So, is anyone looking into obsoleting DNS completely? It seems to me that a DHT (distributed hash table) based system combined with cryptographic signatures of name records could completely replace DNS with the added benefits that come from decentralization.
But I haven't thought about it too hard, has anyone else?
Why wasn't Microsoft first off the block with public AJAX webmail too?
Competition.
Or the lack of it.
Until Gmail came along and sexed up the rather stagnant freemail market, MS was happy to keep doing the bare minimum to keep going. See mozilla vs internet-explorer for a similar situation.
How about the RAZR? You can just ignore the features you don't use.
I think the camera is mandatory on the razr. For my needs (if I told you, I would have to kill you) there must be no camera, and simply breaking the camera is not enough to pass muster.
o) No camera o) No games o) No Java o) No blue-tooth/wi-fi o) Just a really big phonebook + clock o) Really, really, small o) Really, really tough (titanium alloy? liquid metal?) o) Lots of stand-by time, lots of talk-time o) Fast (and quiet) power on/off times o) GSM (my current carrier is T-Mobile)
When he picked it up and started to play his first comment was, "Niiiiiiiice bow!"
Well of course it was a nice bow. The Chinese have been bowing for millenia, I expect they've got the whole thing down pat. Now, if he had said, "nice handshake!" That would be something else.
1. The "taskbar". Before Windows 95 there was a concept of a window being "iconized", where the "icon" vanished if the window was open. It appears that Microsoft first made an "icon" that stayed there even if the window was open.
Motif had an Iconbox. You could put it anywhere on your screen too, not just attached to the side of it. Twm had the IconManager which was similar.
2. Also in the taskbar, the realazation that words are more important than icons, and shrinking the icon to a more appropriate 16x16 size and making the text visible.
The Twm IconManager was primarily (possibly only) a bunch of text-icons.
Both of these predated Win95 by many years, google usenet for twm "icon manager" and you will mention of it going back to at least 1988. Similarly searching for mwm "icon box" will go back to at least 1989.
This is correct. I hope you are honest with your customers. I have never had a vendor admit that such photo-id checks were in their best interest - instead they always feed me the line about how it is for my security, which is completely bogus since I am not liable for fraudulent use of my card - and if I were actually a fraudster, then getting caught is definitely not in my best interest either.
However, you should be aware that you are violating your company's merchant agreement with VISA/MC and if you piss off someone who decides to complain to his card issuer, there is a chance that your company's merchant agreement will be cancelled (it will probably require a few such complaints to get that far). It is a violation to require photo-id in order to accept VISA or MC. Technically it is OK to merely ask for photo-id, but requiring it is not ok. This presumes that there is no reason to consider the transaction as suspicious.
Why sign your credit card at all when no-one even LOOKS at the signature
VISA/MC merchant requirements are that it does not matter what the signature looks like, if the card is signed, then they are to accept it as valid unless there are other extenuating circumstances. They do this because VISA/MC wish to make using their cards as easy as using cash. Extra security measures like you describe reduce the utility of the cards and risk pushing people back to using cash.
YOU are liable for fraudulent use of the card?
Federal law says that you are not liable for more than $50 of fraudulent charges and even that first $50 is almost universally waived by the issuing banks.
The HD thing is what kills mythtv for me. There aren't any cable/satellite capable HD=capture cards that I'm aware of. There's just the one OTA (over-the-air) card that may (will?) die when the FCC gets its broadcast flag.... if anyone knows differently I'm all ears...
There are couple of cable (QAM256) capable cards with recent support in Linux and Myth. Here's a thread on the topic.
One of the best TV shows to come out of Canada recently was ReGenesis (available from better bittorrent sites everywhere).
The first season had lots of stuff going on that seems to have foreshadowed recent developments in real life - the recovery of a live sample of this same flu virus, from a victim in the permafrost plays a key role in the story. An outbreak or two of Marburg Hemmoragic Fever was also major plot device.
That's nice and all, but really has nothing to say about the original point that the right of assembly means nothing if it is only about physical proximity and not about communication of information during the congregation.
