Comment Never compete with bacon (Score 2, Funny) 146
Oi, the fake bacon kicks ass. The fake liver can't hold a candle to it, I don't care how many fiber tubes it contains.
Comment Re:Translation [was Re:IBM Annual Reports] (Score 1) 371
Heheh. The 10-K form from the SEC is very interesting, so many juicy tidbits. Often times this is the only thing you need to hang a company--they practically hand you the rope!
Comment IBM Annual Reports (Score 1) 371
The IBM Annual report shows some very interesting things.
Here is a fun one for all my standards wonks, "Without interoperability among all manner of computing platforms, the integration of any client's internal systems, applications and processes remains a monumental and expensive task."
Here is a fun one for all my standards wonks, "Without interoperability among all manner of computing platforms, the integration of any client's internal systems, applications and processes remains a monumental and expensive task."
Comment Easy Answer With One Catch (Score 1) 360
This kind of stuff would be totally fine with me, except for the fact that Comcast and AT&T are the only companies I can get broadband Internet access from.
Does anyone know of a way to find an ISP that respects users' rights? It seems that in many places you have the choice of AT&T or no Internet.
Does anyone know of a way to find an ISP that respects users' rights? It seems that in many places you have the choice of AT&T or no Internet.
Comment Obama Creative Commons (Score 2, Insightful) 589
Whoever the tech folks who work for Obama understand the need for having a FOSS option. Change.gov is licensed under creative commons, so somebody got the memo that user freedom, the web as a commons and all that is a good thing. The Silverlight thing is probably being viewed by the Obama team as "just another option," but they have made a good faith effort to cater to the (for lack of a better catchall term) FOSS community--at least better than any previous USA presidential administration.
Comment Sunlight (Score 2, Informative) 206
Getting too pedantic about what is and isn't journalism leads the discussion away from focusing on the great tools that are being developed to help the average citizen understand the powers that be (government, corporations, etc..).
The Sunlight Foundation has funded a lot of really great web tools, widgets and applets that show how congress works, track money donated to candidates, expose corporate corruption, and many other areas of coverage that the film noir investigative journalist types might still consider their turf.
Anyone can do good journalism, anyone can do bad journalism. I think talking about who is helping to expose and disseminate new information that is in the public interest (news) is more important that talking about the news industry as such.
The Sunlight Foundation has funded a lot of really great web tools, widgets and applets that show how congress works, track money donated to candidates, expose corporate corruption, and many other areas of coverage that the film noir investigative journalist types might still consider their turf.
Anyone can do good journalism, anyone can do bad journalism. I think talking about who is helping to expose and disseminate new information that is in the public interest (news) is more important that talking about the news industry as such.
Comment Phew (Score 1) 212
I was going to respond to this post by saying something like, "Researchers Discover Social Networks Link Plumbers" but the rest of Slashdot has done such a great job of tearing it to shreds by pointing out all of the other things terrorists can use to do their evil deeds that I no longer need to respond to TFA. Thanks :)
More Brains Needed 232
Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that more people need to donate their brains to medical research if cures for diseases like dementia are to be found and are urging healthy people as well as those with brain disorders to become donors. 'For autism, we only have maybe 15 or 20 brains that have been donated that we can do our research on. That is drastically awful,' said Dr Payam Rezaie of the Neuropathology Research Laboratory at the Open University. 'We would need at least 100 cases to get meaningful data. A lot of research is being hindered by this restriction.' Part of the problem, according to Professor Margaret Esiri at the University of Oxford, may be that people are reluctant to donate their brains because they see the organ as the basis of their identity. 'It used to be other parts of the body that we thought were important,' says Esin. 'But now people realize that their brain is the crucial thing that gives them their mind and their self.' Dr Kieran Breen, of the Parkinson's Disease Society, said over 90% of the brains in their bank at Imperial College London were from patients, with the remaining 10% of 'healthy' brains donated by friends or relatives of patients. 'Some people are under the impression that if they sign up for a donor card that will include donating their brain for research. But it won't,' says Breen. 'Donor cards are about donating organs for transplant, not for medical science.'"
