> Al Queda has gone from a despised group of loonies to > the heroes of the oppressed in the muslim underclass...
In reality they aren't the oppressed underclass at all. In contrast they are often well to do people with good jobs and secular educations, many at english schools.
So what? Robin Hood came from landed gentry, there are plenty of other myths and legends of heros of the underclass who were not members of the underclass themselves.
Osama is still the most popular name for newborn boys in the Muslim world -- its because bin Laden is very popular among those who feel they have no power to fight for themselves. You do not get that popular if people think you are just slaughtering innocents.
While you're lecturing us on economics, howbout you talk about the economics of free and open research you mention? Seriously, profit maximizing is the only reason these companies are in business...
You are making the common mistake of conflating Free (libre) with free (no cost). My point is that there is a lot of research work that is just moldering away in the archives of these companies because they don't know what to do with it. It isn't bringing them any more profit and without a miracle, it never will. But they would rather horde something that is next to useless to them rather than open it up to the world at large on the chance that it will be useful to someone else.
It's a kind of corporate "if I can't have it, then nobody can!" attitude and it is neither helping them nor helping anyone else.
As someone who has worked in and near numerous corporate and university research groups I probably have a faint idea of how these things work. As an AC, you clearly don't. Want to prove me wrong? Then prove it with citations.
In short, it's nothing to do with being open, and all to do with patents. Wrong Slashdot meme there bubba...
I disagree and I won't back up my claim with proof, but here's my point any way.
It's not the final product that needs to be more open, it is the research for the hundreds of products that never make it to a final shipping product. With traditional university-style research it is 'publish-or-perish' which, while increasing the noise level, tends to get the useful info out to others who can make better use of it. With corporate-style research it is "publish-and-perish" because the management mind-set is that every little scrap of information is "intellectual property" and so must be horded like real property. Which causes useful information to be shit-canned because the right people never get a chance to see it.
As good little slashbots we all know that the economics governing real property versus intellecutal pseudo-property are vastly different. But Those In Charge haven't figured it out yet, and for the most part, have a vested interest in NOT figuring that out. They don't care about anyone else making money, not even their own employees, just so long as THEY make a ton of bucks.
So basically what they're doing is using BitTorrent as their distribution system,
No, they are using BT as their distribution system for their commercials, not for anything that is a direct revenue generator.
In the anime community ADV is well-known for some of the suckiest customer-facing behaviour from any publisher. While the engineer who has been the internal promoter of using BT this way is a good enough chap, management clearly sees it as a way to advertise for really, really cheap - they don't even have to pay the bandwidth costs because they let their customers do it for them.
Its a smart business move - as long as the customers don't wise up to how ADV management sees it - but it is not even close to being as visionary or risk taking as it would require to distribute their actual content over a public torrent.
Oh Boy! Yet Another Generic 3D Graphics Card Comparison! Like we've never seen one of those before!
How about something that covers new ground? How about evaluating the features beyond simple stats and 3D performance in various games I'll never play?
I want to see a comparison that looks at these characterstics without regard to 3D FPS...
1) Noise level, idle and under load 2) Heat level and/or power consumption, idle and under load 3) DVI signal quality when pushed to maximum resolution & refresh rate - i.e. how long a cable I can hang off of it at what resolution 4) Video acceleration - mpeg2, mpeg2 for hi-def, WM9, WM9 for hi-def, h.264 and h.264 for at hi-def resolutions 5) Video de-interlacing support and quality - 3:2 telecine at what resolutions, how about 2:2 telecine, etc 6) Video scaling quality -- how many taps for vertical, how many taps horizontal, any fancy algorithms, test-pattern measured quality levels
Anybody and his brother can put up a speclist of 3D features or run a set of semi-standard 3D benchmarks and they already have. How about somebody with some real tools - oscope, multi-meter, pattern tests, etc do something new and useful to the REST of us for a change?
Seriously, the biggest part of "having a sane password police" is to TEACH THE USERS BEST PRACTICES.
Everywhere I've worked, and I've worked at a lot of places since I've been contracting since the early days of the internet bubble, there has been zero user education about passwords.
Typically the IT department comes up with some rules and they think their responsibility stops there. Since they never bother to teach their users the best way to follow the password rules, it is no surprise that the users come up with all kinds of cockamamie schemes.
These people aren't computer security experts, they are just regular schmoes who want to get their work done wit h the last amount of hassle. They've never had to think deeply about password security, so of course most of them never will on their own. They will take the path of least resistance to getting their work done and writing their password down in an easy to find place is very low resistance.
