ICANN has become a trade association for domain registrars. Which isn't surprising; they're the ones that pay it money.
A big problem is that registrars are allowed to speculate in domain names. ICANN has the power to prohibit this (see section 4.2 of the Registrar Agreement) but has not done so. To speculate in domain names, it helps to be a registrar, which isn't that expensive. ICANN's pricing starts at $4000/year. As a result, there are now about 800 "registrars", most of which are fronts for domain speculators. Most of them don't register domains for others at all.
As a result, ICANN's constituency is now composed primarily of typosquatting slimeballs.
That's why we're in this mess.
This sounds like a variation on self-sealing gas tanks, which were first used widely on World War II aircraft.
It's not all that hard to make earthquake-resistant buildings. You just have to have materials and joints with tensile strength. Steel frame buildings are seldom damaged by earthquakes. Wooden buildings with metal plates reinforcing the joints hold up well. Reinforced concrete does fine if there's enough rebar in the right places and the rebar is welded together.
It was way past time to get rid of the 16-bit subsystem. It's been 12 years since Windows 95, after all.
NT 3.51 let you install without the 16-bit subsystem and the OS/2 subsystem. Even back in 1997, you could run without the 16-bit subsystem. I used to install NT 3.51 that way, for greater security.
A decade ago, the major commercial applications worked without the 16-bit subsystem.
Most of the applications people that don't run under Vista for security reasons are just broken. It's useful to flush out all those old programs that do things they shouldn't.
Much of what's in there is the classic telco dream - virtual circuits, charged by usage. What's being proposed is not the next Internet. It's the next ISDN.
Remember what went wrong with ISDN in the United States. The US telcos tried to use it as a way to get away from flat-rate pricing for local voice calls. That made it a non-starter for voice. The data pricing was so high it wasn't even feasible for data in the era of dial-up.
"Flows as first-class citizens. One innovation that we believe to be important is
the recognition of flows in the network. We believe flows should be treated as
first-class citizens, perhaps replacing the packet as the predominant unit for
manipulation inside switches and routers." Virtual circuits. They're BAACK. The excuse is congestion control. The real reason is billing.
"The current
Internet has not converged on a balance between regulation and competition; observe, for
example, the fact that six of the seven largest national ISPs in 2002 have since undergone
corporate restructuring. They are simply not profitable." Ah, now the agenda appears - find some way to reduce buyer power and increase prices. That's what this is really all about. Overall, the communications industry is in better shape than the airline industry or the auto industry.
"The Internet provides no support for determining the value of a packet to the sender, receiver, or service provider." That's what telcos really want, especially the wireless ones, who just love how much they can overcharge on a per-bit basis for SMS messages.
"Finally, the lack of
economic primitives in the current Internet makes charging for traffic, and micropayments
in particular, a challenge to implement." Telco thinking again. Ever notice how all the enthusiasm for micropayments is from people who want to collect them? There's nobody running around saying "If only I could send 5 cents to anybody I wanted..."
From their own words, the agenda is clear - create a billable Internet where the price of each service can be cranked up by the service provider to the point that maximizes the provider's revenue.
There are times when I'm embarrassed that I graduated from Stanford computer science. This is one of them.
This news release seems to have been timed to divert attention from a bigger issue.
Herb Greenberg points out that
the iPhone is in trouble. A late iPhone is a real problem for Apple, because the other phone vendors aren't standing still. Apple could get into the position Sony finds itself with the PS3 - last to market at the highest price.
Driving is just a minor issue. The big "cop exemption" involves evasion of the Domestic Violence Offender Gun Ban by cops. This prohibits any gun ownership or possession in the US by anyone convicted of domestic violence.
Including cops and soldiers.
The Army has faced up to this. A domestic violence conviction for a soldier means no more access to small arms. (Aircraft, artillery, and other big stuff are still OK.) But many police departments are really lax about this. Nationally, about 60,000 cops should have lost their jobs when that restriction became law in 1996, but to date, only a few hundred actually have. However, at least it's usually checked when hiring new cops, and gradually, departments are coming around. Even the Fraternal Order of Police finally gave up fighting this.
When Mark Pinto of Applied Materials spoke at Stanford in EE380 two weeks ago, he said that the current energy payback time on their solar panels is two years, and they're trying to get that down to six months. Some of the fab steps borrowed from semiconductor processing, where the areas
aren't so large, can be improved.
This is just another overlay on Google Earth by a third party, right? It doesn't seem to be in the standard Google Earth. I'm looking at downtown Nyala in Google Earth now, and I'm not seeing any special markings.
