Interesting - I didn't know that, I stand corrected. But then what's to stop Microsoft or AT&T building this documented protocol into their products alongside their own protocols, and having their messenger programs performing the "bridge" between the two networks?
Wouldn't this solve the problem? Or is AOL basically saying that protocol or no protocol, Microsoft and AT&T are not to connect to their servers?
Behaviour & style determine if you're a criminal
on
Caught Before the Act
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· Score: 3
This is the second post that has mentioned black trenchcoats as an image that means "potential criminal". It sounds like a stereotype, but you're not wrong.
I used to cross the English channel on the Eurotunnel a lot, and I would always be alone in my car, usually quite heavily loaded with all the junk I tended to carry back and forth between home and university.
I used to wear black clothes, I had facial hair (not a lot of it, but facial hair is a big customs no-no). And I had a lot of stamps, visas and stuff in my passport because I'd travelled a lot in obscure African countries and in Eastern Europe.
I used to get stopped all the time, and they'd check the car out thoroughly every time, with a dog sniffing around it, a little vacuum cleaner that would provide samples for analysis by a big machine, people checking the insides of the wheels, unloading all my stuff and so on.
I began drawing up theories as to why I was getting stopped so much, I'd even joke about it with the customs officials whilst they were trying to look important. I thought maybe it was because I was a single male travelling in a car, or because I'd travelled so much, or because my passport was so worn in.
The truth is, the day I decided I wanted to be clean-shaven again, they stopped searching me. Not only at the Eurotunnel, but also in Airports. I have a strong suspicion that most of the "random" checks done at the Eurotunnel are the result of the guy who checks your passport deciding you "look suspicious" and signalling this to the customs folk who then pull you over.
I wonder if they're recruited on their ability to distinguish the difference between someone who wears black and has a beard and whatever they define as a normal person, at a distance of 100 metres, or if it's part of their training package (that my taxes pay for, of course!)
I wonder what AOL hope to achieve in the long run. Their actions to date basically state that no-one other than an AOL user may send a message to AOL. In other words, no consumer choice.
Consumer choice is key - I want the choice between a number of different programs that do vaguely the same thing so that I can pick one that I like, or so that I can avoid the one owned by the company I don't like. To date, I would have avoided Microsoft's IM offering simply because it was owned by Microsoft, but now that AOL are behaving in this way, I'm not sure I want to use it at all.
They are also restricting their own users who have to install a variety of programs to communicate with people both inside and outside the AOL network, since obviously the ICQ and IM systems run by AOL will not send messages to Microsoft subscribers.
What's interesting is that they are in a clear position to take a responsible leadership position in the IM market, but instead have chosen to win the race by excluding all others from playing. This is what their actions will achieve because with the lead they have, nobody will be able to gather a sufficient customer base to get critical mass in the IM market.
Nothing good will come of this. Either for AOL or for any of the others. You don't try to create a monopoly market in this way, it's consumer-unfriendly.
I agree. It seems to me that Sun benefited from a lot of positive PR that came on the back of a general animosity to Microsoft. Sun seemed to be the "friendly" option. I don't think they actually did anything to deserve this, and so were lulled into the false sense that they must be somehow intuitively very good at PR, or that they were by definition a popular company.
Their actions seem to demonstrate a complete lack of consideration for how the IT community at large and the specific user groups they really ought to value will react.
They may be excellent at what they do, but I don't think they've ever been very good at public relations or image management. They're Ok at riding the crest of a positive wave of media attention, they frankly wallow in it, but they're no good at selling themselves when the friendly reporting isn't immediately forthcoming.
I suppose what I'm driving at is that I disagree with the "evil empire" comparisons of Sun to Microsoft. I think they're just incompetent when it comes to selling themselves. Unfortunately, in this day and age, that's unforgivable in a large corporation.
Although I wouldn't have moderated it as redundant, one of these messages (the 2nd post I think) was asking questions which were clearly answered in linked document, and the article clearly stated that you should read the linked document to understand the discussion.
Perhaps the poster wasn't repeating a previous message, but they did demonstrate that they hadn't read the article, which is probably why a moderator thought it was redundant.
Just so you know, I have so far never received moderation points, so it wasn't me!
Why does inbreeding lead to deformities? Two beautiful people who have too much mingled blood between their family trees can have a child that is lacking in ear-lobes, or much worse.
Assuming that we define what is "good" as strength, resistance to disease, good eyesight, and certain physical attributes such as no hair loss etc, won't the similarities between two people's genetic codes end up being larger than normal, given that these attributes will be inserted into each individual's DNA, or sperm and ova selected in order to ensure that the DNA within them conform to these criteria? Perhaps these similarities will be large enough to create the same effect as in-breeding were two "genetically enhanced" individuals to have children naturally?
