An even better addition to that would be to also structure the payments by the income of the filer, that way a person could file patents for a reasonable fee, but a company would have to pay a comparable amount, for instance, Microsoft, Sun, IBM, etc. might have to pay $250 million for a patent, and a regular joe might pay $500, and so on.
So whats your argument again? That you simply don't agree? This isn't a rebuttal, its just a straw man argument. And not applying copyright to code? Again, no explanation for why this would be a jim dandy idea, just another platitude.
You'll note that BushCo is also very eager to control their little secrets, and I'd bet they'd be delighted to erase all of their email, too. The next interesting question is whether or not they can do it, given the state of modern technology. How can they make sure someone hasn't burned a CD that contains the truth?
Simple, this administration has a policy not to use e-mail. No e-mail, no records. No records, no scandals.
My understanding of the fossal record seems to align itself with those scriptures, i.e., there are explosions of species and changes in those species, but hardly any links between the "kinds".
With all due respect, that is because you really don't understand the fossil record. Transitionary forms, or "links between the kinds" as you put it, are common in the fossil record. So, to respond to your statement "This pretty much rules out reptiles evolving into mammals, etc, unless you can find a way to reconsile that" here are some cut and dry references that reconcile this non-dilema:
Fossils are also VERY rare, which explains that even though its hard to find fossils (very hard) and yet transistionary forms are COMMON in the fossil record. Case closed on this, they are all over the place and cover all the "kinds".
OK, first off, why haven't you run these scans with these open source tools yourself? And presented the results to your boss? You should be running vulnerability scans like a writer runs a spell checker. Seriously, if you aren't actively looking for holes, the bad guys will.
Second, and most importantly, no one on slashdot has any idea if the vulnerabilities your company paid to discover are indeed "mountains out of every molehill". For all we know, you just think these are molehills, when in fact they are great big huge gapping high risk holes in your enterprise. Or, they might just be molehills. The point is, we don't know. And why is this? Because only *YOUR ORGANIZATION* is the only party that can make that determination. Let me say that again, another way, a vulnerability is just that, nothing more. Its not a mountain, or a molehill, its just a fact. Its up to your organization to take those facts, the vulnerabilities that company found for your company, and apply some risk management to it. You have to make that determination with measured, careful thought. If you come at this with the pre-concieved notion that these are just molehills, you are going to get 0wn3d.
For instance, say the report found that you are running telnet. Thats a vulnerability. If you're running telnet over an out of band network, where integrity and confidentiality are not an issue for you, and you're not concerned with highjacking and other risks that telnet is exposed to - you write off that vulnerability as an acceptable risk. You apply some risk management, you can tell your boss, its not a big deal AND EXPLAIN WHY. By the same token, lets say the vulnerability scan found a remotely exploitable root/system level hole in all your internet facing web servers, which are tied to your database servers, which manage billions of dollars of other peoples money - well, again, you have to assess the risk. Is this an acceptable risk to expose yourself to? If it is, then you have to explain it as such. This is business 101. You take a risk getting up everyday just to go to work. If you want to take bigger risks, people usually demand some explanation, by the same token, if you want to dodge a risk, you need to explain yourself.
In short, the purpose of a vulnerability assessment is to find ALL the holes, not to make any determination about the risk those holes present. You need to have that information before you can do anything else. Now its YOUR JOB to step up to the plate, and look at each of those holes and explain to your boss why they are acceptable risks to take or not.
If your management is too clueless to understand this process, you are screwed and there isn't anything you can do. The fact that you asked what you can do though means they are probably willing to listen.
The bottom line is that this is the way the process works. If your company didn't ask the security firm to do a risk assessment, then someone else has to do it. A vulnerability assessment can not tell you if a risk is acceptable or not, its just going to tell you about the vulnerabilities.
Theres no requirement that entertainment by moral, deep, educating, non-offensive, non-sexual, non-violent or anything else these people complain about. So what if it is, football is vapid, violent and irrelevant, boxing is terribly violent - and its not a bunch of pixels on a screen, and yet no one is deploring the effect that has on children, professsional wrestling is clearly vapid, violent and degrading to women, and yet, it seems to have its happy followers in power as well.
This is all a bunch of nonsense to even point out the lack or this, or the lack of that in entertainment. Its a moot point. No one is being forced to watch football, boxing, professional wrestling or to play a video game. Don't want your kids to watch football? Change the channel. Don't like boxing? Don't go to a match. Do want your kids to play an ADULT game like GTA, heres an idea - don't buy it, don't let them play it, raise your own damn kids and stay out of other peoples business.
Sterling also as forgot to mention that most of the members of the U.N. are not democracries, but are instead a collection of dictatorships and monarchies. Not there is some other fantastic alternative to the U.N., but its not a legitimate organization in the same sense that another elected body would be. The U.N. isn't supposed to be a world government, its supposed to be a means to keep governments talking.