There may not be any Google involvement with this at all.
However, one should design a new CPU architecture based on a software model, not the other way around as was done with the CELL cpu.
Agreed. The Cell "build it and they will come" attitude isn't working. Although if you had maybe 16MB per CPU, instead of 0.5MB, it might work.
The biggest problem in the computer industry right now is not speed. It's software unreliability.
If anybody cared about software reliability, C and C++ would have been fixed by now.
We know how to make reliable software. Tandem had that problem nailed by 1980. We even know how to make secure software. But users will pick animated cursors over mandatory security.
This thing works a lot like a piezoelectric fire-starter. I think that 4W/cc potential output power is a peak, not continuous. This may have specialized uses, like powering wristwatches, but it's not a major power source.
Gmail, like SpamCop, has a group spam filter system. It looks at mail sent to a large number of recipients. The defining characteristic of spam is that it's sent to a large number of recipients, after all. If you're in a position to watch the incoming mail of a few million mailboxes, detecting spam is easy.
Yes, if we had "alt.binaries.music.riaa.top40" we could probably cut the world's P2P load in half. At least.
It might be a good move for the RIAA members to do that. They pay radio stations to play the stuff. Why not cut out the middleman and ship direct to consumers?
We may be headed for an era where top-40 music is free, but ad-supported.
This is just an illustration of the fact that P2P is an incredibly inefficient way of transferring files around. Most of the material is not only pirated, but a big fraction of the pirated material is the same stuff. P2P "peers" aren't necessarily nearby, either in a physical or bandwidth sense. So huge amounts of bandwidth are being spent shipping the same stuff around.
If it weren't for the piracy issue, the daily output of the RIAA, which is a few gigabytes, could be distributed efficiently by putting MP3s in a Usenet group. With Usenet's distribution mechanism, which is a flooding P2P system, nothing travels over a path more than once.
I envision conversations with your auto dealer now. "Yes sir we understand that the cars brake system locks up randomly, but the CPU manufacturer has assured us that they will be releasing a new patch that might fix the problem in just a few months."
Chrysler just did that. Over 60,000 vehicles had to be recalled for a software upgrade to the braking and stability control system.
Manufacturer : DAIMLERCHRYSLER CORPORATION
NHTSA CAMPAIGN ID Number : 06V493000
Mfr's Report Date : DEC 22, 2006
Component: SERVICE BRAKES, HYDRAULIC:ANTILOCK:CONTROL UNIT/MODULE
Potential Number Of Units Affected : 50665
CHRYSLER / 300 2007
CHRYSLER / SEBRING 2007
DODGE / CALIBER 2007
DODGE / CHARGER 2007
DODGE / MAGNUM 2007
DODGE / NITRO 2007
JEEP / COMMANDER 2007
JEEP / COMPASS 2007
JEEP / GRAND CHEROKEE 2007
JEEP / LIBERTY 2007
JEEP / WRANGLER 2007
Summary: ON CERTAIN VEHICLES, THE ANTILOCK BRAKE SYSTEM (ABS) CONTROL MODULE SOFTWARE MAY CAUSE THE REAR BRAKES TO LOCK UP DURING CERTAIN BRAKING CONDITIONS.
Consequence: THIS COULD RESULT IN A LOSS OF VEHICLE CONTROL AND CAUSE A CRASH WITHOUT WARNING.
Remedy:
DEALERS WILL REPROGRAM THE ABS ELECTRONIC CONTROL UNIT. THE RECALL BEGAN ON FEBRUARY 19, 2007. OWNERS MAY CONTACT DAIMLERCHRYSLER AT 1-800-853-1403.
Without better certification standards, it won't help.
The SSL certificate industry has created something of a mess. In the beginning, it was reasonably hard to get an SSL certificate; you actually had to demonstrate business existence. Standards have since declined considerably.
We've been doing some automatic SSL certificate checking, and we keep finding dirty laundry. State name instead of ZIP code in the "postal code" field. Even incorrect corporate registration numbers in "extended validation" certificates. And this is in certificates where the information has supposedly been validated by the issuer. One major certificate issuer, asked about this, replied "That's what the customer put there", which gives a hint as to the amount of "checking" going on.
"Domain only" certificates, with no business address, have essentially no value. They shouldn't even turn on the lock icon in browsers.
"Extended validation" certificates actually have what ought to be a decent validation system, but they're incredibly overpriced. $1000 per year is overpriced, considering that all they're doing is validating corporate identity.
