(My largest barrier to composing music is coming up with an original melodic hook so I don't get sued. Any hints?)
Sure. Just use the Yoko Ono method - tape the sound of a piano being dropped on a cat, get some manuscript paper, transcribe it to sheet music, and start shopping for your megabuck recording contract.
It's not that hard to believe - I submitted the story and just used the straight nytimes.com link.
Yes, I know about the partners.nytimes.com and archive.nytimes.com links. Yes, it occurred to me to use them about 30 seconds after submitting the story. Yes, I am a moron.
Excellent. That site also covers the difference between "its" and "it's" - one of my pet peeves. If you can persuade them to bookmark it and check before posting, there might be a lot of folks here who suddenly seem literate;)
Re:The Great Microsoft Problem
on
Windows in 2020
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
You can only speculate at what they would be doing if they HAD real competitors.
Well, they've had a slew of real competitors. Apple used to be far more viable than it was now. OS/2, RealNetworks, Netscape, take your pick.
Yes, MS is dependent on the upgrade treadmill, and they've had clever ways to get people to upgrade anyway - let's face it, there's no functional difference between Office 95 and Office XP. The only "improvements" have been to add features and functions that virtually nobody uses anyway. But people upgrade anyway, due in great part to the fact that MS breaks and reinvents the.doc format every time.
And, for my money, the minute they pursue the upgrade treadmill concept to its logical conclusion - software leasing - they've nailed their own coffin. Who needs that shit - paying your monthly Microsoft bill along with electricity and telephones and water? How many companies just finished moving to win2k, and already they're being told to start thinking about XP?
Anyway, I'll share a story about another computer monopoly that my father, the old computing fogey from back in the day, shared with me. He grew up and took his education in computers during period when computing was IBM. If you wanted anything computing, IBM was not just the best way, it was, most often, the only way. So he and his fellow CS students, in his undergraduate and graduate days, grew into a sense that IBM was stifling innovation for its own gain. And they carried that into the real world with them. And as they moved up the ladders of corporate power, they remembered IBM when they came to have purchasing power, and anything that remotely came close to doing the job got bought, so long as it wasn't IBM. This, combined with a never-ending antitrust investigation, helped humble IBM.
Now, think of MS in the 1990's, and compare to IBM of the 1960's and '70's. If I had to add anything, I'd add that MS doesn't appear to me to have the kind of institutional inertia or memory that IBM did - MS seems largely a cult of personality, held together by the force of BillG's will. But, of course, personality cults rarely outlive the personalities they are built around. I have real trouble seeing MS flourish after the end of Bill...
Consider this, my fellow slashdotters - remember MS over the last 10 years when your employer comes to you to ask you for your advice. And have patience. Even the mightiest of empires is destined to crumble.;)
Re:The Great Microsoft Problem
on
Windows in 2020
·
· Score: 2
By NO competitor, I mean: there is no concurrent product with a non-marginal marketshare, that Microsoft has to compete with, that forces Microsoft to lower prices, or add new features, or improve quality... which is the point of the "free market".
Ahh, but therein lies the rub. There is no one forcing them to do those things, yet they perversely continue to do them anyway. Why should they do it if they aren't forced to?
I submit that it is because they fear competitors they either can't see, or that don't exist yet. Even in the absence of actual competition, the fear of competition still drives them. In which case, one can hardly accuse them of being unable or unwilling to compete.
You can trigger the Palm into the HotSync sequence by licking the connections? I'm serious.
You have waaay too much free time on your hands, my friend. Have you ever considered developing a hobby? Aside from molesting your hardware, that is...
Of course, I'm sure he has some legally viable explanation for being able to say he's "recognized by the American Bar Association" but I can't help but think that his "credentials" are a stretch at best.
No doubt, he's gotten some certificate from his local Bar Association - "Junior Attorney-in-Waiting" for the month of April, given to some enterprising youngster who's displayed the proper taste for blood.
Or maybe he's "recognized" in the same sense that Greenpeace "recognizes" me when they ask me to send money - they're able to identify me and communicate with me. Hmmm, "recognized by Greenpeace as a defender of the earth" - got a nice ring to it.
Right, in the sense that they'll have to show that he was aware of its distribution in the US - or that he occupied a position in the company such that he should have known. It really depends on the structure of the company. If it's him and 300 other people, and he just happens to be the lead programmer with demonstrably no input into how and where it's marketed, he might have a way out. If Elcomsoft is him, his brother, and their friend from college, he's in trouble.
