I suggest you try your local library. In Arlington VA, the library has quite a lot of Buster Keaton (and Chaplin, and Three Stooges, as well as more recent films) on DVD, and you get them free for a week.
I've done some experimenting with an SIP gateway from brujula.net
-- free IP calls, cheap as hell to regular lines, and with a standard SIP setup easily portable to your favorite hard or soft phone, plus a free DID (incoming number) in Washington State.
The brujula line ran on my system at about 28 kbps both when I used it to call my cell phone and when I called from the cell phone to the free WA number. I used the X-ten Lite SIP phone they have on their homepage on a Windows XP laptop. I haven't got it working yet with kphone, but I'm sure it can.
There was a little bit of latency, but not as much as I had expected. The sound was actually quite clear, with occasional strange digital distortions that never really got in the way.
28 kbps is not a whole lot of bandwidth, and it doesn't take a whole lot of hardware to run a lot of lines at that speed.
I've also used Skype to call other users in Hong Kong, Slovakia, about three miles down the road in Washington DC, and to the next room over a local network, as well as landlines and mobiles in DC and Slovakia.
The quality's a bit more spotty. I have problems connecting to Slovakia about half the time, but I'm sure the problem is on their end (if you want to know what a real telecoms monopoly is like). When we do connect, the quality is pretty much the same wherever. Theres a lot more latency to Hong Kong than down the road, but that's not surprising.
Even calling on the local network, Skype never seems to go faster than around 10 kbps, and usually closer to 5kbps. That's slow enough that it could work over a modem.
The point is that voip doesn't need to use all your bandwidth, and you don't need much to run it. A properly configured desktop from two years ago can run an office full of phones on a subnet.
Yes there is an initial investment, and yes there are plenty of headaces in redoing any phone system. But the payoff is a drastic reduction in monthly fees, such that the investment into the new system is offset within a few years on the outside. Plus you can get DID numbers that are local to your customers, which saves them money.
Picture phones and $2 ring tones are a fad. Like it or not, voip is for real.
The library of Alexandria was so extensive (and so important) precisely because they didn't do anything like this.
Back in the day, any ship entering port at Alexandria had to declare any books, maps, written works, etc they were carrying as part the customs process. Anything that wasn't already held by the library was taken over and copied by hand, then returned.
The library also allowed others to copy works that they held.
The idea was that ships would create and add to star charts and other navigation tools that could be quickly (for the day) shared with other ships, who would then add their own observations. Everybody benefited, and the Mediterranian became a whole lot safer.
The hoarding and guarding of knowledge didn't become popular in Europe until the Age of Discovery, when nautical charts and chronometer designs were the most closely guarded state secrets.
Having all the books in one place (virtual or otherwise) certainly does make the knowledge more accessible for purchase, but locking down the contents is not quite what Alexandria was about.
1. Make it illegal. Sponsor bills over and over and over again until something sticks. This may or may not work.
This won't work. They haven't yet been able to make other P2P programs like Kazaa illegal, and BT is not even a program, it's a protocol. You might as well try and make FTP illegal. Besides, as the author of the article points out, there are plenty of statistics to show legal uses of BT.
2. Buy up as many ISPs and digital communication carriers as possible. . . . After that you customise service offerings to filter bittorrent traffic.
This won't work either. For one thing, ISPs are in the business of providing data, not restricting it. An ISP has nothing to gain by blocking certain protocols, as another ISP will offer the service.
For another thing, even if all the companies of the MPAA and RIAA got together, they still couldn't afford to take over the ISP business -- you're talking about companies like Comcast, Adelphia, the baby Bells, AOL, etc. The entertainment industry couldn't afford them for one thing, and wouldn't be allowed to control the internet access market for another.
Even assuming that the entertainment industry scraped together $100 billion or so to buy some of the largest ISPs, BT still allows the users to change port settings. Is every ISP in the US going to block all non-html ports?
3. Continue the strategy of pummeling bittorent portals into oblivion with legal paperwork.
This, unfortunately, is likely to continue. However, this is aimed mostly at sites pointing to shares that violate the owner's copyright. I know it's an unpopular idea, but if Joe Hollywood wants to enforce his rights to "Three Gay Weddings and a Car Chase", then it is not alright to make his film available for download. Not that it's not possible, but it is a violation of copyright law.
If, on the otherhand, a BT portal points to Jane Penguin's list of favorite OSS distributions and applications, there's nothing anyone can do legally to stop it (assuming that everything Jane's site points to is cleared by its respective copyright owner).
4. Buy anti-virus vendors, spyware vendors. Offer the product for free, but identify any bittorrent code as malware and remove it.
Possible, but not likely. Anti-virus and other computer security vendors depend on their reputations for developing business. If a vendor has a reputation for breaking legal software that the user installed on purpose, the vendor will lose business very quickly.
5. Buy or sponsor bios code for retail/consumer highspeed modems, wireless cards, routers, etc. Get filters put in place on these devices.
To filter what? To a modem, data is data is data is data. You could have port blocking, but I don't see a long market life for routers and NICs that don't give administrators control over port assignments and availablity. Besides, BT ports can be changed.
You could theoretically fileter by filetype, but I'm sure there's a lot of people here with experience emailing friends files like 01_Camptown_Ladies_mp3.xls.
Yes, these are all possible tacks that the **AA could take against BT, but it will be much harder than trying to take on earlier P2P apps, which hasn't been entirely successful anyway.