I'll give you that, but they aren't saying you cant assamble thay are saying you can't assamble and discuss breaking copyrights, I don't think that violates Article 20 IMHO
Your rationalization fails the laugh test. If that kind of arbitrary limit on assembly were allowed then there would be no teeth to the article at all. For example:
You can assemble, you just can't assemble and discuss civil rights abuses
You can assemble, you just can't assemble and discuss government corruption
You can assemble, you just can't assemble and discuss drug legalization
You can assemble, you just can't assemble and discuss banned books
You can assemble, you just can't assemble and discuss corporate malefeasance
You can assemble, you just can't assemble and discuss protest marchs
You can assemble, you just can't assemble and discuss gay marriage
You can assemble, you just can't assemble and discuss forming a new political party
before the national registry, there was a law requiring all telemarketing firms to send out written copies of their do-not-call policies to consumers upon request. Any individual violations of the request to send written copies of the DNC policy was something you could sue for in small claims court. Most telemarketers had never heard of this rule, and most were never trained about it.
Sounds like a fable to me. I'm a privacy freak and I never heard bupkiss about such a law (federal, state?) You got an authoritative source to back up this claim?
You might also win points with your boss if you include a clause saying that you won't sell the same code or solution to a direct competitor for X months after termination of the contract. It's not as restrictive as a standard non-compete agreement, but it will give your current employer a lot of peace of mind (which will make them like you more).
Business is war. Do not volunteer this. Let your boss ask for it, but do not bring it up yourself. It could become a significant wedge to make your ownership of the code useless because the definition of a competitor can be twisted to cover almost anyone.
I think those other competing formats failed for other reasons. Mainly because people didn't care, or a better or acceptable existing format was available. People see movies at theatres all the time, and are used to high resolution. As HD TVs become affordable, I think people are going to really want a high resolution DVD format to make use of those sets.
As an inverterate HDTV freak, I disagree. I believe that the hdtv owning joe-sixpack is not going to be hugely interested in high-def DVDs because current DVDs, played on a DVI/HDMI scaling player are surprisingly good. In fact, a good quality DVD scaled up can easily best a poor HDTV transfer.
Based on commentary from sites like avsforum, where there is a lot of BS but insiders are also known to frequent, I believe that hollywood's big focus on HD-BLU-DVD is copy prevention. The promise of high quality video is the carrot, but they don't care if the carrot is half rotten. The major studios have a rotten track record when it comes to image quality on DVD - even big name releases are at risk for a poor job - for example Spiderman's initial DVD release was average to poor, only the 'superbit' re-release made up for it. But even the 'superbit' brand is no promise of high quality - Spiderman 2 on superbit is merely somewhat better than average, Panic Room in superbit was another average to poor transfer and the various musical or non-movie superbits (Tommy, Cirque du Soleil, etc) are quite poor.
Another place to look for terrible quality control is TV releases. TV on DVD is booming, but the studios rarely take any care with the technical details. Way too many TV shows are released in their syndicated (cut) form rather than the original full-length version. Transfer quality is often an after-thought, even on brand new shows (see season 1 of Las Vegas, a show that is primarily about eye-candy with plot a distant second, it looks incredible in broadcast HDTV, but the DVDs feature a soft transfer with dull, muted colors).
I fully expect to see TV on HD-BLU-DVD being over-compressed and just as poorly cared for as current TV on DVD.
There are other factors that will tend to slow adoption - the DVD player market has already peaked, the market is saturated, everybody who might want one already owns one. This will limit the chances for manufacturers to substitute DVD+HD-BLU-DVD players for regular DVD players in a 'stealth' approach to getting the functionality out there (the PS3 being the best counter-example of a 'stealth' deployment that will probably work).
And, while DVD uptake has been the fastest of any consumer eletronics product so far, I think that the HD-BLU-DVD will have a much tougher battle ahead because it only offers (potential) improved picture quality. The move from VHS to DVD brought with it random-access, no-rewind, smaller physical size, physical durability (playing a DVD does not degrade it like VHS does). It also co-incided with a huge reduction in movie pricing - VHS (even to this day in some cases) suffers from 'rental pricing' where initial releases had retail prices of about $100 - making VHS collecting price prohibitive. Since DVDs are already free of rental pricing, HD-BLU-DVD won't be able to leverage that kind of price reduction. It would be great if the studios decided that all HD-BLU-DVDs would retail for $5 instead of $20, but I doubt that will happen.
