1. Yes, I like your "knock at the door" analogy better than my "come into my unlocked house" analogy. Someone does have to "answer the door", so to speak.
2. The stranger won't necessarily have to sit through the ads, since he is most likely parsing and filtering what he's "watching". At the very least, I doubt that he'd pass on the ads to his "clients". Maybe, but I doubt it.
3. I truly wish that this analogy were closer to reality, because if it were, I could go through the request logs and track down the whereabouts of the sorry little bastards who broke into my car last week and stole my stereo. I could then go to their address and initiate a "Denial of the Ability to Walk Correctly Again" attack. Ah, well....
I would say that your scrapes fall under one of the "special case" scenarios.
And, string parsing vs. token parsing/tree traversal issues aside (I agree with you on that, BTW), my point is that unless you can enforce the integrity of the return data, or at least be reasonably certain that it will be enforced by the party on the other end, you are relying on inherently unreliable data. In some cases, the risks may be acceptable, but I've always shied away from it whenever possible.
You leave your house unlocked. Someone walks in the front door and steals your TV.
According to our laws, just because you left your house unlocked (giving the outside world access) does not give the person who stole your TV a legal right to do so. They still committed a crime.
Now, where this analogy might fall flat on his face is the idea that when you make a GET request, and the party on the other end responds by sending you a stream of data, have they just performed the equivalent of giving you the TV after you walked into their house? They can't very well say that you stole it if they willingly gave it to you.
This begs the question: why screen scrape in the first place? It's not very reliable in the sense that, barring special circumstances, there is no guarantee that the data that is returned in a response will be in the format the scraper expects.
You're basically trying to parse data out a string that you can at best only *assume* is going to be in a predetermined format. All the target has to do, in a lot of cases, is change a tag, comment, or what-have-you here or there (assuming that the response is a string of HTML) and it can throw the whole thing out of whack.
Now, if the response is just straight data, a return from a web service, or some other special case, then the data from it could probably be more trustworthy. But then again, if you're making requests to a web service, it's not really a "screen scrape", is it? And, I would also assume that if the target went to the trouble to expose a web service, they certainly expect outside parties to use it. Authorization issues, etc. would then become their burden.
Well, I don't claim to be a lawyer, so I'll have to take your word for it. But the point remains that this is the doing of the states, and not the federal government. And, existing law or no, it's still nothing more than the states trying to get a piece of the action. There's not much that I can see that is "voluntary" about this. The online companies are clearly being threatened.
I've owned a couple of Mexican Strats. They are pretty hit-or-miss when it comes to quality. I had one that played great that got stolen. I replaced it with a Tex-Mex that sounded better (better pickups), but it didn't play nearly as well as the first one. After a while, the truss rod came completely loose in the neck. So, I guess it's off to Carvin for a replacement...
Please step back, take a deep breath, and think about what you are saying. You might conclude the following:
1. Bush is a Republican. Traditionally, Republicans are against the idea of levying new taxes. So, why, again, would he do something like this?
2. If you read the article more closely, you will see that this is an "agreement" (I use the term loosely) between 38 states and online corporations. Bush has exactly zip to do with this.
3. And, if you read the article more closely, you will see that it's nothing more than extortion on these companies being performed by a cabal of state governments. The so-called "agreement" is nothing more than "pay up voluntarily or we'll come in there with our guns drawn". There's no "lobbying" going on here. Somebody's making money, and the government (or governments, in this case) is going to get a piece. That sounds more like good ol' liberal thinking to me.
I'm not one to shut down all the alarms. I'd like to see pollution pulled back. But not because of global warming or ozone holes or any of that made up crap, but because sucking down great heaping bucketfuls of industrial smoke and sludgy water is BAD, MMMKAY? That much we do know. Fuck the false arguments, make a stand on the reality of it. Scare tactics based on tomorrows that we'll never know don't work. Telling people they'll die slow painful deaths from all the toxins in the environment may not work either, but at least that'd be true.
Well, that would be refreshing, to say the least. But the problem is that then a lot of the so-called "friends of the environment" out there (and by "friends of the environment", I mean the ELF-types and such, not legitimate climatologists and scientists) would have to admit that what they are really fighting is capitalism, not the degradation of the environment.
Personally, I would be a lot less offended by these people if they would just be more honest about their motives. After all, doesn't the statement "I'm burning down this mountaintop ski lodge because I'm waging war against the excesses of capitalism" make a bit more sense than "I'm burning down this mountaintop ski lodge because I want to save the environment"?
