The company's name is Walid, for those of you too lazy to read the article. I mention this because I found their slogan very amusing:
"Welcome to the real world."
Exactly. When is America ("Land of the Free") going to realize that it's IP laws are strangling the very ideals upon which the country was founded. Namely Life, Liberty, and Property. IP (as currently instituted) is not property, it is paramount to theft. When I have the same idea as you, you do not lose your idea or your ability to use that idea, but when you prevent me from using my own ideas (which you happen to have had first and independently), you are doing something very similar to stealing.
An oft quoted but important statement from Thomas Jefferson:
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until wecopied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
As much as I would like to stick it to the man (the RIAA in this case) I can't see it hold up. A search warrant will easily get around the DMCA provisions, and the RIAA easily has enough power to get one. Then they'll build their case and we're back to where we are with Napster. (Maybe not though, the facts that it's not explicitly for music sharing and the indices aren't stored locally may help.)
I think the U.S. Supreme Court is the only body in our justice system that I have even a modicum of trust in, so I'm hoping the whole thing will get resolved there with Napster, and the RIAA will die and we can all go back to being sane again. Then this and other similar services can begin to compete on merits and for once the consumer will actually be able to enjoy the fruits of a (more) free market. Of course that's probably unrealistic optimism.
This is really old news. Companies have had anti-cryptography products for years. One excellent example is free from Digital Convergence. It's called the CueCat. It's the most shining example of anti-cryptography I can think of right now... there are many others.
Yeah, it would suck if the MPAA were forced to endure the _increase_ in revenue that was recently forced upon the RIAA. (10% or something, as I recall.) Sure, there's no direct proof that the increase was caused by the advent of Napster, but, on the other hand, what else could be responsible for it? I don't remember anything revolutionary happening in music in the recent past that could account for it. Let's face it, 10% is a *lot* given those volumes. Plus, there's lots of anecdotal evidence. I know I downloaded some MP3s of some new bands (the kind that are unlikely to ever get radio time) and liked them so much I went out to get CDs. That can't be an isolated incident.
I know the pattern of use for music is different than movies, but not as different as you might think. I really only buy DVDs of movies that I know I'll want to watch more than once, because otherwise I'd rent. Several of those DVDs I've seen more than once now. If I were in the MPAA, I would say, "Bring on the MPAApster!"
I think the MPAA is just whining about the possibility that they might lose some control over their intellectual property. I think they don't like the feeling that they can't control their destiny, and will hurt the consumer badly to try to regain control. What they've forgotten is that their control is an illusion, because we (the consumers) define the value of their intellectual property anyway through our demand. So, they may be forced (like they were with VHS) to realize that making the customer happy is actually a good thing, and that we don't have to be adversarial just because of our producer-consumer relationship.
I've learned a wealth of information from these sites. You'll find that these guys are all talking about spending a lot more than your budget on their hardware, but they are the guys you want to ask about a $1500 system, because they're the ones critical enough to sift the wheat from the chaff, even though they might not buy the system themselves. (Obviously I'm stereotyping here. Many of the people on the forums are as strapped for cash as the next guy.) For equipment reviews, www.audioreview.com is good, and so is www.etown.com. Audioreview seems to have a good quantity of reviews and etown has good quality reviews. For buying equipment, if you are looking for used stuff, look at audioreview and audiogon before going to ebay, and you'll like what you find. I prefer dealing with people who know what they're selling when possible.
Anyway, good luck, and welcome to the "club"!
David Fay
P.S. FYI, my current setup:
Sony 1272 CRT projector (92" x 52" 16:9 home-made screen)
PC with DVD-ROM drive, SBLive! (SPDIF out), and PowerDVD 2.55
Pioneer Elite receiver (older one, no DTS)
B&W Nautilus 804 mains
Dual SVS 20-39 subwoofers with the Fidek 600W amp
I need to get surrounds and a center, but so far things are sounding and looking good! HTPC (home theater PC) is definitely the way to go if you can. There's nothing like watching a DVD in 1280x720@72Hz resolution on a projector.