So, with the market already saturated with DVDs and DVDs being "good enough," for the vast majority of the consumer base (remember HDTV penetration is less than 10% anyway) plus the confusion of BLU vs HD, I think we will see major product stagnation - on the order DVD-A vs SACD vs mp3.
I also think such stagnation will be a good thing. I used to think otherwise, but I feel that such stagnation will be seen, in part, as a market condemnation of over-blown copy prevention. But, as an HDTV freak, such a delay will bum me out too.
Given his odd word choice through the post, I'm thinking the author is at least native mainland chinese, probably immigrated to the US. Within that context, I think his post is an attempt to explain Chinese thought on China's system and not the way the world in general should be.
It is interesting to compare the part about some people just being happy with the way things are and not wanting to rock the boat. I read somewhere (probably here) recently that 70-80% of the colonial population were not interested in breaking with the British. It was only the 'agitators' who wanted to form a new country. That such a small proportion of the population could drag the rest along into such a huge change in direction is interesting, and probably terrifying to the chinese goverment.
many protesters seem to think it is their right to stop me from doing what i want to do becuase they disagree with me.
It has nothing to do with whether you agree or disagree with them. It has to do with getting noticed.
The rationale is that by disrupting people's everyday routines, the message is more likely to get heard. Some will say that getting the message heard by annoyed people is counter-productive. Some will say that getting it heard at all is more important because most people can distinguish the difference between the message and the medium.
they are a response to protesters who block doors, sidewalks and generally disrupt other peoples daily routines
That's the price we pay for the use of public resources. Who is to say that obnoxious protestors use of those public resources in order to get their point-of-view across to the public in general is any less valid than your use of those public resources to go about your own personal business?
Cue the pedants who claim "It's not about open or proprietary, people should pick the best tool for the job..."
Guys who claim that are wrong. They don't see the big picture and are ignoring secondary effects. Free software is all about "standing on the shoulders of giants." When you spend money on Free Software, you guarantee that the work done with that money is available for everyone to make use of. When you spend money on Proprietary Software, you guarantee that the work done with that money is only available to that one company which owns the software. They may make good use of it, but they are more likely to mismanage it to maximize their gains.
So, it is quite likely that paying for the second, or third "best tool for the job" - as long as it is Free - is a better long term course than paying for the best tool that is also proprietary. It is kind of like Ecclesiastes 11.1 -Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days. When you cast thy bread on the proprietary software maker, your chances of it coming back to you are a lot smaller.
Usability reports I remember reading a few months ago indicated that on an interactive medium like the web, users get "bored" if they don't have to interact with a page for too long. If you don't provide regular user-interaction (eg, by making them click for the next page) they get fractious and are more likely to drop out of reading the article.
Seems to me that occasionally pressing the page-down key or clicking in the scroll-bar should provide the same level of "interactivity" as clicking on "next page" at the same frequency.
At least some websites are smart - they provide two ways to view the story, one for stupids who have to click something to stay interested and a second "print" mode for people who can actually focus on the content and want to see it all at once, even if they have no intention of actually printing it.
Slashdot Mirror
So, is anyone looking into obsoleting DNS completely?
It seems to me that a DHT (distributed hash table) based system combined with cryptographic signatures of name records could completely replace DNS with the added benefits that come from decentralization.
But I haven't thought about it too hard, has anyone else?
Why wasn't Microsoft first off the block with public AJAX webmail too?
Competition.
Or the lack of it.
Until Gmail came along and sexed up the rather stagnant freemail market, MS was happy to keep doing the bare minimum to keep going. See mozilla vs internet-explorer for a similar situation.
What's Phillipine GNP?
Or, more importantly, what's the Philippine GNP?
How about the RAZR? You can just ignore the features you don't use.