Comment Stop Calling Communication War (Score 1) 951
Hi. I am the Internet. I am a communications medium. People use me to communicate with one another on an unprecedented scale.
I am a "read/write" medium. That means that a lot of the times people can add-on to the creations of others. Sometimes they can even completely erase the communications of others. This is OK, and is not war, but just another form of communication. Granted, I appreciate it when everyone "plays fair," and there are many people (like Slashdot moderators, wink, wink) that help keep things fair for everyone.
I take offense when people refer to communication as war. There are many people who work for many militaries who use me to communicate (sometimes they are pretty angry). That is OK with me, as long as they play fair. This is not war, but communication.
Some might even think about it as a kind of grassroots diplomacy. Wouldn't it be great if more people could talk with those who their government tells them are the "enemy?" More communication usually tends to alleviate misunderstanding, which can lead to resolution or conflict (aka peace).
Please stop referring to what I do as war, I find it inaccurate and distasteful.
I am a "read/write" medium. That means that a lot of the times people can add-on to the creations of others. Sometimes they can even completely erase the communications of others. This is OK, and is not war, but just another form of communication. Granted, I appreciate it when everyone "plays fair," and there are many people (like Slashdot moderators, wink, wink) that help keep things fair for everyone.
I take offense when people refer to communication as war. There are many people who work for many militaries who use me to communicate (sometimes they are pretty angry). That is OK with me, as long as they play fair. This is not war, but communication.
Some might even think about it as a kind of grassroots diplomacy. Wouldn't it be great if more people could talk with those who their government tells them are the "enemy?" More communication usually tends to alleviate misunderstanding, which can lead to resolution or conflict (aka peace).
Please stop referring to what I do as war, I find it inaccurate and distasteful.
Chinese Hacking of American Military Networks On the Rise 205
Anti-Globalism writes with this excerpt from the Guardian:
"China is stealing sensitive information from American computer networks and stepping up its online espionage, according to a US congressional panel. Beijing's investment in rocket technology is also accelerating the militarization of outer space and lifting it into the 'commanding heights' of modern warfare, the advisory group claims. ... A summary of the study, released in advance, alleges that networks and databases used by the US government and American defense contractors are regularly targeted by Chinese hackers. 'China is stealing vast amounts of sensitive information from US computer networks,' says Larry Wortzel, chairman of the commission set up by Congress in 2000 to investigate US-China issues."
The full study addresses these issues and others relating to the US-China relationship (PDF).
Cyber Attacks against Tibetan Communities 193
UnderAttack writes "The SANS Internet Storm Center reports about an increasing number of sophisticated and targeted cyber attacks against Tibetan NGOs. These attacks appear to be related to attacks against other anti-chinese groups like Falun Gong. 'There is lots of media coverage on the protests in Tibet. Something that lies under the surface, and rarely gets a blip in the press, are the various targeted cyber attacks that have been taking place against these various communities recently. These attacks are not limited to various Tibetan NGOs and support groups. They have been reported dating back to 2002, and even somewhat before that, and have affected several other communities, including Falun Gong and the Uyghurs.'"
Submission + - EDGAR Makes GPD'ed Software (sec.gov)
rhinokitty writes: "After doing some research on creating a web tool that would automatically pull information from the EDGAR database, I saw that someone already beat me to it. The terms of the liscense grant users the right to get the source code, modify, copy, etc.. If it walks like a GPL, and talks like a GPL, is it really a GPL?"
Submission + - Bust 2.0
rhinokitty writes: I am sorry, but I must tell you this.
Web 2.0 is about to go bust. The way that the markets have self-built is an exact copy of the way that the original dot-com build up happened, but with an additional patina of socialness. It is an inevitable part of markets that this will happen. People are already over-extended. The user is saturated with new web applications. The latest startups are getting overly niche specific. And the many first time stumblers upon any website are saying, "Who cares?"
