Besides being dumb on the cause-and-effect level, this is bound to be unfair. Which artists get a cut of the tax money? Anyone who claims they've been pirated? Whoever the culture minister likes?
The slogan should be "a stupid tax to fund croneyism."
I just sent them an email with a link to this story and urged them to act quickly. This is funny and all, but will someone please think of the grandmas?
I don't care if they put these restrictions on...As long as I can play it on any device that I own with only a single payment
How can that work? The main concept of DRM is this: "if our algorithm says you didn't buy this, it won't work."
That algorithm is always fallible. Maybe 5 years from now you'll want to use the file on hardware that hasn't been invented yet. Maybe 10 years from now the DRM-verifying server will be shut down. Somehow, sometime, it will bite you. And it will suck. And you will have lost what you paid for.
If I could get rid of all my DVDs and have a single, secure, backed up place where my devices can connect and download the content for local playing then I'd be much happier.
Sounds good, but will that cloud service be perpetually free after you bought the content? Nope. It will be a subscription. And when you stop paying, you'll lose access to the cloud. So unless you can still back up, transfer, and play your local copies, this model is known as "renting."
You make a good point - sometimes the 'stupid' programing decisions of management are actually smart business decisions. They prefer messy code that makes money to pristine code that doesn't, and that's just business. The money it makes keeps us employed. The fact that we coders are immersed in the details makes us more concerned about them than about the big picture - which is fine, but we need to be overruled at times.
I'm glad that you've got a boss who understands the tradeoffs.
Manager: We need to add Feature Y. Coder: But that builds on Feature X, which is still buggy. Manager: I don't care. The customer wants it. --- (A month later) Coder: Can we take some time to fix the bugs in Feature X and Y? Manager: No, we have to make Feature Z, which builds on X and Y. We can fix them later. Coder: If we'd known you wanted Feature Z, we would have done X and Y completely differently. Manager: Hmmm. Well, it needs to work by next Tuesday. Coder: (very quiet expletive)
If you use a piece of FOSS software that lacks a feature you need, hire one of the project's developers to add that feature and contribute it back to the project.
This is great because:
1) You get the feature you need for a low, one-time cost 2) If it's added back to the main project, it simplifies your future installations 3) You help the project to continue development, which again benefits your organization in the future 4) This use of taxpayer money goes to create something that all citizens can use. Public dollars for public benefit.
Go to a government agency conference and do a presentation. Talk about how open source has saved you money, eliminated licensing headaches, etc etc. Show some charts.
More importantly, how do you know if they're honest even if they provide data? They could have faked the raw data. Independent (i.e. different data/code) reproduction is the only way.
Your overall point is good, but publication of the raw data would still be useful. It's much easier to tweak an algorithm to bias it than it is to tweak thousands of data points individually, without leaving any trace of manipulation (for example, maybe (I'm not sure) these numbers could be expected to follow Benford's Law). My guess is that much of the data collection is automated, too, so if we were really paranoid, we could say that the data collection stations must publish their measurements in real time to the public internet. It would be REALLY hard to tweak them, then.
I realize this is probably overkill. I'm just saying that more transparency CAN be useful. Whether its usefulness outweighs to cost of providing it is debatable.
Free exchange of information isn't a problem between honest scientists. To some random political asshole who will merely use it as ammunition? Not really.
How do we know who the honest scientists are unless their data and source code is available for public analysis?
It's worth pointing out that at one point CRU were getting over 50 FOI requests per week from climate skeptics. Maybe it's more now. That is a crazy additional workload for the CRU scientists who are paid to do actual research and not fill out FOI replies.
Solution:
Make a public web site
Post your new data there continuously
Answer every FOI request with a one-line, stock email with the URL
The word "unlimited" just has to come out of all advertising everywhere. There is no such thing as unlimited supply of anything so it is, on its face, false advertising.
While it's true that nobody can give you truly unlimited access due to finite bandwidth, I think that a company could still advertise unlimited access honestly. To me, it would mean "we are capable of giving you bandwidth X, and we guarantee that you can use that much bandwidth, around the clock, 365 days a year if you like. We won't stop you."
