By my understanding, VISA does a similar sort of thing with its transaction processing. The software monitors your usage pattern -- locations, dollar amounts, dates, time and suchlike -- and attempts to identify abnormal usage.
So, probably, most of your spending is in and around your hometown. Once in a while you make a trip to the big city. You don't seem to use it a lot at the jeweller's -- Christmas is the exception.
Hmmm.. what's this? You're buying a $3000 necklace at Goldstein's Jewellers in Vancouver, BC? Seems unlikely you'd be getting a videotape from Roger's on Tuesday in Poughkeepsie, and then buying diamonds in Vancouver on Wednesday... let's deny the transaction, or get the clerk to confirm ID.
Now, this is hearsay. I can't say I've *read* a report on this, but I've heard several people tell of it. And it doesn't seem such a stretch, though I've never actually heard of someone being denied an unlikely purchase.
Anyway, long and short of it is that it's not a real stretch to imagine this being a powerful tool for networks. Monitor the traffic and perform analysis: start figuring out what's normal and what's not. And alert someone when abnormal things begin to happen.
It's inutterably stupid to choose a video standard based on 24fps, simply because that's what film uses.
Digital video is where it's going, and bloody fast. Set the standard at 48 or 72fps, and use every second or third frame if cutting back to film (or double or triple the frames if going from film to television).
And let's start seeing the wide format more in use. Most of our world is lived more horizontally spread-out than vertically spread-out, New York and Hong Kong being the notable exceptions.
Though, of course, all this is moot when considering broadcast television. That shite ain't worth watching no-how. I just want my DVDs to look good...:-)
I'm not entirely sure that tobacco is "freely chosen." The tobacco companies do their damnedest to get children addicted. I'm not confident that many of these kids are mentally/emotionally mature enough to make free choices about a lot of their actions.
Which isn't to say that it absolves them of the consequences of their actions. Not in the least.
But to say that it's "free choice" and dismissing the causative role of the tobacco companies in creating a situation in which children wish to smoke is disingenuous at best.
The tobacco companies manufacture a product that is harmfully addictive, and go out of their way to promote that product to populations that are poorly informed regarding the consequences of their peer- and self-worth influenced choices.
They should not be let off the hook by the casual statement of "hey, free choice, man!" any more than any other company that creates hazardous situations for their workers, the general public or their specific consumers.
For those of you running Windows9x, you'll find that ZoneAlarm is a good firewall. Access Zone Labs here.
Also protects against.vbs worms, it claims. That, I'm not so sure about. But it does appear to be effective against a number of attacks, holes, etcetera.
Absolutely essential for anyone with a 24/7 connect.
Oooh, this is going to cost me karma as trolling, but...
How is this all-inclusive, single-source applications/OS environment any different than, say, Windows and Office?
I know, I know: it's not monopolistic, you are able to run other GUIs, it isn't tied into the OS, etcetera.
On the other hand, there are a *LOT* of Linux supporters who really get off on flaming Microsoft for packaging Office with Windows, for the way Office buggers with the GUI, for their scripting support, for bloatware, and so on.
All accusations that could be made toward KDE, and probably Gnome. Like, when Linux finally rules the common man's desktop, is an installation package that by default installs KDE and KOffice really any different than what MS does? Isn't there a parallel with Office's non-standard dialogs and widgets, and KDE's different-from-other-GUIs dialogs and widgets (there being a complete lack of standard for Linux GUIs)? Is KDE scripting going to be any less a security risk than VBA? Isn't X-Windows+KDE+KOffice not abhorrently oversized, just like Office?
Yes, I'm fully aware that it's a different situation... but not so different that it's not more than a little ironic that what KDE is praised for, MS is condemned for.
Part of the problem with this ruling is that a logical-shift-right (er, that's division by two) doesn't make sense for a lot of the company.
Microsoft Press shouldn't be part of OS nor of Applications. It should stand alone. Likewise for Microsoft Hardware.
