Assume one considers this to be a good idea (I don't, but arguendo, grant that).
How you're stuck looking for a legal definition for pornography, which has hardly been a success in the U.S. (amusingly, the more repressive the regime, the easier it is to define.) But suppose you manage to find one that at least sort of works in the U.S.
Does the BBC get forced to host in.xxx because they show boobies?
But, take this farther. Suppose the one world government comes, agrees on a global definition for porn, and pushes this through.
Ever heard of IP addresses? Don't say "reverse resolve and block", there's shared hosting. Proxies. Redirects. SSL.
Attempting to filter by TLD may be appealing to some who either don't think about the tech, want to ban porn entirely, or want an angle in to exerting more governmental control on content.
In the week and a half I worked with him he probably put in over 180 hours of work.
This reminds me of the old joke...
A bright, promising attorney dies in a car crash. He gets to the pearly gates, and St. Peter greets him. "Robert! You must be the 79 year old attorney who just wrecked his Porsche."
Robert says, "Um... I did wreck my porsche... but I'm 38."
I haven't been to Defcon since the third one... no time (at least I have the t-shirts), and now that I don't live nearby, it is hard to justify the expense and time off. Hell, I can't even have normal vacations, let alone conference junkets. But damn, this seems like it would have been a great year to have gone.
I'm sure someone watched the wire for this event - if TCPdump (or whatever) traces of it are available anywhere, someone post a link. It would be a fascinating thing to waste my weekend on.
This is one of the reasons I prefer privately held firms, in both my personal and professional life. You simply get better service. If I go to an owner with a problem (be it that the product/service sucks, or that you don't like that they're dumping oil down the sewer (true story)), they actually listen to you. As an owner of a private company, I know I do - that's my dinner you're threatening when you bitch to me about something you didn't like, so I'm going to do anything reasonable (and some things that aren't) to make you happy.
Add public trading to the mix, and the importance of customer service is diluted. Short term value extraction becomes the most important thing, and goals of course shift, as you note.
Of course, some functions need the capital that (almost always) only an IPO can provide, and many industries are the sorts in which a failure to IPO means you're doomed. Cisco is certainly in this category. But when buying Cisco (or Walmart), one should remember that you're implicitly funding their behaviour. What that means to you? I dunno. For me, I don't shop with either of them. Does this mean I pay more for soap? Probably. It also led to me learning how to make soap. I don't do it any more, but it was neat to learn. I also build network hardware for clients most of the time - they don't need Cisco gear, and I'm good enough at it now that it actually works out cheaper to use OpenBSD on decent hardware. For places where redundancy and optimization is important, we bid it out for the client (Cisco included), and Cisco almost never wins on cost benefit.
Lesson? Small, hungry companies provide better service and product, and the attitude of dealing with the devil you know just means you don't learn anything new. Oh, and that economics dictates everything, but that doesn't invalidate rational exploration of alternatives - heck, some people even call that 'innovation'.
The Kingdom of Loathing is a sort of middle ground between them. Extremely tight community, mostly text-based puzzles, RPG-style gaming, and a buttload of goofy humor thrown in. There are others that are similar, too, but they didn't grab me, so I don't have links.
No, there aren't. If you can see the sky, you can get the internet. Services like Iridium and Globalstar have made that possible.
If you pay, as another posternoted.
The important thing about ametueur radio jockies is that is that the network is extremely robust, free, and everywhere. It works for long distance communciation, especially when overoptimized pay services fail. Iridium -- sorry, I have to giggle just a bit there. Ham is a (very modest) reserved spectrum for a network of people that communicate when everything else fails. There's already talk about how to handle jamming; not a solved problem, but in general, it is distributed enough to pose attackers serious issues.
The great power of terrorist attack is uncertainty, followed closely by communication. I find it heartening that as much as the US government might fuck up, at least we are left with a good emergency response channel, made of people who don't attach to the government. That's a really positive feature.
