Cool idea, but no thanks...
on
USB Batteries
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
There's more geek factor here than real usability. Anyone had their charger melted to slag because of leaky batteries? Yeah, me too. Personally, I wouldn't mind too much if a $10 charger got toasted, but not my $1xxx laptop. I can garentee that they won't be held responsible should anything get toasted with your lappy...besides, there has been enough troubles with the official laptop battery blowing up without throwing something like this into the mix...
...Or how about improvements to the underlying transportation infrastructure? Face it, if the oil dried up we'd be paralyzed, not because we're 'oil addicts' but there's is no alternative transportation infrastructure to support our population. Trains do not go everywhere, buses aren't adequate, light rail systems are not as ubiquitous as they are in say, Europe or Asia. The vehicle itself is what we're addicted to, and as long as our culture continues to emphisize the dependency on self-owned transportation, there will always be problems no matter what technology we find to power them.
I'm no knee jerk anti-drm demon here because I'm really trying to look at this in an agnostic way. This really bites for consumers and really instills a real lack of confidence in the whole scheme of content devices. Not only does the DRM itself kind of lock you into certain vendors, but now there is no guarantee that the content will work on a device from the same vendor. Honest to goodness I was considering a Zune, mostly because I didn't want to get an iPod because it was the trendy thing to do. But after looking at the options, I know without a doubt that the Zune is not for me. This, because of the latest news on how its tentacles get wrapped around your non-DRM files, AND there's really no way for me to be sure that MS will change its mind AGAIN about the future compatibility of its own file formats. What am I to do? I want to get an iPod, but I'm not not sure they are the answer either because now I can't be sure that if I buy music through iTunes that it won't break someday either. It seems to me that if I still want to buy legitimate music from iTunes, I need to get a pirated counterpart in a non-restricted format like MP3 or ogg, etc. so that as devices wax and wane, I'm still able to listen to my tunes...which really kinda defeats the purpose of going legit.
Even for someone who's tech savvy, the uncertainty is disconcerting...
If so, buying a PS3 could pay for itself over time. Seriously, I would signup, have them e-mail me CPU usage statistics muliplied by an industry standard rate as a reciept. They're happy to have CPU cycles, I'm happy to have the tax deduction.
Now if that's the case, can something similar be done with other CPU cycle donations to other projects? I have a multi-core server that spends most of its time idle. Might as well put to some use, eh?
is the fact that I can 'moderate on the fly'. No needing to abandon my position on the screen to scroll down and click the moderate button. As soon as I select the score, it moderates. I think that there ought to be some control on that though, maybe putting the button 'Moderate' button next to the drop down list would be better in the event that I incorrectly moderate.
Really makes you wonder though, doesn't it? I mean when faced with piracy and the myriad ways to get a movie for free, how else can they get revenue with their current business model? I'm sure the discs aren't much more expensive to produce than a DVD, yet they cost at least twice as much to consumers. A player? Yikes! That's quite a cost to consumers for them to pay for R&D.
No, it is a racket to get the consumer to pay for all this equipment just so that they can further consolidate their power against the piracy movement. It would seem to me that with all this 'secure' passing of information that at some point you ought to be able to pull the decoded stream from somewhere just like has been accomplished with iTunes. Besides, I don't think the piracy is as pervasive as the movie industry would have us believe.
What if you were to create a CPU CAPTCHA that stayed resident either in memory or written somewhere for a specified amount of time? For example, everyday at a designated time when there is low usage, generate a batch of thousands of new psuedo-random CAPTCHAS. Those CAPTCHAS are then only good for say, 3 days. Then, they are discarded/erased/etc. and new ones are generated. That way you are burning CPU cycles when there is a lull in demand, and when the demand hits you are simply serving up ones that got generated up to a couple of days ago.
This means that the spammers have to be solving the CAPTCHAS on a fairly frequent and quick basis, frustrating their efforts for a longer short term solution.
I know this is slightly off topic, but along that same vein, I was thinking about the Matrix the other day. I mean, if you were stuck in a little pod from birth until adulthood, do you know how atrophied your body would be? I doubt you coauld even reach adulthood. I mean seriously, you're muscle mass would be practically nil. Your eyes wouldn't be able to see much at all since they've never been exposed to light. You wouldn't be able to walk. Talk. Manipulate your arms and hands. About the only thing you would be able to do with any efficacy is wet yourself.
But you're right. When we walk into that movie theater, we're already stepping out of reality. We go to the movie theater for that exact reason. We don't want to be bothered by the nitty gritty details of how plausible something is, as long as the artist has successfully suspended our belief, we're happy.
Simple word sub would work too....
on
Duke in Trouble?
