I went to the site (since the article said that the site clearly stated that it wasn't affiliated with the school on the front page) and I looked for a few seconds. Then I noticed that while there was a huge chunk of blank space at the bottom of the screen, there was a scroll bar to be used. Then, in tiny light grey text I saw it say that it wasn't affiliated.
I'm sorry, but given the size, location, and use of blank space to make that text the ONLY thing that wasn't on my screen (running in 1280x1024), I can't call the notice obvious by any means. With that bit so well hidden and an application for admissions right there, only the big banner that stated LSU was suing them tipped me off that they were not actually owned or operated by LSU.
I hesitate to say that it's intentionally deceptive, but it definately wasn't obvious at first glance. The URL doesn't help things much (if you ignore the fact that it is a.com and not a.edu)
One reason I dislike the bill is because I am not sure what they really mean by robust notice. If the salon article is right, the small bit they had in the kazaa liscense about BDE could count as robust notice.
Another reason I dislike the bill is because it requires opt-out. While this is better than nothing being required, it is easy to hide the option to opt out or to put the access to the option to opt out somewhere you can't access till you have allready registered. I don't want anybody selling my personal information before they've even given me a chance to opt out.
With those two thing, the bill unsettles me. Why can't it require things to be opt in? If a website had something clear that said "If you give us consent to collect and sell your personal information, check this box" I would have no qualms. In that case, you know both that the user does consent and that if you do not consent, then you won't be shafted.
While stuff like this should be regulated, it should not be under these terms.
I can understand that DB would want xs4all.com to remove the pages because they tell how to damage DB property. Now, whether xs4all.com should have had to remove the pages seems a bit iffy to me, but let us assume for the sake of argument that there is certain information that should not be posted to the web.
I can then understnad the desire to have google (or anybody else who has caches of web pages) remove the cache from the web, since if the content shouldn't be available (again, iffy), then google shouldn't provide it either.
However, they want google (and yahoo) to remove links to the site. It seems dubious to me that you should be able to force someone to remove a link to somebody elses site. If they didn't want google linking to their own site, it wouldn't bother me. However, I can't condone demanding that a third party remove lniks to something I just don't like.
What if Amazon.com demanded that google remove all links to Barnesandnoble.com...
The difference between email and everything else, though, is the cost of those adds. When you read an add in a magazine, people paid the magazine for it to be there. When you see an add on TV, people paid the station for it to be there. When you see an add on a billboard, someone paid the billboard owner for it to be there.
When you see an add in your email inbox, who got paid? It wasn't your ISP. It wasn't you.
Now, you might think "why does it matter if I nobody is paying for the adds?" It matters because you are getting no value from it. When you see adds on TV, the payment from those adds is subsidizing the cost so that you don't pay anything. Same as radio. When you see adds in the newspaper, it is subsidizing the cost so you pay less. If you are bombarded with adds, then you should pay less. Unfrotunately, with large amounts of spam on servers causing more traffic and strain, if anything else, you end up paying more. Is that fair?
When you see adds everywhere else, there is a silent agreement: you see the adds but you get some sort of compensation in return. With spam, they waste your time and can cost you money, but you get nothing in return. Unless you were looking for college coeds who can give you herbal viagra, restore your hairloss, and help you get out of debt?
>>This is not a reactionless thruster, it just uses whateven matter is surrounding it.
Actually, that is not true. According to the page (or one of the subpages on the site), some of these things have actually been tested in a vacum. I'll admit that I don't know quite how it works, but that I find it very interesting.
Really, this is similar to saying, "why pay for a newspaper every morning when I can swipe one from the guy on the subway?"
Actually, it is more akin to saying "Why pay for a newspaper every morning when the guy on the subway lets me read his?"
I hate it when people treat the "theft" of IP as if it were the theft of something tangible. I never bought music before MP3s were around, and I think I can honestly say that even if there were no music sharing things out there, I wouldn't buy music now. I am not a lost sale. If you look at the statistics, music saless have been steadily rising, too. I doubt that many people who download music would buy substantially more if they did not have that luxery. Just like the kids who pirate 3d studio max and fuck around with it for two days, nobody is actually losing any money here.
That said, I have a few problems with this whole system:
1.) The RIAA is involved, so there is a big question of who is getting the money. Its easy to say "Pay the artists" but that doesn't mean that the artists don't get less than a penny for every dollar that goes to the RIAA.