Teaching them smart and effective password techniques is one of the surest ways to improve security that there is.
the United States, a large country with more vast, unpopulated areas than any other industrial nation.
Again this idiotic notion buried in the American psyche that they are first at everything. Canada has far more vast, unpopulated regions than the US could ever possibly hope to have.
Brewing beer does not make you an industrial nation.
If you do not know what is on your network, if you cannot at least estimate the hourly, monthly or yearly cost of downtime, if you do not know how long it takes to recover from a security outage, if you cannot answer questions about the extent of your company's license compliance, then you cannot truly evaluate whether Linux, Windows or Unix is right for your business.
I think a strong case can be made that if your organization does not know these things about your own systems then chances are that you really could benefit from moving to linux for one simple reason - license compliance.
If your company doesn't have a clue about what OSes and what software is installed where, then chances are you are just one disgruntled employee's phone call away from a devastatingly expensive SPA "audit."
The sooner you can say, "I may not know how many installations of Redhat, Mandrake or even Ubuntu our company is running but I know damn well that none of the machines are running proprietary software," the sooner you can sleep easy at night because the risk of a SPA audit has been neutralized.
It's no wonder Hollywood is considering alternatives, they've just experienced their worst box-office slump in 20 years. Ticket sales are down nearly 8% compared with 2004. With movie revenue quickly shrinking (due to lackluster movies, overpriced tickets and dvd's), this seems like a logical transition for Hollywood studios.
There is no slump!
This so called "slump" is just political marketing on the part of the big studios. There is no slump as far as they are concerned. In fact, their theaterical revenues went UP 10% from $797M to $870M for the first 3 quarters of the year. REF: http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/US205MPA.htm
The real hit has been to indie and otherwise non-MPAA films, they are the ones that have been losing out at the box office. You can find more details in the pair of articles here: http://slate.msn.com/id/2123286/
Let me guess (no I didn't RTFA, big surprise!) - the FCC just wants to make sure that we can all get 911 emergency service if we need it. After all, some child might have to call in for their parents who have both been hit by a bus and we can't expect a poor thing like that to tell the emergency dispatchers where he is.
Never mind the man in the corner who is really pulling the strings and thinks he ought to be able to track any citizen at will without anything even resembling just cause. That boogeyman doesn't even exist and if see him, just stick your head in the ground and you will be safe!
Not everyone that likes fast cars is a polluting slob.
I like the environment and do my best to contribute to it's preservation, but please don't ask me to drive an 18 sec pussymobile.
As long as you don't complain about gas prices, no matter how high they go, then you are welcome to drive your penis car as much as you want. The second you do start complaining about the cost of gas is the second you should have realized that buying a more efficient vehicle would have been the smart thing to do. You want to play, you gotta pay.
Is it in their job description to monitor what users access?
As someone with generations of many librarians in the family, I can say that monitoring what users access - be it electronic or paper - is antithetical to being a librarian.
Librarians are supposed to be about enabling patrons to find the information they are looking for, not judging them and certainly not censoring the information.
It's true that lots of people want to turn librarians into the information police to enforce their own social agendas. But that role is about as far from what it means to be a librarian as you can get.
For example, when the Patriot Act required that libraries secretly reveal their patrons' borrowing histories in effectively warrantless searches, librarians around the country made sure that their systems stopped keeping borrowing histories. That all they ever tracked is what books a patron currently had checked out and once returned all records of that check-out were destroyed. Thus enabling their patrons to borrow any material they wanted without fear of being tracked.
Being a librarian is about tearing down the walls around information, not building them up.
Your context was not clear until you followed up to my post, and even then it still dilly-dallied with further distraction. You outta be thanking my ass for giving you editorial review.
From Risks Digest (which ought to be mandatory reading for anyone developing software or hardware):
Millions of lost revenue from faulty speed cameras Bertrand Meyer
Sat, 01 May 2004 14:44:42 +0200
Given the attention this story has been commanding in Australia, I was surprised to find no record in RISKS. The country is proud of its strictness in enforcing speed rules, sometimes fining motorists for driving one kilometer above the posted limit (however absurd that sounds). The state of Victoria has numerous speed cameras. Last year their accuracy was questioned after reports that a truck with a maximum speed of 140 km/h was
caught traveling at 164 km/h, and other similar incidents. After the first such report the Assistant Commissioner said (Melbourne Age, 11 Nov 2003):
"There's no evidence to support that any of the other cameras are malfunctioning [...] in any other way,"
but he later had to change to:
"It's embarrassing for everybody... Technology is technology and I think we have had indications where it doesn't say the right thing."
