Hrm, amateurs launching things into space... I wonder if anyone's done that. Does hopping a ride on someone else's rocket count as long as it's your satellite?
-l
It's a cool project but I don't think that counts as "Launching" things into space, though it does count as "Having" things in space - they piggy backed on government/commercial launch vehicles, I believe.
I never once said accessibility was a bad idea, that I didn't support it, or even that I don't implement it whenever possible.
By emphasising the cost, and your "need" to use captcha despite it breaking readability, you certainly imply that you're against dropping more complex human validation mechanisms that would preclude the blind. Like I said, off - base, I never emphasized anything about captcha. In fact I didn't mention captcha at all, excepting that I mentioned security technology to separate humans from bots, which, admittedly, captcha is one method of doing that, and a new form of Captcha is what the article is all about, but in either case, there was no particular emphasis on my part.
Although I did spend a lot of time talking about cost, that is because the OP's remarks were that cost of accessibility were negligible. Covering some other issue when I was responding on that specific subject would have been trolling (a definition that is quite clear, and that you fail, it seems, to understand). What I did, and still do refute is that accessibility is not negligible in cost. The average user wants graphical and multimedia content, particularly video and animations. Creating a text equivalent is not negligible in cost, no amount of HTML wizardry is ging to change that.
To add accessibility for the blind, you are going to have to add a non-visual equivalent, which will always add to the cost, and that added cost is never going to be negligible, which is exactly what I said to start with, but you are apparently too stupid to understand without having your hand held every step of the way.
My phrasing wasn't at issue, but I submit your trolling is, which is why I find your sig so ironic. I understood fully what you intended, what you missed was that the nature of your comments, by definition qualify as flaimebait and trolling (i.e personal attacks instead of topical commentary) Our exchange has not been a discussion with disagreement, it's been one of a troll trying to bait me with straw man arguments and flame baiting commentary. Finally, I suggest you check your own spelling and grammer prior to attacking anothers education.
"Ladies and Gentleman of the supposed court, I know my clients lawsuit has been rendered ashes by you fine people; but you see here this is Chewbacca..." "Damn, Johnny Cochran is dead. Now what will we do?" -- Darl McBride
Ahem, what money? All the trades this year seem to be $50,000 and they're going both directions.
Maybe it is something as simple as assets being sold off, generating income for the defunct company? I don't know anything about trading in bankrupt companies, but this was the first idea that I thought of. The other possibility that crossed my mind is shady stock market tricks being played. Maybe it's a slightly more sophisticated pump-and-dump?
If I buy at.10 and sell at.13 (which someone did a few days ago) I make 30% in three hours.... Not a bad return, and someone has been doing that every since the first of the year....
I honestly don't understand peoples absolute preoccupation with the RIAA. Let me ask you something... {snipe}
I'll admit, what I do know of the RIAA is they are extremely heavy handed, so much so that it's entirely possible that innocents are wrapped up in their vendetta. entirely POSSIBLE? well, there is an answer to your first question. You might understand once you realize that it isn't that innocent people MIGHT get sued, harassed, and badly treated, it because they ARE being harassed, sued, and badly treated. And when it turns out that an innocent was caught up in thier shotgun litigation and decides to defend themselves, they cut and run, doing everything they can (until now successfully, for the most part) to cover the legal costs of those they targeted.
Multiple instances of misuse of the legal system that definately has cost innocent people thousands of dollars, since defending themselves would be more expensive than just paying the extortion.
That they are waging a vendetta, against their own customer base, well, that sort of thing is never going to go over well.
And finally, with very few exceptions, the outcry isn't against the artists that create the "Arts you love in your life" it's against the RIAA and it's member record companies that are throwing the baby out with the wash.
What surprises me is that, after 5 plus years of coverage on this issue, anyone that is savvy enough to comment on slashdot is also ignorant of these issues. But I avoided the knee-jerk "Label them a troll" response, since there are possible explanations for ignorance on this subject. And the post was at least polite.
