Here's an example of poor design. Or architecture, if you prefer, but you can think of architecture as "building design".
At my university, I have an office. There's a coffee machine somewhere else, and there's a door between the hall my office is a part of and the coffee machine.
A good design would make the door easy to open for people who are standing on the coffee machine side of the door, with a full cup of coffee in their right hand (because most people are right-handed).
A good design of such a door would be one that opens inwards: you can push it with your left hand, or your hips and butt.
Another good design would be one that opens out and to the left: you can pull it with your empty left hand.
A bad design is one that opens out and to the right: if you pull it with your left hand, you have to turn around to walk through it (it auto-closes fairly rapidly). If you want to open it with your right hand, you have to switch your cup to your left hand (not pleasant with hot coffee).
Guess which one my university chose? The one bad design:(
Point of the story: you need to know what a thing will be used for, in order to design it well for all its uses.
Point two of the story: you won't think of everything. Go observe people, then you will have a better chance of knowing.
It's not what you'd call a rich data set, and of course the Qwerty keyboard comes up trumps
I of course have to mention the Dvorak layout. I encourage you to try it. Your hands might thank you (and fall in love), and if not you can always go back rather easily. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard
Also, for some experimental geekery, trying to find out whether it's all the shit it's made out to be, see http://klausler.com/evolved.html
That's it. Thank you for listening. My hands thank me for listening way back when, too;)
Who said that we were going to stop paying people to make these things? We are talking about the idiotic and insulting attempts that these companies are undertaking to create scarcity where there is none.
Let us be sure we're talking about the same thing. You're talking about the limits copyright law places on people who want to make copies of films, correct? And the scarcity is the absence of copies people would make if the law wasn't forbidding them from doing that, correct? And the scarcity is artificial because we could set up a system where (1) all socially desirable* films exist; and (2) all the socially desirable* copies get made, correct?
* "Socially desirable" means that there exists some collection of people p_1...p_n who in total is willing to pay a sum of money equal to or exceeding the amount the producers want for their goods. (Either film makers or peer-to-peer film distributors)
I'd like you to explain to me the solution: which payment scheme should we adopt in order to make the film as wide-spread as is beneficial and so that the films people want get made? Why should we think the scheme you have in mind works?
I think this is a really hard problem. I don't have a solution. Shortening copyright without abolishing it still introduces scarcity: for $DURATION, some people go without the film, even though they'd be willing to pay the cost of copying it. (They go without because they don't want to pay the price that Copyright law lets the seller charge.)
How do we pay without introducing artificial scarcity?
I think we've seen that there is room in the market for high performing low budget films[: The Blair Witch Project, "9", Paranormal Activity]
I agree with you that you can make really good films on the cheap.
But, like you said: there is room in the market. There is a market. The films (and their tickets) get sold. At least tBWP. How about the rest, were they given away for free? How were the budgets recouped?
That was my point: making films in the quantity and quality people seem to want takes money going in the makers' direction. Doesn't have to be much, but it has to be non-zero.
Add to that, the immorality of creating artificial scarcity to begin with, based on the false premise that creativity will somehow be stifled if we don't.
Making a two-hour film takes a significant amount of time out of many peoples' lives. Why would we expect people to do that if they're not paid?
Making music is (comparatively) cheap, and an easily accessible hobby. So is making software. Recording music can be done fairly easily because you don't need to pull that many people together, and you can pay your way out of not being a good recording technicians. The maintenance and evolution of software can be distributed (initial creation is more debatable).
Making films doesn't seem to have the same advantages that music and software does.
I'm not advocating any particular policy based off of these observations---I'm trying to say that if you expect people to create films for free, you may be disappointed at the volume and/or quality of output.
But let's say most copyrighted stuff makes most of its money in the first three(/five/ten) years after publication. Maybe that's a good argument for shortening the duration? And maybe different kinds of works should have different restrictions and durations, due to the economics of their creation?
Why does every successful new language have to use "C" syntax?
You mean like python, ruby and Haskell?