The state government then ordered tests of all the cameras in the system, and had to suspend fines from all fixed cameras. According to the Age of 29 April 2004, the problems were supposed to "take six weeks to fix" but:
almost six months after the State Government suspended the issuing of fines from Victoria's fixed speed cameras, problems with the cameras are
still unresolved [...] A State Government spokesman confirmed yesterday
that the 47 fixed cameras were still under review. He was unable to say
when the issue would be resolved.
More than 40,000 fines notified to motorists have been suspended until the
results are in. This represents a total sum of over six million Australian
dollars.
IBM get rid of Aix, Novell get rid of Netware, HP get rid of Hpux
I've heard rumours about IBM and the future of AIX but nothing specific. But I can say that inside HP the linux kernel group is growing while at the same time the hpux kernel group is shrinking. There is no way any of those vendors is going to drop their OS products wholesale -- if for no other reason than that they have contractual obligations to support their OSes on new hardware going forward.
But they are all steadily increasing their emphasis on linux which is entirely consistent with a smooth, well managed transition.
I volunteer off and on doing Linux support and I can tell you that without Google there would be a lot of questions that I would be unable to answer.
You presume that in the absence of google, some other, perhaps even superior, resource would not have risen to serve the same need that google does today.
Somehow, I doubt things would be so simple as that.
HD-DVD discs MUST CONTAIN DRM in order to be played in an HD-DVD player AT ALL.
That kind of restriction is more about being anti-competitive (only big studios will be able to get an official digital imprimatur - the indies will be locked out) than it is about preventing piracy.
The reason is that everybody pirating over the net re-encodes anyway. Any modern DVD player will not only play DVDs and CDs, it will play divx encodings, VCDs, SVCDs, etc. We will see the same thing with the BLU-HD players, they'll play clear.mp4 files, clear WM9 files, etc. So you won't get a fancy animated menu on your pirated movie - for most people that will be plus.
More piracy, stealing, and outright theft -- won't someone think of the children?? -- on the topic:
Calling across the divide Mar 10th 2005 From The Economist print edition
New research examines the link between mobile phones and economic growth in the developing world
WEDGED between stalls of dried fish and mounds of plastic goods, a red shipping container is loaded with Coca-Cola bottles. The local distributor for Soweto market, located in a tatty corner of Zambia's capital city, Lusaka, sells all its stock every few days. A full load costs 10m kwacha (about $2,000). In cash, this amount can be hard to get hold of, takes ages to count and--being ten times the average annual wage--is tempting to thieves. So Coca-Cola now tells its 300 Zambian distributors to pay for deliveries not in cash, but by sending text messages from their mobile phones. The process takes about 30 seconds, and the driver issues a receipt. Faraway computers record the movement of money and stock. Coca-Cola is not alone. Around the corner from the market, a small dry-cleaning firm lets customers pay for laundry using their phones. So do Zambian petrol stations, and dozens of bigger shops and restaurants.
This is just one example of the many innovative ways in which mobile phones are being used in the poorest parts of the world. Anecdotal evidence for mobile phones' ability to boost economic activity is abundant: they enable fishermen or farmers to check prices at different markets before selling produce, make it easier for people to look for jobs, and prevent wasted journeys. Mobile phones reduce transaction costs, broaden trade networks and substitute for costly physical transport. They are of particular value when other means of communication (such as roads, post or fixed-line phones) are poor or non-existent.
This can be hard for people in the rich world to understand, because the ways in which mobile phones are used in the poor world are so different. In particular, phones are widely shared. One person in a village buys a mobile phone, perhaps using a micro-credit loan. Others then rent it out by the minute; the small profit margin enables its owner to pay back the loan and make a living. When the phone rings, its owner carries it to the home of the person being called, who then takes the call. Other entrepreneurs can set up as "text message interpreters", sending and receiving text messages (which are generally cheaper than voice calls) on behalf of their customers, who may be illiterate. So although the number of phones per 100 people is low by rich-world standards, they still make a big difference.
The strong demand for mobile telephony in poor countries is illustrated by booming subscriber growth. Subscriber growth in several sub-Saharan African countries exceeded 150% last year, and there are now eight mobile phones for every 100 people in Africa, up from three in 2001. World Bank figures show that people in developing countries spend a larger proportion of their income on telecommunications than those in the rich world. Yet this is all merely indirect evidence for the impact of mobile telecoms on economic growth. After all, as people become richer, they have more money to spend on things like phone calls. A new study by Leonard Waverman, of the London Business School, and Meloria Meschi and Melvyn Fuss, of LECG, an economics consultancy, provides the most detailed analysis yet of the relationship between mobile phones and economic growth. (It was one of several papers presented this week at a meeting organised by Vodafone, the world's largest mobile operator.)
