The "surviving member" is nobody but the woman who inherited control of the trademark and partial interest in the songwriting and performance rights. Nobody in the band can stand her. She's why they started performing as "The Dead", so separate themselves profesionally from what was left of the management organization that found itself under control of Garcia's widow.
Archive.org got threats and responded to them, but Phil didn't know this was going on. See, Phil actually has the right to permit this material to be distributed, and he's not too happy about someing going over his head, essentially, abridging his own rights as one of the artists involved. I predict this incident will have the effect of reducing Debra Koons' influence again, and also, another resource for this material will manifest, better than Archive.org was, perhaps under control of someone like the Rex foundation, or someone like that who won't be disposed to cave in the first time they get a letter from a lawyer.
Personally I think Archive.org should have insisted on a court order, since they have powerful enough allies who have equal claim to the distribution rights of this material.
"Garcia's widow threatened to sue, archive.org pulled it. Happened about a week and a half ago."
She has been trying to milk something out of that band since before Jerry died. It's so bad, everybody else has basically walked away, dissolved the production company, and moved on to new and different projects, or gone into retirement. I think it's hilarious how she alienated herself from the only people who could have given her what she wanted.
Wouldn't surpise me one bit if the stress of dealing with Debra contributed to Jerry's death.
She really is a piece of work. Seriously. The people who had to be close to her totally hated her. The whole reason the surviving members re-formed the band as "The Dead" was to sever the business organization in the Garcia estate, which Debra controlled, so that she couldn't control it.
So it's no big surprise that she'd threaten Archive.org.
I have a big problem with this, though. See, Archive.org did a great thing. They consolidated a lot of the material that had been circulating in umpteen different circles. They did that so well, that they successfully *replaced* all that whole distributed scene. Everybody contributed to Archive.org instead. But Archive.org didn't have the foresight to exist outside of US civil jurisdiction, and didn't have the balls to stand up to legal threats, giving in to a mere cease and desist letter (as opposed to a court order.)
So by doing what they did so well, they ended up destroying the scene that they were trying to help.
What's probably going to end up happening, is Phil, who reserves distribution rights on pretty much everything, will put the smack down on whoever is trying to go over his head. That'll take time, but it might even end up with the music being distributed on a system of his. In a fight between Debra's people, who control a holding company with a trademark, and Phil, who controls songwriter and performer rights, Phil will win.
Seriously, they all hate her guts. I don't even think Jerry liked her very much after the honeymoon was over.
Fair enough. I wasn't trying to say, myself, that we've made as much forward progress as we'd like to think. In fact, some of the best work in automata theory predates electronic computing:-)
"IIRC, IBM tried to do just this with OS/360, which was developed in the 1960's IIRC. What they eventually found was that despite their most concerted efforts, they reached a point where trying to fix old bugs introduced at least as many, or more, new bugs."
Are you suggesting that we haven't made progress in almost 50 years of developing the science and the tools of software engineering? If a case study from the '60s, when the science was in its infancy, has relevance today, when the science is in a post-modern period, that's as damning on today's developers as it is praising what the pioneers accomplished.
>hmm maybe they have a vested interest in NOT providing vonage that access?
The article is short on details. Depending on how "uncooperative" they are being, and in what ways, they might find themselves in trouble, since Vonage and the FCC could claim that they are interfering with someone's effort to comply with lawful orders. Obstruction of justice perhaps, that sort of thing?
If Vonage is sandbagging because they aren't getting 911 to POTS *for free* that's another matter entirely.
Look at the asm output of your compiler sometime, and ponder how many algorithms end up with unconditional jumps. I can easily see how it might be possible to optimize away a stack operation here and a compare there by suggesting a jump in the right place, why not?
Just because it's *possible* to get a performance improvement, doesn't make it a win in every situation, right?
I'm sure the kind of mess Dijkstra was dealing with when he wrote the paper, was truly maddening. I'd be willing to bet that the kind of GOTO abuse by the ALGOL(?) and PL/I(?) programmers of the day were in *every* loop structure, and *very* common special case handling. Bundle that with the kind of optimizations you had to do in the days of 8K core being a big machine, and the end result could be *really* ugly.
On the other hand, Dijkstra himself would probably use GOTO in the situation described in the article (e.g., porting LAPACK?)