Also, what's gained just by being different? It's one thing to have different concepts that need new syntax simply because there isn't anything to copy. It's another thing to rehash an old concept with a different syntax, without any apparent purpose for the difference. Why "fix" what works?
I'm currently working on my STR score (push-ups, sit-ups, biceps curl, etc.) and my base attack bonus (fencing). I might also get Proficiency: Martial Weapon (Foil).
All that exercise spills over into my INT score as well;)
When the authorities have requested copies of patrons borrowing records
As a frequent library patron, I would rather object to being copied for that purpose. I love to do a bit of deliberately sabotaged "copying" with my girlfriend, though.
If you're in what-the-hell mode, OP meant patrons' (with an apostrophe).
I've never understood the draw and allure that WoW provides, and why people get addicted to the point that they drop out of schools.
It could be that people are unsatisfied with their real life and aren't well-equipped to manage it. I know for sure I learned more than I'm happy to admit about life management (setting goals, working towards them) from David Allen and his Getting Things Done. Maybe I'm not the only one who'd do well to read some of his thoughts?
In any case, In contrast to a poorly managed real life, WoW gives you some very clear goals ("kill monster(s)" and "fetch item(s)" are popular, I hear; they worked in Diablo II), and, if Diablo II is anything to go by, a reasonably straightforward and easy way of accomplishing those goals if you just put in enough time.
So you have "complex, ambiguous, unsuccessful" versus "simple, well-defined, successful". What do you think wins?
Folks- if you're going to put your code out there, then tell the world what the hell it does and what it's good for- not that you've improved the frobulation, and rejiggered the comblastictor.
But this new rejiggerment is ALPHABETSOUP-2010 comblastictor(TM) compatible!
However if you are having phone sex and you get throttled it will ruin the conversation. The same is true of a streaming video. If you are streaming your porn movie then throttling may make it full of skips/jumps.
You want to use the internet for something you don't have the bandwidth for. Why should your desire let you steal my bandwidth?
Maybe a delayed torrent will mean I won't get to watch that film I just started downloading while my friend is still over at my house.
If your argument is that our two-customer ISP should share their bandwidth over time roughly 50/50 if we both want to max out, but they should tend to schedule your interactive packets before my non-interactive packets, while still giving me the bandwidth I need, then we can start talking. I'm not clear whether that's what you want, or whether you want 70/30 bandwidth distribution because you watch porn on redtube while I prefer to download mine off of TPB.
If I've mistaken your position, then sorry if I came off more aggressive than you deserve. Could you please explain exactly what your position is? How should the ISP handle the packets in their queue? What goal should they work towards?
Will the police catch people who read my mail as it's travelling around some foreign mail servers?
Is it possible to secure as well against breaking and entering as it is to secure against eavesdropping? Is it feasible?
Bad analogy. The trade-off equations are vastly different for securing houses vs. securing information.
Say you wanted to practice your breaking and entering skills. Would you practice picking one of your own locks, or would you demand your neighbours not lock their doors?
I assume you're a nice person who respects their neighbours' wishes. I assume you can extend that nice respect and not insist on picking your neighbours' electronic locks, or on them being unlocked.
The only reason we have a middle ground in the WiFi land (WEP) is because the crypto guys screwed up.
No, it's because the guys who screwed up weren't crypto guys. Or rather, they were made crypto-responsible without being crypto-capable.
Let us keep and decide how secure we need to keep our information
Sure. But why do you want to pay more for the server to spend boatloads of extra CPU cycles (because they have many clients) in order to... still not be secure against the non-lazy man in the middle?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you said that because we don't use encryption only, we're insecure against eavesdropping. I showed you how we're still not secure against eavesdropping if we use encryption only.
Exactly what goal is served by using the crappy tools?
A VOIP packet needs to be a higher priority than say someone's bit torrent download because it is real time.
Your phone sex is not more important than my porn movie.
Your phone sex might be more important---to you!---than your own porn movie. That's fine. Tell your ISP (via IP QoS flags) to downgrade your own bittorent transfers in preference to your VoIP.