No one should surrender sovereignty over anything to the U.N., as, unfortunately, the U.N. is not a legitimate reflection of what the people of the world want. Its not a government, its not representative and there is nothing, you citizen of the world, can do if the U.N. does you wrong. You can't re-elect them or kick anyone out of the U.N.
Sterling was surely joking folks. The U.N. is possibly the last organization you want governing anything. Its not a government!
This is brought up by the Attorney's General... which are the advocates for consumer rights in the state. They do not speak for all the "citizens", thus "consumer" is the proper term, since not all "citizens" are "consumers".
I don't buy this spin. I've never heard an Attorney General refer to the citizens of his or her state exclusively as "consumers", they tend to use terms like "the citizens of the great state of NY", or "the people of this state", or "citizens". I just don't buy the line that AG's generally refer to people as "consumers". Now corporations, they always refer to people as "consumers". I think what really happened here is that the AG's got busted taking a set of industry talking points and then trying to pass them off as their own.
This letter has nothing to do with "consumers", and everything to do with "producers".
Nonsense, you don't hand over your belongings to any little twit that comes along do you? This sort of hypocracy leads to the nonsense victim culture that made 9/11 possible. Just go along with the hijackers, just cooperate and they won't hurt you!
Absolute rubbish. Its time that we all stopped pretending like nothing is worth losing your life over. Anytime you surrender control to another person, at the fear of your life, you run the risk of losing your life. Never, ever accept as a solution that you will just go along with a robbery, a kidnapping, a hijacking or anything else. Once you give up control, you will have no control over life. Its not about protecting your wallet, about its realizing that your attacker may have other ideas than just taking your stuff. They may not care at all about taking your stuff, but are really just looking for a mark to kidnap, rape, murder or whatever else they might have on their minds. The most foolish thing you can do is to presume to understand the intent and motives of a criminal. Never, ever, ever give up control to someone that is willing to use violence to get what they want from you. It may be the last action you ever take.
Its dangerous, its provably dangerous and its going to get you and the people around you killed. You have a resonsibility to do more than just go weak in the knees and hand over your life to a complete stranger.
Actually Vonage is "strictly IP to IP" when you call another vonage user. There is no POTS interconnect unless you call someone using the old POTS network. So, should someone have to pay the extra taxes if they only make IP-to-IP calls?
This is an attempt by the big commercial closed sourced companies to pass the buck, by asking the DHS to come up with "standards" to "certify" software for use in critical environments. This lets the vendor pass the buck onto the user if something goes wrong. Afterall, the government certified it, so the vendor can't possibly be to blame.
If anyone has worked with the government to get a system "certified", you may remember that the process is basically a sham. Its referred to as C&A, or Certification and Accredication. One common joke is to spell this out in spanish C y A. or Cover Your Ass, which is all the C&A process is. A government organization basically papers over all its problems, documents it, and exempts itself from doing anything really productive to protect itself. Further, the government happily gives itself a ridiculous amount of time to get its systems certified and even exempts itself when it needs to. The process can literally take years to get what is referred to as an "ATO", Approval To Operate. That is supposed to be the system can not go online without an ATO, but, HAHA the government gave itself an out - the IATO. The Interim ATO, basically a "go ahead withour the ATO" exemption, which is supposed to expire. However, when it expires, agencies can and do exempt themselves from that to. In some cases this can go over for 3 or 4 years before anyone even bothers to start the ATO process.
The point is the government is literally the last organization on earth to take seriously in this area. They don't even bother to practice what they preach, so why should anyone trust them to certify anything? Its like they can be sued for messing up. Afterall, its not their money, its the tax payers. Government certifications are rarely worth more than the paper they are printed on. Its a feel good measure, and I suspect this latest "software certification" will be much better.
The point here is that with C&As', which is not what this article was about, the whole intent is to pass the buck on to someone else. We're certified, so the problem must lie elsewhere. The issue is rarely brought up that maybe the certification is worthless.
Typically, the argument is "We met the standard, theres nothing else we could do, we did everything we were supposed to, the problem must lie elsewhere." In reality, there is plenty they could have done and this is just an exercise in equivocation. Today, we know the problem is with the vendors product, tomorrow we assume its not because its "certified". certified = secure. So all certified software must be secure. War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength and Certified is Secure. Its all a clever ploy to pass the buck.
Whats really galling is that with this "new" request by industry to get a "certification", we see the same rhetoric and old tricks back in play that vendors have used before with government security certifications. Vendors will simply look for a silly set of standards, such as with the NIAP program, common criteria and other useless certifications for software. The government, being politically controlled, and bowing to the wishes of it's financial contributors (MS, CA, BSA and other big companies), will put out a flowery and impressive sounding certification program which the industry will, in a very serious sounding tone, sigh and accept as "the right thing to do". Knowing full well that its all a big paper game, with no real liability assigned to anybody in control of the process. Its all about passing the buck.