I wonder what the consequences are of taking this energy away from the ocean? Less erosion on coasts, leading to greater land mass, leading to less oceanic evaporation, leading to all of Earth becoming a dry desert, like in Mad Max?:)
Or if the waves are caused by the wind created by the rotation of the earth, maybe the earth would slow down, making days longer, and winds would be weaker, so wind power would become less effective? Also, perhaps the perception of time would dilate, and people would die at an earlier age, except for super-intelligent genetically-mutated people, who could perceive time at the current rate, and would appear to have Matrix-like moves to the other ordinary people!
Or if the waves are partially caused by lunar gravity, could the removal of this energy result in the de-orbiting of the moon, in which case the surface of the earth would be devastated by a massive Earth-Moon collision?!?
We must stop this project, if the future of the species is to be maintained! Everyone, burn more fossil fuels! It's clearly the safest energy source!
I thought that he didn't ask permission. This was from a long time ago, however, when Michael Jackson got mad at him and sued. My memory of the situation may be wrong.
One thing I was definitely wrong about was the freedom issue. I admit, I skimmed the article and took CmdrTaco's comments to heart that Lucasfilm was going to control the "legal" parodies. Upon reading the article, I now realize I was wrong.
Taco: read the articles carefully before adding commentary! Otherwise you mislead us and turn/. into an off-topic flame war, instead of a discussion about the article.
...it leaves a funny taste in your mouth. Lucasfilm would like everyone (including our government) to believe that we need their permission to use the words "Star" and "Wars" in the same sentence. In reality, parody is a protected form of speech, which people can engage in without the permission of those being parodied. Just ask Weird Al Yankovik. After that, you can ask him how many times he's had to legally defend himself from jealous or offended pop stars and their rabid attorneys, and how many times he has kept his right to parody.
If Lucasfilm controls what parodies are allowed, do you think that anything beyond delicately poking fun would be permitted? What if you have another "Star Wars meets South Park" type of idea and you want to distribute it. Do you think Lucasfilm will give their blessing, no matter how funny it is?
It's time for Hollywood and Lucasfilm in particular to be reminded that we live in a country in which personal freedom is more important that a corporation's ability to make money. Actually, it's about time for a lot of people to be reminded of that.
Dave
If you build a man a fire he's warm for a day,
If you set a man on fire he's warm for a lifetime.
-- Unknown
I'm not trying to say that this is either "right" or "wrong", but to put it in another light, since I think the article missed this point. Essentially, the companies are taking money that they would have paid to the government, and giving it instead directly to their employees. The money, in this case, is really stock options, but you get the idea. Instead of money going to the government to be spent by the government on your behalf, it is given (minus tax, of course) directly to you.
The other thing that the article points out, but not well enough, is that in the end, all this really means is that these companies really aren't as profitable as they claim, since their expense is much higher than they are announcing.
Anyway, I think if you can write off expenses, you might as well be able to write off stock option programs too, since it really seems to be an expense. And (being on the conservative side) I do like the idea of less of my money flowing through Washington before it gets to me (usually in the form of poorly managed entitlement programs with more than a few hands skimming off of the top).
Just my 2 options... (priced at $0.01/option)
David Fay
If you build a man a fire he's warm for a day
If you set a man on fire he's warm for a lifetime.
Perl always wins these kinds of contests, it seems, when there's a knowledgeable Perl programmer (or team) entered. It makes sense too. If you wanted to program something quickly and you knew all common programming languages, which would you choose? Also, the kinds of problems given in these contests are typically ones where programming language choice is a fairly neutral decision. In other words, they aren't going to assign a complex database problem, because everyone would choose [insert your favorite DB language here]. Likewise, it's not going to be a kernel or filesystem problem, or everyone would just choose [insert your favorite mid- to low-level language here]. Typically it's an interesting math problem, or a CS theory problem, and if there is any bias towards a particular language's features, it tends to be a bias in the direction of the kind of things Perl is particularly good at.
I think this kind of test is interesting, and fun, but I don't think it proves what some of you might be thinking. This test is going to last 72 hours. How many projects last 72 hours? How many projects are finished by the same team that started them? How many projects are never maintained after being completed? How many projects have no particular bias towards the features of a particular language? If you had a project like this, which language would you choose? Would you then decide to use that language for all future projects, regardless of what they might be?
