My understanding is iTunes is basicaly a promotional tool to sell iPods.
I would imagine that Apples longterm plan is in 6 months or a year to renogiate the contracts, pointing out how much more succesful it was then predicted, and start making money then.
Aside from that I am left with a question, how exactly is Microsoft expecting to turn a profit from this venture?
Sure they can undercut Apple, but what will that gain them?
Microsoft has no iPod like device to sell.
I don't know, if I was Bill 'Money' Gates I would be tempted to give this particular market to Apple.
I am afraid the real problem is the intellegence of the average thief.
I am guessing that the scanner looks for a temperature of 98 degrees or so, and if it doesn't get it then doesn't process.
Like I said, the problem is the intelligence of the average theif. Think they will think of this before they cut off my thumb??? Noooooooooo.
In fact, I dare say the theifs may have to have a pocket full of thumbs before they realize that They are doing something wrong.
Who do I have to thank for this little miracle???
on
Farscape is Back
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· Score: 1
I know that not everyone agrees with me that Farscape is possibly the best show to have graced TV since, well since, hell since forever.
But even if you don't get Farscape you have to have some sympathy for us fans.
You realize they didn't even have the common curtesy to delete the words 'To be continued' from the last scene of the last episode?
In the last 3 minutes of the last episode the 2 main characters are blown away by a previously unknown badguy, and then the other good guys are left with jaws in there laps and the words 'To Be Continued'.
If you don't have some sort of pity for us fans then you are an incompassionate slug.
I will take a miniseries and say 'Thank You'. All I ever wanted was a final episode, maybe a 2 hour one, to tie up the loose ends. I never demanded they give us another full season.
My first thought was 'well if he hasn't planted a flag there then how could he own it?'.
But that argument really doesn't stand the test of time. There are plenty of people that own land and property that they have never set foot on. Nothing strange about that. So the moon is a tad farther away, and this asteroid a bit farther then that. Distance isn't the problem.
The law isn't either.
It is enforceability and protection of said property. A business owner who owns property on the other side of the country has many different tools protecting his ownership of the property. He has local, state and federal laws that specifically give him ownership, he can buy security service, he can hire people to protect his property, these are the ways that he takes ownership.
As long as his defenses are better then your offenses, as long as he wins the case of ownership and you loose then he owns the property. And it isn't neccesarily laws that protect property ownership.
Take Saddam as an example. Saddam owned palaces all over Iraq. A year ago the owner of those palaces was not in question. You could try to lay claim to those palaces, but when Saddam was done with you, well lets just say you would apologize for your stupidity.
But now the US owns those palaces. We didn't go to court and prove anything. We took them. By force. With big guns.
And in Iraq we are basicaly saying 'We don't need no stinking laws, if you think you own this property, then we challenge you to take it.'.
This has a bearing on this crackpot who sent Nasa a $20 parking ticket.
So dude has a peace of paper saying that he owns said asteroid. Isn't that nice. Nasa dissagrees. If dude can find a judge that will enforce his parking ticket against Nasa, then dude wins, ergo dude 'owns' the asteroid. If dude cannot succesfully collect payment from Nasa then dude is left with one more option. Eviction. If dude can get the finances together, and the means, and the smarts to knock Nasa's probe off the asteroid then dude would truly own the asteroid. But if dude cannot evict Nasa, and cannot enforce payment, then dude certainly doesn't own the asteroid.
This may all seem like the petty politics of a crackpot. But China wants to put a man on the moon in the next 10 years.
The only thing stopping China from planting a Chinese flag and claiming the moon is a piece of paper that China may or may not have signed.
After saying all that I want to add something to my thoughts.
While in general I am against new laws against spammers, I do think that something legally needs to be done about minors receiving sexually innapropriate email from spammers.
Now maybe I am wrong (somehow I don't think so) but I would imagine that if I bought your 8 year old son a subscription to Playboy for Christmas I would be in some legal trouble. Doubly (and rightfully) so since I am a complete stranger to you.
Now I know nothing about how this applies towards spam. But I do know that we live in a different age from when I grew up. I am a 30 year old male. I remember a time when getting my hands on Penthouse was pretty much the holy grail of my existence (say 14-16 years old). It was so rare for me to come across any nudie pics that getting the stuff was really half the fun. If I could go back in time and confer with my 14 year old self that the time would come when all I really had to do was look over my shoulder that Mom and Dad were not watching, and I could have all the porn I wanted, well I would call myself a liar. But it is even worse then that. Kids today don't even have to search for it. It is thrust upon them in there email.
