I've had a hand strain and a blister on my thumb since I played fifteen straight hours of Tetris on their first machine, and every Nintendo since has only made it worse.
Finally, some relief!
--
TV statistics coverage...
on
LonelyNet
·
· Score: 1
...was the stupidest thing I've ever seen.
The CBC ran a story about this saying that, on top of all the "antisocial" parts of the survey, that Internet users spent a whopping 59% less time watching TV.
I say, what?
I say again, what? A) When did watching TV become a social activity, B) when did watching TV become a useful way to spend time and C) what good reason could anybody have to want to "make up those TV-watching hours"?
ObligatoryTheOnionReference: Are your valuable TV-looking skills going unused?
I wonder when they'll survey people living alone to see how many of them spend Saturday night alone on the couch, in front of a TV, wasting those valuable "social hours".
That's the most frightening part of the article, to my mind. Not 660,000 people, or samples to compare, but "possible suspects". The implication, of course, is that every person who's ever given a DNA sample to the police is a suspect in every crime the police investigate through DNA evidence.
Great. Guilty by association, and there's two-thirds of a million associated people. I wonder if the cops take a sample, and you prove not to be guilty, if you can insist that your DNA be removed from the database. I doubt it, though.
Is this a good thing? I think so. I don't think anybody has any illusions about whether or not war involves killing people. A lot of people in North America have WW2-Vet grandparents, but you don't hear a lot about how grandad is numb to violence. All of these training methods are designed to move war towards a Judo-like idea of finesse and economy of effort being a better approach than massive, overwhelming strength.
I _really_ like the idea of training towards tightly controlled, precision warfare; the phrase "minimum civilian casualties" sounds a lot better to me than "build me a pile of skulls." If a war has to be fought, let it be fought by the warriors, on the battleground. Not by turning schools and suburbs into smoking craters until there's nothing worth defending.
What this says is that DVD CCA's right to have their ass covered by the law when they made a booboo and picked a weak encryption scheme, and god forbid it lets make fair use of a recording medium we purchases, is more imporant than our (I am a defendant) right to disseminate information freely
This is Wrong. Not your arguments, specifically - I agree with them. But it's definitely the wrong mindset, and approach. Who gives a good goddamn if they picked a weak encryption scheme? Not the law. If you walk into a courtroom and say it's the homeowner's fault for having two-dollar luggage locks on their doors, and you broke in because it was easy and eventually somebody would have anyway, you will go to jail. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred. It doesn't matter if they secured it with 1,024 bit encryption or a glad-bag twist-tie; the winning play is to assert your constitutional and fair-use rights, not to tell the judge that they were lax with their security.
It's not clear to me why any company being rebroadcast, in their entirety, by iCraveTV is bothering to sue at all. Their advertisements are intact. Advertisements are how all these fine (ahem) television shows get paid for, so it's not like less eyeballs are seeing them, or they're being changed.
In a word, these companies aren't losing money on this, period.
In addition, I've got a legal question for any lawyers in the crowd. The article says "The complaint filed today in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania charges that the defendants, which operate an Internet Web site, are responsible for "one of the largest and most brazen thefts of 'intellectual property ever committed in the United States.'"
I mean, so what? If I'm in Toronto, and you file in D.C., what's going to make me pay attention to that? In a more extreme case, if I'm in the Yukon, can I be forced to haul my ass down to southern Florida to appear in court?
Software publishers should be held responsible for gross negligence or for intentionally witholding essential information from the customer, but no more than that.
Bullshit. If my antilock brakes fail because of a defective part, whoever manufactured that part is liable. If those same antilock brakes, or some metaphorical equivalent thereof, fail because of a software glitch, then the writer of that software should be equally liable. I don't see that software should be any different from any other product on the marketplace with respect to the creator of the product making claims about that product.
In addition, one of the reasons that so many consumer groups are concerned about the UCITA is that it lets a company avoid that liability. So, if I shrink-wrap the 'hello world' program as a Low Cost, Completely Secure Alternative To WorkingFirewallWhatever, with a disclaimer that says (may not do what the box says, and it's expressly forbidden to publish comparisons or benchmarks of the product without FooCorp's written permission) I can quite happily sell that and _never_ have to worry about bad print-press reviews. Because those clauses are now enforceable, by law.
When I write a piece of software, I cannot guarantee that it will function in a certain way, even if that is the essential purpose of the software - software is simply too complex. e.g. if I write a piece of software for securing a system, I cannot guarantee that the system will now be uncrackable. Placing unreasonable demands on software developer will have a chilling effect on software produced in this country.