Prioritize your own traffic however the hell you like it (or ask your ISP to do that service for you). As long as I get the bandwidth I paid for, no matter how I like to use it.
Otherwise, I'm going to encode bittorrent packets as sound waves (remember modems?) and start delivering them over VoIP if that's faster. Then what have we gained?
Perhaps it gets overlooked so much because it's difficult to create a car/road traffic analogy that expresses it.
Not at all.
Suppose the roads were privately owned. Dominos and Pizza Hut offer competing pizza delivery services. You really like Dominos' pizzas better, but Pizza Hut has paid the road owner of your neighbourhood to only let one Dominos delivery through for every 20 Pizza Hut deliveries, so you can't get your delicious pizza.
That'd make you quite unhappy, right? You'd feel unfairly discriminated against just for living in the wrong neighbourhood, right? You'd feel the road company servicing your neighbourhood was not providing the service you expected (despite you paying them), right? Oh, but you could of course always move. To a neighbourhood that has Dominos instead of Pizza Hut, but only lets the shipping company you hate operate. Or...
I think that car analogy was pretty easy and worked pretty well.
where for most uses encrypted communication alone would be sufficient
Okay, here's a thought experiment:
Suppose you have a two-way key exchange protocol. That is, Alice sends something to Bob, then Bob sends something back, then they can talk encryptedly.
Suppose when Alice sends "Hi Bob, I'm Alice" to Bob, that Alice's ISP, Eve, grabs that bit, then sends her own message to Bob saying "Hi Bob, I'm Alice". Bob returns something ("Oh, hi Alice, Bob here.").
Now Eve is talking to Bob (and vice versa) encryptedly, and Bob thinks Eve is really Alice.
Oh, but we left Alice waiting. Now Eve returns "Oh, hi Alice, Bob here." to Alice.
Then Alice is talking to Eve and vice versa, encryptedly, and Alice thinks Eve is really Bob.
So when Alice sends "I love you, Bob" (the secret message), Eve---who hates Alice---looks at that and cackles. Then she sends "I hate you, Bob. I'm breaking up." to Bob, who now thinks Alice hates him.
Not only did Eve learn what secret and ostensibly encrypted message Alice wanted to send to Bob, she could also forge a completely different one. She could also have just relayed the message, and listen in on the session between Alice and Bob.
Exactly what did we gain?
There's a reason I'm doing my phd in cryptography: if you fail at implementing an efficient algorithm for sorting, or shortest path, or travelling salesman, you know your algorithm is inefficient. If you fail at designing a secure protocol, there's a very real danger you think it's secure. The failure modes of cryptography are worse and more hidden than in almost any other subfield of computer science that I knew I needed to spend more time on it.
Plus, I like the geeky math (finite fields ftw.) and the spy-vs.-spy stories;)
it *still* takes forever (days) to re-sign our domains, something you are supposed to do monthly.
So what? As long as it takes itself days and doesn't take your days to do the job, and it's allowed to start that number of days before it has to be done, what's the big deal here? Don't you just delegate the work to it and consider yourself done with that task?
Slashdot Mirror
Here's an example of poor design. Or architecture, if you prefer, but you can think of architecture as "building design".
At my university, I have an office. There's a coffee machine somewhere else, and there's a door between the hall my office is a part of and the coffee machine.
A good design would make the door easy to open for people who are standing on the coffee machine side of the door, with a full cup of coffee in their right hand (because most people are right-handed).
A good design of such a door would be one that opens inwards: you can push it with your left hand, or your hips and butt.
Another good design would be one that opens out and to the left: you can pull it with your empty left hand.
A bad design is one that opens out and to the right: if you pull it with your left hand, you have to turn around to walk through it (it auto-closes fairly rapidly). If you want to open it with your right hand, you have to switch your cup to your left hand (not pleasant with hot coffee).
Guess which one my university chose? The one bad design :(
Point of the story: you need to know what a thing will be used for, in order to design it well for all its uses.
