It seems that if anyone should get how to deal with people's personal data, it should be someone who cares deeply about protecting the content industry.
Simply put, my private data *is* property in the same way that N'Sync's newest crapfest is property. When I give my information to a company, it is analogous to the record label selling an N'Sync CD. I have given my information to them and they have limited rights as to what they can do with it. If they sell my data to another company, it's piracy in the same manner as if a consumer were to rip a cd and AIM it to his/her friend.
I'm always amazed at the amount of corporate types who will rant about people pirating music/software/other content yet defend a company's right to use my private information however they choose. I'm also surprised by the number of people (much of the/. crowd, I'd imagine) who believe that there isn't anything wrong with trading copyrighted oggs/mp3s but will blast a company for doing something nasty with people's personal data.
You can say that CA has amazing national parks, miles upon miles of breathtaking beaches, convenient skiing and that most areas never get below 50 degrees farenheit all year and no one will care.
But mention that we have %30 of the digital theaters in the country and you'll probably have more than a few/. readers out there considering a move.
When I was writing it, I thought about putting money in that list as well, but thought better of it.
My thinking was that no reasonable amount of money would make it worthwhile. If someone were to offer me a completely unreasonable amount (on the high end, of course) to program something, I could probably find a way to enjoy it...maybe write up a little app that plays a cash register sound ever 100 key presses, or something along those lines.
I originally got into programming because I really love to do it. I can sit in front of a computer and hack away for hours (days) on end and never tire of it. However, at work, I often start to feel what the "burn out" effect that the poster was talking about. I've come to realize that programming is just half of the equasion. It matters what you are programming as well.
On my own personal projects, I get to choose something I'm interested in. At work, I don't. It amazed me when I realized that when I was feeling most "burnt out" was when I was concentrating more on my work projects and less on my personal projects.
So, now my #1 concern when looking for a new job is, "am I interested in what I will be programming?" If the answer is no, then no amount of "cool technology" or "cool workplace environment" can make it worthwhile.
My theory on why his books don't sell well is that there's no submission box at the end where people can rail on him. He should use to his advantage the fact that people feel compelled to vent after reading his work.
This article is not standards compliant!!!
on
Web Services
·
· Score: 2
Anyone else see the irony in an article about standards that has so many grammatical errors?
I find every source of information I need to program can be rendered pretty well by lynx. I also find that my urge to waste time browsing the internet is less when I'm using lynx. You can easily setup bookmark aliases in your shell's startup script to replace those in your graphical browser.
Just deny yourself a graphical browser when you program and you won't have nearly as many distractions.
For long time/. users (I myself have been actively reading for about 3 years), this shouldn't be about "what do I get for my money?" The ad-less pages should be an added bonus for helping to support the site. When the subscriptions were announced, I immediately bought 5000 page views. I still have 5000 page views (well...4998, I viewed a couple of pages before I figured out how to turn it off). I view it as more of a donation than a subscription...an acknowledgement that I've received a valuable service for the past 3 years. If I get access to some new "plum" that is just for subscribers, so much the better.
I can attest to that. I used to have an email address that, if you removed the.com and replaced the '@' with a space would form a popular two word explitive. I received so much spam from companies thinking that I was "evaluating" their software that I eventually had to stop using that address.
I liked using that address. It was easy for people to remember when they didn't have a pen and paper to write it down. But thanks to companies requiring people give out their email addresses, I can't use my email address anymore.
However, while I was still using that address, I did compile a list of every company that ever sent me unsolicited email so that I might never buy their product or have any company that I work for buy their product.
Just something to think about when reqiring your users to submit an email address.
I will make it clear to my representatives that I support legislation like this that protects my privacy. If Hollings' bill reaches a vote, I hope it passes.
But come the next election in which Hollings is running, you can better believe I'll be giving money to his opponent.
Notice the last paragraph in which I recommended being as informed as possible. No one should take my advice without first questioning what I say and confirming for themselves that it is likely to be true. People on/. are more than capable of doing web research. There's lots of information and disinformation out there.
Bottom line is there is an inherant danger in introducing a foreign substance into your body without first knowing exactly what it is and how it is likely to affect you. Maybe I didn't make that clear in my first post. Believing everything that I said is just as naive as believing what the DEA says.