·
· Score: 1
This is nothing new. People have left before, IT IS THE NATURE OF THIS BUSINESS.
Just sub in 'vaporware' and you get this.
This is nothing new. Vaporware IS THE NATURE OF THIS BUSINESS.
As a side note, why does Duke keep getting coverage??? Let the man rest in peace until the day he rises from the 3D Realms ashes and is born again at retailer near you. Until then, goodbye, Duke.
Well, there isn't much difference when you get a similar conversation like this:
"Hi, we downloaded this open source X but we have a serious problem with it..." "Sorry, that product doesn't include any support." "But it is mission critical to us!" "You must download and install something else or fix it yourself then." "Sure, we will. But that takes time and costs millions. Until then..." "Good luck." "No, I mean, can't you help us with the problem?" "No, didn't you read the MAN? Go to a forum and maybe someone will have mercy on you." "We'll pay you lots of money!" "Uhm... Well... No, sorry." "You really don't care about it?" "No. Please go find your support somewhere else."
Re:Steal This Film fails to persuade...
on
Steal This Film
·
· Score: 1
Well, since I am obviously a 'brainwashed' capitalist, let me say this: If you're tired of the capitalists, vote with your dollar. If the politicians are corrupt, vote with your ballot. Because believe it or not you *elect* to consume that which is making 'this world a misrable[sic] place to live'.
Steal This Film fails to persuade...
on
Steal This Film
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I downloaded a copy of "Steal This Film" last week. The whole idea of "Steal This Film" was to provide not only an opposing view to the seizure of their servers, but to provide a counterpoint to the whole piracy and peer to peer debate.
And unfortunately, I think they only half-succeeded. They historical events don't seem to be lacking at all, but TPB seemed to lack any philosophical basis for their reasons to justify piracy. Honestly, I came into this movie hoping to get more ammunition to justify piracy, but because there didn't seem to be a real argument in favor it, I actually came away from the movie thinking that it is wrong.
One of the 'Pirates' was explaining that she felt that it was against her ethics to buy a CD or movie on DVD. That's it. No explanation. Another remarked that he felt by supporting TPB and facilitating the theft of over 150,000 copyrighted materials he was committing 'civil disobedience'. Could you elaborate?
Unfortunately, TPB really seems to cast itself in an immature light with their reasoning in favor of piracy. For example, they played a clip of an MPAA executive stating that obvious economic facts that their product cannot just be given away for free. TPB's response? "It's not my problem to come up with an answer."
Interesting. TPB, at least through this documentary, really tries to portray itself as an advocate for change in intellectual property laws, but fails (in my opinion) to offer any real compelling reason why that should be, and fails again in really pushing for an alternative to outrageous movie prices and the equally ridiculous idea of getting it for free.
They were right about a few things, though. The MPAA and RIAA really do need to change their business model. With the advent of online music stores such as iTunes, the RIAA is slowly moving into the 21st century along with the rest of the world's digital civilization, but even still, their model for business is quite inept for the age we're in.
People ought to be able to get music and have fair use with it. Before the age of Digital Rights Management (DRM), it was quite easy to be able to buy a CD, duplicate it, make mixes of different songs, copy it to a cassette tape, etc. within the bounds of personal use. The new locks that come with downloadable content are unacceptable because they remove the ability of the user to play it whenever, wherever, and on whatever they want. This only adds fuel and justification to the piracy movement.
No, "Steal This Film" fails in providing a real compelling pro-piracy justification. But who knows, maybe in Part Two (scheduled for release in two months) they'll redeem themselves. Until then, TPB really has lost ground on the offensive.
We wrote a script once that would gradually slow down the mouse pointer. We installed it on the interns computers and watched them get frustrated when their mouse pointer wouldn't move. We explained to them that they had to unplug the mouse, swing the plug end rapidly around their heads, and then plug it back in, and it would be fixed.
We would conspiciously watch from quite a few cubes away and watch this mice get whipped around in the air! It was the most hilarous thing we've ever seen! You'd think that they wouldn't buy it, but when push came to shove they did it and it worked for them after looking like fools!
I think what he/she is trying to say is that it's terrible that that many people died, but the intended effect was to strike at the heart of our economy and that of our allies. This way you not only kill a bunch of people but cause economic distress all over the world.
With today's announcement of a foiled terrorist plot to detonate bombs stowed in carry-on baggage, one really has to ask themselves why terrorists choose to use mass transit as their target for their plots.