I think the camera is mandatory on the razr. For my needs (if I told you, I would have to kill you) there must be no camera, and simply breaking the camera is not enough to pass muster.
Can anyone recommend a high-quality DUMB phone?
These are features I'm looking for:
o) No camera
o) No games
o) No Java
o) No blue-tooth/wi-fi
o) Just a really big phonebook + clock
o) Really, really, small
o) Really, really tough (titanium alloy? liquid metal?)
o) Lots of stand-by time, lots of talk-time
o) Fast (and quiet) power on/off times
o) GSM (my current carrier is T-Mobile)
When he picked it up and started to play his first comment was, "Niiiiiiiice bow!"
Well of course it was a nice bow. The Chinese have been bowing for millenia, I expect they've got the whole thing down pat. Now, if he had said, "nice handshake!" That would be something else.
1. The "taskbar". Before Windows 95 there was a concept of a window being "iconized", where the "icon" vanished if the window was open. It appears that Microsoft first made an "icon" that stayed there even if the window was open.
Motif had an Iconbox. You could put it anywhere on your screen too, not just attached to the side of it. Twm had the IconManager which was similar.
2. Also in the taskbar, the realazation that words are more important than icons, and shrinking the icon to a more appropriate 16x16 size and making the text visible.
The Twm IconManager was primarily (possibly only) a bunch of text-icons.
Both of these predated Win95 by many years, google usenet for twm "icon manager" and you will mention of it going back to at least 1988. Similarly searching for mwm "icon box" will go back to at least 1989.
It provides _ME_ with security.
This is correct. I hope you are honest with your customers. I have never had a vendor admit that such photo-id checks were in their best interest - instead they always feed me the line about how it is for my security, which is completely bogus since I am not liable for fraudulent use of my card - and if I were actually a fraudster, then getting caught is definitely not in my best interest either.
However, you should be aware that you are violating your company's merchant agreement with VISA/MC and if you piss off someone who decides to complain to his card issuer, there is a chance that your company's merchant agreement will be cancelled (it will probably require a few such complaints to get that far). It is a violation to require photo-id in order to accept VISA or MC. Technically it is OK to merely ask for photo-id, but requiring it is not ok. This presumes that there is no reason to consider the transaction as suspicious.
Why sign your credit card at all when no-one even LOOKS at the signature
VISA/MC merchant requirements are that it does not matter what the signature looks like, if the card is signed, then they are to accept it as valid unless there are other extenuating circumstances. They do this because VISA/MC wish to make using their cards as easy as using cash. Extra security measures like you describe reduce the utility of the cards and risk pushing people back to using cash.
YOU are liable for fraudulent use of the card?
Federal law says that you are not liable for more than $50 of fraudulent charges and even that first $50 is almost universally waived by the issuing banks.
The HD thing is what kills mythtv for me. There aren't any cable/satellite capable HD=capture cards that I'm aware of. There's just the one OTA (over-the-air) card that may (will?) die when the FCC gets its broadcast flag. ... if anyone knows differently I'm all ears...
There are couple of cable (QAM256) capable cards with recent support in Linux and Myth.
Here's a thread on the topic.
One of the best TV shows to come out of Canada recently was ReGenesis (available from better bittorrent sites everywhere).
The first season had lots of stuff going on that seems to have foreshadowed recent developments in real life - the recovery of a live sample of this same flu virus, from a victim in the permafrost plays a key role in the story. An outbreak or two of Marburg Hemmoragic Fever was also major plot device.
That's nice and all, but really has nothing to say about the original point that the right of assembly means nothing if it is only about physical proximity and not about communication of information during the congregation.
Do you remember where all this neo-copyright bullshit started? Do you remember what corporations lobbied the EU to pass this legislation?
... yet.
Here's a hint -- he did not say, "I am glad to be an American mega-corporation."
