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CNET Says CueCat Restrictions Are Bogus
Barondude writes: "Steve Fox at CNET Insider wrote The CueCat: When Free Isn't Worth the Price. Besides mentioning Slashdot, he brings to the general public many of the points that have been made here."
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And from a marketing company's standpoint, a cuecat code is definitely better than a url. They wanna track their traffic based on which ads people are reacting to and what publications they're from. The only way to do that is creating complicated URLs that contain ad/publication tracking infos, and people like you and I would just chop off everything after the top level domain name. So the codes are a definite plus for advertisement people.
The problem is that the cuecat reader is not that good to begin with. I've had the pleasure of playing with one, and basically it involved a lot of random waving back and forth, and turning the sucker at all the weird angles I could think of before the code went through. That does make it more hassle than it's worth.
If they made it good and accurate, it's sitting right there by the keyboard, heck, I'd use it if I found an ad with the code on it... Maybe the first few ads I'd even scan in if I wasn't interested in the product. Just for the sheer heck of it. Unfortunately for them, like I said, the scanner isn't too accurate.
Ñ'
they used TCWWW. Bonus karma to the two of you who still remember what that means :)
~luge
IAAL,BIANLY
It's cuet, but within seconds I was bored and decided to see what makes the fridge tick and now have a new hair style (Note: unplug first -- then tear apart compressor) I'm about to take apart my laptop computer, it sure is tiny and I'd love to see how they laid out all the parts in this thing!
IMHO Steve Fox didn't shed any new light here, nothing on the order of "violation of statute X" or "precedent Y" We're pretty much still left to our humble opinions, same as he is. Yes, it's absurd to think D:C will appear on my (Rod's) door step at 10:03 PM (PST^H^H^HEST) and demand the return of the Cat. Same as it's absurd that they are right now scavenging a landfill in Dayton, Ohio for a CueCat that was delivered to a non-forwarding address and got gratis ride on the trash trolley. So, where does that leave reverse engineering? Still laughing at D:C, but too chicken to release the code (c'mon, c'mon, I'm getting bored, I need a new toy), or emboldened, like Micron, which is going great guns at DDR while prepping to do the litigation waltz with Rambeaux?
Now where's that nibbling tool...
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Check out the CueCat Collector's Club! I know mine are gonna be worth millions some day!
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
Pull that CueCat out from where the sun don't shine and check out the CueCat Collectors Club!
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
If you ever let me play with your cat, I could capture the serial# output and type it in by hand along with the code for the Dew.
I'm just not a big fan of using known information as a pw.
The best use for the cat that I've seen is This one. It actually serves a purpose!
i think the obsession comes from free hardware. i could care less about cues or whatever, but i will enjoy cataloging my books and cds.
wish
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"Besides mentioning Slashdot, he brings to the general public many of the points that have been made here."
C|Net readers are the general public? I don't think so. C|Net is nearly as geeky as Slashdot, but far more commercial (As can be seen by its television shows, which sure as hell never garner mainstream timeslots). C|Net tries to report on other stuff, but in the long run C|Net is by techies for techies, and the general public doesn't have a clue that it exists.
Really. Think about it. For so many people, /. IS media, if we define media by that which people collectively glean information form the world at large from.
/.
/. reports on a story on cnet, who reports on a story at
What does that tell you?
Rehash, no new info. Talk amongst yourselves.
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I am the dot in slashdot.org
The obsession is with the frivolous bullying by the parent company, and how it's patently rediculous that they should even TRY to send cease and desist letters. This could almost be considered harassment; any lawyer would KNOW that there is no legal ground to stand on.
Shouldn't the threat of legal action without followup be illegal in itself?
See September 15, 2000
Jakob Nielsen is the world's foremost expert on software and web usability.
He links to this Scott Rosenberg Salon.com article for more.
Bad cat.
This is just ongoing fallout from the "good old days" when VCs would throw money at any idea with Internet in it. Just the other day, I got a T-shirt from Swapit.com, even though I have never used their service and have no intention of ever doing so.
A lot of silly stuff is still in the pipeline. Even though VC money isn't flowing as freely as it was, it will take a while for these things to stop because companies have already signed contracts and ordered things.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
From the article:
Third, the courts have found that reverse engineering is legal (as long as chunks of the original software code are not present in the resulting software).
Hasn't the DMCA effectively made reverse engineering illegal? (Or has the DMCA not yet really been tested in court? I thought the DeCSS case was an example of a judge indicating that we aren't going to get reasonable judgements about DMCA.) (A reasonable judgement meaning the trashing of the whole thing.)
-Rob
Better yet, the wireless cuecat could have a little screen, so you didn't have to go to the computer. Wow! waddya know. We've just invented Handsprings and Pilots. Let's patent something and sue both of them.
Actually, a scanner module for the Handspring would be useful, if there isn't one already. A hearty handshake to the first hacker who grafts a Cue Cat onto a handspring.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Here is an idea. Get a few hundred thousand or so of your friends to get the barcodes of the worst products available, put them up on the net and a printer-friendly form, and scan them in on a regular basis. This way all of these crappy companies have inflated statistics, there stocks will rise, and then all of a sudden all of the day traders will one day realize that maybe ``Chia colostomy Bag'' was not such a good product afterall, and the market will crash.
Who said that this product was useless? It has within its power to be the most destructive weapon that capitalism has in its arsenal.
Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
Um....swipe the monitor? Are you sure that's not a crackpipe you're waving around?
There's no "feature" to scan a barcode on a WEBSITE. The barcodes appear in print, or on products - not on webpages. You scan the product's UPC, or the print advertisement's barcode (Called a "cue"), and the software takes you to a relevant website. You don't scan your monitor.
Sheesh. Where the hell did you read that?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
You're not very imaginative, are you?
And it was said: "So shall the Internet draw forth from the masses the humour impaired."
Duh. It's a joke.
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
Hacking the cue:cat doesn't harm anyone, and is thus a prime example of situations where the DMCA and like legislation are a bad idea.
Like Hell it doesn't! You take their free product, use it in a way that prevents the profits they were expecting from its use, and claim that it hasn't hurt them? They're minus one barcode scanner with nothing to show for it.
Legal or not, ethical or unethical, you're still screwing them, and discouraging such products from being given away in the future.
I don't think it's a good example of what's wrong with the DMCA at all. It's something you'd never have given you if they'd have known you'd hack it, you didn't pay a fair price for it, and generally wouldn't have bothered buying if they didn't offer it.
I think it's a focus of discussion precisely because it's a marginal case. Cuecat tries to screw the consumer (by not being completely open and honest about why they're giving the things away and what data they're gathering), and the consumers screw Cuecat (by denying them the expected return on investment). Nobody's really holding the moral high ground, so there's plenty of room for argument.
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http://www.cnet.com/insider/ 0-1 21949-7-3304007.html
Cheap enough for free?
Bah, look at all the cool stuff you get..
A barcode scanner
A marital aid
A good time harassing the Radio Shack employee
Thousands of minutes spent thinking, "What can I waste my time doing with this thing?"
Hours of Slashdot stories updating the idiocy of DC and their marketing strategy
Being embraced by DC's approach of loving the linux hackers
heh.. I found that it just looked to ridiculous to use it myself.. but it has provided me with a lot of laughter.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Yeah, they mention Slashdot alright... but, erm..
:)
from the article:
(For an extensive, often impassioned discussion of the issues, check out Slashdot, at www.slashdot.com )
I know. It works, but still
Don't throw your computer out the window, throw the Windows out of your computer!
It's doubtful, but someone may have missed the previous 6,000 cuecat stories.
If you're seeking more information, I have a lot of links to news stories, info on the hardware (including disabling and reprogramming the serial number), and software for Linux, Windows and the Mac at http://www.flyingbuttmonkeys.com/foocat/
________________________________________
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
> a handheld scanner fetchingly shaped like a cat
http://www.popbeads.org/Software
If you watch TV news, you know less about the world than if you just drank gin straight from the bottle.
How would it benefit anyone to scan the barcode of the can of Coke that they are drinking to see a Coke advertisement. If I'm drinking a Coke I don't need to be advertised to. I don't do inferior drugs like Pepsi and I can't easily obtaint the good drugs like Jolt.
Preaching to the choir is not a very effective way to spend advertising dollars
Then there is the feature that allows you to scan a barcode on a website and go to a link. Can someone explain to me why I would take my hand off the mouse, then pick up the cat, then swipe the monitor. I could more easily have left my hand on the mouse and clicked on a link. They must be targeting the Ultra newbie.
For the record my entire argument is all based on hearsay evidence because I don't have a Colon:Cat and I haven't had someone run out of a Raidio Shack in Canada to give me one with a license agreement to laugh at.
I do have to admit, however, the ability to scan a bottle of water to find out which Ontario nuclear plant it was bottled downstream from would be an asset.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
or DC for that matter. This event is just one example of a seemingly rising trend of revocation of consumer rights. I personally have no desire to take apart a cue cat. But I am an electrical engineer. What if I did? What if I wanted to figure out how it works, then put it to good use in some other barcode related application?
I think whats important here is what precedent gets set. If DC wins and is able to prevent us from investigating objects in our possession, it sets a legal precedent for another company to do the same thing.
Another reason why Slashdotters have latched onto this story is because it is a very good example for us. The ability to circumvent copy protection schemes to pirate movies is morally hazy. Hacking the cue:cat doesn't harm anyone, and is thus a prime example of situations where the DMCA and like legislation are a bad idea.
I'm relatively new to Slashdot, but I think I've captured the gist of it. Any veterans care to add / respond?
Captain_Frisk
At least the stuff that they add is so poorly edited that it's clear that it is not part of the true, professional Slashdot site.
"We will compete with anybody."
- Michael Risse, general manager at a company that complains that all antitrust complaints are instigated by competitors
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
And you STILL posted the article?
They only mentioned /. to draw page hits. Their servers can take it. Also: perhaps by your argument they should have included a barcode so those with :Colon:Cats could find /. without using their mouse and keyboard.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
Taunting Digital Convergence is just too much fun. More fun than we've had in years, in fact. We'll ride them for all they're worth before they go out of business in a blaze of, well, some VC's investment capital.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
If you took a spare computer w/nothing but a power supply and motherboard, how many cuecats could you daisychain together through the keyboard port?
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
You haven't seen the scanner for the handspring only because you haven't looked!
So far, PalmGear's Springboard Module page hasn't listed a module for barcode scanning. Not saying that it doesn't exist yet, but PalmGear is the first place Handspring suggests you look for modules.
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O P E N___S O U R C E___H U M O R
great comedy company.