Sooner or later, the entertainment industry will have to realize that they no longer control distribution they way that they have, and that they are never going to have that level of control again.
Sooner or later they may also realize that this is a good thing, and that digital distribution can drastically cut their promotion and manufacturing costs while increasing sales values and volumes.
I wouldn't hold my breath on that last one, though.
I built a Myth system last year, so you can be sure that this issue has concerned me greatly. But I am still optimistic that we're going to see the system actually work for a change.
I don't know if the flag was Michael Powell's idea or not, but he was appointed by Clinton. Funny ways of regulating whole industries, as well as coziness with Big Hollywood, are much more Democratic traits than Republican.
Anyway, Powell's out, the broadcast flag has been successfully challenged (at least the first step), and this is an issue that can get people excited.
I am betting the Republicans gang up and squash the broadcast flag before it comes into effect, mostly because it can make them look very good to their constituents. For one thing, they can do something very loudly to protect consumers from Big Bad Government. For another, they can twist Hollywood's nose (the GOP is no friend of big movie studios, believe me). And the kicker is that they can somehow blame it all on Clinton.
All you need is someone like John McCain to start making noise about this -- he's gone after cable companies before and is pushing cable a la carte -- and people will line up to back him.
It's very easy to speak persuasively about letting Joe Sixpack (or Jane Sixfigure) keep a DVD archive of Masterpiece Theater (or Pimp My Ride). It's much harder to explain how being able to take your shows with you is a mortal threat to God, Mom, and The American Way(TM).
The Republicans in Congress will be able to colonize C-Span with catchy populist rhetoric, while anyone defending the flag -- it would have to be a Democrat, maybe Sen Feinstein (D-CA, who wrote a bill to throw people in jail for sharing screeners) -- would have a hard time not looking like a shill.
For some perspective, there was a very good op-ed piece in the Seattle Times on March 1 about retooling the FCC after the Powell era.
I am no Republican, but it's clear that they have the most to gain from scuttling the broadcast flag, and very little to lose. I wouldn't trust Democrats give up a chance at regulation, or to piss off Hollywood.
While I don't doubt that Darl & co will be in jail within a couple years, SCO's delisting may not be the good news that it seems.
Keep in mind that our primary desire should be for SCOs idiotic lawsuits to be resolved with a decision that sticks. If the company simply disappears and the suits are unresolved, it doen't really help Linux because the IP questions in the case would still be open, at least in a narrow, legal sense.
With IBM's heavy investment into Linux, I have to believe that they want resolution, not simply that the case go away. The question is, can IBM get a decision if SCO goes belly-up before the case ends?
Obviously, as a company SCO is finished. As a lawsuit with a logo, they have very, very little chance. However, what we need for Linux is a judgement that finally and fatally destroys them.
Then the real fun starts -- criminal cases. IANAL, but if I were, I would be salivating at the prospect of going after McBride, personally, for everything from wire fraud (he does use the telephone, right?) to petty theft of company pens before all SCOs property is auctioned off.
As I see it, he will very soon have a great deal more personal attention than he ever wished from the SEC, FBI, IRS, and a lot more folks with blue suits and Federal Government IDs.
There is. Its called ndiswrapper. From what I understand, it will 'translate' the MS API into Linux, allowing you to use MS drivers in Linux.
I don't know all the details, but I know that it worked for me in getting a Netgear 802.11g card to work under Mandrake. I ended up finding a native Linux driver a week later, but in the meantime the card worked, and wasn't very difficult to get running.
It seems to me that if you take Dvorak's comments to their logical conclusion that:
* MS can kill Linux because Linux doesn't have full driver support;
* Therefore, Linux can kill MS by implementing driver support.
Somehow, I believe that it is far more likely that the community, and the hardware vendors, will make Linux drivers available long before Redmond can figure out how to release Linux without a GPL.
The strength of Linux is not in its ease of use or setup, but in the fact that you have complete control over your whole system. It's not designed to be painless, it just happens to be getting easier and easier every day.
I assume that even before you installed Linux and/or bought your card that you googled and checked the various forums to make sure the card would work with your distribution and kernel. If not, it's rather like complaining that you can't install your ElCheapo WinModem on a Mac.
If you did a little digging, you would find that you can install your linksys wireless driver by using ndiswrapper and the original MS driver. If you did a little more digging, you would be able to determine the exact chipset of your card and find a native Linux driver for it.
By the time you finished (and it really doesn't take all that long) not only is card instaled and working, but you now have a much better idea of how the card works, how the operating system works, how TCP/IP and other network components work, and you are much more able to add features to your network or troubleshoot when the need arises.
You're not going to get a whole lot of sympathy by complaining that you can't run your own system because you haven't done sufficient research.
If you dig around and ask questions, you will find that people are very helpful. This is what makes OSS in general and Linux in particular so strong. If you complain that Linux stinks because you're unable to follow directions, well there's not much help anyone can give.
What makes this different from Rotten Tomatoes? And I am genuinely asking this question, not being a horrible sarcastic person.
The difference is that Rotten Tomatoes has a confusing, graphics-heavy, vomit-colored home page, whereas Google is sparse, utilitarian, and fast.
Maybe some people like confusing, graphics-heavy, vomit-colored pages. There seem to be a lot of them (at least the confusing, graphics-heavy bit). I've always liked Google for it's simplicity. That and the fact that it works.
Just for kicks, I tried to find one of my favorite films, Year of the Devil (Rok Dabla) on Rotton Tomatoes. Didn't find a thing.