I think the answer lies in their motives--to make people afraid and submissive. By blowing up a plane, you're killing a couple hundred of people. This has the effect of making people afraid. So afraid, in fact, that they stop flying. That translates into a trickle down effect of people not going about their usual economic activities. Buy a hamburger at the airport, renting a vehicle, purchasing meals at restaurants, buying souvenirs, etc. Terrorism has a large micro-economical impact on those they affect, not to mention the trauma that the world's markets feel in addition.
Terrorism isn't just evil on the grounds of cold blooded murder. Terrorism is evil because it seeks to disrupt the ebb and flow of free economies that have a direct impact on every single person on the planet. That's what 9/11 was all about. I think in the end their desire wasn't necessarily to kill a lot of people, but something far more sinister--destroy the largest symbol of capitalism.
The events after 9/11 certainly prove that it sent our economy into a tailspin. Which, as I have asserted, was their primary goal.
In conclusion, to all you out there that are kidding yourselves about terrorism--it's real and has a direct impact on your life. Before you start criticizing policy on actions taken to prevent it, consider what the real life impact would be without taking those measures.
A heterogenous Linux environment isn't the end of the world, nor an administration nightmare.
True, the world would still continue to revolve, but IMHO if you're having to support a heteroegenous Linux environment, you're creating more problems than solving. As an admin, nothing could be easier than maintaining a single huge group of Windows XP corporate clients--especially when the hardware was virtually the same no matter where you go on campus. If there's a problem all I had to do was push updates to a single OS and didn't have to do any jimmy-rigging to keep things moving smooth. However, with *multiple* flavors of penguins running around, I personally believe that would create more work than it is worth. For standard student workstations there's nothing several flavors couldn't do that a sinlge *one* doesn't accomplish--especially with SLED being the standard. To me going to several didn't distros smacks of 'we do it because we can' not 'we do it to be practicle'.
I think that there's something to be said here about that. To me it says that/. users are too lazy to go forage for their own articles and instead go cherry pick them off of digg. Why? Because the digg community picks the stories, not a handful of select people. If/. wants to continue to do things that way, I have no bones about, it's just interesting that the/. model lags behind other sites.
The one thing that I think/. has over digg is the discussions and moderation system. I was reading the comments over at digg and I felt like I was in a room full of 3 year olds (insert joke here). At least here I feel like the least meaningful and mature comments carry more relevancy than most of what I read over there.
You see, the BSA doesn't have a financial interest to go after GPL violators because there's a lack of monetary incentive. If any of the GPL software was owned by a multi-billion dollar company shelling out the big bucks to enforce the infringement of their IP, sure the BSA would be right after them.
I can't wait until IE 8.0 comes out. And all the nice features that it will implement. Oh wait...
I think another sticking point here is that we not even know for certainty that Firefox 3.0 is in the works, but what things are mapped to go into it! Can MS speak the same on IE 8? I really think that IE is looking to get another butt-whoopin'.
Slashdot Mirror
Or maybe their own systems didn't ship with the lemon batteries that they gave to everyone else...
Yes, it will be called Windows Vista-DRM Edition
Because it's a Genuine Advantage to do so. HAH!
There's more geek factor here than real usability. Anyone had their charger melted to slag because of leaky batteries? Yeah, me too. Personally, I wouldn't mind too much if a $10 charger got toasted, but not my $1xxx laptop. I can garentee that they won't be held responsible should anything get toasted with your lappy...besides, there has been enough troubles with the official laptop battery blowing up without throwing something like this into the mix...
...Or how about improvements to the underlying transportation infrastructure? Face it, if the oil dried up we'd be paralyzed, not because we're 'oil addicts' but there's is no alternative transportation infrastructure to support our population. Trains do not go everywhere, buses aren't adequate, light rail systems are not as ubiquitous as they are in say, Europe or Asia. The vehicle itself is what we're addicted to, and as long as our culture continues to emphisize the dependency on self-owned transportation, there will always be problems no matter what technology we find to power them.
I'm no knee jerk anti-drm demon here because I'm really trying to look at this in an agnostic way. This really bites for consumers and really instills a real lack of confidence in the whole scheme of content devices. Not only does the DRM itself kind of lock you into certain vendors, but now there is no guarantee that the content will work on a device from the same vendor. Honest to goodness I was considering a Zune, mostly because I didn't want to get an iPod because it was the trendy thing to do. But after looking at the options, I know without a doubt that the Zune is not for me. This, because of the latest news on how its tentacles get wrapped around your non-DRM files, AND there's really no way for me to be sure that MS will change its mind AGAIN about the future compatibility of its own file formats. What am I to do? I want to get an iPod, but I'm not not sure they are the answer either because now I can't be sure that if I buy music through iTunes that it won't break someday either. It seems to me that if I still want to buy legitimate music from iTunes, I need to get a pirated counterpart in a non-restricted format like MP3 or ogg, etc. so that as devices wax and wane, I'm still able to listen to my tunes...which really kinda defeats the purpose of going legit.