Don't get me wrong. Perl is cool, and it is a very useful tool, but I don't think that any language is "the best". Perl just happens to be a very good language for programming contests. Does that mean we should embrace it to the exclusion of all others?
David Fay
P.S. For those of you who think that Perl sucks and [insert your favorite "best" language here] kicks Perl's a**, just remove Perl from the above text and insert the name of your pet language. Is everything I said still valid? Thought so. Let's pick the language for the task, like engineers, not the "best" language for all tasks, like a zealous fan.
The Chronicle of Not-So-High Education reports in this story that a computer-privacy 'expert sensationalist' has told colleges that they should ban computers because 'they offer easy routes for unauthorized people to gain access to personal data on campus networks.' "Computer crime has increased at an alarming rate, and data suggests that the key event that triggered it all was the introduction of computers into society. As computer usage has gone up, there has always been a corresponding increase in computer crime. The link is undeniable." said 'expert sensationalist' Joe Fudd. With such incontrovertible evidence, colleges across the nation are expected to set policies in place that would heavily penalize the use of computers.
You are quite right; I've seen many sound card reviews that do include information on how much processing the card takes off of the processor. (Although in the case of EAX vs. A3D I think it probably has more to do with how much the APIs do as much as how fast the cards are. Wavetracing and HRTF sound a lot more complicated to me than a little reverb.)
You might note, though, that the interest isn't really in the sound card's performance per se, it's in how well it gets out of the way of the 3D renderer. Video is still king in the eyes of the reviewers, and therefore in the eyes of the consumers.
Although I hope it doesn't go the way of the pet rock and so many of the other many-company initiatives we hear about all of the time. Here are a few items of advice, if they want to supplant the horrible beast tyrant that is DirectX:
1) Don't just go after video/audio! Many game developers use DirectX not for the wonderful (ahem, *sarcasm*) APIs in Direct3D, but for the DirectInput and DirectPlay APIs. That way they know that people will be able to use their new "Force Feedback Webcam Modem Ultra Joystick With Added Internet Buttons" with their three week old game that wasn't coded for it.
2) Update the release often to support new technology, but try to keep the APIs from getting beat to death. This is a fine line to tread of course, but it is one that Micros~1 has partially succeeded at. Most game players don't mind upgrading DirectX, since it can result in better performance in games they already have, and it's on their game CDs anyway. The chief problem with DirectX is that the Direct3D API is *very* ugly. Memo to Micros~1: it's bad enough to version your function calls with "Ex", but please don't append numbers to them! Memo to the media: you all seem to believe that games make kids kill other kids. Is it possible that these kids happened to come across the Direct3D API, read it, and flipped out? Investigate! Maybe we can use some filtering software to keep the kiddies from seeing the Direct3D API on the web.
3) In spite of #1, the only performance anyone cares about is the 3D. Go look for reviews on how many giga blams (gb) per second you can get out of a sound card in EAX vs. A3D. I bet you won't find much. While good APIs are invaluable to developers, they won't use your APIs unless you can at least provide comparable performance to the competitor. I know, the APIs don't theoretically dictate performance, but in reality, the design choices of the API can have a serious effect on the ability to incorporate future performance gains due to the latest hardware techniques.
Anyway, that's all I can think of for right now. Hope it becomes a reality! It'd be great for Linux, but what it will really be best for is the future OS that none of us have even dreamed up yet, that will be able to have support for games sooner due to some standard APIs.
Is this what my manager meant when he says
on
Scotch Tape Storage
·
· Score: 2
I said something similar in a previous discussion of some other stupid patent. What I was thinking of was basically a database of ideas that people have forfeit their right to patent. So basically you have this great idea, and in the spirit of open source you want to give it to the community. Who knows, maybe because you were inspired by another project and want to give something back. Anyway, you don't want anyone else to do what you just did but greedily patent the idea and extort money out of others, so you send the idea to the Anti-Patent site and after a short review (to keep a relatively high signal-to-noise ratio in the database) it is time-stamped and placed on the Anti-Patent web site for all to see.
