I'd also like to point out that the "independent expert" they first selected to evaluate their "system", turned out to be an ex-lobbyist for the RIAA. (Or maybe it was the MPAA, but it was definitely one of the two.)
While they did drop the guy, and say they'd go with some other "independent expert", there are three notable things about that:
(1) They still haven't done it yet,
(2) when they do, you can bet it will STILL be somebody about as "independent" as my ass is from the rest of me, and
(3) the software they currently have lined up for their "system" (and which [see item 1] hasn't been independently reviewed yet) has had some notorious, public, and pretty ridiculous failures... setting them up for even more lawsuits.
"This is actually a pretty moderate approach compared to just suing single mothers for millions of dollars for downloading an MP3 once."
But even if it is "more moderate", it isn't going to work, and it's still very likely illegal on a number of grounds, which I have repeatedly pointed out here on/. before.
I don't remember who said this about the RIAA and MPAA, but it was something like, "Bashing somebody in the head repeatedly and then saying 'Buy my product!' is probably not a very good business model."
(A) They've been saying they were going to do it "any day now" for over a year. Most of the time they've said they were going to start "the beginning of next month". Now it's "next week" (which, in fact, is the beginning of next month). So if their past performance is any indication, it will probably be another 6 months at least.
(B) I predict that as soon as they do start to implement it, whenever that may be, they will start to see lawsuits. Maybe even class-action lawsuits. Because it violates an awful lot of existing contracts. Not all, but a lot. In fact the legality of the whole "system" is very much in question. Not to mention its accuracy.
(C) Many of those for whom latency or highest speed is not an issue will likely just go to satellite (it's cheaper anyway), or DSL, or some other service that does not try to pull this B.S.
" it seems that the government's regular printing of money isn't exactly plunging the currency into a terrible [inflationary] spiral."
Oh? First, there is generally a 2-3 year delay between inflationary influences and the start of inflation actually hitting the market. So most of it won't have hit the market yet anyway. But some. Have you checked your grocery bill lately? I don't know about yours, but mine has been up somewhere around 50% over just the last couple of years. And short-term commodities like that are usually the first to see a major hit.
So we HAVE been beginning to see some major inflation, just about on schedule, give or take.
If inflation isn't significantly above the government-claimed "approximately 2%", why do they want to raise the minimum wage 24%? Just an arbitrary figure in a misguided attempt to "legislate prosperity"? Or an attempt to cover actual costs of living the government lied about? Either one is bad news.
"It seems that big investors are pretty sure that all this money printing won't hurt the value of their dollar-based bonds"
Investors always have been "pretty sure". They were sure of that in 1929... that's why the markets were at an all-time high, just before the big crash. They were just as sure in 1999-2000. And they were just as sure in 2007-2008. Look at the YouTube clips from both periods, of people saying "Come on in! The economy has never been better! The market has never been higher!"
Puh-leeze. You'd have to give me a far better reason to have faith in government monetary policy than "the big investors seem to think it's okay". They have frequently been disastrously wrong. And besides, since 2008, even if they are wrong, they have faith they'd just be bailed out, right?
"Rossi is a fraud. Given his device's claimed output, it would be very easy to use it to generate the claimed input power, and make the whole thing self-contained. This would be proof it works."
He might be a fraud. I'm not trying to say one way or another. But I've seen no evidence that he's a fraud... only lack of evidence that it's genuine. Those are 2 very different things.
And no, being genuine does NOT mean he'd be eager to show it to the general public. History is full of examples of inventors who held things close to the chest until they could establish some kind of profit-making business model.
Yes, that would tend to reduce his credibility in the eyes of most people. But it's not evidence that he's a fraud. A number of claims about why it is a hoax have been debunked.
But again, maybe it's fake, maybe it's not. At this point I don't pretend to know.
I didn't mean to imply that they were intentionally giving him support. I just meant that since NASA is pushing a similar technology, maybe -- just maybe -- it gives him a little more credibility. Whether his thing is actually a hoax, or real.