In other words, the fact that the network has inherent limits is not a problem, as long as they're made clear up front. The problem is when they say "unlimited" and actually plan to cut you off at some point. That should be considered false advertising. If the cap is 5 GB, call it a "5 GB data plan."
a DOCUMENT READER shouldn't be interpreting javascript.
Seriously. Web pages are interactive. Documents are meant to be read and maybe filled out. The only reason we need PDF is for stuff that needs to look the same on every screen and print out the way it looks. We don't need Javascript in them.
...I walked out on the movie Minority Report about 10 minutes in, because it's exactly like that.
There were definitely some unpleasant things in that movie. But it's like the book "1984": it gives people a nasty mental image of a government with too much power. Which is very useful for those of us who want to influence the debate.
What you're talking about is being communication standard neutral simply by supporting multiple standards, but that is increasingly a non-standard
CDMA might be a "non-standard" globally, but in the US, 2 of the 3 biggest carriers (Verizon and Sprint) use it. If you want to be able to freely switch between carriers here, supporting GSM and CDMA is important.
Here's what I'm really envisioning:
You buy an unlocked phone that will work on any major US cell carrier.
Carriers offer more and more pre-paid service. You buy some minutes on every carrier.
You set your phone to use whichever carrier has strongest signal where you are.
You give out a universal number (like Google Voice) that forward calls to whichever phone number you're currently using (I'm assuming you have one on each carrier)
To complete the picture, you use a service that monitors your prepaid minutes and automatically buys more from whichever carrier you are using.
Tada! Now you don't care about carriers. Your phone just works, and you just pay for the minutes you use.
Of course the carriers would fight this scenario tooth and nail...
What will really be big news is when someone (probably Google or Apple) introduces a phone with something like the Gobi chip, now being used in some netbooks. It's a "carrier-neutral" chip, so you can activate the device on whatever carrier you like - GSM or CDMA.
The only reason people buy phones from carriers is to get financing (which is what carriers' phone subsidies really are - rolling the payments into your plan and sneakily continuing them forever). If people are willing to pay up front, or if the manufacturer will finance the handset, you can buy a phone and pick your own carrier, or even activate the same device on multiple carriers. This would be a real game-changer, and would push the carriers further towards being dumb pipes.
I think this would be ideal: make carriers compete on network quality alone, and make handset makers compete cross-carrier on handset quality alone.
Mr. Jha soon decided to axe the entire Symbian product line as well as phones using several other operating systems. He wanted to simplify product development to standardize on one or two core systems. It came down to a Microsoft Windows mobile operating system and Android. When Microsoft said that a crucial release of its mobile operating system would be delayed, Mr. Jha gave Microsoft the stiff arm and bet on Android.
Well, my thoughts are, really...unless you want to have kids, there is really NO reason to ever get married. Why risk losing half your **** over a piece of ***?
I don't know, maybe some of us don't see every other human as a piece of meat, and like having a companion who will always be there. Maybe we find satisfaction in knowing someone intimately, and taking care of them, instead of having an endless parade of meaningless dates and shallow conversations. Maybe we find it deeply comforting to have someone love us despite knowing our worst faults, and to be able to do the same for them.
But yes, if you see other people as sexual vending machines, you should avoid marriage, for everyone's sake.
What I don't get, and maybe someone can answer this for me, is why do people care if global warming is man made or not? Even if it isn't man made...we need to do something to stop it...
So you're saying that we may need to stop global warming, but it doesn't matter whether we know what causes it?
...or come up with alternatives for our survival.
And these alternatives would be necessary IF we determine that we can't stop it, right? And to make that determination, step 1 is to find out what causes it. (Step 0 is to determine whether global warming is actually happening.)
I don't have an opinion on any of this, but if global warming is a real problem, it does matter whether or not we're causing it.
The question is, did they make a profit from that $22 cell phone? Or were they just getting it out of their stock for whatever price they could get, even at a loss?
Applying human moral rules to non-human entities driven by very different rules of success with zero loyalty to humanity is a recipe for disaster.
