Locking down every information handling tool available to us is just not worth it because the same DRM tools that content creators use to ensure payment will undoubtedly also be used by governments and private parties to monitor, snoop and control all of the information that we use.
Thats a good post. Thanks for that.
When I read Dune for the first time I wondered how they got to the point where computers were illegal and terrorists had to resort to mechanical timers on their weapons.
What's wrong with rotary phones? Hell I have a pair old (60+) Western Electrics I use on a daily basis.
A friend of mine has a really old phone on the wall behind the bar in the room he uses for entertaining. This is a big wooden box with the microphone attached to the box and the earpiece on a separate cord. It has a hand crank generator on the side. I think it is wired to his intercom system or something.
His brother came by it while working as a repair guy for a telco company. He installed a new phone for this old couple in the country and offered to remove their old unit for free.
What is more surprising are the times when someone obviously much younger, say 30's - 40's are in that very same situation.
Yes, my brother in law would be in that category. He used my internet connection to apply for a job online. I could see how uncomfortable he was with the structure which the application form enforced.
My grandma's comming up to 80. and she emails me I doubt it is impossible for an old person to Download kazza or similar and download some songs.
Absolutely. It is easy to find examples of technology phobic older people but this is just a way to demonstrate that some people in our communities can get by without computers.
I'll believe anything the RIAA says before I believe a person could live a life without ever once using a computer.
My in-laws (67 & 72 years old, born in Malaysia) have never used a computer of any kind, other than pressing the walk button at traffic lights, playing poker machines and playing video tapes and DVD's on normal consumer equipment set up by myself or another relative.
Maybe you were joking and I missed it. Lots of older people that I can think of would never use any kind of personal or work computer.
Maybe she is 80 years old. Personal computers started to become practical when she turned 60. She has always been a Home Health Aide, and has never had to fill out an online timesheet or purchase order.
I am sure there are lots of people like that out there, just that us geeks are not aways aware of them.
US DOJ is going to spend boatloads of cash extraditing two of the kids in this case, one from Australia and one from Barbados
As long as the death penalty stays off the table they should be in with a chance for extradition from Australia;)
But I wonder why? If you haven't done anything in the USA, or even been there (as I assume the case is here), how can you be deemed to have comitted an offence?
Can they take this guy on a world tour, convicting him in every country where his product has been sold? I hate to think what would happen in Saudi Arabia.
Did they tell you that they were extremists, or did they just look arabic enough to be extremists?
Well, to be fair, there haven't been any convictions yet, but the circumstancial evidence is pretty convincing to the extent that they would have tried something if they had had the capability.
Smaller camera's. Camera's in things you don't know are camera's. Camera's with the ability to send their pictures to anywhere on the planet, instantly.
Most of the local public swimming pools here in Victoria now have rules banning the use of mobile phones in changing rooms because of people apparently taking pictures with camera phones.
Perhaps we will be banned from using phones near oil refineries, just as we are when filling our cars with fuel at the petrol station, just for different reasons.
This seems to be sensitive and could have caused trouble if such pictures land up in the hands of terrorists.
My co-lo is in the basement of a building in the Melbourne CBD. About a year ago a local bunch of Islamic extremists were caught taking photographs of it. Perhaps they were just fans of architecture. This building also houses the stock exchange, though I was most concerned about my two BSD boxes.
Building management tightened security as a result and I had to go along for a security induction. The security guy took me to an employees lunch room. There was another guy in there eating noodles for dinner. Security guy said something about this being a very secure building and I replied off the cuff that somebody was thinking of blowing it up!
Noodle eater inhaled at the wrong time and started to choke on his noodles. That was a bad joke, sorry about that.
My sister in law runs ubuntu and I have had a go at getting some windows games running under wine for her son. What I would like to see is a windows environment which she can use to install these things herself.
As it is I have to mount the CD, find the installer executable and run it under wine. This is a bit difficult to explain to a non technical person.
They have no sense that they need to have some caution when near these huge animals and their big, steel-shod hooves.
When I was seven my Aunt let me ride on her horse. There I was up in the seat and my five year old brother grabbed on to the poor animals tail and gave it a tug.
Next thing I knew my grandfather was twisting my left arm and telling all who could hear: "yep, its broken allright"
What you describe is nothing new. Most of us get smarter with age and experience, so younger people seem more stupid. That's just the way it is.
A fact often missed by the popular media when dealing with the Challenger accident is emergency egress provision.
With 20-20 hindsight I wondered if the Shuttle orbiter could have been considered as a winged evolution of the Apollo service module.
The flight deck could be a complete apollo CM attached to the front of the winged orbiter. Heat shield hatches were trialed during the gemini program. The hatch would be kept closed during launch and reentry.
A normal LES would be used during launch, and if the TPS fails during aerobraking the CM RCS could be used to break the CM away from the rest of the spacecraft and start a reentry with the ablative heat shield.
I believe this idea scores for reuse and modularity.
Rebates must be an American thing... In NZ, I've never heard of this sort of craziness.
Here in.au we get a bit of it. You can pay $800 for a laptop by paying $1000 up front and writing in for $200 back.
My wife bought a Brother fax machine from officeworks which came with a free MP3 player. You had to write in for it but the documentation didn't come with the unit. I emailed the sales staff and they sorted it out with the retailer. Some people wouldn't have bothered.
What we got was a 256 MB MP3 player/USB key preloaded with some crap music. I thought that this unit might sell for $30 at a swap meet. Later I saw it on sale at a retailer for $100. I suppose it will make money for somebody that way.
if they want to check your id before they let you onboard, its their right.
The local shop is private property but the owners can not demand proof of identity because a shop is a public place. This is a particular legal concept here in Australia. The same rule prohibits business owners from excluding people on the grounds of race, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Thats a good post. Thanks for that.