I guess regular (non-adult oriented) spam doesn't offend me. I view that stuff as something I can control with the proper tools. But adult oriented spam makes me uneasy. I think about how society has changed and I don't like it.
I don't think it changes how I feel though. Okay even if the Free Speach isn't a no-brainer like I thought it was, but something that has already been decided by the supreme court, it still doesn't change something that is critically important to this thing called spam.
Spammers would simply migrate there servers to a country that is friendlier to them. Us passing a law would only have one effect, send the spammers overseas, it would not stop spam.
That is the thing about the legal aspect of this problem. It just seems like such a waste of time. As a community we need to think of spam as a technical problem with a technical solution. We need to have the mindset that spam is the second coming of computer viruses. If we look at resolving from that mindset, that is putting the power to solve the problem in the hands of ISP's and consumers, then we don't need new laws.
New anti-spam laws will bring new consequences. I shudder at the thought of some parent of an 8 year old that is feuding with another parent. One of the 8 year olds sends a birthday party invitation to his/her entire class, the feuding parent sees the email and raises holy hell on the other parent, all thanks to anti-spam regulation.
There seems to be a fair amount of fear in the community that Spam is a problem for which there does not exist a solution. Short of shutting down the internet.
Hmmm.
I don't think that is the case. I do think though that creating laws and litigation against spammers (except special circumstances, such as sending porn to children) is a slippery slope that will almost cirtenly backfire. At some point the spammers are going to get smart and realize that they are sitting on a free speech case. If the Supreme Court finds in there favor then we have real problems. Besides, when we are dealing with laws one is left asking 'just what is spam?'. If my kid sends out an email to every kid in his class, is that spam? And if it isn't, then why not?
For me that is something worth protecting.
I feel strongly that Spam can be solved. The solution is a 2 pronged attack. The first bit is at the ISP's end. The 2nd bit is on my computer at home. In the next couple of years an anti-spam filter will be just as common as a virus filter.
This entire 'Linux is bad, but IBM is badder, but Micrsoft is even baddier' SCO stuff is just interesting enough to me to get my attention.
But whenever I read it I have a hard time wrapping my head around it.
The best I can figure out is that somewhere within the thousands of line or code that makes up the Linux kernel there is code that is copyrighted by.... someone. That someone (is it IBM??? see how confused I am) wants to be either paid $900 an installation or wants all Linux code banished to Pluto until the year 3000.
However, no one can site what the offending code is. IBM (or whoever it is) when asked about the code mearly says 'it's proprietary, we can't tell you.'.
So IBM is accusing someone of stealing from them, but IBM won't disclose to the accused what it is they stole from IBM. Why is this being taken seriously by anyone?
Can some kind person please do me (and others like me) a favor and explain this whole thing in a way that a 4th grader can understand? Better yet, include Dick and Jane references and you will be my hero.
It is high time that the private sector starts getting into the act of man spaceflight and NASA reevaluates it's mission.
In the 60's NASA was taking on a mission that only goverment with it's vast capital could undertake.
That isn't the case anymore. One need look no farther then the X-Prize to see that.
I think many people missunderstand the point of the X-Prize. I hear a lot of complaints about how just simply shooting someone up in the air 60 miles and then doing it again 2 weeks later isn't that challenging. How a real challenge is orbital velocity. The point they are missing is that before you can hit orbital velocity you have to be able to shoot a man 60 miles straight up. The X-Prize is providing the private sector with encouragement to achieve step 1.
It is hoped that once someone shows that you don't have to be NASA to do that, then maybe harder things are doable.
Why not give every transmitter a distinct serial number. Whenever the transmitters go off they automaticaly broadcast the serial number. Have the recievers tied into the internet and accessing a central database. Everytime they get a signal they clear it through the database before activating the light change. Force all the transmitters to register with the database system and you should have an effective way of weeding out people not authorized to use them.
It would be a very simple thing to write up some code that tells the system that if a code is used at least twice within a certain time increment and at least a certain distance apart to block access to the code. When the fire truck realizes that he suddenly has to stop for red lights then they call in and get there access code changed.
It will be those hippy, leather clad, bad ass, cocaine using, Harley riding 'Oh look at me, I am on a motorcycle and I am having trouble with the light, I have a special need!' loosers that buy them.
See, 2 can play your game.
If you are having problems with lights then buy something that is heavy enough it might trip them.
On one hand I am impressed that authors have such rights over there work. If only musicians had it so good.
However I think the Authors Guild needs to take a step back and take some deep breaths. How about the guild agrees not to discuss this for a week?