In other words, the belief is based on speculation. The actual manufacturing costs aren't disclosed. It's in the company's interest to make the consumer *believe* it's losing money, or that it's losses are higher per unit than other consumer devices in the bracket, but it might not even be true.
Or if it is true that the company takes a $126 loss per unit, does that actually mean what the typical consumer thinks it means?
What's the wholesale, pre-tax, pre-import-duty cost on the Xbox? What's it's insured value at the warehouse? Are the per-component, per-unit-labor, and per-unit packaging and transportation costs really disclosed to the public? Why would they be?
Who benefits from a widespread belief that you're "sticking it to Microsoft" if you buy an Xbox and not buying any games?
"The guy didn't exactly steal the legos (or LEGO bricks, for the anal-retentative). He pulled the ol' UPC-swap trick on the store."
It's shoplifting, which is theft, so he did *exactly* steal them. The point when the crime is committed is when you switch the price tag concealed from the merchant. (It would be legal to switch the tags with the merchant's consent -- it's the point of concealment where it becomes shoplifting.)
I never could find the right version of Mechassault.
It's unfortunate that there's no *straightforward* way to boot for instance Linux on an unmodified Xbox. Surprising that nobody has simply made a boot loader that does whatever the Mechassault game does, but without the requirement of the special, long-discontinued game.
Well, I don't think anybody has died yet from an Xbox PSU... But back in the early days of the 386, there were systems we could not sell to residential customers because the #1 cause of failure was the machine spontaneously catching fire. (Presumably, business customers were less at risk; I never quite understood this. Mostly I resented the fact that I couldn't sell them despite demand!)
How would you like to be the guy who stopped the Xbox delivery for 2005? How would you like to justify pulling the production line based on a smallish possibility that some units might have overheating problems?
I'd like to see what the instructions say about setting up the PS. I'd bet money there's something about setting it on its rubber feet,with airflow, etc., wherever it tells you not to use it in the tub.
"First of all, I want to mention I can run my Xbox 360 for a stonkin' forever without it crashing."
Nobody, except for maybe a few Microsoft R&D folks, has had an Xbox 360 long enough to qualify for a proper burn-in period, let alone, to consider it proven in the field.
Well... the fact that it was apparently legal to change the wording after the conference, suggests that there was never any need for the conference in the first place, since the only party with any legitimate involvement was the last one to touch the document.
Was it legal? And if not, what consequences could there be?
"The numbers in the article don't add up. They say they have $1 million in revenue and have 50 full time employees. That means avg. $20K/yr, which even in Minot wouldn't go far. Then they say they charge $35-$50 per hour. What gives?"
Eight of those employees are making $80,000 a year, three are making 1.6 million, and the rest get whatever federally mandated minimum wage and benefit, and as soon as the working capital is gone, the shop will close, because it's $45 million in the hole.
I know of a place within a few hours drive of DC, where a large two story house on five acres could easily be had for $65,000, where a storefront building on the main street (admittedly of a very small town) can be had for $10,000, and there's still little interest. I saw places that would go for $250,000 in the city, in the high teens out there. Saw with my own eyes, and actually considered buying some property just on a whim. That's WV; no doubt there are political and social reasons that keep people who have a choice from living in such places...
I'd like to let them know that by "not taking sides", they've actually taken the side of the Creationists, by acknowledging that there is some validity to the debate.
"You can preach creationism all you want in a religious context, but when creationism starts to get forced down the throats of children in science classes, it gets Bad. "
Seems like a self-correcting problem to me -- these students won't be accepted to any university, and won't become teachers themseleves. Let Kansas or whatever wasteland teach bad science. After it destroys a generation or two, the problem will correct itself.
Slashdot Mirror
>Note to self: Don't play Keyboards for the Grateful Dead
Tom Constanten and Ned Lagin both are alive and well.
TC answered mail from me, even apologized for taking so long since he'd had the flu.
The "surviving member" is nobody but the woman who inherited control of the trademark and partial interest in the songwriting and performance rights.
Nobody in the band can stand her. She's why they started performing as "The Dead", so separate themselves profesionally from what was left of the management organization that found itself under control of Garcia's widow.
