have done absolutely fuck all since then in THIRTY FIVE FUCKING YEARS!
Simply because for *many* kind of searches, for example looking for a supplier of aluminium extrusions for heatsinking, ALL google's top returns are for OTHER fucking indexing sites like fucking kellysearch and NOT fucking sites owneed and run by aluminium extruders.
This is a trend that has become ever more prevalent over time, and it makes google ever more irellevant.
and I realise this is likely to get this post instantly modded as a troll, but it isn't.
my question is this.
Is the primary directive of USA foreign policy one of alienating everyone else on the planet to the point where we are all either actively participating or standing by and cheering on anyone and everyone who is bent upon the utter destruction of the USA?
If this isn't the primary directive, I'd like to know what is, and why it is being so well suppressed.
For those of you USAians who think you're invulnerable to the rest of the planet, go study 5000 years of human history.
On the Island of Mallorca in the mediterrenean there was (is?) a nightclub called Tito's which had a fantastic roof mounted laser whose purpose was in effect a visible-for-miles sign.
After many complaints from the pilots using the airport which was 7 miles away, because it was somehow interfering with their visibility during landing and takeoff, the laser show was permanently shut down.
The point was this was a big and very powerful installation, where the beams were swept across the sky very rapidly in effect creating curtains of light which I can easily picture a plane flying through, however a SINGLE beam is a different proposition, especially given the high sill height of cockpit windows (higher than a car windscreen) and the nose up attitude of a plane on landing approach or takeoff, even assuming you could deliberately aim that well, you would need to be at least the same height as the cockpit.
So unless the plane was on final approach somewhere like hong kong where a laser targeter could conceivably be atop a tower block or mountain, you're looking at the only possible EXTERNAL platform being another plane, and someone with an INCREDIBLY steady aim, or military type laser aiming capabilities.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't be silly, all those sorts of people use "scrambler" phones and encrypt.... .. a bit like skype really...
just paste them in a couple of random emails every week....
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Lets take a standard, say the 5/16 unc thread, say it is a nut, any 5/16 bolt made anywhere will fit and work, that is a standard.
The closest (improved cos its cheaper) metric size is oing to be 7 or 8 mm, neither of which will work, at all, if you try and force it to work it breaks terminally, that is a standard.
Now take the MS implementation of the TCP/IP stack "standard", instead of being non compliant and not working at all, thus forcing MS to fix it, OR define a NEW standard, it works, and takes priority over all other packets from systems that came before it and obey the standard.
s in action.
As I've said elsewhere, my original trade was engineer, so I'll use an engineering standard that you will ALL have handled, and hopefully it will be distant enough from computing to illustrate some points without getting embroiled in a fanboy flame war.
Lots of people say the original great invention was the wheel, as an engineer I'd have to pick the much more recent lathe bed or screw thread, without the lathe bed NO accurate machining is possible (including screw threads)
What this means in laymans terms is that EVERY SINGLE COMPONENT would be bespoke, hand made, and slightly different, so EVERY mechanical device would have to be ENTIRELY hand made... no going to the shop to buy a gasket, you have to make every one by hand to match whatever you are working on.
When we come to screw threads there are many standards, BSP, JIC, Metric, and variations amongst these.
Each thread has it's own strengths and weaknesses, and included in these is the actual cost of making a given nut or bolt to a certain thread patterm, which depends on the specification and STANDARD of the thread chosen.
BSP is simply the best for hydraulics for example, while BSF and UNC are good for bolting things together, however metric comes along, with it's predisposition (which is an entirely ETHICAL predisposition, eg academic, rather than practical, and likes everything to be in nice multiples of ten) for simplicity, and it has to be said this simplicity makes a metric bolt cheaper to make than say a BSF bolt. (if you think the cost is the same in these days of CNC then you are wrong and you are omitting precision tolerances and cost of metal removed etc etc etc) so of course metric bolts rapidly became extremely popular.
Trouble is metric threads are, to an engineer, shit. They are cheaper, so management selects them over the engineers preference.
Henry Ford went metric on the truck side of things many mnay years ago now, but for many years (and possibly still today, I'm out of the loop) kept some things, notably wheel nuts, on an imperial thread. Why? because the metric threads worked loose.. like I said, metric threads are crap, old imperial threads are far superior.
SO, to the point.
Obviously a standard thread is very useful, a 1/2 inch AF spanner bought in the UK will fit perfectly around the head of a 5/16 bolt made in germany, which will screw perfectly into a 5/16 water pump made in the USA, because of standards.