I don't think that asking a product to behave the way the company says it will is unreasonable at all. Try replacing the word "software" with "car engine" or "airplane" and see how ridiculous it sounds.
I had that damn ACME factory song (you know the one - Wile E.'s building something...) going through my head recently, so I decided to look it up. It's called "Powerhouse", and it was written by a guy named Raymond Scott.
CDs are available, apparently. I'm going to get me one.
If you scroll down the page a bit, you'll also see step-by-step instructions on how to take your Linux CDs outside, light them on fire, jump up and down on them and mail the ashes directly to Linus.
I'm glad Microsoft is looking out for me, the consumer.
"The ultimate result is that some innovations that would truly suck consumers never occur for the sole reason that they do not spank with Microsoft's mouse." Urgh.
Have you guys thought of giving sites like this one, with a large downloaded file as the main focus, a one-day warning chance to let them distribute the file to a couple of mirror sites?
I like the press release. The whole idea that someone can have a "leading position in the Open Source market" has a whole bunch of assumptions behind it that are mostly good news for the Open Source movement.
One assumption that's not so good is that if there is a market for Linux information sources, then there can also be a monopoly on major Linux information sources. This could be good or bad, depending on intent and who's siding with who. I'd be wary if the information sources that new users would tend to turn to start to get consolidated under one roof.
This is Stephenson's strongest point as a writer. From the first page of Snow Crash, with the description of Hiro's bulletproof outfit ("A bullet will bounce off its arachnofiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly-napalmed forest") I was hooked.
A lot of the imagery in Snow Crash will really stick with you, because the analogies Stephenson uses are so bang-on accurate.
Oh, and I really, really want that car he starts off with. Oh, yah.
One thing that Katz does not address is that sometimes getting the information out quickly is more important than getting the information precisely right or properly moderated. That, to my mind, has had a huge influence in creating the journalist culture he's complaining about. With so much (presumably sales numbers and so forth) riding on the ability of a story to be novel and sensational, as opposed to precisely accurate, it's no wonder that journalists will tend to shoot first and ask questions later.
There are times, however, where this approach is perfectly justifiable. I want to know about health issues, flawed or dangerous technology that I might be dealing with, and so forth as soon as possible. If a company is producing a dangerous product, it is much more valuable to me that their product line be painted with a broad brush and either recalled or dealt with quickly than it is for me to hear a few days later that the ABS in my car fails one time in a thousand or that mixing ChemCo. Houshold Products A and B will give me a hideous illness.
As well, the idea of "investigative reporting" is probably (I've got zero experience here) also something that you can't do by committee, especially if there are powerful people involved. I can't imagine how the discovery of Nixon's abuse of power would have turned out if Nixon himself had got wind it a week in advance, and brought presidential influence to bear on the journalists and the publication itself.
Peer review is nowhere near a new idea. It may be a novelty in the context of modern journalism, but it is simply not a tool that you can use all of the time. I agree that there is a lot of good to the idea, but the idea just isn't appropriate for urgent situations or for those that demand some degree of caution or secrecy before release, for fear of tainting the product.
The challenge will be in deciding which is which. Look for a book called "Dead Secret", for an interesting bit of apropos fiction.
--
Other things Gartner has had to say about Linux...
on
Gartner Slams Linux
·
· Score: 2
I predict that this is going to end abruptly and with a great public outcry when a student somewhere creates a completely nonsensical string of words that manages to trip all the right switches in the marking programs. Nothing brings the ruthless ingenuity out of a CS major like their GPA. How long do you think it will take for essay sites to start putting up notices saying "will score 87% when marked with QuikMarkIt Pro, 76% with EssayMarker 1.2"?
"It seems to me that Linux advocates should take this as a great compliment - MS Marketdroids sweating over a free OS that wasn't even a blip on the radar a year or two ago. With the pace of development that is going on, what will it be like 2 years from now?"
The really great thing about this is that they've given us a To-Do list.
This is the wonderful thing about Productive Fanaticism - Every time a criticism is made, somebody somewhere goes to work on it. Every "Linux Can't Do This" sets a coder somewhere saying "Betcha I can make Linux do that." And with the open-source model, the Community doesn't have to wait for somebody in a suit to decide that it's a priority issue; A newsgroup is posted to, e-mail is exchanged and the ball rolls.
