Most self-regulating industries operate by requiring (by government and competitor pressure against non-conforming companies) a company to join the independent (but private) regulating agency. The agency can then regulate the members; members in violation are fined, threatened with expulsion (putting them out of government shield that is the regulation agency and all alone in front of Uncle Sam), etc.
Self-regulation does not mean "the corporation will do the right thing out of the goodness of its heart" - that's no regulation! Self-regulation might (I'd be skeptical, given the tiny number of major ISPs out there and the close cooperation between companies in the upper-tier ISP industry) be an option here... but what McDowell is suggesting is not self-regulation.
Of course what McDowell is literally saying is that engineers should be the policy-makers for ISPs... I would fully support legislation to that effect!
The interesting thing is that these sorts of preferential Web services can only be implemented at the second- and third-tier ISPs. First-tier ISPs have way too much data for deep-packet inspection (and when deep-packet inspection technology catches up they'll have even more data), nor do they have a direct connection between IP address and customer. This means that there will always be the possiblity of alternative Internet service providers peering with the first-tier providers if the second- and third-tier providers get overzealous with their filtering.
Also, we could see a move to fourth-tier providers. In fact, I know of one city at least whose utilities provider (electricity, water, etc is provided by one pseudo-public entity) offers a "metro-area" Ethernet network for home Internet access that piers with a local "big" (but still second-tier) provider; it's impractical for the third- or second-tier provider to which these fourth-tier ISPs peer to filter individual customers within the fourth-tier network.
So while things might look bleak - return of the walled garden Internet - we do in fact have options. First-tier providers aren't so picky about what flows through their tubes, and there are definite markets for fourth-tier provider startups. This is a bump in the road, but in the long run the nerds will prevail over the suits!
LCD panels are very sensitive to heat; if you check your laptop's manual it'll probably have a phrase in there about keeping the display out of direct sunlight for too long, due to heat concerns. The back of a panel full of LCDs is not the place to be dumping dozens of Watts of heat!
If a law were passed to enforce those ratings, it would be placing the executive power to evaluate the content into the hands of a non-governmental entity.
Just like MPAA movie ratings that do, in fact, work pretty well. The difference is that in order to distribute movies, theaters must join NATO (National Association of Theater Owners, but I'm sure the MPAA would like to have the same militance as the real NATO if they could get away with it!), and NATO agrees to enforce the MPAA rating age-verification.
I think the best thing would be for game manufacturers to set up their own voluntary national association, and agree to enforce ESRB ratings. Self-policing would keep the government from getting too censory, and would give parents a relatively simple way to enforce limits on their kids. Bad parents will still be bad parents and buy their kids the same games the kid would have bought illicitely otherwise, but you can't legislate parenting - no matter how hard New York tries.
Additional labels for video games seems like another toothless measure to do... what, exactly, that isn't already done by existing legislation? And a single state in a single country enforcing parental controls in a product that is distributed world-wide? Good luck with that.
If you want to crack down on video games, why not crack down on retailers that sell the games to underage consumers? Much like undercover cops in liquor stores watching to see if the cashier cards the 14 year old, it wouldn't be hard to enforce age verification in brick-and-mortar game retailers. Of course then you'd have to deal with taxpayers who find out that their dollars are going to support cops standing around in video game stores making sure Johnny doesn't spend his paper route money on the newest naughty game. Much easier to write broad, sweeping legislation that you don't have to worry about enforcing, since it simply cannot be enforced.
Ok. So don't use it. The fact is that many (most?) of us have one or two email accounts that we use for registration purposes. If our email was cracked then all of those registrations are toast. From what I've read, OpenID provides a way to replace this hack (email is not meant for personal identification... it's meant for communicating text efficiently) with a registration system that is as secure as the provider you choose to sign up with. There are providers that give you the same lack of security as email, there are providers that use certificates and fancy-schmancy secure communication, and there are providers that use hardware to verify who you are - you pick the level of security you want when you pick a provider.
And of course, if you really do want a seperate identity for each and every site for which you register, you're free to register multiple OpenID identities.