SO, we have a general trend away from the old, superior, but more expensive, standards, towards the new, inferior but cheaper standards.
This is all great in theory and the halls of academia but in the real world these unequal pressures bring about strange offspring.
About 20 years ago I worked in Spain, which had just thrown off the mantle of a dictatorship, and was working its way towards joining the European Union, so things including the economy were in a flux, although spain was metric lots of the stuff that was used in spain (for example austin had a car assembly plant there) was not metric.
Instead of everyone owning a whitworth tool set, an AF tool set, and so on (remember that thing about costs, imperial spanners were higher precsion than metric too, so cost more) so the spanish came out with a unique solution, which saved EVERYONE money.
When they made a bolt they would make a 5/16 UNC bolt, just like everyone else, except it would end in a METRIC head, so pable with his metric toolkit could work on it.
When you come across this and see a "wrong" size bolt head on say an engine, you ASSUME that some bastards have ruined it in the past and stripped the thread, and drilled to a larger diameter and tapped it to a matric thread, which of course will have an utterly different ideal torque setting, so you sigh and swear.
It is only when you REMOVE the bastard that you discover that it is a 5/16 UNC.
At this point, all the preceding standards are vastly degraded, you cannot as
I'm an engineer.
If you put me in charge of a Mars mission here's the only proper way to do it.
#1 what we did in the sixties, whistle stop one pass visits, are pointless, if you're going to go then go, don't fuck around.
#2 we have the perfect platform for solar system operations right on uor doorstep, Luna, that and the L1 and L2 largrange points in lunar orbit for stuff that the moon's 1/6th gravity will make difficult or expensive.
#3 all space vehicles will need enough delta vee to decelerate to matching velocity with the target, whether that target is Mars, another planet, or an asteroid, that's no big deal we can use MHD which will efficiently generate low braking thrust for long periods.
#4 all space vehicles and this includes "materiel" of any kind, including "lego" style construction sets and so on, can be given practically any velocity you like by launching from a lunar linear accelerator, these work REALLY well in a vacuum.
SO top priority will be getting mebbe 500,000 tons of mass up to the moon to buind a nearly self sufficient base.
Best way to do that is a two pronged approach.
1/ Develop REALLY heavy lifters, nuclear salt water is cool as a starting point, first step need to be throw everything at perfecting Fusion until it's as doable as fission power plants.
2/ Develop (materials) for the space elevator.
The united states spends 450 BILLION dollars every year on the military, if that lot was thrown at this project you could adopt a JFK / Apollo sort of timescale and we'd have a viable and working moonbase by 2020 AD easy.
If the USA doesn't do this, there will be a moonbase by 2050 at the latest, and it will be Chinese.
When that happens the entire might of every military on the planet, IN CONJUNCTION, will be as effective as wet toilet paper agauinst a
Who knows, I may even live long enough to see it.
Why is such a mediocre writer so adored by slashdot drones?
(watch this get modded troll by the fanboys)
Yeah, it is a well known fact that the wooly mammoths driving around in dodge vipers were largely responsible for the end of the last ice age too.
I don't have a TV licence, I've never had one, so here is some facts.
Yes, stores must take a name and address if you buy a TV, mostly this isn't an issue to people buying 40 inch plasma screens on credit to keep up with the neighbours, they already have your name and address for the credit agreement.
If you pay cash the sales droid has a simple choice, sell the telly to Mr M Jagger (or whoever) and take the commission or lose the sale to the next shop along.
The state simply assumes that the entire population is comprised of mindless assholes who cannot survive without an "idiot's lantern" in the corner of the room, so they simply compare the database of TV licences with the database of all households and send out licence demands to those without one.
TV Detector vans are bullshit, a parlour trick, sure, there are vans with TV Detector written on them, but all detection is done at the database.
If you live in a household that does not have a TV licence (I do) be advised you do not need a licence to own a TV, only to recieve broadcast telly, eg plugged in to the aerial, use it for playing VCR or PS2 and no worries.
TV licencing send you "to the occupier" letters threatening all sorts, wipe your ass with them and throw them in the bin.
Once every year or two some jobsworth asswipe will come around from TV licencing asking why you don't have a licence and can he come in and check. Abuse the asswipe verbally and don't answer any of his questions, he does not have the legal right to demand answers, laugh in his face when he threatens to go off and get a warrant and return, it will never happen.
TV licencing is one of those "crimes" where you can only get done if you shop yourself.
Now, absolutely true story.
I was up in front of the local beak on minor motoring charges.