First, GP didn't claim that QE directly sets the interest rate. The claim was that it effects the market, and the market then changes the rate. You're arguing with something that wasn't even said.
Further, your "proof" is nothing of the sort. Very few interest- or inflation-changing events have an instant effect. There is usually a delay. For example: after the bailout, prime interest rate lockdown, and the first QE, it took a couple of years for your grocery bill to start going up.
"The Fed sets some rates directly. However, you do know how Treasury Bond rates are set? By public auction..."
Not really terribly relevant. The Fed sets the prime lending rate, which pretty much dictates both bank and consumer borrowing rates. If anything, bond rates have a sort of inverse relationship.
I'm not saying they're completely unrelated, but they do have a relatively minor impact on the economy as a whole.
And, I don't buy the claim that those bond interest rates are based on trust in stability. Rather, they are based on trust in the Government's ability to print money, which is a far, far, vastly different thing.
"If people thought they were too risky, they wouldn't buy. Our interest rates are low because of the safety of the almight dollar, not because our government unilaterally dicates that the private market will buy them."
Absolute nonsense.
First, in case you hadn't noticed, they HAVE begun to cease buying. Remember the flap about China raising its valuation compared to the dollar? They haven't done that very strongly, simply because it would devalue their own large U.S. investments. But it has nothing to do with trust or safety, and our domestic interest rates have absolutely nothing directly to do with the money market.
Second, it's the Fed that sets interest rates within the U.S., not the money market. And while the Fed is technically not government, it might as well be, since government and the Fed are great big asshole buddies, and the President appoints the chairman. And it is the Fed (this is hardly controversial... it's been in the newspapers, and on TV, and on YouTube) that has been keeping our interest rates at rock-bottom. And even that isn't enough! They've done "quantitive easing" what, 4 times now? 5? Which is something they do only when they can't lower the interest rates further.
Probably because there are pre-made applications to solve certain types of CAPTCHA. I don't know for sure, but I would imagine that anything from Google would be a prime target for that kind of thing. If you are a smaller site, you might be more likely to be hit with one of those, and less likely to have someone outsource human CAPTCHA-drones.
Somebody hired me a couple of years back to scrape information from a government site, which was technically public information, but it used a CAPTCHA. Turned out that one was particularly difficult to solve. A pre-made app to solve similar CAPTCHAs didn't work on that variant, but I found a customizable app that, with some trouble, could be tuned to do it.
But again, those are aimed at more typical CAPTCHAs. It could be that nobody wanted to take the trouble to do a custom solution for your site's new scheme. I don't know.
This appears to be the same technology Andrea Rossi claimed to have developed, and is trying to sell. Except he isn't using any kind of radiation. He claims to have some kind of "secret ingredient" he adds to the nickel and hydrogen.
But both the Navy and NASA have been saying the basic idea might be workable. Is this Rossi guy just borrowing the buzzwords to put together a scam? Or are these other folks actually making him more believable?
"The RIAA is run by the music industry. Of course they're only representing the views of music industry experts."
Sure. But those "experts" have pretty obviously been telling it to do the wrong things.
I don't know which party or parties have been coming up with their ideas and schemes. I just know that those ideas and schemes have been backfiring on them.
Hahaha! They thought text-based CAPTCHAs were getting too easy to automatically solve! Wait until they try logo-based captchas! Hahahaha!
This is too funny.
First off, TFA is W-A-Y off: companies didn't abandon text-based CAPTCHAs because they took too long! They have been abandoning them because they are TOO EASY for machines to solve! I have been paid to do CAPTCHA - solving apps myself.
Put logos in there instead, it will just get easier!
And "to add insult to injury", as the saying goes: even more economical in many cases, there are 3rd-world services that will solve CAPTCHAs using humans to decipher them, 100 for a penny! It would get even easier if logos were used. I can easily see the services starting to offer 300 per penny.
