When you read article II you realize the president can't do shit without Congress's approval.
The mandate of the Commander in Chief, as we've seen lately, is rather broad. The U.S. Constitution is one of enumerated powers, but where the separation of powers is unclear, history has demonstrated that politics is the deciding factor. Whichever branch of the federal government jumps in first is likely to control, at least until they screw up. Witness our Fearless Leader. For years Congress didn't want to exercise its war powers, and was content to let the President exercise his. Now they're having second thoughts, and are beginning to give him less lattitude.
As for the FCC, although the FCC Chairmanship must be approved by Congress, it hasn't exactly been the kind of appointment the minority party is willing to fight over. When the majority party runs the House, the Senate, and the Congress, the President will get a rubber stamp on whomever he wants to run the FCC. Nobody likes fussing with FCC politics. It's messy, complex, and the electorate finds it boring. Better to spend political capital going after gay whales and people on respirators.
In the early days of personal computing, there was a great deal of promise, and the entire industry could have gone in any direction. The Amiga failed, the Mac floundered for a decade, OS/2 was stillborn, Be never got off the ground, and Microsoft Windows flourished. Most every day computer users have never, ever used anything but Windows (or if they're old enough, DOS). This annoys those of us who know that several technically advanced operating systems never got to the top of the heap, while Microsoft made billions from Windows.
The computing world is plagued by malware, viruses, trojan horses, and other security weaknesses because of the poor design of Windows. Millions of users simply accept as a fact of life that their computing experience is going to be crappy. They've become so used to it that they dismiss other platforms out of hand, disbelieving that there might be better options. Following Microsoft's lead, Windows developers have created thousands of software titles that are oriented around market segments and feature checklists, rather than elegant design.
If Be or the Mac or some other OS had risen to the top, we might still have this disgusting paraside economy of malware writers and black hat hackers. But I don't buy the notion that all operating systems are created equal any more than Paul Graham believes that all programming languages are created equal. Yes, I understand that Microsoft's competitors shot themselves in the foot, and yes I know that Microsoft is not composed of moustache-twirling villains. But the fact that a marketing-driven, bloatware-producing bureaucracy became the most powerful technology company on the planet still bothers me. I take solace in the fact that business empires never last forever, and that the sun is setting for the Goliath from Redmond.
I think it says something about what Trek has become that so many people immediately think of reliance on the tired plot device of time travel when they think of the franchise.
The TV networks aren't stupid. They've got a really long-term vision for this. After they create this "video player," which I hear is going to be called something like "FastTemporalMovement," or "HurryUpNow," they're going to start making some of these clips available on a vast, distributed network they are calling, "The ConnectedLattice." Originally they were going to call it "DenseAdaptiveRegisteredPlaybackAssociationNET," but apparently that was too close to some other experimental project someone else is working on. After their new distributed network gets activated, they're going to pass their video through a series of interconnected tubes and into this distributed network, which will then allow individual users to connect via the "FastTemporalMovement" video player and watch programming on.. get this, here's where it really gets exciting... THEIR HOME COMPUTERS!!!"
Now tell me the TV networks aren't technology and business innovators! Once people start getting a taste of this "video on your computer" thing, customers will start lining up to pay the networks for quality programming like American Idol and Deal or No Deal. The only potential snag in the networks' plan is that some viewers may, and I think this is only a slim possibility, may start producing their own video content and attempting to place it on the vast distributed network the clever TV folks thought up. What a funny thought that is: consumers actually producing content. Heh heh. Too funny. It'll never happen. The networks are WAY ahead of the game, folks.
gamers would just laugh at any Apple-branded gaming device. this is coming from a diehard Mac user, btw.
Spot on.
I love working with Macs, but you have to be delusional to think Apple is going to woo hardcore gamers. Jobs knows this. Tilting at windmills won't work for Apple, and he knows it. I'm frankly surprised that this rumor is getting so much play, when it so obviously makes no sense. Think of the effort required to get game companies to develop titles on a new platform. That in itself is a massive barrier to entry for Apple.
Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are battling it out for console supremacy, devoting massive resources to winning this war.