2.) You're paying for it, so what do you get? Isn't it yours? I guess I don't mind that its crippled to the extent that you can't arbitrarily share it (although I can't say that I like that), but I do mind the fact that it is crippled to the point that you can't do legitimate things with it like use it in your mp3 player or make a cd to put in your car?
3.) why in the world would I *pay* Napster simply to get a crippled version of (take your pick) Morpheus? Its a valid question. Assuming you don't see a moral or ethical problem with free file sharing, this becomes a practical question. The RIAA is getting extra money for things it doesn't seem to deserve. It didn't create the music. It isn't distributing the music online. It is not the middle-man of napster. Why should they get a cut? For people to bother paying, there should be something additional to give napster something - anything -that sets it apart and makes it worthwile. Maybe the RIAA should provide everything they have, encoded at high quality. That way you wouldn't be at the mercy of the 3 other people who thought the service was worth paying for.
I dunno. It just doesn't seem worthwhile. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe there was something that wasn't mentioned on the website that turns this into more than something that doesn't even look good on paper.
Isn't it usually the regular version that costs money and the crippled version that is free?
The average feature film is about 500 megabytes in digitized form and will take 20 minutes to 40 minutes to download, Mr. Landau said, depending on the type of broadband connection.
I don't know about you, but I don't average between 200 and 400 KB/sec. I have used a number of different broadband commections (cable, dsl, t1, t3) and never downloaded anything at more than 150 KB/sec. Usually, if the servers are decent, I can still only get 50 KB/sec. Assuming the my connection can actually handle that much, there has to be sifficient bandwith between them and me. If they are relying 20 minute downloads for this to be appealing, I think they should think again...
Maximum theoretical bandwith != actual bandwith
Yes, the article does mention Ad-Aware, but did you see the context?
Scott Eagle, chief marketing officer at Gator, said consumers can easily uninstall the software by accessing the "add/remove programs" in their settings. He added that consumers can opt out of receiving the program during downloads of partners' technology. A program called Ad-Aware, from LavaSoft, also helps consumers remove remnants of programs installed surreptitiously on their machines.
From what I understand of Gator and problems people have had with it, unless you have Ad-Aware, you might as well forget actually getting rid of Gator. The uninstall you get from them doesn't actually fully remove the product. Although, I can't say that I'm surprised that a company who would piggyback spyware with their "partners'" products would provide a faulty uninstall program and then sell adds for products to show up on competitors web sites. Advertising on the net just seems to get worse and worse...*sigh*
Ibag
When you trade a product or a service directly, you are giving something tangible.
When you trade gold, you are trading something tangible.
When you you trade currency, you are trading something that is tangible that represents gold. Assuming this representation is verifiable (i.e. one cannot flood the market with them via counterfitting), this will work as a medium.
When you trade credit card numbers, you are trading an intangible object that represents currency (although not in as direct a way as currency represents gold). Since a credit card number is only a number, it can be duplicated (which you cannot do with gold or currency), and since it is not tangible, it is harder to verify as being legitimate.
Therefore there is a huge difference between a shiny rock representing something valuable and a string of numbers representing something valuable (in part because the number only represents a representation of soemthing valuable). If for no other reasons than tangibility and lack of duplicatability, solid coinage (whether paper or coins) is a much better, safer, realistic representation of value than a string of numbers.
Ibag
Besides making patents and suing/forcing other companies to pay royalties, I don't know that Rambus has ever done a damned thing. As for the other companies, WTF wouldn't they sue back?
Ibag
...predictions of missiles launching and all critical systems crashing across the globe. They almost had me frightened that my toaster wouldn't work! I think that had people not worked to fix a few Y2k issues, there would have been more incidents than there were. However, I also believe that almost NONE of what the media predicted would happen was even a possibility. I mean, what does a missile control system think to itself? "Ahhhh....its 1900! Missiles havn't even been invented yet! Must do something....must....launch randomly and take out a major city....must reach beyond the limitations of my programming..."
Ibag
Procrastination is like masturbation: Its great at first, but then you realize that you are only fucking yourself.
In the wake of their announcement that they will be chargine $9.95 to users who use more than 40 hours a month, it would seem that they are doing everything they can to increase their revenues and become the dominant force in the free isp game.
Then again, as they have it in their budget to launch a television advertising campaign, perhaps they are not as close to going broke as some of the other free isps which now lie dead are...