Of course you could fix the genetic code in the new offspring to remove the traits that are caused by the inbreeding, but what that means is that you've lost the ability to have normal kids naturally!
Have I completely lost the plot or is this a legitimate risk?
I see that the article spends a considerable amount of time focusing on the new cybersquatting rules. Basically, the rules seem to state that a company's name cannot be registered as a web address by a third party if it is a registered trademark.
After reading a fair amount about the M.I.T. case, I understand why it can be considered offensive to have a validly registered net name taken from you by a big corporation. But surely this is just one aspect.
Anna Friel (a Uk actress) has a website, but it had to be hosted on a different URL than www.annafriel.co.uk because that name had been taken by a pr0n site. I think she got the URL back, and I think that any legislation that would have made that any easier is a good thing.
How should the law be formulated in order to prevent abuse of a trademark, acknowledging that big corporations have a right to market their names on the internet and protect any equity they have built up over time, whilst at the same time protecting the small company or the individual from having their web address taken from them?
Everything I read on this issue offers up a lot of criticism of the law, the big corporations, but very few proposed solutions that don't end up being to someone's detriment.
The article mentions that the bill might be used to prevent net names such as AolSucks.Com from being registered. Since that one actually exists, is there a real threat there and could the bill be used in this way?
I agree that the EU doesn't decry the methods used by the UK to supervise it's citizens - I don't think removing all of the CCTV units from London would result in a net positive outcome, since I think the diminished ability to capture criminals would outweigh the (admittedly very desirable) increase in privacy. A compromise needs to be reached. But this isn't really what concerns me here.
The thought that when I purchase an Intel chip a company somewhere should be able to track my movements and activities across the net bothers me - I don't buy snooping devices, I buy PC equipment for my own use, and I don't want hidden "loss of privacy" costs.
Returning to the original article, it says, "...an inquiry of the possible roles of the NSA and the FBI in the creation of..." That Intel should think itself in a position to impose this "remote tagging" on it's customers is worse than RealNetworks scanning our taste in music, because they can then track everything we do on the Internet. I didn't agree with the Realnetworks approach, and I agree with this even less. But lets not lose sight of the fact that this investigation is into the government agencies involvement in the fabrication of the system, and the thought that the US government should think it appropriate or permissible to start tracking my movements on the Internet in any way should concern us all.
Only a fool thinks that they have absolute privacy on the internet. Your e-mail can be read by a resourceful cracker/hacker/or system administrator. You surfing can be tracked by the same resourceful group, and because of the way that the internet works there isn't much than can be done about it.
That doesn't make it right - by your definition, a very large proportion of the Internet-aware population of the planet are fools, suffering from this loss of privacy whilst entrusting personal and business documents to the internet for safe, uncompromised delivery. Lets not think that makes it Ok for Intel, with or without their government's say-so, to embed technology into their chips that represents a further weakening of what little privacy is left.
At this point I'm finding it very hard to avoid falling back on tired "Big Brother" cliches, which means it's probably a good place to stop.
The EU is just offended that the FBI and NSA could be involved in stepping on their toes. The EU should be the only ones able to spy on residents of Europe.
You imply that the EU spies, this is not true. The motivation to protect ones own citizens from foreign snooping should be present. Were I an elected member of a local council, I would be offended enough at the thought of a foreign nation gathering data on my constituents without their explicit knowledge or authorisation that I would do something about it.
You perceive Europe as a super-government, which it isn't. Europe's four main entities, the Council, Commission, Parliament and Court of Justice, deal directly with governments and legislatures, not with individuals. They initiate, debate, pass and enforce legislation with governments - not vis-a-vis individuals.
Directives which are passed by the EU are then enacted in each of the nation states by being passed as laws in those nation states. Europe has no FBI, no CIA and no NSA - it has loose bodies that try to co-ordinate the many national forces, but these bodies are neither funded by nor answerable to the EU - rather they are multi-national initiatives in their own right.
If you were to walk/drive/bike around London you could be tracked by video surveillance equipment every step of the way. The EU is no hero for the cause of privacy.
First of all, the centre of London being covered by cameras has absolutely nothing to do with the European Union - it has everything to do with the British Government and the Police Forces in London. The EU does not spy on it's citizens, individual governments do what they want so long as it isn't illegal or they don't get caught.