The case 2 in front of mine was a young woman who was being charged with wasting police time for making a false accusation of rape, she got off scot free, not even a fine.
Case just in front of me was a blind guy being done for no TV licence, as he said in court, any letters not written in braille he just binned as advertising because he is a state registered blind person, the wankers fined him 400 pounds.
I considered myself lucky not to get a death sentence for my motoring transgression.
People who talk about "Europe" or the "EU" like it was some sort of close of the USA probably don't live here and certainly don't travel.
There is more variety just crossing the channel to france than there is crossing the entire united states from east to west or north to south, just because you can buy a big mac and a coke in japan doesn't mean they are americanised.
Microsoft and Apple are allegedly two utterly different companies making utterly different products, yet both were founded and are still steered by people from the same small socio-economic-geographical area, they both work the same, they both think the same, the both act the same, and the only people who cannot see this are those that come from the same area.
Ask a chinese about the differences between the two, you will get some surprising answers.
But, back to the plot, the EU is far far far from homogenised like the USA, and it is unlikely it ever will be, 2000 years of individual history says so, fuck even Iraq itself, royal shell petroleum, redrawing of borders best part of a century ago and nothing has changed at the people level, and you think the EU rolling over is going to change things in a couple of years???
One thing you all miss about the EU.
NOTHING, but NOTHING, about the modern EU is new, open borders, common currencies, free trade, it has all been done before, just check your history, and that all makes it very easy for a present EU member country to say fuck it, and simply quit the EU....
The UK, which is the USA closest asslicker, is STILL debating this very point in some circles and political parties, so if the country closest to the USA model is feeling unwelcome in the EU I shouldn't be too impressed by a few laws being passed in brussels, especially when there is a strong sense in EU member countries that laws passed in brussels are "optional"...
Stamping out piracy to any meaningful degree here, as opposed to glomming the occasional sensationalist headline about arresting half a dozen "bedroom burner" schoolkids, is pretty much a non starter, sure you can spend millions on it, but you'll never make a dent worth noticing.
Alternative nameservers, nntp traffic, the thousands of miles of still dark backbone fibre, no there are way too many OTHER financial interests at stake here, and too many of them are opposing the motives of DRM, and these big companies are too sprawling themselves, they can't trample on too many toes or they start trampling on their own toes, eg going after backbone providers to stop p2p traffic will result in their own comms bills skyrocketing.
No, the big issue here is too many of these mage companies are american based, which means the board of directors are american, which means the whole company has an american viewpoint, which is fine, but things that are possible inside the borders of the USA simply will not fly in other parts of the world, and more to the point, cannot be made to fly.
If DRM is going to be meaningful or effective in any way, then it has to be global, no choice about it.
So tell me, how are you going to DRM China?
If your plans dont include former soviet states, china, japan, the koreas, the indian subcontinent, africa as well as ALL of europe (not just the EU bits) as well as north and south america then it won't fly.
There's all that dark fibre just waiting for demand to rise, and it will when we all have a choice between DRMed up the ass shit from the USA or ripped and open versions of everything from everywhere else.
Fuck it man, we can only be a few years away from somewhere like north korea being a global power, all they need are a few tea chest nukes to deter the dubyas of this world, and plenty of fat lit fibre running into some big server farms and a total disregard for every other countries copyright laws....
.at least that is the impression I get from reading your replies.
For example, I bought Deep Purple on vynil, several times cos they got fucked at parties, then I bought it several times on cassette, cos the tapes got chewed, then I bought it on an indestructible cd, and it died, then mp3 came along.
The music industry have NEVER EVER EVER been about selling music.
What they have ALWAYS sold and we have ALWAYS bought was the MEDIUM, eg vinyl, cassette, cd red book, whatever.
In the new digital age there is essentially no medium, only the data itself.
DRM in ALL ITS FORMS is quite simply nothing other than a DESPERATE (for failure = bankruptcy) attempt by these companies to impose pseudo medium characteristics onto medium free digital data.
I don't know why nobody gets this.
It's not just the RIAA, it is all big media business, hollywood as well as music biz as well as publishers as well as anyone who'se stuff can be distributed as digital data.
Talk of this version of drm vs that version of encoding versus this methods of copyright protection is all bullshit, because it is missing the point.
NOTHING LESS than imposing pseudo physical properties (the scratched vinyl, the chewed cassette, the skipped cd) onto digital media will satisfy these bastards.
Because anything less means their revenue stream crashes, permanently.
Wake up, this is essentially an American Big Media Corporation tea party vs the rest of the world and its consumers, you cannot afford to give these bastards even a nanometer.