Basically, OpenID replaces an email address as a central identity. It provides all of the "ease" of using email addresses, but also provides a wealth of possible security improvements and, of course, single sign-on capabilities.
Or you could spend the extra couple of dollars and buy a decent USB keyboard with a couple of ports built in and use those ports. USB is chainable.
Actually USB is not "chainable" in the sense of daisy-chaining (a la SCSI). Those USB keyboard with additional ports are just bus-powered USB hubs with USB keyboards permanently attached to one of the hub inputs.
You're still right, of course, this is one way around the problem of only two USB ports, if not particularly desirable. Bus-powered hubs can't support the same power needs as the original hub for obvious reasons. The point is that for a "cloud" (ugh) device, a second USB host to provide two more ports would make this thing great for webcam/microphone use - a cheap connectivity device for Skype, MSN, etc.
Basic electronics to the rescue! Power usage depends on the load (the CherryPal) not the source (the power supply)*. The source can supply up to 10 W... the load will draw up to 2 W so there shouldn't be any problem.
*This is because P = I * V (power equals current times voltage) and current draw is a function of the load. The voltage is constant, therefore the power is also a function of the load. All power supplies work like this; having a PSU that can supply 1000 W does not mean it is supplying 1000 W. After all, what if nothing was plugged in? It's the load that matters here.
I agree: harassing personalized genomics companies? a medical community that is fiercely resistant to change? I believe the issue in California was privacy; lawmakers wanted to require that genetic results be sent to a patient's doctor, to provide a safeguard against fraud. While (maybe) controversial, probably not so broadly accepted as a Bad Thing to warrant this summary.
Unless you're posting in the comments, Slashdot is not your pulpit!
The question is really "what defines the Web?". If the Web is just any system of transport and file protocols over the Internet that allows for easy indexing and cross-server linking, then sure, what we have today is still the Web. Personally, I'd like to see a major change in the Web - forget HTML, forget CSS, I want a real client-server approach. I think that so long as the protocols are easy to use (or at least scalable - the average 14 year old OMGPONIES girl needs to be able to throw together a site, but not at the expense of "Enterprise" sites) and it supports cross-server linking and indexing, then the average person will still identify it as the Web.
From an abstract viewpoint, how different is the modern Web from a bunch of remote X11 clients that can link to one another - XHTML, PHP, Javascript make a complex programming system with a myriad of frameworks, tools, and interfaces - much like the state of X11 and wrapping toolkits on the desktop! It's time to stop extending Tim Berners-Lee's first attempt at the Web; now that we know what we want and where the Web is going, let's come up with some real tools to do it and dump the HTML/Javascript mess.
As is said often on Slashdot (and bears repeating), CS is not software engineering and there are many opportunities in the field that are not assembly-line-programming jobs.
What comes to mind for me, however, is that if you have a problem with programming after going through 4 years of computer science education, maybe it's not the programming in X, Y, or Z language that you don't like, but the whole idea of thinking in processes, algorithms, computational theory, etc. If you don't like coding in C++ you may still enjoy a job in CS... but if you don't like coding in C++ because you don't like thinking about and designing processes and algorithms then maybe computer science as a field isn't for you. Not every CS job will involve writing the boring "phone book" applications you did in school... but every CS job will involve the theory behind those applications, at some level of abstraction.
Banks make money by borrowing your money (at a low interest rate) and loaning it out to someone else (at a higher interest rate). If your identity is stolen in a big way, then any fees you pay to reverse bad transactions or identity-protection services you take part in are going to be outweighed by the fact that your money is quickly dissapearing (and thus no longer available to be loaned out by the bank).
It's in the best interest of the bank to keep your money in their vault; identity theft typically results in the exact opposite.
Identity theft (at the scale we see it now) is relatively young, and so it's understandable that banks and credit unions don't really have a developed, effective strategy to protect the customer... but as the parent says, given the shroud of secrecy that surrounds much of the banking and credit industries, a little transparency might go a long way to illuminate danger areas, so we don't have to rely on proof-by-egg-on-face as in TFA.