These people are nothing more than the left-wing equivalent of an abortion-clinic bomber. Think about it. In both cases, both laws and logic take a back seat to the perpetrators' "righteous" cause. And, in both cases, the more legitimate voices of reason who lean to their side on the debate don't want to have a damn thing to do with them.
Hey, all, I have what is probably a dumb question, but I figure that someone in here can help.
I have the ISO images for the 7.3 version, which I transferred over to CD. I created a boot disk and have been trying to do an install on an x86 laptop from it.
The boot disk loads up fine, but when it goes to do the install from the CD, it pops up a dialog which tells me that the CD is not a correct Linux CD.
My CD burning software is Nero, which I'm not all that familiar with, so I'm thinking that maybe I didn't burn the image correctly.
Any help would be appreciated. Everything that I've seen and heard about Linux looks pretty kickass, and I'm getting pretty sick of WinCrap, so it's time...
ain't there fixin' to be alot more acceptance of substandard English up in da hizzouse? I don't mean to dis' nobody, but you be talkin' some wack shiznit, know what I'm sayin'?
What is it that you don't like about USB in this application? Is it that you prefer Firewire? I've never messed with transferring mp3s from device to device (I've never had to, as I have a car stereo that plays mp3 CDs), so I'm blissfully ignorant on this subject.
I may want to get one of these portables soon, though, so I thought that I might ask.
Yeah well, if you can show me a just planet, I'll admit we're earning our wealth.
You are absolutely correct-we are not earning our wealth. Well, not all of us, anyway. Some of us would rather depend on the generosity of the state to sustain themselves. Unfortunate, but true.
Until you can prove that reality mirrors the idealistic mechanics of a perfectly capitalist free market system, I will continue to battle against the broken pieces of capitalism.
No, capitalism isn't perfect. I have never claimed that it was. However, the flaws of capitalism are not arguments for socialism. We could play this quixotic game all day long, but it won't get anyone anywhere.
Thanks for reducing me to a label. I'm simply against extremes. I'm against communism, and I'm against capitalism run amok. There's a reason why 'everything in moderation' tends to be a truism in the physical world.
Good for you. Seriously. Sorry if you felt that you were personally being reduced to a label. My intent was to condemn the ideal itself, not the idealist.
Institutionalized distribution of weath implies wealth distributed by a central state. If you understood....thats about as far from institutionalized distribution of wealth as you can get.
OK, I'm listening. What's the point here, exactly? What does 'making a stand' entail? That they can suggest to people how they can spend their money? Well, certainly, they can do that. It's just that a lot of the time, the "suggestions" turn to "preaching", if you know what I mean.
Open your brain...I'd feel sorry for your limited viewpoint...I understand that pity tends to make people more stubborn and more prone to self-censorship.
Exactly how is attempting to insult my intelligence/condescending tone/etc. supposed to bolster your argument? Bad move. Fire away to your heart's content, but it'll get you nowhere.
And finally.......once certain entities in a free-market become powerful enough, they essentially become a centralized institutionalized method of the distribution of weath - nearly indistinguishable from communism, but with the 'carrot' offered in front of your nose saying, 'hey, one day you might get this powerful, so its not really communism, is it?'
This is debatable, to say the least. Examples that refute it are too numerous to mention-Dave Thomas (founder of Wendy's) comes to mind immediately.
As for the "carrot" analogy, I suppose the socialist "remedy" would be 'hey, it's just the proverbial carrot, you probably can't get it, so why don't we just do you a favor and remove any chance you might have had?'
Really? Why? Look how wonderfully the idea of institutionalized redistribution of wealth worked for the former Soviet Union, or any other number of their Eastern Bloc satellites.
Really, the *most* idiotic thing ever is that good old Socialist^H^H^HLiberal ideal that wealth is "distributed", not earned. Were that to be true, I certainly would have a lot less incentive to actually work a decent-paying job.
C'mon, don't you think that's just a bit of a cheap shot? I wouldn't necessarily lump all Republicans together as Religious-Right types. As a matter of fact, there are quite a few Republicans of the Adam Smith variety that could do very happily without the Jerry Falwells of the world.
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1. Yes, I like your "knock at the door" analogy better than my "come into my unlocked house" analogy. Someone does have to "answer the door", so to speak.
2. The stranger won't necessarily have to sit through the ads, since he is most likely parsing and filtering what he's "watching". At the very least, I doubt that he'd pass on the ads to his "clients". Maybe, but I doubt it.
3. I truly wish that this analogy were closer to reality, because if it were, I could go through the request logs and track down the whereabouts of the sorry little bastards who broke into my car last week and stole my stereo. I could then go to their address and initiate a "Denial of the Ability to Walk Correctly Again" attack. Ah, well....