Hey, what a great time for Apple to jump in! Low barriers to entry. No entrenched competitors, and a vast unserved market with pent-up demand. It's *perfect*!!!
For pity's sake, will someone think of the users?!
Seriously, this is all a bunch of hot air about nothing. We're talking about PAID advertising on a search engine. The vast majority of traffic to most sites still comes from ORGANIC placement, not from paid ads in Google. Yes, it's a huge revenue source for Google, and yes, the top spot is being taken by Google, but:
Most users will still click on the organic search result rather than the paid result, unless they're not finding what they need in the organic result.
The top link in paid results is not the only option. People scan web pages, they do not read them in a linear fashion. The top three or four paid ads show up very quickly in the user's field of vision, and are all pretty much absorbed at once. I've never been able to detect any measurable difference in referral rates between ads placed in the top 4 or 5 slots. They're all pretty much the same in terms of referral results.
At a certain point, advertising their own products in the paid search area may be counterproductive for Google. Just like banner ads, users may learn to simply gloss over ads for Google that appear within Google. Ostensibly if I'm using Google and I'm performing a search for something, I'm not looking for a Google service. Even if that's not true and there are many Google users who type in "online maps" when in Google, there's a point of diminishing return for Google with repeat Google users. They may find it simply not cost-effective, opting instead for an interface change or other means of marketing their non-core services.
As others have noted, Google is nowhere near a monopoly. Also, this is not like Microsoft advertising their own products inside MS Office, for example, and excluding other advertisers. Google is chock full o' ads. The ads Google places for itself are only a small fraction of the total ads being offered. Come to think of it, if Microsoft advertised its own products inside MS Office, that would probably be just another incentive for customers to jump ship. After a while, advertising within your own products becomes so annoying that consumers look elsewhere.
the parties most familiar with the case are not concerned with truth, justice, or fairness, only with winning
At least it is honest. Would you rather have learned individuals telling us what "truth" "justice" and "fairness" mean? Ask any ten people what "truth" means and you'll get ten different answers. The problem with sophisticated thinkers telling us what these things mean is that sophisticated thinkers are subject to as much bias as interested parties are, but they think they're not. I'd rather have a system where the biases of the parties involved are front and center.
Law is like plumbing. Everyone needs it. Nobody likes when they don't have it, but nobody likes dealing with the people who have to make it function on a day to day basis (i.e. - plumbers and lawyers). But just like plumbers, lawyers have to deal with the messy details, while everyone else gets to use grandiose terms like "truth," "justice," and "indoor plumbing.";-)
An advertizing company with a search engine [and other tools] to drive traffic to its advertizements.
Google's goal is to make information available and useful to people. They do so through a variety of means, and currently their profit model is based on advertising. It's tempting to reduce companies down to soundbytes, but it's not really useful for understanding how they operate or what they'll do in the future.
You assume the defendant will be provided with a competent attorney.
Just because someone is extradited doesn't mean they can't obtain their own counsel. Even if they were given court-appointed counsel, you'd have to try pretty damned hard to find an attorney that had passed the bar in any state in the Union who would be so incompetent as to not seek evidence during discovery. If he or she were to not take advantage of discovery, they would very likely later be sued for malpractice. The losing party wouldn't even have to know anything about legal malpractice suits. There are lawyers who specialize in legal malpractice, and they'd likely find the losing party and inform him of his right to sue the original lawyer.
I just hacked my way into the Bank of America, just to test its security. The fact that I managed to dowload millions of user account files with sensitive personal information I could sell to unscrupulous characters is *totally* beside the point of my wholly beneficial White Hat Crusade.
Next week, I'll be mounting a White Hat Mission to test the security of Apple's online ordering system. If a few dozen dual core machines find their way to my house, it's a sacrifice I must make for the greater good!
Instead of tossing out a "guess-timate", they should not give a quote without all the facts present.