He glad that as an American, at least we still have a semblence of governmental sanity that such laws have not been sucessfully passed
I'll give you that, but they aren't saying you cant assamble thay are saying you can't assamble and discuss breaking copyrights, I don't think that violates Article 20 IMHO
Your rationalization fails the laugh test. If that kind of arbitrary limit on assembly were allowed then there would be no teeth to the article at all. For example:
You can assemble, you just can't assemble and discuss civil rights abuses
You can assemble, you just can't assemble and discuss government corruption
You can assemble, you just can't assemble and discuss drug legalization
You can assemble, you just can't assemble and discuss banned books
You can assemble, you just can't assemble and discuss corporate malefeasance
You can assemble, you just can't assemble and discuss protest marchs
You can assemble, you just can't assemble and discuss gay marriage
You can assemble, you just can't assemble and discuss forming a new political party
In other news, Axe body spray doesn't get you laid, and Red Bull doesn't give you wings.
But Herbal Esssence Shampoo does give hot chicks a totally organic experience!
before the national registry, there was a law requiring all telemarketing firms to send out written copies of their do-not-call policies to consumers upon request. Any individual violations of the request to send written copies of the DNC policy was something you could sue for in small claims court. Most telemarketers had never heard of this rule, and most were never trained about it.
Sounds like a fable to me. I'm a privacy freak and I never heard bupkiss about such a law (federal, state?) You got an authoritative source to back up this claim?
You might also win points with your boss if you include a clause saying that you won't sell the same code or solution to a direct competitor for X months after termination of the contract. It's not as restrictive as a standard non-compete agreement, but it will give your current employer a lot of peace of mind (which will make them like you more).
Business is war. Do not volunteer this. Let your boss ask for it, but do not bring it up yourself. It could become a significant wedge to make your ownership of the code useless because the definition of a competitor can be twisted to cover almost anyone.
"Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer."
Sun Tzu (probably maybe)
Michael Coreleone: "There are many things my father taught me here in this room.
He taught me: keep your friends close, but your enemies closer."
Sun Tzu: "Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories."
People tend to forget the "know they self" part, despite it being the most important part.
I think those other competing formats failed for other reasons. Mainly because people didn't care, or a better or acceptable existing format was available. People see movies at theatres all the time, and are used to high resolution. As HD TVs become affordable, I think people are going to really want a high resolution DVD format to make use of those sets.
As an inverterate HDTV freak, I disagree. I believe that the hdtv owning joe-sixpack is not going to be hugely interested in high-def DVDs because current DVDs, played on a DVI/HDMI scaling player are surprisingly good. In fact, a good quality DVD scaled up can easily best a poor HDTV transfer.
Based on commentary from sites like avsforum, where there is a lot of BS but insiders are also known to frequent, I believe that hollywood's big focus on HD-BLU-DVD is copy prevention. The promise of high quality video is the carrot, but they don't care if the carrot is half rotten. The major studios have a rotten track record when it comes to image quality on DVD - even big name releases are at risk for a poor job - for example Spiderman's initial DVD release was average to poor, only the 'superbit' re-release made up for it. But even the 'superbit' brand is no promise of high quality - Spiderman 2 on superbit is merely somewhat better than average, Panic Room in superbit was another average to poor transfer and the various musical or non-movie superbits (Tommy, Cirque du Soleil, etc) are quite poor.
Another place to look for terrible quality control is TV releases. TV on DVD is booming, but the studios rarely take any care with the technical details. Way too many TV shows are released in their syndicated (cut) form rather than the original full-length version. Transfer quality is often an after-thought, even on brand new shows (see season 1 of Las Vegas, a show that is primarily about eye-candy with plot a distant second, it looks incredible in broadcast HDTV, but the DVDs feature a soft transfer with dull, muted colors).
I fully expect to see TV on HD-BLU-DVD being over-compressed and just as poorly cared for as current TV on DVD.
There are other factors that will tend to slow adoption - the DVD player market has already peaked, the market is saturated, everybody who might want one already owns one. This will limit the chances for manufacturers to substitute DVD+HD-BLU-DVD players for regular DVD players in a 'stealth' approach to getting the functionality out there (the PS3 being the best counter-example of a 'stealth' deployment that will probably work).