In a previous paper, published in 2001, Mr Waverman used a "production-function" model to examine the impact of fixed-line telecoms in the developed world in the 1970s and 1980s, the pre-mobile era. He found that investment in telecoms significantly enhanced output, allowing (using nifty statistical tests) for the fact that demand for telecoms services increases as GDP rises. Since then, other researchers have tried to apply the
They are right about cheap phones being good for developing countries. Mobiles are used in totally different ways there then they are in the 1st world. They are also responsible for some of the fastest commercial growth ever seen in those countries. Here is one article from the Economist about it -- they have several. Since I don't know if you have to pay for this or not, I'm STEALING it myself since I did pay for it and giving it to you.
Mobile phones and development: Less is more Jul 7th 2005 From The Economist print edition
Mobile phones can boost development in poor countries--if governments let them
Africa
IMAGINE a magical device that could boost entrepreneurship and economic activity, provide an alternative to bad roads and unreliable postal services, widen farmers' access to markets, and allow swift and secure transfers of money. Now stop imagining: the device in question is the mobile phone. Not surprisingly, people in the developing world are clamouring for them, and subscriber growth is booming. The fastest growth rates are to be found in Africa, albeit from a low base. Already, 80% of the world's population lives within range of a mobile network; but only about 25% have a mobile phone.
The primary obstacle to wider adoption is the cost of handsets. In the rich world, these typically cost around $200 (though most pay less than this thanks to subsidies from network operators), or less than 1% of the average income per person. In the developing world, in contrast, a $50 handset would account for 14% of the annual income of someone earning $1 a day. So the first step in promoting the adoption of mobile phones, say operators in developing countries, is to reduce the cost of the handsets. Several such schemes are under way: in particular, several operators in developing countries have joined together to aggregate their buying power, and Motorola, the world's second-largest handset-maker, has agreed to supply up to 6m handsets for less than $40 each (see article). There is already talk of prices falling below $30 next year.
ndustry observers believe cheaper handsets could expand the market by as many as 150m new subscribers a year. As well as boosting economic development in poor countries, this will help to close the "digital divide" between the communications-rich and communications-poor. Governments, you would have thought, would be doing everything in their power to promote the spread of mobile phones.
But rather than treating mobile phones as an important tool for development, many governments see them instead as an opportunity to impose hefty taxes and milk a fast-growing industry for all it is worth. In both Turkey and Bangladesh, for example, anyone buying a new mobile phone must pay a $15 connection tax. Many countries slap large import duties on handsets and impose special taxes on subscribers and operators. In many cases, these taxes double the cost of acquiring a mobile phone. As handset prices fall, such taxes will become an ever more prominent obstacle to wider adoption.
Governments should reduce these taxes at once. Indeed, by doing so, they can both speed adoption and increase revenues. High import tariffs discourage legal imports of phones and encourage people to buy them on the black market instead. Reducing such tariffs would boost revenues as legal imports increased. Lower taxes on phone calls would encourage adoption and increase the tax base. It can be done: both Mauritius and India have recently reduced their taxes and tariffs.
Mobile phones have created more entrepreneurs in Africa in the past five years than anything else, says the boss of one pan-African operator. Promoting their spread requires no aid payments or charity handouts: handset-makers, acting in their own interest, are ready to produce low-cost phones for what they now regard as a promising new market. Mobile operators across the developing world would love to sign up millions of new customers. But if developing countries are to realise the full social and economic benefits of mobile phones, governments must ensure that their policies help, rather than hinder, the wider adoption of this miraculous technology.
If Moore tried to employ a little journalistic integrity or even simple objectivity (which even he admits he doesn't do), he could be a powerful voice.
No, he would be just another documentary film-maker that no one has ever heard of and no one will ever see any of his films. Just like thousands of other documentarians with more "journalistic integrity."
There is a reason F9/11 was the largest grossing documentary of all time -- he made it entertaining, he worked the system to get as much play as he could. In doing so he sacrificed some of the moral high ground, but he did get his message out.
Remember, it doesn't matter how right you are, if you keep it a secret. Moore's approach seems to be that it is better to get your core message heard even if it costs him some credibility because in the american public consciousness, perception is reality.
Given that no other documentary, on any topic, has had even one tenth the public recognition - not just box-office receipts, but news coverage, public discussion, etc - I think his tactics are at least one reasonable option.
Slashdot Mirror
> Al Queda has gone from a despised group of loonies to
> the heroes of the oppressed in the muslim underclass...