Google told me more than I could ever want to know about the film, the actors, the studio that made it, the cinemas and times that the film was playing, where to buy the DVD, etc. Everything except where to find an.srt with English subtitles.
Yes, automated processes catch innocents, especially as some on this page have suggested if they deliberately make themselves look guilty when they arent (if they carried around a white powder in a bag, they would expect to get arrested by the police if its discovered - wheres the difference?).
A few years ago when I was living in central Europe, I took some tie-dye chemicals back from the US to Slovakia to use at an art camp I was organizing.
For simplicity, I took all the chemicals out of the box they came in and packed them in my backpack. The 'activator' needed to make the dyes work (I cant remember exactly what chemical) was an unmarked plastic bag of white powder, about a kilogram of it.
Anyway, I was checked at the airport in Vienna, and the customs people were very curious about the bag.
I told them what it was, they opened it and figured out that it wasn't drugs, and let me go.
I was not much bothered by the whole process because the Austrian police were very polite and understanding, and the whole ordeal took less than 10 minutes.
In this case, the authorities did their jobs properly -- asking the right questions, listening to my answers, and never treating me as if I was guilty of anything. Afterwards, they even apologized for opening the bag. I told them I understood, and wished them a good day.
If this process had beeen automated the way this DMCA nonsense is, then I would have been tossed in jail until someone determined that the powder was not, in fact, illegal.
Remeber, I was not trying to make myself look guilty, nor did I expect to be arrested.
Contrast this with the situation of someone running into legal problems for sharing a perfectly legitimate file like X-Files1.21b.tar.gz.
There's a lot more to Myth than recording cable. I don't have cable TV, but football is about all I watch on TV anyway.
But I have MythMusic playing almost constantly. The jukebox supports ogg, mp3, flac, and other formats, and is really easy to use to set up playlists or just randomize a whole bunch of albums and/or singles.
Add to that the ability of Myth to archive and display photos from a digital camera.
Plus it plays divx, xvid, mpg and most wmv files. There's been very few video files it hasn't been able to play.
The built-in ability to rip and transcode CDs and DVDs is not something I expect MS to duplicate.
Add to all this that you can build a functional Myth system for around $500, or less if you already have some of the components. I built mine on a P-3 700 and it works like a charm.
My folks still use AOL mail for business. The logic when they signed up in the mid '90s was that it was a recognizable name, and therefore had more value than mail@joesflybynightisp.com.
This is also why they still use AOL mail even though they have switched from AOL dialup to cable access, and have switched to using Firefox to access the mail rather than AOL's (POS) built-in browser.
They've been using this address for so long that it's completely inundated with spam, but they'd rather not go through the hassle of changing addresses.
But what this means is that they'll still be able to keep the AOL addresses, but now will no longer have to pay for it.
This is a great thing for them, but I don't see how AOL will be making money out of it.
I imagine that there are many more people who keep their AOL accounts out of inertia than there are people who want an AOL address but can't or don't want to pay for it.
I don't see a mass migration from free Hotmail, Yahoo, or Gmail to AOL, but I do see a mass migration from paid AOL to free AOL.
Even assuming they increase the number of users, do they expexct future ad revenues to be larger than current monthly fees?
The most important thing you will need is a good teaching staff. Don't worry about expensive equipment as much as basic educational supplies.
Good textbooks and workbooks, lots of materials for activities, flip-chart paper, markers, dictionaries, a photocopier, and a well-lit room.
Also try to get some materials from Japan that can be used in activities and/or demonstrate how the language is used in everyday life -- things like restaurant menus, magazines (advertisements are great for language activities), brochures, maps, etc.
Don't skimp on physical books and artifacts thinking you can get the same thing online. The books and bits of paper are FAR more helpful in teaching language than any web site is, especially in the hands of a good teacher.
Hmmmm. I'm not quite sure I understand your point. Firstly, the US government is not in the business of auctioning off permission to work, nor should it be. And we're talking about permissions here, not rights; and we're talking about temporary foreign workers, not immigrants.
Secondly, there are no subsidies involved. Hiring an H1B is a lot more complicated and expensive than you might think. There's a lot of bureaucratic hoops to jump through, and there's not really any savings from lower wages.
According to the Labor Department, a company hiring an H1B is required to 1) determine the prevailing wage for the position, based on collective bargaining agreeements, government statistics, independent audit, etc; 2) determine the actual wage for the position, based on what the company pays people in the same or similar capacities with similar qualifications and experience; and 3) pay the H1B the higher of the two rates.
Thirdly, you seem to suggest that H1B visas are easy to come by, and that the program is not managed. Actually Federal law sets a limit on H1Bs at 65,000, plus another 6,800 H1B1s, which are, curiously enough, for "foreign workers in the U.S. in a specialty occupation or as a fashion model of distinguished merit and ability from Chile and Singapore."
As in any other government program, there is an absurd amount of management, paperwork, forms, rules, requirements, and so on involved. See for yourself: here.
These foreign workers are already putting more tax money into the system than they're taking out. If you make companies pay for this, they will stop hiring temporary foreign workers, which means no fees to the government, no surplus from people paying taxes and Social Security without really drawing benefits, and therefore a higher tax burden for everyone else.