...and know when to fold 'em. Surely somebody at the **AA must realize that the jig is up, the game is over, it was a nice (profitable) thing while it lasted, but simply pushing for more and more draconian laws is not going to bring back the age of the vinyl record - "piracy" is just too fast and easy. You just aren't going to make as much as you used to through media distribution anymore. Either find a different way to make money or settle for reduced profits.
People will purchase media when obtaining that media is less costly than "pirating" it. You've got three ways to make that happen:
Monetarily: make the music cost less in dollars than the pirated version. Obviously not posible.
Punishment: make it more costly to be caught with pirated media. Tried this one, it doesn't work.
Ease of use: make it easier/more pleasant to get and use purchased media than pirated media.
The **AA is happy to keep pounding away at #2, suing en masse, requesting ridiculous measures like those suggested in TFA... but there must be somebody at the headquarters whose pondering #3.
Of course maybe it's just that anybody with a sense for business has better things to do than work for the **AA.
An international research group has created the most perfect spheres ever made, in a bid to pin down a definition of the kilogram. It should be possible to count exactly the number of atoms in one of the roughly 9cm silicon spheres to define the unit.
"First we create a perfect sphere, then we count the number of atoms exactly - and we get a kilogram standard!"
I'll deride slow-loading, unintuitive Flash apps as much as the next guy, but this is a big step towards Flash a viable alternative to the HTML/XHTML/Javascript/CSS/PHP jumble that makes up the Web today. Other things that still need addressing (IMO) to make a true Flash web:
Flash-to-Flash linking
More natural and useful text objects
Standardized framework for GUI elements
Real accessibility
If these things could get cleared up, I wouldn't mind seeing a Flash Web... where Flash isn't a box in the center of an HTML page, but the basic protocol itself (like what Curl claims to be).
Of course given the cludginess of most Flash apps, maybe I'm just being a masochist here!
I don't think this is what "net neutrality" is about. If you want to be able to download anything and interrupt other people who want to surf freely, that is one thing, but if you just want to be able to surf freely without restriction being imposed by IPS's and such, that is a totally different kettle of fish.
You realize, of course, that "surfing" is shorthand for "downloading and then rendering as a web page"? The Web is just one system of protocols and file formats that is available on the Internet - who's to say it should be the only one?
I think it is the exact same kettle of fish. I want to access server A by protocol 1. You wish to access server B by protocol 2. Should mine be throttled so yours can go faster? Should it depend on the servers we want to access ("tiered" Internet)? Should it depend on the protocols we're using (packet-inspection, throttling)? Should it depend on how much we pay (current subscription-based service)? This question is what we call "net neutrality" - how do we get the most people online in a way that is amenable to everything those people want to do - being as "fair" as possible.
Exactly - while the technology of a distributed, encrypted file system might be neat (though this particular implementation seems kind of silly IMO), this isn't some huge loophole for distributing copyrighted works without violating copyright. Encrypting a copyrighted work does not diminish the copyright of the work. It just makes it harder for anyone to prove that the file does indeed represent a copyrighted work.
From the article:
Even if a number (file) in question can be copyrighted under current legislation, it is practically impossible and unreasonable to state that every other representation of that particular number is copyrighted.
This quote in particular shows how little the authors understand copyright. Nobody copyrights a number (well... nobody who doesn't want said number to end up on t-shirts sold over the Internet that is!). You copyright a work, and then you can try and sue people who distribute (without rights) representations of that work (yeah yeah, fair use, derivative works, etc etc - some representations are protected). You can ROT-13 the work all day long, but at the end of the day you're still violating copyright.
This system might make it harder to prove that any particular block is a piece of a file that represents a copyrighted work... but then that seems more like the opposite of a "bright" net to me!
Attempts to analyze (and then throttle) Internet traffic reminds me of copy protection schemes. The schemes get more and more complicated (and costly) and at every turn the user gets more sophisticated in his or her attempts to get around the protection. ISPs would be wise to look at the music, movie, and in particular video game industries and realize that there are many, many more users who wish to use P2P software than there are ISP engineers who wish to throttle said users, and that it will always be a losing battle.