I would say that your scrapes fall under one of the "special case" scenarios.
And, string parsing vs. token parsing/tree traversal issues aside (I agree with you on that, BTW), my point is that unless you can enforce the integrity of the return data, or at least be reasonably certain that it will be enforced by the party on the other end, you are relying on inherently unreliable data. In some cases, the risks may be acceptable, but I've always shied away from it whenever possible.
Here's an analogy of sorts:
You leave your house unlocked. Someone walks in the front door and steals your TV.
According to our laws, just because you left your house unlocked (giving the outside world access) does not give the person who stole your TV a legal right to do so. They still committed a crime.
Now, where this analogy might fall flat on his face is the idea that when you make a GET request, and the party on the other end responds by sending you a stream of data, have they just performed the equivalent of giving you the TV after you walked into their house? They can't very well say that you stole it if they willingly gave it to you.
This begs the question: why screen scrape in the first place? It's not very reliable in the sense that, barring special circumstances, there is no guarantee that the data that is returned in a response will be in the format the scraper expects.
You're basically trying to parse data out a string that you can at best only *assume* is going to be in a predetermined format. All the target has to do, in a lot of cases, is change a tag, comment, or what-have-you here or there (assuming that the response is a string of HTML) and it can throw the whole thing out of whack.
Now, if the response is just straight data, a return from a web service, or some other special case, then the data from it could probably be more trustworthy. But then again, if you're making requests to a web service, it's not really a "screen scrape", is it? And, I would also assume that if the target went to the trouble to expose a web service, they certainly expect outside parties to use it. Authorization issues, etc. would then become their burden.
Ha! So I guess that T-shirts with penguins on the front of them will soon become U.S Government Issue along with the combat boots.
How does one define a "uniform"?
Well, I don't claim to be a lawyer, so I'll have to take your word for it. But the point remains that this is the doing of the states, and not the federal government. And, existing law or no, it's still nothing more than the states trying to get a piece of the action. There's not much that I can see that is "voluntary" about this. The online companies are clearly being threatened.
I've owned a couple of Mexican Strats. They are pretty hit-or-miss when it comes to quality. I had one that played great that got stolen. I replaced it with a Tex-Mex that sounded better (better pickups), but it didn't play nearly as well as the first one. After a while, the truss rod came completely loose in the neck. So, I guess it's off to Carvin for a replacement...
Please step back, take a deep breath, and think about what you are saying. You might conclude the following:
1. Bush is a Republican. Traditionally, Republicans are against the idea of levying new taxes. So, why, again, would he do something like this?
2. If you read the article more closely, you will see that this is an "agreement" (I use the term loosely) between 38 states and online corporations. Bush has exactly zip to do with this.
3. And, if you read the article more closely, you will see that it's nothing more than extortion on these companies being performed by a cabal of state governments. The so-called "agreement" is nothing more than "pay up voluntarily or we'll come in there with our guns drawn". There's no "lobbying" going on here. Somebody's making money, and the government (or governments, in this case) is going to get a piece. That sounds more like good ol' liberal thinking to me.
This idea looks great on paper....
Umm...as opposed to the goddamned baboon who is inevitably going to seize this tragedy to bash said occupant of the Oval Office?
You, sir, are no better. Shame on you.
I got curious, so I checked it out. It's a small island nation in the South Pacific. Here's a map, for the interested:
I'm not one to shut down all the alarms. I'd like to see pollution pulled back. But not because of global warming or ozone holes or any of that made up crap, but because sucking down great heaping bucketfuls of industrial smoke and sludgy water is BAD, MMMKAY? That much we do know. Fuck the false arguments, make a stand on the reality of it. Scare tactics based on tomorrows that we'll never know don't work. Telling people they'll die slow painful deaths from all the toxins in the environment may not work either, but at least that'd be true.
Well, that would be refreshing, to say the least. But the problem is that then a lot of the so-called "friends of the environment" out there (and by "friends of the environment", I mean the ELF-types and such, not legitimate climatologists and scientists) would have to admit that what they are really fighting is capitalism, not the degradation of the environment.
Personally, I would be a lot less offended by these people if they would just be more honest about their motives. After all, doesn't the statement "I'm burning down this mountaintop ski lodge because I'm waging war against the excesses of capitalism" make a bit more sense than "I'm burning down this mountaintop ski lodge because I want to save the environment"?