As for your last point, H1Bs are not immigrants -- they are temporary workers. Once here they can pursue immigration, but that is not a given. Even if they do immigrate, we are talking about people who are highly educated, highly skilled, gainfully employed, productive and law-abiding members of our society -- exactly what every country in the world would like its citizens to be. I don't think that "dilutes the value" of anyone's citizenship. Quite the contrary, I think it enriches our culture and makes all of us a little better off.
The key is that they are willing to work longer. This does not mean they are indentured servants.
The point I was making was to show that H1Bs are attractive to employers for reasons beyond a simple cash equation. If cash were the only issue, why not just get interns to do the job? They cost a lot less and work part-time, so there's no need for benefits.
And to address the question of abuse, you have to look at each case and ask if the individual involved got the deal they signed up for. In the case of many J1s I know, the answer is yes -- the wage, costs, and living conditions were fairly presented to them before they agreed to the position and before they bought tickets and paid applicable fees. In the case of the kids from Virginia, they did not get the deal they were promised, and all the ones I met in late-June left the hotel and arranged different J1 jobs as soon as they got their Social Security Numbers.
Everyone I know here on an H1B got exactly what they signed up for, and in some cases a better deal. They are making good money, saving cash for their return (of 12 H1Bs I know from central Europe, all but one are planning to return home after their three years), and gaining the kind of experience they simply couldn't get at home.
At the same time, they are contributing to the companies where they work and to their communities. I don't see exploitaion, and I don't see how this is anything but a win-win situation.
Seriously, I have nothing against some guy that worked for years to get a chance at a green card. I recent corporations using those immigration rights as compensation without paying anything to the public.
Ummmm. Employers pay the same payroll taxes for H1Bs as they do for citizens. H1Bs do not draw from public spending at nearly the same levels -- if they don't become permanent residents or citizens they will not likely get any Social Security, they have no children here to send to school, they can't collect welfare, etc. H1Bs are a net plus to the system.
Realistically, companies like H1Bs because they are single and they are here to work. They will work longer and harder than similarly aged and experience Americans, because they don't have to be home for dinner at 7:00, get off early Tuesday to go to their daughter's dance recital, need Saturday off for Billy's baseball game, or need a week off at Thanksgiving to go see their sister on the coast.
Plus, the difference in work ethics between Asians and Americans makes Asians much more attractive hires any day of the week.
Contrary to what you say, the H1B program is far from indentured servitude. Yes, its true that H1B holders cannot switch jobs as easily as citizens, but remember that the point of the program is to allow skilled workers the chance to work in their field of expertise, and be compensated accordingly.
It's true that an individual on an H1B has to be sponsored by a company, but the decision to recruit H1Bs is about a lot more than cutting wages.
For one thing, an immigrant on a two-year gig will be more willing to put in more hours, and spend those hours more productively. A temporary immigrant has no family in the US he/she needs to spend time with, and is here for the sole purpose of making money and gaining experience. Plus he/she will not spend company time farting around on the internet looking for better jobs.
For another, an H1B is only going to be at a position for a limited time. Once the visa is up, that person may return to their home country (or not), but is very likely to remain in the same field. If I run a software house and can build up a network of people I know -- people who have worked for me -- who are going to be running their own software houses in Mumbai (or Madras, or Bangkok, or Beijing, or Chicago, etc), it will make it much easier for me to open up business opportunities there.
The J1 program, on the other hand, is for seasonal work, and a participant has to be enrolled at a university. These are usually three-month positions paid at or below minimum wage. Nominally, they are at least minimum wage, but employers often find ways of getting the money back.
Last summer I met a whole bunch of Polish, Czech, and Slovak J1s at a hotel in central Virginia. They were living at the hotel and making, nominally, $8.00/hour.
However, $2.50/hour went from their paycheck to the agency that recruited them (which was owned by the same group that owned the hotel); they lived four-to-a-room (standard motel room with 2 double beds), for which they paid around $90/week each, and another $10/day for food (2 meals, extremely small -- breakfast was generally an orange, a single-size cereal box, and a half-pint of milk, lunch was maybe 60g of mystery meat and a scoop of mashed potatoes -- enough for a child, maybe). They had to pay for the food whether or not they actually ate it.
The funny thing is what these kids complained most about was that they were being limited to 35 hours/week of work, presumably so the employer would not be required to give them full-time benefits. They would gladly have worked twice that amount.
As it was, they netted less than $50/week of work, after paying more than $1000 (agency fees, plane tickets, insurance, etc) for the privilege.
I've known lots of J1s and this was the worst situation I had ever seen, but it is far from uncommon. I also know quite a few H1Bs, and none of them have any horror stories like this.
It appears the poster changed a few details -- in the original, for example, it was an IBM modem instead of a thinkpad, but the article is the same.
The point is that it is not an original piece of writing. There's nothing wrong with lifting text from somewhere else and posting it here, but if the writing is not original, the source should be identified.
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I suggest you try your local library. In Arlington VA, the library has quite a lot of Buster Keaton (and Chaplin, and Three Stooges, as well as more recent films) on DVD, and you get them free for a week.
Don't forget about the compression.
I've done some experimenting with an SIP gateway from brujula.net -- free IP calls, cheap as hell to regular lines, and with a standard SIP setup easily portable to your favorite hard or soft phone, plus a free DID (incoming number) in Washington State.
The brujula line ran on my system at about 28 kbps both when I used it to call my cell phone and when I called from the cell phone to the free WA number. I used the X-ten Lite SIP phone they have on their homepage on a Windows XP laptop. I haven't got it working yet with kphone, but I'm sure it can.