Way back on topic, but I have mixed feelings about dropping the Morse requirements. They've been loosening the rules for a while, but at some point, we're loosing the idea that one can actually assemble kit. We probably already have lost that. Morse is rather important - listening to a fuzzy transmission bounced off clouds from somewhere else in a language you don'nt know is great for learning. And learning is vital for ami radio folks.
OK, I've probably placed, and dated myself. Time to shut up.
I'm not going to touch most of your points, which I feel others have handled well.
Rather, I'm going to talk about a weird case; the sort of thing that makes me wonder about my (heavy) leaning towards classical liberal beliefs.
I was going home, after meeting someone in another state. ~3 hour drive or so. I'm going about the speed limit (I hardly ever speed, because I hardly ever drive: I don't know the rules of what you can get away with, so I'm careful). My rearview flashes at me a few times with bright lights, so I pay attention. This car behind me is weaving all over the place, is completely inconsistent speed-wise (zooms up in a neighboring lane, swerves into mine, slows down, etc.), that sort of thing. It is going faster than me, on average, so I speed up - I don't want this dumbshit to sideswipe me. I plan to speed up and get off the highway, and let it go by.
Only, I get pulled over in for 83 in a 65. Cop gets pissed at me for my explanation - "didn't you see that drunk maniac?" (I didn't say it that way; I was very calm and I respect weapons and later testimony.) He didn't like my answer. So, I got the $185 ticket, and 3 points. For dodging a drunk.
So, here's the question for libertarians like me: If I'd have had a black box and cameras on my car, I could have proven that the cop was a dumbshit, and more importantly, not have had to pay the state, or the insurance weasels that currently feed on the state. Worth it?
His beef is not with the more useful licenses, but rather with the ones that are useless, like the public domain.
He spends rather a lot of time smacking the others up, too... read the first page again.
Dvorak is remarking that some of them *don't* serve a purpose, such as the one for Public Domain works.
I thought about that, when I first saw the CC bring that out. Legally, it does not make a difference, as far as I can tell. What it *does* appear to do is provide a branding to the act. It publicizes that one can do so, and here's an easy way, making it easier for producers and consumers to understand what's going on. That is in line with their goals. Other nonprofits do this all the time - look at "rain forest coffee", "fair trade pumpkins", or whatever. Sure, others can hit the same goal (grown only by gnomes who hold shares and transported by slavery free fairy buckets direct to your store, or whatever), but the brand is a communication, and it validated by a third party. Trusted proxies are important in many situations like this.
I think there are pro and con arguments for this sort of thing, but at least, I think that is the goal here, and it isn't automatically invalid.
I haven't. I'm just starting to poke around. (backburner project.) I've heard it is great, and I intend to look when I get there. Just saw a chance to ask a question that was bugging me... I'm familiar with this app from the Netscape days, so my first impulse is to look there - I just don't find directory services all that terribly interesting, and just want something that Just Works.
I was expecting that he'd at least mention Redhat Directory Server, which is the most interesting recent development as far as easy-to-manage Linux identity servers go.
I'll soon be shopping for a DS manager. I look back fondly on NDS, which I used in 1999. RDS looks interesting, but the RH product pages, as they always seem to be, are pure fluff. So, questions:
- Is that open source? The page makes it look like it isn't.
- Is this the reincarnation of Netscape Directory Server?
- If it isn't, is it similar in use/functionality/stability/scalability?
Bah, big annoying questions. If anyone has any answers, I'm grateful. Been out of the DS admin scene for a while, other than hand-loading OpenLDAP.
Is a blowhard, no nothing columnist. For a compare and constrast, he wrote an article a while back (can't find it now, it is probably behind the pay-wall) saying that the recent white-collar punishments were way too harsh, and these poor execs didn't do anything so bad as to call for 10 year stretches alongside all those dangerous criminals.
Verifax: This notice is solely made in order to collect a debt. Any information provided will be used for that purpose.
As our previous corespondence to you has indicated, your past-due account has been reffered to our office for handling. Despite our prior attempts to resovle this issue, your past-due debt remains outstanding, and we have no indication that you indend to honor your obligation amicably. We hope that you will take this final opportunity to resolve your past-due debt of $31337.00, however, if you fail to do so, our client intends to enforce your outstanding obligation in court.
