Nothing I've said means that a woman can't be stunningly intelligent and can't be driven by money and power -- just that they tend to be less extreme and more sensible.
Ironically, I think the only (slightly? somewhat?) flame-baiting thing you've said, you've said after suggesting you might be baiting the flames:)
I think it can be sensible to aim for money and power, and you can approach your goal in sensible ways. You can, of course, also approach your goals in an insensible way (pretty much no matter your goals).
One sensible reason to aim for money and power is because men believe women are attracted to it. At least I've heard that story over and over. Another sensible reason is that money tends to go with power and money buys you a lot of nice stuff that makes you happy (whether that be a bigger house than your friends or food for more kids).
I'm not saying you're intentionally flame-baiting. But that last remark comes off in a way that might offend some.
If your phone can screw up the towers, then there's something wrong with the towers.
Yes. Now, why are you assuming nothing is wrong with the towers?
Remember, the phone infrastructure is designed by people who think designing their own crypto (without review from crypto experts) is a good idea.
Be aware that if you're roaming, the phone company you're guesting can pretend to your phone service provider to be your phone (i.e. they can place calls in your name, intercept your calls, etc.).
(At least that's how I remember that lecture.)
I wouldn't trust these people to not trust the client. I wouldn't trust these people to not trust in law-based security (i.e. deterring people by threatening to find and punish them after the fact).
Why do you trust these people to make good security decisions?
I really don't care what any of my friends had for dinner, the new dress they bought or what their little kids did that morning.
When you visit your friends, you do say "hey, nice new dress!", or "how're the kids doing?", or "so how's that diet you're on working out for you?", right?
Oh well, if they're geeks too, I suppose "So did you hear about this new smartphone that runs Linux?" is more appropriate, but it sounds like you're dissing small talk rather than dissing facebook as a medium for small talk.
The latter I agree with, the former I don't---even though I'm not a particularly well-renowned practitioner of said art;-)
One also has to consider [tested and maintained, broad userbase, active community, future maintenance]
Those are all very good points.
All of this goes into choosing a sub-1.0 project for something important.
Now, what does the version number have to do with the above considerations? Are you advocating investigating these issues for some version numbers but not others? So if I cobble something together which compiles and I call it "version 1.0", I can sneak my shoddy code past all your careful considerations?
To me, it sounds like the prudent thing would be to investigate the project for future dependability (however you define it, e.g. as above, or more detailed) no matter its current version number.
Delete it, preferably with a file shredder that opens up the file, overwrites each block with random bytes, closes the file, flushes the cache, THEN deletes the file.
I don't think that's going to work that well with a journalling or versioning file system; it'll store the new version of the file (the random-contents blocks) in a set of blocks disjoint from those storing the child porn. Fine, you flush those to disk, then unlink. The CP is still there.
You want to shred unallocated space once in a while.
(Whether or not you'll have this problem of course depends on the implementation decisions of your particular file system.)
How about enforcing them? Bandwidth caps you don't get to know about on "unlimited" internet connections? Have all the slashdotters who talked about this lied?
Has this happened yet?
I recall an American ISP spoofing RST packets to both parties in bittorrent connections.
Now let's say the government was controlling our Internet lines and they decided to block certain sites for our "safety". Do you think this would have the same effect?
I have no clue. Why? Is anyone advocating that the US government should be able to do this?
The only reason we are able to get high speed internet at affordable rates is because of the free market.
Could you have faster, cheaper internet connections if the government adopted a different set of regulations?
You, like many other people that argue with pure emotion and no logic, [...]
Erm... market failures, tragedy of the commons, public goods, previous cases of bad behaviour by big corporations, that's completely emotional?
I'll happily admit I'm not an economist. I'm not an expert on public policy. But I can't agree that my arguments are completely emotional.
are obviously against corporations and business.
I'm not. Really, I'm not. Maybe my post wasn't clear enough. I want the government to regulate the market such that it becomes more free than it would be on its own, such that all the wonderful businesses out there can sell me good cheap stuff:)
I think there are good reasons to not trust the market to do everything on its own. Externalities, public goods, tragedy of the commons; the market has lots of failures. I think it's a good idea (just like some---most?---economists do) for the government to step in and do something about these failures.