Personally, I think the granularity of the ISP payment schemes need to be increased. We pay for cell phone minutes in blocks of 100 or so (or by the minute, depending on your plan); we pay for electricity by the kWH, we pay for water by the gallon (or liter), and so on... why not pay for bandwidth by the Mb? In a perfect world (yeah, well, one can dream!) this would mean reduced costs for the average home Internet user, as most people aren't using anywhere close to what is available, and maybe slightly increased costs for people like me. But then at the same time throttling is no longer an issue. Of course in reality this is unlikely to happen any time soon; why charge responsible, realistic rates when you could charge a flat fee and then just block any traffic you don't like with increasingly expensive technology (and pass the cost on to your monthly subscribers, of course)?
ISPs, learn from the "War on Copyright Violation" - you won't win this battle; give it up and fix the underlying problem.
I wouldn't say that. The "terrorists" don't really get much out of this (whoever they are) - this is just going to create more identity theft problems for our European neighbors.
It's stupid, yes, and it's invariably going to create a whole host of headaches, and I have no idea why any EU official would possibly think this is a good thing... but this is typical government nonsense, not terrorism.
How does this myth stay alive? There were personal computers before Bill Gates: Macs. There were personal computers during the early rise of Microsoft: Macs, OS/2, Suns. There were personal computers throughout the Bill Gates glory days: Macs, Linux, (and Suns, kinda). And there are personal computers today. And there would have been personal computers without Bill Gates.
That's not to say his contributions are worthless, but let's not start patting him too hard on the back just because he's retiring. He used questionably ethical business practices to produce and sell products of questionable quality.
On the plus side, he's going to spend the rest of his life giving away enormous sums of money to charity - there's not much to dislike about that!
I'm surprised at the posts defending this girl - suggesting that airport security should be able to identify electrical components and distinguish art putty from plastic explosives at a glance. If they were trained to do that, they'd be the ones at MIT, not this girl! It sounds like they handled the situation correctly - asked her what the device was, and then detained her without needing to use violence when she didn't respond.
As to the girl herself - how dumb do you have to be? What would convince someone to question the arrival time of a flight while wearing electronics and handling putty? How about some common sense? I hesitate to say "she's lucky she's not dead", since that implies that deadly force would have been justified in this case, but at a certain point it's hard to have pity.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to paint a squirt gun black and walk into a kindergarten, then complain when the teachers can't distinguish my toy from the real deal.
I have to say, it took me a while to warm up to Office 2007, but now that I'm used to it I quite like it. I have a few caveats.. I don't like the need to right click to bring up text-formatting options within floating objects, nor do I like how the selected menu reverts to "Home" after you do certain things, but in general I find that I can work as fast as I can in Office 2003.
With that in mind, there are some very nice features in 2007 that previous versions didn't have. The equation thingy is improved, using masters/templates is a lot more natural and easy, color selections have been changed to some very pretty gradients (rather than the typical 128 standard colors or whatever) so that for style-blind people like myself, making pretty presentations and whatnot is a breeze. Styles feel more natural in Word, so that you can set up the style and then just concentrate on the content (kind of in the direction of Latex, though obviously not the same). I could list more, but I don't want to be accused of being a shill:) So in general, if you have the cash to spare or you have access to 2007 for free through a school or company (and you don't mind a few days getting used to the reorganization of things) it's an improvement over 2003.
Now, Open Office. Style support has always been better than Word, and still is better than 2007's support. Equations used to be *much* better than Word, but with the changes in 2007 I'd say they're about on par now. Open Office's PowerPoint equivalent (can't remember the name) doesn't have all the bells and whistles of 2007 (not even close), and it's object-drawing (like for flow-charts) isn't as easy to use, but it certainly gets the job done without any major flaws. The whole application is a LOT slower than 2007 (or 2003) Office... and this is a big drawback to me, as my computers aren't exactly state of the art. On the other hand it's free, I can install it on as many computers as I want, it has better file type support (with the exception of 2007's ???x files), and I don't feel a chill go down my spine every time I use it like I do when I see that Microsoft logo:)
After using 2007 for a couple weeks, however, (and this is a big thing when it comes to Mr. and Mrs. Sixpack) Open Office just feels clunky. I'm not sure if it's the slower response of the application, or the bland UI, or just in my head, but Open Office just feels like it's a step behind Office. However, when it comes down to it, I'm going to run Open Office at home because I don't intend on paying for Microsoft Office.