The trouble he's got is that officers of companies can be, and are, held criminally liable for the criminal activities of their companies. Otherwise, you'd have perverse situations where the corporate executives blame the ethereal "company" for bad acts, without any actual person being responsible. And the law doesn't recognize that - Union Carbide was collectively responsible for Bhopal, but in a legal sense, so were the executives that made the decisions that led to that. I don't know if any faced criminal charges, but they certainly should have if evidence of criminal negligence presented itself.
As for holding him, at his arraignment, the charges should have been read to him, so his defense team should be well aware of them by now. But you don't have to be Kreskin to see it coming - Skylarov wrote this tool to circumvent a copyright protection device, Skylarov distributed it in the US willfully and intentionally, thereby violating the DCMA. As for what law he broke, that's it right there - he distributed it, or caused it to be distributed in the US. I'd bet money that the government's case will be almost that simple - A, B, C, go to jail.
But that's exactly the case the government is going to try to make - he distributed ("shipped") it, or caused it to be distributed, to the US in contravention of the DMCA.
Look, a few people seem to be getting the wrong impression here - I don't like the law any more than the next person. But this is the case the feds have before them, and as long as that law stands, Dmitry is in serious trouble.
Woohoo, Dr. Anonymous. You've discovered that public universities are public accomodations. Congrats, that means that they have to provide facilities accessible to all. If universities provide texts in the form of e-books, then those texts must be accessible to the disabled also. But - and here's the fun part - the responsibility belongs to the university, not Adobe.
Yeah, but officers of companies can be, and are, held criminally responsible for the criminal activities of the companies they work for. All they have to do is show that he participated in the distribution, and profited from it. I don't know how deeply tied into such decisions he was, but the fact that the company set up an agent in the US to receive payments says that they fully intended to distribute the thing in the US. We'll see how it shakes out, anyway...
Nice try, chief, but you ought to read
Title III before spouting off. E-books are not a public accomodation, nor are they a commercial facility. Nor are they an employer, or a state or local government.
Or perhaps you'd like to discuss how publishers of traditional books are required to print Braille editions.
No, because you never intended for it to be transported to the US - assuming you just sold it to some random guy, and didn't arrange for him to transport it for you.
But, Skylarov isn't free just yet. The Justice Department will point to the fact that he set up an agent in the US to receive payment, and that he only accepted payment in US dollars as proof that he fully intended to distribute his circumvention device (I hate that term, but that's what they'll use) in the US. They'll have evidence of the act of distributing the device and evidence of the necessary intent to do so, which is how you convict someone of something. And then Dmitry goes to jail, unless his lawyers can successfully attack the law itself.
Placing Dmitri in jail for explaining how bad software algorithms work, is akin to placing someone in jail for explaining how a car works, dna replicates, or how the checks and balances system of government works.
But that's not what they're going to prosecute him for. That case - prosecuting him for his speech - is a total piece of shit that nobody in DOJ is fool enough to touch with a ten-foot pole. Rather, what they'll prosecute him for is distributing this circumvention device in the US, which is - like it or not - currently a crime in the US. And as long as the law stands, I'm sorry to say that it appears they've got him dead to rights.
Arresting a Russian citizen for an alleged violation of the DMCA, which occured in Russia, if at all, is analogous to arresting a Dutch citizen for smoking marijuana while at home in the Netherlands, where such activity is perfectly legal.
Not exactly. They'll draw a much finer line than that. They'll prosecute him for distributing his tool in the US, which is a crime under the DMCA. Following your analogy, it's the same as if a Dutch citizen arranged for a hundred pounds of hash to be shipped to the US - even if he never leaves his house to do it, it's still a crime under US law the instant that stuff touches US soil, and therefore falls under US jurisdiction.
Not exactly. As a general rule, foreign nationals on US soil are entitled to the protections the Constitution affords to citizens. On the other hand, foreign nationals NOT on US soil are not entitled to the protections of the Constitution. There was a SCOTUS case a few years ago which decided essentially that - the cite escapes me at the moment, but I'm sure I can find it again.
While in the US, Skylarov was entitled to First Amendment protections for his speech. However, he is almost certainly not going to be prosecuted for anything he said here or in Russia. Rather, his distribution of this circumvention tool in the US is the crime that will be prosecuted. And the government will point to the fact that he had an American payment agent set up and that he only (AFAIK) accepted payment in US dollars as proof that he/Elcomsoft intended to distribute it in the US. And so they find one copy of it in the US to establish the act, and make the case for his intent to commit the act, and they've got him dead to rights. I don't see that his lawyers will have any choice but to attack the law itself, because if the law stands, he's toast...
