Some people will spend far more than 4 years developing their mathematics education. Some will take the Algebra class that ends with the binomial theorom (or even just quadratics), scrape through it, and that's the end of math for them. Others will have multivar, partial diff, number theory, and advanced linear. Different strokes, different calculating tools used, different reasons for using them.
I'm in the latter category, where the calculator is pretty much irrelevant for the math classes.
I use the calculator for *arithmetic*, and hardly at all for *mathematics*.
I think that before they are allowed to claim the loss in court, they should be obligated to claim the loss on their tax. If they are willing to justify $6B to the IRS auditors, then I'm okay with them claiming the loss here. I'm guessing they don't have enough confidence in that number to do so.
Saying that you have a loss to the IRS without a clear papertrail that arrives at that figure happens to be a much bigger crime than "stealing cable."
The fact that you call it this, "THE" WB, indicates that their marketing tactics have influenced you substantially. Don't you get this?
I stopped watching TV quite a few years ago. The day I decided to cut it out completely was the day of the OJ Simpson chase ("cavalcade", I think they called it...)
I had some real prosperity in recent years where I sort of accreted some trappings of household material stuff, including things like tv's, dvd players, an espresso gadget, and so on, but my habit of not watching TV has stuck. Every couple of months, I entertain the idea of getting cable hooked up (there's wars and stuff, and TV might be a reasonable news source I suppose), but I always blow it off -- Television is too much of a time sink and does not benefit me enough to compensate for the time it takes. Hell, the time it would take to deal with the Cable Guy is too much.
Nobody else seems to have this problem, or even is aware of just how much of their life they spend watching tv. (More than sleeping+working combined, some of em..., and MOST of them spend MOST of their non-sleeping/non-working time watching. Watching what, exactly, I don't know, and don't really care.)
>Generics are alive and well. You can get them at >almost every supermarket chain.
I think it's very important to differentiate between "store brands" and the true "generic products" of the 80's. Wasn't there some sort of public support for generic food products? I don't think there was a "generic food company" per se, rather something like a tax incentive to help low to moderate income people make ends meet.
Past a certain threshold, ads are just lost in the noise of other ads. I suspect even the advertisers don't like this.
>No one wants to pay for programming
I'm sure if the programming was of a certain quality AND you could figure out a way to charge for it, people would be happy to pay. Possibly not to the kinds of margins that broadcasters enjoy under the current model, but enough to keep the industry alive.
>No one wants adverts plugged in the background
That's been there since before the "commercial break."
>No one wants to pay for public tv
But we do! Public TV stations act like they barely make it, but that's only because they have to compete just to save their channel from being taken over by a "church" or other syndicate.
>So where does that leave us?
Hopefully in the post-television era.
It would not bother me if a television set became an anachronism, a quaint thing of the previous century that a few people have for nostalgic purposes. Maybe keep it in the room with the victrola.
What is the aggregate amount of time spent by Americans watching television over the period of a year?
Would 10e10 hours be an overestimate?
In the big picture, does "what we do" amount to sleep and watch tv? Does anybody else see this as a tragedy on a monumental scale?
>You'd think it would be in their best interests >to not piss off the very people who earn them >their money.
Well, it appears that the only people who are pissed off represent a very small minority. Large enough group to bring down a website with the slightest controversy in 15 seconds, but not large or influential enough to bring about a culture audit in the entertainment industry.
In a fair fight between those who do care about this stuff and those who don't, those who do will lose because of overwhelming numbers.
>I vaguely remember somebody telling me that >rental DVD's have the commercials, but >commercial ones don't. In other words, it's >possible that if you buy the DVD at a movie >store you won't have that.
Yabbut, that is totally, absolutely irrelevant.
The experience with the rental pissed of the consumer, in the case of the OP, to the extent that the frustration would work against his buying impulse. It's the exact opposite of what an ad is supposed to accomplish.
It matters not at all that the retail version is different. It's a very subtle issue with consumer's perception of a product, and with the very limited period of time during which he is hot to buy. Once you've lost him, it takes monumental effort to close.
>Throwing their wooden shoes into the machinery >would probably constitute a federal crime, >however, so Im sure the techs weren't too keen >on going to jail.
Then they didn't care enough... This is the essence of civil disobediance. Not defying authority in secret, hoping the status quo changes, but openly defying it, knowing that you do the noble thing by facing the consequences.
