So you think it's just coincidence, or lack of foresight or something, that LucasFilm is notorious for releasing not one, not two, not three, but *four or more* versions of each film to the home video market? The initial ones being downright crippled, then gradually getting better?
His lifestyle, which you point out, actually argues my point: when people are greedy, they often *don't* have mansions, yachts, harems, etc, because it isn't about enjoying wealth, but rather accumulating it.
George Lucas definitely had some potential, but speaking in present tense, he's about as much of an "artist" as Brittney Spears -- he may be in complete technical control of movies, but he is absolutely a slave to public opinion when it comes to what to make, because he's greedy and the primary interest is in maximizing revenue, not producing quality movies. Sometimes it works in our favor (everyone hates Jar-Jar, we get less Jar-Jar), sometimes it works against us (must include a cheesy romance to capture the female demographic). That's par for the course in Hollywood, I know, but my point is that he's no exception... and that, with customer-abusive attitudes in video release and merchandising, he is actually one of the worst.
I totally agree. He makes a few good points, but then he brings up Hitler / the Holocaust not just once, but *twice*. Not exactly the sign of an evenhanded critic who just has some stylistic/technical issues with a movie plot.
IANAL, but my expectation is "no." I imagine the fake was created with photoshop, so the question is "Is creating a photoshop image of a fake passport illegal?". To answer that, I'd ask "Is creating a photoshop image of a fake murder illegal?" or "Is creating a photoshop image of a speedometer reading 200mph on a public road illegal?"
I think most folks would agree that an image of a thing is not the thing. Of course, there's the whole "simulated child pornography" thing which goes the other way, but it's unclear how far that will fly in the courts. And, fake passports being much less of a hotbutton issue than child porn, I daresay this guy can sleep well at night.
Now, trying to *use* the image for anything would be a whole different story.
There is no way for you to determine whether the small guy is overselling his uplink without getting into his data center and doing an audit of his equipment -- something he'd have to be crazy to allow (*I* don't want a T1 from someone who lets potential customers do that!).
However, as other people have noted, after installation it's fairly easy to measure the bandwidth you're actually seeing. Telltale signs of oversold uplinks are things like vastly better performance at 3am than 3pm.
All in all, it's not necessarily a bad thing to have a (slightly) oversold uplink, as long as it is constantly monitored and upgraded if/when end users' aggregate usage is more than 75% for any length of time.
...os/2 version 8.0 will be shipping soon....wordstar 2003 was recently released....Netware has recently updated its enterprise class firewall....Vivo has revved their technology.
Yawn.
Cheers -b
(Hey, man, I hit the karma cap. I got a license to troll, don'tcha know?)
...no wonder the damned things always tear in two when I try to do pull-ups on them. The setae can support 280lbs, but the rest of their bodies are woefully underdesigned for that kind of load.
I'd love to see the research. My guess is that it boils down more to the fact that roach coaches always cook meat way past well done to ensure that there can't possibly be any issues. Better restaurants are usually sensitive to customer taste and therefore cook burgers to medium be default and will happily do rare or medium rare by request.
If I really care about food quality I'm usually willing to pay a little more. I'd expect the same in other industries.
Me, I've got an iron stomach so I've never had digestive issues with either the $1.25 burger or the $10 burger. However, I suspect that my metaphor has broken down by being taken a bit to literally.
My read isn't that the loitering got them on the future criminals list, but that the police used loitering as a reason to briefly stop them and take their picture. Though I guess it not entirely clear.
Either way, it's always pretty scary when police use things like loitering, jaywalking, or vagrancy (do *you* always have cash on you?) to stop people in the hopes of finding something more damning.
You're right. It's not like breaking into someone's house, stealing their stuff, then telling them they need a new lock.
It *is* like breaking into someone's house, going through their papers and files, then telling the local newspaper that this particular house has a crappy lock that's easy to break into.
Can you justify that?
As for whether "every" group that hates the US has already broken into Army computers, I wouldn't speculate on that. I would say, though, that these folks sure helped anyone who hasn't done so already pick an easy target. How patriotic, eh?
