In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Roy Schestowitz
<newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote
on Thu, 01 Nov 2007 15:30:05 +0000
<5359227.hyuk05Sbbg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> ____/ The Ghost In The Machine on Thursday 01 November 2007 14:18 : \____
>
>> In comp.os.linux.advocacy, [H]omer
>> <spam@xxxxxxx>
>> wrote
>> on Thu, 01 Nov 2007 06:07:05 +0000
>> <b17ov4-ghc.ln1@xxxxxxxxxx>:
>>> Verily I say unto thee, that Roy Schestowitz spake thusly:
>>>
>>>> PIC:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.flickr.com/photos/17046638@N08/1809660485/
>>>>
>>>> "I am sick of Microsoft and now use Ubuntu Linux. This is one of the
>>>> million reasons i switched."
>>>
>>> "48434 days and 10 hours *remaining*", at approx. 33% done, to copy a
>>> whopping 430MB over the network!!!
>>>
>>> Holy molasses, Batman.
>>>
>>> Let's see...
>>>
>>> Be generous, and discount the 10 hours.
>>>
>>> (48434 / 2) * 3 = 72651 *days* in total, to copy 430MB.
>>>
>>> Ignoring leap years...
>>>
>>> 72651 / 365 = 199 *YEARS* approx.
>>>
>>> Let's look at transfer rate...
>>>
>>> 430 / 199 = 2 MB/year transfer rate approx.
>>>
>>> MB/s value = 430 / (72651 * 365 * 24 * 60 * 60) = 1.876809755e-10 MB/s
>>>
>>> .0000000001876809755 megabytes = 0.000196797767 bytes
>>>
>>> #########################################
>>> ###### Vista Network Transfer Rate ######
>>> #########################################
>>> ###### *0.0002* *bytes* per second ######
>>> ###### 430MB will take 200 *YEARS* ######
>>> #########################################
>>>
>>>> [Tongue in Cheek]
>>>
>>> Jaw on floor.
>>>
>>
>> I suspect someone really screwed up an unsigned computation.
>> 48434 * 86400 + 10*3600
>> = 4184733600 .
>> 2^32 = 4294967296 .
>>
>> Granted, the difference of these two values doesn't make
>> much sense either -- it can be expressed as almost
>> 3 1/2 years.
>>
>> Gotta hand it to those Microsoft engineers, though,
>> ensuring that we can report remaining time of more than a
>> day on item copies that can apparently take more than a
>> day, never mind whether they can actually calculate the
>> time remaining properly or not. I'm not sure which of
>> these three "features" is the most bizarre.
>>
> Did you really mean "features"? Or was it fee churns? Or afeatures
> (anti-features)?
OK, "undocumented features". :-)
>
> Anti-Features
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | DRM and trusted/treacherous computing systems are, in many ways,
> | an extreme example of anti-features.
It's a big lie. The general idea is to sell a cat in a poke
by saying it's a pig. More specifically, the idea might be
along the lines of the following -- at least, thus is my
very cynical thinking.
[1] Botch the solution (in this case, Windows) for security
purposes, probably inadvertantly at first.
[2] Wait a bit.
[3] Fix the solution and hope. If it actually works,
go back to [1].
[4] Botch the fix to fix the botch in [3].
[5] Watch as the problem begins to grow much worse.
[6] Tout a solution that will fix the security subproblem
while locking out alternatives to the original solution
in [1].
[7] Implement [6].
[8] Watch as the gullible look up the word "gullible" in
the dictionary after they've been told that there's
no such word in the ... oh, wait, wrong joke.
Unfortunately for the DRM crowd, this has already
been botched as [7] was implemented a bit too early,
revealing itself as a danger to the public's cherished
notion of being able to play a bought song anywhere (which
is not unreasonable in itself, from a classical material
standpoint; I bought this flashlight and I should be able
to take it with me anywhere, why can't I do that with a
Metallica single or a performance of La Traviata?).
Nice botch of a bodge to botch the botched competitive market...
> |
> | [...]
> |
> | Unfortunately for the companies and individuals trying
> | to push anti-features, users increasingly often have
> | alternatives in free software. Similar to Mozilla's
> | pop-up blocking feature, RAW was low-hanging fruit for
> | the free software developers working on CHDK. The absence
> | of similar anti-features form some of the the easiest
> | victories for free software. It does not cost free
> | software developers anything to avoid anti-features.
> | In many cases, doing nothing is exactly what users want.
> `----
>
> http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/antifeatures
>
I like the camera example, assuming it's true. Sell two
otherwise identical cameras, but the one without DRM
(allowing for RAW mode) is hundreds of dollars more.
--
#191, ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Insert random misquote here.
--
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