No I honestly don't expect the FAA techs to give up their jobs and get arrested for what they believe in, any more than I expect everyone who smokes pot to speak up (or even to vote).
But the bottom line is, they really don't think it's that dangerous, do they? If there was some *certainty* that the flaws in this system are dangerous enough to routinely cause air disasters, I bet you'd be seeing clear skies. Federal crime or no federal crime.
Remember, you don't "just go to jail", you do get a hearing where you get to state your case. If *everyone* involved in this system had refused to take part in it, I think the FAA would be more interested in keeping the story OUT of the press and OUT of a courtroom.
As it happens, it's just a sidebar story in the travel section. The system may nor be ready for production, but it's not bad enough for the whole industry to walk off, ask for the head of the person responsible, and march on the capitol steps either, now is it?
>Can the technicians - or better yet the public >sue to block the FAA from using the new system?
Why sue? The technicians themselves could have shown some backbone and refused to install the buggy system. (Ensuring that scabs don't install it anyway is a bit problematic, but it would instantly be bigger news).
The public has all the power in the world, but absolutely NO consciousness of this. They could refuse to travel. One day would probably end the industry...
It's not buggy enough to get the pilots' attention. If it was, not one single plane would take off. Scab pilot or no scab pilot. Well, the pilots with a deathwish would fly, but that's about it.
Unfortunately, we as a society tend not to really want to change things or reduce the authority of bureaucracies, do we?
People who are versed in such matters, including FAA technicians and ATC's, have expressed strong concerns that this system is ready.
They aren't serious enough to (a.) refuse to follow the order to install it, or (b.) refuse to report to work if it is installed. So, if there's ever a disaster directly caused by the known flaws in this system, they're part of the same conspiracy. Whoever made this decision should have done so with the understanding that if they're wrong, they might be held accountable for more than just negligence.
But, people want that paycheck more than they want to protect human lives. So pilots won't be refusing to fly, ATC's won't be halting takeoffs, and FAA managers won't be yelling fire.
If these people really cared, we'd be seeing empty skies like Sept 12th.
So either the systems aren't all that bad, or the people who have the power to stop the madness immediately are chickenshits.
Let's start in Syracuse. Why didn't these "FAA technicians" put their money where their mouth is, and throw their wooden shoes into the machinery? Because they didn't, they should be the first people to answer for any accident that comes from this flawed system. They capitualted, didn't they?
If someone was interested in this data, they should have covered this kind of situation under a risk management plan. Hindsight being 20/20 and all that, they did not, and someone is now holding the bag. Because there is a file that is known to contain the data they want, they hold out hope that it will be salvageable.
In reality, this situation is almost the same as if a fire had destroyed the building along with the data, or even as if the person responsible for the data intended for it to die with him. There is a chance, however large or small, that the data will be recovered, but from a business perspective, an appropriate response would be to consider it a loss, start collecting the data again, and learn from the experience. Retrieving the data from the encrypted file is an interesting exercise, but one with uncertain results. Push the file into an academic circle and hope for the best.
In this case, having the file is misleading a management decision, because it appears as if they still have the data. In reality, they do not, unless an unlikely contingency occurs where someone can retrieve it. Since nobody seems to be able to put a delivery date on that retrieval, or even state the degree of cetrainty with which it can be retrieved, the correct business decision would probably be to consider it lost.
I'm guessing it's a loss not covered by their insurance.
This is a harsh assessment of the situation, and I'm only making it because I'm not the one with the data that needs to be recovered:-)
Another thing I notice is that the party responsible for the data seems interested in limiting the number of people who will get the opportunity to try to crack this, as opposed to just posting the thing to the world as a challenge, perhaps with a reward to the first person to break it. Remember the King Arthur legend -- Arthur wasn't authorized to try for Excalibur!
The details in the article are sketchy. The title of the Slashdot article seems to be pretty misleading. The file in question doesn't contin the historical documents themselves, but an index to them?
I'm sorry to hear that a researcher has died in Norway.
>...but only for musicians who play their instruments 6+ hours every day.
>How many of those are there?
Pretty much every professional.
You do realize that professional music is a career, a job, one of those fields where the 40 hour work week is about half what's really required, right?
>How come we don't hear about CTS amoungst piano players
We do, and we try to teach technique with health and safety in mind. I don't think there is any standard for the curriculum, but I assure you it is definitely a concern at the collegiate level of keyboard instruction.