This could have two uses, that I can see. First of all, when someone files a patent-infringement lawsuit against you, you can look at the Anti-Patent site and maybe send them back a little notice saying, "Oh, I'm sorry, but it appears that Anti-Patent #34278954 clearly predates your almost identical Patent #354665354. If your patent isn't thrown out on the basis of prior art, then the Anti-Patent can at least help establish that the Patent is obvious." While this wouldn't prevent abuse of the legal system, I can't help thinking that it would discourage it to some degree, especially as the Anti-Patent site gains in reputation.
The second idea is that after a really stupid patent is awarded, anyone could email the USPTO with a nice friendly pointer to the pertinent prior art on the Anti-Patent web site. Eventually, (again, once the site gains some reputation,) the Patent Officers will probably consider the Anti-Patent database a tool to help them decide whether or not a new patent application is valid or not.
At first I thought that maybe there would be a problem with people submitting ideas that were already patented or had clear prior art. But then I realized, it doesn't matter. If someone submits an Anti-Patent that a previous patent applies to, a note could just be added to the Anti-Patent pointing to the previous patent. That could actually strengthen the Anti-Patent. If there seems to be no usefulness to the Anti-Patent because it is exactly equivalent to a previous patent, it could be removed to reduce clutter in the database, but even that is not really necessary. It's not illegal to print something that has already been released to the public in the form of a patent. (Unlike copyright... but that is the province of the GPL!)
This seems like it would make an excellent open source project. Also, it wouldn't require too much in the way of resources until it got really large, and then maybe donations could support it. Basically it just has to be a moderated, searchable text database freely available via the web.
It sounds like his argument could apply to the earlier article about color copies as well. If I ever decide to hand out pamphlets that could be considered "subversive" by anyone in the gov't, I'll be sure to make them black and white.:)
Seriously, though, this seems to be completely the opposite view of the police and FBI. They use every means at their disposal to track down someone whom they consider to be a suspect. They will even do things that they know are illegal and would not stand up in court (i.e. wiretapping without a warrant) to gather information on the suspect so they can find out how to get legal evidence so that they can get a warrant/make an arrest.
These two viewpoints, while each has obvious merit and obvious failings when taken to extremes, need to be met with some kind of compromise. As it stands now, the only compromise is that the technically savvy can have anonymity and the technically ignorant masses get to have their privacy violated.
I really like the idea of a prior art repository, where we could stick a lot of the OSS stuff or pretty much anything we wanted to. It could probably be structured so that it would be easily accessible for searches, indexing, and so on. I'm sure it'd get really big, and harder to manage over time, but on the other hand, the larger it gets, the better it supports the OSS community. It could even end up encouraging open source developers to take on projects in an area that they're interested in.
The main reason for the idea, at first, would be to "help" patent officers determine if there is clearly prior art on something they're about to send through. (e.g. "Doh! It looks like this idea of 'sending e-mail over the internet' has already been done. I guess I should reject it.") In the end, it could become an anti-patent database. (Meaning copyleft is to copyright as anti-patent is to patent.) For example, I could have some great new idea. I'd just go over to the repository and donate it to the world by submitting it as an anti-patent. I don't know if there are any legal problems with this, but I would assume the anti-patent author would have to make sure that his idea wasn't already patented.
On the other hand, IANAL but I think there are some legal benefits from *not* researching an idea to see if it has been patented. Something to do with knowingly infringing a patent vs. unknowingly.
This is essentially the same idea as Melissa, except more targeted. It seems like it would be the most useful in making crackers just that much more anonymous.
For example: I want to crack a machine, but if someone tries to catch me, I want it to look like it was someone else. So, I want to assume that other person's identity (IP) for the attack. I need to DoS that person and then spoof his IP while attacking my target. Oops, but now the person I'm doing a DoS attack on knows who is attacking him! Oh, no problem, I'll just write a macro virus that installs a time-scheduled program (via Windows Task Scheduler or whatever) that hits my DoS target's HTTP port at a certain time (UTC). Now I distribute the virus, wait until the specified time, verify that the DoS target is getting pounded, and then spoof him and try to crack my original target. Hopefully I'm non-blind spoofing so I can see what is going on!
Is anyone aware of a way in which the DoS target would a) know it was me, or b) be able to defend against the attack?
Slashdot Mirror
"Welcome to the real world."