If the government claims $1.36M + $100k in damage done, they have to submit evidence to the court as to why and how they came up with those numbers. Much of the reason cases involving economic damage take so long is that the discovery phase of the trial, when all of this information gets unearthed and shared among plaintiff and defendant, takes a lot of depositions, requests for information, requests for further information, and so on. You'd better believe that *if* the US successfully gets him extradited to the United States, his attorney will be issuing subpoenas for proof of those numbers. If the government can't substantiate them, it won't fly with the judge.
I actually used this case in my advocacy class this semester. I had to argue for the school in a faux case that had some similarities to Morse. I also had to sift through the Supreme Court and 9th Circuit cases relating to school activities and free speech. The 9th Circuit (the West Coast) tends to take a liberal view of free speech, especially when compared to the 4th Circuit (Southeast), for example. The Supreme Court clearly articulated the notion in Tinker that students do not leave their 1st Amendment rights at the door when they enter school grounds. However, subsequent cases have been ruled such that vulgar, lewd speech may be limited, and controversial speech that might appear to be under the impimatur of the school may be limited as well. If the speech is disruptive of the educational mission, it may be curtailed by the school. However, clearly political speech, so long as it is not an attack on a specific group or class of individuals ("Latinos should burn in hell") is solidly protected.
The interesting thing about Morse as the article points out, is that this is really about speech related to illegal drugs. Should the school be allowed to curtail student speech any time it has to do with drugs? How attenuated can the connection between the student and the school be? Should students who are doing homework together in a public library have their speech restricted because onlookers might somethow think that the school is tacitly approving that speech? The Supreme Court will not be able to re-examine the facts in the case, only the holding of the case as it relates to the Constitution. So the arguments will be about how close the connection was between the school and the student during that activity, what the nature of the speech was, what the speech's effect on onlookers was, and whether the speech was inherently political. I wouldn't be surprised if the school's student behavior policies and the notice students receive about these policies comes under scrutiny as well.
Before you jump to the conclusion that the "conservative" Court is going to side with the school, remember that Scalia didn't have a problem with medical marijuana. This is a Court that is very wary of state action, and it is entirely possible that Morse will be decided in favor of the student, thereby cementing the exact result our good friend Mr. Starr would rather avoid.
Perhaps, security-wise, the OS choice really boils down to a 'pick-your-poison X user-base' equation?
Yeah, like, everyone knows that all OSes are, like, equal in all respect. It's not like they were designed differently or anything. It's all just 1s and 2s anyway. Every computer gets cloggged up with worms, viruses, and malware. It's just that there are more Windows users out there, and the Mac users just keep quiet about their virus infestations, so they can keep the Sacret Cult of the Mac going strong. I know plenty of Mac users who have to do clean installs all the time because their machines get so clogged up with worms and viruses. All of these whiners talk like that's not true!
83.2% of gamers said they were at least 75% certain that they were likely to buy a console based on a statistical analysis of available game titles and their relative worth. Of those who said they would likelly buy a console based on a statistical analysis, 38.3% indicated that they were also running their own independent analyses in order to verify the accuracy of the initial analysis.
This will make them incredibly cheap, thus making it a prime hacker target which in turn gives us with the desire a really cool item.
So it's a great *potential* hacker toy. Andy's review was spot-on for regular readers. Hopefully you'll be right about its suitability as a cool device for hackers to play with. So if I read your message correctly, you generally like it when products get panned, because that means they'll ultimately become fodder for hacking.
Yeah, and that's the problem with copyright law, people think it exists to "reward artists" or something.
In America, most of the people I get into conversations with about copyright are utterly clueless about the intent of copyright. What I find most amusing/sad, is that the very people who bark loudest about the rights of copyright owners are usually the folks who are most surprised that the "moral right of the creator" argument stems from the Berne Convention, and was until quite recently vigorously avoided in the United States. They get downright surly when I tell them they're parroting a notion first advanced by Victor Hugo. As interpreted today, creativity flows out of the copyright holder without any influence, guidance, inspiration, or support from the larger culture. Every artist is an island.
I shouldn't be suprised by this, I suppose. We're usually quite unwilling to do anything these days on behalf of collective good, if it in any way denies the individual the right to pursue maximum greed. After all, it's right there in the Constitution.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
will be so proud.
When you read article II you realize the president can't do shit without Congress's approval.