And that is the point, no one. Marketing has pushed the hype beyond its limits, and the buzz words are already tired again. We are around the same block and back at the beginning again. Its a shame, but the party had to end some time. I hate to break it to you, but Web 2.0 is about to go bust.
The problem is that businesses can not help but operate the way they do and instead of investing in the long term they are bound by the rules of the game, which are to invest in the next quarter and pray for the best. At this point the Internet simply moves faster than the market and the level of denial that companies have is higher than a myopic senior at a slot machine in Atlantic City. When your career is on the line and venture capital is available, you take what you can get.
Just look at the latest GigaOm Web 2.0 hyped product, WeBot (of course it is beta). It is yet another typical web app that performs yet another totally redundant function. They even resort to using profanity on their home page to try to shock people into thinking, "Wow, this must really be cutting edge." A desperate attempt at hype.
And that is the only thing that can make any individual temporarily apex above the swarm, hype. Yet this hype is self defeating — it shows the chink in the armor of the Web 2.0 fad. Companies are competing each other into the ground.
The Internet does not have the same safeguards against a total spin out that a market based on physical goods and services has. The Internet will collectively outrun any individual "product" because of the fundamental disconnect between a communications network and a market. Trying to make a communications network into a market will fail again and again, because selling and buying information as if it were a physical good ignores the fact that there is no actual scarcity of any particular data. There is only inacessability. All data can be copied indefinitely without any degradation, the only way to create scarcity (and hence value) is to restrict access in some clever way.
Further reducing the idea of data to the idea of "interest" or "mindshare" to be bought and sold will yield the same results. Imposing artificial scarcity by means of locking down information using crippled technology will also yield the same results.
The crucial downfall of web 2.0 (and 3.0, and 4.0) has already been sealed. Many business models are based on capturing user data and keeping it locked up in the CMS somehow. Has AOL taught us nothing? This can not work. Flickr, YouTube, del.icio.us, twitter, etc all are based on the same idea. Get users to go to your site, create content, then continue to use their site because of the initial time investment, and the fact that your friends and family are also invested. Can you export your photos from Flickr? How much does it cost? What about your friend network?
When the initial glow wears off people realize they are doing something that their computer could already do, but they have to go through a middle man to do it. This explains the extremely short shelf life of social networking sites. Remember Friendster? How played out is MySpace already? How many years old is it?
After a few rounds people realize they have been duped. Social networking (yes, even Second Life) goes the way of the chat room and marketers will have to continue the arms race of engaging an increasingly bored public by selling them ever more inane bits of proprietary code to keep them dazed enough to be open to the next salvo. Each new cycle of this arms race will end the same way the first one did, with another dot-com bust.
"Don't say that, shareholder and consumer confidence is the only thing keeping my business model afloat!"
Boom, bust, boom, bust.
Any real attempt to intervene in this endless cycle requires that the people building the sites and the people using the sites share a common and mutually beneficial interest.
The Open Source and Free Software community has already taken this oath to protect the freedoms of users and programmers alike. There is still money to be made, but is is not the wild west. It is a sustainable model of computer software development (and web apps) that takes into consideration the totality of its effects on society, not just profit margins.
Code is created collaboratively and in a way that is responsive to the community of users. Services are provided to average users by communal forums, those who need custom work done can hire a programmer or a company to develop new software, with the caveat that anything developed from existing works must be made available to the community that collectively created those works.
Instead of screwing over users who will then have to be won over again by a different, re-branded service that does the same thing, with a different API, users are listened to and the software can develop incrementally, serving both the developer and the user community and keeping out the middle man.
Web 2.0 is about to go bust. The way that the markets have self-built is an exact copy of the way that the original dot-com build up happened, but with an additional patina of socialness. It is an inevitable part of markets that this will happen. People are already over-extended. The user is saturated with new web applications. The latest startups are getting overly niche specific. And the many first time stumblers upon any website are saying, "Who cares?"
And that is the point, no one. Marketing has pushed the hype beyond its limits, and the buzz words are already tired again. We are around the same block and back at the beginning again. Its a shame, but the party had to end some time. I hate to break it to you, but Web 2.0 is about to go bust.