There was a little bit of latency, but not as much as I had expected. The sound was actually quite clear, with occasional strange digital distortions that never really got in the way.
28 kbps is not a whole lot of bandwidth, and it doesn't take a whole lot of hardware to run a lot of lines at that speed.
I've also used Skype to call other users in Hong Kong, Slovakia, about three miles down the road in Washington DC, and to the next room over a local network, as well as landlines and mobiles in DC and Slovakia.
The quality's a bit more spotty. I have problems connecting to Slovakia about half the time, but I'm sure the problem is on their end (if you want to know what a real telecoms monopoly is like). When we do connect, the quality is pretty much the same wherever. Theres a lot more latency to Hong Kong than down the road, but that's not surprising.
Even calling on the local network, Skype never seems to go faster than around 10 kbps, and usually closer to 5kbps. That's slow enough that it could work over a modem.
The point is that voip doesn't need to use all your bandwidth, and you don't need much to run it. A properly configured desktop from two years ago can run an office full of phones on a subnet.
Yes there is an initial investment, and yes there are plenty of headaces in redoing any phone system. But the payoff is a drastic reduction in monthly fees, such that the investment into the new system is offset within a few years on the outside. Plus you can get DID numbers that are local to your customers, which saves them money.
Picture phones and $2 ring tones are a fad. Like it or not, voip is for real.
The library of Alexandria was so extensive (and so important) precisely because they didn't do anything like this.
Back in the day, any ship entering port at Alexandria had to declare any books, maps, written works, etc they were carrying as part the customs process. Anything that wasn't already held by the library was taken over and copied by hand, then returned.
The library also allowed others to copy works that they held.
The idea was that ships would create and add to star charts and other navigation tools that could be quickly (for the day) shared with other ships, who would then add their own observations. Everybody benefited, and the Mediterranian became a whole lot safer.
The hoarding and guarding of knowledge didn't become popular in Europe until the Age of Discovery, when nautical charts and chronometer designs were the most closely guarded state secrets.
Having all the books in one place (virtual or otherwise) certainly does make the knowledge more accessible for purchase, but locking down the contents is not quite what Alexandria was about.
1. Make it illegal. Sponsor bills over and over and over again until something sticks. This may or may not work.
This won't work. They haven't yet been able to make other P2P programs like Kazaa illegal, and BT is not even a program, it's a protocol. You might as well try and make FTP illegal. Besides, as the author of the article points out, there are plenty of statistics to show legal uses of BT.
2. Buy up as many ISPs and digital communication carriers as possible. . . . After that you customise service offerings to filter bittorrent traffic.
This won't work either. For one thing, ISPs are in the business of providing data, not restricting it. An ISP has nothing to gain by blocking certain protocols, as another ISP will offer the service.
For another thing, even if all the companies of the MPAA and RIAA got together, they still couldn't afford to take over the ISP business -- you're talking about companies like Comcast, Adelphia, the baby Bells, AOL, etc. The entertainment industry couldn't afford them for one thing, and wouldn't be allowed to control the internet access market for another.
Even assuming that the entertainment industry scraped together $100 billion or so to buy some of the largest ISPs, BT still allows the users to change port settings. Is every ISP in the US going to block all non-html ports?
3. Continue the strategy of pummeling bittorent portals into oblivion with legal paperwork.
This, unfortunately, is likely to continue. However, this is aimed mostly at sites pointing to shares that violate the owner's copyright. I know it's an unpopular idea, but if Joe Hollywood wants to enforce his rights to "Three Gay Weddings and a Car Chase", then it is not alright to make his film available for download. Not that it's not possible, but it is a violation of copyright law.
If, on the otherhand, a BT portal points to Jane Penguin's list of favorite OSS distributions and applications, there's nothing anyone can do legally to stop it (assuming that everything Jane's site points to is cleared by its respective copyright owner).
4. Buy anti-virus vendors, spyware vendors. Offer the product for free, but identify any bittorrent code as malware and remove it.
Possible, but not likely. Anti-virus and other computer security vendors depend on their reputations for developing business. If a vendor has a reputation for breaking legal software that the user installed on purpose, the vendor will lose business very quickly.
5. Buy or sponsor bios code for retail/consumer highspeed modems, wireless cards, routers, etc. Get filters put in place on these devices.
To filter what? To a modem, data is data is data is data. You could have port blocking, but I don't see a long market life for routers and NICs that don't give administrators control over port assignments and availablity. Besides, BT ports can be changed.
You could theoretically fileter by filetype, but I'm sure there's a lot of people here with experience emailing friends files like 01_Camptown_Ladies_mp3.xls.
Yes, these are all possible tacks that the **AA could take against BT, but it will be much harder than trying to take on earlier P2P apps, which hasn't been entirely successful anyway.
Sooner or later, the entertainment industry will have to realize that they no longer control distribution they way that they have, and that they are never going to have that level of control again.
Sooner or later they may also realize that this is a good thing, and that digital distribution can drastically cut their promotion and manufacturing costs while increasing sales values and volumes.
I wouldn't hold my breath on that last one, though.
Actually, I have Firefox running happily on an old Pentium 133 Thinkpad. It doesn't load very fast, but once it's up, pages load quickly enough
I built a Myth system last year, so you can be sure that this issue has concerned me greatly. But I am still optimistic that we're going to see the system actually work for a change.