America will end up as a digital cultural backwater, with everything inside its borders DRM'ed up the wazoo, and everyone outside the borders sticking 2 fingers up.
And this shit less than 24 hours after a post about the BBC (or rather hackers at the beeb before their bosses get tech savvy and twig) pushing for a open source codec in the community which by definition is not going to meet the needs of those who seek to make a fat living selling copy after copy after copy of the same thing to you, claiming to be selling you the media, but in fact merely peddling the medium itself.
wake up FFS
If it's an even year, eg 2004 / 2006 / 2008, the semiconductor industry is waxing, if it's an odd year it must be waning.
Clearly since next year is an odd year, 2005, we can expect a semiconductor slump.
God these stock market types really are clever.
and China and basically anywhere that sticks two fingers up to the fucking US of Assholes.
As I understand it our senses of taste and smell are essentially based on detecting the actual physical shape of molecules, because it when a physical shape (say a plug) matches a physical receptor for that shape (say a socket) something goes "bing" and you get x taste or smell.
As an aside there is a known medical condition where people's senses are crosswired in their heads and smells trigger taste reactions, I remember an old case of brain surgery where taste and auditory was crosswired and a drop of vinegar sounded like an explosion.
so, if it's all shape based, we're going to get into levels of accuracy, is it just "sweet" like sugar, or is it the particular sweetness of tate and lyle demerara sugar?
To be honest I'd be more worried about similar molecule shape patents, after all molecule shape is defined by molecule chemical composition and formula, specifically here I'm talking about large corporations patenting chunks of amino acid that happens to occur naturally in my body.
Where do I stand when someone owns a patent that matches a part of my DNA?
Do they own a part of me?
Do I have to pay them a licence to have kids and reproduce my DNA in part?
Or, far more worryingly, do they have the right to use associated knowledge, eg this bit of DNA that we own the patent to is associated with people who have a specific biochemical makeup in their brains, a biochemical signature that is associated with people who are great to have around in times of great troubles, but who are a real pain in the ass in a modern USA style society where you will conform and obey citizen or else.
Can they use this patented knowledge to deny me legal insurance, limit life and injury insurance, and screen me from having the sorts of jobs where I might cause some shit for big brother?
Can I be pressured to report to level 42 for biochemical "readjustment" or "training", or simply disenfranchised as a citizen otherwise?
It's so fucking easy.
Nowadays you don't need to run the risk of being taken to court for saying "no fucking niggers" because all you have to do is for example check for the presence of the genetic code for sickle cell anaemia, except of course you're testing for your genetic IP, not sickle cell, just so happens the two overlap.
comments?
which never seems to get a mention...
alt.binaries.pirated.music.for.free roolz
who cares, it's a dead industry and everyone knows it except them.
For example, just last night on the machine I am typing this on, a dell latitude c840 connected via 802.11b, I thought "I'll copy over the 3 svcd images for man on fire, and watch it later in bed"
start the process abd ooh, 72 minutes to go...
FUCK
plug the RJ45 in and it is done in a couple of minutes.
So the truth?
Wireless is OK for web browsing, email, and maybe copying the odd few megabytes, but everything else on the LAN, including the fileserver which is the whole point of a LAN for many people, is limited to cable modem speeds AT BEST.
This was with only ONE active wireless client using my local AP.
You can't increase the bandwidth (significantly) without increasing the frequency significantly, and you lose loads of range when you do that, so you need to up the power significantly, and that is the achilles heel. POWER.
My missus just bought a new mobile phone, as a proportion of volume it is mainly battery, the only significant power consumer inside is the transmit circuit, it will last days on standby, but a couple of hours of talk time and zap.
Laptops proportionally speaking (this includes PDA's etc) must have a much smaller battery, and they also have a bunch of power hungry internal devices (screen, hard disk, cpu, etc) of which the wireless card is just one.
There just ISN'T the spare electrical power to run a fast wireless transmitter to spare, not for any useful period of time.
The ONLY way to get the power to spare is to run it off the mains, then you don't have a portable device, then you might as well just pick up the RJ45, it is one hell of a lot more secure and orders of magnitude faster.
(gigabit 802.11 anyone?)
And yet all I see and hear is wireless being touted as the emperors new clothes, you gotta have this or your life will be meaningless, it will make everything so easy for you, blah blah blah.
You know the ONLY real application for wireless in the real world that actually causes it to be used?
