Comment Re: Agner Krarup Erlang - The telephone in 1909! (Score 1) 342
Yeah this is basic Computer Science -- IIRC we studied this in the Operating Systems courses.
Check-in at the airport does this too.
Yeah this is basic Computer Science -- IIRC we studied this in the Operating Systems courses.
Check-in at the airport does this too.
Yes, the ridiculous length is indeed a problem.
The "evils" of copyright was debated back in 1841 !!
"The easiest form of parochialism to fall into is to assume that we are smarter than the past generations, that our thinking is necessarily more sophisticated. This may be true in science and technology, but not necessarily so in wisdom."
-- "Macaulay on Copyright"
Correct. The dirty secret of Copyright is that it was invented by --> Publishers <-- to maintain control by preventing other publishers from making a profit !!
I've posted about this in the past
"The history of copyright law starts with early privileges and monopolies granted to printers of books. The British Statute of Anne 1710, full title "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned", was the first copyright statute. Initially copyright law only applied to the copying of books."
and
"Pope Alexander VI issued a bull in 1501 against the unlicensed printing of books and in 1559 the Index Expurgatorius, or List of Prohibited Books, was issued for the first time."
and
"The first copyright privilege in England bears date 1518 and was issued to Richard Pynson, King's Printer, the successor to William Caxton. The privilege gives a monopoly for the term of two years. The date is 15 years later than that of the first privilege issued in France. Early copyright privileges were called "monopolies,"
...
and
"In England the printers, known as stationers, formed a collective organization, known as the Stationers' Company. In the 16th century the Stationers' Company was given the power to require all lawfully printed books to be entered into its register. Only members of the Stationers' Company could enter books into the register. This meant that the Stationers' Company achieved a dominant position over publishing in 17th century England"
Incorrect.
As a kid for the longest time I couldn't see or reason how simply copying a number* was illegal.
* Where on the Apple ][
When "piracy" became hijacked from meaning the naval context, copying was rampant. In the 80's as kids we couldn't afford all the games so we (illegally) shared them. Hell, I got into computers simply because it was a fun challenge to "krack" software. In the 90's In college/university we used BBS's, FSP (how many know about _that_ protocol!!), FTP with hidden directories containing control characters, IRC with XDCC, binary newsgroup with split
What is kind of ironic and completely counter-intuitive is that those who pirate tend to spend more but that is a discussion for another day. (Part of the problem is that certain "assets" are not even available to be legally purchased, etc.)
IMHO Piracy begins AND ends with education. Futurama's Bender made fun of this "archaic philosophy" that "Sharing is illegal" by joking "You wouldn't steal X, right? Or would I !" meme along with the popular "You wouldn't download car?" Because most people are able to separate the issue from money vs freedom. i.e. Artists want to share their creations. Consumers want to share those same creations -- that is what culture does -- preserves "popular" art in whatever medium. Unfortunately the context behind those same reason's don't always sync up. You have bands like The Who who don't care about "bootlegging"; other sellout bands like Metallica that only care about the money and could care less if fans help "market" the band.
Kids these day's aren't stupid. They are questing the status quo that: "Why is illegal sharing illegal? Because of arbitrary financial reasons??" id software created the shareware model -- give part of the game away for free, customers can spend money to buy the rest. These days Humble Bundles let people pay what they want. IMHO this is the correct way to do things. Compromise between 2 conflicting ideals. Open Source or Creative Commons is another approach.
Google making it harder to find digital goods is not going to change a dam thing. Google wasn't around when we were kids and piracy was rampant. Removing a search engine will only drive the process back underground when it peaked with The Pirate Bay in the mid 2000's.
Piracy has existed since the beginning of the network. Any technological means to try to remove it is like pissing in the ocean. Yeah good luck with that !
Some of Wikipedia's rules are ass-backwards asinine. Such as Avoid Trivia
One man's trivia is another man's noise.
Oh I see, so only if it is _popular_ does the "truthiness" count.
Fuck that. I want an _inclusive_ dictionary / encyclopedia / reference, not an _exclusive_ based on some "arbitrary" rules simply because something is not popular. I am there in the first place to _learn_ about things I don't know about ! Not because some asshat decided "not enough people care about this topic."
It is not like a extra web page take up THAT much storage in the first place.
> A jail or prison consists of a school, dorm, library,
Some would say school is a jail of individual, creative thought. (A Mathematician's Lament by Paul Lockhart)
It was was probably inspired by Cargo Cult Science by Feynman.
How inexpensive?
* $200 Nexus 7
* $299 nVidia Shield Tablet http://shield.nvidia.com/gamin...
* $350+ Nexus 10
Some tech specs comparisons
* http://gadgets.ndtv.com/nvidia...
* http://versus.com/en/nvidia-sh...
Indeed. Reminds me of that old joke
"If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization." -- Murphy's (Computer) Laws
While funny it is sad to see that the state of software really hasn't progressed much in the last 20+ years. Businesses still cut corner to minimize expenses. Programs still have shitty UI. Keyboard accelerators / shortcuts along with manuals have gone the way of the dodo. Help has moved to being online only -- with the help index being a complete joke lacking common search terms. We've gone from 1 MHz to 4 GHz machines which is over 3 orders of magnitudes difference and we _still_ wait. Every day we hear of yet-another-device (or company) getting hacked / p0wned / etc. Security is a complete joke at most places.
One of the few good things is that never before has so much computing power been so inexpensive.
Along the way we lost the "human element". We don't build machines for other machines for but for _people_ to use. Why do computers _still_ continue to suck? Because we doing it ass-backwards. We're forcing people to adopt to some shitty UI instead of making the computer adapt to us. But that isn't the complete picture.
There is a meta problem looming. This video seems relevant
The solution of this problem is trivial and is left as an exercise for the reader.