It's not that hard to do this right. The way it should work is that, when someone signs up for a SSL certificate of any kind, they have to give the business identity of the business. That's looked up in the appropriate government records, and a passcode is sent by mail to the address associated with the business. For a corporation, the address for service of process is used, which gets it to the company's attorneys. Issuance of the SSL certificate should only happen once that passcode has been entered. This is cheap to do. You need a physical mailing operation, but that can be outsourced easily to any major direct mail firm. For Extended Validation certificates, use FedEx or registered mail, so delivery confirmation comes back.
In fact, domain registration should work like that. When you register a domain, you should get postal mail back with an authorization code, and the domain doesn't go into DNS until that authorization code is input. If you're in a hurry, you can pay extra and get the authorization code sent by FedEx Overnight. This should add about $3 to the cost of registering a domain, and the Whois data would get much better.
If we can get the certificate mess under control, the next step is something in the browser's user interface that prevents putting a credit card number, recognized by its format, into a form field unless the page is secure. That might be worth putting in Firefox.
Meanwhile, over at SiteTruth, we're trying to attack this problem via search rating: lack of valid business identity + selling something = low ranking. We're still at the proof of concept stage, but it looks promising.
I know I've heard the same gunshot noise in 500 movies and video games,
There's an infamous ricochet sound that's appeared in dozens of movies. I once went to a talk by an audio guy from Lucasfilm who showed a collection of about thirty short clips from movies made over several decades, all with the same ricochet sound. It was recorded in the 1940s, used heavily during the Western movie and TV boom of the 1950s, and picked up from old Westerns in later years.
That's an awful web site. Take a look at this page. The Google logo appears with the wrong background color. Another company logo appears with the wrong background color and bad clipping. Stupid slogan: "It's all about results". There's terrible copy, like: "Dale and Thomas plans to use Google Website Optimizer for multivariate testing from now on, from logo results, to which headlines prompt higher conversion rates, to whether a Peanut Butter and White Chocolate DrizzleCorn(TM) picture sells more popcorn than a Toffee Crunch DrizzleCorn(TM) image." That's not even a sentence.
This looks like an amateur eBay "seller"'s first web site. It's embarassing for Google. They're losing their touch.
Worse, Google used to disfavor "landing pages" and "doorway pages" in search ranking. Now, this part of Google is telling people to use them. This raises some questions.
Disclaimer: everything I am saying below is common sense and I am posting as an individual, not on behalf of ReputationDefender, despite my affiliation with the company. And I'm definitely not qualified or authorized to make legal comments about a User Agreement.
"As an attorney, there are several troubling issues with this start-up. Since the trigger for removal of negative information is that information being slanderous/libelous, determining what is slanderous/libelous is in the realm of legal practitioners not corporate entities. This may mean that the start-up could be practicing law without a license. Certainly, issuing any "cease and desist" letters on behalf of 3rd parties would have to prepared by attorneys, and these attorneys would not be able to be part of ReputationDefender's staff.
Taking all of the above into consideration, the cost of services rendered by outside counsel would most likely fall out of the price of $15.95 per monthly subscription, making ReputationDefender destined to the great web 2.0 graveyard. (Assuming they don't get charged with practicing law without a license first)"
They become your legal agent. But not your attorney. "You authorize us to be your privacy advocates. In this role, we might contact third parties, including creators of unwelcome content, hosts of unwelcome content, and other parties who might have control or authority over such content. You authorize us to take such action on your behalf, and to identify ourselves as acting on your behalf. You recognize that such contact may have unpredictable side-effects, including but not limited to negative responses from others. We are not your lawyer and cannot dispense legal advice, nor does this Agreement or the Services create any attorney-client relationship or legal representation."
Then they try to escape any liability: "You agree that you will hold harmless ReputationDefender, Inc., and its officers, directors, and employees, from all claims arising out of or related to your access or use of, or your inability to access or use, ReputationDefender's services, this Web site, or the information contained in this Web site or other web sites to which it is linked."
As your authorized agent, if they do something they shouldn't, you are liable. That's what "agent" means, legally. ReputationDefender doesn't take responsibility for its own actions. That's a dangerous position to be in contractually.
Usually the people you might let be your agent, in the legal sense, are regulated in some way. Realtors, stockbrokers, accountants, private detectives, employment agents, and lawyers may act as your agent. But those are all regulated businesses, for good reasons. Such people take on liability and usually carry insurance coverage. There are established guidelines for what people in those fields can and can't do. That's not the case here. ReputationDefender, which is unregulated, wants you to take the responsibility for their actions, while being rather vague about what those actions might be. This is an open-ended risk.