Point two of the story: you won't think of everything. Go observe people, then you will have a better chance of knowing.
I will nominate the best icons I've ever seen:
A tree trunk for most of the files in /var/log: "Hmm, that looks like a log..."
A spigot for FIFO files: "hey, those are often seen in connection to a pipe..."
Funny and informative :)
It's not what you'd call a rich data set, and of course the Qwerty keyboard comes up trumps
I of course have to mention the Dvorak layout. I encourage you to try it. Your hands might thank you (and fall in love), and if not you can always go back rather easily. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard
Also, for some experimental geekery, trying to find out whether it's all the shit it's made out to be, see http://klausler.com/evolved.html
That's it. Thank you for listening. My hands thank me for listening way back when, too ;)
Who said that we were going to stop paying people to make these things? We are talking about the idiotic and insulting attempts that these companies are undertaking to create scarcity where there is none.
Let us be sure we're talking about the same thing. You're talking about the limits copyright law places on people who want to make copies of films, correct? And the scarcity is the absence of copies people would make if the law wasn't forbidding them from doing that, correct? And the scarcity is artificial because we could set up a system where (1) all socially desirable* films exist; and (2) all the socially desirable* copies get made, correct?
* "Socially desirable" means that there exists some collection of people p_1...p_n who in total is willing to pay a sum of money equal to or exceeding the amount the producers want for their goods. (Either film makers or peer-to-peer film distributors)
I'd like you to explain to me the solution: which payment scheme should we adopt in order to make the film as wide-spread as is beneficial and so that the films people want get made? Why should we think the scheme you have in mind works?
I think this is a really hard problem. I don't have a solution. Shortening copyright without abolishing it still introduces scarcity: for $DURATION, some people go without the film, even though they'd be willing to pay the cost of copying it. (They go without because they don't want to pay the price that Copyright law lets the seller charge.)
How do we pay without introducing artificial scarcity?
I think we've seen that there is room in the market for high performing low budget films[: The Blair Witch Project, "9", Paranormal Activity]
I agree with you that you can make really good films on the cheap.
But, like you said: there is room in the market. There is a market. The films (and their tickets) get sold. At least tBWP. How about the rest, were they given away for free? How were the budgets recouped?
That was my point: making films in the quantity and quality people seem to want takes money going in the makers' direction. Doesn't have to be much, but it has to be non-zero.
Add to that, the immorality of creating artificial scarcity to begin with, based on the false premise that creativity will somehow be stifled if we don't.
Making a two-hour film takes a significant amount of time out of many peoples' lives. Why would we expect people to do that if they're not paid?
Making music is (comparatively) cheap, and an easily accessible hobby. So is making software. Recording music can be done fairly easily because you don't need to pull that many people together, and you can pay your way out of not being a good recording technicians. The maintenance and evolution of software can be distributed (initial creation is more debatable).
Making films doesn't seem to have the same advantages that music and software does.
I'm not advocating any particular policy based off of these observations---I'm trying to say that if you expect people to create films for free, you may be disappointed at the volume and/or quality of output.
But let's say most copyrighted stuff makes most of its money in the first three(/five/ten) years after publication. Maybe that's a good argument for shortening the duration? And maybe different kinds of works should have different restrictions and durations, due to the economics of their creation?
If humans were so smart, you wouldn't have to explain the golden rule to them.
Do onto others as you would like to have them do ~1.618 times to you?
'Good' input is secondary to both 'loud' and 'popular', to the deficit of the community.
That's a very 'loud' and 'popular' point! ;)
Why does every successful new language have to use "C" syntax?
You mean like python, ruby and Haskell?
Also, what's gained just by being different? It's one thing to have different concepts that need new syntax simply because there isn't anything to copy. It's another thing to rehash an old concept with a different syntax, without any apparent purpose for the difference. Why "fix" what works?
just modding him down won't work.
Yeah, it's tough kill-filing something which regenerates 3 KP every story (Karma Points).
Then again, I'd much rather battle trolls than try to kill that which has no life.