Exactly. When is America ("Land of the Free") going to realize that it's IP laws are strangling the very ideals upon which the country was founded. Namely Life, Liberty, and Property. IP (as currently instituted) is not property, it is paramount to theft. When I have the same idea as you, you do not lose your idea or your ability to use that idea, but when you prevent me from using my own ideas (which you happen to have had first and independently), you are doing something very similar to stealing.
An oft quoted but important statement from Thomas Jefferson:
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until wecopied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
-- Thomas Jefferson
As much as I would like to stick it to the man (the RIAA in this case) I can't see it hold up. A search warrant will easily get around the DMCA provisions, and the RIAA easily has enough power to get one. Then they'll build their case and we're back to where we are with Napster. (Maybe not though, the facts that it's not explicitly for music sharing and the indices aren't stored locally may help.)
I think the U.S. Supreme Court is the only body in our justice system that I have even a modicum of trust in, so I'm hoping the whole thing will get resolved there with Napster, and the RIAA will die and we can all go back to being sane again. Then this and other similar services can begin to compete on merits and for once the consumer will actually be able to enjoy the fruits of a (more) free market. Of course that's probably unrealistic optimism.
Dave
This is really old news. Companies have had anti-cryptography products for years. One excellent example is free from Digital Convergence. It's called the CueCat. It's the most shining example of anti-cryptography I can think of right now... there are many others.
Yeah, it would suck if the MPAA were forced to endure the _increase_ in revenue that was recently forced upon the RIAA. (10% or something, as I recall.) Sure, there's no direct proof that the increase was caused by the advent of Napster, but, on the other hand, what else could be responsible for it? I don't remember anything revolutionary happening in music in the recent past that could account for it. Let's face it, 10% is a *lot* given those volumes. Plus, there's lots of anecdotal evidence. I know I downloaded some MP3s of some new bands (the kind that are unlikely to ever get radio time) and liked them so much I went out to get CDs. That can't be an isolated incident.
I know the pattern of use for music is different than movies, but not as different as you might think. I really only buy DVDs of movies that I know I'll want to watch more than once, because otherwise I'd rent. Several of those DVDs I've seen more than once now. If I were in the MPAA, I would say, "Bring on the MPAApster!"
I think the MPAA is just whining about the possibility that they might lose some control over their intellectual property. I think they don't like the feeling that they can't control their destiny, and will hurt the consumer badly to try to regain control. What they've forgotten is that their control is an illusion, because we (the consumers) define the value of their intellectual property anyway through our demand. So, they may be forced (like they were with VHS) to realize that making the customer happy is actually a good thing, and that we don't have to be adversarial just because of our producer-consumer relationship.
D
http://www.audiogon.com
These guys will have you buying tube equipment before long, but they know their stuff.
http://www.avsforum.com
Home Theater buffs with a tremendous amount of knowledge.
http://www.hometheaterforum.com
Similar to the above, but it's a slightly different crowd. It's hard to explain.
I've learned a wealth of information from these sites. You'll find that these guys are all talking about spending a lot more than your budget on their hardware, but they are the guys you want to ask about a $1500 system, because they're the ones critical enough to sift the wheat from the chaff, even though they might not buy the system themselves. (Obviously I'm stereotyping here. Many of the people on the forums are as strapped for cash as the next guy.) For equipment reviews, www.audioreview.com is good, and so is www.etown.com. Audioreview seems to have a good quantity of reviews and etown has good quality reviews. For buying equipment, if you are looking for used stuff, look at audioreview and audiogon before going to ebay, and you'll like what you find. I prefer dealing with people who know what they're selling when possible.
Anyway, good luck, and welcome to the "club"!
David Fay
P.S. FYI, my current setup:
Sony 1272 CRT projector (92" x 52" 16:9 home-made screen)
PC with DVD-ROM drive, SBLive! (SPDIF out), and PowerDVD 2.55
Pioneer Elite receiver (older one, no DTS)
B&W Nautilus 804 mains
Dual SVS 20-39 subwoofers with the Fidek 600W amp
I need to get surrounds and a center, but so far things are sounding and looking good! HTPC (home theater PC) is definitely the way to go if you can. There's nothing like watching a DVD in 1280x720@72Hz resolution on a projector.