Security.Institutions must provide sufficient security to prevent unauthorized access to personal information.
If an institution is hacked, does this mean that the government will go after the institution because their security wasn't sufficient? Besides, if republicans aren't for big government and beuracracies, what are they going to do to enforce this? If they don't enforce it, its merely talk to sway the masses...
In a democracy, the definition of murder, manslaughter, medical care, legitimate, illegitimate, you name it, is in the hands of the people.
Even if this was the case in a democracy, the US is not a democracy. It's a republic. People vote for local matters and representitives, not the definition of murder.
An engineer sticks a thick piece of cardboard in front of the laser to simulate a sudden fog or a particularly pesky pigeon. Instead of losing data, R2-D2 senses a problem and automatically reroutes the information via another pathway--another R2-D2 unit with an unobstructed signal--so none of the data is lost.
The only problem with this is that unless the R2-D2 units are large distances away from eachother, its very unlikely that fog will merely be between two units. A unit stuck in the middle of the fog will be completely surrounded on all sides, so communication will be shot between whoever uses the particular node and the rest of the world. Of course, depending upon how widespread this becomes, it is still possible that one can send a signal from one point that has no fog to another point that has no fog, but who is to say that on a heavily foggy day everybody who uses the system in a certain place will be without their precious network... I'd like to see what these things do when they are covered in a cardboard box!
Photons travel at the speed of light. Electrons travel at the speed of light. The speed of a system should not depend on which of these are used. Is there something I am missing? Are there intricicies to the matter which make opticle better? Would one method produce less heat than the other? Or is it all hype because its just something new that people can have optimism about? If children can ask, then so can I: Why?
What do you see as the next big thing in programing languages? Is there anything left to do except make the languages closer to english? Also, what current languages do you see as still being around in the future (as in 10 or maybe even 20 years down the road)? What accounts for this longevity?
Ignoring the rights of the user and the fact that the only real application of this is coptright protection for the moment, what about the issue of performance loss doe to an encryption system? Contrary to common belief, processing does occur when encrypting or decrypting happens. This display encryption was said to be a "last step" in the encrytption process which means that there is alot of it going on throughout the entire system if everybody but the consumer gets their way here. Maybe the hit isn't that much (though considering that massive amount of bandwith that video cards are requiring to play newer games in good resolutions, I think that it is rather a good chunk of data to encrypt/decrypt). Maybe the spare cycles needed for such a system are just lying around idle waiting to be used to keep people from using their hardware in every way possible. Then again, maybe they aren't and will require added power: power which could go to making a better and faster product but now has other duties. What does this power cost? Is there any chance that the end user will not be the one paying for this? Will the fact that the encryption has to be liscensed make it cost even more?
Just food for thought, Ibag
"If you ever go back in time, don't touch anything" --Abraham Simpson
Haven't there been several odd days this month? I mean, 11/1/99, or maybe 11/3/99, or even 11/5/99? I might not be the smartest man in the world (I think I am number 3), but I do know the definition of odd. I think it is odd that this post made it to/.'s front page...
Sure, high fill rates are a good thing to have an all, but I am not sure I like how they are going about getting it. My problem with the card(s) (ignoring the lack of geometry support) is that they do it by means of multiple processors using SLI. If I do remember correctly, SLI does have some visual drawbacks which make it look like less than it should (thought I may have heard wrong). Having fullscreen AA might clear that up, but it isn't that they have a gigapixel chip on their cards but that they have several less powerful ones. I don't know. It just seems to underwhelm me (but duel Athlons are okay because single athlons are just plain wicked!)
Ibag (I'll Buy AGeforce...with linux support, I do believe)
I'm just curious why in all of those movies the text on the screen is always at least an inch high? Who even cares that it only takes 3 clicks to break into the governments most heavily secured systems?
Slashdot Mirror
I went to the site (since the article said that the site clearly stated that it wasn't affiliated with the school on the front page) and I looked for a few seconds. Then I noticed that while there was a huge chunk of blank space at the bottom of the screen, there was a scroll bar to be used. Then, in tiny light grey text I saw it say that it wasn't affiliated.
.com and not a .edu)
I'm sorry, but given the size, location, and use of blank space to make that text the ONLY thing that wasn't on my screen (running in 1280x1024), I can't call the notice obvious by any means. With that bit so well hidden and an application for admissions right there, only the big banner that stated LSU was suing them tipped me off that they were not actually owned or operated by LSU.