They have demonstrably not done anybody any real good. They have been attacking the music industry's best friends. (People who download also tend to be those who buy more music and attend more theater movies). And they have made enemies of The People in general.
"There was more than just conflicting evidence presented in the link I provided, and it is well worth the read."
Yes, I have read it, and a few other articles as well now. The ones that are rabidly for her release tend to make emotionally-charged arguments: "She just had a baby," "There were children in danger," "She was a battered woman" kind of thing, and then leave a lot of other details out.
Well, apparently that woman committed some pretty good battering, too.
I guess he wasn't supposed to be there. But on the other hand, she had gone to his place before in violation of court order, too. And he called 911 saying she had given him a black eye.
I don't know. I didn't see where he was standing, or the bullet hole, or any of those things, which I would pretty much have to see to make a judgment of my own. But I will say she seems to be the sort who was looking for trouble. I have known people like that. So I am not inclined to just take the emotional arguments for granted and say she is innocent.
In my opinion (and it is not always a popular one, I admit), in most states restraining orders are too easy to get today, and often just add to the problems. Don't misunderstand... sometimes they are necessary. But lately it seems people can get them at the drop of a hat, and I'm not sure that's really a good thing.
Yeah. Even if it might not be desirable, "destabilization of the industry" is NOT a legal argument.
Our legal system was not designed as a support for any particular kind of business model. Especially one that is inherently predatory and against the public interest. One might even say that, since it would be another restriction on software, allowing an API itself to be copyrighted is contrary to the interest of the industry as a whole.
"At which time they point out that a retail sale of an automobile is not a debt, and they don't have to take cash."
Right. But what about a different situation, like one I was in: a landlord who refused to take cash in payment.
That *IS* a debt, and I pointed out to them that refusing to take cash is illegal. They said that they would not take cash for fear of being robbed. But that is their own problem, not mine. Maybe they should buy a gun.
Now that I think about it, there was a more recent, famous case.
A campaign worker for one of the Pauls (I think it was Ron, but it might have been Rand) had lots of cash with him when he went to board a plane. (For obvious reasons, he didn't want to put it in his luggage.) TSA discovered the cash. Non-hilarity ensued.
He was detained, and grilled about where the cash came from. He refused to tell them. (Yay for him!) Of course, TSA could see right there in the pile, a number of checks that said "R. Paul For Office Campaign", or whatever. It didn't faze them.
Of course, they were pretty embarrassed later when it turned out they had detained and interrogated a worker for a Federal election campaign. Their cries of "we didn't know" are completely irrelevant to the fact that what they did was illegal, and they should not have been doing it to ANYBODY.
Whether that has stopped the practice, I don't know. I sure hope so.
Back in the '90s, there were some highly publicized cases in which police at airports detained people for little more than looking suspicious, then detaining and questioning them and calling in government (like DEA) when it was discovered they had a lot of cash on them. In some cases the cash was confiscated, even though no charges were brought.
One case was a guy who owned a greenhouse, and he was flying to do his seasonal buy of ornamental shrubs. He liked to do business in cash. The detained and questioned him, and seized his cash. To the best of my knowledge he never got it back. Even though there were never any kind of charges filed against him.
There have been reports of TSA doing similar things to people who have lots of cash.
Illegal? No. But they have apparently gone out of their way to make sure people know the government discourages it... even if it meant breaking the law themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
Hah! Very well said.
I'd also like to point out that the "independent expert" they first selected to evaluate their "system", turned out to be an ex-lobbyist for the RIAA. (Or maybe it was the MPAA, but it was definitely one of the two.)
While they did drop the guy, and say they'd go with some other "independent expert", there are three notable things about that:
(1) They still haven't done it yet,
(2) when they do, you can bet it will STILL be somebody about as "independent" as my ass is from the rest of me, and
(3) the software they currently have lined up for their "system" (and which [see item 1] hasn't been independently reviewed yet) has had some notorious, public, and pretty ridiculous failures... setting them up for even more lawsuits.