This process will probably be much like the absurd NIAP/common criteria approach which is just an excercise in mutual mental masturbation, with the vendor claiming the product meets the standard, providing miles of paperwork to prove it, and the government being totally overworked will glance at the paper and give em a stamp, or outsource it to a company that has no choice but to certify a product with a toothless standard. Then, when the inevitable break in happens, the vendors will s
Except that you can generate a key with pseudonym. Nothing says you key has to be related to you real name and/or e-mail address, and you can use the Type II or Type III remailer networks to e-mail someone without exposing you real identity, but still keeping your "pseudonym".
Well, best of luck to you if what you say is true. But the chances of SnoCap securing rights to content from the entertainment industry is slim. Also, some of what SnoCap wants to do (I also know what they are really up to) is patented by other companies, and they still need to secure the rights to those methods. All in all, they have a very long ways to go, and the executive team has a bad track record in this market.
Actually, funding is on the rise again. Its not that hard to get funding for a new project. Nevertheless, in the present case, Sean didn't pitch this to VCs, he got one of the people that invested in Napster to invest in SnoCap. Its not suprising that he would go back to the people that invested in Napster, he knows them, they know him. Its also not suprising that the same people that thought Napster was going to work would think this would too. They were not disinterested parties in Napster. We're talking about some of the same people that ran Napster into the ground, but probably don't realize it. Sometimes people stick to their guns even after a spectacular failure like Napster.
In the present case, its possible this investment occured becayse no one learned from their mistakes, investors are sticking by their friends or they sincerely think this is a great idea. In any of these cases, this doesn't mean its going to suceed. Napster was well funded, and it failed. Funding is not an event by itself. Its a non-event, its only the very start of an idea and it has little bearing on success. So don't read too much into the fact that his idea got funded. You can literally have the greatest idea ever, but if you can't pitch it and you don't know the right people you won't get a cent. You can have a mediocre idea and if you know the right people, you can get a lot of money. Hell, you can get a ton of money and still crash and burn. It helps to fuel the engine of growth, but funding along can not make a company succeed. As they say, you cant polish a turd.
He would be better served creating a truly anonymous P2P client and charging for it. Instead, he looks to be sucking up to the people that put him out of business. WTF?
Oh please. Lets be realistic. He had a revolutionary idea in a market vacuum. He wrote some cool, useful, revolutionary software - but he is not a business genius. You can have the greatest idea on Earth, but if you can't make it into a business, then you won't make a cent of it. Sean wanted to make money, and he made nothing, nor did his investors or anyone except the lawyers.
So lets review, Sean was smart enough to let his Uncle own over 70% of the company before they had even hired one employee, smart enough to never construct a model that would generate one cent of revenue, and smart enough to let his VCs and lawyers run Napster into the ground and he's working with them again? Wow, what a plan, anyone wondering whats going to happen again?
Just to be clear, how much did you, or anyone else net from Napster? Aside from all the lawyers of course? Nothing? This is sad. Sean is a clever opportunistic programmer, but he's not a sharp businessman. He's in league with the same people that ran Napster into the ground. He's a dupe. He's being taken advantage of, at best, and he's shortsighted at worst. I for one hope he cuts the bounds, turns his back on these idiots that ruined Napster and truly does his own thing.
Don't be so quick to hand him all the credit for the implosion of Napster though. Afterall, he was surrounded by geniuses. Brilliant people that blew the chance of a lifetime and netted nothing, and convinced him it was a great idea. No doubt how they have strung him along with this one.
Don't forget, his company, unlike others in the digital music space, failed totally, so how smart is he? He didn't pull anything off except the total loss of money for all parties involved.
Yep. People pay for apple because they serve the content. With a P2P model, you have no idea what service you are going to get from a peer. The problem with the P2P pay-as-you-go model is that you have no QOS guaranteed in the model. Maybe you get the download now, maybe it takes a few days, maybe its a good recording, etc, you just don't know. Come on, for pennies you can get the music NOW!. With SnoCap you get... what? DRM crippled content? A slow P2P download? An untrustworthy company filled with people that don't care about the users or the content owners? No thanks. They don't sound like they plan to do anyone any favors
For most people, the old school P2P model works because they already paid for the bandwidth (ISP fees), they own the computer and, they don't mind waiting for the content. It didn't "cost" them anything, so let it ride. Sean is apparently not as smart as everyone thinks. This makes no sense. Napster worked because it was "free" and it was the only option at the time. Now there are many many other options, and they are vastly superior to napster, they offer other content as well (video, boosk, software, etc.), and lets be honest, Napster was a trivially simple setup: client -> server. This is a real P2P system like gnutella, kazaa, etc.. Sean invented the mainframe, someone else invented the PC of the P2P world. His ideas are ancient history and he hasn't had a new idea since then. Frankly, all he did was create a central directory for DCC IRC transfers. Neat, useful, revolutionary, but its ancient history now. There are much better options and he seems stuck in the past.