That was exactly my point. While it may be perfectly valid to say that the MS OS license cannot be used independant of the machine that it came with, it is not valid to say that the machine cannot be used independant of the OS that it came with. The way they word their sentence does not make this distinction (thus my assertion that it is intentionally vague).
I'm really curious what law they are referring to when they saw "legal requirement". If they're going to say stuff like that, I'd like to see where it was written.
It's probably written in their EULA which I'm sure Microsoft sees as fully enforceable legal document.
I have a computer with a pre-installed version of Windows. It's a package deal. This Is Significant And Important (TM). I donate the PC to a school. The Windows license must accompany it.
If that were what Microsoft was saying, they might have a point...but when they say:
It is a legal requirement that pre-installed operating systems remain with a machine for the life of the machine. (first sentence of the first answer in the Q & A section)
They *are* being intentionally vague. It would be one thing for them to say, "A pre-installed operating system cannot be used on a different computer if the original computer is donated." The way that they've stated it makes it seem that installing a non-MS OS on a donated computer is illegal.
Microsoft is more than capable of constructing sentences that are anything but vague (ever read one of their EULAs?). The fact that they're not doing it here shows that they are intentionally trying to mislead people.
While it's true that Ecstacy can make you depressed, it's a bit unfair to say that depression is a side effect of the drug since there are steps one can take to prevent it.
At one point, I considered no longer using the drug because of this very fact. However, I did some research into how the drug works and why it causes depression. Basically, you get depressed because you either have too little seratonin in your brain for it to function normally or you've damaged the seratonin receptors in your brain to the point where you no longer have a sufficient number to support normal serotonin levels.
So, the goal is to counteract those affects in some way. In order to boost low seratonin levels, my friends and I take 5-HTP (the body's natural precursor to serotonin). This won't ensure high serotonin levels in all cases, but usually does. It's also important to maintain high levels of MAOs (monoamine oxidases IIRC...anti-oxidants...vitamin C, for example). The MAOs help your brain metabolize serotonin that is not recaptured by the receptors. If that serotonin isn't matoblized, it can cause brain damage. This is also why people taking MAOIs (the I is for inhibitors) should never take e.
So basically, if you're going to be using e anywhere close to regularly, go down to the local pharmacy/GNC and pick up some 5-HTP and some multi-vitamins (or however you feel like loading up on anti-oxidants). I can't offer any scientific evidence that this works, but within my circle of friends (about 30-45...all of whom follow this advice), not one person has complained about depression as a side effect of e.
Bottom line is: if you're going to do any drug, be educated about it. Read as much as you can about how it affects your body. There is a lot of misinformation on both sides of the issue, so think about the source of the information you read (i.e. trust the government about as much as the buy passed out on the floor with his face in a pool of drool).
.prn is an interesting idea, but forcing sites out of.com/.net/.org doesn't seem right to me. I would bet that porn sites will comply with any technical solution that they are asked to implement since I don't think they make too much off underage users.
I would propose one of the following:
- Ask adult content sites to include a "<META NAME="RATING" CONTENT="ADULT">". Then it would be a simple matter of Browser manufacturers building in configurations to prevent their browsers from displaying adult content (just give the kids a seperated XP login and tie adult privileges to the user profile...shouldn't be too hard).
Or...
- Have browsers that do not want to receive adult content (again tied to OS login) send a "Reject-Content: adult" HTTP header. Any site with adult content can just send a 403 response back.
Both these solutions do not limit free speech in any way and IMHO would be a reliable way for parents to control what their children see on the internet. It could even be expanded to allow for other gradations such as allowing parents of small children to block sites which might be intended for users who are either teens or adults.
The point of CDDB like databases is to create a global database of meta data for digital content so to make it easy for people to assign consistant meta data to their content...basically, not to have to type in track info when ripping a cd to mp3.
With books, the physical medium doesn't translate well into a digital form. Sure, there will eventually be e-books, but the current form in which books are sold is hard to make a digital copy of (which is easier, ripping a cd or OCRing 500 or so pages and then spell checking it?)
So, absent digital copies of books that are without meta data, this project wouldn't be particularly useful. The only reason you'd want to search such a database is to find a book to buy. So let Amazon pay the $30k/yr and just search there.
they just don't have the traffic patterns to make peering financially viable to western carriers.
You sure??? We slammed the hell out of that Nigerian server.