Although no suit has yet been filed gainst you, please be advided that, if we have not heard from you within ten (10) business days, an attorney in your area will be retained for the purpose of filing a lawsuit.
If a lawsuit is filed, our client will seek to recover attorney's fees, court costs, and an other costs if permitted by law or contract. If our client obtains a judgement against you, it may seek to enforce the judgement by all means allowed by law.
Please contact our office immediately if you would like to settle this matter.
NOTE: This is a notice of an attempt to collect a debt. Any information obtained will be used for that purpose. This is a communications from a debt collector.
(Sorry if some of this is a little off - haven't been involved in writing one of those in a while.)
They're Conde Nasty now. Before that, they did outsource subscriber management. But when they started, they did subs in house, in a neat little (OK, slow and big) FileMaker DB. Yes, I know this for a fact, first hand. Managing your own subscribers sucks when you're trying to get little details, like, say, publishing a magazine on razor thin margins. That's not excusing anything, but it is true.
Yes, that's the way it should work. But like any successful system, credit-and-collections has attacted parasites. And that's actually what is being discussed here - abusive practices. There are a lot of them. Trying to play in good faith with the worst of them is not optimal - the business plan takes that into account, and attempts to make it cheaper, at least emotionally, to pay rather than put up with the abuse. With those sorts, the only correct response is as the grandparent poster said - raise the cost over the threshold that makes it profitable to collect.
An under-medicated, short curmudgeon, with distinct bi-polar and antisocial traits who used his personality as a birth control device is a somewhat more accurate description of the Ellison I know.
I've always wondered about large cash tranfers like this between companies.
Does anyone know the mechanics of such a thing? I presume they don't just write a check and drop it in the mail...
The closest I've been to large scale finance is a couple of orders of magnitude short of that sort of thing (and even there, we didn't write a check), so I'm curious. Anyone know?
One trick for detecting display is to embed JS that asks for the size of an image, and redirect if it is wrong. Not perfect by any, excuse me, stretch). There are others.
The logical conclusion of all of this is that content will be streamed to a flash applet surrounded by blinky ads. And then I'm going back to 80x24 only for all my content needs. (which is still how I read my mail - yeay mutt/procmail/spamassassin!)
Slashdot Mirror
How you're stuck looking for a legal definition for pornography, which has hardly been a success in the U.S. (amusingly, the more repressive the regime, the easier it is to define.) But suppose you manage to find one that at least sort of works in the U.S.
Does the BBC get forced to host in .xxx because they show boobies?
But, take this farther. Suppose the one world government comes, agrees on a global definition for porn, and pushes this through.
Ever heard of IP addresses? Don't say "reverse resolve and block", there's shared hosting. Proxies. Redirects. SSL.
Attempting to filter by TLD may be appealing to some who either don't think about the tech, want to ban porn entirely, or want an angle in to exerting more governmental control on content.
This reminds me of the old joke...
A bright, promising attorney dies in a car crash. He gets to the pearly gates, and St. Peter greets him. "Robert! You must be the 79 year old attorney who just wrecked his Porsche."
Robert says, "Um... I did wreck my porsche... but I'm 38."
"Not according to your billing records..."
"Kiss off", by the Violent Femmes.
It looks like the author's already experimenting with negative information...
I'm sure someone watched the wire for this event - if TCPdump (or whatever) traces of it are available anywhere, someone post a link. It would be a fascinating thing to waste my weekend on.
Add public trading to the mix, and the importance of customer service is diluted. Short term value extraction becomes the most important thing, and goals of course shift, as you note.