In the end I will have respect for there decision. However, Amazon's new feature is a GREAT way to sell hard to find books.
The first time you type in some obscure phrase that really shouldn't get a logical hit on Amazon, and the search engine gives you a bunch, you are sold.
It is the online equivelant to walking into a bookstore and telling the clerk you are looking for a book on 'servecing the static port of a Beechcraft turboprop' and having the clerk reply '3 rows back on your left, 2nd shelf from the top 23'rd book from the aisle side of the shelf, page 167 2nd paragraph, 3rd sentence.'.
Mark my words. My name is Sllim, and you read it here first.
This is smart. Really, really smart.
And they have already alluded to it several times.
And it is gonna work too.
They are not even humoring themselves on making money on the console. No sir. They are gonna make money on the digital rights managment feature. Or rather, they are baiting another company to put epoxy over there chips and to put a tamper switch on the case of there console. Know what they do when that happens? Nothing. Wait a couple of years for the company to make some money and then sue them till there balls hit the floor.
This isn't about a console. It is about future copyright infringment.
It isn't the early adopters. The early adopters are fascinated by bigger, better and faster. This whole epoxy glue and tamper-resistent case thing will turn those early adopters off big time. They are going to see a box that is screaming for more memory, faster bus speed or a bigger CPU. But unless you can get around the tamper-resistent case (probably) you risk turning it into a useless pile of junk by doing so.
It certainly isn't parents shopping for a Christmas present. So you are telling me that I can go to an EB games (yea right, EB games isn't dumb enough to sell this pile O poo) hand the cashier $300 and I am lucky to walk out of the store with.... a receipt!
As long as EB games has PS2's, Gcubes and Xboxes in stock, and as long as we can walk out of the store with one, no body is gonna buy one of these things.
It also isn't the kiddies who get excited about every third game that hits the market. In order to get those kids excited you gotta have some launch titles. It is ALLLL ABOUT THE LAUNCH TITLES (just ask Nintendo).
So, I ask again, just who the hell is the market for this thing?
I am not a subscriber to AOL so please excuse my ignorance. I am assuming that AOL does this without asking the user if they can do this and without informing the user that they are doing this?
That is what AOL is doing wrong. AOL needs to tell the user that Microsoft has this stupid system service on by default and that it won't damage anything if they turn it off. You will stop getting those stupid pop-ups. Let us preceed? Yes or No.
If AOL did that then I would applaud them. Microsoft should be so bold.
Complete Bloom County with extra goodies? What rock do you live under?
www.mycomicspage.com They have gotten permission and more importantly the artwork to run Berke Breathed's entire Bloom County run, in order, including Outland.
For $10, yes only $10 you get 5 panels delivered every other day, and every other day you get a Sunday panel. They take weekends off.
I have it delivered to my email at work. Gives me a reason to come to work.
When Slashdot originaly ran this people were bitching it wasn't free. Shame on them. I would pay, christ, I would pay a hell of a lot more then $10 yearly for this.
This is a solution looking for a problem. A better problem is one of fast food. I create more waste and polution every week eating fast food (using the drive through) then I do tossing CD's.
What about all the other crap in a landfill?
There are things worth your energy, but this isn't one of them.
Some schmuck made a CD out of corn. Lucky us. If that schmuck can demonstrate to me that his CD's are more reliable or somehow supperior or maybe just simply cheaper then traditional CD's then he will get my business. Somehow I think the only thing he has going is guilt. I feel exactly no guilt sitting in the drive through of McDonalds every day. why would I give a rats ass about a CD?
Exactly how much effort is your sister willing to put into reading the Papyrus documents (or whatever she is reading)? What does it take for her to throw it in the trash and be done with it?
Of course you need to think about technology. Who will be looking at this stuff? Is it us 3 or 4 thousand years in the future? If so I would imagine that you and I have no ability to predict what is or is not possible to those people. Same goes for any civilization that can cross the vast expanse of space or time to visit us.
I made a big deal out of the whole archeological thing and maybe I shouldn't have. The thought that went through my mind was, 'What if all CD's in the future were made like this? Modern day CD's provide the potential (however unlikely it is still there) to tell our story in the far future. Is it possible for us to destroy this opportunity?'
Of course you pointed out that papyrus leaves have lasted for 3 or 4 thousand years. While it does blow a nice little hole in my theory, I think I can still hold a little ground. Traditional CD material has a higher likelyhood of surviving.
But screw all that, the bottom line is still the same. I throw away crap every day that is much larger by volume then a CD. Hell, for the most part I don't consider CD's disposable. I pay good money for them, why would I want to pitch them?