Bigger HD support? Somebody's probably on that. Hard data on performance and uptimes? Somebody's on that, too. Look forward to hearing from Microsoft - They light the way.
Seconded. As far as temperature goes, the celcius system is vastly better if you live somewhere with snow. Plus or minus tells you what you'll be driving in or walking through on the way home from work. As for distance, I'll take the metric system anyday. I can remember getting my first geometry set and having the inside lid conveniently list all the American and Canadian conversions. 8 rods to a chain, so many chains to a furlong... Over on the other side, a neat row of tens and half a dozen greek prefixes that are, coincidentally, the same ones as the weights. I'll take that over pounds, slugs, and chains anytime.
Slashdot Mirror
Finally, some relief!
--
The CBC ran a story about this saying that, on top of all the "antisocial" parts of the survey, that Internet users spent a whopping 59% less time watching TV.
I say, what?
I say again, what? A) When did watching TV become a social activity, B) when did watching TV become a useful way to spend time and C) what good reason could anybody have to want to "make up those TV-watching hours"?
ObligatoryTheOnionReference: Are your valuable TV-looking skills going unused?
I wonder when they'll survey people living alone to see how many of them spend Saturday night alone on the couch, in front of a TV, wasting those valuable "social hours".
--
Great. Guilty by association, and there's two-thirds of a million associated people. I wonder if the cops take a sample, and you prove not to be guilty, if you can insist that your DNA be removed from the database. I doubt it, though.
--
Is this a good thing? I think so. I don't think anybody has any illusions about whether or not war involves killing people. A lot of people in North America have WW2-Vet grandparents, but you don't hear a lot about how grandad is numb to violence. All of these training methods are designed to move war towards a Judo-like idea of finesse and economy of effort being a better approach than massive, overwhelming strength.
I _really_ like the idea of training towards tightly controlled, precision warfare; the phrase "minimum civilian casualties" sounds a lot better to me than "build me a pile of skulls." If a war has to be fought, let it be fought by the warriors, on the battleground. Not by turning schools and suburbs into smoking craters until there's nothing worth defending.
--
Given you'll be recorded in binary on a sensitive electrical appliance somewhere, that's more likely than you'd think.
--
This is Wrong. Not your arguments, specifically - I agree with them. But it's definitely the wrong mindset, and approach. Who gives a good goddamn if they picked a weak encryption scheme? Not the law. If you walk into a courtroom and say it's the homeowner's fault for having two-dollar luggage locks on their doors, and you broke in because it was easy and eventually somebody would have anyway, you will go to jail. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred. It doesn't matter if they secured it with 1,024 bit encryption or a glad-bag twist-tie; the winning play is to assert your constitutional and fair-use rights, not to tell the judge that they were lax with their security.
--
In a word, these companies aren't losing money on this, period.
In addition, I've got a legal question for any lawyers in the crowd. The article says "The complaint filed today in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania charges that the defendants, which operate an Internet Web site, are responsible for "one of the largest and most brazen thefts of 'intellectual property ever committed in the United States.'"
I mean, so what? If I'm in Toronto, and you file in D.C., what's going to make me pay attention to that? In a more extreme case, if I'm in the Yukon, can I be forced to haul my ass down to southern Florida to appear in court?
--
Bullshit. If my antilock brakes fail because of a defective part, whoever manufactured that part is liable. If those same antilock brakes, or some metaphorical equivalent thereof, fail because of a software glitch, then the writer of that software should be equally liable. I don't see that software should be any different from any other product on the marketplace with respect to the creator of the product making claims about that product.
In addition, one of the reasons that so many consumer groups are concerned about the UCITA is that it lets a company avoid that liability. So, if I shrink-wrap the 'hello world' program as a Low Cost, Completely Secure Alternative To WorkingFirewallWhatever, with a disclaimer that says (may not do what the box says, and it's expressly forbidden to publish comparisons or benchmarks of the product without FooCorp's written permission) I can quite happily sell that and _never_ have to worry about bad print-press reviews. Because those clauses are now enforceable, by law.
When I write a piece of software, I cannot guarantee that it will function in a certain way, even if that is the essential purpose of the software - software is simply too complex. e.g. if I write a piece of software for securing a system, I cannot guarantee that the system will now be uncrackable. Placing unreasonable demands on software developer will have a chilling effect on software produced in this country.
I don't think that asking a product to behave the way the company says it will is unreasonable at all. Try replacing the word "software" with "car engine" or "airplane" and see how ridiculous it sounds.
