Of course it's important to be 'accessible', but beyond that, make it _useful_. An exceptionally bad design, for example, is the New Jersey Transit homepage. I can't see a complete line schedule for the trains, and all of the bus schedules are scanned PDFs (meaning I can't text search anything).
A slightly better example is the Texas state homepage. There's lots of information available about laws and whatnot, but unfortunately none of it is searchable. On the state legislation page there is (as far as I can tell) a complete legislation listing, but none of it has been indexed.
If I could make one suggestion, it would be this: Include a search capability.
I have less and less faith that people like those behind SDMI, the DMCA, Library/School filtering, etc. can loose. Yes, thus far people with reasonable, intelligent, knowledgeable positions have been able to hold all that money in check, but I just don't see how that situation can continue. What isn't technically possible _will_ be legislated into effect by people with the resources and desire to see it so.
What those who rose to the SDMI challenge did, if I'm to understand the implications of the end to the DMCA commentary period correctly, is now a felony. It is my understanding that even the Princeton team, a legitimate academic research effort, put themselves at risk of ending their careers by participating in this overtly sanctioned exercise in reverse engineering.
If the mind-blowing amount of money behing initiatives like SDMI can't create a technical solution, you can guarantee that it will realign to bring about a legislative solution, and once that's done, that money will move toward financing enforcement. The truly sad part is that we're already moving into the enforcement phase, and neither of the two possible next presidents have displayed any willingness to curb the trend. As the subject says, SDMI will win, not because of its technical superiority, but because there's too much money working to guarantee that it does.
I've been a cynic for a long time, but I've never seen so much to be cynical about as I have in the past year on the internet.
Were they in any way associated with the Gore campaign? I think it's an important point, as I have documentation of Bush supporters claiming to have beaten people up for being black.
I seem to be alone in not having heard the term "Hellmouth" until Katz first used it to describe the metaphysical source of the post-Littleton emails. Is this a pop-culture reference that I've missed?
This entire screed reads like a glossy brochure. I can't be the only technical person out here who has earned (through personal pain and toil) to immediately distrust a supposedly technical document that contains the words "Something wonderful is coming."
Not true. Do whois on 'microsoft' and you get all of the microsoft (.net.org etc.) in addition to these listed. A query against the whois database returns all matching strings: Someone has a nameserver registered as MICROSOFT.COM.IS.SECRETLY.RUN.BY.ILLUMINATI.TERROR ISTS.NET, that's all. I could register MICROSOFT.COM.IS.POOPY.JURNEY.NET tomorrow if I wanted. Not a hack, just good clean fun.
Since this bill provides no funding to purchase the software, I'm curious to know what the delta between that cost and the lost funding would be. If the library has the option of spending a roughly equal amount of money for either censoware or internet access (the former would get the latter paid for through funding, the latter would eliminate the need for the former), one would hope that there would be a relatively large number making the right choice. Hell, just giving them the choice in the first place would be relatively refreshing.
Ping is supposed to work like that. Almost all network tools in the unix world (not just linux) will attempt to give a name first (traceroute, route, arp, etc. etc. etc.). It's a feature:)
I've been using linux since about '94 as well, and here's what the argument boils down to: They're shipping 2 compilers because their userland compiler doesn't work. It's a development release. I don't understand what possible benefit they derived from "gcc 2.96" that outweighs the simplicity of having one compiler for everything. Business practices schmisiness practices, this compiler decision makes _my_ life as a sysadmin considerably more complicated. How many installations are now going to have to roll 6.x AND 7.x rpms because they can't replace their existing servers? At least one (mine).
ll the specification says is, "if you download a song to a PC it should be protected; if you transfer it to a portable device, the wire along which it travels should be protected and the portable device itself should keep it protected."
All of this sounds to me like another round of suggestion that only approved hardware should be able to play back digital contact. Yet another incarnation of encryption hardware in your monitor to keep you from viewing the (copyrighted) source of a webpage.
I keep having visions of my children sitting in their homes 20 or 30 years from now. They're paying $15 to rent a digitally encoded movie about the days when people could do whatever they could think up with their information. I see them downloading these movies into their WebTV box.
-- Ideology breeds Hypocrisy. How much is up to you.
Rakoff said any positive impact of MP3's activities on the recording companies prior market in no way frees the defendants to "usurp a further market" by reproducing the plaintiffs' copyrighted works.