I don't know if the flag was Michael Powell's idea or not, but he was appointed by Clinton. Funny ways of regulating whole industries, as well as coziness with Big Hollywood, are much more Democratic traits than Republican.
Anyway, Powell's out, the broadcast flag has been successfully challenged (at least the first step), and this is an issue that can get people excited.
I am betting the Republicans gang up and squash the broadcast flag before it comes into effect, mostly because it can make them look very good to their constituents. For one thing, they can do something very loudly to protect consumers from Big Bad Government. For another, they can twist Hollywood's nose (the GOP is no friend of big movie studios, believe me). And the kicker is that they can somehow blame it all on Clinton.
All you need is someone like John McCain to start making noise about this -- he's gone after cable companies before and is pushing cable a la carte -- and people will line up to back him.
It's very easy to speak persuasively about letting Joe Sixpack (or Jane Sixfigure) keep a DVD archive of Masterpiece Theater (or Pimp My Ride). It's much harder to explain how being able to take your shows with you is a mortal threat to God, Mom, and The American Way(TM).
The Republicans in Congress will be able to colonize C-Span with catchy populist rhetoric, while anyone defending the flag -- it would have to be a Democrat, maybe Sen Feinstein (D-CA, who wrote a bill to throw people in jail for sharing screeners) -- would have a hard time not looking like a shill.
For some perspective, there was a very good op-ed piece in the Seattle Times on March 1 about retooling the FCC after the Powell era.
I am no Republican, but it's clear that they have the most to gain from scuttling the broadcast flag, and very little to lose. I wouldn't trust Democrats give up a chance at regulation, or to piss off Hollywood.
While I don't doubt that Darl & co will be in jail within a couple years, SCO's delisting may not be the good news that it seems.
Keep in mind that our primary desire should be for SCOs idiotic lawsuits to be resolved with a decision that sticks. If the company simply disappears and the suits are unresolved, it doen't really help Linux because the IP questions in the case would still be open, at least in a narrow, legal sense.
With IBM's heavy investment into Linux, I have to believe that they want resolution, not simply that the case go away. The question is, can IBM get a decision if SCO goes belly-up before the case ends?
Obviously, as a company SCO is finished. As a lawsuit with a logo, they have very, very little chance. However, what we need for Linux is a judgement that finally and fatally destroys them.
Then the real fun starts -- criminal cases. IANAL, but if I were, I would be salivating at the prospect of going after McBride, personally, for everything from wire fraud (he does use the telephone, right?) to petty theft of company pens before all SCOs property is auctioned off.
As I see it, he will very soon have a great deal more personal attention than he ever wished from the SEC, FBI, IRS, and a lot more folks with blue suits and Federal Government IDs.
There is. Its called ndiswrapper. From what I understand, it will 'translate' the MS API into Linux, allowing you to use MS drivers in Linux.
I don't know all the details, but I know that it worked for me in getting a Netgear 802.11g card to work under Mandrake. I ended up finding a native Linux driver a week later, but in the meantime the card worked, and wasn't very difficult to get running.
It seems to me that if you take Dvorak's comments to their logical conclusion that:
* MS can kill Linux because Linux doesn't have full driver support;
* Therefore, Linux can kill MS by implementing driver support.
Somehow, I believe that it is far more likely that the community, and the hardware vendors, will make Linux drivers available long before Redmond can figure out how to release Linux without a GPL.
The strength of Linux is not in its ease of use or setup, but in the fact that you have complete control over your whole system. It's not designed to be painless, it just happens to be getting easier and easier every day.
I assume that even before you installed Linux and/or bought your card that you googled and checked the various forums to make sure the card would work with your distribution and kernel. If not, it's rather like complaining that you can't install your ElCheapo WinModem on a Mac.
If you did a little digging, you would find that you can install your linksys wireless driver by using ndiswrapper and the original MS driver. If you did a little more digging, you would be able to determine the exact chipset of your card and find a native Linux driver for it.
By the time you finished (and it really doesn't take all that long) not only is card instaled and working, but you now have a much better idea of how the card works, how the operating system works, how TCP/IP and other network components work, and you are much more able to add features to your network or troubleshoot when the need arises.
You're not going to get a whole lot of sympathy by complaining that you can't run your own system because you haven't done sufficient research.
If you dig around and ask questions, you will find that people are very helpful. This is what makes OSS in general and Linux in particular so strong. If you complain that Linux stinks because you're unable to follow directions, well there's not much help anyone can give.
Other way around.
The CEO bought an MS laptop because that's what they use at work.
Not only on the PC -- The shrink-wrapped boxes of windows on Walmart shelves have the code on the outside of the box.
What makes this different from Rotten Tomatoes? And I am genuinely asking this question, not being a horrible sarcastic person.
The difference is that Rotten Tomatoes has a confusing, graphics-heavy, vomit-colored home page, whereas Google is sparse, utilitarian, and fast.
Maybe some people like confusing, graphics-heavy, vomit-colored pages. There seem to be a lot of them (at least the confusing, graphics-heavy bit). I've always liked Google for it's simplicity. That and the fact that it works.
Just for kicks, I tried to find one of my favorite films, Year of the Devil (Rok Dabla) on Rotton Tomatoes. Didn't find a thing.
Google told me more than I could ever want to know about the film, the actors, the studio that made it, the cinemas and times that the film was playing, where to buy the DVD, etc. Everything except where to find an .srt with English subtitles.
Errrm.