There may be some differences, but stealing is still stealing. When I go to work for a company, I'm making an agreement with my boss and my coworkers to give my labor in exchange for my pay. If I don't do what I promised, it just as wrong as if they didn't pay me as promised. It's not immoral for my company to fire me or lay me off, unless they promised that they wouldn't, just as it's not immoral for me to quit unless I promised I wouldn't.
If I steal company property or data, it's just as wrong as if the company stole my property or data. You can try to abstract it away, but my actions would harm my coworkers.
So, rather "they all deserve to pay," I think @reporter outlines a reality of choices within the realm of market "only profit is good and nothing else matters much."
Profit is the goal of business, but that doesn't mean nothing else matters. Imagine you have a business, and you are the owner and sole employee. Can you morally kill babies if it makes you a profit? Of course not. Profit is the goal of your business, but you are still a human. If you then hire 10 or 10,000 employees, the "no baby killing" rule would still apply. Saying "this is business" changes nothing.
Slashdot Mirror
Besides being dumb on the cause-and-effect level, this is bound to be unfair. Which artists get a cut of the tax money? Anyone who claims they've been pirated? Whoever the culture minister likes?
The slogan should be "a stupid tax to fund croneyism."
I just sent them an email with a link to this story and urged them to act quickly. This is funny and all, but will someone please think of the grandmas?
How can that work? The main concept of DRM is this: "if our algorithm says you didn't buy this, it won't work."
That algorithm is always fallible. Maybe 5 years from now you'll want to use the file on hardware that hasn't been invented yet. Maybe 10 years from now the DRM-verifying server will be shut down. Somehow, sometime, it will bite you. And it will suck. And you will have lost what you paid for.
Sounds good, but will that cloud service be perpetually free after you bought the content? Nope. It will be a subscription. And when you stop paying, you'll lose access to the cloud. So unless you can still back up, transfer, and play your local copies, this model is known as "renting."
You make a good point - sometimes the 'stupid' programing decisions of management are actually smart business decisions. They prefer messy code that makes money to pristine code that doesn't, and that's just business. The money it makes keeps us employed. The fact that we coders are immersed in the details makes us more concerned about them than about the big picture - which is fine, but we need to be overruled at times.
I'm glad that you've got a boss who understands the tradeoffs.
So by believing in reincarnation, you make it real?
Consider Ruby. 'The Well-Grounded Rubyist' is an excellent (new) book that I'm currently working my way through. Very good teaching of a fun language.
Also, this happens too often:
Manager: We need to add Feature Y.
Coder: But that builds on Feature X, which is still buggy.
Manager: I don't care. The customer wants it.
---
(A month later)
Coder: Can we take some time to fix the bugs in Feature X and Y?
Manager: No, we have to make Feature Z, which builds on X and Y. We can fix them later.
Coder: If we'd known you wanted Feature Z, we would have done X and Y completely differently.
Manager: Hmmm. Well, it needs to work by next Tuesday.
Coder: (very quiet expletive)
If you use a piece of FOSS software that lacks a feature you need, hire one of the project's developers to add that feature and contribute it back to the project.
This is great because:
1) You get the feature you need for a low, one-time cost
2) If it's added back to the main project, it simplifies your future installations
3) You help the project to continue development, which again benefits your organization in the future
4) This use of taxpayer money goes to create something that all citizens can use. Public dollars for public benefit.
Go to a government agency conference and do a presentation. Talk about how open source has saved you money, eliminated licensing headaches, etc etc. Show some charts.
Your overall point is good, but publication of the raw data would still be useful. It's much easier to tweak an algorithm to bias it than it is to tweak thousands of data points individually, without leaving any trace of manipulation (for example, maybe (I'm not sure) these numbers could be expected to follow Benford's Law). My guess is that much of the data collection is automated, too, so if we were really paranoid, we could say that the data collection stations must publish their measurements in real time to the public internet. It would be REALLY hard to tweak them, then.
I realize this is probably overkill. I'm just saying that more transparency CAN be useful. Whether its usefulness outweighs to cost of providing it is debatable.
How do we know who the honest scientists are unless their data and source code is available for public analysis?
