You might think I'm wrong about this but consider satellite TV signals - DMCA concerns (which most of us don't agree with anyways) aside, I've always just thought.... you want me to pay for satellite service, fine. But to say that I can't interpret the signals YOU are beaming in to MY house in any way I want (by using a decoder, etc.) is ludicrous - if you don't want me to do something with them, DON'T BEAM THEM INTO MY HOUSE. Or try and use proprietary technology, encryption algorithms, etc. to prevent me from reading them - but its your job to make sure I can't.
Wow -- I agree completely. In fact, when I read the first paragraph of your post, about cell phone privacy, I was going to respond with exactly this example. So there are other people who think like I do... scary.
The makeup of the passengers of a vehicle could greatly effect the results.
Think about it, a car full of teenagers will show several cell phone signals versus a car full of seniors or nuns which would probably have 0 cell phones inside.
As I said (keyed in) in an earlier post, it doesn't matter how many cell phones there are. You can track how quickly they move from one cell to another, and know if traffic is jammed or not on a specified area of highway.
a cell phone detector can only count cell phones. For example, a bus with 18 people using cellphones on it is not 18 cars. A video camera, on the other hand, can tell you exactly how many cars are on the road, and what types and sizes, and their speeds.
It isn't the number of cell phones, it is how fast they move from cell to cell -- thus telling you the speed that traffic is moving on that section of highway. Estimating the number of cars and trucks in the traffic jam is an exercise left up to the reader...
You think there could be methods such as motion detectors or those rubber things you run over when they count the number of cars that go through intersections.
There are, but somebody has to pay to purchase and install such equipment. Monitoring cell phone use on a busy highway is cheaper, the equipment already exists wherever there are cell phone networks.
Yes, those were the times without TiVo, NetFlix, Personal Computers, or Slashdot. Instead of watching TV and movies for two hours a day, and playing on-line FPS games for two hours, and reading Slashdot for three hours, they read and wrote letters -- with no spell checker no less.
They also, probably, didn't have jobs that required them to sit at a desk looking at dumps and C++ code for 8 hours a day.
Isn't that a little like saying that if the police can't catch John Q. Bank Robber in the bank, then the law shouldn't be enforced after he leaves?
No. It's like saying that an ATM should be programmed to accept or reject your pin number, and not leave it up to the whims of someone else who uses the ATM.
There are lots of rules possible that would difficult to enforce programmatically but easy for a real human to enforce.
This is the most asinine thing I've read in a long time. If you cannot program the rule into the game, then the rule is subjective, arbitrary, or ambiguous... or you're just not a very good programmer.
It sucks that Taco had to change his name, but guess what? He should have known from the beginning that the name was against the rules.
No... he shouldn't have been able to create the name in the first place if it violated the rules -- if the rules cannot be programmed into the game, then they should not be "enforced" by plebes.
That's not the right attitude. The problem lies with web browsers that accept non-standard code.
Uhh.. that would be all of them. If you're reading this page, then your browser is interpreting invalid HTML 4.01.
If you would like to try an experiment to prove it, then do a "View Source" on this page and then save it off as "test.htm". Then upload and validate it here http://validator.w3.org/file-upload.html
I would guess that you decided that it was the web browser's fault, when you thought that IE would interpret invalid HTML while FireFox wouldn't, but it turns out that FireFox interprets invalid HTML too.
Most web pages are invalid HTML, or XHTML, or DHTML, or whatever the W3C is calling the latest version of it.
Very few web-sites, including this one, use valid HTML. Pick a web site and then check it out on the W3C Validator: http://validator.w3.org/detailed.html
Slashdot now blocks you from checking it's site using the validator.... Not long ago though, (when it switched to HTML 4.01) it did allow it, and none of the Slashdot pages I checked passed validation.
Oh... and this invalid HTML renders just fine in FireFox, as well as pretty much any other browser.
Remember a few months back when the "P2P users more likely to buy music online" survey was posted? The same analysis applies, yet the correlation/causation difference was largely lost on Slashdotters. Hopefully your post will provide some enlightenment of this fundamental step of statistical analysis.
Yes. I don't think anyone was saying that using p2p causes people to buy music online... or that buying music online causes people to use p2p. This isn't causality (or causation), just correlation. What it shows is that those who use p2p, are also likely to be the customers of purveyors of online music. Not that one causes the other. Of course the study could have other flaws or reasons to not take it seriously -- who commissioned it?
Funnily enough, this actually encourages the Average User (a mythical beast, only whose footprints have ever been found) to read the whole article. Usability reports I remember reading a few months ago indicated that on an interactive medium like the web, users get "bored" if they don't have to interact with a page for too long.
And clicking on the "next" button is somehow more interactive than clicking on the scroll bar?
I'd like to know how it differentiates between a legal file and an illegal file.
It doesn't. The EULA says that it doesn't and that you have to make that determination yourself. It only deletes what you tell it to delete. The EULA also says it may not find everything.
You just described 99% of modern "brand-awareness" marketing. When will ads for Pepsi featuring the most recent just-overage female singer be recognized for the waste of resources that they are?
I think you meant "just-of-age", that is 18 or older.
But yes, I suppose it is a waste of my time to watch those commercials, drooling over the young female singer, when she could be my daughter and I probably wouldn't even have a chance with her mother....