I'm typing this on a laptop with ONE cable, the mains power cable, running in to it, as it happens it is a "pull it and it will fall out" not a "pull it and either the cable plug or socket will break" type connection, that and the fact that 2 wires will always tangle themselves no matter what you do, makes it worth using.
UNTIL I want to transfer a gig or two across the network, then I pick up the RJ45.
My contention is this, the more "professional" you are (as opposed to an amateur who uses a PC for home use only, for maybe a couple of hours a day) then the MORE likely you are to want to transfer lots of files, the less use wireless becomes.
I use my laptop at home, as I am now, and "at work" when it functions as a portable personalised computer and mobile hard disk storage system, where I will use it for everything from temporary file backup of clients computer while I do X to clients computer, through network diagnostic tool, to repository of wads of useful files (eg XPsp2 et al) that I might want, to the other benefits of a mobile personal workstation, the "oh, while you're here, I don't suppose you could take a look at" to which the answer is yes because I have my tools in the form of my laptop, to the bottom line which is while you are sat there waiting for some time depemndent process to complete, instead of twiddling your thumbs you can just go online and check your email and poke slashdot.
In those scenarios listed above, you the only use I have for a network card?
To see if they have a wireless network up.
For actually DOING anything it is too slow by orders of magnitude and too insecure by entire paradigms.
my 2c anyway.
so?
does anyone have to lift it into low earth orbit?
I'd like to use s;ashdot to promote / advertise my magazine for free too....
this weeks feature story is "Broadband is faster than modem dial up"
Three THOUSAND fucking dollars!!!!!!!!!!!
what does it do that the second user and dirt cheap dell c840 I'm typing this on (and just about to watch man on fire on) doesn't do??/
Check out a movie called "The Dish" sometime
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205873/
Ok it is a film, but the facts behind the film etc etc mean the only way to fake the moon landing would be to send a transmitter to lunar orbit and THEN fake a whole load of other shit, a feat that "might" be possible today but wouldn't have been with the computing power available back then.
I don't find a moon landing the least remarkable.
What absolutely fucking stuns the living shit out of me is that apart from teflon frying pans we have done absolutely fuck all since then in THIRTY FIVE FUCKING YEARS!
now THAT blows my mind.
It's the same in software land.
No good saying "it's windows fault for requiring a reboot every 49 days" when IT IS YOUR FUCKING FAULT for picking the WRONG TOOL TO DO THE JOB!
I see this everywhere nowadays, and it all boils down to everyone trying to evade personal responsobility for things that they are involved it.
Fuck it, not my fault, must be someone else's, so lets sue them.
Oh look, my lawyer agrees with me that I have a case so I MUST be as innocent as I claim.
bullshit.
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pattle/nacc/arc0 531.htm
.n
Simply because for *many* kind of searches, for example looking for a supplier of aluminium extrusions for heatsinking, ALL google's top returns are for OTHER fucking indexing sites like fucking kellysearch and NOT fucking sites owneed and run by aluminium extruders.
This is a trend that has become ever more prevalent over time, and it makes google ever more irellevant.
this will of course get modded troll, see journal
and I realise this is likely to get this post instantly modded as a troll, but it isn't.
my question is this.
Is the primary directive of USA foreign policy one of alienating everyone else on the planet to the point where we are all either actively participating or standing by and cheering on anyone and everyone who is bent upon the utter destruction of the USA?
If this isn't the primary directive, I'd like to know what is, and why it is being so well suppressed.
For those of you USAians who think you're invulnerable to the rest of the planet, go study 5000 years of human history.
On the Island of Mallorca in the mediterrenean there was (is?) a nightclub called Tito's which had a fantastic roof mounted laser whose purpose was in effect a visible-for-miles sign.
After many complaints from the pilots using the airport which was 7 miles away, because it was somehow interfering with their visibility during landing and takeoff, the laser show was permanently shut down.
The point was this was a big and very powerful installation, where the beams were swept across the sky very rapidly in effect creating curtains of light which I can easily picture a plane flying through, however a SINGLE beam is a different proposition, especially given the high sill height of cockpit windows (higher than a car windscreen) and the nose up attitude of a plane on landing approach or takeoff, even assuming you could deliberately aim that well, you would need to be at least the same height as the cockpit.
So unless the plane was on final approach somewhere like hong kong where a laser targeter could conceivably be atop a tower block or mountain, you're looking at the only possible EXTERNAL platform being another plane, and someone with an INCREDIBLY steady aim, or military type laser aiming capabilities.
cheers
More details and a picture of a robotic hand using orgasmic transistors as pressure sensors.