It would be a very good idea to consult a lawyer before signing up with ReputationDefender.
1) Since when does "dead" mean a company that is no longer feared? True, MS has lost it's fear factor, but that is nothing like being dead. "Dead" means dead, as in SCO.
Our definition of "dead", for Downside, was "stockholders have lost 90% of their investment." Microsoft hasn't reached that point. Although, of course, the company behind Slashdot, VA Systems, has.
The page being linked to has so much advertising-related dreck that it uses 8-12% of the CPU just sitting there. Much more if you move the mouse over it. And that's with popup blocking. There's ad-related Javascript on that page for at least five different ad systems: "Rojackpot", "Google Syndication", "PriceGrabber", "Extreme-DM.com", and "AdSolution". Plus attempts to get the article onto Digg and Reddit.
The article content sucks, too. They don't understand the WHQL process, and don't give any real insight into whether it is broken. It's just a page of junk content intended to fool blogs like Slashdot into feeding them traffic. And Slashdot's "editors" fell for it.
Slashdot Mirror
It's worse than that. And it's all ICANN's fault.
ICANN has become a trade association for domain registrars. Which isn't surprising; they're the ones that pay it money.
A big problem is that registrars are allowed to speculate in domain names. ICANN has the power to prohibit this (see section 4.2 of the Registrar Agreement) but has not done so. To speculate in domain names, it helps to be a registrar, which isn't that expensive. ICANN's pricing starts at $4000/year. As a result, there are now about 800 "registrars", most of which are fronts for domain speculators. Most of them don't register domains for others at all.
As a result, ICANN's constituency is now composed primarily of typosquatting slimeballs. That's why we're in this mess.
It's Roland the Plogger again.
This sounds like a variation on self-sealing gas tanks, which were first used widely on World War II aircraft.
It's not all that hard to make earthquake-resistant buildings. You just have to have materials and joints with tensile strength. Steel frame buildings are seldom damaged by earthquakes. Wooden buildings with metal plates reinforcing the joints hold up well. Reinforced concrete does fine if there's enough rebar in the right places and the rebar is welded together.
It was way past time to get rid of the 16-bit subsystem. It's been 12 years since Windows 95, after all.
NT 3.51 let you install without the 16-bit subsystem and the OS/2 subsystem. Even back in 1997, you could run without the 16-bit subsystem. I used to install NT 3.51 that way, for greater security. A decade ago, the major commercial applications worked without the 16-bit subsystem.
Most of the applications people that don't run under Vista for security reasons are just broken. It's useful to flush out all those old programs that do things they shouldn't.
Much of what's in there is the classic telco dream - virtual circuits, charged by usage. What's being proposed is not the next Internet. It's the next ISDN.
Remember what went wrong with ISDN in the United States. The US telcos tried to use it as a way to get away from flat-rate pricing for local voice calls. That made it a non-starter for voice. The data pricing was so high it wasn't even feasible for data in the era of dial-up.
The Stanford "clean slate" document is basically "ISDN 2.0". Or, at the bulk level, "ATM 2.0".
From their own words, the agenda is clear - create a billable Internet where the price of each service can be cranked up by the service provider to the point that maximizes the provider's revenue.
There are times when I'm embarrassed that I graduated from Stanford computer science. This is one of them.
This news release seems to have been timed to divert attention from a bigger issue. Herb Greenberg points out that the iPhone is in trouble. A late iPhone is a real problem for Apple, because the other phone vendors aren't standing still. Apple could get into the position Sony finds itself with the PS3 - last to market at the highest price.
Driving is just a minor issue. The big "cop exemption" involves evasion of the Domestic Violence Offender Gun Ban by cops. This prohibits any gun ownership or possession in the US by anyone convicted of domestic violence.
Including cops and soldiers.
The Army has faced up to this. A domestic violence conviction for a soldier means no more access to small arms. (Aircraft, artillery, and other big stuff are still OK.) But many police departments are really lax about this. Nationally, about 60,000 cops should have lost their jobs when that restriction became law in 1996, but to date, only a few hundred actually have. However, at least it's usually checked when hiring new cops, and gradually, departments are coming around. Even the Fraternal Order of Police finally gave up fighting this.