Regardless, SnoCap appears to lack the key ingredient that is needed: value. People have to see that there is a point to using it, more content, faster D/ls, quality, time not wasted, money, etc. Given the unlikeliness that Sean can convince an industry made up of technophobes with petty beefs towards him, long memories, and a history of not caring about either the artist or the consumer, SnoCaps chances of working out a good deal for all parties are slim. These are not people that play well with others, let alone their enemies: Napster founders and executives. The whole P2P revolution the recording industry believes cost them a ton of money, and is continuing to hurt them. Why on Earth would the recording industry trust someone that they believe cost them billions?
This SnoCap thing is ridiculous. You couldn't ask for a bigger joke. The users won't trust Sean because he's "sold out", he wants to build DRM on top of P2P, and the entertainment industry can't stand him or the people involved with him. Its absurd. If I didn't know any better, I would wonder if this was some big fake story for what the company is really doing. But seeing who invesnted in it, I'm not suprised. These are the same people that thought poring money into Napster, without anything close to a business model was going to net them billions. Yeah, so how is that working out for them now? Thought so.
Move along folks. This is ysterdays news. This is the the sad story of a dot-bomb crew trying to relive their glory days in the most absurd and attention grabing way possible. The industry might throw them a bone, but they have nothing to add to the current mix. iTunes and others are already doing this, and without all the mess. Its cheap, its easy, and if you don't want to even pay a few cents for your tunes, you can still get them from Kazaa, eMule and so on. Nothing to see here at all, except a sad sad attempt to try and re-invent Napster.
This seems doomed to fail. It sounds like Sean is trying to sell DRM, based on audio fingerprints, to the record labels. Several technical problems exist with such schemes, such as the ability of the fingerprint to truly fingerprint the content, and of course, the need to trust the client, amongst other problems with DRM. In short, DRM built in the client won't work.
The big elephant in the room, however, is Sean himself. It sounds like SnoCap is trying to sell a "Secure" model to the entertainment industry, from someone the industry does not trust: Sean. This doesn't bode well for the industry. This is someone the industry claims contributed to the decline of CD sales, and yet then they will turn around and work with him to prevent it? Doesn't add up. Further, if well healed security and DRM companies have not suceeded with the industry, why should SnoCap where others have failed? SnoCap doesn't even appear to have any security people on its staff, so where does it get its expertise? Can anyone say "implementation flaw"? It just doesn't add up. DRM from a company and people that don't have any experience with DRM, security or working with the entertainment industry. Yeah, they're gonna get alot of cooperation from the RIAA.
Let us not forget the fact that Sean is not well liked in the entertainement industry, nor are the former investors in Napster. These people have little hope of getting the RIAA onboard. Even if they do manage to gain some ground with the industry, its a steep climb for SnoCap to anything close to sucess.
BTW, why would you want to use a P2P client that has DRM, when you can use something like eMule, Kazaa, GNUNet or any other P2P client that doesn't? Yeah, this will do about as well as Napster would have if they had implemented DRM. Dead in the water.
it'd drive the cost of goods sky high, but it is something that society might find acceptible.
All you have to do is look at what the market is willing to pay for a product to determine if this statement is true. Consider the average wages of a US citizen, now increase the cost of just their food and clothing. Given that the average american has precious little disposable income, you would drive them into a position of having to buy less of something else, say cars, TVs, computers, day care, etc. This in turn reduces the flow of economic wealth into those industries, which requires them to cut back on costs to either maintain or prevent loss of growth. This usually leads to laying off those same average amercians.
In short, you are right, society might find it acceptable, and the answer is usually staring you in the face. What are people willing to pay for a thing? In this case, what will people pay to not feel guilty? In some cases, some people will pay anything, in others, they could care less about the people that made the product, in most cases people simply live close to the edge of their own earnings potential and they buy what they can barely afford.
There is not nearly as much slack in the average americans budget to facilitate a world that your postulate. Would it be nice? Hell yeah, it would be truly humane if everyone had the same excellent worker rights throughout the world, is it practical. No. Its sounds odd, but if that amount of economic good will existed, the market would be happily paying through the nose for "worker friendly" goods. As it is, except for some rare cases, the vast majority of consumers worldwide are not willing to pay more for goods just to ensure that the workers that made those goods are paid as much and treated as well themselves. In purely ecomonic terms, humans act to maximize their utility. In laymans terms, that means that do whatever floats their boat, no matter how mean or nice it might be. They do whatever makes them feel satisfied.