These people are nothing more than the left-wing equivalent of an abortion-clinic bomber. Think about it. In both cases, both laws and logic take a back seat to the perpetrators' "righteous" cause. And, in both cases, the more legitimate voices of reason who lean to their side on the debate don't want to have a damn thing to do with them.
Honesty, that's all I ask....
I assume that it's gas powered....
Oh, what I wouldn't do for a port of ProTools for Linux.
Hey, all, I have what is probably a dumb question, but I figure that someone in here can help.
I have the ISO images for the 7.3 version, which I transferred over to CD. I created a boot disk and have been trying to do an install on an x86 laptop from it.
The boot disk loads up fine, but when it goes to do the install from the CD, it pops up a dialog which tells me that the CD is not a correct Linux CD.
My CD burning software is Nero, which I'm not all that familiar with, so I'm thinking that maybe I didn't burn the image correctly.
Any help would be appreciated. Everything that I've seen and heard about Linux looks pretty kickass, and I'm getting pretty sick of WinCrap, so it's time...
ain't there fixin' to be alot more acceptance of substandard English up in da hizzouse? I don't mean to dis' nobody, but you be talkin' some wack shiznit, know what I'm sayin'?
Word up, y'all!
Or,
Those who can't Teach, become critics.
"Sue EVERYBODY!"
--Sol Rosenberg
What is it that you don't like about USB in this application? Is it that you prefer Firewire? I've never messed with transferring mp3s from device to device (I've never had to, as I have a car stereo that plays mp3 CDs), so I'm blissfully ignorant on this subject.
I may want to get one of these portables soon, though, so I thought that I might ask.
And, are these walks officially sanctioned by the Ministry of Silly Walks?
Yeah well, if you can show me a just planet, I'll admit we're earning our wealth.
...once certain entities in a free-market become powerful enough, they essentially become a centralized institutionalized method of the distribution of weath - nearly indistinguishable from communism, but with the 'carrot' offered in front of your nose saying, 'hey, one day you might get this powerful, so its not really communism, is it?'
You are absolutely correct-we are not earning our wealth. Well, not all of us, anyway. Some of us would rather depend on the generosity of the state to sustain themselves. Unfortunate, but true.
Until you can prove that reality mirrors the idealistic mechanics of a perfectly capitalist free market system, I will continue to battle against the broken pieces of capitalism.
No, capitalism isn't perfect. I have never claimed that it was. However, the flaws of capitalism are not arguments for socialism. We could play this quixotic game all day long, but it won't get anyone anywhere.
Thanks for reducing me to a label. I'm simply against extremes. I'm against communism, and I'm against capitalism run amok. There's a reason why 'everything in moderation' tends to be a truism in the physical world.
Good for you. Seriously. Sorry if you felt that you were personally being reduced to a label. My intent was to condemn the ideal itself, not the idealist.
Institutionalized distribution of weath implies wealth distributed by a central state. If you understood....thats about as far from institutionalized distribution of wealth as you can get.
OK, I'm listening. What's the point here, exactly? What does 'making a stand' entail? That they can suggest to people how they can spend their money? Well, certainly, they can do that. It's just that a lot of the time, the "suggestions" turn to "preaching", if you know what I mean.
Open your brain...I'd feel sorry for your limited viewpoint...I understand that pity tends to make people more stubborn and more prone to self-censorship.
Exactly how is attempting to insult my intelligence/condescending tone/etc. supposed to bolster your argument? Bad move. Fire away to your heart's content, but it'll get you nowhere.
And finally....
This is debatable, to say the least. Examples that refute it are too numerous to mention-Dave Thomas (founder of Wendy's) comes to mind immediately.
As for the "carrot" analogy, I suppose the socialist "remedy" would be 'hey, it's just the proverbial carrot, you probably can't get it, so why don't we just do you a favor and remove any chance you might have had?'
I'll take my chances in the garden, thanks.
This is the most idiotic thing I've ever heard...
Really? Why? Look how wonderfully the idea of institutionalized redistribution of wealth worked for the former Soviet Union, or any other number of their Eastern Bloc satellites.
Really, the *most* idiotic thing ever is that good old Socialist^H^H^HLiberal ideal that wealth is "distributed", not earned. Were that to be true, I certainly would have a lot less incentive to actually work a decent-paying job.
C'mon, don't you think that's just a bit of a cheap shot? I wouldn't necessarily lump all Republicans together as Religious-Right types. As a matter of fact, there are quite a few Republicans of the Adam Smith variety that could do very happily without the Jerry Falwells of the world.
It wasn't really intended as a 'shot' at anyone; I honestly just didn't expect to see that sort of talk here.