(Yes, I know, I'm treading dangerous territory here, saying "more free"; I hope we can avoid turning this into a BSD-vs-GPL-style misunderstanding of what "free" and "more free" means.)
And are you seriously comparing an ISP's rightful regulation of its internet traffic
No, I think your parent is more worried about the wrongful regulations.
I want sysadmins regulating their company's services
That's fine, as long as the company providing those services advertises truthfully what the sysadmins are actually doing to your packets.
And, of course, as long as the two internet providers in your zip code (only one of whom offers service to your house) don't collude and offer a deliberately neutered product (i.e. no bittorent, no streaming video, no voip, no [etc.]) when they could just as easily offer the better version just because the non-neutered version competes with their own video delivery service, telephony service, or other service.
the free market keeps abuses in check
Right. That works great, sometimes. Except for tragedy of the commons. And for providing law enforcement, emergency services, health insurance (so I hear), and in some other cases.
But the free market does keep some abuses in check. I think it would be wise to keep abuses in check in the highly non-free internet service market as well.
Could some of you stop giving the government so much power, please?
Could you stop giving large corporations so much power, please? Especially the ones having monopolies or duopolies...
We get it, you hate free markets and think government power solves absolutely everything by magic.
I get it. You hate government power and think free markets solves absolutely everything by magic.
Yep, history sure has shown how pure, fair, reliable, trustworthy, and incorruptible big business is. Uh-huh.
FTFY.
See? It's very easy to take what you say and turn it on its head. The bad thing isn't government power vs. corporate power, but the existence of concentrated power itself. Completely unregulated markets tend to concentrate power. Network effects help that along. It seems that we need even bigger power (in government) to break up concentrated power in the market. I don't think there is an easy solution. But blindly trusting concentrated power on one hand vs. another is a Bad Idea (TM).
Why would you want to prevent Carol from reselling a movie but not from reselling a refrigerator?
Well, as a seller, I always want to price discriminate (that is, sell the same thing at different prices to different people), because it always benefits me, no matter what I'm selling.
It sometimes also benefits society, as I outlined above: society gets the benefit of me making the film (which is a benefit, as it costs $22 to make and society is willing to pay $25 for it). I chose the numbers so that this was the case; I could have chosen the numbers differently.
Now, to your question: why do we see DRM on movies and not refrigerators? Well, because it's possible to put DRM on computer systems*, but not really on physical objects. If I could make sure the refrigerator only ran on power outlets in your home, I might be tempted to sell you a refrigerator you couldn't resell, such that I can price discriminate. But I can't (at least I don't know how).
* Whether it actually works is a different question.
He claims that TV2 is indirectly encouraging illegal activity, and has reported them to the Anti-Piracy Group (Antipiratgruppen). As he says, not because he dislikes TV2, but to create a debate about these issues.
He has also reported DR (a tax-funded TV/Radio/media-house-thing) for "So Ein Ding"* (A Tech show, I assume), and PC World (a magazine) for indirectly encourage illegal activity (also, not because he dislikes them, but to start a debate).
(*German for "Such a thing", a reference to a line from an old Danish christmas TV show, "So ein Ding muss ich auch haben"--"I must also have such a thing")
Here's the argument for DRM I've heard Ed Felten present. You might remember Ed Felten from a story where the music industry encouraged people to research their new watermarking schemes, which he did, and then they threatened him to not publish his findings because they didn't like them.
Anyways, here goes: Suppose I can make a movie for $22. Alice and Bob are each willing to pay (up to) $10 for a copy. Carol is willing to pay $5. Dave is not willing to pay any amount of money for it. Nobody else wants to watch it.
What should I charge per copy? If I charge $5, I make $15, a net loss. If I charge $10, I make $20, again a net loss. If I charge anything above $10, I make $0, and charging prices less than $10, except exactly $5, is dumb because I can up the price to match an amount a person is willing to make and thus make more money.
