You just have to divide up the galaxy into areas. The humans get the S-block, the d-block elemets are all in vulcan space, and obviously the F-block would be out in the delta quadrant.:P
Do you honestly think it will be possible to purchase and watch content on a linux machine? Do you think the movie industry is going to give you something playable on your un-DRMed box? You might pirate it.
Of course, we all know that making bits not copyable is like making water not wet. But I think you underestimate the MPAA's lobbying capabilities. I fully expect it to be illegal to posses or discuss wet water any day now.
IMHO, this is another example of the industry shooting itself in the foot, only moreso than they previously have.
It's one thing when joe-consumer downloads a song from the Microsoft music store, and can't copy it to his iPod. It's one thing when joe-consumer buys a DVD, and has a hard time making a VHS copy because his kids keep scratching the crap out her DVDs. Both of these things the average consumer accepts will not work, because consumers are used to different technologies not playing nicely together. They don't know about DRM, but they do know that they could never get those photos aunt Kathy sent to print on their printer, and figure this is more of the same.
If Morgan Freeman has his way, though, and movies are delivered to our homes by internet, consumers will be calling tech support in droves; "I can't watch my movie? What's wrong?" And those consumers will not be happy when they're told the 19" LCD monitor they bought two years ago needs to be replaced. Consumers DO expect to be able to watch a movie they download.
I think, ultimately, this is a nail in the coffin of the unborn movies-by-internet industry, which is a shame.
My VERY VERY first ever inkjet printer (and the arguably the first commercially sucessful color inkjet printer) had the print head in the printer. Ink cartridges just had ink in them.
And you know what? That was an awful printer, for exactly that reason. If you didn't print regularly, ink in the print head woudl dry out and clog it irreparably. That printer "died" not because it "didn't work", but because it got to the point where Canon was selling print heads for more than the cost of a newer inkjet printer.
So, if I "liberate" some merchandise from a store, where there is no store clerk "actively resisting" my theft, then the store clerk is as guilty as I am? If I steal some coffee for example (and to quote from an old l0pht advisory; "Remember, coffee WANTS to be free!"), then because I am "owning" the coffee, and making the coffee do something that the store owner didn't want it to do (namely, leave, without being paid for), then the store owner is somehow to blame for this?
In any crime, there is a transgressor and a victim, and the transgressor is at fault. If you break into a computer, or a house, or a store, and you steal something, or break something, or erase something, you've just committed a crime, regardless of how you want to justify it to yourself. If you write a program or build a robot to do these things, you're still the stimulus for the crime, and you're still at fault, end of story.
Now, if you write a program which causes damage unintentionally, then the line becomes a bit fuzzier, but if your program is committing electronic trespass, it's already committing a crime, and any damage that results is therefore the result of a criminal act.
...people who cause massive damage on an any scale - economic, physical, emotional - are sociopaths.
I would ammend that to say that people who intentionally cause massive damage are possibly sociopaths.
The history of our discipline is replete with examples of people accidently causing such mayhem.
The "first ever" internet worm, the 1988 internet worm, written by Robert Tappan Morris, brought the internet to a standstill, but was intended to be benign. There was a defect in the worm which caused it to replicate out of control, and eat up all the PIDs on the unix machines it infected (it was actually designed specifically NOT to do this; only one instance should have been running on the infected machine at a time, but software bugs are everywhere).
More recently, a worm intended to patch machines against Code Red had a defect in it that caused some machines to be rebooted without being patched. The "fix" worm was more annoying for many people than the original Code Red was. I had one friend who was unable to patch his system on his dial-up connection, as his machine would be rebooted by the "fix" worm long before he had time to download the microsoft patch.
As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. A university ethics course would force most people to consider the problems with writing a "good worm", but most of the authors involved aren't in university yet.
Although, people who accidently unleash terrible worms are unlikely to be deterred by the death penalty, either.
You know, when a girl is wearing a short skirt, and she's walking at night alone? She's just as guilty of rape as the guy who rapes her, for not defending herself adequately. </SARCASM>
That sort of thinking is nonsense.
Not that I agree with this article either. I have a hard time taking anyone seriously who uses a "cost-benefit analysis" to determine who should live and who should die. (Why not just kill all the old people?)
Add in this new concept motorcycle by Dodge (which, incidently, not only looks a lot like a lightcycle, but has a 8.3L V10 engine, so would probably go about as fast);
Actually, if you scroll down a bit on the ESRB page, you'll see their definition of "intense violence" is actually fairly restricted;
"Intense Violence - Graphic and realistic-looking depictions of physical conflict. May involve extreme and/or realistic blood, gore, weapons, and depictions of human injury and death."