"This is actually a pretty moderate approach compared to just suing single mothers for millions of dollars for downloading an MP3 once."
But even if it is "more moderate", it isn't going to work, and it's still very likely illegal on a number of grounds, which I have repeatedly pointed out here on /. before.
I don't remember who said this about the RIAA and MPAA, but it was something like, "Bashing somebody in the head repeatedly and then saying 'Buy my product!' is probably not a very good business model."
I would not worry too much about it.
(A) They've been saying they were going to do it "any day now" for over a year. Most of the time they've said they were going to start "the beginning of next month". Now it's "next week" (which, in fact, is the beginning of next month). So if their past performance is any indication, it will probably be another 6 months at least.
(B) I predict that as soon as they do start to implement it, whenever that may be, they will start to see lawsuits. Maybe even class-action lawsuits. Because it violates an awful lot of existing contracts. Not all, but a lot. In fact the legality of the whole "system" is very much in question. Not to mention its accuracy.
(C) Many of those for whom latency or highest speed is not an issue will likely just go to satellite (it's cheaper anyway), or DSL, or some other service that does not try to pull this B.S.
Etc...
" it seems that the government's regular printing of money isn't exactly plunging the currency into a terrible [inflationary] spiral."
Oh? First, there is generally a 2-3 year delay between inflationary influences and the start of inflation actually hitting the market. So most of it won't have hit the market yet anyway. But some. Have you checked your grocery bill lately? I don't know about yours, but mine has been up somewhere around 50% over just the last couple of years. And short-term commodities like that are usually the first to see a major hit.
So we HAVE been beginning to see some major inflation, just about on schedule, give or take.
If inflation isn't significantly above the government-claimed "approximately 2%", why do they want to raise the minimum wage 24%? Just an arbitrary figure in a misguided attempt to "legislate prosperity"? Or an attempt to cover actual costs of living the government lied about? Either one is bad news.
"It seems that big investors are pretty sure that all this money printing won't hurt the value of their dollar-based bonds"
Investors always have been "pretty sure". They were sure of that in 1929... that's why the markets were at an all-time high, just before the big crash. They were just as sure in 1999-2000. And they were just as sure in 2007-2008. Look at the YouTube clips from both periods, of people saying "Come on in! The economy has never been better! The market has never been higher!"
Puh-leeze. You'd have to give me a far better reason to have faith in government monetary policy than "the big investors seem to think it's okay". They have frequently been disastrously wrong. And besides, since 2008, even if they are wrong, they have faith they'd just be bailed out, right?
"Borrowing rates and long term rates are determined by the market "
You are denying that the Fed's setting of the prime rate has a direct (and pretty solid) effect on borrowing rates?
Yes, borrowing rates are set by the market. But that market is pretty damned well regulated by the prime rate, set by the Fed.
"Rossi is a fraud. Given his device's claimed output, it would be very easy to use it to generate the claimed input power, and make the whole thing self-contained. This would be proof it works."
He might be a fraud. I'm not trying to say one way or another. But I've seen no evidence that he's a fraud... only lack of evidence that it's genuine. Those are 2 very different things.
And no, being genuine does NOT mean he'd be eager to show it to the general public. History is full of examples of inventors who held things close to the chest until they could establish some kind of profit-making business model.
Yes, that would tend to reduce his credibility in the eyes of most people. But it's not evidence that he's a fraud. A number of claims about why it is a hoax have been debunked.
But again, maybe it's fake, maybe it's not. At this point I don't pretend to know.
I didn't mean to imply that they were intentionally giving him support. I just meant that since NASA is pushing a similar technology, maybe -- just maybe -- it gives him a little more credibility. Whether his thing is actually a hoax, or real.
Perhaps you misunderstood me. Rossi is trying to sell the product, not NASA.