This assumes that at any price, Carol can buy and resell to Alice and Bob. But if that's no longer true, I can sell at $10 to Alice and Bob, and sell a $5 copy to Carol. That way, I make $25, a net profit of $3. Of course, if I charge $9.50/$9.50/$4.50 I make $1.50 and my customers each "profit" (in the sense of buying something cheaper than the largest price they were willing to buy at) $0.50, so I make society at large more prosperous.
Note that this only works when I can prevent Carol from reselling. I can do this with DRM that works. Of course, I can also do this with an invisible pink unicorn which is just as likely to exist, but that's not really the point. The point is that there is a rational argument for DRM.
My personal opinion is that people don't know what they really want (because they don't know when they get DRM, what it is, what it does, or what that means for them), that you-the-seller need DRM that works against everybody, that this DRM doesn't exist, and that DRM that does work against a large part of the population is not what people want (because it prevents them from doing what they really want---even just the legal subset), that ultimately the damage caused by DRM outweighs the gains, and that DRM that works effectively prevents DRM'ed copyrighted works from ever entering the public domain (i.e. it prevents We The People from exercising our natural and legal rights to enjoy those works).
In summary: Here's an argument. It's not the full story, and I think the counterarguments win, but here it is.
If you read the comments to the article, you'll note a link to Henrik's home page, http://enfrustreretforbruger.dk/ (which is in danish).
If you click "Sådan støtter du op om digitale kopier" (how to support digital copies), you'll see a page telling you to click the paypal link on the right hand side (of his home page) to donate any amount "for the running of enfrustreretforbruger.dk".
That would be an obvious way to support him. There may be laws against collecting money under a false pretence (A Time To Kill says there are such laws in the US, fwiw ^_^), so you may want to add a note to the paypal transfer saying "Hi. Here's some money for whatever purpose you like. You might want to spend them on lawyers etc." (although I suspect that if you give him money without saying that he can spend them for whatever he likes, you're the only one who can sue him for having taking your money under a false pretence. IANAL, TINLA, ask a ninja, etc.)
The support page at http://enfrustreretforbruger.dk/home/?p=882 also lists putting banners on your web page, reading his twitter feed, writing to the Danish ministry of culture ("minicult"?:D), and joining a project that Ekstra Bladet (a Danish tabloid news paper) is running where you can submit your own digital copying stories.
You can also send him an email and ask how you might help. Click on the "kontakt" (contact) link in the upper-right corner.
(I'm not going to post his email address here on slashdot since he'd get, well, slashdotted with mail. If you really want to get in touch with him, you can take the time to click a few links. Also, he posts his street address and phone number there, but encourages people to comment on his blog articles where relevant.)
I hope this helps, and that Google Translate can get you the rest of the way.
Slashdot Mirror
and now try put disk copy protection on that!
Actually, there are turntables for analog to digital conversion---I've wondered aloud what's going on here with no copy prevention. See http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1469166&cid=30350490
FTFA:
Interest from younger listeners is what convinced music industry executives that vinyl had staying power this time around.
Taking this at face value, it seems like the music industry execs aren't that stupid: the market wants something, let's give it to them.
Don't they worry about piracy, though?
Some are traditional analog record players; others are designed to connect to computers for converting music to digital files.
Hmm...
In any case...
At a glance, the far corner of the main floor of J&R Music looks familiar to anybody old enough to have scratched a record by accident.
I will not buy thees myoosic store. Eet is skrratshed.
Nothing I've said means that a woman can't be stunningly intelligent and can't be driven by money and power -- just that they tend to be less extreme and more sensible.
Ironically, I think the only (slightly? somewhat?) flame-baiting thing you've said, you've said after suggesting you might be baiting the flames :)
I think it can be sensible to aim for money and power, and you can approach your goal in sensible ways. You can, of course, also approach your goals in an insensible way (pretty much no matter your goals).