So Viewtiful Joe 2 is very definately in the "Teen" catagory.
...hate it when the apparent outcome of a historical event can be changed by human interaction.
You obviously missed out on FF7. No part of the outcome of that game could be altered by human interaction, and it was one of the bestselling games in the world at the time.
You can't tap a phone you "technically own" either, not even in the US. If you want to record a phone conversation, you have to let both parties know. Nothing odd about that.
Monitoring your employees productivity is one thing. Keystroke logging is quite another. My employer does not need to know every key I press in order to decide whether or not I am productive.
If I write an email to my wife that says "I love you snugglywugglykins!", my employer definately doesn't need to see that. You can say "It's the employer's equipment, they have a right to do what they want," but that isn't true. Your employer, for example, can't tap your phone without your knowledge. They CAN record your phone conversations, but they have to let both parties of the phone call know it is being recorded ahead of time ("This call may be recorded for quality purposes."). I don't see how secretly recording my keystrokes, which effectively taps all my email, is any different.
Perhaps if the library here had told their employee "We're going to start recording your keystrokes to measure your productivity," and the employee had agreed, that would be a different matter.
I'll admit right now, I haven't RTFA, and I'm playing devil's advovate here (hence, I'm sure I'll be modded "Troll"), but...
The problem is, if they sell the rights to distribute this show on P2P networks, they've just sold the rights to distribute the show globally, which is something they don't want to do.
Just because WB has "turned down" a show does not mean they don't intend to profit from it. It means they won't show it here in the US. There are many other countries where a show that may not be popular here in the USA would be popular, and WB has the option of selling this show overseas now, which they may decide to pursue. Selling the electronic copy rights would hurt their ability to do this.
WB is just keeping their options open. While that sucks, because we don't get to see their cool show, from a buisness standpoint it is a very common move.
The reason people don't buy diamonds used is because of a remarkably sucessful advertising campaign by DeBeers. There's a huge stigma associated with used diamonds. I was just talking with someone about this over the weekend, and they said they'd rather buy an artificial diamond for an engagement ring than a used one, but they thought even that would get them into trouble with their SO.
When you buy a diamond, you're essentially buying it from DeBeers. They control the diamond market. Jewlery stores, though, don't buy diamonds from DeBeers, they sell them on commission, and can return anything they don't sell.
So, quite aside from the fact that diamonds are, at best, semi-precious in terms of rarity, in order for a jewler to buy your diamond, if they wanted to pay "market price", they'd have to pay you considerably more than they'd pay DeBeers for the same quality diamond, and they'd have to take a risk that they wouldn't have to take buying a diamond from DeBeers (what if your diamond doesn't sell?). Neither is attractive, so the market for selling diamonds is essentially non-existant.
Phising is the act of sending someone an email which tricks them into visiting a phony website and entering personal details. Once you stop doing that, and just start sending out malicious trojans, you're no longer a phisher, you're just a jerk.
This is sort of like saying "Muggers are starting to steal credit card numbers online, and are using them to commit a mugging by buying things with them".
"PoE could end up being a universal power supply system as the cables and connectors for it are the same all over the world."
Don't you need a hub or switch which supports PoE? Ethernet sockets may be the same all over the world, but how many PoE-enabled ethernet sockets have you seen on a day to day basis?
I remember reading an interesting incident report from a year ago or so. I'm afraid I don't recall all the details, but basically there was an Airbus A340 which had a tail strike on takeoff, so they circled around and tried to land immediately, just to make sure everything was OK. Their landing was less than perfect;
They intercepted ILS (Instrument Landing System - A radio based system which tells your aircraft "You're lined up with the runway" or "You're too far left, and a little too high", etc...), and then let the computer take the landing. The plane was fine for a little bit, but then starting pitching up, and up, and up, until they were flying along at around (again, this is from memory, so don't quote me on any figures) 35 degrees pitch up, before finally one of the pilots took manual control and correctly landed the plane.
The problem should have been noticed much earlier; the plane picked up the ILS beam about 5 miles farther out than they should have. What happened was, another aircraft was taxiing around the airport, and paused for a while in front of the ILS antenna. This deflected the ILS beam downwards, causing the A340 to pick up the ILS further away than they should have, and proceed on a very shallow landing trajectory. When the other plane eventually moved, the ILS beam was restored to the correct position. The A340's computer suddenly said "Whoa! I'm way too low! I better start climbing," and so increased pitch, and throttled up.