Of course, some functions need the capital that (almost always) only an IPO can provide, and many industries are the sorts in which a failure to IPO means you're doomed. Cisco is certainly in this category. But when buying Cisco (or Walmart), one should remember that you're implicitly funding their behaviour. What that means to you? I dunno. For me, I don't shop with either of them. Does this mean I pay more for soap? Probably. It also led to me learning how to make soap. I don't do it any more, but it was neat to learn. I also build network hardware for clients most of the time - they don't need Cisco gear, and I'm good enough at it now that it actually works out cheaper to use OpenBSD on decent hardware. For places where redundancy and optimization is important, we bid it out for the client (Cisco included), and Cisco almost never wins on cost benefit.
Lesson? Small, hungry companies provide better service and product, and the attitude of dealing with the devil you know just means you don't learn anything new. Oh, and that economics dictates everything, but that doesn't invalidate rational exploration of alternatives - heck, some people even call that 'innovation'.
The Kingdom of Loathing is a sort of middle ground between them. Extremely tight community, mostly text-based puzzles, RPG-style gaming, and a buttload of goofy humor thrown in. There are others that are similar, too, but they didn't grab me, so I don't have links.
If you pay, as another posternoted.
The important thing about ametueur radio jockies is that is that the network is extremely robust, free, and everywhere. It works for long distance communciation, especially when overoptimized pay services fail. Iridium -- sorry, I have to giggle just a bit there. Ham is a (very modest) reserved spectrum for a network of people that communicate when everything else fails. There's already talk about how to handle jamming; not a solved problem, but in general, it is distributed enough to pose attackers serious issues.
The great power of terrorist attack is uncertainty, followed closely by communication. I find it heartening that as much as the US government might fuck up, at least we are left with a good emergency response channel, made of people who don't attach to the government. That's a really positive feature.
Way back on topic, but I have mixed feelings about dropping the Morse requirements. They've been loosening the rules for a while, but at some point, we're loosing the idea that one can actually assemble kit. We probably already have lost that. Morse is rather important - listening to a fuzzy transmission bounced off clouds from somewhere else in a language you don'nt know is great for learning. And learning is vital for ami radio folks.
OK, I've probably placed, and dated myself. Time to shut up.
Rather, I'm going to talk about a weird case; the sort of thing that makes me wonder about my (heavy) leaning towards classical liberal beliefs.
I was going home, after meeting someone in another state. ~3 hour drive or so. I'm going about the speed limit (I hardly ever speed, because I hardly ever drive: I don't know the rules of what you can get away with, so I'm careful). My rearview flashes at me a few times with bright lights, so I pay attention. This car behind me is weaving all over the place, is completely inconsistent speed-wise (zooms up in a neighboring lane, swerves into mine, slows down, etc.), that sort of thing. It is going faster than me, on average, so I speed up - I don't want this dumbshit to sideswipe me. I plan to speed up and get off the highway, and let it go by.
Only, I get pulled over in for 83 in a 65. Cop gets pissed at me for my explanation - "didn't you see that drunk maniac?" (I didn't say it that way; I was very calm and I respect weapons and later testimony.) He didn't like my answer. So, I got the $185 ticket, and 3 points. For dodging a drunk.
So, here's the question for libertarians like me: If I'd have had a black box and cameras on my car, I could have proven that the cop was a dumbshit, and more importantly, not have had to pay the state, or the insurance weasels that currently feed on the state. Worth it?
I still don't know myself.
He spends rather a lot of time smacking the others up, too... read the first page again.
Dvorak is remarking that some of them *don't* serve a purpose, such as the one for Public Domain works.
I thought about that, when I first saw the CC bring that out. Legally, it does not make a difference, as far as I can tell. What it *does* appear to do is provide a branding to the act. It publicizes that one can do so, and here's an easy way, making it easier for producers and consumers to understand what's going on. That is in line with their goals. Other nonprofits do this all the time - look at "rain forest coffee", "fair trade pumpkins", or whatever. Sure, others can hit the same goal (grown only by gnomes who hold shares and transported by slavery free fairy buckets direct to your store, or whatever), but the brand is a communication, and it validated by a third party. Trusted proxies are important in many situations like this.
I think there are pro and con arguments for this sort of thing, but at least, I think that is the goal here, and it isn't automatically invalid.