One sensible reason to aim for money and power is because men believe women are attracted to it. At least I've heard that story over and over. Another sensible reason is that money tends to go with power and money buys you a lot of nice stuff that makes you happy (whether that be a bigger house than your friends or food for more kids).
I'm not saying you're intentionally flame-baiting. But that last remark comes off in a way that might offend some.
If your phone can screw up the towers, then there's something wrong with the towers.
Yes. Now, why are you assuming nothing is wrong with the towers?
Remember, the phone infrastructure is designed by people who think designing their own crypto (without review from crypto experts) is a good idea.
Be aware that if you're roaming, the phone company you're guesting can pretend to your phone service provider to be your phone (i.e. they can place calls in your name, intercept your calls, etc.).
(At least that's how I remember that lecture.)
I wouldn't trust these people to not trust the client. I wouldn't trust these people to not trust in law-based security (i.e. deterring people by threatening to find and punish them after the fact).
Why do you trust these people to make good security decisions?
I really don't care what any of my friends had for dinner, the new dress they bought or what their little kids did that morning.
When you visit your friends, you do say "hey, nice new dress!", or "how're the kids doing?", or "so how's that diet you're on working out for you?", right?
Oh well, if they're geeks too, I suppose "So did you hear about this new smartphone that runs Linux?" is more appropriate, but it sounds like you're dissing small talk rather than dissing facebook as a medium for small talk.
The latter I agree with, the former I don't---even though I'm not a particularly well-renowned practitioner of said art ;-)
One also has to consider [tested and maintained, broad userbase, active community, future maintenance]
Those are all very good points.
All of this goes into choosing a sub-1.0 project for something important.
Now, what does the version number have to do with the above considerations? Are you advocating investigating these issues for some version numbers but not others? So if I cobble something together which compiles and I call it "version 1.0", I can sneak my shoddy code past all your careful considerations?
To me, it sounds like the prudent thing would be to investigate the project for future dependability (however you define it, e.g. as above, or more detailed) no matter its current version number.
You are the lucky winner of my geek certificate!
Wait, does that mean I can get laid now? ;-)
Delete it, preferably with a file shredder that opens up the file, overwrites each block with random bytes, closes the file, flushes the cache, THEN deletes the file.
I don't think that's going to work that well with a journalling or versioning file system; it'll store the new version of the file (the random-contents blocks) in a set of blocks disjoint from those storing the child porn. Fine, you flush those to disk, then unlink. The CP is still there.
You want to shred unallocated space once in a while.
(Whether or not you'll have this problem of course depends on the implementation decisions of your particular file system.)
This got modded informative? This???
Who the hell here doesn't have a set of D&D books?
</fake-nerd-rage>
I will not buy that joke. It is old. And scratched.
I'm Robert Hanlon, and I disapprove of this message ;-)
I find the comments more interesting than the story a surprising amount of the time.
If you still find that surprising, I'm guessing you're new here ;-)
We have laws against deceit in advertising.
How about enforcing them? Bandwidth caps you don't get to know about on "unlimited" internet connections? Have all the slashdotters who talked about this lied?
Has this happened yet?
I recall an American ISP spoofing RST packets to both parties in bittorrent connections.
Now let's say the government was controlling our Internet lines and they decided to block certain sites for our "safety". Do you think this would have the same effect?
I have no clue. Why? Is anyone advocating that the US government should be able to do this?
The only reason we are able to get high speed internet at affordable rates is because of the free market.
Could you have faster, cheaper internet connections if the government adopted a different set of regulations?
You, like many other people that argue with pure emotion and no logic, [...]
Erm... market failures, tragedy of the commons, public goods, previous cases of bad behaviour by big corporations, that's completely emotional?
I'll happily admit I'm not an economist. I'm not an expert on public policy. But I can't agree that my arguments are completely emotional.
are obviously against corporations and business.
I'm not. Really, I'm not. Maybe my post wasn't clear enough. I want the government to regulate the market such that it becomes more free than it would be on its own, such that all the wonderful businesses out there can sell me good cheap stuff :)
I think there are good reasons to not trust the market to do everything on its own. Externalities, public goods, tragedy of the commons; the market has lots of failures. I think it's a good idea (just like some---most?---economists do) for the government to step in and do something about these failures.