Yes, it could have been worse. However, what they did was 1) illegal (isn't everything these days?), 2) stupid, and 3) amateur. You can almost always get away with one out of those three. Often with two out of the three. Go for three out of three, though, and you're going to see some trouble.
So, you wouldn't mind if I did a little security research on your home while you're away at work -- or, better yet, in the middle of the night when you *are* at home?
I mean, I wouldn't actually steal anything. Just rifle the place a bit, see what you've got, that sort of thing. Then, I might call the press and see if they're interested in doing a story about the level of security at [insert your address here].
I'm sure you'd appreciate the free research, right?
Rent-a-cop company raided after beating up govenment officials San Diego, CA
Officials at SecureTech expressed surprise over an early morning FBI raid. For the past few months, SecureTech had been waylaying public officials and beating them to a pulp. The raid came just hours after a Washington Post article mentioning the beatings.
Brent Clueless, SecureTech spokesperson, decried the search. "A few months ago, while installing video cameras in a local mini-mall, we realized that some government officials had woefully inadequate security. Some of them drove the same route home every day, and a few of them even left their front doors unlocked at night. By sneaking in and severely beating in their own houses, we hoped to draw attention to this problem and maybe gain some positive publicity for our security firm."
"We only continued the break-ins and beatings because we were surprised that it was so easy, and we were curious about just how much truly malicious people would be able to get away with, " Clueless continued.
- Add the blacklist to the GPL. That is, if you are ever blacklisted, you have to stop using all GPL'd software.
- Have the FSF or someone maintain the canonical blacklist, with some kind of charter or bylaws to prevent abuse. There is only *one* way to be added to the blacklist.
- When a company sues the author/distributor of GPL'd software for patent infringement, add them to the blacklist (thus revoking their license to *all* GPL'd software)
- If that situation occurs, the company can remedy the situation by granting a license for the patent(s) in question to all GPL'd software, and get themselves removed from the blacklist.
As sun-tzu said, the ultimate victory lies in sapping the enemy's will to fight in the first place. This approach would do that, I dare say. GPL'd software is *everywhere*, and trying to root it all out would be impossible for a large company.
Of course, as I said, it's a fairly evil solution. And some open source supporters, like IBM, would probably be less than thrilled. But I submit that it *would* work.
Amend the GPL to add a blacklist; individuals, companies, or organizations that are not allowed to use GPL'd software in any form. As part of the accepting the GPL, you'd have to committ to cease use and destroy all copies of said software upon being notified that you were added to the blacklist.
Then blacklist any company that brings patent infringement suits against (or even sends a cease and desist to) open source developers of distributors , and remove them from the blacklist only when they grant all GPL'd software a license to the patent in question.
Just *how* many copies of Linux do you think are in use somewhere in SGI? How about GCC? How about...
I feel so sorry for this poor company. Having one of their trademarks lightly referenced in the context of the open source vs. Microsoft battle. Thus keeping the mark in front of not only geeks, but a fair amount of the mainstream as well. Thereby increasing interest in their Godzilla properties, and generally entrenching the -zilla suffix in the not only english, but other languages as well.
It must be terrible for them, all that free publicity.
Of course, to retain control of the trademark it might be necessary to come to some licensing agreement, but trying to stamp out the use of -zilla is a serious case of shooting oneself in the foot. Hormel wised up about Spam; you'd think these folks would learn from that example.
Sure, but either way you don't want big old holes in it; holes in the bottom might not leak all of your helium, but anything that penetrates the top certainly will.
Well, first, let me say that I don't give the story a high credibility rating, either.
However, the reason for the secrecy (if BBD's really exist) seems clear: they're large, slow, and inflatable, and rely on cover of night for deliveries.
These days, huge searchlights have pretty much fallen out of fashion for air defense -- what good are they going to do against planes zipping around at hundreds of miles an hour?
However, BBD's would be pretty vulnerable to old-fashioned searchlights and flak guns. If they *did* exist, their usefulness would be limited if they could only visit completely friendly-controlled territory.