Furthermore, if you impose these sorts of costs ofnextra-american producers you are actually hurting those poor workers by reducing realized demand. Once prices become equalized, other factors kick in, such a tarrifs, taxes, transportation, etc. that may actually resort in off-shore sources being more expensive, and at the very least it increaes their costs, which means people buy less of those products. Its a delicate balance, and it comes down to a simple concept called comparative advantage. Its not fair, but it works. One simple example:
You are I grow coffee. I grow it on the edge of a n American desert, flag unfurled, 100 strapping strong good old boy American heros working for me. You, on the otherhand, grow it across the world in rich soil using cheap labor. You are able to grow tons of coffee at a fraction of the price that I can grow coffee, for me its a struggle just to turn out coffee each year, but damn do I LOVE my boys! Some years, I can't grow at all, pesky desert keeps incroaching on my fields. I really really really want to grow coffee, and my family has been doing so for 300 years, and I think its damn unfair that I can't compete with you. But that doesn't change the fact that you will likely always beat me in the market with your cheaper coffee and you will probably employ way more people than me. I'll probably go out of business. An extreme example, I admit, but it to illustrate a point: sometimes no matter how much you want to do something, you can't do it where you are at. Sometimes you have to move or find something that can do it better than you can.
The point being not that "anything goes" in the market, but rather that there isn't anything inherently unethical about comparative advantage. Its just the cold hard truth. Sometimes industries have to shut down because they can no longer compete, and their customers are not willing to pay the price for "good will". The world is not a balanced place, for all sorts of r
Slashdot Mirror
the children? Come on kids, you want to be safe don't you?
An even better addition to that would be to also structure the payments by the income of the filer, that way a person could file patents for a reasonable fee, but a company would have to pay a comparable amount, for instance, Microsoft, Sun, IBM, etc. might have to pay $250 million for a patent, and a regular joe might pay $500, and so on.
So whats your argument again? That you simply don't agree? This isn't a rebuttal, its just a straw man argument. And not applying copyright to code? Again, no explanation for why this would be a jim dandy idea, just another platitude.
Simple, this administration has a policy not to use e-mail. No e-mail, no records. No records, no scandals.
With all due respect, that is because you really don't understand the fossil record. Transitionary forms, or "links between the kinds" as you put it, are common in the fossil record. So, to respond to your statement "This pretty much rules out reptiles evolving into mammals, etc, unless you can find a way to reconsile that" here are some cut and dry references that reconcile this non-dilema:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/p art1b.html#mammTransition from synapsid reptiles to mammals
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/birds/archae opteryx.htmlArchaeopteryx lithographica
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Miller.htmlTaxon omy, Transitional Forms, and the Fossil Record
Fossils are also VERY rare, which explains that even though its hard to find fossils (very hard) and yet transistionary forms are COMMON in the fossil record. Case closed on this, they are all over the place and cover all the "kinds".
http://scienceviews.com/dinosaurs/fossilformation. htmlThe Formation of Fossils
So, you on board now?
OK, first off, why haven't you run these scans with these open source tools yourself? And presented the results to your boss? You should be running vulnerability scans like a writer runs a spell checker. Seriously, if you aren't actively looking for holes, the bad guys will.
Second, and most importantly, no one on slashdot has any idea if the vulnerabilities your company paid to discover are indeed "mountains out of every molehill". For all we know, you just think these are molehills, when in fact they are great big huge gapping high risk holes in your enterprise. Or, they might just be molehills. The point is, we don't know. And why is this? Because only *YOUR ORGANIZATION* is the only party that can make that determination. Let me say that again, another way, a vulnerability is just that, nothing more. Its not a mountain, or a molehill, its just a fact. Its up to your organization to take those facts, the vulnerabilities that company found for your company, and apply some risk management to it. You have to make that determination with measured, careful thought. If you come at this with the pre-concieved notion that these are just molehills, you are going to get 0wn3d.
For instance, say the report found that you are running telnet. Thats a vulnerability. If you're running telnet over an out of band network, where integrity and confidentiality are not an issue for you, and you're not concerned with highjacking and other risks that telnet is exposed to - you write off that vulnerability as an acceptable risk. You apply some risk management, you can tell your boss, its not a big deal AND EXPLAIN WHY. By the same token, lets say the vulnerability scan found a remotely exploitable root/system level hole in all your internet facing web servers, which are tied to your database servers, which manage billions of dollars of other peoples money - well, again, you have to assess the risk. Is this an acceptable risk to expose yourself to? If it is, then you have to explain it as such. This is business 101. You take a risk getting up everyday just to go to work. If you want to take bigger risks, people usually demand some explanation, by the same token, if you want to dodge a risk, you need to explain yourself.
In short, the purpose of a vulnerability assessment is to find ALL the holes, not to make any determination about the risk those holes present. You need to have that information before you can do anything else. Now its YOUR JOB to step up to the plate, and look at each of those holes and explain to your boss why they are acceptable risks to take or not.
If your management is too clueless to understand this process, you are screwed and there isn't anything you can do. The fact that you asked what you can do though means they are probably willing to listen.
The bottom line is that this is the way the process works. If your company didn't ask the security firm to do a risk assessment, then someone else has to do it. A vulnerability assessment can not tell you if a risk is acceptable or not, its just going to tell you about the vulnerabilities.