First, GP didn't claim that QE directly sets the interest rate. The claim was that it effects the market, and the market then changes the rate. You're arguing with something that wasn't even said.
Further, your "proof" is nothing of the sort. Very few interest- or inflation-changing events have an instant effect. There is usually a delay. For example: after the bailout, prime interest rate lockdown, and the first QE, it took a couple of years for your grocery bill to start going up.
"The Fed sets some rates directly. However, you do know how Treasury Bond rates are set? By public auction..."
Not really terribly relevant. The Fed sets the prime lending rate, which pretty much dictates both bank and consumer borrowing rates. If anything, bond rates have a sort of inverse relationship.
I'm not saying they're completely unrelated, but they do have a relatively minor impact on the economy as a whole.
And, I don't buy the claim that those bond interest rates are based on trust in stability. Rather, they are based on trust in the Government's ability to print money, which is a far, far, vastly different thing.
"If people thought they were too risky, they wouldn't buy. Our interest rates are low because of the safety of the almight dollar, not because our government unilaterally dicates that the private market will buy them."
Absolute nonsense.
First, in case you hadn't noticed, they HAVE begun to cease buying. Remember the flap about China raising its valuation compared to the dollar? They haven't done that very strongly, simply because it would devalue their own large U.S. investments. But it has nothing to do with trust or safety, and our domestic interest rates have absolutely nothing directly to do with the money market.
Second, it's the Fed that sets interest rates within the U.S., not the money market. And while the Fed is technically not government, it might as well be, since government and the Fed are great big asshole buddies, and the President appoints the chairman. And it is the Fed (this is hardly controversial... it's been in the newspapers, and on TV, and on YouTube) that has been keeping our interest rates at rock-bottom. And even that isn't enough! They've done "quantitive easing" what, 4 times now? 5? Which is something they do only when they can't lower the interest rates further.
"Just wait until captchas turn into 30-second flash videos, followed by freeform text answers with questions..."
I don't deny it could happen. But I wouldn't sit through them.
Probably because there are pre-made applications to solve certain types of CAPTCHA. I don't know for sure, but I would imagine that anything from Google would be a prime target for that kind of thing. If you are a smaller site, you might be more likely to be hit with one of those, and less likely to have someone outsource human CAPTCHA-drones.
Somebody hired me a couple of years back to scrape information from a government site, which was technically public information, but it used a CAPTCHA. Turned out that one was particularly difficult to solve. A pre-made app to solve similar CAPTCHAs didn't work on that variant, but I found a customizable app that, with some trouble, could be tuned to do it.
But again, those are aimed at more typical CAPTCHAs. It could be that nobody wanted to take the trouble to do a custom solution for your site's new scheme. I don't know.
I don't know details, but it seems he's still moving forward with it.
I guess he got an Italian patent on it. Does that mean anything? I wouldn't think that proves a lot.
This appears to be the same technology Andrea Rossi claimed to have developed, and is trying to sell. Except he isn't using any kind of radiation. He claims to have some kind of "secret ingredient" he adds to the nickel and hydrogen.
But both the Navy and NASA have been saying the basic idea might be workable. Is this Rossi guy just borrowing the buzzwords to put together a scam? Or are these other folks actually making him more believable?
"The RIAA is run by the music industry. Of course they're only representing the views of music industry experts."
Sure. But those "experts" have pretty obviously been telling it to do the wrong things.
I don't know which party or parties have been coming up with their ideas and schemes. I just know that those ideas and schemes have been backfiring on them.
Hahaha! They thought text-based CAPTCHAs were getting too easy to automatically solve! Wait until they try logo-based captchas! Hahahaha!
This is too funny.
First off, TFA is W-A-Y off: companies didn't abandon text-based CAPTCHAs because they took too long! They have been abandoning them because they are TOO EASY for machines to solve! I have been paid to do CAPTCHA - solving apps myself.