This is a classic case of a solution looking for a problem.
Of course, there are gonna be some greenies out there that won't like what I am gonna say. Oh well, sucks to be them. God forbid there are opposing views, we wouldn't want that.....
My thought is this, CD's taking up space in landfills is a joke. There are things that we throw away every day that take up a lot more space. Cups, diapers, pride, ego, remnants of fast food meals, paper products of every type. Pick up a CD and look at it... Seriously, if you are complaining about the space that this takes up in a landfill then you got your priorities wrong. There are far more important things to worry about.
Besides CD's provide an incredible archeological opportunity. Think about how valuable written texts are that can be dated back 1000 years. Archeologists work there entire careers for the opportunity to get a scrap of 1/3 a sheet of paper. Say what you want, but in 3000 years those CD's will be in much better shape then a book.
Back to the corn based media, gets a big 'ol from me. I can go out and buy a 100 spindle of cheap CDR media at Wal-Mart right now for around $20. I have no intention to allow some unjustified guilt trip influence what I buy. If the corn stuff is more expensive then it damn well better be better quality.
This reminds me of when Disney got all that crap for the DVD rental program where the DVD's self destructed. Disney wishes they would ship as many DVD's in a day as AOL puts out CD's. I personally wasn't too hot on Disney's idea, but that was for other reasons. I could care less about how much space a small thing like that is taking up at the landfill.
Your problems are management company created problems. They need to be solved on that level.
Your company needs to create a security admin. This person needs to be above the level of department managers. This person needs to dictate security policies company wide. If a manager doesn't like her policies, that manager needs to go to her boss. The security admin needs to have her job on the line if your code gets out in the open.
Do that one thing and see what happens. Many, many, many people are gonna be pissed off. Good. Sometimes that is a good thing. People need to get pissed occasionaly, it is a good way of putting them in line.
Numbers 2 and 10 are completly unaceptable. Having any engineer being able to enable access to any other engineer is simply not a good thing. Force those people to go through the proper channels to get access. It will force a paper trail, if code gets leaked it gives you a place to start. I simply won't comment on #2.
#3 is part of #2. Think about it.
#5. Why do engineers need to take files home? Should any engineer be able to spontaneously take any file home? Where I work it is SOP for people to PCANYWHERE into there workstations from home. I am not sure how good of an idea THAT is, but I like it better then allowing people to burn anything they want to a CD and be off with it.
#8 There needs to be accountability for the tools you are using to do your job.
Fix those things from within the company. I bet what you are left with after you have fixed those things can be fixed with software.
Music is easy everything else is hard.
on
Why Only Music?
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· Score: 1
MP3's is an easy alternative to CD's. Burn it to a CD and you have a traditional CD just like that. The files are small enough that downloading them is not a big deal.
Movies, games and printed material suffers in ways that music does not on P2P networks. These things suffer to the point that they do not make an adequate replacement for the actual media.
Movies... where to begin. If you want them in a small download, small being defined at 700 megs or less, you have a quality hit that you must take. If you don't want the quality hit you are looking at 1.5 gigs of media. More importantly though you simply cannot recreate the movie theatre experience at home. Cannot be done. People that think that movie theatres suffer because of P2P are simply wrong. Ever try to take a date to your PC? DVD's suffer in pretty much the same way, want DVD quality, you are looking at 4.5-9 gigs of a download.
Then there are video games. Games probably suffer the least. But they do suffer. There is no compression scheme for games. A 4 disk set will always mean a 4 disk download. Copy protection schemes on games are very wide ranging. Some games, -ahem- Microsoft games, can simply be copied, other games need cracks, still others there is no way around. When the games are patched it is an educated guess wether the patch will destroy the downloaded game or not. You just don't know.
And printed material. This suffers the most. I simply cannot replace the feeling of printed material in my hands for staring at a screen.
This would really upset people and really amuse me. The best of both worlds!
I could place an RFID scanner/antenna/array outside my apartment pointing at the sidewalk and the street. I then aim a webcam at it and make sure that the video of the webcam is timestamped.
I don't have even the slightest clue about how to do this... but the idea certainly amuses me.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that a reporter and Wired editor were fooled big time.
I read the article in Wired, I put it down and said 'amusing, but total BS.'.
My understanding is iTunes is basicaly a promotional tool to sell iPods.
I would imagine that Apples longterm plan is in 6 months or a year to renogiate the contracts, pointing out how much more succesful it was then predicted, and start making money then.
Aside from that I am left with a question, how exactly is Microsoft expecting to turn a profit from this venture?