Even for someone who's tech savvy, the uncertainty is disconcerting...
If so, buying a PS3 could pay for itself over time. Seriously, I would signup, have them e-mail me CPU usage statistics muliplied by an industry standard rate as a reciept. They're happy to have CPU cycles, I'm happy to have the tax deduction.
Now if that's the case, can something similar be done with other CPU cycle donations to other projects? I have a multi-core server that spends most of its time idle. Might as well put to some use, eh?
is the fact that I can 'moderate on the fly'. No needing to abandon my position on the screen to scroll down and click the moderate button. As soon as I select the score, it moderates. I think that there ought to be some control on that though, maybe putting the button 'Moderate' button next to the drop down list would be better in the event that I incorrectly moderate.
Ya know, that reminds of a T-shirt that I saw last night at the mall. It read:
I'm not suffering from laziness, I'm enjoying every minute of it.
When you got an economic fire lit under their ass to the tune of millions and billions of dollars, sure they'll bust a patch out real quick.
Really makes you wonder though, doesn't it? I mean when faced with piracy and the myriad ways to get a movie for free, how else can they get revenue with their current business model? I'm sure the discs aren't much more expensive to produce than a DVD, yet they cost at least twice as much to consumers. A player? Yikes! That's quite a cost to consumers for them to pay for R&D.
No, it is a racket to get the consumer to pay for all this equipment just so that they can further consolidate their power against the piracy movement. It would seem to me that with all this 'secure' passing of information that at some point you ought to be able to pull the decoded stream from somewhere just like has been accomplished with iTunes. Besides, I don't think the piracy is as pervasive as the movie industry would have us believe.
Let the cat and mouse game begin...
What if you were to create a CPU CAPTCHA that stayed resident either in memory or written somewhere for a specified amount of time? For example, everyday at a designated time when there is low usage, generate a batch of thousands of new psuedo-random CAPTCHAS. Those CAPTCHAS are then only good for say, 3 days. Then, they are discarded/erased/etc. and new ones are generated. That way you are burning CPU cycles when there is a lull in demand, and when the demand hits you are simply serving up ones that got generated up to a couple of days ago.
This means that the spammers have to be solving the CAPTCHAS on a fairly frequent and quick basis, frustrating their efforts for a longer short term solution.
I know this is slightly off topic, but along that same vein, I was thinking about the Matrix the other day. I mean, if you were stuck in a little pod from birth until adulthood, do you know how atrophied your body would be? I doubt you coauld even reach adulthood. I mean seriously, you're muscle mass would be practically nil. Your eyes wouldn't be able to see much at all since they've never been exposed to light. You wouldn't be able to walk. Talk. Manipulate your arms and hands. About the only thing you would be able to do with any efficacy is wet yourself.
But you're right. When we walk into that movie theater, we're already stepping out of reality. We go to the movie theater for that exact reason. We don't want to be bothered by the nitty gritty details of how plausible something is, as long as the artist has successfully suspended our belief, we're happy.
This is nothing new. People have left before, IT IS THE NATURE OF THIS BUSINESS.
Just sub in 'vaporware' and you get this.
This is nothing new. Vaporware IS THE NATURE OF THIS BUSINESS.
As a side note, why does Duke keep getting coverage??? Let the man rest in peace until the day he rises from the 3D Realms ashes and is born again at retailer near you. Until then, goodbye, Duke.
Well, there isn't much difference when you get a similar conversation like this:
"Hi, we downloaded this open source X but we have a serious problem with it..."
"Sorry, that product doesn't include any support."
"But it is mission critical to us!"
"You must download and install something else or fix it yourself then."
"Sure, we will. But that takes time and costs millions. Until then..."
"Good luck."
"No, I mean, can't you help us with the problem?"
"No, didn't you read the MAN? Go to a forum and maybe someone will have mercy on you."
"We'll pay you lots of money!"
"Uhm... Well... No, sorry."
"You really don't care about it?"
"No. Please go find your support somewhere else."
Well, since I am obviously a 'brainwashed' capitalist, let me say this: If you're tired of the capitalists, vote with your dollar. If the politicians are corrupt, vote with your ballot. Because believe it or not you *elect* to consume that which is making 'this world a misrable[sic] place to live'.
I downloaded a copy of "Steal This Film" last week. The whole idea of "Steal This Film" was to provide not only an opposing view to the seizure of their servers, but to provide a counterpoint to the whole piracy and peer to peer debate.