Theres no requirement that entertainment by moral, deep, educating, non-offensive, non-sexual, non-violent or anything else these people complain about. So what if it is, football is vapid, violent and irrelevant, boxing is terribly violent - and its not a bunch of pixels on a screen, and yet no one is deploring the effect that has on children, professsional wrestling is clearly vapid, violent and degrading to women, and yet, it seems to have its happy followers in power as well.
This is all a bunch of nonsense to even point out the lack or this, or the lack of that in entertainment. Its a moot point. No one is being forced to watch football, boxing, professional wrestling or to play a video game. Don't want your kids to watch football? Change the channel. Don't like boxing? Don't go to a match. Do want your kids to play an ADULT game like GTA, heres an idea - don't buy it, don't let them play it, raise your own damn kids and stay out of other peoples business.
http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/82e3e840a62dd614b 01cd89182c8373a/index.html/
Sterling also as forgot to mention that most of the members of the U.N. are not democracries, but are instead a collection of dictatorships and monarchies. Not there is some other fantastic alternative to the U.N., but its not a legitimate organization in the same sense that another elected body would be. The U.N. isn't supposed to be a world government, its supposed to be a means to keep governments talking. No one should surrender sovereignty over anything to the U.N., as, unfortunately, the U.N. is not a legitimate reflection of what the people of the world want. Its not a government, its not representative and there is nothing, you citizen of the world, can do if the U.N. does you wrong. You can't re-elect them or kick anyone out of the U.N. Sterling was surely joking folks. The U.N. is possibly the last organization you want governing anything. Its not a government!
I don't buy this spin. I've never heard an Attorney General refer to the citizens of his or her state exclusively as "consumers", they tend to use terms like "the citizens of the great state of NY", or "the people of this state", or "citizens". I just don't buy the line that AG's generally refer to people as "consumers". Now corporations, they always refer to people as "consumers". I think what really happened here is that the AG's got busted taking a set of industry talking points and then trying to pass them off as their own.
This letter has nothing to do with "consumers", and everything to do with "producers".
Absolute rubbish. Its time that we all stopped pretending like nothing is worth losing your life over. Anytime you surrender control to another person, at the fear of your life, you run the risk of losing your life. Never, ever accept as a solution that you will just go along with a robbery, a kidnapping, a hijacking or anything else. Once you give up control, you will have no control over life. Its not about protecting your wallet, about its realizing that your attacker may have other ideas than just taking your stuff. They may not care at all about taking your stuff, but are really just looking for a mark to kidnap, rape, murder or whatever else they might have on their minds. The most foolish thing you can do is to presume to understand the intent and motives of a criminal. Never, ever, ever give up control to someone that is willing to use violence to get what they want from you. It may be the last action you ever take.
Its dangerous, its provably dangerous and its going to get you and the people around you killed. You have a resonsibility to do more than just go weak in the knees and hand over your life to a complete stranger.
Actually Vonage is "strictly IP to IP" when you call another vonage user. There is no POTS interconnect unless you call someone using the old POTS network. So, should someone have to pay the extra taxes if they only make IP-to-IP calls?
If anyone has worked with the government to get a system "certified", you may remember that the process is basically a sham. Its referred to as C&A, or Certification and Accredication. One common joke is to spell this out in spanish C y A. or Cover Your Ass, which is all the C&A process is. A government organization basically papers over all its problems, documents it, and exempts itself from doing anything really productive to protect itself. Further, the government happily gives itself a ridiculous amount of time to get its systems certified and even exempts itself when it needs to. The process can literally take years to get what is referred to as an "ATO", Approval To Operate. That is supposed to be the system can not go online without an ATO, but, HAHA the government gave itself an out - the IATO. The Interim ATO, basically a "go ahead withour the ATO" exemption, which is supposed to expire. However, when it expires, agencies can and do exempt themselves from that to. In some cases this can go over for 3 or 4 years before anyone even bothers to start the ATO process.
The point is the government is literally the last organization on earth to take seriously in this area. They don't even bother to practice what they preach, so why should anyone trust them to certify anything? Its like they can be sued for messing up. Afterall, its not their money, its the tax payers. Government certifications are rarely worth more than the paper they are printed on. Its a feel good measure, and I suspect this latest "software certification" will be much better.
The point here is that with C&As', which is not what this article was about, the whole intent is to pass the buck on to someone else. We're certified, so the problem must lie elsewhere. The issue is rarely brought up that maybe the certification is worthless.
Typically, the argument is "We met the standard, theres nothing else we could do, we did everything we were supposed to, the problem must lie elsewhere." In reality, there is plenty they could have done and this is just an exercise in equivocation. Today, we know the problem is with the vendors product, tomorrow we assume its not because its "certified". certified = secure. So all certified software must be secure. War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength and Certified is Secure. Its all a clever ploy to pass the buck.