The mandate of the Commander in Chief, as we've seen lately, is rather broad. The U.S. Constitution is one of enumerated powers, but where the separation of powers is unclear, history has demonstrated that politics is the deciding factor. Whichever branch of the federal government jumps in first is likely to control, at least until they screw up. Witness our Fearless Leader. For years Congress didn't want to exercise its war powers, and was content to let the President exercise his. Now they're having second thoughts, and are beginning to give him less lattitude.
As for the FCC, although the FCC Chairmanship must be approved by Congress, it hasn't exactly been the kind of appointment the minority party is willing to fight over. When the majority party runs the House, the Senate, and the Congress, the President will get a rubber stamp on whomever he wants to run the FCC. Nobody likes fussing with FCC politics. It's messy, complex, and the electorate finds it boring. Better to spend political capital going after gay whales and people on respirators.
In the early days of personal computing, there was a great deal of promise, and the entire industry could have gone in any direction. The Amiga failed, the Mac floundered for a decade, OS/2 was stillborn, Be never got off the ground, and Microsoft Windows flourished. Most every day computer users have never, ever used anything but Windows (or if they're old enough, DOS). This annoys those of us who know that several technically advanced operating systems never got to the top of the heap, while Microsoft made billions from Windows.
The computing world is plagued by malware, viruses, trojan horses, and other security weaknesses because of the poor design of Windows. Millions of users simply accept as a fact of life that their computing experience is going to be crappy. They've become so used to it that they dismiss other platforms out of hand, disbelieving that there might be better options. Following Microsoft's lead, Windows developers have created thousands of software titles that are oriented around market segments and feature checklists, rather than elegant design.
If Be or the Mac or some other OS had risen to the top, we might still have this disgusting paraside economy of malware writers and black hat hackers. But I don't buy the notion that all operating systems are created equal any more than Paul Graham believes that all programming languages are created equal. Yes, I understand that Microsoft's competitors shot themselves in the foot, and yes I know that Microsoft is not composed of moustache-twirling villains. But the fact that a marketing-driven, bloatware-producing bureaucracy became the most powerful technology company on the planet still bothers me. I take solace in the fact that business empires never last forever, and that the sun is setting for the Goliath from Redmond.
Crap! You beat me to it!
I think it says something about what Trek has become that so many people immediately think of reliance on the tired plot device of time travel when they think of the franchise.
This man owns a search optimization business
Nice catch, Sir Homer.
Here's where he tells us he's going to mount a viral campaign.
How did a giant joke get modded interesting? There is a word to describe jokes. But I already posted/don't have mod points.
Someone from one of the networks read it and thought it would be a great idea.
building a Web video player that could play clips
The TV networks aren't stupid. They've got a really long-term vision for this. After they create this "video player," which I hear is going to be called something like "FastTemporalMovement," or "HurryUpNow," they're going to start making some of these clips available on a vast, distributed network they are calling, "The ConnectedLattice." Originally they were going to call it "DenseAdaptiveRegisteredPlaybackAssociationNET," but apparently that was too close to some other experimental project someone else is working on. After their new distributed network gets activated, they're going to pass their video through a series of interconnected tubes and into this distributed network, which will then allow individual users to connect via the "FastTemporalMovement" video player and watch programming on.. get this, here's where it really gets exciting... THEIR HOME COMPUTERS!!!"
Now tell me the TV networks aren't technology and business innovators! Once people start getting a taste of this "video on your computer" thing, customers will start lining up to pay the networks for quality programming like American Idol and Deal or No Deal. The only potential snag in the networks' plan is that some viewers may, and I think this is only a slim possibility, may start producing their own video content and attempting to place it on the vast distributed network the clever TV folks thought up. What a funny thought that is: consumers actually producing content. Heh heh. Too funny. It'll never happen. The networks are WAY ahead of the game, folks.
I'm all for routing out corruption and all that jazz, but this is an issue of civil law.
They're in high dudgeon and don't want to be confused with facts.
gamers would just laugh at any Apple-branded gaming device. this is coming from a diehard Mac user, btw.