--
I had that damn ACME factory song (you know the one - Wile E.'s building something...) going through my head recently, so I decided to look it up. It's called "Powerhouse", and it was written by a guy named Raymond Scott.
CDs are available, apparently. I'm going to get me one.
--
If you scroll down the page a bit, you'll also see step-by-step instructions on how to take your Linux CDs outside, light them on fire, jump up and down on them and mail the ashes directly to Linus.
I'm glad Microsoft is looking out for me, the consumer.
--
"The ultimate result is that some innovations that would truly suck consumers never occur for the sole reason that they do not spank with Microsoft's mouse."
Urgh.
--
Have you guys thought of giving sites like this one, with a large downloaded file as the main focus, a one-day warning chance to let them distribute the file to a couple of mirror sites?
--
I hope you gave them a little heads-up before putting this up.
Something like "It's nice you've got this experimental new server thingy going, 'cause in ten minutes we're going to bury you."
Or just "Hi, we run Slashdot. Brace yourselves."
--
They're doing some incredible work on this at Silicone Graphics...
--
I like the press release. The whole idea that someone can have a "leading position in the Open Source market" has a whole bunch of assumptions behind it that are mostly good news for the Open Source movement.
One assumption that's not so good is that if there is a market for Linux information sources, then there can also be a monopoly on major Linux information sources. This could be good or bad, depending on intent and who's siding with who. I'd be wary if the information sources that new users would tend to turn to start to get consolidated under one roof.
--
A lot of the imagery in Snow Crash will really stick with you, because the analogies Stephenson uses are so bang-on accurate.
Oh, and I really, really want that car he starts off with. Oh, yah.
--
One thing that Katz does not address is that sometimes getting the information out quickly is more important than getting the information precisely right or properly moderated. That, to my mind, has had a huge influence in creating the journalist culture he's complaining about. With so much (presumably sales numbers and so forth) riding on the ability of a story to be novel and sensational, as opposed to precisely accurate, it's no wonder that journalists will tend to shoot first and ask questions later.
There are times, however, where this approach is perfectly justifiable. I want to know about health issues, flawed or dangerous technology that I might be dealing with, and so forth as soon as possible. If a company is producing a dangerous product, it is much more valuable to me that their product line be painted with a broad brush and either recalled or dealt with quickly than it is for me to hear a few days later that the ABS in my car fails one time in a thousand or that mixing ChemCo. Houshold Products A and B will give me a hideous illness.
As well, the idea of "investigative reporting" is probably (I've got zero experience here) also something that you can't do by committee, especially if there are powerful people involved. I can't imagine how the discovery of Nixon's abuse of power would have turned out if Nixon himself had got wind it a week in advance, and brought presidential influence to bear on the journalists and the publication itself.
Peer review is nowhere near a new idea. It may be a novelty in the context of modern journalism, but it is simply not a tool that you can use all of the time. I agree that there is a lot of good to the idea, but the idea just isn't appropriate for urgent situations or for those that demand some degree of caution or secrecy before release, for fear of tainting the product.
The challenge will be in deciding which is which. Look for a book called "Dead Secret", for an interesting bit of apropos fiction.
--
Check it out. It's nowhere near a kiss of death.
--
Mike Hoye
"A man without a .plan is not a man."
--
--
There is no data. There is only XUL.
--
--
Mike Hoye
--
The really great thing about this is that they've given us a To-Do list.
This is the wonderful thing about Productive Fanaticism - Every time a criticism is made, somebody somewhere goes to work on it. Every "Linux Can't Do This" sets a coder somewhere saying "Betcha I can make Linux do that." And with the open-source model, the Community doesn't have to wait for somebody in a suit to decide that it's a priority issue; A newsgroup is posted to, e-mail is exchanged and the ball rolls.
Bigger HD support? Somebody's probably on that. Hard data on performance and uptimes? Somebody's on that, too. Look forward to hearing from Microsoft - They light the way.
--
Seconded. As far as temperature goes, the celcius system is vastly better if you live somewhere with snow. Plus or minus tells you what you'll be driving in or walking through on the way home from work. As for distance, I'll take the metric system anyday. I can remember getting my first geometry set and having the inside lid conveniently list all the American and Canadian conversions. 8 rods to a chain, so many chains to a furlong... Over on the other side, a neat row of tens and half a dozen greek prefixes that are, coincidentally, the same ones as the weights. I'll take that over pounds, slugs, and chains anytime.