How about "if you're funded by public tax dollars, whatever data you produce is public property and it's part of your job to release it publicly?"
Solution:
Am I missing something?
While it's true that nobody can give you truly unlimited access due to finite bandwidth, I think that a company could still advertise unlimited access honestly. To me, it would mean "we are capable of giving you bandwidth X, and we guarantee that you can use that much bandwidth, around the clock, 365 days a year if you like. We won't stop you."
In other words, the fact that the network has inherent limits is not a problem, as long as they're made clear up front. The problem is when they say "unlimited" and actually plan to cut you off at some point. That should be considered false advertising. If the cap is 5 GB, call it a "5 GB data plan."
Uberdork: "Now if only we could get them to ship Windows with a choice to use bash."
a DOCUMENT READER shouldn't be interpreting javascript.
Seriously. Web pages are interactive. Documents are meant to be read and maybe filled out. The only reason we need PDF is for stuff that needs to look the same on every screen and print out the way it looks. We don't need Javascript in them.
There were definitely some unpleasant things in that movie. But it's like the book "1984": it gives people a nasty mental image of a government with too much power. Which is very useful for those of us who want to influence the debate.
CDMA might be a "non-standard" globally, but in the US, 2 of the 3 biggest carriers (Verizon and Sprint) use it. If you want to be able to freely switch between carriers here, supporting GSM and CDMA is important.
Here's what I'm really envisioning:
Tada! Now you don't care about carriers. Your phone just works, and you just pay for the minutes you use.
Of course the carriers would fight this scenario tooth and nail...
What will really be big news is when someone (probably Google or Apple) introduces a phone with something like the Gobi chip, now being used in some netbooks. It's a "carrier-neutral" chip, so you can activate the device on whatever carrier you like - GSM or CDMA.
The only reason people buy phones from carriers is to get financing (which is what carriers' phone subsidies really are - rolling the payments into your plan and sneakily continuing them forever). If people are willing to pay up front, or if the manufacturer will finance the handset, you can buy a phone and pick your own carrier, or even activate the same device on multiple carriers. This would be a real game-changer, and would push the carriers further towards being dumb pipes.
I think this would be ideal: make carriers compete on network quality alone, and make handset makers compete cross-carrier on handset quality alone.
You're in luck - they're going with Android.
Is the DRM also 3D? Does it actually come out and stab you in the eye?
I don't know, maybe some of us don't see every other human as a piece of meat, and like having a companion who will always be there. Maybe we find satisfaction in knowing someone intimately, and taking care of them, instead of having an endless parade of meaningless dates and shallow conversations. Maybe we find it deeply comforting to have someone love us despite knowing our worst faults, and to be able to do the same for them.
But yes, if you see other people as sexual vending machines, you should avoid marriage, for everyone's sake.
So you're saying that we may need to stop global warming, but it doesn't matter whether we know what causes it?
And these alternatives would be necessary IF we determine that we can't stop it, right? And to make that determination, step 1 is to find out what causes it. (Step 0 is to determine whether global warming is actually happening.)
I don't have an opinion on any of this, but if global warming is a real problem, it does matter whether or not we're causing it.
The question is, did they make a profit from that $22 cell phone? Or were they just getting it out of their stock for whatever price they could get, even at a loss?
There may be some differences, but stealing is still stealing. When I go to work for a company, I'm making an agreement with my boss and my coworkers to give my labor in exchange for my pay. If I don't do what I promised, it just as wrong as if they didn't pay me as promised. It's not immoral for my company to fire me or lay me off, unless they promised that they wouldn't, just as it's not immoral for me to quit unless I promised I wouldn't.
If I steal company property or data, it's just as wrong as if the company stole my property or data. You can try to abstract it away, but my actions would harm my coworkers.
Profit is the goal of business, but that doesn't mean nothing else matters. Imagine you have a business, and you are the owner and sole employee. Can you morally kill babies if it makes you a profit? Of course not. Profit is the goal of your business, but you are still a human. If you then hire 10 or 10,000 employees, the "no baby killing" rule would still apply. Saying "this is business" changes nothing.