Whats really galling is that with this "new" request by industry to get a "certification", we see the same rhetoric and old tricks back in play that vendors have used before with government security certifications. Vendors will simply look for a silly set of standards, such as with the NIAP program, common criteria and other useless certifications for software. The government, being politically controlled, and bowing to the wishes of it's financial contributors (MS, CA, BSA and other big companies), will put out a flowery and impressive sounding certification program which the industry will, in a very serious sounding tone, sigh and accept as "the right thing to do". Knowing full well that its all a big paper game, with no real liability assigned to anybody in control of the process. Its all about passing the buck.
This process will probably be much like the absurd NIAP/common criteria approach which is just an excercise in mutual mental masturbation, with the vendor claiming the product meets the standard, providing miles of paperwork to prove it, and the government being totally overworked will glance at the paper and give em a stamp, or outsource it to a company that has no choice but to certify a product with a toothless standard. Then, when the inevitable break in happens, the vendors will s
Except that you can generate a key with pseudonym. Nothing says you key has to be related to you real name and/or e-mail address, and you can use the Type II or Type III remailer networks to e-mail someone without exposing you real identity, but still keeping your "pseudonym".
Well, best of luck to you if what you say is true. But the chances of SnoCap securing rights to content from the entertainment industry is slim. Also, some of what SnoCap wants to do (I also know what they are really up to) is patented by other companies, and they still need to secure the rights to those methods. All in all, they have a very long ways to go, and the executive team has a bad track record in this market.
Didn't say otherwise. Read the post again.
So, please, enlighten us all about what the are really up to. Of course, you'll probably just claim your signed an NDA... blah blah blah. Whatever.
In the present case, its possible this investment occured becayse no one learned from their mistakes, investors are sticking by their friends or they sincerely think this is a great idea. In any of these cases, this doesn't mean its going to suceed. Napster was well funded, and it failed. Funding is not an event by itself. Its a non-event, its only the very start of an idea and it has little bearing on success. So don't read too much into the fact that his idea got funded. You can literally have the greatest idea ever, but if you can't pitch it and you don't know the right people you won't get a cent. You can have a mediocre idea and if you know the right people, you can get a lot of money. Hell, you can get a ton of money and still crash and burn. It helps to fuel the engine of growth, but funding along can not make a company succeed. As they say, you cant polish a turd.
Because unlike the author of the article, some of us in the valley actually already knew about his newcompany. This isn't news here.
He would be better served creating a truly anonymous P2P client and charging for it. Instead, he looks to be sucking up to the people that put him out of business. WTF?
So lets review, Sean was smart enough to let his Uncle own over 70% of the company before they had even hired one employee, smart enough to never construct a model that would generate one cent of revenue, and smart enough to let his VCs and lawyers run Napster into the ground and he's working with them again? Wow, what a plan, anyone wondering whats going to happen again?
Just to be clear, how much did you, or anyone else net from Napster? Aside from all the lawyers of course? Nothing? This is sad. Sean is a clever opportunistic programmer, but he's not a sharp businessman. He's in league with the same people that ran Napster into the ground. He's a dupe. He's being taken advantage of, at best, and he's shortsighted at worst. I for one hope he cuts the bounds, turns his back on these idiots that ruined Napster and truly does his own thing.
Don't be so quick to hand him all the credit for the implosion of Napster though. Afterall, he was surrounded by geniuses. Brilliant people that blew the chance of a lifetime and netted nothing, and convinced him it was a great idea. No doubt how they have strung him along with this one.
A sad story. Pity the man.
Don't forget, his company, unlike others in the digital music space, failed totally, so how smart is he? He didn't pull anything off except the total loss of money for all parties involved.
For most people, the old school P2P model works because they already paid for the bandwidth (ISP fees), they own the computer and, they don't mind waiting for the content. It didn't "cost" them anything, so let it ride. Sean is apparently not as smart as everyone thinks. This makes no sense. Napster worked because it was "free" and it was the only option at the time. Now there are many many other options, and they are vastly superior to napster, they offer other content as well (video, boosk, software, etc.), and lets be honest, Napster was a trivially simple setup: client -> server. This is a real P2P system like gnutella, kazaa, etc.. Sean invented the mainframe, someone else invented the PC of the P2P world. His ideas are ancient history and he hasn't had a new idea since then. Frankly, all he did was create a central directory for DCC IRC transfers. Neat, useful, revolutionary, but its ancient history now. There are much better options and he seems stuck in the past.
Regardless, SnoCap appears to lack the key ingredient that is needed: value. People have to see that there is a point to using it, more content, faster D/ls, quality, time not wasted, money, etc. Given the unlikeliness that Sean can convince an industry made up of technophobes with petty beefs towards him, long memories, and a history of not caring about either the artist or the consumer, SnoCaps chances of working out a good deal for all parties are slim. These are not people that play well with others, let alone their enemies: Napster founders and executives. The whole P2P revolution the recording industry believes cost them a ton of money, and is continuing to hurt them. Why on Earth would the recording industry trust someone that they believe cost them billions?