In reality they aren't the oppressed underclass at all. In contrast they are often well to do people with good jobs and secular educations, many at english schools.
So what? Robin Hood came from landed gentry, there are plenty of other myths and legends of heros of the underclass who were not members of the underclass themselves.
Osama is still the most popular name for newborn boys in the Muslim world -- its because bin Laden is very popular among those who feel they have no power to fight for themselves. You do not get that popular if people think you are just slaughtering innocents.
While you're lecturing us on economics, howbout you talk about the economics of free and open research you mention? Seriously, profit maximizing is the only reason these companies are in business...
You are making the common mistake of conflating Free (libre) with free (no cost). My point is that there is a lot of research work that is just moldering away in the archives of these companies because they don't know what to do with it. It isn't bringing them any more profit and without a miracle, it never will. But they would rather horde something that is next to useless to them rather than open it up to the world at large on the chance that it will be useful to someone else.
It's a kind of corporate "if I can't have it, then nobody can!" attitude and it is neither helping them nor helping anyone else.
As someone who has worked in and near numerous corporate and university research groups I probably have a faint idea of how these things work. As an AC, you clearly don't. Want to prove me wrong? Then prove it with citations.
In short, it's nothing to do with being open, and all to do with patents. Wrong Slashdot meme there bubba...
I disagree and I won't back up my claim with proof, but here's my point any way.
It's not the final product that needs to be more open, it is the research for the hundreds of products that never make it to a final shipping product. With traditional university-style research it is 'publish-or-perish' which, while increasing the noise level, tends to get the useful info out to others who can make better use of it. With corporate-style research it is "publish-and-perish" because the management mind-set is that every little scrap of information is "intellectual property" and so must be horded like real property. Which causes useful information to be shit-canned because the right people never get a chance to see it.
As good little slashbots we all know that the economics governing real property versus intellecutal pseudo-property are vastly different. But Those In Charge haven't figured it out yet, and for the most part, have a vested interest in NOT figuring that out. They don't care about anyone else making money, not even their own employees, just so long as THEY make a ton of bucks.
So basically what they're doing is using BitTorrent as their distribution system,
No, they are using BT as their distribution system for their commercials, not for anything that is a direct revenue generator.
In the anime community ADV is well-known for some of the suckiest customer-facing behaviour from any publisher. While the engineer who has been the internal promoter of using BT this way is a good enough chap, management clearly sees it as a way to advertise for really, really cheap - they don't even have to pay the bandwidth costs because they let their customers do it for them.
Its a smart business move - as long as the customers don't wise up to how ADV management sees it - but it is not even close to being as visionary or risk taking as it would require to distribute their actual content over a public torrent.
Oh Boy! Yet Another Generic 3D Graphics Card Comparison! Like we've never seen one of those before!
How about something that covers new ground? How about evaluating the features beyond simple stats and 3D performance in various games I'll never play?
I want to see a comparison that looks at these characterstics without regard to 3D FPS...
1) Noise level, idle and under load
2) Heat level and/or power consumption, idle and under load
3) DVI signal quality when pushed to maximum resolution & refresh rate - i.e. how long a cable I can hang off of it at what resolution
4) Video acceleration - mpeg2, mpeg2 for hi-def, WM9, WM9 for hi-def, h.264 and h.264 for at hi-def resolutions
5) Video de-interlacing support and quality - 3:2 telecine at what resolutions, how about 2:2 telecine, etc
6) Video scaling quality -- how many taps for vertical, how many taps horizontal, any fancy algorithms, test-pattern measured quality levels
Anybody and his brother can put up a speclist of 3D features or run a set of semi-standard 3D benchmarks and they already have. How about somebody with some real tools - oscope, multi-meter, pattern tests, etc do something new and useful to the REST of us for a change?
Why do people write down the real password?
Because no one ever suggested otherwise!
Seriously, the biggest part of "having a sane password police" is to TEACH THE USERS BEST PRACTICES.
Everywhere I've worked, and I've worked at a lot of places since I've been contracting since the early days of the internet bubble, there has been zero user education about passwords.
Typically the IT department comes up with some rules and they think their responsibility stops there. Since they never bother to teach their users the best way to follow the password rules, it is no surprise that the users come up with all kinds of cockamamie schemes.
These people aren't computer security experts, they are just regular schmoes who want to get their work done wit h the last amount of hassle. They've never had to think deeply about password security, so of course most of them never will on their own. They will take the path of least resistance to getting their work done and writing their password down in an easy to find place is very low resistance.
Teaching them smart and effective password techniques is one of the surest ways to improve security that there is.
Brewing beer does not make you an industrial nation.