I wonder what the consequences are of taking this energy away from the ocean? Less erosion on coasts, leading to greater land mass, leading to less oceanic evaporation, leading to all of Earth becoming a dry desert, like in Mad Max? :)
Or if the waves are caused by the wind created by the rotation of the earth, maybe the earth would slow down, making days longer, and winds would be weaker, so wind power would become less effective? Also, perhaps the perception of time would dilate, and people would die at an earlier age, except for super-intelligent genetically-mutated people, who could perceive time at the current rate, and would appear to have Matrix-like moves to the other ordinary people!
Or if the waves are partially caused by lunar gravity, could the removal of this energy result in the de-orbiting of the moon, in which case the surface of the earth would be devastated by a massive Earth-Moon collision?!?
We must stop this project, if the future of the species is to be maintained! Everyone, burn more fossil fuels! It's clearly the safest energy source!
I thought that he didn't ask permission. This was from a long time ago, however, when Michael Jackson got mad at him and sued. My memory of the situation may be wrong.
One thing I was definitely wrong about was the freedom issue. I admit, I skimmed the article and took CmdrTaco's comments to heart that Lucasfilm was going to control the "legal" parodies. Upon reading the article, I now realize I was wrong.
Taco: read the articles carefully before adding commentary! Otherwise you mislead us and turn
Dave
...it leaves a funny taste in your mouth. Lucasfilm would like everyone (including our government) to believe that we need their permission to use the words "Star" and "Wars" in the same sentence. In reality, parody is a protected form of speech, which people can engage in without the permission of those being parodied. Just ask Weird Al Yankovik. After that, you can ask him how many times he's had to legally defend himself from jealous or offended pop stars and their rabid attorneys, and how many times he has kept his right to parody.
If Lucasfilm controls what parodies are allowed, do you think that anything beyond delicately poking fun would be permitted? What if you have another "Star Wars meets South Park" type of idea and you want to distribute it. Do you think Lucasfilm will give their blessing, no matter how funny it is?
It's time for Hollywood and Lucasfilm in particular to be reminded that we live in a country in which personal freedom is more important that a corporation's ability to make money. Actually, it's about time for a lot of people to be reminded of that.
Dave
If you build a man a fire he's warm for a day,
If you set a man on fire he's warm for a lifetime.
-- Unknown
I'm not trying to say that this is either "right" or "wrong", but to put it in another light, since I think the article missed this point. Essentially, the companies are taking money that they would have paid to the government, and giving it instead directly to their employees. The money, in this case, is really stock options, but you get the idea. Instead of money going to the government to be spent by the government on your behalf, it is given (minus tax, of course) directly to you.
The other thing that the article points out, but not well enough, is that in the end, all this really means is that these companies really aren't as profitable as they claim, since their expense is much higher than they are announcing.
Anyway, I think if you can write off expenses, you might as well be able to write off stock option programs too, since it really seems to be an expense. And (being on the conservative side) I do like the idea of less of my money flowing through Washington before it gets to me (usually in the form of poorly managed entitlement programs with more than a few hands skimming off of the top).
Just my 2 options... (priced at $0.01/option)
David Fay
If you build a man a fire he's warm for a day
If you set a man on fire he's warm for a lifetime.
Perl always wins these kinds of contests, it seems, when there's a knowledgeable Perl programmer (or team) entered. It makes sense too. If you wanted to program something quickly and you knew all common programming languages, which would you choose? Also, the kinds of problems given in these contests are typically ones where programming language choice is a fairly neutral decision. In other words, they aren't going to assign a complex database problem, because everyone would choose [insert your favorite DB language here]. Likewise, it's not going to be a kernel or filesystem problem, or everyone would just choose [insert your favorite mid- to low-level language here]. Typically it's an interesting math problem, or a CS theory problem, and if there is any bias towards a particular language's features, it tends to be a bias in the direction of the kind of things Perl is particularly good at.
I think this kind of test is interesting, and fun, but I don't think it proves what some of you might be thinking. This test is going to last 72 hours. How many projects last 72 hours? How many projects are finished by the same team that started them? How many projects are never maintained after being completed? How many projects have no particular bias towards the features of a particular language? If you had a project like this, which language would you choose? Would you then decide to use that language for all future projects, regardless of what they might be?