(Yes, I know, I'm treading dangerous territory here, saying "more free"; I hope we can avoid turning this into a BSD-vs-GPL-style misunderstanding of what "free" and "more free" means.)
And are you seriously comparing an ISP's rightful regulation of its internet traffic
No, I think your parent is more worried about the wrongful regulations.
I want sysadmins regulating their company's services
That's fine, as long as the company providing those services advertises truthfully what the sysadmins are actually doing to your packets.
And, of course, as long as the two internet providers in your zip code (only one of whom offers service to your house) don't collude and offer a deliberately neutered product (i.e. no bittorent, no streaming video, no voip, no [etc.]) when they could just as easily offer the better version just because the non-neutered version competes with their own video delivery service, telephony service, or other service.
the free market keeps abuses in check
Right. That works great, sometimes. Except for tragedy of the commons. And for providing law enforcement, emergency services, health insurance (so I hear), and in some other cases.
But the free market does keep some abuses in check. I think it would be wise to keep abuses in check in the highly non-free internet service market as well.
Could some of you stop giving the government so much power, please?
Could you stop giving large corporations so much power, please? Especially the ones having monopolies or duopolies...
We get it, you hate free markets and think government power solves absolutely everything by magic.
I get it. You hate government power and think free markets solves absolutely everything by magic.
Yep, history sure has shown how pure, fair, reliable, trustworthy, and incorruptible big business is. Uh-huh.
FTFY.
See? It's very easy to take what you say and turn it on its head. The bad thing isn't government power vs. corporate power, but the existence of concentrated power itself. Completely unregulated markets tend to concentrate power. Network effects help that along. It seems that we need even bigger power (in government) to break up concentrated power in the market. I don't think there is an easy solution. But blindly trusting concentrated power on one hand vs. another is a Bad Idea (TM).
If more than one person shares a secret, it is no longer a secret.
Adi Shamir would disagree: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_sharing
(Yes, I'm a crypto geek. Yes, you meant something different.)
Why would you want to prevent Carol from reselling a movie but not from reselling a refrigerator?
Well, as a seller, I always want to price discriminate (that is, sell the same thing at different prices to different people), because it always benefits me, no matter what I'm selling.
It sometimes also benefits society, as I outlined above: society gets the benefit of me making the film (which is a benefit, as it costs $22 to make and society is willing to pay $25 for it). I chose the numbers so that this was the case; I could have chosen the numbers differently.
Now, to your question: why do we see DRM on movies and not refrigerators? Well, because it's possible to put DRM on computer systems*, but not really on physical objects. If I could make sure the refrigerator only ran on power outlets in your home, I might be tempted to sell you a refrigerator you couldn't resell, such that I can price discriminate. But I can't (at least I don't know how).
* Whether it actually works is a different question.
Isn't this late 2009? Are you still telling jokes about the original Pentium?
Of course we are! I mean, it's only been two weeFLOATING POINT EXCEPTION
I know I'm going to be modded down for this, but I agree with the parent.
Can you give me karma points anyway? Then you are the WINNAR ;-)
Well, it could just be that Intel wants to sell a really, really big e-peen to business decision makers ;-)
(You know, the ones with short, pointy hair)
Don't forget to leverage turn-key best-of-breed uhh... consumer-focused... enterprise social matrix uh... what are we selling again?
or that you shouldn't eat your keyboard
If anyone fails to realise that you shouldn't eat your keyboards, I'll give you a hundred to one that person has never cleaned one.
Especially not one of mine :(
He also turned in a Danish TV station, "TV2", for an article part of "TV2 Beep", which states that
You put a DVD in the machine, My Movies downloads cover art and information from the net, and rips the movie to your hard disk.
You can put your hundreds of DVDs in your attic [etc.]
(My translation from Danish to English, Henrik quotes the article on http://enfrustreretforbruger.dk/home/?p=812)
He claims that TV2 is indirectly encouraging illegal activity, and has reported them to the Anti-Piracy Group (Antipiratgruppen). As he says, not because he dislikes TV2, but to create a debate about these issues.