So, to conclude this long winded post, if two identical machines are running next to each other - one has Open Office installed, the other has Office 2007 installed - I'm going to use Office 2007. It's faster, slicker, and just plain prettier. Granted it takes some time to get used to, and not all of the changes have been for the better - but in my opinion most of them were. As they say, "you don't sell the steak, you sell the sizzle" - anybody can develop a word processor; it's not difficult. When it comes down to these two options though, Office 2007 has the sizzle. Is the sizzle worth my money? Nope - but that doesn't mean it's not still better than the competition.
Ok, Bill Gates, I've backed a Microsoft product for once in my life... where's my 30 pieces of silver?:)
Slashdot Mirror
Most self-regulating industries operate by requiring (by government and competitor pressure against non-conforming companies) a company to join the independent (but private) regulating agency. The agency can then regulate the members; members in violation are fined, threatened with expulsion (putting them out of government shield that is the regulation agency and all alone in front of Uncle Sam), etc.
Self-regulation does not mean "the corporation will do the right thing out of the goodness of its heart" - that's no regulation! Self-regulation might (I'd be skeptical, given the tiny number of major ISPs out there and the close cooperation between companies in the upper-tier ISP industry) be an option here... but what McDowell is suggesting is not self-regulation.
Of course what McDowell is literally saying is that engineers should be the policy-makers for ISPs... I would fully support legislation to that effect!
Simple, they'll just check the Colour of the bits being downloaded!
The interesting thing is that these sorts of preferential Web services can only be implemented at the second- and third-tier ISPs. First-tier ISPs have way too much data for deep-packet inspection (and when deep-packet inspection technology catches up they'll have even more data), nor do they have a direct connection between IP address and customer. This means that there will always be the possiblity of alternative Internet service providers peering with the first-tier providers if the second- and third-tier providers get overzealous with their filtering.
Also, we could see a move to fourth-tier providers. In fact, I know of one city at least whose utilities provider (electricity, water, etc is provided by one pseudo-public entity) offers a "metro-area" Ethernet network for home Internet access that piers with a local "big" (but still second-tier) provider; it's impractical for the third- or second-tier provider to which these fourth-tier ISPs peer to filter individual customers within the fourth-tier network.
So while things might look bleak - return of the walled garden Internet - we do in fact have options. First-tier providers aren't so picky about what flows through their tubes, and there are definite markets for fourth-tier provider startups. This is a bump in the road, but in the long run the nerds will prevail over the suits!
LCD panels are very sensitive to heat; if you check your laptop's manual it'll probably have a phrase in there about keeping the display out of direct sunlight for too long, due to heat concerns. The back of a panel full of LCDs is not the place to be dumping dozens of Watts of heat!
Just like MPAA movie ratings that do, in fact, work pretty well. The difference is that in order to distribute movies, theaters must join NATO (National Association of Theater Owners, but I'm sure the MPAA would like to have the same militance as the real NATO if they could get away with it!), and NATO agrees to enforce the MPAA rating age-verification.
I think the best thing would be for game manufacturers to set up their own voluntary national association, and agree to enforce ESRB ratings. Self-policing would keep the government from getting too censory, and would give parents a relatively simple way to enforce limits on their kids. Bad parents will still be bad parents and buy their kids the same games the kid would have bought illicitely otherwise, but you can't legislate parenting - no matter how hard New York tries.
Additional labels for video games seems like another toothless measure to do... what, exactly, that isn't already done by existing legislation? And a single state in a single country enforcing parental controls in a product that is distributed world-wide? Good luck with that.
If you want to crack down on video games, why not crack down on retailers that sell the games to underage consumers? Much like undercover cops in liquor stores watching to see if the cashier cards the 14 year old, it wouldn't be hard to enforce age verification in brick-and-mortar game retailers. Of course then you'd have to deal with taxpayers who find out that their dollars are going to support cops standing around in video game stores making sure Johnny doesn't spend his paper route money on the newest naughty game. Much easier to write broad, sweeping legislation that you don't have to worry about enforcing, since it simply cannot be enforced.