This almost seems to suggest that there's more money in extending current business models than there is in inventing brand-new, unproven, arrogrant business models based on the sheer genius of second-year-in-the-real-world-MBA's.
Who would have thought? First people bring porn online and make good money, now people bring classifieds online and make money. Next thing you know, there'll be online auction sites! Wow, there's lots of money to be made by charging for valuable content! Who would've thought?
Why is it so surprising that "Give us $15 and we'll run your classified ad online" makes money, while "Give us nothing while we establish market share by giving away our content, or, if we start to lose money, give us nothing while we download weird spyware that crashes your machine, or, failing that, give us nothing but please look at our flash 12.0 ads that only require a 4MB download, or maybe give us nothing while we figure out what new direction to take our business in" companies are failing left and right. Is it really that hard to figure out?
1) "Trolling for dummies" 2) "Dumbing for trolls" 3) "Anti-trolling for smarties" 4) "How to stop dumb trolls" 5) "Trolls: Dummies or not?" 6) "Is that a troll in your pocket?" 7) "Dumb trolling for smarties" 8) "Smart trolling for dummies" 9) "Dumb, Trolling, and Out in Beverly Hills" 10) "Troll, Dummie, what's the difference?"...er, you were looking for reccomendations for/. readers, right?
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So you think it's just coincidence, or lack of foresight or something, that LucasFilm is notorious for releasing not one, not two, not three, but *four or more* versions of each film to the home video market? The initial ones being downright crippled, then gradually getting better?
How about the fact that they had to scale back the number of merchandising tie-ins for AotC because there was so much press about how TPM was basically a 2 hour vehicle for cross-promotions of toys, ties, and KFC
His lifestyle, which you point out, actually argues my point: when people are greedy, they often *don't* have mansions, yachts, harems, etc, because it isn't about enjoying wealth, but rather accumulating it.
George Lucas definitely had some potential, but speaking in present tense, he's about as much of an "artist" as Brittney Spears -- he may be in complete technical control of movies, but he is absolutely a slave to public opinion when it comes to what to make, because he's greedy and the primary interest is in maximizing revenue, not producing quality movies. Sometimes it works in our favor (everyone hates Jar-Jar, we get less Jar-Jar), sometimes it works against us (must include a cheesy romance to capture the female demographic). That's par for the course in Hollywood, I know, but my point is that he's no exception... and that, with customer-abusive attitudes in video release and merchandising, he is actually one of the worst.
Cheers
-b
I totally agree. He makes a few good points, but then he brings up Hitler / the Holocaust not just once, but *twice*. Not exactly the sign of an evenhanded critic who just has some stylistic/technical issues with a movie plot.
Cheers
-b
From Time magazine, as quoted in the Brin piece:
Cheers
-b
Well, Whoa-man is probably at least better than Nicolas Cage, who was previously on board the project.
http://www.corona.bc.ca/films/details/superman5.ht ml
Cheers
-b
IANAL, but my expectation is "no." I imagine the fake was created with photoshop, so the question is "Is creating a photoshop image of a fake passport illegal?". To answer that, I'd ask "Is creating a photoshop image of a fake murder illegal?" or "Is creating a photoshop image of a speedometer reading 200mph on a public road illegal?"
I think most folks would agree that an image of a thing is not the thing. Of course, there's the whole "simulated child pornography" thing which goes the other way, but it's unclear how far that will fly in the courts. And, fake passports being much less of a hotbutton issue than child porn, I daresay this guy can sleep well at night.
Now, trying to *use* the image for anything would be a whole different story.
Cheers
-b
There is no way for you to determine whether the small guy is overselling his uplink without getting into his data center and doing an audit of his equipment -- something he'd have to be crazy to allow (*I* don't want a T1 from someone who lets potential customers do that!).
However, as other people have noted, after installation it's fairly easy to measure the bandwidth you're actually seeing. Telltale signs of oversold uplinks are things like vastly better performance at 3am than 3pm.
All in all, it's not necessarily a bad thing to have a (slightly) oversold uplink, as long as it is constantly monitored and upgraded if/when end users' aggregate usage is more than 75% for any length of time.