Let me guess, 180 IQ is too high a requirement and will cut out a much larger number of people than not catering for the blind. Well guess what pal, as long as it cuts out arrogant self-centered prats like you, I'm happy with that. Every asshole that thinks that catering for the disabled is too big an ask in this supposedly civilized society should be made to fend for themselves. No access to education, law enforcement, medical care, or public facilities such as roads unless you pay the true cost of using them in full and in advance. After all why should others collectively pay for your needs? (Hint: That's the advantage of living in a society - we band together to get things done and the less people left behind the better) What an amazing rant..... Too bad it's so far off base. I never once said accessibility was a bad idea, that I didn't support it, or even that I don't implement it whenever possible.
What I said was that the OP was stupid because the costs to add accessibility were and are NOT negligible. Never once did I say or imply that those costs shouldn't be spent.
As a point of fact I think they should be spent for a number of moral and economic reasons.
I found your sig particularly ironic, considering.
And how is one to legally provide those MP3s? Hell, I'd love to run a store where I could dump the entire CD collection to a server in flac format, and let people then burn their own custom CD from that and pay me, without me having to pay upstream because I only bought one copy. I don't think it would work that way though.
That would actually be a nice model if you could get the *AA onboard. Other than the obvious pay once, resell many times model that would never work - It occurs to me that this basic new business model is in place already - at every online tunes store. I'm reasonably certain they don't have a ton of copies of all those music Files floating around.
So, the question is, why isn't there a kiosk married to Itunes or Rhapsody or whatever in the wild? Seems like a no-brainer.
I can already see how this is going to go. Why? we both lifted it from the same source material
"You stole my sig!" "No I didn't." "Yes you did, it's exactly the same as mine!" "No it isn't." "Yes it is!" "No it isn't. Look, mine is in two lines." "That hardly makes a difference." "Yes it does!" "No it doesn't." I actually prefer Norwegian Blues.........
I don't if it should be a concern. Do we lament that the blind and h-o-s cannot drive?
I think that's a pretty outrageous attitude. {SNIPPED} What's the cost of a system that allows a blind person to access text stored electronically on a computer? Pretty-much negligible. Here is where you fail to understand the problem.
First, creating content is not negligible in cost.
Second, creating an interface to deliver the content is not Negligable in cost.
Third, Actually delivering the content to the masses isn't negligible in cost either.
Fourth, as has been pointed out in other comments and in the article, the problem involves the creation of a technology that will allow your audience to access the content/service you are providing, while simultaneously preventing the use of automated systems to exploit your services by appearing to be your audience (i.e. a Human), because the failure to do so means that you may lose the entire technology, or at the very least render it substantially less useful and more expensive. Email, for example, is only being used 5% of the time as intended, the other 95% being spam (As seen on/. recently)
The thing is, the web should be a superb medium for making its content accessible to practically everyone. The information is already in a form that computers can manipulate easily.
If you use HTML as it was designed to be used, there is no additional cost in making it accessible. AH! Now I understand! You are in the wrong conversation and didn't realize it.
if you are using HTML only, the whole captcha debate is meaningless for you. HTML is designed for PUBLISHING information, captcha applies to web based applications that HTML is only a SMALL part of. After all, the only interactive part of HTML are the form elements. Since YOU aren't actually doing anything with the posted form information, YOU have no need for security and little to no need to verify that the entity on the other end of that pipe is a human, spyder, or spambot.
However, some of us do create applications that need to know this, because we want to provide services for actual humans, but do not want to provide another place for spambots to send out their crap.
You must be new here. Very, Very new here.... Maybe Chuck Norris can kick the naive out of 'em before the new overlords arrive and start laying out the three point plan for profit!
If you insist on using the analogy though, lets talk about the pervasive use of the automobile putting wainwrights and used buggy salesmen out of bussiness. Hey, there are two used buggy sales lots here, and that's inside the city limits, not out in the rural areas somewhere..... I don't know where to find a wainwright this side of the Mississippi though..... So I guess it's a point well taken;)
Then Fishermen going out to sea for many days or weeks, risking their lives ARE commodity? Are we allowed to use them at our discretion? Maybe they miss their family too, but with no million dollar bank accounts, they have to keep on working.