I hesitate to say that it's intentionally deceptive, but it definately wasn't obvious at first glance. The URL doesn't help things much (if you ignore the fact that it is a
One reason I dislike the bill is because I am not sure what they really mean by robust notice. If the salon article is right, the small bit they had in the kazaa liscense about BDE could count as robust notice.
Another reason I dislike the bill is because it requires opt-out. While this is better than nothing being required, it is easy to hide the option to opt out or to put the access to the option to opt out somewhere you can't access till you have allready registered. I don't want anybody selling my personal information before they've even given me a chance to opt out.
With those two thing, the bill unsettles me. Why can't it require things to be opt in? If a website had something clear that said "If you give us consent to collect and sell your personal information, check this box" I would have no qualms. In that case, you know both that the user does consent and that if you do not consent, then you won't be shafted.
While stuff like this should be regulated, it should not be under these terms.
I can understand that DB would want xs4all.com to remove the pages because they tell how to damage DB property. Now, whether xs4all.com should have had to remove the pages seems a bit iffy to me, but let us assume for the sake of argument that there is certain information that should not be posted to the web.
I can then understnad the desire to have google (or anybody else who has caches of web pages) remove the cache from the web, since if the content shouldn't be available (again, iffy), then google shouldn't provide it either.
However, they want google (and yahoo) to remove links to the site. It seems dubious to me that you should be able to force someone to remove a link to somebody elses site. If they didn't want google linking to their own site, it wouldn't bother me. However, I can't condone demanding that a third party remove lniks to something I just don't like.
What if Amazon.com demanded that google remove all links to Barnesandnoble.com...
The difference between email and everything else, though, is the cost of those adds. When you read an add in a magazine, people paid the magazine for it to be there. When you see an add on TV, people paid the station for it to be there. When you see an add on a billboard, someone paid the billboard owner for it to be there.
When you see an add in your email inbox, who got paid? It wasn't your ISP. It wasn't you.
Now, you might think "why does it matter if I nobody is paying for the adds?" It matters because you are getting no value from it. When you see adds on TV, the payment from those adds is subsidizing the cost so that you don't pay anything. Same as radio. When you see adds in the newspaper, it is subsidizing the cost so you pay less. If you are bombarded with adds, then you should pay less. Unfrotunately, with large amounts of spam on servers causing more traffic and strain, if anything else, you end up paying more. Is that fair?
When you see adds everywhere else, there is a silent agreement: you see the adds but you get some sort of compensation in return. With spam, they waste your time and can cost you money, but you get nothing in return. Unless you were looking for college coeds who can give you herbal viagra, restore your hairloss, and help you get out of debt?
>>This is not a reactionless thruster, it just uses whateven matter is surrounding it.
Actually, that is not true. According to the page (or one of the subpages on the site), some of these things have actually been tested in a vacum. I'll admit that I don't know quite how it works, but that I find it very interesting.
Really, this is similar to saying, "why pay for a newspaper every morning when I can swipe one from the guy on the subway?"
Actually, it is more akin to saying "Why pay for a newspaper every morning when the guy on the subway lets me read his?"
I hate it when people treat the "theft" of IP as if it were the theft of something tangible. I never bought music before MP3s were around, and I think I can honestly say that even if there were no music sharing things out there, I wouldn't buy music now. I am not a lost sale. If you look at the statistics, music saless have been steadily rising, too. I doubt that many people who download music would buy substantially more if they did not have that luxery. Just like the kids who pirate 3d studio max and fuck around with it for two days, nobody is actually losing any money here.
That said, I have a few problems with this whole system:
1.) The RIAA is involved, so there is a big question of who is getting the money. Its easy to say "Pay the artists" but that doesn't mean that the artists don't get less than a penny for every dollar that goes to the RIAA.
2.) You're paying for it, so what do you get? Isn't it yours? I guess I don't mind that its crippled to the extent that you can't arbitrarily share it (although I can't say that I like that), but I do mind the fact that it is crippled to the point that you can't do legitimate things with it like use it in your mp3 player or make a cd to put in your car?
3.) why in the world would I *pay* Napster simply to get a crippled version of (take your pick) Morpheus? Its a valid question. Assuming you don't see a moral or ethical problem with free file sharing, this becomes a practical question. The RIAA is getting extra money for things it doesn't seem to deserve. It didn't create the music. It isn't distributing the music online. It is not the middle-man of napster. Why should they get a cut? For people to bother paying, there should be something additional to give napster something - anything -that sets it apart and makes it worthwile. Maybe the RIAA should provide everything they have, encoded at high quality. That way you wouldn't be at the mercy of the 3 other people who thought the service was worth paying for.