The A340 might have recovered and landed properly eventually, but that's hard to say. Sometimes really wonky things happen, and the computer just can't deal with it, so it is certainly handy to have a real human in the cockpit.
Statistically, though, real humans botch up far more landings than computers do.
This is the famous incident that's always dragged out. It actually turns out to be somewhat more complex than the "common" version that you've probably heard by word of mouth. Check out this version for some facts, or check this one.
In short; the computer said "What you're doing is pretty stupid. Are you sure you want to do this?" and the pilot said "Yes".
Or, in other words, had the computer actually had final say, the accident likely would have been avoided.
Actually, this reminds me of another interesting feature on the A320, which is the computer's response to an emergency. Let's suppose an engine lights on fire. The master alarm goes off, and the central screen says "Fire in engine 1. Please shut off engine". So, you shut off the engine. Then the screen says "Please prime fire suppression SQUIB 1. If fire is not out in 30 seconds, fire SQUIB 1.". Meanwhile the red SQUIB 1 button starts flashing, and then the "30" starts counting down.
Another neat one is the traffic system. If the computer determines you're on a course which would take you dangerously close to another aircraft, a voice says "TRAFFIC! TRAFFIC!", and then the central screen shows the other aircraft in relation to you, and displays a list of maneuvers to carry out to avoid the other plane. (This is actually pretty standard. If you were in a 767 flying head-on at another 767, by the time you could identify the orientation of the other 767 and realize there was a problem, it would be too late to do anything about it. But, it's still very cool).
Slashdot Mirror
You just have to divide up the galaxy into areas. The humans get the S-block, the d-block elemets are all in vulcan space, and obviously the F-block would be out in the delta quadrant. :P
http://www.spatz-tech.de/spatz/dvi_magic.htm
Magic de-HDCPed DVI. Completely illegal in the USA thanks to the DMCA, but the rest of the world can enjoy our content at full resolution.
Do you honestly think it will be possible to purchase and watch content on a linux machine? Do you think the movie industry is going to give you something playable on your un-DRMed box? You might pirate it.
Of course, we all know that making bits not copyable is like making water not wet. But I think you underestimate the MPAA's lobbying capabilities. I fully expect it to be illegal to posses or discuss wet water any day now.
IMHO, this is another example of the industry shooting itself in the foot, only moreso than they previously have.
It's one thing when joe-consumer downloads a song from the Microsoft music store, and can't copy it to his iPod. It's one thing when joe-consumer buys a DVD, and has a hard time making a VHS copy because his kids keep scratching the crap out her DVDs. Both of these things the average consumer accepts will not work, because consumers are used to different technologies not playing nicely together. They don't know about DRM, but they do know that they could never get those photos aunt Kathy sent to print on their printer, and figure this is more of the same.
If Morgan Freeman has his way, though, and movies are delivered to our homes by internet, consumers will be calling tech support in droves; "I can't watch my movie? What's wrong?" And those consumers will not be happy when they're told the 19" LCD monitor they bought two years ago needs to be replaced. Consumers DO expect to be able to watch a movie they download.
I think, ultimately, this is a nail in the coffin of the unborn movies-by-internet industry, which is a shame.
My VERY VERY first ever inkjet printer (and the arguably the first commercially sucessful color inkjet printer) had the print head in the printer. Ink cartridges just had ink in them.
And you know what? That was an awful printer, for exactly that reason. If you didn't print regularly, ink in the print head woudl dry out and clog it irreparably. That printer "died" not because it "didn't work", but because it got to the point where Canon was selling print heads for more than the cost of a newer inkjet printer.
Just because the owner of the computer happens to not be around to tell you to piss off doesn't make it right.
Is joyriding OK, because the car doesn't resist your attempts to hotwire it? Is it "not really a crime" to steal a car?
So, if I "liberate" some merchandise from a store, where there is no store clerk "actively resisting" my theft, then the store clerk is as guilty as I am? If I steal some coffee for example (and to quote from an old l0pht advisory; "Remember, coffee WANTS to be free!"), then because I am "owning" the coffee, and making the coffee do something that the store owner didn't want it to do (namely, leave, without being paid for), then the store owner is somehow to blame for this?
In any crime, there is a transgressor and a victim, and the transgressor is at fault. If you break into a computer, or a house, or a store, and you steal something, or break something, or erase something, you've just committed a crime, regardless of how you want to justify it to yourself. If you write a program or build a robot to do these things, you're still the stimulus for the crime, and you're still at fault, end of story.
