> Thank God For Google. They seem to be one of the few companies that actually gets the fact that information wants to be free
Fact? How is this a fact?
It is expensive to collect data. It is expensive to convert data into information. People don't tend to like doing expensive things for free.
Information is inanimate and doesn't want anything... to steal someone's sig "Information doesn't like to be anthropomorphized."
The fact that information, of its own accord, doesn't try to hide doesn't mean it yearns to be free. Just like you not locking you car one day doesn't mean you car wants to be free.
Well, to be fair, *any* OS will choke on that one (through RAM, process limits, CPU time, whatever resource is limited first), unless it has workarounds to stop it - it's not as though co-operative succeeds where pre-emptive fails in that regard...
That was exactly the point =-)
Being preemptive doesn't magically rid you of the problem, the best of them still have to do other tricks to keep themselves alive at times.
>OS9 didn't have pre-emptive multitasking, so one bug somewhere in one program could bring the system to its knees. I saw that happen far too many times...
1. It did have some preemptive multitasking, it just wasn't used very muhc because it wasn't all that useful outside of very specific circumstances that required a gooda mount of design work.
2. Having preemptive multitasking doesn't prevent one application from bringing down the whole system. It just removes one vector for this behavior. As an exmaple, try writing a program that spawns two copies of itself. The only reason most preemptive OSs won't stay on their knees is they have work arounds to prevent this particular problem (but didn't always have them)
Gotcha... well that takes it right out of "Mission Critical" ratings then... different discussion.
With Life/Death systems, it becomes a legislative issue.
With Business Critical systems, the management in charge needs to clearly factor in the risk of not being able to run software later. If something is live key/date based, and you have to restore to an older state in 6 years due to some Document Retention/Legal requirement, you might just be hosed. It becomes a value/risk decision, not a legislative decision.
In order to be certified for mission critical use, you also have to use certified technicians/parts, etc. And it's not like a non-certified tech is going to break out a signal analyzer and start working the bits back to source code to determine what is going wrong in the field.
These things are supposed to operate a black boxes... no one is supposed to tinker inside them. If it breaks, replace it with a new one... As long as it is certified to do the same job and connect the same way in the same system, I doubt anyone cares about the internals.
As for your contention of what happens when the DRM breaks, that seems to me to be the same as what happens if any other part of the device breaks. ie, That's part of certification. What are the failure scenarios? How does it behave in failure scenarios? What does the watch dog do when things freak out? How operational is it without the broken components, etc...
I still don't see a problem with DRM in mission critical apps. Heck, given certification requirements, this might even be a good use of DRM... to cryptographically sign components to ensure that only certified parts are used.
I don't really know the field, so I could be off... but that's my impression. Anyone disabuse me?
Note: This in no way goes towards DRM being at all proper for use in my music. I don't believe the public is educated enough about the licenses involved in purchasing DRMd music to be able to accept the agreements, so it should default to "I should be able to play any music I pay for on any device I choose..."
Google is fighting from the "Slippery Slope" argument... this is "They are asking for harmless information now, just think what they'll ask for the next round. Let's start fighting them here."
The other search engines may have decided it's not worth fighting at this point. If you look too reactionary, and don't get a clear win (something which Google didn't get, BTW), you may actually damage the longer end goal.
I don't know either way, but in terms of self interest to the corporations, I reall think we just don't have enough to condemn anyone quite yet.
I wonder one thing about the query though... how many queries searching for child porn will have been from research companies developing/testing blocking software? Maybe they're looking for reports on how child porn is affecting our world, etc... There's no way to tell why someone is searching for those terms. We know more pointed questions are coming... questions that can't be answered without linking queries together into sessions... And once you get that, you might be able to start inferring people's identities. I expect more fight from the search engines on that round. (Call me an optimist)
Just because it was subpoena'd doesn't mean you couldn't easily quash it, but the fact that you won't reveal your key or the contents makes you look awfully fishy. And those are humans in the Jury (assuming Jury trial)... even if ordered not to take that into consideration, it may still color their interpretation of other pieces of evidence.
Even if you don't get into that mess, you still have to spend the time and expense of doing the motions to quash, and argue in front of a judge, etc.