Ok. So don't use it. The fact is that many (most?) of us have one or two email accounts that we use for registration purposes. If our email was cracked then all of those registrations are toast. From what I've read, OpenID provides a way to replace this hack (email is not meant for personal identification... it's meant for communicating text efficiently) with a registration system that is as secure as the provider you choose to sign up with. There are providers that give you the same lack of security as email, there are providers that use certificates and fancy-schmancy secure communication, and there are providers that use hardware to verify who you are - you pick the level of security you want when you pick a provider.
And of course, if you really do want a seperate identity for each and every site for which you register, you're free to register multiple OpenID identities.
Basically, OpenID replaces an email address as a central identity. It provides all of the "ease" of using email addresses, but also provides a wealth of possible security improvements and, of course, single sign-on capabilities.
Actually USB is not "chainable" in the sense of daisy-chaining (a la SCSI). Those USB keyboard with additional ports are just bus-powered USB hubs with USB keyboards permanently attached to one of the hub inputs.
You're still right, of course, this is one way around the problem of only two USB ports, if not particularly desirable. Bus-powered hubs can't support the same power needs as the original hub for obvious reasons. The point is that for a "cloud" (ugh) device, a second USB host to provide two more ports would make this thing great for webcam/microphone use - a cheap connectivity device for Skype, MSN, etc.
Basic electronics to the rescue! Power usage depends on the load (the CherryPal) not the source (the power supply)*. The source can supply up to 10 W... the load will draw up to 2 W so there shouldn't be any problem.
*This is because P = I * V (power equals current times voltage) and current draw is a function of the load. The voltage is constant, therefore the power is also a function of the load. All power supplies work like this; having a PSU that can supply 1000 W does not mean it is supplying 1000 W. After all, what if nothing was plugged in? It's the load that matters here.
I advocate mid-term votes on each of your congresscritters, with ballots such as that below (for each):
I think congressperson X:
Get the people really involved!
I agree: harassing personalized genomics companies? a medical community that is fiercely resistant to change? I believe the issue in California was privacy; lawmakers wanted to require that genetic results be sent to a patient's doctor, to provide a safeguard against fraud. While (maybe) controversial, probably not so broadly accepted as a Bad Thing to warrant this summary.
Unless you're posting in the comments, Slashdot is not your pulpit!
The question is really "what defines the Web?". If the Web is just any system of transport and file protocols over the Internet that allows for easy indexing and cross-server linking, then sure, what we have today is still the Web. Personally, I'd like to see a major change in the Web - forget HTML, forget CSS, I want a real client-server approach. I think that so long as the protocols are easy to use (or at least scalable - the average 14 year old OMGPONIES girl needs to be able to throw together a site, but not at the expense of "Enterprise" sites) and it supports cross-server linking and indexing, then the average person will still identify it as the Web.
From an abstract viewpoint, how different is the modern Web from a bunch of remote X11 clients that can link to one another - XHTML, PHP, Javascript make a complex programming system with a myriad of frameworks, tools, and interfaces - much like the state of X11 and wrapping toolkits on the desktop! It's time to stop extending Tim Berners-Lee's first attempt at the Web; now that we know what we want and where the Web is going, let's come up with some real tools to do it and dump the HTML/Javascript mess.
Maybe you should stop programming in raves! Turn off the strobe lights - my light bulbs don't refresh!
As is said often on Slashdot (and bears repeating), CS is not software engineering and there are many opportunities in the field that are not assembly-line-programming jobs.
What comes to mind for me, however, is that if you have a problem with programming after going through 4 years of computer science education, maybe it's not the programming in X, Y, or Z language that you don't like, but the whole idea of thinking in processes, algorithms, computational theory, etc. If you don't like coding in C++ you may still enjoy a job in CS... but if you don't like coding in C++ because you don't like thinking about and designing processes and algorithms then maybe computer science as a field isn't for you. Not every CS job will involve writing the boring "phone book" applications you did in school... but every CS job will involve the theory behind those applications, at some level of abstraction.