If/. wanted to help Africa get peering contracts they could just start posting stories that link to servers in Africa. The traffic patterns would change in a hurry.
You can argue until you are blue in the face about where that line actually lies, but you can not argue that, wherever that line may be, that the terrorists did not cross it.
I was arguing no such thing. If a terrorist is found, he should be punished for his actions. All I was saying is that the magnitude of the events of 9/11 have been exaggerated. We have much larger problems than terrorism which are being ignored due to the way that our government and the media have sensationalized the events.
The bullies at your school wanted to recreate a 13th Century theology and it was their holy duty to wipe your existence off of the face of the Earth by any means possible because you stood in the way of divine justice, of which they were the agents of.
Why is it that the only people who spout off about this "holy war" bullshit are people who have no real knowledge of arab religion or culture. If you think they'd still give a rats ass about us if we didn't have such a major presence in the middle east, then you're seriously smoking something. How do you think we'd feel if arabs decided to occupy texas, oppressing the current residents and arming it to the extent that it could easily destroy the entire rest of the US...might you be slightly upset? I'm not trying to justify their actions. But their motivations are *not* solely religious.
Mob mentality is an emergent psychological phenomenon independent of any controlling force.
You think Americans would feel as strongly as they do if they hadn't been force fed images of the towers collapsing for two whole months? Now who's smoking something? Sure there is no controlling force, but there can certainly be catalysts for that mob mentality, whether that catalyst is a result of some conspiracy is a topic for someone more paranoid than myself...I don't really care.
Slashdot Mirror
I think Michael Eisner, Hillary Rosen and Jack Valenti might disagree with you...kinda the point of the parent post.
It seems that if anyone should get how to deal with people's personal data, it should be someone who cares deeply about protecting the content industry.
/. crowd, I'd imagine) who believe that there isn't anything wrong with trading copyrighted oggs/mp3s but will blast a company for doing something nasty with people's personal data.
Simply put, my private data *is* property in the same way that N'Sync's newest crapfest is property. When I give my information to a company, it is analogous to the record label selling an N'Sync CD. I have given my information to them and they have limited rights as to what they can do with it. If they sell my data to another company, it's piracy in the same manner as if a consumer were to rip a cd and AIM it to his/her friend.
I'm always amazed at the amount of corporate types who will rant about people pirating music/software/other content yet defend a company's right to use my private information however they choose. I'm also surprised by the number of people (much of the
Pick one or the other. I'll take privacy.
You can say that CA has amazing national parks, miles upon miles of breathtaking beaches, convenient skiing and that most areas never get below 50 degrees farenheit all year and no one will care.
/. readers out there considering a move.
/.!!!!
But mention that we have %30 of the digital theaters in the country and you'll probably have more than a few
Gotta love
Hmmm...meesa think the title for that would be: "Attack of the Clowns"...
How 'bout we do it in the same fashion as the taxing sci-fi to fund NASA idea.
Let's slap a $3 tax on every new CD to pay for this. Then you can file your 1040 with a clean conscience.
When I was writing it, I thought about putting money in that list as well, but thought better of it.
My thinking was that no reasonable amount of money would make it worthwhile. If someone were to offer me a completely unreasonable amount (on the high end, of course) to program something, I could probably find a way to enjoy it...maybe write up a little app that plays a cash register sound ever 100 key presses, or something along those lines.
JWZ did something like this (http://www.jwz.org/hacks/marginal.html...the worth perl script) when he was working at Nestcape.
I originally got into programming because I really love to do it. I can sit in front of a computer and hack away for hours (days) on end and never tire of it. However, at work, I often start to feel what the "burn out" effect that the poster was talking about. I've come to realize that programming is just half of the equasion. It matters what you are programming as well.
On my own personal projects, I get to choose something I'm interested in. At work, I don't. It amazed me when I realized that when I was feeling most "burnt out" was when I was concentrating more on my work projects and less on my personal projects.
So, now my #1 concern when looking for a new job is, "am I interested in what I will be programming?" If the answer is no, then no amount of "cool technology" or "cool workplace environment" can make it worthwhile.
Or how about Howard Coble (R-NC)...from what I can tell, he's the one who introduced the DMCA
My theory on why his books don't sell well is that there's no submission box at the end where people can rail on him. He should use to his advantage the fact that people feel compelled to vent after reading his work.