It's unacceptable for MP3.com to move into and profit from a market that the RIAA-represented companies have failed to take advantage of, but Microsoft is in violation of federal law for doing exactly that.
Is RIAA _not_ trying to cut off mp3.com's air supply?
In a related note, when I buy a CD I'm not interested in buying a plastic disk with some reflective foil; I'm buying the _music_, and if a company wants to sell me a service that increases the situations in which I can make use of the product for which I paid so much, I think that's a positive thing.
-- Michael D. Jurney spam@jurney.org More fun than a barrel of scotch.
Re:Image Alteration has it's uses.
on
Live or Memorex?
·
· Score: 1
"It has other applications [besides branding] that I think are very valid and lend themselves perfectly to news, such as obscuring things you don't want in the frame," Shapiro says. That could include blocking out objectionable signs or covering up a competitor's logo, he says, as long as doing so meets CBS' journalistic guidelines.
First off, I'm not a student of journalistic ethics, not am I a lawyer. I think there is one very simple fact here, though:
Everything in the frame is the news. If someone is filming a location and there's a billboard in the background, well, that billboard is part of the context in which that news is taking place. Removing those images is, in my opinion, no different than taking the birthmark off of Mikhail Gorbachev's forehead; It's relatively innocuous, but it's still omission. It's still the intentional manipulation of the news. Whether or not that's wrong is another question, of course.
-- please_do_not_spam_mike@jurney.org If this gets any more post-modern my brain is going to explode. -Tom Tomorrow
It may be a "cute joke", but it appears to be a "cute joke" that radically compromises the security of _any_ WindowsNT system that uses crypto (VPN servers, for example). They've got a demonstration whereby any local user can replace the _NSAKEY value, possibly with one of their own. It looks like a *huge* backdoor. I'd like to see more proof, but I don't have an NT system handy:(
This is the type of thing at which unix systems excel. It's nice to see that more and more companies are realizing that NT just can't handle this type of thing effectively. It's also nice to see that the unix of choice is increasingly linux.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course it's important to be 'accessible', but beyond that, make it _useful_. An exceptionally bad design, for example, is the New Jersey Transit homepage. I can't see a complete line schedule for the trains, and all of the bus schedules are scanned PDFs (meaning I can't text search anything).
A slightly better example is the Texas state homepage. There's lots of information available about laws and whatnot, but unfortunately none of it is searchable. On the state legislation page there is (as far as I can tell) a complete legislation listing, but none of it has been indexed.If I could make one suggestion, it would be this: Include a search capability.
I have less and less faith that people like those behind SDMI, the DMCA, Library/School filtering, etc. can loose. Yes, thus far people with reasonable, intelligent, knowledgeable positions have been able to hold all that money in check, but I just don't see how that situation can continue. What isn't technically possible _will_ be legislated into effect by people with the resources and desire to see it so.
What those who rose to the SDMI challenge did, if I'm to understand the implications of the end to the DMCA commentary period correctly, is now a felony. It is my understanding that even the Princeton team, a legitimate academic research effort, put themselves at risk of ending their careers by participating in this overtly sanctioned exercise in reverse engineering.
If the mind-blowing amount of money behing initiatives like SDMI can't create a technical solution, you can guarantee that it will realign to bring about a legislative solution, and once that's done, that money will move toward financing enforcement. The truly sad part is that we're already moving into the enforcement phase, and neither of the two possible next presidents have displayed any willingness to curb the trend. As the subject says, SDMI will win, not because of its technical superiority, but because there's too much money working to guarantee that it does.
I've been a cynic for a long time, but I've never seen so much to be cynical about as I have in the past year on the internet.
Were they in any way associated with the Gore campaign? I think it's an important point, as I have documentation of Bush supporters claiming to have beaten people up for being black.
I absolutely agree that they have the right to toot their own horns.
I disagree that their unedited, uncommented marketing material is suitable "feature" matter.
I seem to be alone in not having heard the term "Hellmouth" until Katz first used it to describe the metaphysical source of the post-Littleton emails. Is this a pop-culture reference that I've missed?
This entire screed reads like a glossy brochure. I can't be the only technical person out here who has earned (through personal pain and toil) to immediately distrust a supposedly technical document that contains the words "Something wonderful is coming."