The defending attorney can certainly attack the evidence from that front, but circumstantially, I imagine the opposing counsel will have other things handy that will lead to the credibility of the email.
It has to be evaluated on a case by case basis, thus it's admissible.
(Not a lawyer, but been in court more often than I'd really like)
Yeah, but in the case of email, Chain of custody can start upon receipt of the message. For the strongest possible case, you have to be able to track what happened to the message on the system as well as what happened to the backup tapes... you need to be able to show who accessed it, etc...
Gets messy, but if you're doing your job right, it shouldn't be a problem.
And if you're a public company, you have to do this stuff anyway (likely), for SOX compliance.
Sorry, but If your email was ever on a computer (trust me, it was), and that computer was backed up when your email was on it (you hope it was), you're still open (oh crap).
Whoever your provider is just needs to be subpoena'd, and voila... everything you thought you removed is back in action.
I could have sworn that they went, thousand, million, thousand-million, billion in Britain.
(A friend got me one of those mensa books in high school, but it was British, and I remember being really confused by the different way of counting large numbers)
> and it would have the added benefit of giving the screen a measure of protection as it wouldn't be sticking out from your arm.
I've tried both ways with my watches, and I get more scratches with the top towards me. I guess I'm just not as careful bumping against my cell phone, belt, reacking in pocket, etc. as I should be. (And I like not having to move my watch in order to handle something large.)
> It's funny. At one job I had, it wasn't allowed to defragment my own hard drive. Yet I had delete access to every table in the production database. Strange.
Perhaps because you have "ownership" of the production database and will catch living hell if you break it.
But, if you accidentally hose your desktop, there is no real recourse against you? It only ends up costing the IT group time and money to fix your problem. (maybe not you personally, but "users" in general may have set the pattern...)
There are good reasons... shared resources/experts/support-contracts/interopeabilit y/unified budgets, etc... Why have 7 departments get a database guy, when you can have two guys run DBs shared by all?
Internal corporate IT SLAs are a joke. If an SLA is violated, it turns into nothing but a moronic yelling match complete with finger-pointing, et cetera. Meanwhile... the end-user still suffers.
That may be the case where you are, and to some extent where I am as well. But, if we are off on our overall SLAs by much, bad things happen. (Individuals find themselves laid off, managers get replaced, departments shuffle, etc)
Put IT staff inside of each business function. Make them accountable to that business group/function... where it belongs.
I agree with you here. I work for a large company, and we have a group of folks whose entire job is to effectively work in the business units. Business unit A has an senior management level IT person who is directly accountable to that business units goals/needs. Business unit B has a different person.
There isn't necessarily a disconnect between "Divest entirely" and "Have business unit accountability". You can do both successfully.
It just take good senior level guidance/commitment. You have to have the numbers, you have to care about them, you have to educate your customers about them, and you have to be directly tied to your customers' success.
>You should be able to script the Quicktime Player in the meantime.
Yeah, tried that too... but I just couldn't make it play on a specific screen. Either it doesn't work, or I just didn't have the magic needed to do it right
> It likely has to do with my bad WiFi router performance combined with Window's overall inefficiency in handling large files over a network.
Windows transfers large files over the network pretty darn well. It's not so fast at small files (though getting better), so I think your WLAN is the real issue here.
Flip over to 802.11a, and I'll bet you things clean up nicely.
>Assuming you're on a Mac, this can all be done with Applescript. Can your app just do that?
Not really. iTunes doesn't do full screen video, so you can't use that trick. =-( It doesn't give a programmatic method of choosing which screen to play the video on either.
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OK, so ignore the last line then... how is it a FACT that knowlege wants to be free?
> Thank God For Google. They seem to be one of the few companies that actually gets the fact that information wants to be free
Fact? How is this a fact?
It is expensive to collect data.
It is expensive to convert data into information.
People don't tend to like doing expensive things for free.
Information is inanimate and doesn't want anything... to steal someone's sig "Information doesn't like to be anthropomorphized."
The fact that information, of its own accord, doesn't try to hide doesn't mean it yearns to be free. Just like you not locking you car one day doesn't mean you car wants to be free.