Archive.org got threats and responded to them, but Phil didn't know this was going on. See, Phil actually has the right to permit this material to be distributed, and he's not too happy about someing going over his head, essentially, abridging his own rights as one of the artists involved. I predict this incident will have the effect of reducing Debra Koons' influence again, and also, another resource for this material will manifest, better than Archive.org was, perhaps under control of someone like the Rex foundation, or someone like that who won't be disposed to cave in the first time they get a letter from a lawyer.
Personally I think Archive.org should have insisted on a court order, since they have powerful enough allies who have equal claim to the distribution rights of this material.
"Garcia's widow threatened to sue, archive.org pulled it.
Happened about a week and a half ago."
She has been trying to milk something out of that band since before Jerry died.
It's so bad, everybody else has basically walked away, dissolved the production company, and moved on to new and different projects, or gone into retirement.
I think it's hilarious how she alienated herself from the only people who could have given her what she wanted.
Wouldn't surpise me one bit if the stress of dealing with Debra contributed to Jerry's death.
She really is a piece of work. Seriously. The people who had to be close to her totally hated her. The whole reason the surviving members re-formed the band as "The Dead" was to sever the business organization in the Garcia estate, which Debra controlled, so that she couldn't control it.
So it's no big surprise that she'd threaten Archive.org.
I have a big problem with this, though. See, Archive.org did a great thing. They consolidated a lot of the material that had been circulating in umpteen different circles. They did that so well, that they successfully *replaced* all that whole distributed scene. Everybody contributed to Archive.org instead. But Archive.org didn't have the foresight to exist outside of US civil jurisdiction, and didn't have the balls to stand up to legal threats, giving in to a mere cease and desist letter (as opposed to a court order.)
So by doing what they did so well, they ended up destroying the scene that they were trying to help.
What's probably going to end up happening, is Phil, who reserves distribution rights on pretty much everything, will put the smack down on whoever is trying to go over his head. That'll take time, but it might even end up with the music being distributed on a system of his. In a fight between Debra's people, who control a holding company with a trademark, and Phil, who controls songwriter and performer rights, Phil will win.
Seriously, they all hate her guts. I don't even think Jerry liked her very much after the honeymoon was over.
Fair enough. I wasn't trying to say, myself, that we've made as much forward progress as we'd like to think. In fact, some of the best work in automata theory predates electronic computing :-)
"IIRC, IBM tried to do just this with OS/360, which was developed in the 1960's IIRC. What they eventually found was that despite their most concerted efforts, they reached a point where trying to fix old bugs introduced at least as many, or more,
new bugs."
Are you suggesting that we haven't made progress in almost 50 years of developing the science and the tools of software engineering? If a case study from the '60s, when the science was in its infancy, has relevance today, when the science is in a post-modern period, that's as damning on today's developers as it is praising what the pioneers accomplished.
>hmm maybe they have a vested interest in NOT providing vonage that access?
The article is short on details. Depending on how "uncooperative" they are being, and in what ways, they might find themselves in trouble, since Vonage and the FCC could claim that they are interfering with someone's effort to comply with lawful orders. Obstruction of justice perhaps, that sort of thing?
If Vonage is sandbagging because they aren't getting 911 to POTS *for free* that's another matter entirely.
Look at the asm output of your compiler sometime, and ponder how many algorithms
end up with unconditional jumps. I can easily see how it might be possible to optimize away a stack operation here and a compare there by suggesting a jump in the right place, why not?
Just because it's *possible* to get a performance improvement, doesn't make it a win in every situation, right?
I'm sure the kind of mess Dijkstra was dealing with when he wrote the paper, was truly maddening. I'd be willing to bet that the kind of GOTO abuse by the ALGOL(?) and PL/I(?) programmers of the day were in *every* loop structure, and *very* common special case handling.
Bundle that with the kind of optimizations you had to do in the days of 8K core being a big machine, and the end result could be *really* ugly.
On the other hand, Dijkstra himself would probably use GOTO in the situation described in the article (e.g., porting LAPACK?)
In other words, the belief is based on speculation. The actual manufacturing costs aren't disclosed. It's in the company's interest to make the consumer *believe* it's losing money, or that it's losses are higher per unit than other consumer devices in the bracket, but it might not even be true.