Anyway, the long and short of the idea that just struck me is that perhaps a LSR of MSFT is so unusable that it forces the company to break itself up however it best sees fit.
There's still the sticky issue of collusion and product tying, but it's much less likely with a umpteen-split company. Or, rather, less likely to be 'all in the family' instead of with whatever business offers the most money. Heck, the Linux community could kick in a buck each and buy the Apps division's cooperation in releasing Windows-incompatible APIs...:-)
C|Net's hack got a market analyst to ballpark the prices of the two MSFT companies.
The OS group would be at about $17/share, with earnings in the three-quarters of a dollar range.
The Applications group would be about $40/share, with earnings above a dollar per share.
What will be most interesting is to witness the impact this has on other stocks. If the WIndowsOS is only worth $17, then what's BeOS worth? Bugger all... (and this is, perhaps, accurately reflected in its current pricing).
I don't believe any politician is particularly affected by email spam: they typically have front-end staff that filter the mail.
I don't expect they have the same setup for their personal cellphone.
The *ONLY* way that the laws about spam will change is when spam starts hurting politicians. The anti-spam SIGs are just not glamourous enough to garner attention from the politicos.
Anti-spam SIGs that protest baby seal clubbing, maybe they'd get the attention...
According to a link from Kuro5hin today, which purports to be someone's cracking of a major spam business, there is damn fine money to be made in sending spam -- to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars annual income.
The response rate for spam is high enough that the spammers are willing to work on commission. It's high enough, in fact, that their clients are uncommonly willing to pay up fairly large money (four/five figure weekly payouts) readily.
It's more than viably economic: it's a damn fine income... alas.
Over several postings on this thread, you've made it clear that you're deeply supportive of "eye for an eye" justice. I hope you realize that that system inevitably results in oneupmanship: "two eyes for an eye."
You're also remarkably supportive of his action in support of his friends. A sort of all-for-one attitude... and a backhanded sort of support, really: he's judged that his friends are incapable of dealing with it themselves, and that his way of dealing with it is superior to theirs.
Anyway, this is all round-about to saying that if he really were libelled by the newspaper, website and teachers, then it would be *appropriate* to sue them. It is *not* appropriate to engage in the same petty, unlawful and hurtful actions that his "enemies" were.
It sounds to me like a whole bunch of kids need to get a clue and start behaving a bit more maturely; and a whole bunch of staff and administrators need to get a clue and start intervening instead of letting the kids duke it out among themselves.
That, or you can get an editor that is smart enough to indent. Or convert braces to spaces.
I mean, really, of all the things to not like about Python (lack of static typing, even as an option, which makes errors in variable assignments an all too easy mistake, for example), whitespace is the silliest of all possible protests against the language.
"...but it [Python] considers indentation as syntax..."
Oh, GET OVER IT ALREADY!
My god. So it uses indents. So fscking what?
[rant on] Unless you're the type of useless programmer who should be taken out back and shot for writing a mishmash of mal-indented code that is so visually inconsistent that no one wants to maintain your shit, you're already using whitespace that already is syntax -- visual syntax for your brain to keep track of your structures.
I suggest that anyone so tightassed that they can't cope with whitespace as syntax is someone who no one would want on a project team, because the collision of formating styles will cause conflict. [rant off]
Which is exactly how you, with binocular vision, and I, with monocular, achieve parallax information/knowledge/sight for anything much more than an arms-length away.
The disparity in images for anything three feet or more away (? perhaps it's 3 meters; doesn't much matter for my point) is so slight that the eye can not distinguish it: in geek terms, it's beyond the resolution of the eye.
Kind of like depicting a circle on a display that's only 1 pixel per centimeter: the one at coordinates (10.25,10.25) looks exactly like the one at (10.45, 10.45) -- similar to the 'coordinates' of the things you see in your left eye versus your right.