Banks make money by borrowing your money (at a low interest rate) and loaning it out to someone else (at a higher interest rate). If your identity is stolen in a big way, then any fees you pay to reverse bad transactions or identity-protection services you take part in are going to be outweighed by the fact that your money is quickly dissapearing (and thus no longer available to be loaned out by the bank).
It's in the best interest of the bank to keep your money in their vault; identity theft typically results in the exact opposite.
Identity theft (at the scale we see it now) is relatively young, and so it's understandable that banks and credit unions don't really have a developed, effective strategy to protect the customer... but as the parent says, given the shroud of secrecy that surrounds much of the banking and credit industries, a little transparency might go a long way to illuminate danger areas, so we don't have to rely on proof-by-egg-on-face as in TFA.
People will purchase media when obtaining that media is less costly than "pirating" it. You've got three ways to make that happen:
The **AA is happy to keep pounding away at #2, suing en masse, requesting ridiculous measures like those suggested in TFA... but there must be somebody at the headquarters whose pondering #3.
Of course maybe it's just that anybody with a sense for business has better things to do than work for the **AA.
"First we create a perfect sphere, then we count the number of atoms exactly - and we get a kilogram standard!"
"Alright... so how big do we make this sphere?"
"Oh you know.. roughly 9 cm, give or take."
If these things could get cleared up, I wouldn't mind seeing a Flash Web... where Flash isn't a box in the center of an HTML page, but the basic protocol itself (like what Curl claims to be).
Of course given the cludginess of most Flash apps, maybe I'm just being a masochist here!
You realize, of course, that "surfing" is shorthand for "downloading and then rendering as a web page"? The Web is just one system of protocols and file formats that is available on the Internet - who's to say it should be the only one?
I think it is the exact same kettle of fish. I want to access server A by protocol 1. You wish to access server B by protocol 2. Should mine be throttled so yours can go faster? Should it depend on the servers we want to access ("tiered" Internet)? Should it depend on the protocols we're using (packet-inspection, throttling)? Should it depend on how much we pay (current subscription-based service)? This question is what we call "net neutrality" - how do we get the most people online in a way that is amenable to everything those people want to do - being as "fair" as possible.
From the article:
This quote in particular shows how little the authors understand copyright. Nobody copyrights a number (well... nobody who doesn't want said number to end up on t-shirts sold over the Internet that is!). You copyright a work, and then you can try and sue people who distribute (without rights) representations of that work (yeah yeah, fair use, derivative works, etc etc - some representations are protected). You can ROT-13 the work all day long, but at the end of the day you're still violating copyright.
This system might make it harder to prove that any particular block is a piece of a file that represents a copyrighted work... but then that seems more like the opposite of a "bright" net to me!
Attempts to analyze (and then throttle) Internet traffic reminds me of copy protection schemes. The schemes get more and more complicated (and costly) and at every turn the user gets more sophisticated in his or her attempts to get around the protection. ISPs would be wise to look at the music, movie, and in particular video game industries and realize that there are many, many more users who wish to use P2P software than there are ISP engineers who wish to throttle said users, and that it will always be a losing battle.
Personally, I think the granularity of the ISP payment schemes need to be increased. We pay for cell phone minutes in blocks of 100 or so (or by the minute, depending on your plan); we pay for electricity by the kWH, we pay for water by the gallon (or liter), and so on... why not pay for bandwidth by the Mb? In a perfect world (yeah, well, one can dream!) this would mean reduced costs for the average home Internet user, as most people aren't using anywhere close to what is available, and maybe slightly increased costs for people like me. But then at the same time throttling is no longer an issue. Of course in reality this is unlikely to happen any time soon; why charge responsible, realistic rates when you could charge a flat fee and then just block any traffic you don't like with increasingly expensive technology (and pass the cost on to your monthly subscribers, of course)?
ISPs, learn from the "War on Copyright Violation" - you won't win this battle; give it up and fix the underlying problem.
I wouldn't say that. The "terrorists" don't really get much out of this (whoever they are) - this is just going to create more identity theft problems for our European neighbors.