Or if it is true that the company takes a $126 loss per unit, does that actually mean what the typical consumer thinks it means?
What's the wholesale, pre-tax, pre-import-duty cost on the Xbox? What's it's insured value at the warehouse? Are the per-component, per-unit-labor, and per-unit packaging and transportation costs really disclosed to the public? Why would they be?
Who benefits from a widespread belief that you're "sticking it to Microsoft" if you buy an Xbox and not buying any games?
>There's a big difference
One that you can put into the precise language needed for a legal definition?
>If they lose $160 on every box they sell, then they lose that much when he buys it.
Where does this data come from, anyway?
"The guy didn't exactly steal the legos (or LEGO bricks, for the anal-retentative). He pulled the ol' UPC-swap trick on the store."
It's shoplifting, which is theft, so he did *exactly* steal them. The point when the crime is committed is when you switch the price tag concealed from the merchant. (It would be legal to switch the tags with the merchant's consent -- it's the point of concealment where it becomes shoplifting.)
I never could find the right version of Mechassault.
It's unfortunate that there's no *straightforward* way to boot for instance Linux on an unmodified Xbox. Surprising that nobody has simply made a boot loader that does whatever the Mechassault game does, but without the requirement of the special, long-discontinued game.
"I know of a quite reputable company that ships consumer products with far less burn-in than 140 hours."
Fair enough. but they've only been tested outside of controlled conditions for a very short time, and we *are* hearing credible reports of failures.
[Ford Pinto]
Well, I don't think anybody has died yet from an Xbox PSU... But back in the early days of the 386, there were systems we could not sell to residential customers because the #1 cause of failure was the machine spontaneously catching fire. (Presumably, business customers were less at risk; I never quite understood this. Mostly I resented the fact that I couldn't sell them despite demand!)
How would you like to be the guy who stopped the Xbox delivery for 2005? How would you like to justify pulling the production line based on a smallish possibility that some units might have overheating problems?
I'd like to see what the instructions say about setting up the PS. I'd bet money there's something about setting it on its rubber feet,with airflow, etc., wherever it tells you not to use it in the tub.
"First of all, I want to mention I can run my Xbox 360 for a stonkin' forever without it crashing."
Nobody, except for maybe a few Microsoft R&D folks, has had an Xbox 360 long enough to qualify for a proper burn-in period, let alone, to consider it proven in the field.
>What kind of freaky-ass mutant hand do you have?
I can count to 32 on one hand; more if I assign more than two states to each digit.
There's not such a shortage as long as you're willing to pay upwards of $1500...
Well... the fact that it was apparently legal to change the wording after the conference, suggests that there was never any need for the conference in the first place, since the only party with any legitimate involvement was the last one to touch the document.
Was it legal? And if not, what consequences could there be?
Some people could live in a place like Tulsa without wanting to kill themselves. I hope I don't actually have to deal with such people.
"The numbers in the article don't add up. They say they have $1 million in revenue and have 50 full time employees. That means avg. $20K/yr, which even in Minot wouldn't go far. Then they say they charge $35-$50 per hour. What gives?"
Eight of those employees are making $80,000 a year, three are making 1.6 million, and the rest get whatever federally mandated minimum wage and benefit, and as soon as the working capital is gone, the shop will close, because it's $45 million in the hole.
>Who in New York City is making this much money doing tech work?
Anybody making less had better be thinking about leaving NYC!
I know of a place within a few hours drive of DC, where a large two story house on five acres could easily be had for $65,000, where a storefront building on the main street (admittedly of a very small town) can be had for $10,000, and there's still little interest. I saw places that would go for $250,000 in the city, in the high teens out there. Saw with my own eyes, and actually considered buying some property just on a whim. That's WV; no doubt there are political and social reasons that keep people who have a choice from living in such places...
I'd like to let them know that by "not taking sides", they've actually taken the side of the Creationists, by acknowledging that there is some validity to the debate.
"You can preach creationism all you want in a religious context, but when creationism starts to get forced down the throats of children in science classes, it gets Bad. "
Seems like a self-correcting problem to me -- these students won't be accepted to any university, and won't become teachers themseleves. Let Kansas or whatever wasteland teach bad science. After it destroys a generation or two, the problem will correct itself.