Spot on.
I love working with Macs, but you have to be delusional to think Apple is going to woo hardcore gamers. Jobs knows this. Tilting at windmills won't work for Apple, and he knows it. I'm frankly surprised that this rumor is getting so much play, when it so obviously makes no sense. Think of the effort required to get game companies to develop titles on a new platform. That in itself is a massive barrier to entry for Apple.
Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are battling it out for console supremacy, devoting massive resources to winning this war.
Hey, what a great time for Apple to jump in! Low barriers to entry. No entrenched competitors, and a vast unserved market with pent-up demand. It's *perfect*!!!
For pity's sake, will someone think of the users?!
Seriously, this is all a bunch of hot air about nothing. We're talking about PAID advertising on a search engine. The vast majority of traffic to most sites still comes from ORGANIC placement, not from paid ads in Google. Yes, it's a huge revenue source for Google, and yes, the top spot is being taken by Google, but:
As others have noted, Google is nowhere near a monopoly. Also, this is not like Microsoft advertising their own products inside MS Office, for example, and excluding other advertisers. Google is chock full o' ads. The ads Google places for itself are only a small fraction of the total ads being offered. Come to think of it, if Microsoft advertised its own products inside MS Office, that would probably be just another incentive for customers to jump ship. After a while, advertising within your own products becomes so annoying that consumers look elsewhere.
the parties most familiar with the case are not concerned with truth, justice, or fairness, only with winning
At least it is honest. Would you rather have learned individuals telling us what "truth" "justice" and "fairness" mean? Ask any ten people what "truth" means and you'll get ten different answers. The problem with sophisticated thinkers telling us what these things mean is that sophisticated thinkers are subject to as much bias as interested parties are, but they think they're not. I'd rather have a system where the biases of the parties involved are front and center.
Law is like plumbing. Everyone needs it. Nobody likes when they don't have it, but nobody likes dealing with the people who have to make it function on a day to day basis (i.e. - plumbers and lawyers). But just like plumbers, lawyers have to deal with the messy details, while everyone else gets to use grandiose terms like "truth," "justice," and "indoor plumbing." ;-)
An advertizing company with a search engine [and other tools] to drive traffic to its advertizements.
Google's goal is to make information available and useful to people. They do so through a variety of means, and currently their profit model is based on advertising. It's tempting to reduce companies down to soundbytes, but it's not really useful for understanding how they operate or what they'll do in the future.
You assume the defendant will be provided with a competent attorney.
Just because someone is extradited doesn't mean they can't obtain their own counsel. Even if they were given court-appointed counsel, you'd have to try pretty damned hard to find an attorney that had passed the bar in any state in the Union who would be so incompetent as to not seek evidence during discovery. If he or she were to not take advantage of discovery, they would very likely later be sued for malpractice. The losing party wouldn't even have to know anything about legal malpractice suits. There are lawyers who specialize in legal malpractice, and they'd likely find the losing party and inform him of his right to sue the original lawyer.
It's a shark-eat-shark world.
I just hacked my way into the Bank of America, just to test its security. The fact that I managed to dowload millions of user account files with sensitive personal information I could sell to unscrupulous characters is *totally* beside the point of my wholly beneficial White Hat Crusade.
Next week, I'll be mounting a White Hat Mission to test the security of Apple's online ordering system. If a few dozen dual core machines find their way to my house, it's a sacrifice I must make for the greater good!
Instead of tossing out a "guess-timate", they should not give a quote without all the facts present.
If the government claims $1.36M + $100k in damage done, they have to submit evidence to the court as to why and how they came up with those numbers. Much of the reason cases involving economic damage take so long is that the discovery phase of the trial, when all of this information gets unearthed and shared among plaintiff and defendant, takes a lot of depositions, requests for information, requests for further information, and so on. You'd better believe that *if* the US successfully gets him extradited to the United States, his attorney will be issuing subpoenas for proof of those numbers. If the government can't substantiate them, it won't fly with the judge.