For some interesting examples of visual cues that do/don't involve binocular/monocular vision, see http://psych.hanover.edu/Krantz/art/index.html -- there are a half-dozen or more cues!
http://aris.ss.uci.edu/cogsci/courses/psych9b/le ctures/lec7notes.html provides technical terms and discussion.
http://schorlab.berkeley.edu/Lab/220read.html provides proof that if a graduate student blows enough smoke up the thesis committee's arse, he'll graduate with honours. Can technical writing become any worse than this? My gods.
http://www.iversonsoftware.com/reference/psychol ogy/perception.htm also provides pretty pictures and examples.
Ditto. And ditto. I can't imagine how I'm supposed to deal with superimposed 3D images...
(in Real Life, 3D is not a problem; for objects more than about three feet away, you don't use binocular vision to judge depth: the difference in image between your eyes is too minute, so your brain relies on size, 'layering' and parallax... presumably, my brain has become exceptionally good at processing this info closer in than 3ft, 'cause I don't seem to be handicapped by being half-blind...)
(and in Real Life, we're not subjected to that annoying blurry image-over-image effect!)
THE KEY POINT: If you want the laws to change, you're going to have to GET POLITICALLY ACTIVE.
1) UCITA is being put through your Congress by extremely rich and powerful business interests.
2) Your politicians are being bought out.
3) The only thing more important to a politician than money and power is the vote. If they're not voted in, they can't make money or have power.
4) Which means you get ACTIVE and ORGANIZED. If they don't toe YOUR line, then they DON'T GET YOUR VOTE.
The vote is the *ONLY* big stick you hold. Wave it around, threaten them with it, and USE IT.
Other points: 5) The document is written in legalese. Anything you write about it is pure hypothesis. You don't understand it, and you're not meant to.
6) Apogee's lawyer dude laughs it all off. He plainly thinks most of you are idiots. Probably, he's right.
7) Take comfort that, even if you are an idiot, at least you're not a lawyer. Pity poor Scott, who's stuck being Apogee's asshole!
1) Business Methods and Software Methods are not part of the 'traditional' patent system. They have only recently been allowed.
2) The only way to change the system is to get political. When you sat back and let Congress allow the above changes to the Patent Office's mandate, *you* made it possible for this current absurd situation to arise.
Now, IMHO, it's too damn late. The mandate has been expanded, and it is *impossible* to shrink it back.
Which leads to...
3) The *ONLY* solution is to work *with* the PO and *with* Congress.
Work with the PO to help them get their shit together wrt prior art and obviousness. Sounds like the database idea is a good start.
Work with Congress to exert pressure to help refine the way that Business Methods and Software Methods go through the patent process. You can't remove them from the process: you can only change the way they're validated.
"...record companies will never be completely extinct, for one reason and one reason only, that there will always be a need to develop younger artists"
There are artists who 'groom' or, shall we say, 'venture captilize' new artists. They have their own labels, help these up-and-comings learn the ropes, etc.
Seems to me that there are enough successful bands that this sort of a model could be used to completely eliminate the big record companies.
I believe there is a Python program by name of TTX (?) that does this... or something similar. It's worth crawling 'round for -- search "Python TTF XML", perhaps (same page also had a tool for rendering TTF to XML and back...)
Slashdot Mirror
By my understanding, VISA does a similar sort of thing with its transaction processing. The software monitors your usage pattern -- locations, dollar amounts, dates, time and suchlike -- and attempts to identify abnormal usage.
So, probably, most of your spending is in and around your hometown. Once in a while you make a trip to the big city. You don't seem to use it a lot at the jeweller's -- Christmas is the exception.
Hmmm.. what's this? You're buying a $3000 necklace at Goldstein's Jewellers in Vancouver, BC? Seems unlikely you'd be getting a videotape from Roger's on Tuesday in Poughkeepsie, and then buying diamonds in Vancouver on Wednesday... let's deny the transaction, or get the clerk to confirm ID.
