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Comment Re:Design (Score 1) 314

by bobbonomo (#27542591) Attached to: COBOL Turning 50, Still Important

Partly true. The Y2K think was to save 2 bytes. I remember a similar problem at the time and saying "2 bytes! are you kidding?" The response was "the app has x number of clients and x number of fields. This will save 2 disk spindles". The wise-ass kid (me) turned around, removed foot from mouth, and solved the problem. Oh and it was COBOL.

Spindles were 100MB to 200MB, big like dishwashers, and cost a gazillion plus your next new born.

Comment My Generation (Score 1) 278

by bobbonomo (#27140679) Attached to: South Korea Joins the "Three Strikes" Ranks

I did not read this whole thread because there is too much... and this is like arguing religion or politics. Here are my comments anywho.

I take you back about 50 years when mimeograph machine started to make copies and then to photocopiers. I wonder where the photocopy industry (Xerox) would be if we had been this stiff about copyrights in those days. OK so "we" passed "fair usage laws". End of problem.

Do we realise how many times copyright laws are broken in offices today throughout the world? Look around the office. How many photocopies of everthing are there around? Magazines, newspapers, printed copies of web sites. Photocopies of this and that at school. We do this without even thinking. I remember when we made a "Xerox" of something instead of a copy. Technically they are all copyright violations. Oh yeah... "fair usage". Right!

OK so "you" need to invent "fair usage" again.

I do understand the need for copyright as in "I take IP of someone else and sell it for profit" as though it were mine.

To use the analogy above, if I share an electronic copy of a tune with a friend, I am simply making a photocopy of the New York Times front page and giving it to someone so they can read it. Yes, I did deprive the artist of 1 sell but I also did it to the New York Times. No one makes a fuss about the latter not even NYT.

Isn't P2P like photocopying. Bet ya the RIAAAAAAA have copies of things. How many A's in that?

Three strikes? Who's on first?
Music

At Atlantic Records, Digital Sales Surpass CDs 273

Posted by kdawson from the trading-analog-dollars-for-digital-pennies dept.
The NYTimes reports that Atlantic is the first major label to report getting a majority of its revenue from digital sales, not CDs. Analysts say that Atlantic is out in front — the industry as a whole isn't expected to hit the 50% mark until 2011. By 2013, music industry revenues will be 37% down from their 1999 levels (when Napster arrived on the scene), according to Forrester. "'It's not at all clear that digital economics can make up for the drop in physical,' said John Rose, a former executive at EMI ... Instead, the music industry is now hoping to find growth from a variety of other revenue streams it has not always had access to, like concert ticket sales and merchandise from artist tours. ... In virtually all... corners of the media world, executives are fighting to hold onto as much of their old business as possible while transitioning to digital — a difficult process that NBC Universal's chief executive ... has described as 'trading analog dollars for digital pennies.'"
Databases

Searching DNA For Relatives Raises Concerns 199

Posted by kdawson from the database-creep dept.
An anonymous reader calls our attention to California's familial searching policy, which looks for genetic ties between culprits and kin. The technique has come to the fore in the last few years, after a Colorado prosecutor pushed the FBI to relax its rules on cross-state searches. "Los Angeles Police Department investigators want to search the state's DNA database again — not for exact matches but for any profiles similar enough to belong to a parent or sibling. The hope is that one of those family members might lead detectives to the killer. This strategy, pioneered in Britain, is poised to become an important crime-fighting tool in the United States. The Los Angeles case will mark the first major use of California's newly approved familial searching policy, the most far-reaching in the nation."
Google

Google Map To Real Piracy 262

Posted by CmdrTaco from the not-the-pretend-kind dept.
An anonymous reader noted that you can now see a Google Map of piracy. Not the pretend kind, the real kind with boats and stuff. Considering how much time we spend talking about the other kind, I think it's worth paying attention to the real problems out there.

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