When I read Dune for the first time I wondered how they got to the point where computers were illegal and terrorists had to resort to mechanical timers on their weapons.
A friend of mine has a really old phone on the wall behind the bar in the room he uses for entertaining. This is a big wooden box with the microphone attached to the box and the earpiece on a separate cord. It has a hand crank generator on the side. I think it is wired to his intercom system or something.
His brother came by it while working as a repair guy for a telco company. He installed a new phone for this old couple in the country and offered to remove their old unit for free.
Yes, my brother in law would be in that category. He used my internet connection to apply for a job online. I could see how uncomfortable he was with the structure which the application form enforced.
Absolutely. It is easy to find examples of technology phobic older people but this is just a way to demonstrate that some people in our communities can get by without computers.
My in-laws (67 & 72 years old, born in Malaysia) have never used a computer of any kind, other than pressing the walk button at traffic lights, playing poker machines and playing video tapes and DVD's on normal consumer equipment set up by myself or another relative.
Maybe you were joking and I missed it. Lots of older people that I can think of would never use any kind of personal or work computer.
Maybe she is 80 years old. Personal computers started to become practical when she turned 60. She has always been a Home Health Aide, and has never had to fill out an online timesheet or purchase order.
I am sure there are lots of people like that out there, just that us geeks are not aways aware of them.
Looks like a nice steady income awaits Mr Morlan Rogers.
As long as the death penalty stays off the table they should be in with a chance for extradition from Australia ;)
But I wonder why? If you haven't done anything in the USA, or even been there (as I assume the case is here), how can you be deemed to have comitted an offence?
Can they take this guy on a world tour, convicting him in every country where his product has been sold? I hate to think what would happen in Saudi Arabia.
From this site:.
Log entry from pilot: "Autoland carried out. The aircraft landed very firmly and well to left of centerline. Most unsatisfactory."
Engineer's entry: "Autoland not fitted to this aircraft..." (May 1983, #47)
One of the posts there is from:
Steven Edwards - ReactOS and Wine developer...so if he has seen the tainted code is Wine tainted as well?
Well, to be fair, there haven't been any convictions yet, but the circumstancial evidence is pretty convincing to the extent that they would have tried something if they had had the capability.
Most of the local public swimming pools here in Victoria now have rules banning the use of mobile phones in changing rooms because of people apparently taking pictures with camera phones.
Perhaps we will be banned from using phones near oil refineries, just as we are when filling our cars with fuel at the petrol station, just for different reasons.
My co-lo is in the basement of a building in the Melbourne CBD. About a year ago a local bunch of Islamic extremists were caught taking photographs of it. Perhaps they were just fans of architecture. This building also houses the stock exchange, though I was most concerned about my two BSD boxes.
Building management tightened security as a result and I had to go along for a security induction. The security guy took me to an employees lunch room. There was another guy in there eating noodles for dinner. Security guy said something about this being a very secure building and I replied off the cuff that somebody was thinking of blowing it up!
Noodle eater inhaled at the wrong time and started to choke on his noodles. That was a bad joke, sorry about that.
...in Geelong. That would be such a waste of effort.
Its a pity that we didn't have terrorists in Victoria when Coode Island went up. Would have been easier to assign blame.
They will have entirely new techniques available to them.
My sister in law runs ubuntu and I have had a go at getting some windows games running under wine for her son. What I would like to see is a windows environment which she can use to install these things herself.
As it is I have to mount the CD, find the installer executable and run it under wine. This is a bit difficult to explain to a non technical person.
When I was seven my Aunt let me ride on her horse. There I was up in the seat and my five year old brother grabbed on to the poor animals tail and gave it a tug.
Next thing I knew my grandfather was twisting my left arm and telling all who could hear: "yep, its broken allright"
What you describe is nothing new. Most of us get smarter with age and experience, so younger people seem more stupid. That's just the way it is.
Its the unknown ones you really have to worry about.
With 20-20 hindsight I wondered if the Shuttle orbiter could have been considered as a winged evolution of the Apollo service module.
The flight deck could be a complete apollo CM attached to the front of the winged orbiter. Heat shield hatches were trialed during the gemini program. The hatch would be kept closed during launch and reentry.
A normal LES would be used during launch, and if the TPS fails during aerobraking the CM RCS could be used to break the CM away from the rest of the spacecraft and start a reentry with the ablative heat shield.
I believe this idea scores for reuse and modularity.
Here in .au we get a bit of it. You can pay $800 for a laptop by paying $1000 up front and writing in for $200 back.
My wife bought a Brother fax machine from officeworks which came with a free MP3 player. You had to write in for it but the documentation didn't come with the unit. I emailed the sales staff and they sorted it out with the retailer. Some people wouldn't have bothered.
What we got was a 256 MB MP3 player/USB key preloaded with some crap music. I thought that this unit might sell for $30 at a swap meet. Later I saw it on sale at a retailer for $100. I suppose it will make money for somebody that way.
Pages seem to occasionally time out. But I wonder if it is one of the included pages. Possibly the google advertising stuff.
The local shop is private property but the owners can not demand proof of identity because a shop is a public place. This is a particular legal concept here in Australia. The same rule prohibits business owners from excluding people on the grounds of race, etc.
Must be a bug. BSD is enabled in my preferences (along with apache, Science, etc) but I don't see the link.
Yep. During an earlier EVA the sublimator on a suit caused enough asymetric thrust on the ISS to cause a problem.
This one most likely won't have water for the sublimator but the gas inside could certainly create some thrust.
Free (as in Beer) is a side affect of Free (as in Freedom). I have to have the source to be free to modify it.