He has also reported DR (a tax-funded TV/Radio/media-house-thing) for "So Ein Ding"* (A Tech show, I assume), and PC World (a magazine) for indirectly encourage illegal activity (also, not because he dislikes them, but to start a debate).
(*German for "Such a thing", a reference to a line from an old Danish christmas TV show, "So ein Ding muss ich auch haben"--"I must also have such a thing")
Here's the argument for DRM I've heard Ed Felten present. You might remember Ed Felten from a story where the music industry encouraged people to research their new watermarking schemes, which he did, and then they threatened him to not publish his findings because they didn't like them.
Anyways, here goes: Suppose I can make a movie for $22. Alice and Bob are each willing to pay (up to) $10 for a copy. Carol is willing to pay $5. Dave is not willing to pay any amount of money for it. Nobody else wants to watch it.
What should I charge per copy? If I charge $5, I make $15, a net loss. If I charge $10, I make $20, again a net loss. If I charge anything above $10, I make $0, and charging prices less than $10, except exactly $5, is dumb because I can up the price to match an amount a person is willing to make and thus make more money.
This assumes that at any price, Carol can buy and resell to Alice and Bob. But if that's no longer true, I can sell at $10 to Alice and Bob, and sell a $5 copy to Carol. That way, I make $25, a net profit of $3. Of course, if I charge $9.50/$9.50/$4.50 I make $1.50 and my customers each "profit" (in the sense of buying something cheaper than the largest price they were willing to buy at) $0.50, so I make society at large more prosperous.
Note that this only works when I can prevent Carol from reselling. I can do this with DRM that works. Of course, I can also do this with an invisible pink unicorn which is just as likely to exist, but that's not really the point. The point is that there is a rational argument for DRM.
My personal opinion is that people don't know what they really want (because they don't know when they get DRM, what it is, what it does, or what that means for them), that you-the-seller need DRM that works against everybody, that this DRM doesn't exist, and that DRM that does work against a large part of the population is not what people want (because it prevents them from doing what they really want---even just the legal subset), that ultimately the damage caused by DRM outweighs the gains, and that DRM that works effectively prevents DRM'ed copyrighted works from ever entering the public domain (i.e. it prevents We The People from exercising our natural and legal rights to enjoy those works).
In summary: Here's an argument. It's not the full story, and I think the counterarguments win, but here it is.
If you read the comments to the article, you'll note a link to Henrik's home page, http://enfrustreretforbruger.dk/ (which is in danish).
If you click "Sådan støtter du op om digitale kopier" (how to support digital copies), you'll see a page telling you to click the paypal link on the right hand side (of his home page) to donate any amount "for the running of enfrustreretforbruger.dk".
That would be an obvious way to support him. There may be laws against collecting money under a false pretence (A Time To Kill says there are such laws in the US, fwiw ^_^), so you may want to add a note to the paypal transfer saying "Hi. Here's some money for whatever purpose you like. You might want to spend them on lawyers etc." (although I suspect that if you give him money without saying that he can spend them for whatever he likes, you're the only one who can sue him for having taking your money under a false pretence. IANAL, TINLA, ask a ninja, etc.)
The support page at http://enfrustreretforbruger.dk/home/?p=882 also lists putting banners on your web page, reading his twitter feed, writing to the Danish ministry of culture ("minicult"? :D), and joining a project that Ekstra Bladet (a Danish tabloid news paper) is running where you can submit your own digital copying stories.
You can also send him an email and ask how you might help. Click on the "kontakt" (contact) link in the upper-right corner.
(I'm not going to post his email address here on slashdot since he'd get, well, slashdotted with mail. If you really want to get in touch with him, you can take the time to click a few links. Also, he posts his street address and phone number there, but encourages people to comment on his blog articles where relevant.)
I hope this helps, and that Google Translate can get you the rest of the way.
Thank you, good sir! That made me smile, which was just what I needed :)