If you do not know what is on your network, if you cannot at least estimate the hourly, monthly or yearly cost of downtime, if you do not know how long it takes to recover from a security outage, if you cannot answer questions about the extent of your company's license compliance, then you cannot truly evaluate whether Linux, Windows or Unix is right for your business.
I think a strong case can be made that if your organization does not know these things about your own systems then chances are that you really could benefit from moving to linux for one simple reason - license compliance.
If your company doesn't have a clue about what OSes and what software is installed where, then chances are you are just one disgruntled employee's phone call away from a devastatingly expensive SPA "audit."
The sooner you can say, "I may not know how many installations of Redhat, Mandrake or even Ubuntu our company is running but I know damn well that none of the machines are running proprietary software," the sooner you can sleep easy at night because the risk of a SPA audit has been neutralized.
It's no wonder Hollywood is considering alternatives, they've just experienced their worst box-office slump in 20 years. Ticket sales are down nearly 8% compared with 2004. With movie revenue quickly shrinking (due to lackluster movies, overpriced tickets and dvd's), this seems like a logical transition for Hollywood studios.
There is no slump!
This so called "slump" is just political marketing on the part of the big studios. There is no slump as far as they are concerned. In fact, their theaterical revenues went UP 10% from $797M to $870M for the first 3 quarters of the year.
REF: http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/US205MPA.htm
The real hit has been to indie and otherwise non-MPAA films, they are the ones that have been losing out at the box office. You can find more details in the pair of articles here: http://slate.msn.com/id/2123286/
Let me guess (no I didn't RTFA, big surprise!) - the FCC just wants to make sure that we can all get 911 emergency service if we need it. After all, some child might have to call in for their parents who have both been hit by a bus and we can't expect a poor thing like that to tell the emergency dispatchers where he is.
Never mind the man in the corner who is really pulling the strings and thinks he ought to be able to track any citizen at will without anything even resembling just cause. That boogeyman doesn't even exist and if see him, just stick your head in the ground and you will be safe!
Not everyone that likes fast cars is a polluting slob.
I like the environment and do my best to contribute to it's preservation, but please don't ask me to drive an 18 sec pussymobile.
As long as you don't complain about gas prices, no matter how high they go, then you are welcome to drive your penis car as much as you want. The second you do start complaining about the cost of gas is the second you should have realized that buying a more efficient vehicle would have been the smart thing to do. You want to play, you gotta pay.
Is it in their job description to monitor what users access?
As someone with generations of many librarians in the family, I can say that monitoring what users access - be it electronic or paper - is antithetical to being a librarian.
Librarians are supposed to be about enabling patrons to find the information they are looking for, not judging them and certainly not censoring the information.
It's true that lots of people want to turn librarians into the information police to enforce their own social agendas. But that role is about as far from what it means to be a librarian as you can get.
For example, when the Patriot Act required that libraries secretly reveal their patrons' borrowing histories in effectively warrantless searches, librarians around the country made sure that their systems stopped keeping borrowing histories. That all they ever tracked is what books a patron currently had checked out and once returned all records of that check-out were destroyed. Thus enabling their patrons to borrow any material they wanted without fear of being tracked.
Being a librarian is about tearing down the walls around information, not building them up.
Just install vi for Windows and teach them the importance of :q!, dd, :set ts=3 and other commands.
Do not forget HJKL -- nobody, and I mean NOBODY wants to learn HJKL. As a unix freak, it really keeps me up at night.
Your context was not clear until you followed up to my post, and even then it still dilly-dallied with further distraction. You outta be thanking my ass for giving you editorial review.
Regardless of what you meant, what you said is that without google you would be unable to do the job.
Millions of lost revenue from faulty speed cameras
Bertrand Meyer
Sat, 01 May 2004 14:44:42 +0200
Given the attention this story has been commanding in Australia, I was surprised to find no record in RISKS. The country is proud of its strictness in enforcing speed rules, sometimes fining motorists for driving one kilometer above the posted limit (however absurd that sounds). The state of Victoria has numerous speed cameras. Last year their accuracy was questioned after reports that a truck with a maximum speed of 140 km/h was caught traveling at 164 km/h, and other similar incidents. After the first such report the Assistant Commissioner said (Melbourne Age, 11 Nov 2003):
but he later had to change to: The state government then ordered tests of all the cameras in the system, and had to suspend fines from all fixed cameras. According to the Age of 29 April 2004, the problems were supposed to "take six weeks to fix" but: More than 40,000 fines notified to motorists have been suspended until the results are in. This represents a total sum of over six million Australian dollars.For details:
http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/04/29/108322451 6563.html
(30 Apr 2004)
http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/04/28/108310355 1024.html
(29 Apr 2004)
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/10/10683 29487082.html?from=storyrhs
(11 Nov 2003)
Bertrand Meyer
ETH Zurich / Eiffel Software
http://www.se.inf.ethz.ch/ -- http://www.eiffel.com/
IBM get rid of Aix, Novell get rid of Netware, HP get rid of Hpux
I've heard rumours about IBM and the future of AIX but nothing specific. But I can say that inside HP the linux kernel group is growing while at the same time the hpux kernel group is shrinking. There is no way any of those vendors is going to drop their OS products wholesale -- if for no other reason than that they have contractual obligations to support their OSes on new hardware going forward.