Sure they can undercut Apple, but what will that gain them?
Microsoft has no iPod like device to sell.
I don't know, if I was Bill 'Money' Gates I would be tempted to give this particular market to Apple.
I am afraid the real problem is the intellegence of the average thief.
I am guessing that the scanner looks for a temperature of 98 degrees or so, and if it doesn't get it then doesn't process.
Like I said, the problem is the intelligence of the average theif.
Think they will think of this before they cut off my thumb???
Noooooooooo.
In fact, I dare say the theifs may have to have a pocket full of thumbs before they realize that They are doing something wrong.
I know that not everyone agrees with me that Farscape is possibly the best show to have graced TV since, well since, hell since forever.
But even if you don't get Farscape you have to have some sympathy for us fans.
You realize they didn't even have the common curtesy to delete the words 'To be continued' from the last scene of the last episode?
In the last 3 minutes of the last episode the 2 main characters are blown away by a previously unknown badguy, and then the other good guys are left with jaws in there laps and the words 'To Be Continued'.
If you don't have some sort of pity for us fans then you are an incompassionate slug.
I will take a miniseries and say 'Thank You'. All I ever wanted was a final episode, maybe a 2 hour one, to tie up the loose ends.
I never demanded they give us another full season.
So who do I have to thank????
Think about what 'ownership of land' is really.
My first thought was 'well if he hasn't planted a flag there then how could he own it?'.
But that argument really doesn't stand the test of time. There are plenty of people that own land and property that they have never set foot on. Nothing strange about that.
So the moon is a tad farther away, and this asteroid a bit farther then that.
Distance isn't the problem.
The law isn't either.
It is enforceability and protection of said property.
A business owner who owns property on the other side of the country has many different tools protecting his ownership of the property. He has local, state and federal laws that specifically give him ownership, he can buy security service, he can hire people to protect his property, these are the ways that he takes ownership.
As long as his defenses are better then your offenses, as long as he wins the case of ownership and you loose then he owns the property.
And it isn't neccesarily laws that protect property ownership.
Take Saddam as an example. Saddam owned palaces all over Iraq. A year ago the owner of those palaces was not in question. You could try to lay claim to those palaces, but when Saddam was done with you, well lets just say you would apologize for your stupidity.
But now the US owns those palaces. We didn't go to court and prove anything.
We took them.
By force.
With big guns.
And in Iraq we are basicaly saying 'We don't need no stinking laws, if you think you own this property, then we challenge you to take it.'.
This has a bearing on this crackpot who sent Nasa a $20 parking ticket.
So dude has a peace of paper saying that he owns said asteroid. Isn't that nice.
Nasa dissagrees.
If dude can find a judge that will enforce his parking ticket against Nasa, then dude wins, ergo dude 'owns' the asteroid.
If dude cannot succesfully collect payment from Nasa then dude is left with one more option.
Eviction.
If dude can get the finances together, and the means, and the smarts to knock Nasa's probe off the asteroid then dude would truly own the asteroid.
But if dude cannot evict Nasa, and cannot enforce payment, then dude certainly doesn't own the asteroid.
This may all seem like the petty politics of a crackpot.
But China wants to put a man on the moon in the next 10 years.
The only thing stopping China from planting a Chinese flag and claiming the moon is a piece of paper that China may or may not have signed.
After saying all that I want to add something to my thoughts.
While in general I am against new laws against spammers, I do think that something legally needs to be done about minors receiving sexually innapropriate email from spammers.
Now maybe I am wrong (somehow I don't think so) but I would imagine that if I bought your 8 year old son a subscription to Playboy for Christmas I would be in some legal trouble.
Doubly (and rightfully) so since I am a complete stranger to you.
Now I know nothing about how this applies towards spam.
But I do know that we live in a different age from when I grew up.
I am a 30 year old male. I remember a time when getting my hands on Penthouse was pretty much the holy grail of my existence (say 14-16 years old). It was so rare for me to come across any nudie pics that getting the stuff was really half the fun.
If I could go back in time and confer with my 14 year old self that the time would come when all I really had to do was look over my shoulder that Mom and Dad were not watching, and I could have all the porn I wanted, well I would call myself a liar.
But it is even worse then that.
Kids today don't even have to search for it.
It is thrust upon them in there email.
I guess regular (non-adult oriented) spam doesn't offend me. I view that stuff as something I can control with the proper tools.
But adult oriented spam makes me uneasy. I think about how society has changed and I don't like it.
Hmmm good rebuttal.
Thanks for looking that up.