And what about people working very hard at off-shore oil platforms? Can we use them? I'm pretty sure that their wage is somewhat lower than the average artist on tour, but they have to do it anyway.
Not to mention the military, far from home months on end. And don't get me started on the average wage here.
So poor artists with their luxury hotel rooms, first-class plane seats, 50 foot long limousines and multi million dollar contracts can't stand tour pressure? Too bad. Makes me cry. Luxury hotel rooms? I take your point, but you are apparently unaware of what the Average touring groups income is. There are far, far, more groups out there touring than the Mettalicas, Boy Bands, and Hillary Duff, after all.... Just grab your local events magazine and look to see who is playing local bars and small venues... You will see a large percentage of touring musicians, and I assure you that it is very rare for any of them to afford luxury hotel rooms, travel in luxury tour buses or limos and have a million-dollar contract in their back pocket.
So, although the Elite touring groups do have all that cool pampered luxury, the bar for the average touring musician or group is quite a bit below that level.
That doesn't negate your main point, which seems to be "Other fields make sacrifices for the job too, and there is no reason to single out Artists" which I agree with, I might add.
Thank God that we didn't make it through a disaster story without a Godzilla Reference.... Now, if only someone would mention Chuck Norris snap kicking the asteroid into a new orbit, thus saving the earth, all will be as it should be....
Havn't you seen Deep Impact. It'll very nearly (but not quite) drown Washington DC, leaving the top of the capital building humourously sticking out of the water. Well, I guess we'll need to add that as a "Goof" on IMDB when the asteroid hits the Pacific... Silly Filmmakers.....
Instead of a reply buried in the RT vs. Raster debate that this article generated, I thought a reply to the entire thread would be more appropriate:
WHHHOOOOOOOOOSSSSHHHHHHHHH.... As the joke flew over your head. It's an early post April Fools bit, people. However, it might serve some of us to step back and examine our need to defend our own prejudices... {nah... what am I thinking... this is Slashdot..... Carry on.}
Which is another way of saying, Mirroring. Which is another way to say "Needs Mirroring"
What I find interesting is the Slashdot effect exceeded the Slashdot effect.... In other words, Wiki-rumors, it's not just for geeks anymore....
Parent links to shock site - do not click.
This is much more amusing, if you want to click on something;) It's a good thing I read xkcd Or I'd have never known what "being rickrolled" meant........
I mean, since a chair can be used as a weapon, we might as well let anyone have a machine gun, too, otherwise we're all hypocrites? You're right, a chair can be a weapon - lets make Balmer illegal.
The Federal government here in the US is allowing corporate interests to screw us, it's citizens, why not the rest of the world too?
At least it's consistent.
I suspect your reasoning is right, but it is also forward looking to have a 100MPH top speed. As more automated controls are added to cars, highway speeds of 100MPH would be reasonable. Is 100 mph reasonable on the Autobahn?
I think battery technology is advancing fast enough to make the listed criteria too easily attainable by 2010 or 2011. Why not make the requirements difficult so as to promote some really groundbreaking new technology. The criteria as set is essentially the same as needed for a comercially viable pure electric (assuming the price is competitive too....)
I think that an "X" prize should be at the very limits of technology, this one is more of a "P" prize.
Let's compare the bible and Battlefield Earth. One is a disjointed and confusing work of cult propaganda. The other is Battlefield Earth. Let us not forget that one has occasional passages of pretty prose, the other is Battlefield Earth.
Less we forget that she can still get that $2 million+ at the conclusion of the trial? If the RIAA thinks that a mere $2 million will cut the trial short and hide their dirty laundry, then they have seriously under estimated the wrath of a woman who has been royally PISSED OFF. Knowing what they put her through I can't imagine her settling before the RIAA's bag of tricks are all spread out on the table for everyone to see. Can you just imagine what a jury would think? Thats when the real music (that they don't own) begins to play. Isn't this thing a class action now? Doesn't that mean that any settlement would have to be to the benefit of the class (after the Lawyers share, of course...)? Regardless, I'm sure it's all going to be drawn out for years anyway. Given that, I think it's be great if all the other RIAA activity is put on hold pending the outcome of the class action, that'd be a win for the consumer regardless of the settlement terms. I don't really think that the RIAA has a snowballs chance of winning, but SCOx and Microsoft has taught us that the wheels of justice can skid all over unexpected places.