Don't get me wrong. Perl is cool, and it is a very useful tool, but I don't think that any language is "the best". Perl just happens to be a very good language for programming contests. Does that mean we should embrace it to the exclusion of all others?
David Fay
P.S. For those of you who think that Perl sucks and [insert your favorite "best" language here] kicks Perl's a**, just remove Perl from the above text and insert the name of your pet language. Is everything I said still valid? Thought so. Let's pick the language for the task, like engineers, not the "best" language for all tasks, like a zealous fan.
The Chronicle of Not-So-High Education reports in this story that a computer-privacy 'expert sensationalist' has told colleges that they should ban computers because 'they offer easy routes for unauthorized people to gain access to personal data on campus networks.' "Computer crime has increased at an alarming rate, and data suggests that the key event that triggered it all was the introduction of computers into society. As computer usage has gone up, there has always been a corresponding increase in computer crime. The link is undeniable." said 'expert sensationalist' Joe Fudd. With such incontrovertible evidence, colleges across the nation are expected to set policies in place that would heavily penalize the use of computers.
You are quite right; I've seen many sound card reviews that do include information on how much processing the card takes off of the processor. (Although in the case of EAX vs. A3D I think it probably has more to do with how much the APIs do as much as how fast the cards are. Wavetracing and HRTF sound a lot more complicated to me than a little reverb.)
You might note, though, that the interest isn't really in the sound card's performance per se, it's in how well it gets out of the way of the 3D renderer. Video is still king in the eyes of the reviewers, and therefore in the eyes of the consumers.
Although I hope it doesn't go the way of the pet rock and so many of the other many-company initiatives we hear about all of the time. Here are a few items of advice, if they want to supplant the horrible beast tyrant that is DirectX:
1) Don't just go after video/audio! Many game developers use DirectX not for the wonderful (ahem, *sarcasm*) APIs in Direct3D, but for the DirectInput and DirectPlay APIs. That way they know that people will be able to use their new "Force Feedback Webcam Modem Ultra Joystick With Added Internet Buttons" with their three week old game that wasn't coded for it.
2) Update the release often to support new technology, but try to keep the APIs from getting beat to death. This is a fine line to tread of course, but it is one that Micros~1 has partially succeeded at. Most game players don't mind upgrading DirectX, since it can result in better performance in games they already have, and it's on their game CDs anyway. The chief problem with DirectX is that the Direct3D API is *very* ugly. Memo to Micros~1: it's bad enough to version your function calls with "Ex", but please don't append numbers to them! Memo to the media: you all seem to believe that games make kids kill other kids. Is it possible that these kids happened to come across the Direct3D API, read it, and flipped out? Investigate! Maybe we can use some filtering software to keep the kiddies from seeing the Direct3D API on the web.
3) In spite of #1, the only performance anyone cares about is the 3D. Go look for reviews on how many giga blams (gb) per second you can get out of a sound card in EAX vs. A3D. I bet you won't find much. While good APIs are invaluable to developers, they won't use your APIs unless you can at least provide comparable performance to the competitor. I know, the APIs don't theoretically dictate performance, but in reality, the design choices of the API can have a serious effect on the ability to incorporate future performance gains due to the latest hardware techniques.
Anyway, that's all I can think of for right now. Hope it becomes a reality! It'd be great for Linux, but what it will really be best for is the future OS that none of us have even dreamed up yet, that will be able to have support for games sooner due to some standard APIs.
"Try to think outside the box" ?
I said something similar in a previous discussion of some other stupid patent. What I was thinking of was basically a database of ideas that people have forfeit their right to patent. So basically you have this great idea, and in the spirit of open source you want to give it to the community. Who knows, maybe because you were inspired by another project and want to give something back. Anyway, you don't want anyone else to do what you just did but greedily patent the idea and extort money out of others, so you send the idea to the Anti-Patent site and after a short review (to keep a relatively high signal-to-noise ratio in the database) it is time-stamped and placed on the Anti-Patent web site for all to see.