What it would mean is that if you used ActiveX, Microsoft will cover you if Eolas decides to sue you over it.
Well, to be fair, *any* OS will choke on that one (through RAM, process limits, CPU time, whatever resource is limited first), unless it has workarounds to stop it - it's not as though co-operative succeeds where pre-emptive fails in that regard...
That was exactly the point =-)
Being preemptive doesn't magically rid you of the problem, the best of them still have to do other tricks to keep themselves alive at times.
>OS9 didn't have pre-emptive multitasking, so one bug somewhere in one program could bring the system to its knees. I saw that happen far too many times...
1. It did have some preemptive multitasking, it just wasn't used very muhc because it wasn't all that useful outside of very specific circumstances that required a gooda mount of design work.
2. Having preemptive multitasking doesn't prevent one application from bringing down the whole system. It just removes one vector for this behavior.
As an exmaple, try writing a program that spawns two copies of itself. The only reason most preemptive OSs won't stay on their knees is they have work arounds to prevent this particular problem (but didn't always have them)
> the only mainstream OS that didn't have any form of preemptive multitasking.
Actually, it did have preemptive multitasking, you just couldn't use it in alot of circumstances.
Gotcha... well that takes it right out of "Mission Critical" ratings then... different discussion. With Life/Death systems, it becomes a legislative issue. With Business Critical systems, the management in charge needs to clearly factor in the risk of not being able to run software later. If something is live key/date based, and you have to restore to an older state in 6 years due to some Document Retention/Legal requirement, you might just be hosed. It becomes a value/risk decision, not a legislative decision.
In order to be certified for mission critical use, you also have to use certified technicians/parts, etc. And it's not like a non-certified tech is going to break out a signal analyzer and start working the bits back to source code to determine what is going wrong in the field.
These things are supposed to operate a black boxes... no one is supposed to tinker inside them. If it breaks, replace it with a new one... As long as it is certified to do the same job and connect the same way in the same system, I doubt anyone cares about the internals.
As for your contention of what happens when the DRM breaks, that seems to me to be the same as what happens if any other part of the device breaks. ie, That's part of certification. What are the failure scenarios? How does it behave in failure scenarios? What does the watch dog do when things freak out? How operational is it without the broken components, etc...
I still don't see a problem with DRM in mission critical apps. Heck, given certification requirements, this might even be a good use of DRM... to cryptographically sign components to ensure that only certified parts are used.
I don't really know the field, so I could be off... but that's my impression. Anyone disabuse me?
Note: This in no way goes towards DRM being at all proper for use in my music. I don't believe the public is educated enough about the licenses involved in purchasing DRMd music to be able to accept the agreements, so it should default to "I should be able to play any music I pay for on any device I choose..."
Why does anything that requires DRM going to show up on critical systems? Why do you need to shoev that music CD into your Nuclear monitoring system?
Or am I missing something?
I don't know about all my problem, but
<offtopic>
Well... I killed a machine by stepping on a power strip once.
Who the hell thought it was a good idea to make power strips out of metal!?
Lovely flame or plasma cloud or whatever it was though...
Correct.
Google is fighting from the "Slippery Slope" argument... this is "They are asking for harmless information now, just think what they'll ask for the next round. Let's start fighting them here."
The other search engines may have decided it's not worth fighting at this point. If you look too reactionary, and don't get a clear win (something which Google didn't get, BTW), you may actually damage the longer end goal.
I don't know either way, but in terms of self interest to the corporations, I reall think we just don't have enough to condemn anyone quite yet.
I wonder one thing about the query though... how many queries searching for child porn will have been from research companies developing/testing blocking software? Maybe they're looking for reports on how child porn is affecting our world, etc... There's no way to tell why someone is searching for those terms. We know more pointed questions are coming... questions that can't be answered without linking queries together into sessions... And once you get that, you might be able to start inferring people's identities. I expect more fight from the search engines on that round. (Call me an optimist)
Just because it was subpoena'd doesn't mean you couldn't easily quash it, but the fact that you won't reveal your key or the contents makes you look awfully fishy. And those are humans in the Jury (assuming Jury trial)... even if ordered not to take that into consideration, it may still color their interpretation of other pieces of evidence.