Put logos in there instead, it will just get easier!
And "to add insult to injury", as the saying goes: even more economical in many cases, there are 3rd-world services that will solve CAPTCHAs using humans to decipher them, 100 for a penny! It would get even easier if logos were used. I can easily see the services starting to offer 300 per penny.
It's just too funny.
"The RIAA can fuck off."
This.
They have demonstrably not done anybody any real good. They have been attacking the music industry's best friends. (People who download also tend to be those who buy more music and attend more theater movies). And they have made enemies of The People in general.
"There was more than just conflicting evidence presented in the link I provided, and it is well worth the read."
Yes, I have read it, and a few other articles as well now. The ones that are rabidly for her release tend to make emotionally-charged arguments: "She just had a baby," "There were children in danger," "She was a battered woman" kind of thing, and then leave a lot of other details out.
Well, apparently that woman committed some pretty good battering, too.
I guess he wasn't supposed to be there. But on the other hand, she had gone to his place before in violation of court order, too. And he called 911 saying she had given him a black eye.
I don't know. I didn't see where he was standing, or the bullet hole, or any of those things, which I would pretty much have to see to make a judgment of my own. But I will say she seems to be the sort who was looking for trouble. I have known people like that. So I am not inclined to just take the emotional arguments for granted and say she is innocent.
In my opinion (and it is not always a popular one, I admit), in most states restraining orders are too easy to get today, and often just add to the problems. Don't misunderstand... sometimes they are necessary. But lately it seems people can get them at the drop of a hat, and I'm not sure that's really a good thing.
"They say that like it's a bad thing."
Yeah. Even if it might not be desirable, "destabilization of the industry" is NOT a legal argument.
Our legal system was not designed as a support for any particular kind of business model. Especially one that is inherently predatory and against the public interest. One might even say that, since it would be another restriction on software, allowing an API itself to be copyrighted is contrary to the interest of the industry as a whole.
"At which time they point out that a retail sale of an automobile is not a debt, and they don't have to take cash."
Right. But what about a different situation, like one I was in: a landlord who refused to take cash in payment.
That *IS* a debt, and I pointed out to them that refusing to take cash is illegal. They said that they would not take cash for fear of being robbed. But that is their own problem, not mine. Maybe they should buy a gun.
Carrying cash on a plane (or anywhere else) is not a transaction.
"Illegal? How do you figure?"
Now that I think about it, there was a more recent, famous case.
A campaign worker for one of the Pauls (I think it was Ron, but it might have been Rand) had lots of cash with him when he went to board a plane. (For obvious reasons, he didn't want to put it in his luggage.) TSA discovered the cash. Non-hilarity ensued.
He was detained, and grilled about where the cash came from. He refused to tell them. (Yay for him!) Of course, TSA could see right there in the pile, a number of checks that said "R. Paul For Office Campaign", or whatever. It didn't faze them.
Of course, they were pretty embarrassed later when it turned out they had detained and interrogated a worker for a Federal election campaign. Their cries of "we didn't know" are completely irrelevant to the fact that what they did was illegal, and they should not have been doing it to ANYBODY.
Whether that has stopped the practice, I don't know. I sure hope so.
"Illegal? How do you figure?"
Back in the '90s, there were some highly publicized cases in which police at airports detained people for little more than looking suspicious, then detaining and questioning them and calling in government (like DEA) when it was discovered they had a lot of cash on them. In some cases the cash was confiscated, even though no charges were brought.
One case was a guy who owned a greenhouse, and he was flying to do his seasonal buy of ornamental shrubs. He liked to do business in cash. The detained and questioned him, and seized his cash. To the best of my knowledge he never got it back. Even though there were never any kind of charges filed against him.
There have been reports of TSA doing similar things to people who have lots of cash.
Illegal? No. But they have apparently gone out of their way to make sure people know the government discourages it... even if it meant breaking the law themselves.