I'm optimistic that things will work out the way they are supposed to.... eventually. Though I admit a certain amount of concern that the Democratic party's gain in power (where the RIAA's and MPAA's member companies seem to throw a lot of money around) might mean that we're in for a rough ride on Patent and Copyright issues.
Slashdot Mirror
Hrm, amateurs launching things into space... I wonder if anyone's done that. Does hopping a ride on someone else's rocket count as long as it's your satellite?
-l
It's a cool project but I don't think that counts as "Launching" things into space, though it does count as "Having" things in space - they piggy backed on government/commercial launch vehicles, I believe.By emphasising the cost, and your "need" to use captcha despite it breaking readability, you certainly imply that you're against dropping more complex human validation mechanisms that would preclude the blind. Like I said, off - base, I never emphasized anything about captcha. In fact I didn't mention captcha at all, excepting that I mentioned security technology to separate humans from bots, which, admittedly, captcha is one method of doing that, and a new form of Captcha is what the article is all about, but in either case, there was no particular emphasis on my part.
Although I did spend a lot of time talking about cost, that is because the OP's remarks were that cost of accessibility were negligible. Covering some other issue when I was responding on that specific subject would have been trolling (a definition that is quite clear, and that you fail, it seems, to understand). What I did, and still do refute is that accessibility is not negligible in cost. The average user wants graphical and multimedia content, particularly video and animations. Creating a text equivalent is not negligible in cost, no amount of HTML wizardry is ging to change that.
To add accessibility for the blind, you are going to have to add a non-visual equivalent, which will always add to the cost, and that added cost is never going to be negligible, which is exactly what I said to start with, but you are apparently too stupid to understand without having your hand held every step of the way.
My phrasing wasn't at issue, but I submit your trolling is, which is why I find your sig so ironic. I understood fully what you intended, what you missed was that the nature of your comments, by definition qualify as flaimebait and trolling (i.e personal attacks instead of topical commentary) Our exchange has not been a discussion with disagreement, it's been one of a troll trying to bait me with straw man arguments and flame baiting commentary. Finally, I suggest you check your own spelling and grammer prior to attacking anothers education.
Does SCO ask to convert to Chapter 7 next Monday or Not?
My guess is that they will, because converting to Chapter 7 following the ruling against them shows "good faith" and keeps Darl and Co. out of jail.
-- Darl McBride
Maybe it is something as simple as assets being sold off, generating income for the defunct company? I don't know anything about trading in bankrupt companies, but this was the first idea that I thought of. The other possibility that crossed my mind is shady stock market tricks being played. Maybe it's a slightly more sophisticated pump-and-dump?
If I buy at
Multiple instances of misuse of the legal system that definately has cost innocent people thousands of dollars, since defending themselves would be more expensive than just paying the extortion.
That they are waging a vendetta, against their own customer base, well, that sort of thing is never going to go over well.
And finally, with very few exceptions, the outcry isn't against the artists that create the "Arts you love in your life" it's against the RIAA and it's member record companies that are throwing the baby out with the wash.
What surprises me is that, after 5 plus years of coverage on this issue, anyone that is savvy enough to comment on slashdot is also ignorant of these issues. But I avoided the knee-jerk "Label them a troll" response, since there are possible explanations for ignorance on this subject. And the post was at least polite.
What I said was that the OP was stupid because the costs to add accessibility were and are NOT negligible. Never once did I say or imply that those costs shouldn't be spent.
As a point of fact I think they should be spent for a number of moral and economic reasons.
I found your sig particularly ironic, considering.
That would actually be a nice model if you could get the *AA onboard. Other than the obvious pay once, resell many times model that would never work - It occurs to me that this basic new business model is in place already - at every online tunes store. I'm reasonably certain they don't have a ton of copies of all those music Files floating around.