Guitarist John McLaughlin has written something in this direction, but I cannot cite it for you at this moment.
No, that was different. Things like SCMS come about because manufacturers enter into voluntary consent agreements.
What we are talking about today, is Federal laws being passed to enforce such design decision with the force of law to back it up.
There is no law that says a minidisc storage device cannot be made, or that a non SCMS MD recorder cannot exist, or making it a crime to unset the bit.
You heard me, if these two commands can be patented, why not look for other nonobvious pairs of commands? Let's find something in.NET that is "worthy" of such nonsense!
The scary thing about our representatives is this: What if they truly do represent the will of the overwhelming majority? In other words, what if we had a clean slate, and could choose again? Would we end up with EXACTLY the same idiots and criminals in office? Or different ones with the same relative characteristics?
"[If] the person who does the accounts receivable... gets what appears to be a bill, she pays it."
And this doesn't strike you as numerous problems? Receivables department paying bills? Clerk should be replaced with someone who pays attention to detail? I'm sure you could make a fortune just sending out bills to companies. Eventually, the Feds may come to your door (meet you at the po box or follow you to the bank) but there's got to be a fortune to be made from companies like yours!
Do you not remember around 1989-1990 when they did something even worse than what you describe?
There wouldn't even be the phone call -- your new long distance company would just start showing up on your bill. And your phone company (swbell in my case) would not even discuss it (even though they printed it on the bill!) I still think the phone companies should have been punished along with the long distance providers for this practice, but they somehow made people believe it wasn't their fault.
Slashdot Mirror
Some people will spend far more than 4 years developing their mathematics education. Some will take the Algebra class that ends with the binomial theorom (or even just quadratics), scrape through it, and that's the end of math for them. Others will have multivar, partial diff, number theory, and advanced linear. Different strokes, different calculating tools used, different reasons for using them.
I'm in the latter category, where the calculator is pretty much irrelevant for the math classes.
I use the calculator for *arithmetic*, and hardly at all for *mathematics*.
>get upset at the contracts these corporations
>impose on the artists
Why shouldn't I also get upset at the artists for signing these contracts in the first place?
I think that before they are allowed to claim the loss in court, they should be obligated to claim the loss on their tax. If they are willing to justify $6B to the IRS auditors, then I'm okay with them claiming the loss here. I'm guessing they don't have enough confidence in that number to do so.
Saying that you have a loss to the IRS without a clear papertrail that arrives at that figure happens to be a much bigger crime than "stealing cable."
"the WB"
The fact that you call it this, "THE" WB, indicates that their marketing tactics have influenced you substantially. Don't you get this?
I stopped watching TV quite a few years ago. The day I decided to cut it out completely was the day of the OJ Simpson chase ("cavalcade", I think they called it...)
I had some real prosperity in recent years where I sort of accreted some trappings of household material stuff, including things like tv's, dvd players, an espresso gadget, and so on, but my habit of not watching TV has stuck. Every couple of months, I entertain the idea of getting cable hooked up (there's wars and stuff, and TV might be a reasonable news source I suppose), but I always blow it off -- Television is too much of a time sink and does not benefit me enough to compensate for the time it takes. Hell, the time it would take to deal with the Cable Guy is too much.
Nobody else seems to have this problem, or even is aware of just how much of their life they spend watching tv. (More than sleeping+working combined, some of em..., and MOST of them spend MOST of their non-sleeping/non-working time watching. Watching what, exactly, I don't know, and don't really care.)
>Generics are alive and well. You can get them at
>almost every supermarket chain.
I think it's very important to differentiate between "store brands" and the true "generic products" of the 80's. Wasn't there some sort of public support for generic food products? I don't think there was a "generic food company" per se, rather something like a tax incentive to help low to moderate income people make ends meet.
>No one wants ads
Past a certain threshold, ads are just lost in the noise of other ads. I suspect even the advertisers don't like this.
>No one wants to pay for programming
I'm sure if the programming was of a certain quality AND you could figure out a way to charge for it, people would be happy to pay. Possibly not to the kinds of margins that broadcasters enjoy under the current model, but enough to keep the industry alive.
>No one wants adverts plugged in the background
That's been there since before the "commercial break."
>No one wants to pay for public tv
But we do! Public TV stations act like they barely make it, but that's only because they have to compete just to save their channel from being taken over by a "church" or other syndicate.
