This analogy breaks down, however, in that the owners of the house did not already specifically choose to post the details of their lock choice to a public forum and explicitally grant the right for everybody to read and redistribute it freely. Furthermore, this search engine does not index users of code, only the original code itself. So a better analogy would have been that which applies to the lock makers, not the home-owners who employ them.
There is a $40 German application called Virtual CD (http://www.virtualcd-online.com/) that does just this. It works with iTunes but requires a patch (see http://www.virtualcd-online.com/vcd/apps/support/c forum.cfm?forumid=105768 for a discussion of burning from iTunes and links to the patch). The program was quite buggy when I tried it, but it did successfully allow me to burn and rip a CD's worth of songs from the iTMS without making a coaster. I have not found a free or OSS equivalent, or even another commercial program that will actually emulate a CD writer (there are, of course, many that will emulate CD readers).
Why not run a packet sniffer to find out? I expect you'll find that they don't send any information at all, since this would negatively impact their battle with the media over their privacy issues, and wouldn't be very useful data for them anyway.
Many digital cameras do not support a mass storage mode as you describe and can only operate using the Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP), which also supports some more advanced features like remote-shooting (but Picasa doesn't support any of those). For this reason, libgphoto is very useful for Picasa because it provides the PTP communication layer that enables support for a much wider array of cameras.
Wine is an implementation of the Windows API. It is not an emulator of any kind. It enables code written using it to run natively on non-Microsoft platforms. By extension of your logic it would seem that any application written using a library "intended" for use in the Linux world (such as Gaim and GTK+) cannot be considered "native" to Windows when ported to it, but this is clearly not the case. Using Wine may not be the nicest way to develop an application from the ground-up for Linux, but if it works, it works. What Google has released is indeed a native Linux application. Furthermore they have obviously made an extensive effort to improve both the code of Picasa and of Wine to address any bugs in Wine that might have resulted in poor performance.
It should further be noted that Google in the process of porting Picasa to Linux participated in committing a number of patches back into the Wine source, as can be seen here.
libgphoto is an OSS library for interfacing with digital cameras. Marcus Meissner is a major Wine developer. Presumably, he wrote a patch that integrates libgphoto with Wine, thus enabling Picassa to download photos from digital cameras - a neccessary feature that would not have otherwise been available as part of the Wine API.
Do note that a series of lower resolution frames of this video (the immediate impact) was released just months after the event itself. The video released today is a higher resolution and much longer version of the same recording. The crucial frames, however, have been public for a number of years.
Right, but some images are less complex than others, and therefore take less time to transmit in compressed form (jpeg). Most of the browsing around in explorer he would have been doing trying to find stuff to look at would have not required much bandwidth (it's mainly white blocks and black text). VNC and similar programs also only send the sections of the screen that have changed (and where to overlay them). As soon as he opened a complex image, however, (like one of an alien spaceship -- whoopeee!) he would have had to wait a very long time to recieve a screen's worth. That's why he says he turned the bit-depth down to recieve it faster.
He was (idiotically) using a VNC style remote administration program. It sends a jpeg stream of desktop screen captures and forwards your mouse movements/clicks. By "hand" he surely meant "cursor" which he could see move if somebody else touched the mouse. The WordPad conversation was possible simply because both parties were looking at and inputting to the same window.
Corporate responsibility may not be a natural priority in the business world, but that doesn't mean that businesses shouldn't or can't be held accountable for what they do. Sure, if everyone's as complacent as you then we're probably all fucked, but clearly that's not the reality of things.
Actually, I think that businesses should be held accountable for what they do. I hope our laws would reflect what our society believes to be acceptable behavior in this sense, and that our justice system can enforce those laws. They often don't and can't, and in that case there's a problem that needs to be addressed democratically: that should be the focus of our discussion. But to simply rely upon Google - an undemocratic corporation with no representative accountability to the population - to take it upon itself to do what we think is right because they told us they would is a very, very dangerous thing.
Are you saying that a corporation can make any promises that it wants to in a "marketing slogan" and that the corporation doesn't have to back up those promises because the promises are not "corporate policy"?
No, that is not at all what I am saying. I'm actually in favor of very strict regulation of marketing practices - I think it's one of the most important functions of government in regulating an economy. What I'm saying is that those of us who put our faith in this slogan were incredibly naive for two reasons. First, because it is an absolutely meaningless phrase; to even consider "Don't Be Evil" to be of any meaningful value what-so-ever requires you to understand exactly what Sergey Brin understood to be "evil" when he said it. I don't even know what I understand to be "evil", let alone what he does. No company can back up a slogan that doesn't have any meaning to begin with. Second, even if the phrase was meaningful, for the very reason you were getting at, Secrity: marketing slogans in our society are nothing to be trusted. They don't, as I said, necessarily reflect corporate policy, because they are by the definition of marketing designed only to sell to the market.
"Do No Evil" is a meaningless piece of marketing. It does not define "evil", and even if it did, corporate marketing slogans are not the same as corporate policy.
Please explain your definition of "morality" and why, whatever it is, you seem to think that companies should self-regulate according to your version of it without intervention from democratic government?