And unfortunately, I think they only half-succeeded. They historical events don't seem to be lacking at all, but TPB seemed to lack any philosophical basis for their reasons to justify piracy. Honestly, I came into this movie hoping to get more ammunition to justify piracy, but because there didn't seem to be a real argument in favor it, I actually came away from the movie thinking that it is wrong.
One of the 'Pirates' was explaining that she felt that it was against her ethics to buy a CD or movie on DVD. That's it. No explanation. Another remarked that he felt by supporting TPB and facilitating the theft of over 150,000 copyrighted materials he was committing 'civil disobedience'. Could you elaborate?
Unfortunately, TPB really seems to cast itself in an immature light with their reasoning in favor of piracy. For example, they played a clip of an MPAA executive stating that obvious economic facts that their product cannot just be given away for free. TPB's response? "It's not my problem to come up with an answer."
Interesting. TPB, at least through this documentary, really tries to portray itself as an advocate for change in intellectual property laws, but fails (in my opinion) to offer any real compelling reason why that should be, and fails again in really pushing for an alternative to outrageous movie prices and the equally ridiculous idea of getting it for free.
They were right about a few things, though. The MPAA and RIAA really do need to change their business model. With the advent of online music stores such as iTunes, the RIAA is slowly moving into the 21st century along with the rest of the world's digital civilization, but even still, their model for business is quite inept for the age we're in.
People ought to be able to get music and have fair use with it. Before the age of Digital Rights Management (DRM), it was quite easy to be able to buy a CD, duplicate it, make mixes of different songs, copy it to a cassette tape, etc. within the bounds of personal use. The new locks that come with downloadable content are unacceptable because they remove the ability of the user to play it whenever, wherever, and on whatever they want. This only adds fuel and justification to the piracy movement.
No, "Steal This Film" fails in providing a real compelling pro-piracy justification. But who knows, maybe in Part Two (scheduled for release in two months) they'll redeem themselves. Until then, TPB really has lost ground on the offensive.
We wrote a script once that would gradually slow down the mouse pointer. We installed it on the interns computers and watched them get frustrated when their mouse pointer wouldn't move. We explained to them that they had to unplug the mouse, swing the plug end rapidly around their heads, and then plug it back in, and it would be fixed.
We would conspiciously watch from quite a few cubes away and watch this mice get whipped around in the air! It was the most hilarous thing we've ever seen! You'd think that they wouldn't buy it, but when push came to shove they did it and it worked for them after looking like fools!
I think what he/she is trying to say is that it's terrible that that many people died, but the intended effect was to strike at the heart of our economy and that of our allies. This way you not only kill a bunch of people but cause economic distress all over the world.
To quote a blog:
A heterogenous Linux environment isn't the end of the world, nor an administration nightmare.
True, the world would still continue to revolve, but IMHO if you're having to support a heteroegenous Linux environment, you're creating more problems than solving. As an admin, nothing could be easier than maintaining a single huge group of Windows XP corporate clients--especially when the hardware was virtually the same no matter where you go on campus. If there's a problem all I had to do was push updates to a single OS and didn't have to do any jimmy-rigging to keep things moving smooth. However, with *multiple* flavors of penguins running around, I personally believe that would create more work than it is worth. For standard student workstations there's nothing several flavors couldn't do that a sinlge *one* doesn't accomplish--especially with SLED being the standard. To me going to several didn't distros smacks of 'we do it because we can' not 'we do it to be practicle'.
I think that there's something to be said here about that. To me it says that /. users are too lazy to go forage for their own articles and instead go cherry pick them off of digg. Why? Because the digg community picks the stories, not a handful of select people. If /. wants to continue to do things that way, I have no bones about, it's just interesting that the /. model lags behind other sites.
/. has over digg is the discussions and moderation system. I was reading the comments over at digg and I felt like I was in a room full of 3 year olds (insert joke here). At least here I feel like the least meaningful and mature comments carry more relevancy than most of what I read over there.
The one thing that I think
You see, the BSA doesn't have a financial interest to go after GPL violators because there's a lack of monetary incentive. If any of the GPL software was owned by a multi-billion dollar company shelling out the big bucks to enforce the infringement of their IP, sure the BSA would be right after them.
I can't wait until IE 8.0 comes out. And all the nice features that it will implement. Oh wait...
I think another sticking point here is that we not even know for certainty that Firefox 3.0 is in the works, but what things are mapped to go into it! Can MS speak the same on IE 8? I really think that IE is looking to get another butt-whoopin'.
Why doesn't Slashdot implement it? This would be especially nice for expanding/collapsing in the discussions.