>So where does that leave us?
Hopefully in the post-television era.
It would not bother me if a television set became an anachronism, a quaint thing of the previous century that a few people have for nostalgic purposes. Maybe keep it in the room with the victrola.
What is the aggregate amount of time spent by Americans watching television over the period of a year?
Would 10e10 hours be an overestimate?
In the big picture, does "what we do" amount to sleep and watch tv? Does anybody else see this as a tragedy on a monumental scale?
>You'd think it would be in their best interests
>to not piss off the very people who earn them
>their money.
Well, it appears that the only people who are pissed off represent a very small minority. Large enough group to bring down a website with the slightest controversy in 15 seconds, but not large or influential enough to bring about a culture audit in the entertainment industry.
In a fair fight between those who do care about this stuff and those who don't, those who do will lose because of overwhelming numbers.
>I vaguely remember somebody telling me that
>rental DVD's have the commercials, but
>commercial ones don't. In other words, it's
>possible that if you buy the DVD at a movie
>store you won't have that.
Yabbut, that is totally, absolutely irrelevant.
The experience with the rental pissed of the consumer, in the case of the OP, to the extent that the frustration would work against his buying impulse. It's the exact opposite of what an ad is supposed to accomplish.
It matters not at all that the retail version is different. It's a very subtle issue with consumer's perception of a product, and with the very limited period of time during which he is hot to buy. Once you've lost him, it takes monumental effort to close.
before computers and radar, landings weren't 2 minutes apart.
>Throwing their wooden shoes into the machinery
>would probably constitute a federal crime,
>however, so Im sure the techs weren't too keen
>on going to jail.
Then they didn't care enough... This is the essence of civil disobediance. Not defying authority in secret, hoping the status quo changes, but openly defying it, knowing that you do the noble thing by facing the consequences.
No I honestly don't expect the FAA techs to give up their jobs and get arrested for what they believe in, any more than I expect everyone who smokes pot to speak up (or even to vote).
But the bottom line is, they really don't think it's that dangerous, do they? If there was some *certainty* that the flaws in this system are dangerous enough to routinely cause air disasters,
I bet you'd be seeing clear skies. Federal crime or no federal crime.
Remember, you don't "just go to jail", you do get a hearing where you get to state your case. If *everyone* involved in this system had refused to take part in it, I think the FAA would be more interested in keeping the story OUT of the press and OUT of a courtroom.
As it happens, it's just a sidebar story in the travel section. The system may nor be ready for production, but it's not bad enough for the whole industry to walk off, ask for the head of the person responsible, and march on the capitol steps either, now is it?
Wake me up when it's front page news.
>Can the technicians - or better yet the public >sue to block the FAA from using the new system?
Why sue? The technicians themselves could have shown some backbone and refused to install the buggy system. (Ensuring that scabs don't install
it anyway is a bit problematic, but it would instantly be bigger news).
The public has all the power in the world, but absolutely NO consciousness of this. They could refuse to travel. One day would probably end the industry...
It's not buggy enough to get the pilots' attention. If it was, not one single plane would take off. Scab pilot or no scab pilot.
Well, the pilots with a deathwish would fly, but that's about it.
Unfortunately, we as a society tend not to really want to change things or reduce the authority of bureaucracies, do we?
People who are versed in such matters, including FAA technicians and ATC's, have expressed strong concerns that this system is ready.
They aren't serious enough to (a.) refuse to follow the order to install it, or (b.) refuse to report to work if it is installed. So, if there's ever a disaster directly caused by the known flaws in this system, they're part of the same conspiracy. Whoever made this decision should have done so with the understanding that if they're wrong, they might be held accountable for more than just negligence.
But, people want that paycheck more than they want to protect human lives. So pilots won't be refusing to fly, ATC's won't be halting takeoffs, and FAA managers won't be yelling fire.
If these people really cared, we'd be seeing empty skies like Sept 12th.
So either the systems aren't all that bad, or the people who have the power to stop the madness immediately are chickenshits.
Let's start in Syracuse. Why didn't these "FAA technicians" put their money where their mouth is, and throw their wooden shoes into the machinery? Because they didn't, they should be the first people to answer for any accident that comes from this flawed system. They capitualted, didn't they?
If someone was interested in this data, they should have covered this kind of situation under a risk management plan. Hindsight being 20/20 and all that, they did not, and someone is now holding the bag. Because there is a file that is known to contain the data they want, they hold out hope that it will be salvageable.