Now, this is hearsay. I can't say I've *read* a report on this, but I've heard several people tell of it. And it doesn't seem such a stretch, though I've never actually heard of someone being denied an unlikely purchase.
Anyway, long and short of it is that it's not a real stretch to imagine this being a powerful tool for networks. Monitor the traffic and perform analysis: start figuring out what's normal and what's not. And alert someone when abnormal things begin to happen.
Sounds cool. I'm for it!
--
Nor are you, torpor.
No, I couldn't begin to tell you who their audience is these days. Certainly not the people they started out attracting.
For a good web news filter, try GeekPress and, less geeky by far, but more socially relevent, NewsTrolls.
--
Tho' after reading Apotsy's Msg #33, above, perhaps it's just better over all if movie-makers didn't go video...
Though I still want my DVDs to look good.
--
It's inutterably stupid to choose a video standard based on 24fps, simply because that's what film uses.
:-)
Digital video is where it's going, and bloody fast. Set the standard at 48 or 72fps, and use every second or third frame if cutting back to film (or double or triple the frames if going from film to television).
And let's start seeing the wide format more in use. Most of our world is lived more horizontally spread-out than vertically spread-out, New York and Hong Kong being the notable exceptions.
Though, of course, all this is moot when considering broadcast television. That shite ain't worth watching no-how. I just want my DVDs to look good...
--
I don't give a damn *what* format becomes HDTV, just as long as *SOME* effing format becomes HDTV.
We've been waiting, what?, more than a DECADE for everyone to get their act together and make a decision.
Time to shit or get off the pot.
--
I'm not entirely sure that tobacco is "freely chosen." The tobacco companies do their damnedest to get children addicted. I'm not confident that many of these kids are mentally/emotionally mature enough to make free choices about a lot of their actions.
Which isn't to say that it absolves them of the consequences of their actions. Not in the least.
But to say that it's "free choice" and dismissing the causative role of the tobacco companies in creating a situation in which children wish to smoke is disingenuous at best.
The tobacco companies manufacture a product that is harmfully addictive, and go out of their way to promote that product to populations that are poorly informed regarding the consequences of their peer- and self-worth influenced choices.
They should not be let off the hook by the casual statement of "hey, free choice, man!" any more than any other company that creates hazardous situations for their workers, the general public or their specific consumers.
--
For those of you running Windows9x, you'll find that ZoneAlarm is a good firewall. Access Zone Labs here.
.vbs worms, it claims. That, I'm not so sure about. But it does appear to be effective against a number of attacks, holes, etcetera.
Also protects against
Absolutely essential for anyone with a 24/7 connect.
--
Oooh, this is going to cost me karma as trolling, but...
How is this all-inclusive, single-source applications/OS environment any different than, say, Windows and Office?
I know, I know: it's not monopolistic, you are able to run other GUIs, it isn't tied into the OS, etcetera.
On the other hand, there are a *LOT* of Linux supporters who really get off on flaming Microsoft for packaging Office with Windows, for the way Office buggers with the GUI, for their scripting support, for bloatware, and so on.
All accusations that could be made toward KDE, and probably Gnome. Like, when Linux finally rules the common man's desktop, is an installation package that by default installs KDE and KOffice really any different than what MS does? Isn't there a parallel with Office's non-standard dialogs and widgets, and KDE's different-from-other-GUIs dialogs and widgets (there being a complete lack of standard for Linux GUIs)? Is KDE scripting going to be any less a security risk than VBA? Isn't X-Windows+KDE+KOffice not abhorrently oversized, just like Office?
Yes, I'm fully aware that it's a different situation... but not so different that it's not more than a little ironic that what KDE is praised for, MS is condemned for.
Ouch.
--
Part of the problem with this ruling is that a logical-shift-right (er, that's division by two) doesn't make sense for a lot of the company.
:-)
Microsoft Press shouldn't be part of OS nor of Applications. It should stand alone. Likewise for Microsoft Hardware.