The EU as a separate entity doesn't police individuals (other than - perhaps - it's employees, hence the recent resignation of the entire Commission subsequent to a report on their working practices), it has neither the resources nor the remit.
The centre of London is indeed heavily laden with CCTV cameras. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is really material for another debate, where we can discuss the balance between catching rapists, thieves and murderers, and our right to not be spied upon by our respective governments. I think it's irrelevant here because you can't compare observing someone in the street to a foreign entity (government or otherwise) tracking their activities in a medium where they believe they have privacy.
Just to add a little balance to the discussion - I've been a user of Amazon and Amazon.co.uk for a long time now - I've bought a number of items from them.
When I asked for one of my email accounts to be removed from their mailing list, I stopped receiving email from them immediately.
I have never received email from them on an account that hadn't solicited it.
I'm not saying they've never done it, but I am saying that they have behaved impeccably with respect to me, and I know very few people who dislike Spam more than I do.
Slashdot Mirror
Wouldn't this solve the problem? Or is AOL basically saying that protocol or no protocol, Microsoft and AT&T are not to connect to their servers?
I used to cross the English channel on the Eurotunnel a lot, and I would always be alone in my car, usually quite heavily loaded with all the junk I tended to carry back and forth between home and university.
I used to wear black clothes, I had facial hair (not a lot of it, but facial hair is a big customs no-no). And I had a lot of stamps, visas and stuff in my passport because I'd travelled a lot in obscure African countries and in Eastern Europe.
I used to get stopped all the time, and they'd check the car out thoroughly every time, with a dog sniffing around it, a little vacuum cleaner that would provide samples for analysis by a big machine, people checking the insides of the wheels, unloading all my stuff and so on.
I began drawing up theories as to why I was getting stopped so much, I'd even joke about it with the customs officials whilst they were trying to look important. I thought maybe it was because I was a single male travelling in a car, or because I'd travelled so much, or because my passport was so worn in.
The truth is, the day I decided I wanted to be clean-shaven again, they stopped searching me. Not only at the Eurotunnel, but also in Airports. I have a strong suspicion that most of the "random" checks done at the Eurotunnel are the result of the guy who checks your passport deciding you "look suspicious" and signalling this to the customs folk who then pull you over.
I wonder if they're recruited on their ability to distinguish the difference between someone who wears black and has a beard and whatever they define as a normal person, at a distance of 100 metres, or if it's part of their training package (that my taxes pay for, of course!)
Consumer choice is key - I want the choice between a number of different programs that do vaguely the same thing so that I can pick one that I like, or so that I can avoid the one owned by the company I don't like. To date, I would have avoided Microsoft's IM offering simply because it was owned by Microsoft, but now that AOL are behaving in this way, I'm not sure I want to use it at all.
They are also restricting their own users who have to install a variety of programs to communicate with people both inside and outside the AOL network, since obviously the ICQ and IM systems run by AOL will not send messages to Microsoft subscribers.
What's interesting is that they are in a clear position to take a responsible leadership position in the IM market, but instead have chosen to win the race by excluding all others from playing. This is what their actions will achieve because with the lead they have, nobody will be able to gather a sufficient customer base to get critical mass in the IM market.
Nothing good will come of this. Either for AOL or for any of the others. You don't try to create a monopoly market in this way, it's consumer-unfriendly.
Yet another story on compatibility and standards. It's amazing how much mileage these big companies manage to get out of a single reason to bicker.
Their actions seem to demonstrate a complete lack of consideration for how the IT community at large and the specific user groups they really ought to value will react.
They may be excellent at what they do, but I don't think they've ever been very good at public relations or image management. They're Ok at riding the crest of a positive wave of media attention, they frankly wallow in it, but they're no good at selling themselves when the friendly reporting isn't immediately forthcoming.
I suppose what I'm driving at is that I disagree with the "evil empire" comparisons of Sun to Microsoft. I think they're just incompetent when it comes to selling themselves. Unfortunately, in this day and age, that's unforgivable in a large corporation.
Perhaps the poster wasn't repeating a previous message, but they did demonstrate that they hadn't read the article, which is probably why a moderator thought it was redundant.
Just so you know, I have so far never received moderation points, so it wasn't me!
Assuming that we define what is "good" as strength, resistance to disease, good eyesight, and certain physical attributes such as no hair loss etc, won't the similarities between two people's genetic codes end up being larger than normal, given that these attributes will be inserted into each individual's DNA, or sperm and ova selected in order to ensure that the DNA within them conform to these criteria? Perhaps these similarities will be large enough to create the same effect as in-breeding were two "genetically enhanced" individuals to have children naturally?