It's true that corporate secrets and other sensitive information could be compromised through this program, however I doubt any organization that needs that kind of guarantee would actually choose to adopt it (if they do somebody probably needs to be fired). The primary audience seems to me to be institutions like schools, such as San Jose City College, which is the first to try the program according to the Google Blog, who can now offer their students a superior service without any cost.
If they price this right
Why are we assuming that there will be a price? By incorporating the domains of organizations, Google will be getting a massively increased userbase to which they can continue to target ads. Hosting 1000 accounts as part of an organization's domain costs Google no more than hosting 1000 regular GMail accounts, so I see no reason to think they would charge the organization (unless they remove the ads).
Slashdot Mirror
This analogy breaks down, however, in that the owners of the house did not already specifically choose to post the details of their lock choice to a public forum and explicitally grant the right for everybody to read and redistribute it freely. Furthermore, this search engine does not index users of code, only the original code itself. So a better analogy would have been that which applies to the lock makers, not the home-owners who employ them.
There is a $40 German application called Virtual CD (http://www.virtualcd-online.com/) that does just this. It works with iTunes but requires a patch (see http://www.virtualcd-online.com/vcd/apps/support/c forum.cfm?forumid=105768 for a discussion of burning from iTunes and links to the patch). The program was quite buggy when I tried it, but it did successfully allow me to burn and rip a CD's worth of songs from the iTMS without making a coaster. I have not found a free or OSS equivalent, or even another commercial program that will actually emulate a CD writer (there are, of course, many that will emulate CD readers).
Do you even know what the "E" stands for in WINE? Surprise, Emulator.
Ah but do you know what the other 3 letters stand for?
Surprise, Wine Is Not
Why not run a packet sniffer to find out? I expect you'll find that they don't send any information at all, since this would negatively impact their battle with the media over their privacy issues, and wouldn't be very useful data for them anyway.
Many digital cameras do not support a mass storage mode as you describe and can only operate using the Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP), which also supports some more advanced features like remote-shooting (but Picasa doesn't support any of those). For this reason, libgphoto is very useful for Picasa because it provides the PTP communication layer that enables support for a much wider array of cameras.
Wine is an implementation of the Windows API. It is not an emulator of any kind. It enables code written using it to run natively on non-Microsoft platforms. By extension of your logic it would seem that any application written using a library "intended" for use in the Linux world (such as Gaim and GTK+) cannot be considered "native" to Windows when ported to it, but this is clearly not the case. Using Wine may not be the nicest way to develop an application from the ground-up for Linux, but if it works, it works. What Google has released is indeed a native Linux application. Furthermore they have obviously made an extensive effort to improve both the code of Picasa and of Wine to address any bugs in Wine that might have resulted in poor performance.
It should further be noted that Google in the process of porting Picasa to Linux participated in committing a number of patches back into the Wine source, as can be seen here.
libgphoto is an OSS library for interfacing with digital cameras. Marcus Meissner is a major Wine developer. Presumably, he wrote a patch that integrates libgphoto with Wine, thus enabling Picassa to download photos from digital cameras - a neccessary feature that would not have otherwise been available as part of the Wine API.
No
I'm pretty sure that's not Bill Gates' voice.
Do note that a series of lower resolution frames of this video (the immediate impact) was released just months after the event itself. The video released today is a higher resolution and much longer version of the same recording. The crucial frames, however, have been public for a number of years.
The video released today is a higher resolution and signifigantly longer version of that same tape.
Yes - the offer is only valid if you are inside the United States or Canada and are calling the United States or Canada.
You may be interested in this: http://swaroopch.info/text/How_to_use_Vim_with_Fir efox
Right, but some images are less complex than others, and therefore take less time to transmit in compressed form (jpeg). Most of the browsing around in explorer he would have been doing trying to find stuff to look at would have not required much bandwidth (it's mainly white blocks and black text). VNC and similar programs also only send the sections of the screen that have changed (and where to overlay them). As soon as he opened a complex image, however, (like one of an alien spaceship -- whoopeee!) he would have had to wait a very long time to recieve a screen's worth. That's why he says he turned the bit-depth down to recieve it faster.
He was (idiotically) using a VNC style remote administration program. It sends a jpeg stream of desktop screen captures and forwards your mouse movements/clicks. By "hand" he surely meant "cursor" which he could see move if somebody else touched the mouse. The WordPad conversation was possible simply because both parties were looking at and inputting to the same window.
He meant cursor.
Where exactly was The Daily Show freely available for download?
"Do No Evil" is a meaningless piece of marketing. It does not define "evil", and even if it did, corporate marketing slogans are not the same as corporate policy.
Please explain your definition of "morality" and why, whatever it is, you seem to think that companies should self-regulate according to your version of it without intervention from democratic government?
It's true that corporate secrets and other sensitive information could be compromised through this program, however I doubt any organization that needs that kind of guarantee would actually choose to adopt it (if they do somebody probably needs to be fired). The primary audience seems to me to be institutions like schools, such as San Jose City College, which is the first to try the program according to the Google Blog, who can now offer their students a superior service without any cost.
If they price this right Why are we assuming that there will be a price? By incorporating the domains of organizations, Google will be getting a massively increased userbase to which they can continue to target ads. Hosting 1000 accounts as part of an organization's domain costs Google no more than hosting 1000 regular GMail accounts, so I see no reason to think they would charge the organization (unless they remove the ads).
So THAT'S where the NASA research budget has gone!