And, while DVD uptake has been the fastest of any consumer eletronics product so far, I think that the HD-BLU-DVD will have a much tougher battle ahead because it only offers (potential) improved picture quality. The move from VHS to DVD brought with it random-access, no-rewind, smaller physical size, physical durability (playing a DVD does not degrade it like VHS does). It also co-incided with a huge reduction in movie pricing - VHS (even to this day in some cases) suffers from 'rental pricing' where initial releases had retail prices of about $100 - making VHS collecting price prohibitive. Since DVDs are already free of rental pricing, HD-BLU-DVD won't be able to leverage that kind of price reduction. It would be great if the studios decided that all HD-BLU-DVDs would retail for $5 instead of $20, but I doubt that will happen.
So, with the market already saturated with DVDs and DVDs being "good enough," for the vast majority of the consumer base (remember HDTV penetration is less than 10% anyway) plus the confusion of BLU vs HD, I think we will see major product stagnation - on the order DVD-A vs SACD vs mp3.
I also think such stagnation will be a good thing. I used to think otherwise, but I feel that such stagnation will be seen, in part, as a market condemnation of over-blown copy prevention. But, as an HDTV freak, such a delay will bum me out too.
No, I don't understand.
Given his odd word choice through the post, I'm thinking the author is at least native mainland chinese, probably immigrated to the US. Within that context, I think his post is an attempt to explain Chinese thought on China's system and not the way the world in general should be.
It is interesting to compare the part about some people just being happy with the way things are and not wanting to rock the boat. I read somewhere (probably here) recently that 70-80% of the colonial population were not interested in breaking with the British. It was only the 'agitators' who wanted to form a new country. That such a small proportion of the population could drag the rest along into such a huge change in direction is interesting, and probably terrifying to the chinese goverment.
many protesters seem to think it is their right to stop me from doing what i want to do becuase they disagree with me.
It has nothing to do with whether you agree or disagree with them. It has to do with getting noticed.
The rationale is that by disrupting people's everyday routines, the message is more likely to get heard. Some will say that getting the message heard by annoyed people is counter-productive. Some will say that getting it heard at all is more important because most people can distinguish the difference between the message and the medium.
they are a response to protesters who block doors, sidewalks and generally disrupt other peoples daily routines
That's the price we pay for the use of public resources. Who is to say that obnoxious protestors use of those public resources in order to get their point-of-view across to the public in general is any less valid than your use of those public resources to go about your own personal business?
Better than Firefox? I went there using the latest version and I still got a pop-up.
I went there with 1.0.6 with adblock and flashblock and got no ads and no popups.
Cue the pedants who claim "It's not about open or proprietary, people should pick the best tool for the job..."
Guys who claim that are wrong. They don't see the big picture and are ignoring secondary effects. Free software is all about "standing on the shoulders of giants." When you spend money on Free Software, you guarantee that the work done with that money is available for everyone to make use of. When you spend money on Proprietary Software, you guarantee that the work done with that money is only available to that one company which owns the software. They may make good use of it, but they are more likely to mismanage it to maximize their gains.
So, it is quite likely that paying for the second, or third "best tool for the job" - as long as it is Free - is a better long term course than paying for the best tool that is also proprietary. It is kind of like Ecclesiastes 11.1 - Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days. When you cast thy bread on the proprietary software maker, your chances of it coming back to you are a lot smaller.
No he means PIE. Try to learn what the hell you're actually talking about before you correct people.
Awww, give the guy a break. He's only the Pi-Guy after all, not the PIE-Guy or even the PIC-Guy, so it is clearly not his domain of expertise.
Usability reports I remember reading a few months ago indicated that on an interactive medium like the web, users get "bored" if they don't have to interact with a page for too long. If you don't provide regular user-interaction (eg, by making them click for the next page) they get fractious and are more likely to drop out of reading the article.
Seems to me that occasionally pressing the page-down key or clicking in the scroll-bar should provide the same level of "interactivity" as clicking on "next page" at the same frequency.
At least some websites are smart - they provide two ways to view the story, one for stupids who have to click something to stay interested and a second "print" mode for people who can actually focus on the content and want to see it all at once, even if they have no intention of actually printing it.