Of course you could fix the genetic code in the new offspring to remove the traits that are caused by the inbreeding, but what that means is that you've lost the ability to have normal kids naturally!
Have I completely lost the plot or is this a legitimate risk?
Hmm. I'm not sure I agree with the premise that you can judge the right to carry a firearm with the same set of values as the right to privacy.
After reading a fair amount about the M.I.T. case, I understand why it can be considered offensive to have a validly registered net name taken from you by a big corporation. But surely this is just one aspect.
Anna Friel (a Uk actress) has a website, but it had to be hosted on a different URL than www.annafriel.co.uk because that name had been taken by a pr0n site. I think she got the URL back, and I think that any legislation that would have made that any easier is a good thing.
How should the law be formulated in order to prevent abuse of a trademark, acknowledging that big corporations have a right to market their names on the internet and protect any equity they have built up over time, whilst at the same time protecting the small company or the individual from having their web address taken from them?
Everything I read on this issue offers up a lot of criticism of the law, the big corporations, but very few proposed solutions that don't end up being to someone's detriment.
The article mentions that the bill might be used to prevent net names such as AolSucks.Com from being registered. Since that one actually exists, is there a real threat there and could the bill be used in this way?
The thought that when I purchase an Intel chip a company somewhere should be able to track my movements and activities across the net bothers me - I don't buy snooping devices, I buy PC equipment for my own use, and I don't want hidden "loss of privacy" costs.
Returning to the original article, it says, "...an inquiry of the possible roles of the NSA and the FBI in the creation of ..." That Intel should think itself in a position to impose this "remote tagging" on it's customers is worse than RealNetworks scanning our taste in music, because they can then track everything we do on the Internet. I didn't agree with the Realnetworks approach, and I agree with this even less. But lets not lose sight of the fact that this investigation is into the government agencies involvement in the fabrication of the system, and the thought that the US government should think it appropriate or permissible to start tracking my movements on the Internet in any way should concern us all.
Only a fool thinks that they have absolute privacy on the internet. Your e-mail can be read by a resourceful cracker/hacker/or system administrator. You surfing can be tracked by the same resourceful group, and because of the way that the internet works there isn't much than can be done about it.
That doesn't make it right - by your definition, a very large proportion of the Internet-aware population of the planet are fools, suffering from this loss of privacy whilst entrusting personal and business documents to the internet for safe, uncompromised delivery. Lets not think that makes it Ok for Intel, with or without their government's say-so, to embed technology into their chips that represents a further weakening of what little privacy is left.
At this point I'm finding it very hard to avoid falling back on tired "Big Brother" cliches, which means it's probably a good place to stop.
You imply that the EU spies, this is not true. The motivation to protect ones own citizens from foreign snooping should be present. Were I an elected member of a local council, I would be offended enough at the thought of a foreign nation gathering data on my constituents without their explicit knowledge or authorisation that I would do something about it.
You perceive Europe as a super-government, which it isn't. Europe's four main entities, the Council, Commission, Parliament and Court of Justice, deal directly with governments and legislatures, not with individuals. They initiate, debate, pass and enforce legislation with governments - not vis-a-vis individuals.
Directives which are passed by the EU are then enacted in each of the nation states by being passed as laws in those nation states. Europe has no FBI, no CIA and no NSA - it has loose bodies that try to co-ordinate the many national forces, but these bodies are neither funded by nor answerable to the EU - rather they are multi-national initiatives in their own right.
If you were to walk/drive/bike around London you could be tracked by video surveillance equipment every step of the way. The EU is no hero for the cause of privacy.
First of all, the centre of London being covered by cameras has absolutely nothing to do with the European Union - it has everything to do with the British Government and the Police Forces in London. The EU does not spy on it's citizens, individual governments do what they want so long as it isn't illegal or they don't get caught.
The EU as a separate entity doesn't police individuals (other than - perhaps - it's employees, hence the recent resignation of the entire Commission subsequent to a report on their working practices), it has neither the resources nor the remit.
The centre of London is indeed heavily laden with CCTV cameras. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is really material for another debate, where we can discuss the balance between catching rapists, thieves and murderers, and our right to not be spied upon by our respective governments. I think it's irrelevant here because you can't compare observing someone in the street to a foreign entity (government or otherwise) tracking their activities in a medium where they believe they have privacy.
When I asked for one of my email accounts to be removed from their mailing list, I stopped receiving email from them immediately.
I have never received email from them on an account that hadn't solicited it.
I'm not saying they've never done it, but I am saying that they have behaved impeccably with respect to me, and I know very few people who dislike Spam more than I do.