Well, the webmaster of goatse.cx could probably find a use for such things...
I seem to recall that he wouldn't need it though. Just as a hasty estimate, I'm pretty sure that guy could fit a whole news crew up there, including the mobile transmission/editing truck.
Well, "sounds impressive" is sort of a subjective judgement. Presumably the person asking would know that that's the sort of thing sysdamins do - I don't think anyone would expect you to wow them with an account of how you cured cancer or whatever. The key to the question is in the description of the problem-solving process, more so than in the actual problem or solution.
Trust me, if I ask you that question, and you describe a real head-scratcher of a problem that you had never encountered before, evidence of a good problem-solving process will go a long, long way in my book, even if the actual solution is to change one character in some config file
True enough, although if they come back at you with "Well, I just never could wrap my head around this whole int versus float thing..." then you know what you're dealing with right off the bat.;)
I definitely agree with you that the handling of whatever it was, is the key.
One of the best I've seen and heard of is asking "What's the most difficult programming problem or task you've encountered? How did you solve it?"
It's a good question, because it lets you gauge what the applicant is good at, what they might be weak at, and allows you to see evidence of their ability to learn new things.
In other words, was what they consider "difficult" something you'd also consider difficult? Were they able to come up with an elegant and clever solution? A good duct-tape-and-baling-wire workaround? Were they just plain stumped, but understood a good solution when they saw it? Or were they lost completely?
What's Louisiana's basis for a legal system and how does it difffer from common law?
If I remember correctly, Louisiana law was originally based on the Napoleonic Code, owing to its status as formerly French territory. The only notable differences that I know of are in the areas of estates and inheritances and stuff like that...
Slashdot Mirror
(My largest barrier to composing music is coming up with an original melodic hook so I don't get sued. Any hints?)
;)
Sure. Just use the Yoko Ono method - tape the sound of a piano being dropped on a cat, get some manuscript paper, transcribe it to sheet music, and start shopping for your megabuck recording contract.
Of course, "melodic" might be the wrong word
It's not that hard to believe - I submitted the story and just used the straight nytimes.com link.
Yes, I know about the partners.nytimes.com and archive.nytimes.com links. Yes, it occurred to me to use them about 30 seconds after submitting the story. Yes, I am a moron.
Thank you.
Excellent. That site also covers the difference between "its" and "it's" - one of my pet peeves. If you can persuade them to bookmark it and check before posting, there might be a lot of folks here who suddenly seem literate ;)
Well, as of about 10:00 AM EST, here's the breakdown (the top five spots, anyway), with about 18000 hits showing:
;)
By OS:
Windows 2000: 34.39%
Windows 98: 19.76%
Windows NT: 16.14%
Linux: 15.62%
Unknown: 5.36%
And one poor soul using Windows 3.1
By browser:
Explorer 5.0: 62.86%
Netscape 4.0: 18.04%
Explorer 2.0: 6.45%
Netscape 3.0: 4.06%
Konqueror: 2.76%
Along with two users of Lynx and one of Mosaic...
IIRC, Watterson doesn't do interviews. Period.
You can only speculate at what they would be doing if they HAD real competitors.
.doc format every time.
;)
Well, they've had a slew of real competitors. Apple used to be far more viable than it was now. OS/2, RealNetworks, Netscape, take your pick.
Yes, MS is dependent on the upgrade treadmill, and they've had clever ways to get people to upgrade anyway - let's face it, there's no functional difference between Office 95 and Office XP. The only "improvements" have been to add features and functions that virtually nobody uses anyway. But people upgrade anyway, due in great part to the fact that MS breaks and reinvents the
And, for my money, the minute they pursue the upgrade treadmill concept to its logical conclusion - software leasing - they've nailed their own coffin. Who needs that shit - paying your monthly Microsoft bill along with electricity and telephones and water? How many companies just finished moving to win2k, and already they're being told to start thinking about XP?
Anyway, I'll share a story about another computer monopoly that my father, the old computing fogey from back in the day, shared with me. He grew up and took his education in computers during period when computing was IBM. If you wanted anything computing, IBM was not just the best way, it was, most often, the only way. So he and his fellow CS students, in his undergraduate and graduate days, grew into a sense that IBM was stifling innovation for its own gain. And they carried that into the real world with them. And as they moved up the ladders of corporate power, they remembered IBM when they came to have purchasing power, and anything that remotely came close to doing the job got bought, so long as it wasn't IBM. This, combined with a never-ending antitrust investigation, helped humble IBM.