I don't think it changes how I feel though. Okay even if the Free Speach isn't a no-brainer like I thought it was, but something that has already been decided by the supreme court, it still doesn't change something that is critically important to this thing called spam.
Spammers would simply migrate there servers to a country that is friendlier to them. Us passing a law would only have one effect, send the spammers overseas, it would not stop spam.
That is the thing about the legal aspect of this problem. It just seems like such a waste of time.
As a community we need to think of spam as a technical problem with a technical solution. We need to have the mindset that spam is the second coming of computer viruses.
If we look at resolving from that mindset, that is putting the power to solve the problem in the hands of ISP's and consumers, then we don't need new laws.
New anti-spam laws will bring new consequences. I shudder at the thought of some parent of an 8 year old that is feuding with another parent. One of the 8 year olds sends a birthday party invitation to his/her entire class, the feuding parent sees the email and raises holy hell on the other parent, all thanks to anti-spam regulation.
There seems to be a fair amount of fear in the community that Spam is a problem for which there does not exist a solution.
Short of shutting down the internet.
Hmmm.
I don't think that is the case.
I do think though that creating laws and litigation against spammers (except special circumstances, such as sending porn to children) is a slippery slope that will almost cirtenly backfire.
At some point the spammers are going to get smart and realize that they are sitting on a free speech case. If the Supreme Court finds in there favor then we have real problems.
Besides, when we are dealing with laws one is left asking 'just what is spam?'. If my kid sends out an email to every kid in his class, is that spam?
And if it isn't, then why not?
For me that is something worth protecting.
I feel strongly that Spam can be solved. The solution is a 2 pronged attack. The first bit is at the ISP's end. The 2nd bit is on my computer at home.
In the next couple of years an anti-spam filter will be just as common as a virus filter.
That is the solution.
I need it explained that way to me.
This entire 'Linux is bad, but IBM is badder, but Micrsoft is even baddier' SCO stuff is just interesting enough to me to get my attention.
But whenever I read it I have a hard time wrapping my head around it.
The best I can figure out is that somewhere within the thousands of line or code that makes up the Linux kernel there is code that is copyrighted by.... someone. That someone (is it IBM??? see how confused I am) wants to be either paid $900 an installation or wants all Linux code banished to Pluto until the year 3000.
However, no one can site what the offending code is. IBM (or whoever it is) when asked about the code mearly says 'it's proprietary, we can't tell you.'.
So IBM is accusing someone of stealing from them, but IBM won't disclose to the accused what it is they stole from IBM.
Why is this being taken seriously by anyone?
Can some kind person please do me (and others like me) a favor and explain this whole thing in a way that a 4th grader can understand?
Better yet, include Dick and Jane references and you will be my hero.
And I'll say it again.
It is high time that the private sector starts getting into the act of man spaceflight and NASA reevaluates it's mission.
In the 60's NASA was taking on a mission that only goverment with it's vast capital could undertake.
That isn't the case anymore. One need look no farther then the X-Prize to see that.
I think many people missunderstand the point of the X-Prize. I hear a lot of complaints about how just simply shooting someone up in the air 60 miles and then doing it again 2 weeks later isn't that challenging. How a real challenge is orbital velocity.
The point they are missing is that before you can hit orbital velocity you have to be able to shoot a man 60 miles straight up.
The X-Prize is providing the private sector with encouragement to achieve step 1.
It is hoped that once someone shows that you don't have to be NASA to do that, then maybe harder things are doable.
Why not give every transmitter a distinct serial number. Whenever the transmitters go off they automaticaly broadcast the serial number.
Have the recievers tied into the internet and accessing a central database.
Everytime they get a signal they clear it through the database before activating the light change.
Force all the transmitters to register with the database system and you should have an effective way of weeding out people not authorized to use them.
It would be a very simple thing to write up some code that tells the system that if a code is used at least twice within a certain time increment and at least a certain distance apart to block access to the code.
When the fire truck realizes that he suddenly has to stop for red lights then they call in and get there access code changed.
It won't be the H2 people.
It will be those hippy, leather clad, bad ass, cocaine using, Harley riding 'Oh look at me, I am on a motorcycle and I am having trouble with the light, I have a special need!' loosers that buy them.
See, 2 can play your game.
If you are having problems with lights then buy something that is heavy enough it might trip them.
Whew, this is a tricky situation.
On one hand I am impressed that authors have such rights over there work. If only musicians had it so good.
However I think the Authors Guild needs to take a step back and take some deep breaths.
How about the guild agrees not to discuss this for a week?
In the end I will have respect for there decision.
However, Amazon's new feature is a GREAT way to sell hard to find books.