Anyone else see the irony in an article about standards that has so many grammatical errors?
LYNX!
I find every source of information I need to program can be rendered pretty well by lynx. I also find that my urge to waste time browsing the internet is less when I'm using lynx. You can easily setup bookmark aliases in your shell's startup script to replace those in your graphical browser.
Just deny yourself a graphical browser when you program and you won't have nearly as many distractions.
Mod parent up.
/. users (I myself have been actively reading for about 3 years), this shouldn't be about "what do I get for my money?" The ad-less pages should be an added bonus for helping to support the site. When the subscriptions were announced, I immediately bought 5000 page views. I still have 5000 page views (well...4998, I viewed a couple of pages before I figured out how to turn it off). I view it as more of a donation than a subscription...an acknowledgement that I've received a valuable service for the past 3 years. If I get access to some new "plum" that is just for subscribers, so much the better.
For long time
OVER 50% of the email adresses are fake
.com and replaced the '@' with a space would form a popular two word explitive. I received so much spam from companies thinking that I was "evaluating" their software that I eventually had to stop using that address.
I can attest to that. I used to have an email address that, if you removed the
I liked using that address. It was easy for people to remember when they didn't have a pen and paper to write it down. But thanks to companies requiring people give out their email addresses, I can't use my email address anymore.
However, while I was still using that address, I did compile a list of every company that ever sent me unsolicited email so that I might never buy their product or have any company that I work for buy their product.
Just something to think about when reqiring your users to submit an email address.
There's more than one way to hold a grudge...
I will make it clear to my representatives that I support legislation like this that protects my privacy. If Hollings' bill reaches a vote, I hope it passes.
But come the next election in which Hollings is running, you can better believe I'll be giving money to his opponent.
Notice the last paragraph in which I recommended being as informed as possible. No one should take my advice without first questioning what I say and confirming for themselves that it is likely to be true. People on /. are more than capable of doing web research. There's lots of information and disinformation out there.
Bottom line is there is an inherant danger in introducing a foreign substance into your body without first knowing exactly what it is and how it is likely to affect you. Maybe I didn't make that clear in my first post. Believing everything that I said is just as naive as believing what the DEA says.
That was exactly my point. While it may be perfectly valid to say that the MS OS license cannot be used independant of the machine that it came with, it is not valid to say that the machine cannot be used independant of the OS that it came with. The way they word their sentence does not make this distinction (thus my assertion that it is intentionally vague).
I'm really curious what law they are referring to when they saw "legal requirement". If they're going to say stuff like that, I'd like to see where it was written.
It's probably written in their EULA which I'm sure Microsoft sees as fully enforceable legal document.
I have a computer with a pre-installed version of Windows. It's a package deal. This Is Significant And Important (TM). I donate the PC to a school. The Windows license must accompany it.
If that were what Microsoft was saying, they might have a point...but when they say:
It is a legal requirement that pre-installed operating systems remain with a machine for the life of the machine. (first sentence of the first answer in the Q & A section)
They *are* being intentionally vague. It would be one thing for them to say, "A pre-installed operating system cannot be used on a different computer if the original computer is donated." The way that they've stated it makes it seem that installing a non-MS OS on a donated computer is illegal.
Microsoft is more than capable of constructing sentences that are anything but vague (ever read one of their EULAs?). The fact that they're not doing it here shows that they are intentionally trying to mislead people.
Exstacy can make you depressed
While it's true that Ecstacy can make you depressed, it's a bit unfair to say that depression is a side effect of the drug since there are steps one can take to prevent it.
At one point, I considered no longer using the drug because of this very fact. However, I did some research into how the drug works and why it causes depression. Basically, you get depressed because you either have too little seratonin in your brain for it to function normally or you've damaged the seratonin receptors in your brain to the point where you no longer have a sufficient number to support normal serotonin levels.
So, the goal is to counteract those affects in some way. In order to boost low seratonin levels, my friends and I take 5-HTP (the body's natural precursor to serotonin). This won't ensure high serotonin levels in all cases, but usually does. It's also important to maintain high levels of MAOs (monoamine oxidases IIRC...anti-oxidants...vitamin C, for example). The MAOs help your brain metabolize serotonin that is not recaptured by the receptors. If that serotonin isn't matoblized, it can cause brain damage. This is also why people taking MAOIs (the I is for inhibitors) should never take e.