Now, think of MS in the 1990's, and compare to IBM of the 1960's and '70's. If I had to add anything, I'd add that MS doesn't appear to me to have the kind of institutional inertia or memory that IBM did - MS seems largely a cult of personality, held together by the force of BillG's will. But, of course, personality cults rarely outlive the personalities they are built around. I have real trouble seeing MS flourish after the end of Bill...
Consider this, my fellow slashdotters - remember MS over the last 10 years when your employer comes to you to ask you for your advice. And have patience. Even the mightiest of empires is destined to crumble.
By NO competitor, I mean: there is no concurrent product with a non-marginal marketshare, that Microsoft has to compete with, that forces Microsoft to lower prices, or add new features, or improve quality ... which is the point of the "free market".
Ahh, but therein lies the rub. There is no one forcing them to do those things, yet they perversely continue to do them anyway. Why should they do it if they aren't forced to?
I submit that it is because they fear competitors they either can't see, or that don't exist yet. Even in the absence of actual competition, the fear of competition still drives them. In which case, one can hardly accuse them of being unable or unwilling to compete.
You can trigger the Palm into the HotSync sequence by licking the connections? I'm serious.
You have waaay too much free time on your hands, my friend. Have you ever considered developing a hobby? Aside from molesting your hardware, that is...
Of course, I'm sure he has some legally viable explanation for being able to say he's "recognized by the American Bar Association" but I can't help but think that his "credentials" are a stretch at best.
No doubt, he's gotten some certificate from his local Bar Association - "Junior Attorney-in-Waiting" for the month of April, given to some enterprising youngster who's displayed the proper taste for blood.
Or maybe he's "recognized" in the same sense that Greenpeace "recognizes" me when they ask me to send money - they're able to identify me and communicate with me. Hmmm, "recognized by Greenpeace as a defender of the earth" - got a nice ring to it.
Well, I'm off to update my profile now...
Right, in the sense that they'll have to show that he was aware of its distribution in the US - or that he occupied a position in the company such that he should have known. It really depends on the structure of the company. If it's him and 300 other people, and he just happens to be the lead programmer with demonstrably no input into how and where it's marketed, he might have a way out. If Elcomsoft is him, his brother, and their friend from college, he's in trouble.
The trouble he's got is that officers of companies can be, and are, held criminally liable for the criminal activities of their companies. Otherwise, you'd have perverse situations where the corporate executives blame the ethereal "company" for bad acts, without any actual person being responsible. And the law doesn't recognize that - Union Carbide was collectively responsible for Bhopal, but in a legal sense, so were the executives that made the decisions that led to that. I don't know if any faced criminal charges, but they certainly should have if evidence of criminal negligence presented itself.
As for holding him, at his arraignment, the charges should have been read to him, so his defense team should be well aware of them by now. But you don't have to be Kreskin to see it coming - Skylarov wrote this tool to circumvent a copyright protection device, Skylarov distributed it in the US willfully and intentionally, thereby violating the DCMA. As for what law he broke, that's it right there - he distributed it, or caused it to be distributed in the US. I'd bet money that the government's case will be almost that simple - A, B, C, go to jail.
But that's exactly the case the government is going to try to make - he distributed ("shipped") it, or caused it to be distributed, to the US in contravention of the DMCA.
Look, a few people seem to be getting the wrong impression here - I don't like the law any more than the next person. But this is the case the feds have before them, and as long as that law stands, Dmitry is in serious trouble.
Woohoo, Dr. Anonymous. You've discovered that public universities are public accomodations. Congrats, that means that they have to provide facilities accessible to all. If universities provide texts in the form of e-books, then those texts must be accessible to the disabled also. But - and here's the fun part - the responsibility belongs to the university, not Adobe.
Thanks for playing, though.
Yeah, but officers of companies can be, and are, held criminally responsible for the criminal activities of the companies they work for. All they have to do is show that he participated in the distribution, and profited from it. I don't know how deeply tied into such decisions he was, but the fact that the company set up an agent in the US to receive payments says that they fully intended to distribute the thing in the US. We'll see how it shakes out, anyway...
Nice try, chief, but you ought to read Title III before spouting off. E-books are not a public accomodation, nor are they a commercial facility. Nor are they an employer, or a state or local government.
Or perhaps you'd like to discuss how publishers of traditional books are required to print Braille editions.
Don't quit your day job.