Cheers
-b
...os/2 version 8.0 will be shipping soon. ...wordstar 2003 was recently released. ...Netware has recently updated its enterprise class firewall. ...Vivo has revved their technology.
Yawn.
Cheers
-b
(Hey, man, I hit the karma cap. I got a license to troll, don'tcha know?)
Are you kidding? This is a fantastic idea.
For their next trick, I propose they ban possession of the common cold, cancerous cells, and bad breath. Voila! A healthy populace.
It's so heartwarming to see bureaucracy in action... and all for our own good!
Cheers
-b
...no wonder the damned things always tear in two when I try to do pull-ups on them. The setae can support 280lbs, but the rest of their bodies are woefully underdesigned for that kind of load.
-b
I'd love to see the research. My guess is that it boils down more to the fact that roach coaches always cook meat way past well done to ensure that there can't possibly be any issues. Better restaurants are usually sensitive to customer taste and therefore cook burgers to medium be default and will happily do rare or medium rare by request.
If I really care about food quality I'm usually willing to pay a little more. I'd expect the same in other industries.
Me, I've got an iron stomach so I've never had digestive issues with either the $1.25 burger or the $10 burger. However, I suspect that my metaphor has broken down by being taken a bit to literally.
Cheers
-b
"Why are people willing to pay $10 for a burger at some fancy restaurant when you can get one from a roach coach for $1.25?"
Looking at it that way, the reasons seem pretty obvious:
- Quality
- Service
- Atmosphere
- Accountability (you know where they'll be if something bad happens)
Cheers
-b
My read isn't that the loitering got them on the future criminals list, but that the police used loitering as a reason to briefly stop them and take their picture. Though I guess it not entirely clear.
Either way, it's always pretty scary when police use things like loitering, jaywalking, or vagrancy (do *you* always have cash on you?) to stop people in the hopes of finding something more damning.
Cheers
-b
These police are amateurs. My money says 90% of those in the database are *actual* criminals, having managed to violate the DMCA one way or another.
Cheers
-b
You're right. It's not like breaking into someone's house, stealing their stuff, then telling them they need a new lock.
It *is* like breaking into someone's house, going through their papers and files, then telling the local newspaper that this particular house has a crappy lock that's easy to break into.
Can you justify that?
As for whether "every" group that hates the US has already broken into Army computers, I wouldn't speculate on that. I would say, though, that these folks sure helped anyone who hasn't done so already pick an easy target. How patriotic, eh?
Yes, it could have been worse. However, what they did was 1) illegal (isn't everything these days?), 2) stupid, and 3) amateur. You can almost always get away with one out of those three. Often with two out of the three. Go for three out of three, though, and you're going to see some trouble.
-b
So, you wouldn't mind if I did a little security research on your home while you're away at work -- or, better yet, in the middle of the night when you *are* at home?
I mean, I wouldn't actually steal anything. Just rifle the place a bit, see what you've got, that sort of thing. Then, I might call the press and see if they're interested in doing a story about the level of security at [insert your address here].
I'm sure you'd appreciate the free research, right?
Cheers
-b
Rent-a-cop company raided after beating up govenment officials
San Diego, CA
Officials at SecureTech expressed surprise over an early morning FBI raid. For the past few months, SecureTech had been waylaying public officials and beating them to a pulp. The raid came just hours after a Washington Post article mentioning the beatings.
Brent Clueless, SecureTech spokesperson, decried the search. "A few months ago, while installing video cameras in a local mini-mall, we realized that some government officials had woefully inadequate security. Some of them drove the same route home every day, and a few of them even left their front doors unlocked at night. By sneaking in and severely beating in their own houses, we hoped to draw attention to this problem and maybe gain some positive publicity for our security firm."
"We only continued the break-ins and beatings because we were surprised that it was so easy, and we were curious about just how much truly malicious people would be able to get away with, " Clueless continued.
Cheers
-b
I don't think you entirely got it.
Here's the mechanism:
- Add the blacklist to the GPL. That is, if you are ever blacklisted, you have to stop using all GPL'd software.