Even if you don't get into that mess, you still have to spend the time and expense of doing the motions to quash, and argue in front of a judge, etc.
Exactly.
Remeber kids, SMTP and email travel over open connections and between untrusted hosts.
If you don't want it seen, don't send it.
(If you encrypt it and send it, you can be subpoena'd to decrypt the file, etc...)
The defending attorney can certainly attack the evidence from that front, but circumstantially, I imagine the opposing counsel will have other things handy that will lead to the credibility of the email.
It has to be evaluated on a case by case basis, thus it's admissible.
(Not a lawyer, but been in court more often than I'd really like)
Yeah, but in the case of email, Chain of custody can start upon receipt of the message.
For the strongest possible case, you have to be able to track what happened to the message on the system as well as what happened to the backup tapes... you need to be able to show who accessed it, etc...
Gets messy, but if you're doing your job right, it shouldn't be a problem.
And if you're a public company, you have to do this stuff anyway (likely), for SOX compliance.
Sorry, but If your email was ever on a computer (trust me, it was), and that computer was backed up when your email was on it (you hope it was), you're still open (oh crap).
Whoever your provider is just needs to be subpoena'd, and voila... everything you thought you removed is back in action.
Did something change?
I could have sworn that they went, thousand, million, thousand-million, billion in Britain.
(A friend got me one of those mensa books in high school, but it was British, and I remember being really confused by the different way of counting large numbers)
Maybe I hallucinated it?
> and it would have the added benefit of giving the screen a measure of protection as it wouldn't be sticking out from your arm.
I've tried both ways with my watches, and I get more scratches with the top towards me.
I guess I'm just not as careful bumping against my cell phone, belt, reacking in pocket, etc. as I should be.
(And I like not having to move my watch in order to handle something large.)
And have 7 servers to patch, track, maintain, backup, etc...
> It's funny. At one job I had, it wasn't allowed to defragment my own hard drive. Yet I had delete access to every table in the production database. Strange.
Perhaps because you have "ownership" of the production database and will catch living hell if you break it.
But, if you accidentally hose your desktop, there is no real recourse against you? It only ends up costing the IT group time and money to fix your problem. (maybe not you personally, but "users" in general may have set the pattern...)
Whoaa. Slow down there sparky.
t y/unified budgets, etc... Why have 7 departments get a database guy, when you can have two guys run DBs shared by all?
There are good reasons... shared resources/experts/support-contracts/interopeabili
Internal corporate IT SLAs are a joke. If an SLA is violated, it turns into nothing but a moronic yelling match complete with finger-pointing, et cetera. Meanwhile... the end-user still suffers.
That may be the case where you are, and to some extent where I am as well. But, if we are off on our overall SLAs by much, bad things happen. (Individuals find themselves laid off, managers get replaced, departments shuffle, etc)
Put IT staff inside of each business function. Make them accountable to that business group/function... where it belongs.
I agree with you here. I work for a large company, and we have a group of folks whose entire job is to effectively work in the business units. Business unit A has an senior management level IT person who is directly accountable to that business units goals/needs. Business unit B has a different person.
There isn't necessarily a disconnect between "Divest entirely" and "Have business unit accountability". You can do both successfully.
It just take good senior level guidance/commitment. You have to have the numbers, you have to care about them, you have to educate your customers about them, and you have to be directly tied to your customers' success.
>You should be able to script the Quicktime Player in the meantime.
Yeah, tried that too... but I just couldn't make it play on a specific screen. Either it doesn't work, or I just didn't have the magic needed to do it right
> It likely has to do with my bad WiFi router performance combined with Window's overall inefficiency in handling large files over a network.
Windows transfers large files over the network pretty darn well.
It's not so fast at small files (though getting better), so I think your WLAN is the real issue here.
Flip over to 802.11a, and I'll bet you things clean up nicely.
So, the important question: How many Libraries of Congress is that per second?
>Assuming you're on a Mac, this can all be done with Applescript. Can your app just do that?
Not really. iTunes doesn't do full screen video, so you can't use that trick. =-(
It doesn't give a programmatic method of choosing which screen to play the video on either.