I actually used this case in my advocacy class this semester. I had to argue for the school in a faux case that had some similarities to Morse. I also had to sift through the Supreme Court and 9th Circuit cases relating to school activities and free speech. The 9th Circuit (the West Coast) tends to take a liberal view of free speech, especially when compared to the 4th Circuit (Southeast), for example. The Supreme Court clearly articulated the notion in Tinker that students do not leave their 1st Amendment rights at the door when they enter school grounds. However, subsequent cases have been ruled such that vulgar, lewd speech may be limited, and controversial speech that might appear to be under the impimatur of the school may be limited as well. If the speech is disruptive of the educational mission, it may be curtailed by the school. However, clearly political speech, so long as it is not an attack on a specific group or class of individuals ("Latinos should burn in hell") is solidly protected.
The interesting thing about Morse as the article points out, is that this is really about speech related to illegal drugs. Should the school be allowed to curtail student speech any time it has to do with drugs? How attenuated can the connection between the student and the school be? Should students who are doing homework together in a public library have their speech restricted because onlookers might somethow think that the school is tacitly approving that speech? The Supreme Court will not be able to re-examine the facts in the case, only the holding of the case as it relates to the Constitution. So the arguments will be about how close the connection was between the school and the student during that activity, what the nature of the speech was, what the speech's effect on onlookers was, and whether the speech was inherently political. I wouldn't be surprised if the school's student behavior policies and the notice students receive about these policies comes under scrutiny as well.
Before you jump to the conclusion that the "conservative" Court is going to side with the school, remember that Scalia didn't have a problem with medical marijuana. This is a Court that is very wary of state action, and it is entirely possible that Morse will be decided in favor of the student, thereby cementing the exact result our good friend Mr. Starr would rather avoid.
Macs can and do have problems, like all computers -- no argument here. But these problems to *not* include worms or virus infections.
I agree. I was actually making fun of those who pretend that there are no security differences between OSes.
The Apple Deathwatch is back!!!
Irony can be either intentional or unintentional...
That made me laugh out loud. So true.
"shifting the U.S. role from combat to support and advising"
That's how we got into Vietnam.
That's also how we exited Vietnam.
Perhaps, security-wise, the OS choice really boils down to a 'pick-your-poison X user-base' equation?
Yeah, like, everyone knows that all OSes are, like, equal in all respect. It's not like they were designed differently or anything. It's all just 1s and 2s anyway. Every computer gets cloggged up with worms, viruses, and malware. It's just that there are more Windows users out there, and the Mac users just keep quiet about their virus infestations, so they can keep the Sacret Cult of the Mac going strong. I know plenty of Mac users who have to do clean installs all the time because their machines get so clogged up with worms and viruses. All of these whiners talk like that's not true!
... as group most obsessed with statistics.
83.2% of gamers said they were at least 75% certain that they were likely to buy a console based on a statistical analysis of available game titles and their relative worth. Of those who said they would likelly buy a console based on a statistical analysis, 38.3% indicated that they were also running their own independent analyses in order to verify the accuracy of the initial analysis.
This will make them incredibly cheap, thus making it a prime hacker target which in turn gives us with the desire a really cool item.
So it's a great *potential* hacker toy. Andy's review was spot-on for regular readers. Hopefully you'll be right about its suitability as a cool device for hackers to play with. So if I read your message correctly, you generally like it when products get panned, because that means they'll ultimately become fodder for hacking.
Yeah, and that's the problem with copyright law, people think it exists to "reward artists" or something.
In America, most of the people I get into conversations with about copyright are utterly clueless about the intent of copyright. What I find most amusing/sad, is that the very people who bark loudest about the rights of copyright owners are usually the folks who are most surprised that the "moral right of the creator" argument stems from the Berne Convention, and was until quite recently vigorously avoided in the United States. They get downright surly when I tell them they're parroting a notion first advanced by Victor Hugo. As interpreted today, creativity flows out of the copyright holder without any influence, guidance, inspiration, or support from the larger culture. Every artist is an island.
I shouldn't be suprised by this, I suppose. We're usually quite unwilling to do anything these days on behalf of collective good, if it in any way denies the individual the right to pursue maximum greed. After all, it's right there in the Constitution. ;-)