- Have the FSF or someone maintain the canonical blacklist, with some kind of charter or bylaws to prevent abuse. There is only *one* way to be added to the blacklist.
- When a company sues the author/distributor of GPL'd software for patent infringement, add them to the blacklist (thus revoking their license to *all* GPL'd software)
- If that situation occurs, the company can remedy the situation by granting a license for the patent(s) in question to all GPL'd software, and get themselves removed from the blacklist.
As sun-tzu said, the ultimate victory lies in sapping the enemy's will to fight in the first place. This approach would do that, I dare say. GPL'd software is *everywhere*, and trying to root it all out would be impossible for a large company.
Of course, as I said, it's a fairly evil solution. And some open source supporters, like IBM, would probably be less than thrilled. But I submit that it *would* work.
Cheers
-b
Here's an easy (if somewhat evil) solution:
Amend the GPL to add a blacklist; individuals, companies, or organizations that are not allowed to use GPL'd software in any form. As part of the accepting the GPL, you'd have to committ to cease use and destroy all copies of said software upon being notified that you were added to the blacklist.
Then blacklist any company that brings patent infringement suits against (or even sends a cease and desist to) open source developers of distributors , and remove them from the blacklist only when they grant all GPL'd software a license to the patent in question.
Just *how* many copies of Linux do you think are in use somewhere in SGI? How about GCC? How about...
Cheers
-b
...would this be considered "news."
Cheers
-b
I feel so sorry for this poor company. Having one of their trademarks lightly referenced in the context of the open source vs. Microsoft battle. Thus keeping the mark in front of not only geeks, but a fair amount of the mainstream as well. Thereby increasing interest in their Godzilla properties, and generally entrenching the -zilla suffix in the not only english, but other languages as well.
It must be terrible for them, all that free publicity.
Of course, to retain control of the trademark it might be necessary to come to some licensing agreement, but trying to stamp out the use of -zilla is a serious case of shooting oneself in the foot. Hormel wised up about Spam; you'd think these folks would learn from that example.
Cheers
-b
Sure, but either way you don't want big old holes in it; holes in the bottom might not leak all of your helium, but anything that penetrates the top certainly will.
Cheers
-b
Well, first, let me say that I don't give the story a high credibility rating, either.
However, the reason for the secrecy (if BBD's really exist) seems clear: they're large, slow, and inflatable, and rely on cover of night for deliveries.
These days, huge searchlights have pretty much fallen out of fashion for air defense -- what good are they going to do against planes zipping around at hundreds of miles an hour?
However, BBD's would be pretty vulnerable to old-fashioned searchlights and flak guns. If they *did* exist, their usefulness would be limited if they could only visit completely friendly-controlled territory.
Cheers
-b
This almost seems to suggest that there's more money in extending current business models than there is in inventing brand-new, unproven, arrogrant business models based on the sheer genius of second-year-in-the-real-world-MBA's.
Who would have thought? First people bring porn online and make good money, now people bring classifieds online and make money. Next thing you know, there'll be online auction sites! Wow, there's lots of money to be made by charging for valuable content! Who would've thought?
Why is it so surprising that "Give us $15 and we'll run your classified ad online" makes money, while "Give us nothing while we establish market share by giving away our content, or, if we start to lose money, give us nothing while we download weird spyware that crashes your machine, or, failing that, give us nothing but please look at our flash 12.0 ads that only require a 4MB download, or maybe give us nothing while we figure out what new direction to take our business in" companies are failing left and right. Is it really that hard to figure out?
Perceived value = real value. Simple as that.
Cheers
-b
1) "Trolling for dummies" ...er, you were looking for reccomendations for /. readers, right?
2) "Dumbing for trolls"
3) "Anti-trolling for smarties"
4) "How to stop dumb trolls"
5) "Trolls: Dummies or not?"
6) "Is that a troll in your pocket?"
7) "Dumb trolling for smarties"
8) "Smart trolling for dummies"
9) "Dumb, Trolling, and Out in Beverly Hills"
10) "Troll, Dummie, what's the difference?"
Cheers
-b
A very cool idea. I'll look into it.
Thanks!
-b