I haven't. I'm just starting to poke around. (backburner project.) I've heard it is great, and I intend to look when I get there. Just saw a chance to ask a question that was bugging me... I'm familiar with this app from the Netscape days, so my first impulse is to look there - I just don't find directory services all that terribly interesting, and just want something that Just Works.
Thanks! I appreciate it.
I'll soon be shopping for a DS manager. I look back fondly on NDS, which I used in 1999. RDS looks interesting, but the RH product pages, as they always seem to be, are pure fluff. So, questions:
- Is that open source? The page makes it look like it isn't.
- Is this the reincarnation of Netscape Directory Server?
- If it isn't, is it similar in use/functionality/stability/scalability?
Bah, big annoying questions. If anyone has any answers, I'm grateful. Been out of the DS admin scene for a while, other than hand-loading OpenLDAP.
Is a blowhard, no nothing columnist. For a compare and constrast, he wrote an article a while back (can't find it now, it is probably behind the pay-wall) saying that the recent white-collar punishments were way too harsh, and these poor execs didn't do anything so bad as to call for 10 year stretches alongside all those dangerous criminals.
As our previous corespondence to you has indicated, your past-due account has been reffered to our office for handling. Despite our prior attempts to resovle this issue, your past-due debt remains outstanding, and we have no indication that you indend to honor your obligation amicably. We hope that you will take this final opportunity to resolve your past-due debt of $31337.00, however, if you fail to do so, our client intends to enforce your outstanding obligation in court.
Although no suit has yet been filed gainst you, please be advided that, if we have not heard from you within ten (10) business days, an attorney in your area will be retained for the purpose of filing a lawsuit.
If a lawsuit is filed, our client will seek to recover attorney's fees, court costs, and an other costs if permitted by law or contract. If our client obtains a judgement against you, it may seek to enforce the judgement by all means allowed by law.
Please contact our office immediately if you would like to settle this matter.
NOTE: This is a notice of an attempt to collect a debt. Any information obtained will be used for that purpose. This is a communications from a debt collector.
(Sorry if some of this is a little off - haven't been involved in writing one of those in a while.)
They're Conde Nasty now. Before that, they did outsource subscriber management. But when they started, they did subs in house, in a neat little (OK, slow and big) FileMaker DB. Yes, I know this for a fact, first hand. Managing your own subscribers sucks when you're trying to get little details, like, say, publishing a magazine on razor thin margins. That's not excusing anything, but it is true.
Yes, that's the way it should work. But like any successful system, credit-and-collections has attacted parasites. And that's actually what is being discussed here - abusive practices. There are a lot of them. Trying to play in good faith with the worst of them is not optimal - the business plan takes that into account, and attempts to make it cheaper, at least emotionally, to pay rather than put up with the abuse. With those sorts, the only correct response is as the grandparent poster said - raise the cost over the threshold that makes it profitable to collect.
Someone's going to rail on Ruby. Hey, it was me last time.
+5 ignored by peers, and is bitter
+5 (indirectly) referenced Galileo
Diagnosis: kook.
What better slasdot topic can there be? "Imagine a beowulf cluster of DNA emitters which don't overheat..."
I feel much better about myself now. Thank you.
Does anyone know the mechanics of such a thing? I presume they don't just write a check and drop it in the mail...
The closest I've been to large scale finance is a couple of orders of magnitude short of that sort of thing (and even there, we didn't write a check), so I'm curious. Anyone know?
[Raises hand.] Me, for one. Apparently lots of other people, too, by the looks of things on the various mailing lists.
The things it breaks arn't really that important
Maybe not to you. Ever stop and think that others might have different needs and expectations?
and the internet email system is so clogged with spam it's worthless anyway.
If it addressed spam, that would be one thing. But it doesn't, and it is turning into a strategic tool in standards warfare.
The logical conclusion of all of this is that content will be streamed to a flash applet surrounded by blinky ads. And then I'm going back to 80x24 only for all my content needs. (which is still how I read my mail - yeay mutt/procmail/spamassassin!)
I still read that as, "Who would Darwin Curse?"
-1, offtopic