The first time you type in some obscure phrase that really shouldn't get a logical hit on Amazon, and the search engine gives you a bunch, you are sold.
It is the online equivelant to walking into a bookstore and telling the clerk you are looking for a book on 'servecing the static port of a Beechcraft turboprop' and having the clerk reply '3 rows back on your left, 2nd shelf from the top 23'rd book from the aisle side of the shelf, page 167 2nd paragraph, 3rd sentence.'.
How could this feature not sell books?
Bravo to Amazon.
Mark my words. My name is Sllim, and you read it here first.
This is smart. Really, really smart.
And they have already alluded to it several times.
And it is gonna work too.
They are not even humoring themselves on making money on the console. No sir.
They are gonna make money on the digital rights managment feature.
Or rather, they are baiting another company to put epoxy over there chips and to put a tamper switch on the case of there console.
Know what they do when that happens?
Nothing.
Wait a couple of years for the company to make some money and then sue them till there balls hit the floor.
This isn't about a console.
It is about future copyright infringment.
That's it, hide behind the AC sign on.
I dare you to repost this with a valid sign on and email address.
That would be daring and maybe funny.
But to post something like that as AC?
That is just pathetic.
Now go home to your Mommy.
It isn't the early adopters. The early adopters are fascinated by bigger, better and faster. This whole epoxy glue and tamper-resistent case thing will turn those early adopters off big time.
They are going to see a box that is screaming for more memory, faster bus speed or a bigger CPU. But unless you can get around the tamper-resistent case (probably) you risk turning it into a useless pile of junk by doing so.
It certainly isn't parents shopping for a Christmas present. So you are telling me that I can go to an EB games (yea right, EB games isn't dumb enough to sell this pile O poo) hand the cashier $300 and I am lucky to walk out of the store with.... a receipt!
As long as EB games has PS2's, Gcubes and Xboxes in stock, and as long as we can walk out of the store with one, no body is gonna buy one of these things.
It also isn't the kiddies who get excited about every third game that hits the market.
In order to get those kids excited you gotta have some launch titles.
It is ALLLL ABOUT THE LAUNCH TITLES (just ask Nintendo).
So, I ask again, just who the hell is the market for this thing?
I am not a subscriber to AOL so please excuse my ignorance.
I am assuming that AOL does this without asking the user if they can do this and without informing the user that they are doing this?
That is what AOL is doing wrong.
AOL needs to tell the user that Microsoft has this stupid system service on by default and that it won't damage anything if they turn it off. You will stop getting those stupid pop-ups.
Let us preceed? Yes or No.
If AOL did that then I would applaud them.
Microsoft should be so bold.
Complete Bloom County with extra goodies?
What rock do you live under?
www.mycomicspage.com
They have gotten permission and more importantly the artwork to run Berke Breathed's entire Bloom County run, in order, including Outland.
For $10, yes only $10 you get 5 panels delivered every other day, and every other day you get a Sunday panel. They take weekends off.
I have it delivered to my email at work. Gives me a reason to come to work.
When Slashdot originaly ran this people were bitching it wasn't free.
Shame on them. I would pay, christ, I would pay a hell of a lot more then $10 yearly for this.
Actually, no it doesn't add up.
This is a solution looking for a problem.
A better problem is one of fast food.
I create more waste and polution every week eating fast food (using the drive through) then I do tossing CD's.
What about all the other crap in a landfill?
There are things worth your energy, but this isn't one of them.
Some schmuck made a CD out of corn.
Lucky us.
If that schmuck can demonstrate to me that his CD's are more reliable or somehow supperior or maybe just simply cheaper then traditional CD's then he will get my business.
Somehow I think the only thing he has going is guilt.
I feel exactly no guilt sitting in the drive through of McDonalds every day.
why would I give a rats ass about a CD?
Exactly how much effort is your sister willing to put into reading the Papyrus documents (or whatever she is reading)?
What does it take for her to throw it in the trash and be done with it?
Of course you need to think about technology. Who will be looking at this stuff? Is it us 3 or 4 thousand years in the future? If so I would imagine that you and I have no ability to predict what is or is not possible to those people.
Same goes for any civilization that can cross the vast expanse of space or time to visit us.
I made a big deal out of the whole archeological thing and maybe I shouldn't have.
The thought that went through my mind was, 'What if all CD's in the future were made like this? Modern day CD's provide the potential (however unlikely it is still there) to tell our story in the far future. Is it possible for us to destroy this opportunity?'