The problem is that businesses can not help but operate the way they do and instead of investing in the long term they are bound by the rules of the game, which are to invest in the next quarter and pray for the best. At this point the Internet simply moves faster than the market and the level of denial that companies have is higher than a myopic senior at a slot machine in Atlantic City. When your career is on the line and venture capital is available, you take what you can get.
Just look at the latest GigaOm Web 2.0 hyped product, WeBot (of course it is beta). It is yet another typical web app that performs yet another totally redundant function. They even resort to using profanity on their home page to try to shock people into thinking, "Wow, this must really be cutting edge." A desperate attempt at hype.
And that is the only thing that can make any individual temporarily apex above the swarm, hype. Yet this hype is self defeating — it shows the chink in the armor of the Web 2.0 fad. Companies are competing each other into the ground.
The Internet does not have the same safeguards against a total spin out that a market based on physical goods and services has. The Internet will collectively outrun any individual "product" because of the fundamental disconnect between a communications network and a market. Trying to make a communications network into a market will fail again and again, because selling and buying information as if it were a physical good ignores the fact that there is no actual scarcity of any particular data. There is only inacessability. All data can be copied indefinitely without any degradation, the only way to create scarcity (and hence value) is to restrict access in some clever way.
Further reducing the idea of data to the idea of "interest" or "mindshare" to be bought and sold will yield the same results. Imposing artificial scarcity by means of locking down information using crippled technology will also yield the same results.
The crucial downfall of web 2.0 (and 3.0, and 4.0) has already been sealed. Many business models are based on capturing user data and keeping it locked up in the CMS somehow. Has AOL taught us nothing? This can not work. Flickr, YouTube, del.icio.us, twitter, etc all are based on the same idea. Get users to go to your site, create content, then continue to use their site because of the initial time investment, and the fact that your friends and family are also invested. Can you export your photos from Flickr? How much does it cost? What about your friend network?
When the initial glow wears off people realize they are doing something that their computer could already do, but they have to go through a middle man to do it. This explains the extremely short shelf life of social networking sites. Remember Friendster? How played out is MySpace already? How many years old is it?
After a few rounds people realize they have been duped. Social networking (yes, even Second Life) goes the way of the chat room and marketers will have to continue the arms race of engaging an increasingly bored public by selling them ever more inane bits of proprietary code to keep them dazed enough to be open to the next salvo. Each new cycle of this arms race will end the same way the first one did, with another dot-com bust.
"Don't say that, shareholder and consumer confidence is the only thing keeping my business model afloat!"
Boom, bust, boom, bust.
Any real attempt to intervene in this endless cycle requires that the people building the sites and the people using the sites share a common and mutually beneficial interest.
The Open Source and Free Software community has already taken this oath to protect the freedoms of users and programmers alike. There is still money to be made, but is is not the wild west. It is a sustainable model of computer software development (and web apps) that takes into consideration the totality of its effects on society, not just profit margins.
Code is created collaboratively and in a way that is responsive to the community of users. Services are provided to average users by communal forums, those who need custom work done can hire a programmer or a company to develop new software, with the caveat that anything developed from existing works must be made available to the community that collectively created those works.
Instead of screwing over users who will then have to be won over again by a different, re-branded service that does the same thing, with a different API, users are listened to and the software can develop incrementally, serving both the developer and the user community and keeping out the middle man.
Submission + - Script Kiddies Pay Big Bucks (bbc.co.uk)
rhinokitty writes: It seems that some folks are paying upwards of 500 pounds to get the latest in preprogrammed "Cyber Crime Toolkits." Doesn't the fact that they are ready-made pretty much preclude them being at the cutting edge of functionality/dangerousness?
Submission + - Free Energy: Please Debunk (blogspot.com)
rhinokitty writes: So it seems this scientist has come up with a way to seemingly produce energy al la a perpetual motion machine. He claims it puts out more energy than is put into it. Every physicists wet dream? Please debunk this, I couldn't find any holes in his logic.