Anyway, the long and short of the idea that just struck me is that perhaps a LSR of MSFT is so unusable that it forces the company to break itself up however it best sees fit.
There's still the sticky issue of collusion and product tying, but it's much less likely with a umpteen-split company. Or, rather, less likely to be 'all in the family' instead of with whatever business offers the most money. Heck, the Linux community could kick in a buck each and buy the Apps division's cooperation in releasing Windows-incompatible APIs...
--
The OS group would be at about $17/share, with earnings in the three-quarters of a dollar range.
The Applications group would be about $40/share, with earnings above a dollar per share.
What will be most interesting is to witness the impact this has on other stocks. If the WIndowsOS is only worth $17, then what's BeOS worth? Bugger all... (and this is, perhaps, accurately reflected in its current pricing).
--
THIS PAGE lets you send SMS messages to anyone you care to.
One wonders if they're harvesting spam-able phone numbers...
(hit Google and type "send sms message cell phone" and you'll get another few sites that let you do the same thing)
--
...to clue politicians in.
I don't believe any politician is particularly affected by email spam: they typically have front-end staff that filter the mail.
I don't expect they have the same setup for their personal cellphone.
The *ONLY* way that the laws about spam will change is when spam starts hurting politicians. The anti-spam SIGs are just not glamourous enough to garner attention from the politicos.
Anti-spam SIGs that protest baby seal clubbing, maybe they'd get the attention...
--
According to a link from Kuro5hin today, which purports to be someone's cracking of a major spam business, there is damn fine money to be made in sending spam -- to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars annual income.
The response rate for spam is high enough that the spammers are willing to work on commission. It's high enough, in fact, that their clients are uncommonly willing to pay up fairly large money (four/five figure weekly payouts) readily.
It's more than viably economic: it's a damn fine income... alas.
--
Over several postings on this thread, you've made it clear that you're deeply supportive of "eye for an eye" justice. I hope you realize that that system inevitably results in oneupmanship: "two eyes for an eye."
You're also remarkably supportive of his action in support of his friends. A sort of all-for-one attitude... and a backhanded sort of support, really: he's judged that his friends are incapable of dealing with it themselves, and that his way of dealing with it is superior to theirs.
Anyway, this is all round-about to saying that if he really were libelled by the newspaper, website and teachers, then it would be *appropriate* to sue them. It is *not* appropriate to engage in the same petty, unlawful and hurtful actions that his "enemies" were.
It sounds to me like a whole bunch of kids need to get a clue and start behaving a bit more maturely; and a whole bunch of staff and administrators need to get a clue and start intervening instead of letting the kids duke it out among themselves.
--
AFAIK, there is a vi macro set that does do automagic indentation.
I could be completely wrong, having never used it. But I can't imagine there's much point to having it if it doesn't do that.
--
Touche'. :-) I wish I could give you a moderation point for funny, even if I had to steal one from my own posting.
--
That, or you can get an editor that is smart enough to indent. Or convert braces to spaces.
I mean, really, of all the things to not like about Python (lack of static typing, even as an option, which makes errors in variable assignments an all too easy mistake, for example), whitespace is the silliest of all possible protests against the language.
--
"...but it [Python] considers indentation as syntax..."
Oh, GET OVER IT ALREADY!
My god. So it uses indents. So fscking what?
[rant on]
Unless you're the type of useless programmer who should be taken out back and shot for writing a mishmash of mal-indented code that is so visually inconsistent that no one wants to maintain your shit, you're already using whitespace that already is syntax -- visual syntax for your brain to keep track of your structures.
I suggest that anyone so tightassed that they can't cope with whitespace as syntax is someone who no one would want on a project team, because the collision of formating styles will cause conflict.
[rant off]
My god. What some people will whinge on about!
--
Which is exactly how you, with binocular vision, and I, with monocular, achieve parallax information/knowledge/sight for anything much more than an arms-length away.
e ctures/lec7notes.html provides technical terms and discussion.
l ogy/perception.htm also provides pretty pictures and examples.