Stacked juries are one of those things that really annoy me about our current legal system, especially since it is often used against minorities who can't afford the same caliber of legal protection as the other party.
Ohhh.... you mean like O.J. No? Like Michael Jackson then. Rodney King?
That doesn't make sense. If the information helps a person needing a heart transplant to find the hospital that does heart transplants best and a person needing brain surgery to find the hospital that does brain surgery best then overall society benefits by allocating the right patients to the right hospitals. Ditto for schools.
That depends on your point of view -- I would think that "survival of the not so fittest" weakens our species as a whole, and thus weakens society. Or that survival of these people just means more mouths to feed -- the mouths of people who are probably non-productive people due to their illnesses.
Who is to decide what benefits society?
We need to remember, that business is not in business to benefit society, but to benefit business.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow -- I agree completely. In fact, when I read the first paragraph of your post, about cell phone privacy, I was going to respond with exactly this example. So there are other people who think like I do... scary.
As I said (keyed in) in an earlier post, it doesn't matter how many cell phones there are. You can track how quickly they move from one cell to another, and know if traffic is jammed or not on a specified area of highway.
It isn't the number of cell phones, it is how fast they move from cell to cell -- thus telling you the speed that traffic is moving on that section of highway. Estimating the number of cars and trucks in the traffic jam is an exercise left up to the reader...
There are, but somebody has to pay to purchase and install such equipment. Monitoring cell phone use on a busy highway is cheaper, the equipment already exists wherever there are cell phone networks.
Yes, those were the times without TiVo, NetFlix, Personal Computers, or Slashdot. Instead of watching TV and movies for two hours a day, and playing on-line FPS games for two hours, and reading Slashdot for three hours, they read and wrote letters -- with no spell checker no less.
They also, probably, didn't have jobs that required them to sit at a desk looking at dumps and C++ code for 8 hours a day.
No. It's like saying that an ATM should be programmed to accept or reject your pin number, and not leave it up to the whims of someone else who uses the ATM.
This is the most asinine thing I've read in a long time. If you cannot program the rule into the game, then the rule is subjective, arbitrary, or ambiguous... or you're just not a very good programmer.
Gee, could we post a link to the server here? -- Uhhh... so we all can get the information first hand, yeah...
No... he shouldn't have been able to create the name in the first place if it violated the rules -- if the rules cannot be programmed into the game, then they should not be "enforced" by plebes.
I guess that the people at the Onion aren't creative enough to make up a satirical seal...
Uhh.. that would be all of them. If you're reading this page, then your browser is interpreting invalid HTML 4.01.
If you would like to try an experiment to prove it, then do a "View Source" on this page and then save it off as "test.htm". Then upload and validate it here http://validator.w3.org/file-upload.html
I would guess that you decided that it was the web browser's fault, when you thought that IE would interpret invalid HTML while FireFox wouldn't, but it turns out that FireFox interprets invalid HTML too.
Most web pages are invalid HTML, or XHTML, or DHTML, or whatever the W3C is calling the latest version of it.
You can try validating other sites here http://validator.w3.org/detailed.html, you can just enter the URL.
I think that the blame for allowing this particular exploit lies in both camps -- but the blame for creating the problem was the authors.
Slashdot now blocks you from checking it's site using the validator.... Not long ago though, (when it switched to HTML 4.01) it did allow it, and none of the Slashdot pages I checked passed validation.
Oh... and this invalid HTML renders just fine in FireFox, as well as pretty much any other browser.
XHTML requires closing tags on all non-empty elements. See http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/REC-xhtml1-20020801/#h-4 .3
But XHTML does require closing tags on all non-empty elements. See http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/REC-xhtml1-20020801/#h-4 .3
Yes. I don't think anyone was saying that using p2p causes people to buy music online... or that buying music online causes people to use p2p. This isn't causality (or causation), just correlation. What it shows is that those who use p2p, are also likely to be the customers of purveyors of online music. Not that one causes the other. Of course the study could have other flaws or reasons to not take it seriously -- who commissioned it?
What they are implying is that being Canadian causes people to have poor moral standards... Now who can argue with that?
Gee, that's not what she told me...
And clicking on the "next" button is somehow more interactive than clicking on the scroll bar?
It doesn't. The EULA says that it doesn't and that you have to make that determination yourself. It only deletes what you tell it to delete. The EULA also says it may not find everything.
I'd guess that he has already been informed, as Netcraft is already blocking the site.
I think you meant "just-of-age", that is 18 or older.
But yes, I suppose it is a waste of my time to watch those commercials, drooling over the young female singer, when she could be my daughter and I probably wouldn't even have a chance with her mother....
Ohhh.... you mean like O.J. No? Like Michael Jackson then. Rodney King?
That depends on your point of view -- I would think that "survival of the not so fittest" weakens our species as a whole, and thus weakens society. Or that survival of these people just means more mouths to feed -- the mouths of people who are probably non-productive people due to their illnesses.
Who is to decide what benefits society?
We need to remember, that business is not in business to benefit society, but to benefit business.
Tell that to Rosie O'Donnel's kids...
Why? Where you conceived in a garden by the Brussels Sprouts on a pile of some fertilizer?