No, because you never intended for it to be transported to the US - assuming you just sold it to some random guy, and didn't arrange for him to transport it for you.
But, Skylarov isn't free just yet. The Justice Department will point to the fact that he set up an agent in the US to receive payment, and that he only accepted payment in US dollars as proof that he fully intended to distribute his circumvention device (I hate that term, but that's what they'll use) in the US. They'll have evidence of the act of distributing the device and evidence of the necessary intent to do so, which is how you convict someone of something. And then Dmitry goes to jail, unless his lawyers can successfully attack the law itself.
Tell that to the blind kids who couldn't read/hear Adobe's books.
Oh, give me a break. What, all two of them?
Are we going to bitch now that they can't drive either? Since when is the audible reading of a e-book some sort of fundamental right?
Nice troll, yourself.
Placing Dmitri in jail for explaining how bad software algorithms work, is akin to placing someone in jail for explaining how a car works, dna replicates, or how the checks and balances system of government works.
But that's not what they're going to prosecute him for. That case - prosecuting him for his speech - is a total piece of shit that nobody in DOJ is fool enough to touch with a ten-foot pole. Rather, what they'll prosecute him for is distributing this circumvention device in the US, which is - like it or not - currently a crime in the US. And as long as the law stands, I'm sorry to say that it appears they've got him dead to rights.
Arresting a Russian citizen for an alleged violation of the DMCA, which occured in Russia, if at all, is analogous to arresting a Dutch citizen for smoking marijuana while at home in the Netherlands, where such activity is perfectly legal.
Not exactly. They'll draw a much finer line than that. They'll prosecute him for distributing his tool in the US, which is a crime under the DMCA. Following your analogy, it's the same as if a Dutch citizen arranged for a hundred pounds of hash to be shipped to the US - even if he never leaves his house to do it, it's still a crime under US law the instant that stuff touches US soil, and therefore falls under US jurisdiction.
Not exactly. As a general rule, foreign nationals on US soil are entitled to the protections the Constitution affords to citizens. On the other hand, foreign nationals NOT on US soil are not entitled to the protections of the Constitution. There was a SCOTUS case a few years ago which decided essentially that - the cite escapes me at the moment, but I'm sure I can find it again.
While in the US, Skylarov was entitled to First Amendment protections for his speech. However, he is almost certainly not going to be prosecuted for anything he said here or in Russia. Rather, his distribution of this circumvention tool in the US is the crime that will be prosecuted. And the government will point to the fact that he had an American payment agent set up and that he only (AFAIK) accepted payment in US dollars as proof that he/Elcomsoft intended to distribute it in the US. And so they find one copy of it in the US to establish the act, and make the case for his intent to commit the act, and they've got him dead to rights. I don't see that his lawyers will have any choice but to attack the law itself, because if the law stands, he's toast...
Well, the webmaster of goatse.cx could probably find a use for such things...
I seem to recall that he wouldn't need it though. Just as a hasty estimate, I'm pretty sure that guy could fit a whole news crew up there, including the mobile transmission/editing truck.
Well, "sounds impressive" is sort of a subjective judgement. Presumably the person asking would know that that's the sort of thing sysdamins do - I don't think anyone would expect you to wow them with an account of how you cured cancer or whatever. The key to the question is in the description of the problem-solving process, more so than in the actual problem or solution.
Trust me, if I ask you that question, and you describe a real head-scratcher of a problem that you had never encountered before, evidence of a good problem-solving process will go a long, long way in my book, even if the actual solution is to change one character in some config file
True enough, although if they come back at you with "Well, I just never could wrap my head around this whole int versus float thing..." then you know what you're dealing with right off the bat. ;)
I definitely agree with you that the handling of whatever it was, is the key.
Well, strike out "programming" in the above, but otherwise it works ;)
One of the best I've seen and heard of is asking "What's the most difficult programming problem or task you've encountered? How did you solve it?"
It's a good question, because it lets you gauge what the applicant is good at, what they might be weak at, and allows you to see evidence of their ability to learn new things.
In other words, was what they consider "difficult" something you'd also consider difficult? Were they able to come up with an elegant and clever solution? A good duct-tape-and-baling-wire workaround? Were they just plain stumped, but understood a good solution when they saw it? Or were they lost completely?
What's Louisiana's basis for a legal system and how does it difffer from common law?
If I remember correctly, Louisiana law was originally based on the Napoleonic Code, owing to its status as formerly French territory. The only notable differences that I know of are in the areas of estates and inheritances and stuff like that...