You forgot this one: http://xkcd.com/189/
I'm currently working on my STR score (push-ups, sit-ups, biceps curl, etc.) and my base attack bonus (fencing). I might also get Proficiency: Martial Weapon (Foil).
All that exercise spills over into my INT score as well ;)
(Take the 45% you just saved; buy more books. Take the 45% you just saved; buy more books. Repeat until funds=0.)
That converges to 1/(1 - 0.45) = 1/.55 = 1/(11/20) = 20/11 = 2 - 2/11, or 1.8181(81)...
For 50%, it's exactly 2. For 55% it's 1/.45 = 2 + 1/9 = 2.11(1).... /me is a math geek ;)
When the authorities have requested copies of patrons borrowing records
As a frequent library patron, I would rather object to being copied for that purpose. I love to do a bit of deliberately sabotaged "copying" with my girlfriend, though.
If you're in what-the-hell mode, OP meant patrons' (with an apostrophe).
That's nothing. The Economist once had a cover with two copulating camels (the female didn't look to happy).
She was probably getting dry-humped.
Thank you, I'm here all week.
I've never understood the draw and allure that WoW provides, and why people get addicted to the point that they drop out of schools.
It could be that people are unsatisfied with their real life and aren't well-equipped to manage it. I know for sure I learned more than I'm happy to admit about life management (setting goals, working towards them) from David Allen and his Getting Things Done. Maybe I'm not the only one who'd do well to read some of his thoughts?
In any case, In contrast to a poorly managed real life, WoW gives you some very clear goals ("kill monster(s)" and "fetch item(s)" are popular, I hear; they worked in Diablo II), and, if Diablo II is anything to go by, a reasonably straightforward and easy way of accomplishing those goals if you just put in enough time.
So you have "complex, ambiguous, unsuccessful" versus "simple, well-defined, successful". What do you think wins?
See also someone else's take on this question at http://www.pixelpoppers.com/2009/11/awesome-by-proxy-addicted-to-fake.html
Folks- if you're going to put your code out there, then tell the world what the hell it does and what it's good for- not that you've improved the frobulation, and rejiggered the comblastictor.
But this new rejiggerment is ALPHABETSOUP-2010 comblastictor(TM) compatible!
This is unlikely to happen unless Eve has access to Bob's private key.
Bob doesn't have a private key. What I described is supposed to happen during e.g. a diffie-helman key exchange protocol.
However if you are having phone sex and you get throttled it will ruin the conversation. The same is true of a streaming video. If you are streaming your porn movie then throttling may make it full of skips/jumps.
You want to use the internet for something you don't have the bandwidth for. Why should your desire let you steal my bandwidth?
Maybe a delayed torrent will mean I won't get to watch that film I just started downloading while my friend is still over at my house.
If your argument is that our two-customer ISP should share their bandwidth over time roughly 50/50 if we both want to max out, but they should tend to schedule your interactive packets before my non-interactive packets, while still giving me the bandwidth I need, then we can start talking. I'm not clear whether that's what you want, or whether you want 70/30 bandwidth distribution because you watch porn on redtube while I prefer to download mine off of TPB.
If I've mistaken your position, then sorry if I came off more aggressive than you deserve. Could you please explain exactly what your position is? How should the ISP handle the packets in their queue? What goal should they work towards?
Do you lock your house? Does it have windows?
Will the police catch people who read my mail as it's travelling around some foreign mail servers?
Is it possible to secure as well against breaking and entering as it is to secure against eavesdropping? Is it feasible?
Bad analogy. The trade-off equations are vastly different for securing houses vs. securing information.
Say you wanted to practice your breaking and entering skills. Would you practice picking one of your own locks, or would you demand your neighbours not lock their doors?
I assume you're a nice person who respects their neighbours' wishes. I assume you can extend that nice respect and not insist on picking your neighbours' electronic locks, or on them being unlocked.
If not, why not?
The only reason we have a middle ground in the WiFi land (WEP) is because the crypto guys screwed up.