So basically, if you're going to be using e anywhere close to regularly, go down to the local pharmacy/GNC and pick up some 5-HTP and some multi-vitamins (or however you feel like loading up on anti-oxidants). I can't offer any scientific evidence that this works, but within my circle of friends (about 30-45...all of whom follow this advice), not one person has complained about depression as a side effect of e.
Bottom line is: if you're going to do any drug, be educated about it. Read as much as you can about how it affects your body. There is a lot of misinformation on both sides of the issue, so think about the source of the information you read (i.e. trust the government about as much as the buy passed out on the floor with his face in a pool of drool).
.prn is an interesting idea, but forcing sites out of .com/.net/.org doesn't seem right to me. I would bet that porn sites will comply with any technical solution that they are asked to implement since I don't think they make too much off underage users.
I would propose one of the following:
- Ask adult content sites to include a "<META NAME="RATING" CONTENT="ADULT">". Then it would be a simple matter of Browser manufacturers building in configurations to prevent their browsers from displaying adult content (just give the kids a seperated XP login and tie adult privileges to the user profile...shouldn't be too hard).
Or...
- Have browsers that do not want to receive adult content (again tied to OS login) send a "Reject-Content: adult" HTTP header. Any site with adult content can just send a 403 response back.
Both these solutions do not limit free speech in any way and IMHO would be a reliable way for parents to control what their children see on the internet. It could even be expanded to allow for other gradations such as allowing parents of small children to block sites which might be intended for users who are either teens or adults.
Ain't it easier to just look at the cover??
I think you just hit the nail on the head.
The point of CDDB like databases is to create a global database of meta data for digital content so to make it easy for people to assign consistant meta data to their content...basically, not to have to type in track info when ripping a cd to mp3.
With books, the physical medium doesn't translate well into a digital form. Sure, there will eventually be e-books, but the current form in which books are sold is hard to make a digital copy of (which is easier, ripping a cd or OCRing 500 or so pages and then spell checking it?)
So, absent digital copies of books that are without meta data, this project wouldn't be particularly useful. The only reason you'd want to search such a database is to find a book to buy. So let Amazon pay the $30k/yr and just search there.
they just don't have the traffic patterns to make peering financially viable to western carriers.
/. wanted to help Africa get peering contracts they could just start posting stories that link to servers in Africa. The traffic patterns would change in a hurry.
You sure??? We slammed the hell out of that Nigerian server.
If
Every one of you dumb fucks talk as if all music came in three minute "songs". That is NOT the universal unit of music.
Well...Universal does pump out a lot of music around that length...so maybe you're just getting confused over capitalization.
You can argue until you are blue in the face about where that line actually lies, but you can not argue that, wherever that line may be, that the terrorists did not cross it.
I was arguing no such thing. If a terrorist is found, he should be punished for his actions. All I was saying is that the magnitude of the events of 9/11 have been exaggerated. We have much larger problems than terrorism which are being ignored due to the way that our government and the media have sensationalized the events.
The bullies at your school wanted to recreate a 13th Century theology and it was their holy duty to wipe your existence off of the face of the Earth by any means possible because you stood in the way of divine justice, of which they were the agents of.
Why is it that the only people who spout off about this "holy war" bullshit are people who have no real knowledge of arab religion or culture. If you think they'd still give a rats ass about us if we didn't have such a major presence in the middle east, then you're seriously smoking something. How do you think we'd feel if arabs decided to occupy texas, oppressing the current residents and arming it to the extent that it could easily destroy the entire rest of the US...might you be slightly upset? I'm not trying to justify their actions. But their motivations are *not* solely religious.
Mob mentality is an emergent psychological phenomenon independent of any controlling force.
You think Americans would feel as strongly as they do if they hadn't been force fed images of the towers collapsing for two whole months? Now who's smoking something? Sure there is no controlling force, but there can certainly be catalysts for that mob mentality, whether that catalyst is a result of some conspiracy is a topic for someone more paranoid than myself...I don't really care.
But this begs the question...
/dev/null
Actually, it doesn't. It raises the question. Begging the question is something entirely different.
Ok...I know I'm lame for posting something like this, but this kind of thing bugs me.
$ mv ~curunir/karma