It's stupid, yes, and it's invariably going to create a whole host of headaches, and I have no idea why any EU official would possibly think this is a good thing... but this is typical government nonsense, not terrorism.
How does this myth stay alive? There were personal computers before Bill Gates: Macs. There were personal computers during the early rise of Microsoft: Macs, OS/2, Suns. There were personal computers throughout the Bill Gates glory days: Macs, Linux, (and Suns, kinda). And there are personal computers today. And there would have been personal computers without Bill Gates.
That's not to say his contributions are worthless, but let's not start patting him too hard on the back just because he's retiring. He used questionably ethical business practices to produce and sell products of questionable quality.
On the plus side, he's going to spend the rest of his life giving away enormous sums of money to charity - there's not much to dislike about that!
I'm surprised at the posts defending this girl - suggesting that airport security should be able to identify electrical components and distinguish art putty from plastic explosives at a glance. If they were trained to do that, they'd be the ones at MIT, not this girl! It sounds like they handled the situation correctly - asked her what the device was, and then detained her without needing to use violence when she didn't respond.
As to the girl herself - how dumb do you have to be? What would convince someone to question the arrival time of a flight while wearing electronics and handling putty? How about some common sense? I hesitate to say "she's lucky she's not dead", since that implies that deadly force would have been justified in this case, but at a certain point it's hard to have pity.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to paint a squirt gun black and walk into a kindergarten, then complain when the teachers can't distinguish my toy from the real deal.
I have to say, it took me a while to warm up to Office 2007, but now that I'm used to it I quite like it. I have a few caveats.. I don't like the need to right click to bring up text-formatting options within floating objects, nor do I like how the selected menu reverts to "Home" after you do certain things, but in general I find that I can work as fast as I can in Office 2003.
:) So in general, if you have the cash to spare or you have access to 2007 for free through a school or company (and you don't mind a few days getting used to the reorganization of things) it's an improvement over 2003.
:)
:)
With that in mind, there are some very nice features in 2007 that previous versions didn't have. The equation thingy is improved, using masters/templates is a lot more natural and easy, color selections have been changed to some very pretty gradients (rather than the typical 128 standard colors or whatever) so that for style-blind people like myself, making pretty presentations and whatnot is a breeze. Styles feel more natural in Word, so that you can set up the style and then just concentrate on the content (kind of in the direction of Latex, though obviously not the same). I could list more, but I don't want to be accused of being a shill
Now, Open Office. Style support has always been better than Word, and still is better than 2007's support. Equations used to be *much* better than Word, but with the changes in 2007 I'd say they're about on par now. Open Office's PowerPoint equivalent (can't remember the name) doesn't have all the bells and whistles of 2007 (not even close), and it's object-drawing (like for flow-charts) isn't as easy to use, but it certainly gets the job done without any major flaws. The whole application is a LOT slower than 2007 (or 2003) Office... and this is a big drawback to me, as my computers aren't exactly state of the art. On the other hand it's free, I can install it on as many computers as I want, it has better file type support (with the exception of 2007's ???x files), and I don't feel a chill go down my spine every time I use it like I do when I see that Microsoft logo
After using 2007 for a couple weeks, however, (and this is a big thing when it comes to Mr. and Mrs. Sixpack) Open Office just feels clunky. I'm not sure if it's the slower response of the application, or the bland UI, or just in my head, but Open Office just feels like it's a step behind Office. However, when it comes down to it, I'm going to run Open Office at home because I don't intend on paying for Microsoft Office.
So, to conclude this long winded post, if two identical machines are running next to each other - one has Open Office installed, the other has Office 2007 installed - I'm going to use Office 2007. It's faster, slicker, and just plain prettier. Granted it takes some time to get used to, and not all of the changes have been for the better - but in my opinion most of them were. As they say, "you don't sell the steak, you sell the sizzle" - anybody can develop a word processor; it's not difficult. When it comes down to these two options though, Office 2007 has the sizzle. Is the sizzle worth my money? Nope - but that doesn't mean it's not still better than the competition.
Ok, Bill Gates, I've backed a Microsoft product for once in my life... where's my 30 pieces of silver?