Yes, automated processes catch innocents, especially as some on this page have suggested if they deliberately make themselves look guilty when they arent (if they carried around a white powder in a bag, they would expect to get arrested by the police if its discovered - wheres the difference?).
A few years ago when I was living in central Europe, I took some tie-dye chemicals back from the US to Slovakia to use at an art camp I was organizing.
For simplicity, I took all the chemicals out of the box they came in and packed them in my backpack. The 'activator' needed to make the dyes work (I cant remember exactly what chemical) was an unmarked plastic bag of white powder, about a kilogram of it.
Anyway, I was checked at the airport in Vienna, and the customs people were very curious about the bag.
I told them what it was, they opened it and figured out that it wasn't drugs, and let me go.
I was not much bothered by the whole process because the Austrian police were very polite and understanding, and the whole ordeal took less than 10 minutes.
In this case, the authorities did their jobs properly -- asking the right questions, listening to my answers, and never treating me as if I was guilty of anything. Afterwards, they even apologized for opening the bag. I told them I understood, and wished them a good day.
If this process had beeen automated the way this DMCA nonsense is, then I would have been tossed in jail until someone determined that the powder was not, in fact, illegal.
Remeber, I was not trying to make myself look guilty, nor did I expect to be arrested.
Contrast this with the situation of someone running into legal problems for sharing a perfectly legitimate file like X-Files1.21b.tar.gz.
There's a lot more to Myth than recording cable. I don't have cable TV, but football is about all I watch on TV anyway.
But I have MythMusic playing almost constantly. The jukebox supports ogg, mp3, flac, and other formats, and is really easy to use to set up playlists or just randomize a whole bunch of albums and/or singles.
Add to that the ability of Myth to archive and display photos from a digital camera.
Plus it plays divx, xvid, mpg and most wmv files. There's been very few video files it hasn't been able to play.
The built-in ability to rip and transcode CDs and DVDs is not something I expect MS to duplicate.
Add to all this that you can build a functional Myth system for around $500, or less if you already have some of the components. I built mine on a P-3 700 and it works like a charm.
The rules of cricket are actually quite simple, and deftly explained here.
The Rules of Cricket as Explained to a foreign visitor
You have two sides, one out in the field and one in.
Each man that's in the side that's in, goes out, and when he's out, he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out.
When they are all out the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in out.
Sometimes you get men still in and not out.
When both sides have been in and out including the not-outs, that's the end of the game.
This description of the game is remarkably accurate.
My folks still use AOL mail for business. The logic when they signed up in the mid '90s was that it was a recognizable name, and therefore had more value than mail@joesflybynightisp.com.
This is also why they still use AOL mail even though they have switched from AOL dialup to cable access, and have switched to using Firefox to access the mail rather than AOL's (POS) built-in browser.
They've been using this address for so long that it's completely inundated with spam, but they'd rather not go through the hassle of changing addresses.
But what this means is that they'll still be able to keep the AOL addresses, but now will no longer have to pay for it.
This is a great thing for them, but I don't see how AOL will be making money out of it.
I imagine that there are many more people who keep their AOL accounts out of inertia than there are people who want an AOL address but can't or don't want to pay for it.
I don't see a mass migration from free Hotmail, Yahoo, or Gmail to AOL, but I do see a mass migration from paid AOL to free AOL.
Even assuming they increase the number of users, do they expexct future ad revenues to be larger than current monthly fees?
The most important thing you will need is a good teaching staff. Don't worry about expensive equipment as much as basic educational supplies.
Good textbooks and workbooks, lots of materials for activities, flip-chart paper, markers, dictionaries, a photocopier, and a well-lit room.
Also try to get some materials from Japan that can be used in activities and/or demonstrate how the language is used in everyday life -- things like restaurant menus, magazines (advertisements are great for language activities), brochures, maps, etc.
Don't skimp on physical books and artifacts thinking you can get the same thing online. The books and bits of paper are FAR more helpful in teaching language than any web site is, especially in the hands of a good teacher.
Hmmmm. I'm not quite sure I understand your point. Firstly, the US government is not in the business of auctioning off permission to work, nor should it be. And we're talking about permissions here, not rights; and we're talking about temporary foreign workers, not immigrants.
Secondly, there are no subsidies involved. Hiring an H1B is a lot more complicated and expensive than you might think. There's a lot of bureaucratic hoops to jump through, and there's not really any savings from lower wages.
According to the Labor Department, a company hiring an H1B is required to 1) determine the prevailing wage for the position, based on collective bargaining agreeements, government statistics, independent audit, etc; 2) determine the actual wage for the position, based on what the company pays people in the same or similar capacities with similar qualifications and experience; and 3) pay the H1B the higher of the two rates.
Thirdly, you seem to suggest that H1B visas are easy to come by, and that the program is not managed. Actually Federal law sets a limit on H1Bs at 65,000, plus another 6,800 H1B1s, which are, curiously enough, for "foreign workers in the U.S. in a specialty occupation or as a fashion model of distinguished merit and ability from Chile and Singapore."
As in any other government program, there is an absurd amount of management, paperwork, forms, rules, requirements, and so on involved. See for yourself: here.
These foreign workers are already putting more tax money into the system than they're taking out. If you make companies pay for this, they will stop hiring temporary foreign workers, which means no fees to the government, no surplus from people paying taxes and Social Security without really drawing benefits, and therefore a higher tax burden for everyone else.