Now, if you write a program which causes damage unintentionally, then the line becomes a bit fuzzier, but if your program is committing electronic trespass, it's already committing a crime, and any damage that results is therefore the result of a criminal act.
...people who cause massive damage on an any scale - economic, physical, emotional - are sociopaths.
I would ammend that to say that people who intentionally cause massive damage are possibly sociopaths.
The history of our discipline is replete with examples of people accidently causing such mayhem.
The "first ever" internet worm, the 1988 internet worm, written by Robert Tappan Morris, brought the internet to a standstill, but was intended to be benign. There was a defect in the worm which caused it to replicate out of control, and eat up all the PIDs on the unix machines it infected (it was actually designed specifically NOT to do this; only one instance should have been running on the infected machine at a time, but software bugs are everywhere).
More recently, a worm intended to patch machines against Code Red had a defect in it that caused some machines to be rebooted without being patched. The "fix" worm was more annoying for many people than the original Code Red was. I had one friend who was unable to patch his system on his dial-up connection, as his machine would be rebooted by the "fix" worm long before he had time to download the microsoft patch.
As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. A university ethics course would force most people to consider the problems with writing a "good worm", but most of the authors involved aren't in university yet.
Although, people who accidently unleash terrible worms are unlikely to be deterred by the death penalty, either.
You know, when a girl is wearing a short skirt, and she's walking at night alone? She's just as guilty of rape as the guy who rapes her, for not defending herself adequately.
</SARCASM>
That sort of thinking is nonsense.
Not that I agree with this article either. I have a hard time taking anyone seriously who uses a "cost-benefit analysis" to determine who should live and who should die. (Why not just kill all the old people?)
Add in this new concept motorcycle by Dodge (which, incidently, not only looks a lot like a lightcycle, but has a 8.3L V10 engine, so would probably go about as fast);
http://www.dodge.com/tomahawk/flash.html
Actually, if you scroll down a bit on the ESRB page, you'll see their definition of "intense violence" is actually fairly restricted;
"Intense Violence - Graphic and realistic-looking depictions of physical conflict. May involve extreme and/or realistic blood, gore, weapons, and depictions of human injury and death."
So Viewtiful Joe 2 is very definately in the "Teen" catagory.
http://www.esrb.org/esrbratings_guide.asp#symbols
M is defined as "Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content, and/or strong language."
AO is defined as "Titles in this category may include prolonged scenes of intense violence and/or graphic sexual content and nudity."
So, how exactly does GTA:SA violate M, and why should it be in AO?
...hate it when the apparent outcome of a historical event can be changed by human interaction.
You obviously missed out on FF7. No part of the outcome of that game could be altered by human interaction, and it was one of the bestselling games in the world at the time.
You can't tap a phone you "technically own" either, not even in the US. If you want to record a phone conversation, you have to let both parties know. Nothing odd about that.
Monitoring your employees productivity is one thing. Keystroke logging is quite another. My employer does not need to know every key I press in order to decide whether or not I am productive.
If I write an email to my wife that says "I love you snugglywugglykins!", my employer definately doesn't need to see that. You can say "It's the employer's equipment, they have a right to do what they want," but that isn't true. Your employer, for example, can't tap your phone without your knowledge. They CAN record your phone conversations, but they have to let both parties of the phone call know it is being recorded ahead of time ("This call may be recorded for quality purposes."). I don't see how secretly recording my keystrokes, which effectively taps all my email, is any different.
Perhaps if the library here had told their employee "We're going to start recording your keystrokes to measure your productivity," and the employee had agreed, that would be a different matter.
Last time I checked, 10% of 285 million was 28.5 million, not 3 million.
:)
If 12% is 33.6 million, and 10% is 3 million, then 2% must be 30.6 million.
I'll admit right now, I haven't RTFA, and I'm playing devil's advovate here (hence, I'm sure I'll be modded "Troll"), but...
The problem is, if they sell the rights to distribute this show on P2P networks, they've just sold the rights to distribute the show globally, which is something they don't want to do.
Just because WB has "turned down" a show does not mean they don't intend to profit from it. It means they won't show it here in the US. There are many other countries where a show that may not be popular here in the USA would be popular, and WB has the option of selling this show overseas now, which they may decide to pursue. Selling the electronic copy rights would hurt their ability to do this.
WB is just keeping their options open. While that sucks, because we don't get to see their cool show, from a buisness standpoint it is a very common move.