Not true. Do whois on 'microsoft' and you get all of the microsoft (.net .org etc.) in addition to these listed. A query against the whois database returns all matching strings: Someone has a nameserver registered as MICROSOFT.COM.IS.SECRETLY.RUN.BY.ILLUMINATI.TERROR ISTS.NET, that's all. I could register MICROSOFT.COM.IS.POOPY.JURNEY.NET tomorrow if I wanted. Not a hack, just good clean fun.
Since this bill provides no funding to purchase the software, I'm curious to know what the delta between that cost and the lost funding would be. If the library has the option of spending a roughly equal amount of money for either censoware or internet access (the former would get the latter paid for through funding, the latter would eliminate the need for the former), one would hope that there would be a relatively large number making the right choice. Hell, just giving them the choice in the first place would be relatively refreshing.
For what it's worth:
:)
Ping is supposed to work like that. Almost all network tools in the unix world (not just linux) will attempt to give a name first (traceroute, route, arp, etc. etc. etc.). It's a feature
I've been using linux since about '94 as well, and here's what the argument boils down to: They're shipping 2 compilers because their userland compiler doesn't work. It's a development release. I don't understand what possible benefit they derived from "gcc 2.96" that outweighs the simplicity of having one compiler for everything. Business practices schmisiness practices, this compiler decision makes _my_ life as a sysadmin considerably more complicated. How many installations are now going to have to roll 6.x AND 7.x rpms because they can't replace their existing servers? At least one (mine).
...but just how much is up to you. If you want to keep the job, you'll have to compromise. How much you choose to compromise is your choice :)
--
mikej
All of this sounds to me like another round of suggestion that only approved hardware should be able to play back digital contact. Yet another incarnation of encryption hardware in your monitor to keep you from viewing the (copyrighted) source of a webpage.
I keep having visions of my children sitting in their homes 20 or 30 years from now. They're paying $15 to rent a digitally encoded movie about the days when people could do whatever they could think up with their information. I see them downloading these movies into their WebTV box.
-- Ideology breeds Hypocrisy. How much is up to you.
I'm highly interested in knowing the name of the webhosting farm from which this attack came.
Rakoff said any positive impact of MP3's activities on the recording companies prior market in no way frees the defendants to "usurp a further market" by reproducing the plaintiffs' copyrighted works.
It's unacceptable for MP3.com to move into and profit from a market that the RIAA-represented companies have failed to take advantage of, but Microsoft is in violation of federal law for doing exactly that.
Is RIAA _not_ trying to cut off mp3.com's air supply?
In a related note, when I buy a CD I'm not interested in buying a plastic disk with some reflective foil; I'm buying the _music_, and if a company wants to sell me a service that increases the situations in which I can make use of the product for which I paid so much, I think that's a positive thing.
--
Michael D. Jurney
spam@jurney.org
More fun than a barrel of scotch.
"It has other applications [besides branding] that I think are very valid and lend themselves perfectly to news, such as obscuring things you don't want in the frame," Shapiro says. That could include blocking out objectionable signs or covering up a competitor's logo, he says, as long as doing so meets CBS' journalistic guidelines.
First off, I'm not a student of journalistic ethics, not am I a lawyer. I think there is one very simple fact here, though:
Everything in the frame is the news. If someone is filming a location and there's a billboard in the background, well, that billboard is part of the context in which that news is taking place. Removing those images is, in my opinion, no different than taking the birthmark off of Mikhail Gorbachev's forehead; It's relatively innocuous, but it's still omission. It's still the intentional manipulation of the news. Whether or not that's wrong is another question, of course.
--
please_do_not_spam_mike@jurney.org
If this gets any more post-modern my brain is going to explode.
-Tom Tomorrow
Oops, I need to make a retraction. It's not a backdoor into installed software at all. My bad, it seems.
It may be a "cute joke", but it appears to be a "cute joke" that radically compromises the security of _any_ WindowsNT system that uses crypto (VPN servers, for example). They've got a demonstration whereby any local user can replace the _NSAKEY value, possibly with one of their own. It looks like a *huge* backdoor. I'd like to see more proof, but I don't have an NT system handy :(
This is the type of thing at which unix systems
excel. It's nice to see that more and more companies are realizing that NT just can't handle this type of thing effectively. It's also nice to see that the unix of choice is increasingly linux.