Of course you pointed out that papyrus leaves have lasted for 3 or 4 thousand years. While it does blow a nice little hole in my theory, I think I can still hold a little ground. Traditional CD material has a higher likelyhood of surviving.
But screw all that, the bottom line is still the same. I throw away crap every day that is much larger by volume then a CD. Hell, for the most part I don't consider CD's disposable. I pay good money for them, why would I want to pitch them?
This is a classic case of a solution looking for a problem.
Any prize for the first intelligent post???
Of course, there are gonna be some greenies out there that won't like what I am gonna say.
Oh well, sucks to be them.
God forbid there are opposing views, we wouldn't want that.....
My thought is this, CD's taking up space in landfills is a joke. There are things that we throw away every day that take up a lot more space.
Cups, diapers, pride, ego, remnants of fast food meals, paper products of every type.
Pick up a CD and look at it...
Seriously, if you are complaining about the space that this takes up in a landfill then you got your priorities wrong. There are far more important things to worry about.
Besides CD's provide an incredible archeological opportunity. Think about how valuable written texts are that can be dated back 1000 years. Archeologists work there entire careers for the opportunity to get a scrap of 1/3 a sheet of paper.
Say what you want, but in 3000 years those CD's will be in much better shape then a book.
Back to the corn based media, gets a big 'ol from me. I can go out and buy a 100 spindle of cheap CDR media at Wal-Mart right now for around $20. I have no intention to allow some unjustified guilt trip influence what I buy. If the corn stuff is more expensive then it damn well better be better quality.
This reminds me of when Disney got all that crap for the DVD rental program where the DVD's self destructed.
Disney wishes they would ship as many DVD's in a day as AOL puts out CD's. I personally wasn't too hot on Disney's idea, but that was for other reasons. I could care less about how much space a small thing like that is taking up at the landfill.
There is a God.
I don't think there is any theatre quite like the Senator.
I wonder if they will play a cartoon before the movies???
Your problems are management company created problems. They need to be solved on that level.
Your company needs to create a security admin. This person needs to be above the level of department managers. This person needs to dictate security policies company wide. If a manager doesn't like her policies, that manager needs to go to her boss.
The security admin needs to have her job on the line if your code gets out in the open.
Do that one thing and see what happens.
Many, many, many people are gonna be pissed off.
Good. Sometimes that is a good thing. People need to get pissed occasionaly, it is a good way of putting them in line.
Numbers 2 and 10 are completly unaceptable.
Having any engineer being able to enable access to any other engineer is simply not a good thing. Force those people to go through the proper channels to get access. It will force a paper trail, if code gets leaked it gives you a place to start.
I simply won't comment on #2.
#3 is part of #2. Think about it.
#5. Why do engineers need to take files home? Should any engineer be able to spontaneously take any file home? Where I work it is SOP for people to PCANYWHERE into there workstations from home. I am not sure how good of an idea THAT is, but I like it better then allowing people to burn anything they want to a CD and be off with it.
#8 There needs to be accountability for the tools you are using to do your job.
Fix those things from within the company. I bet what you are left with after you have fixed those things can be fixed with software.
MP3's is an easy alternative to CD's. Burn it to a CD and you have a traditional CD just like that. The files are small enough that downloading them is not a big deal.
Movies, games and printed material suffers in ways that music does not on P2P networks. These things suffer to the point that they do not make an adequate replacement for the actual media.
Movies... where to begin. If you want them in a small download, small being defined at 700 megs or less, you have a quality hit that you must take. If you don't want the quality hit you are looking at 1.5 gigs of media. More importantly though you simply cannot recreate the movie theatre experience at home.
Cannot be done. People that think that movie theatres suffer because of P2P are simply wrong.
Ever try to take a date to your PC?
DVD's suffer in pretty much the same way, want DVD quality, you are looking at 4.5-9 gigs of a download.
Then there are video games.
Games probably suffer the least. But they do suffer. There is no compression scheme for games. A 4 disk set will always mean a 4 disk download. Copy protection schemes on games are very wide ranging. Some games, -ahem- Microsoft games, can simply be copied, other games need cracks, still others there is no way around.
When the games are patched it is an educated guess wether the patch will destroy the downloaded game or not. You just don't know.
And printed material. This suffers the most.
I simply cannot replace the feeling of printed material in my hands for staring at a screen.
This would really upset people and really amuse me.
The best of both worlds!
I could place an RFID scanner/antenna/array outside my apartment pointing at the sidewalk and the street. I then aim a webcam at it and make sure that the video of the webcam is timestamped.
I don't have even the slightest clue about how to do this... but the idea certainly amuses me.