But they are all steadily increasing their emphasis on linux which is entirely consistent with a smooth, well managed transition.
I volunteer off and on doing Linux support and I can tell you that without Google there would be a lot of questions that I would be unable to answer.
You presume that in the absence of google, some other, perhaps even superior,
resource would not have risen to serve the same need that google does today.
Somehow, I doubt things would be so simple as that.
HD-DVD discs MUST CONTAIN DRM in order to be played in an HD-DVD player AT ALL.
.mp4 files, clear WM9 files, etc. So you won't get a fancy animated menu on your pirated movie - for most people that will be plus.
That kind of restriction is more about being anti-competitive (only big studios will be able to get an official digital imprimatur - the indies will be locked out) than it is about preventing piracy.
The reason is that everybody pirating over the net re-encodes anyway. Any modern DVD player will not only play DVDs and CDs, it will play divx encodings, VCDs, SVCDs, etc. We will see the same thing with the BLU-HD players, they'll play clear
More piracy, stealing, and outright theft -- won't someone think of the children?? -- on the topic:
Calling across the divide
Mar 10th 2005
From The Economist print edition
New research examines the link between mobile phones and economic growth in the developing world
WEDGED between stalls of dried fish and mounds of plastic goods, a red shipping container is loaded with Coca-Cola bottles. The local distributor for Soweto market, located in a tatty corner of Zambia's capital city, Lusaka, sells all its stock every few days. A full load costs 10m kwacha (about $2,000). In cash, this amount can be hard to get hold of, takes ages to count and--being ten times the average annual wage--is tempting to thieves. So Coca-Cola now tells its 300 Zambian distributors to pay for deliveries not in cash, but by sending text messages from their mobile phones. The process takes about 30 seconds, and the driver issues a receipt. Faraway computers record the movement of money and stock. Coca-Cola is not alone. Around the corner from the market, a small dry-cleaning firm lets customers pay for laundry using their phones. So do Zambian petrol stations, and dozens of bigger shops and restaurants.
This is just one example of the many innovative ways in which mobile phones are being used in the poorest parts of the world. Anecdotal evidence for mobile phones' ability to boost economic activity is abundant: they enable fishermen or farmers to check prices at different markets before selling produce, make it easier for people to look for jobs, and prevent wasted journeys. Mobile phones reduce transaction costs, broaden trade networks and substitute for costly physical transport. They are of particular value when other means of communication (such as roads, post or fixed-line phones) are poor or non-existent.
This can be hard for people in the rich world to understand, because the ways in which mobile phones are used in the poor world are so different. In particular, phones are widely shared. One person in a village buys a mobile phone, perhaps using a micro-credit loan. Others then rent it out by the minute; the small profit margin enables its owner to pay back the loan and make a living. When the phone rings, its owner carries it to the home of the person being called, who then takes the call. Other entrepreneurs can set up as "text message interpreters", sending and receiving text messages (which are generally cheaper than voice calls) on behalf of their customers, who may be illiterate. So although the number of phones per 100 people is low by rich-world standards, they still make a big difference.
The strong demand for mobile telephony in poor countries is illustrated by booming subscriber growth. Subscriber growth in several sub-Saharan African countries exceeded 150% last year, and there are now eight mobile phones for every 100 people in Africa, up from three in 2001. World Bank figures show that people in developing countries spend a larger proportion of their income on telecommunications than those in the rich world. Yet this is all merely indirect evidence for the impact of mobile telecoms on economic growth. After all, as people become richer, they have more money to spend on things like phone calls. A new study by Leonard Waverman, of the London Business School, and Meloria Meschi and Melvyn Fuss, of LECG, an economics consultancy, provides the most detailed analysis yet of the relationship between mobile phones and economic growth. (It was one of several papers presented this week at a meeting organised by Vodafone, the world's largest mobile operator.)