:-)
In reality, this situation is almost the same as if a fire had destroyed the building along with the data, or even as if the person responsible for the data intended for it to die with him. There is a chance, however large or small, that the data will be recovered, but from a business perspective, an appropriate response would be to consider it a loss, start collecting the data again, and learn from the experience. Retrieving the data from the encrypted file is an interesting exercise, but one with uncertain results. Push the file into an academic circle and hope for the best.
In this case, having the file is misleading a management decision, because it appears as if they still have the data. In reality, they do not, unless an unlikely contingency occurs where someone can retrieve it. Since nobody seems to be able to put a delivery date on that retrieval, or even state the degree of cetrainty with which it can be retrieved, the correct business decision would probably be to consider it lost.
I'm guessing it's a loss not covered by their insurance.
This is a harsh assessment of the situation, and I'm only making it because I'm not the one with the data that needs to be recovered
Another thing I notice is that the party responsible for the data seems interested in limiting the number of people who will get the opportunity to try to crack this, as opposed to just posting the thing to the world as a challenge, perhaps with a reward to the first person to break it. Remember the King Arthur legend -- Arthur wasn't authorized to try for Excalibur!
The details in the article are sketchy. The title of the Slashdot article seems to be pretty misleading. The file in question doesn't contin the historical documents themselves, but an index to them?
I'm sorry to hear that a researcher has died in Norway.
>So people who remember the days of party lines
>were so used to this that they never bothered to
>question it.
Okay, now I feel old.
For me, "the days of party lines" included some of the Reagan years.
>The keyboard is layed out to be intentionally difficult to type on.
This is widely believed, but untrue.
The arrangement of QWERTY was intended to
reduce jamming, but not by slowing down the typist.
A better way to put it was that the layout was to help
speed up the typist, by enabling a faster keystroke rate
without jamming.
>
>How many of those are there?
Pretty much every professional.
You do realize that professional music is a career, a job, one of those
fields where the 40 hour work week is about half what's really required,
right?
>How come we don't hear about CTS amoungst piano players
We do, and we try to teach technique with health and safety in mind.
I don't think there is any standard for the curriculum, but I assure you
it is definitely a concern at the collegiate level of keyboard instruction.
Guitarist John McLaughlin has written something in this direction,
but I cannot cite it for you at this moment.
>minidisc went through all this ten years ago
No, that was different. Things like SCMS come about because manufacturers enter into voluntary consent agreements.
What we are talking about today, is Federal laws being passed to enforce such design decision with the force of law to back it up.
There is no law that says a minidisc storage device cannot be made, or that a non SCMS MD recorder cannot exist, or making it a crime to unset the bit.
>CDs have a frequency response that goes up to
>~22KHz
Point of information:
Consumer digital audio is 44.1 kHz.
I don't disagree with what you posted, except for that fact.
You heard me, if these two commands can be patented, why not look for other nonobvious pairs of commands? Let's find something in .NET that is "worthy" of such nonsense!
The scary thing about our representatives is this:
What if they truly do represent the will of the overwhelming majority? In other words, what if we had a clean slate, and could choose again? Would we end up with EXACTLY the same idiots and criminals in office? Or different ones with the same relative characteristics?
>Would it be cheaper to by VMWare licenses for
>those users who absolutely have to run some
>esoteric Windows app.
Well, then you have the cost of the VMWare license, plus the cost of the guest OS, plus the cost of the "esoteric" app.
"[T]heaters are projecting on two or three screens at once from a single copy of the film."
You mean, the glass prism is a circumvention device?
"[If] the person who does the accounts receivable ... gets what appears to be a bill, she pays it."
And this doesn't strike you as numerous problems?
Receivables department paying bills?
Clerk should be replaced with someone who pays attention to detail? I'm sure you could make a fortune just sending out bills to companies. Eventually, the Feds may come to your door (meet you at the po box or follow you to the bank) but there's got to be a fortune to be made from companies like yours!
Do you not remember around 1989-1990 when they did
something even worse than what you describe?
There wouldn't even be the phone call -- your new
long distance company would just start showing up on your bill. And your phone company (swbell in my case) would not even discuss it (even though they printed it on the bill!) I still think the phone companies should have been punished along with the long distance providers for this practice, but they somehow made people believe it wasn't their fault.