This could have two uses, that I can see. First of all, when someone files a patent-infringement lawsuit against you, you can look at the Anti-Patent site and maybe send them back a little notice saying, "Oh, I'm sorry, but it appears that Anti-Patent #34278954 clearly predates your almost identical Patent #354665354. If your patent isn't thrown out on the basis of prior art, then the Anti-Patent can at least help establish that the Patent is obvious." While this wouldn't prevent abuse of the legal system, I can't help thinking that it would discourage it to some degree, especially as the Anti-Patent site gains in reputation.
The second idea is that after a really stupid patent is awarded, anyone could email the USPTO with a nice friendly pointer to the pertinent prior art on the Anti-Patent web site. Eventually, (again, once the site gains some reputation,) the Patent Officers will probably consider the Anti-Patent database a tool to help them decide whether or not a new patent application is valid or not.
At first I thought that maybe there would be a problem with people submitting ideas that were already patented or had clear prior art. But then I realized, it doesn't matter. If someone submits an Anti-Patent that a previous patent applies to, a note could just be added to the Anti-Patent pointing to the previous patent. That could actually strengthen the Anti-Patent. If there seems to be no usefulness to the Anti-Patent because it is exactly equivalent to a previous patent, it could be removed to reduce clutter in the database, but even that is not really necessary. It's not illegal to print something that has already been released to the public in the form of a patent. (Unlike copyright... but that is the province of the GPL!)
This seems like it would make an excellent open source project. Also, it wouldn't require too much in the way of resources until it got really large, and then maybe donations could support it. Basically it just has to be a moderated, searchable text database freely available via the web.
Does anyone else like this idea?
It sounds like his argument could apply to the earlier article about color copies as well. If I ever decide to hand out pamphlets that could be considered "subversive" by anyone in the gov't, I'll be sure to make them black and white. :)
Seriously, though, this seems to be completely the opposite view of the police and FBI. They use every means at their disposal to track down someone whom they consider to be a suspect. They will even do things that they know are illegal and would not stand up in court (i.e. wiretapping without a warrant) to gather information on the suspect so they can find out how to get legal evidence so that they can get a warrant/make an arrest.
These two viewpoints, while each has obvious merit and obvious failings when taken to extremes, need to be met with some kind of compromise. As it stands now, the only compromise is that the technically savvy can have anonymity and the technically ignorant masses get to have their privacy violated.
I really like the idea of a prior art repository, where we could stick a lot of the OSS stuff or pretty much anything we wanted to. It could probably be structured so that it would be easily accessible for searches, indexing, and so on. I'm sure it'd get really big, and harder to manage over time, but on the other hand, the larger it gets, the better it supports the OSS community. It could even end up encouraging open source developers to take on projects in an area that they're interested in.
The main reason for the idea, at first, would be to "help" patent officers determine if there is clearly prior art on something they're about to send through. (e.g. "Doh! It looks like this idea of 'sending e-mail over the internet' has already been done. I guess I should reject it.") In the end, it could become an anti-patent database. (Meaning copyleft is to copyright as anti-patent is to patent.) For example, I could have some great new idea. I'd just go over to the repository and donate it to the world by submitting it as an anti-patent. I don't know if there are any legal problems with this, but I would assume the anti-patent author would have to make sure that his idea wasn't already patented.
On the other hand, IANAL but I think there are some legal benefits from *not* researching an idea to see if it has been patented. Something to do with knowingly infringing a patent vs. unknowingly.
Anyway, food for thought. What do you guys think?
This is essentially the same idea as Melissa, except more targeted. It seems like it would be the most useful in making crackers just that much more anonymous.
For example:
I want to crack a machine, but if someone tries to catch me, I want it to look like it was someone else. So, I want to assume that other person's identity (IP) for the attack. I need to DoS that person and then spoof his IP while attacking my target. Oops, but now the person I'm doing a DoS attack on knows who is attacking him! Oh, no problem, I'll just write a macro virus that installs a time-scheduled program (via Windows Task Scheduler or whatever) that hits my DoS target's HTTP port at a certain time (UTC). Now I distribute the virus, wait until the specified time, verify that the DoS target is getting pounded, and then spoof him and try to crack my original target. Hopefully I'm non-blind spoofing so I can see what is going on!
Is anyone aware of a way in which the DoS target would a) know it was me, or b) be able to defend against the attack?
I won't be impressed until it can simulate my junior high school band with a substitute teacher leading.