So, the question is, why isn't there a kiosk married to Itunes or Rhapsody or whatever in the wild? Seems like a no-brainer.
"No I didn't."
"Yes you did, it's exactly the same as mine!"
"No it isn't."
"Yes it is!"
"No it isn't. Look, mine is in two lines."
"That hardly makes a difference."
"Yes it does!"
"No it doesn't." I actually prefer Norwegian Blues.........
{SNIPPED}
What's the cost of a system that allows a blind person to access text stored electronically on a computer? Pretty-much negligible. Here is where you fail to understand the problem.
First, creating content is not negligible in cost.
Second, creating an interface to deliver the content is not Negligable in cost.
Third, Actually delivering the content to the masses isn't negligible in cost either.
Fourth, as has been pointed out in other comments and in the article, the problem involves the creation of a technology that will allow your audience to access the content/service you are providing, while simultaneously preventing the use of automated systems to exploit your services by appearing to be your audience (i.e. a Human), because the failure to do so means that you may lose the entire technology, or at the very least render it substantially less useful and more expensive. Email, for example, is only being used 5% of the time as intended, the other 95% being spam (As seen on
If you use HTML as it was designed to be used, there is no additional cost in making it accessible. AH! Now I understand! You are in the wrong conversation and didn't realize it.
if you are using HTML only, the whole captcha debate is meaningless for you. HTML is designed for PUBLISHING information, captcha applies to web based applications that HTML is only a SMALL part of. After all, the only interactive part of HTML are the form elements. Since YOU aren't actually doing anything with the posted form information, YOU have no need for security and little to no need to verify that the entity on the other end of that pipe is a human, spyder, or spambot.
However, some of us do create applications that need to know this, because we want to provide services for actual humans, but do not want to provide another place for spambots to send out their crap.
And what about people working very hard at off-shore oil platforms? Can we use them? I'm pretty sure that their wage is somewhat lower than the average artist on tour, but they have to do it anyway.
Not to mention the military, far from home months on end. And don't get me started on the average wage here.
So poor artists with their luxury hotel rooms, first-class plane seats, 50 foot long limousines and multi million dollar contracts can't stand tour pressure? Too bad. Makes me cry. Luxury hotel rooms? I take your point, but you are apparently unaware of what the Average touring groups income is. There are far, far, more groups out there touring than the Mettalicas, Boy Bands, and Hillary Duff, after all.... Just grab your local events magazine and look to see who is playing local bars and small venues... You will see a large percentage of touring musicians, and I assure you that it is very rare for any of them to afford luxury hotel rooms, travel in luxury tour buses or limos and have a million-dollar contract in their back pocket.
So, although the Elite touring groups do have all that cool pampered luxury, the bar for the average touring musician or group is quite a bit below that level.
That doesn't negate your main point, which seems to be "Other fields make sacrifices for the job too, and there is no reason to single out Artists" which I agree with, I might add.
Thank God that we didn't make it through a disaster story without a Godzilla Reference.... Now, if only someone would mention Chuck Norris snap kicking the asteroid into a new orbit, thus saving the earth, all will be as it should be....
Instead of a reply buried in the RT vs. Raster debate that this article generated, I thought a reply to the entire thread would be more appropriate: WHHHOOOOOOOOOSSSSHHHHHHHHH.... As the joke flew over your head. It's an early post April Fools bit, people. However, it might serve some of us to step back and examine our need to defend our own prejudices... {nah... what am I thinking... this is Slashdot..... Carry on.}
The Federal government here in the US is allowing corporate interests to screw us, it's citizens, why not the rest of the world too? At least it's consistent.
I think battery technology is advancing fast enough to make the listed criteria too easily attainable by 2010 or 2011. Why not make the requirements difficult so as to promote some really groundbreaking new technology. The criteria as set is essentially the same as needed for a comercially viable pure electric (assuming the price is competitive too....) I think that an "X" prize should be at the very limits of technology, this one is more of a "P" prize.