This SnoCap thing is ridiculous. You couldn't ask for a bigger joke. The users won't trust Sean because he's "sold out", he wants to build DRM on top of P2P, and the entertainment industry can't stand him or the people involved with him. Its absurd. If I didn't know any better, I would wonder if this was some big fake story for what the company is really doing. But seeing who invesnted in it, I'm not suprised. These are the same people that thought poring money into Napster, without anything close to a business model was going to net them billions. Yeah, so how is that working out for them now? Thought so.
Move along folks. This is ysterdays news. This is the the sad story of a dot-bomb crew trying to relive their glory days in the most absurd and attention grabing way possible. The industry might throw them a bone, but they have nothing to add to the current mix. iTunes and others are already doing this, and without all the mess. Its cheap, its easy, and if you don't want to even pay a few cents for your tunes, you can still get them from Kazaa, eMule and so on. Nothing to see here at all, except a sad sad attempt to try and re-invent Napster.
The big elephant in the room, however, is Sean himself. It sounds like SnoCap is trying to sell a "Secure" model to the entertainment industry, from someone the industry does not trust: Sean. This doesn't bode well for the industry. This is someone the industry claims contributed to the decline of CD sales, and yet then they will turn around and work with him to prevent it? Doesn't add up. Further, if well healed security and DRM companies have not suceeded with the industry, why should SnoCap where others have failed? SnoCap doesn't even appear to have any security people on its staff, so where does it get its expertise? Can anyone say "implementation flaw"? It just doesn't add up. DRM from a company and people that don't have any experience with DRM, security or working with the entertainment industry. Yeah, they're gonna get alot of cooperation from the RIAA.
Let us not forget the fact that Sean is not well liked in the entertainement industry, nor are the former investors in Napster. These people have little hope of getting the RIAA onboard. Even if they do manage to gain some ground with the industry, its a steep climb for SnoCap to anything close to sucess.
BTW, why would you want to use a P2P client that has DRM, when you can use something like eMule, Kazaa, GNUNet or any other P2P client that doesn't? Yeah, this will do about as well as Napster would have if they had implemented DRM. Dead in the water.
All you have to do is look at what the market is willing to pay for a product to determine if this statement is true. Consider the average wages of a US citizen, now increase the cost of just their food and clothing. Given that the average american has precious little disposable income, you would drive them into a position of having to buy less of something else, say cars, TVs, computers, day care, etc. This in turn reduces the flow of economic wealth into those industries, which requires them to cut back on costs to either maintain or prevent loss of growth. This usually leads to laying off those same average amercians.
In short, you are right, society might find it acceptable, and the answer is usually staring you in the face. What are people willing to pay for a thing? In this case, what will people pay to not feel guilty? In some cases, some people will pay anything, in others, they could care less about the people that made the product, in most cases people simply live close to the edge of their own earnings potential and they buy what they can barely afford.
There is not nearly as much slack in the average americans budget to facilitate a world that your postulate. Would it be nice? Hell yeah, it would be truly humane if everyone had the same excellent worker rights throughout the world, is it practical. No. Its sounds odd, but if that amount of economic good will existed, the market would be happily paying through the nose for "worker friendly" goods. As it is, except for some rare cases, the vast majority of consumers worldwide are not willing to pay more for goods just to ensure that the workers that made those goods are paid as much and treated as well themselves. In purely ecomonic terms, humans act to maximize their utility. In laymans terms, that means that do whatever floats their boat, no matter how mean or nice it might be. They do whatever makes them feel satisfied.
Furthermore, if you impose these sorts of costs ofnextra-american producers you are actually hurting those poor workers by reducing realized demand. Once prices become equalized, other factors kick in, such a tarrifs, taxes, transportation, etc. that may actually resort in off-shore sources being more expensive, and at the very least it increaes their costs, which means people buy less of those products. Its a delicate balance, and it comes down to a simple concept called comparative advantage. Its not fair, but it works. One simple example:
You are I grow coffee. I grow it on the edge of a n American desert, flag unfurled, 100 strapping strong good old boy American heros working for me. You, on the otherhand, grow it across the world in rich soil using cheap labor. You are able to grow tons of coffee at a fraction of the price that I can grow coffee, for me its a struggle just to turn out coffee each year, but damn do I LOVE my boys! Some years, I can't grow at all, pesky desert keeps incroaching on my fields. I really really really want to grow coffee, and my family has been doing so for 300 years, and I think its damn unfair that I can't compete with you. But that doesn't change the fact that you will likely always beat me in the market with your cheaper coffee and you will probably employ way more people than me. I'll probably go out of business. An extreme example, I admit, but it to illustrate a point: sometimes no matter how much you want to do something, you can't do it where you are at. Sometimes you have to move or find something that can do it better than you can.
The point being not that "anything goes" in the market, but rather that there isn't anything inherently unethical about comparative advantage. Its just the cold hard truth. Sometimes industries have to shut down because they can no longer compete, and their customers are not willing to pay the price for "good will". The world is not a balanced place, for all sorts of r