No, it's because the guys who screwed up weren't crypto guys. Or rather, they were made crypto-responsible without being crypto-capable.
Let us keep and decide how secure we need to keep our information
Sure. But why do you want to pay more for the server to spend boatloads of extra CPU cycles (because they have many clients) in order to... still not be secure against the non-lazy man in the middle?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you said that because we don't use encryption only, we're insecure against eavesdropping. I showed you how we're still not secure against eavesdropping if we use encryption only.
Exactly what goal is served by using the crappy tools?
Because thats the way it works, the big guy sets the rules.
I hear that's why the French nobility and the English king squished some small rebellions in the late 17-hundreds.
Wait, no?
A VOIP packet needs to be a higher priority than say someone's bit torrent download because it is real time.
Your phone sex is not more important than my porn movie.
Your phone sex might be more important---to you!---than your own porn movie. That's fine. Tell your ISP (via IP QoS flags) to downgrade your own bittorent transfers in preference to your VoIP.
Prioritize your own traffic however the hell you like it (or ask your ISP to do that service for you). As long as I get the bandwidth I paid for, no matter how I like to use it.
Otherwise, I'm going to encode bittorrent packets as sound waves (remember modems?) and start delivering them over VoIP if that's faster. Then what have we gained?
Perhaps it gets overlooked so much because it's difficult to create a car/road traffic analogy that expresses it.
Not at all.
Suppose the roads were privately owned. Dominos and Pizza Hut offer competing pizza delivery services. You really like Dominos' pizzas better, but Pizza Hut has paid the road owner of your neighbourhood to only let one Dominos delivery through for every 20 Pizza Hut deliveries, so you can't get your delicious pizza.
That'd make you quite unhappy, right? You'd feel unfairly discriminated against just for living in the wrong neighbourhood, right? You'd feel the road company servicing your neighbourhood was not providing the service you expected (despite you paying them), right? Oh, but you could of course always move. To a neighbourhood that has Dominos instead of Pizza Hut, but only lets the shipping company you hate operate. Or...
I think that car analogy was pretty easy and worked pretty well.
where for most uses encrypted communication alone would be sufficient
Okay, here's a thought experiment:
Suppose you have a two-way key exchange protocol. That is, Alice sends something to Bob, then Bob sends something back, then they can talk encryptedly.
Suppose when Alice sends "Hi Bob, I'm Alice" to Bob, that Alice's ISP, Eve, grabs that bit, then sends her own message to Bob saying "Hi Bob, I'm Alice". Bob returns something ("Oh, hi Alice, Bob here.").
Now Eve is talking to Bob (and vice versa) encryptedly, and Bob thinks Eve is really Alice.
Oh, but we left Alice waiting. Now Eve returns "Oh, hi Alice, Bob here." to Alice.
Then Alice is talking to Eve and vice versa, encryptedly, and Alice thinks Eve is really Bob.
So when Alice sends "I love you, Bob" (the secret message), Eve---who hates Alice---looks at that and cackles. Then she sends "I hate you, Bob. I'm breaking up." to Bob, who now thinks Alice hates him.
Not only did Eve learn what secret and ostensibly encrypted message Alice wanted to send to Bob, she could also forge a completely different one. She could also have just relayed the message, and listen in on the session between Alice and Bob.
Exactly what did we gain?
There's a reason I'm doing my phd in cryptography: if you fail at implementing an efficient algorithm for sorting, or shortest path, or travelling salesman, you know your algorithm is inefficient. If you fail at designing a secure protocol, there's a very real danger you think it's secure. The failure modes of cryptography are worse and more hidden than in almost any other subfield of computer science that I knew I needed to spend more time on it.
Plus, I like the geeky math (finite fields ftw.) and the spy-vs.-spy stories ;)
it *still* takes forever (days) to re-sign our domains, something you are supposed to do monthly.
So what? As long as it takes itself days and doesn't take your days to do the job, and it's allowed to start that number of days before it has to be done, what's the big deal here? Don't you just delegate the work to it and consider yourself done with that task?