As for your last point, H1Bs are not immigrants -- they are temporary workers. Once here they can pursue immigration, but that is not a given. Even if they do immigrate, we are talking about people who are highly educated, highly skilled, gainfully employed, productive and law-abiding members of our society -- exactly what every country in the world would like its citizens to be. I don't think that "dilutes the value" of anyone's citizenship. Quite the contrary, I think it enriches our culture and makes all of us a little better off.
The key is that they are willing to work longer. This does not mean they are indentured servants.
The point I was making was to show that H1Bs are attractive to employers for reasons beyond a simple cash equation. If cash were the only issue, why not just get interns to do the job? They cost a lot less and work part-time, so there's no need for benefits.
And to address the question of abuse, you have to look at each case and ask if the individual involved got the deal they signed up for. In the case of many J1s I know, the answer is yes -- the wage, costs, and living conditions were fairly presented to them before they agreed to the position and before they bought tickets and paid applicable fees. In the case of the kids from Virginia, they did not get the deal they were promised, and all the ones I met in late-June left the hotel and arranged different J1 jobs as soon as they got their Social Security Numbers.
Everyone I know here on an H1B got exactly what they signed up for, and in some cases a better deal. They are making good money, saving cash for their return (of 12 H1Bs I know from central Europe, all but one are planning to return home after their three years), and gaining the kind of experience they simply couldn't get at home.
At the same time, they are contributing to the companies where they work and to their communities. I don't see exploitaion, and I don't see how this is anything but a win-win situation.
I'm running SP1, but when I hover on the test link my status bar says:
javascript:start();
Maybe it's an exploit, but I wouldn't fall for it.
Seriously, I have nothing against some guy that worked for years to get a chance at a green card. I recent corporations using those immigration rights as compensation without paying anything to the public.
Ummmm. Employers pay the same payroll taxes for H1Bs as they do for citizens. H1Bs do not draw from public spending at nearly the same levels -- if they don't become permanent residents or citizens they will not likely get any Social Security, they have no children here to send to school, they can't collect welfare, etc. H1Bs are a net plus to the system.
Realistically, companies like H1Bs because they are single and they are here to work. They will work longer and harder than similarly aged and experience Americans, because they don't have to be home for dinner at 7:00, get off early Tuesday to go to their daughter's dance recital, need Saturday off for Billy's baseball game, or need a week off at Thanksgiving to go see their sister on the coast.
Plus, the difference in work ethics between Asians and Americans makes Asians much more attractive hires any day of the week.
Contrary to what you say, the H1B program is far from indentured servitude. Yes, its true that H1B holders cannot switch jobs as easily as citizens, but remember that the point of the program is to allow skilled workers the chance to work in their field of expertise, and be compensated accordingly.
It's true that an individual on an H1B has to be sponsored by a company, but the decision to recruit H1Bs is about a lot more than cutting wages.
For one thing, an immigrant on a two-year gig will be more willing to put in more hours, and spend those hours more productively. A temporary immigrant has no family in the US he/she needs to spend time with, and is here for the sole purpose of making money and gaining experience. Plus he/she will not spend company time farting around on the internet looking for better jobs.
For another, an H1B is only going to be at a position for a limited time. Once the visa is up, that person may return to their home country (or not), but is very likely to remain in the same field. If I run a software house and can build up a network of people I know -- people who have worked for me -- who are going to be running their own software houses in Mumbai (or Madras, or Bangkok, or Beijing, or Chicago, etc), it will make it much easier for me to open up business opportunities there.
The J1 program, on the other hand, is for seasonal work, and a participant has to be enrolled at a university. These are usually three-month positions paid at or below minimum wage. Nominally, they are at least minimum wage, but employers often find ways of getting the money back.
Last summer I met a whole bunch of Polish, Czech, and Slovak J1s at a hotel in central Virginia. They were living at the hotel and making, nominally, $8.00/hour.
However, $2.50/hour went from their paycheck to the agency that recruited them (which was owned by the same group that owned the hotel); they lived four-to-a-room (standard motel room with 2 double beds), for which they paid around $90/week each, and another $10/day for food (2 meals, extremely small -- breakfast was generally an orange, a single-size cereal box, and a half-pint of milk, lunch was maybe 60g of mystery meat and a scoop of mashed potatoes -- enough for a child, maybe). They had to pay for the food whether or not they actually ate it.
The funny thing is what these kids complained most about was that they were being limited to 35 hours/week of work, presumably so the employer would not be required to give them full-time benefits. They would gladly have worked twice that amount.
As it was, they netted less than $50/week of work, after paying more than $1000 (agency fees, plane tickets, insurance, etc) for the privilege.
I've known lots of J1s and this was the worst situation I had ever seen, but it is far from uncommon. I also know quite a few H1Bs, and none of them have any horror stories like this.
Are you talking about FF? Ummmmmm I have two browsers open right now on two monitors, each with about 5 tabs.
It's amazing what you can do with Ctrl-N.
I can't find the article on the site, but I don't have premium access. The article was published in The Onion's Finest News Reporting Vol 1.
Here's as much as I can get on it from amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0609804634/ref=sib _dp_srch_pop/002-3510364-1045660?v=search-inside&k eywords=Ndeti&go.x=11&go.y=5&go=Go!
It appears the poster changed a few details -- in the original, for example, it was an IBM modem instead of a thinkpad, but the article is the same.
The point is that it is not an original piece of writing. There's nothing wrong with lifting text from somewhere else and posting it here, but if the writing is not original, the source should be identified.