I dunno. It just doesn't seem worthwhile. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe there was something that wasn't mentioned on the website that turns this into more than something that doesn't even look good on paper.
Isn't it usually the regular version that costs money and the crippled version that is free?
I don't know about you, but I don't average between 200 and 400 KB/sec. I have used a number of different broadband commections (cable, dsl, t1, t3) and never downloaded anything at more than 150 KB/sec. Usually, if the servers are decent, I can still only get 50 KB/sec. Assuming the my connection can actually handle that much, there has to be sifficient bandwith between them and me. If they are relying 20 minute downloads for this to be appealing, I think they should think again...
Maximum theoretical bandwith != actual bandwith
Ibag
Ibag
When you trade a product or a service directly, you are giving something tangible. When you trade gold, you are trading something tangible. When you you trade currency, you are trading something that is tangible that represents gold. Assuming this representation is verifiable (i.e. one cannot flood the market with them via counterfitting), this will work as a medium. When you trade credit card numbers, you are trading an intangible object that represents currency (although not in as direct a way as currency represents gold). Since a credit card number is only a number, it can be duplicated (which you cannot do with gold or currency), and since it is not tangible, it is harder to verify as being legitimate. Therefore there is a huge difference between a shiny rock representing something valuable and a string of numbers representing something valuable (in part because the number only represents a representation of soemthing valuable). If for no other reasons than tangibility and lack of duplicatability, solid coinage (whether paper or coins) is a much better, safer, realistic representation of value than a string of numbers. Ibag
Besides making patents and suing/forcing other companies to pay royalties, I don't know that Rambus has ever done a damned thing. As for the other companies, WTF wouldn't they sue back? Ibag
...predictions of missiles launching and all critical systems crashing across the globe. They almost had me frightened that my toaster wouldn't work! I think that had people not worked to fix a few Y2k issues, there would have been more incidents than there were. However, I also believe that almost NONE of what the media predicted would happen was even a possibility. I mean, what does a missile control system think to itself? "Ahhhh....its 1900! Missiles havn't even been invented yet! Must do something....must....launch randomly and take out a major city....must reach beyond the limitations of my programming..."
Ibag
Procrastination is like masturbation: Its great at first, but then you realize that you are only fucking yourself.
In the wake of their announcement that they will be chargine $9.95 to users who use more than 40 hours a month, it would seem that they are doing everything they can to increase their revenues and become the dominant force in the free isp game.
Then again, as they have it in their budget to launch a television advertising campaign, perhaps they are not as close to going broke as some of the other free isps which now lie dead are...
Ibag
Security. Institutions must provide sufficient security to prevent unauthorized access to personal information.
If an institution is hacked, does this mean that the government will go after the institution because their security wasn't sufficient? Besides, if republicans aren't for big government and beuracracies, what are they going to do to enforce this? If they don't enforce it, its merely talk to sway the masses...
Ibag
In a democracy, the definition of murder, manslaughter, medical care, legitimate, illegitimate, you name it, is in the hands of the people.
Even if this was the case in a democracy, the US is not a democracy. It's a republic. People vote for local matters and representitives, not the definition of murder.
Ibag
Ibag
"Me fail english? That's unpossible!" --Ralph
Photons travel at the speed of light. Electrons travel at the speed of light. The speed of a system should not depend on which of these are used. Is there something I am missing? Are there intricicies to the matter which make opticle better? Would one method produce less heat than the other? Or is it all hype because its just something new that people can have optimism about? If children can ask, then so can I: Why?
Ibag
Ibag
Just food for thought,
Ibag
"If you ever go back in time, don't touch anything"
--Abraham Simpson
Haven't there been several odd days this month? I mean, 11/1/99, or maybe 11/3/99, or even 11/5/99? I might not be the smartest man in the world (I think I am number 3), but I do know the definition of odd. I think it is odd that this post made it to /.'s front page...
Ibag (I'll Buy A Geforce...with linux support, I do believe)
I'm just curious why in all of those movies the text on the screen is always at least an inch high? Who even cares that it only takes 3 clicks to break into the governments most heavily secured systems?