The disparity in images for anything three feet or more away (? perhaps it's 3 meters; doesn't much matter for my point) is so slight that the eye can not distinguish it: in geek terms, it's beyond the resolution of the eye.
Kind of like depicting a circle on a display that's only 1 pixel per centimeter: the one at coordinates (10.25,10.25) looks exactly like the one at (10.45, 10.45) -- similar to the 'coordinates' of the things you see in your left eye versus your right.
For some interesting examples of visual cues that do/don't involve binocular/monocular vision, see http://psych.hanover.edu/Krantz/art/index.html -- there are a half-dozen or more cues!
http://aris.ss.uci.edu/cogsci/courses/psych9b/l
http://schorlab.berkeley.edu/Lab/220read.html provides proof that if a graduate student blows enough smoke up the thesis committee's arse, he'll graduate with honours. Can technical writing become any worse than this? My gods.
http://www.iversonsoftware.com/reference/psycho
--
This is not true. Your brain relies far more on parallax, "smaller is farther" and "stuff in front blocks out stuff behind."
You use binocular difference with close objects, within a few feet distance. Beyond that, binocular doesn't enter into it.
--
Ditto. And ditto. I can't imagine how I'm supposed to deal with superimposed 3D images...
(in Real Life, 3D is not a problem; for objects more than about three feet away, you don't use binocular vision to judge depth: the difference in image between your eyes is too minute, so your brain relies on size, 'layering' and parallax... presumably, my brain has become exceptionally good at processing this info closer in than 3ft, 'cause I don't seem to be handicapped by being half-blind...)
(and in Real Life, we're not subjected to that annoying blurry image-over-image effect!)
--
THE KEY POINT: If you want the laws to change, you're going to have to GET POLITICALLY ACTIVE.
1) UCITA is being put through your Congress by extremely rich and powerful business interests.
2) Your politicians are being bought out.
3) The only thing more important to a politician than money and power is the vote. If they're not voted in, they can't make money or have power.
4) Which means you get ACTIVE and ORGANIZED. If they don't toe YOUR line, then they DON'T GET YOUR VOTE.
The vote is the *ONLY* big stick you hold. Wave it around, threaten them with it, and USE IT.
Other points:
5) The document is written in legalese. Anything you write about it is pure hypothesis. You don't understand it, and you're not meant to.
6) Apogee's lawyer dude laughs it all off. He plainly thinks most of you are idiots. Probably, he's right.
7) Take comfort that, even if you are an idiot, at least you're not a lawyer. Pity poor Scott, who's stuck being Apogee's asshole!
--
1) Business Methods and Software Methods are not part of the 'traditional' patent system. They have only recently been allowed.
2) The only way to change the system is to get political. When you sat back and let Congress allow the above changes to the Patent Office's mandate, *you* made it possible for this current absurd situation to arise.
Now, IMHO, it's too damn late. The mandate has been expanded, and it is *impossible* to shrink it back.
Which leads to...
3) The *ONLY* solution is to work *with* the PO and *with* Congress.
Work with the PO to help them get their shit together wrt prior art and obviousness. Sounds like the database idea is a good start.
Work with Congress to exert pressure to help refine the way that Business Methods and Software Methods go through the patent process. You can't remove them from the process: you can only change the way they're validated.
You gotta get involved. S'only way.
--
"...record companies will never be
completely extinct, for one reason and one reason only, that there will always be a need to develop younger artists"
There are artists who 'groom' or, shall we say, 'venture captilize' new artists. They have their own labels, help these up-and-comings learn the ropes, etc.
Seems to me that there are enough successful bands that this sort of a model could be used to completely eliminate the big record companies.
--
I believe there is a Python program by name of TTX (?) that does this... or something similar. It's worth crawling 'round for -- search "Python TTF XML", perhaps (same page also had a tool for rendering TTF to XML and back...)
--