In a previous paper, published in 2001, Mr Waverman used a "production-function" model to examine the impact of fixed-line telecoms in the developed world in the 1970s and 1980s, the pre-mobile era. He found that investment in telecoms significantly enhanced output, allowing (using nifty statistical tests) for the fact that demand for telecoms services increases as GDP rises. Since then, other researchers have tried to apply the
They are right about cheap phones being good for developing countries. Mobiles are used in totally different ways there then they are in the 1st world. They are also responsible for some of the fastest commercial growth ever seen in those countries. Here is one article from the Economist about it -- they have several. Since I don't know if you have to pay for this or not, I'm STEALING it myself since I did pay for it and giving it to you.
Mobile phones and development: Less is more
Jul 7th 2005
From The Economist print edition
Mobile phones can boost development in poor countries--if governments let them
Africa
IMAGINE a magical device that could boost entrepreneurship and economic activity, provide an alternative to bad roads and unreliable postal services, widen farmers' access to markets, and allow swift and secure transfers of money. Now stop imagining: the device in question is the mobile phone. Not surprisingly, people in the developing world are clamouring for them, and subscriber growth is booming. The fastest growth rates are to be found in Africa, albeit from a low base. Already, 80% of the world's population lives within range of a mobile network; but only about 25% have a mobile phone.
The primary obstacle to wider adoption is the cost of handsets. In the rich world, these typically cost around $200 (though most pay less than this thanks to subsidies from network operators), or less than 1% of the average income per person. In the developing world, in contrast, a $50 handset would account for 14% of the annual income of someone earning $1 a day. So the first step in promoting the adoption of mobile phones, say operators in developing countries, is to reduce the cost of the handsets. Several such schemes are under way: in particular, several operators in developing countries have joined together to aggregate their buying power, and Motorola, the world's second-largest handset-maker, has agreed to supply up to 6m handsets for less than $40 each (see article). There is already talk of prices falling below $30 next year.
ndustry observers believe cheaper handsets could expand the market by as many as 150m new subscribers a year. As well as boosting economic development in poor countries, this will help to close the "digital divide" between the communications-rich and communications-poor. Governments, you would have thought, would be doing everything in their power to promote the spread of mobile phones.
But rather than treating mobile phones as an important tool for development, many governments see them instead as an opportunity to impose hefty taxes and milk a fast-growing industry for all it is worth. In both Turkey and Bangladesh, for example, anyone buying a new mobile phone must pay a $15 connection tax. Many countries slap large import duties on handsets and impose special taxes on subscribers and operators. In many cases, these taxes double the cost of acquiring a mobile phone. As handset prices fall, such taxes will become an ever more prominent obstacle to wider adoption.
Governments should reduce these taxes at once. Indeed, by doing so, they can both speed adoption and increase revenues. High import tariffs discourage legal imports of phones and encourage people to buy them on the black market instead. Reducing such tariffs would boost revenues as legal imports increased. Lower taxes on phone calls would encourage adoption and increase the tax base. It can be done: both Mauritius and India have recently reduced their taxes and tariffs.
Mobile phones have created more entrepreneurs in Africa in the past five years than anything else, says the boss of one pan-African operator. Promoting their spread requires no aid payments or charity handouts: handset-makers, acting in their own interest, are ready to produce low-cost phones for what they now regard as a promising new market. Mobile operators across the developing world would love to sign up millions of new customers. But if developing countries are to realise the full social and economic benefits of mobile phones, governments must ensure that their policies help, rather than hinder, the wider adoption of this miraculous technology.
PCs didn't have reset switches until MS Windows came along
False.
My Kaypro-10 and Kaypro-2 luggables had reset switches, and they ran CP/M.
For those out of the know, CP/M pre-dated PC-DOS not to mention MS-Windows.
If Moore tried to employ a little journalistic integrity or even simple objectivity (which even he admits he doesn't do), he could be a powerful voice.
No, he would be just another documentary film-maker that no one has ever heard of and no one will ever see any of his films. Just like thousands of other documentarians with more "journalistic integrity."
There is a reason F9/11 was the largest grossing documentary of all time -- he made it entertaining, he worked the system to get as much play as he could. In doing so he sacrificed some of the moral high ground, but he did get his message out.
Remember, it doesn't matter how right you are, if you keep it a secret. Moore's approach seems to be that it is better to get your core message heard even if it costs him some credibility because in the american public consciousness, perception is reality.
Given that no other documentary, on any topic, has had even one tenth the public recognition - not just box-office receipts, but news coverage, public discussion, etc - I think his tactics are at least one reasonable option.
I hate the act of gay/lesbian sex. I believe it is destructive to society as a whole...
Prove it.