The reason people don't buy diamonds used is because of a remarkably sucessful advertising campaign by DeBeers. There's a huge stigma associated with used diamonds. I was just talking with someone about this over the weekend, and they said they'd rather buy an artificial diamond for an engagement ring than a used one, but they thought even that would get them into trouble with their SO.
Ever try to sell a diamond? It's basically impossible (or at least, you can't expect to get more than about 20% of it's *cough* "value").
- ever-tried-to-sell-diamond.html
http://www.princeton.edu/~amoroz/2004/11/have-you
When you buy a diamond, you're essentially buying it from DeBeers. They control the diamond market. Jewlery stores, though, don't buy diamonds from DeBeers, they sell them on commission, and can return anything they don't sell.
So, quite aside from the fact that diamonds are, at best, semi-precious in terms of rarity, in order for a jewler to buy your diamond, if they wanted to pay "market price", they'd have to pay you considerably more than they'd pay DeBeers for the same quality diamond, and they'd have to take a risk that they wouldn't have to take buying a diamond from DeBeers (what if your diamond doesn't sell?). Neither is attractive, so the market for selling diamonds is essentially non-existant.
I think, perhaps, some people are taking this article a might bit too seriously.
It's just lousy typing. :P
Phising is the act of sending someone an email which tricks them into visiting a phony website and entering personal details. Once you stop doing that, and just start sending out malicious trojans, you're no longer a phisher, you're just a jerk.
This is sort of like saying "Muggers are starting to steal credit card numbers online, and are using them to commit a mugging by buying things with them".
"PoE could end up being a universal power supply system as the cables and connectors for it are the same all over the world."
Don't you need a hub or switch which supports PoE? Ethernet sockets may be the same all over the world, but how many PoE-enabled ethernet sockets have you seen on a day to day basis?
I remember reading an interesting incident report from a year ago or so. I'm afraid I don't recall all the details, but basically there was an Airbus A340 which had a tail strike on takeoff, so they circled around and tried to land immediately, just to make sure everything was OK. Their landing was less than perfect;
They intercepted ILS (Instrument Landing System - A radio based system which tells your aircraft "You're lined up with the runway" or "You're too far left, and a little too high", etc...), and then let the computer take the landing. The plane was fine for a little bit, but then starting pitching up, and up, and up, until they were flying along at around (again, this is from memory, so don't quote me on any figures) 35 degrees pitch up, before finally one of the pilots took manual control and correctly landed the plane.
The problem should have been noticed much earlier; the plane picked up the ILS beam about 5 miles farther out than they should have. What happened was, another aircraft was taxiing around the airport, and paused for a while in front of the ILS antenna. This deflected the ILS beam downwards, causing the A340 to pick up the ILS further away than they should have, and proceed on a very shallow landing trajectory. When the other plane eventually moved, the ILS beam was restored to the correct position. The A340's computer suddenly said "Whoa! I'm way too low! I better start climbing," and so increased pitch, and throttled up.
The A340 might have recovered and landed properly eventually, but that's hard to say. Sometimes really wonky things happen, and the computer just can't deal with it, so it is certainly handy to have a real human in the cockpit.
Statistically, though, real humans botch up far more landings than computers do.
This is the famous incident that's always dragged out. It actually turns out to be somewhat more complex than the "common" version that you've probably heard by word of mouth. Check out this version for some facts, or check this one.
In short; the computer said "What you're doing is pretty stupid. Are you sure you want to do this?" and the pilot said "Yes".
Or, in other words, had the computer actually had final say, the accident likely would have been avoided.
Actually, this reminds me of another interesting feature on the A320, which is the computer's response to an emergency. Let's suppose an engine lights on fire. The master alarm goes off, and the central screen says "Fire in engine 1. Please shut off engine". So, you shut off the engine. Then the screen says "Please prime fire suppression SQUIB 1. If fire is not out in 30 seconds, fire SQUIB 1.". Meanwhile the red SQUIB 1 button starts flashing, and then the "30" starts counting down.
Another neat one is the traffic system. If the computer determines you're on a course which would take you dangerously close to another aircraft, a voice says "TRAFFIC! TRAFFIC!", and then the central screen shows the other aircraft in relation to you, and displays a list of maneuvers to carry out to avoid the other plane. (This is actually pretty standard. If you were in a 767 flying head-on at another 767, by the time you could identify the orientation of the other 767 and realize there was a problem, it would be too late to do anything about it. But, it's still very cool).