When Mark Pinto of Applied Materials spoke at Stanford in EE380 two weeks ago, he said that the current energy payback time on their solar panels is two years, and they're trying to get that down to six months. Some of the fab steps borrowed from semiconductor processing, where the areas aren't so large, can be improved.
This is just another overlay on Google Earth by a third party, right? It doesn't seem to be in the standard Google Earth. I'm looking at downtown Nyala in Google Earth now, and I'm not seeing any special markings.
There may not be any Google involvement with this at all.
However, one should design a new CPU architecture based on a software model, not the other way around as was done with the CELL cpu.
Agreed. The Cell "build it and they will come" attitude isn't working. Although if you had maybe 16MB per CPU, instead of 0.5MB, it might work.
The biggest problem in the computer industry right now is not speed. It's software unreliability.
If anybody cared about software reliability, C and C++ would have been fixed by now.
We know how to make reliable software. Tandem had that problem nailed by 1980. We even know how to make secure software. But users will pick animated cursors over mandatory security.
I thought this was covered on Slashdot next week.
This thing works a lot like a piezoelectric fire-starter. I think that 4W/cc potential output power is a peak, not continuous. This may have specialized uses, like powering wristwatches, but it's not a major power source.
Yeah- I'm waiting to see algorithmically generated spam where no two messages are alike.
We've had that for years. The latest variant is in those Viagra spams with a faint pattern of background noise in the images, different for each spam.
Gmail, like SpamCop, has a group spam filter system. It looks at mail sent to a large number of recipients. The defining characteristic of spam is that it's sent to a large number of recipients, after all. If you're in a position to watch the incoming mail of a few million mailboxes, detecting spam is easy.
Yes, if we had "alt.binaries.music.riaa.top40" we could probably cut the world's P2P load in half. At least.
It might be a good move for the RIAA members to do that. They pay radio stations to play the stuff. Why not cut out the middleman and ship direct to consumers?
We may be headed for an era where top-40 music is free, but ad-supported.
This is just an illustration of the fact that P2P is an incredibly inefficient way of transferring files around. Most of the material is not only pirated, but a big fraction of the pirated material is the same stuff. P2P "peers" aren't necessarily nearby, either in a physical or bandwidth sense. So huge amounts of bandwidth are being spent shipping the same stuff around.
If it weren't for the piracy issue, the daily output of the RIAA, which is a few gigabytes, could be distributed efficiently by putting MP3s in a Usenet group. With Usenet's distribution mechanism, which is a flooding P2P system, nothing travels over a path more than once.
I envision conversations with your auto dealer now. "Yes sir we understand that the cars brake system locks up randomly, but the CPU manufacturer has assured us that they will be releasing a new patch that might fix the problem in just a few months."
Chrysler just did that. Over 60,000 vehicles had to be recalled for a software upgrade to the braking and stability control system.
Manufacturer : DAIMLERCHRYSLER CORPORATION
NHTSA CAMPAIGN ID Number : 06V493000
Mfr's Report Date : DEC 22, 2006
Component: SERVICE BRAKES, HYDRAULIC:ANTILOCK:CONTROL UNIT/MODULE
Potential Number Of Units Affected : 50665
- CHRYSLER / 300 2007
- CHRYSLER / SEBRING 2007
- DODGE / CALIBER 2007
- DODGE / CHARGER 2007
- DODGE / MAGNUM 2007
- DODGE / NITRO 2007
- JEEP / COMMANDER 2007
- JEEP / COMPASS 2007
- JEEP / GRAND CHEROKEE 2007
- JEEP / LIBERTY 2007
- JEEP / WRANGLER 2007
Summary:ON CERTAIN VEHICLES, THE ANTILOCK BRAKE SYSTEM (ABS) CONTROL MODULE SOFTWARE MAY CAUSE THE REAR BRAKES TO LOCK UP DURING CERTAIN BRAKING CONDITIONS.
Consequence:
THIS COULD RESULT IN A LOSS OF VEHICLE CONTROL AND CAUSE A CRASH WITHOUT WARNING.
Remedy:
DEALERS WILL REPROGRAM THE ABS ELECTRONIC CONTROL UNIT.
THE RECALL BEGAN ON FEBRUARY 19, 2007. OWNERS MAY CONTACT DAIMLERCHRYSLER AT 1-800-853-1403.
Is there a supported hardware list? On what hardware does WiFi work?
Without better certification standards, it won't help.
The SSL certificate industry has created something of a mess. In the beginning, it was reasonably hard to get an SSL certificate; you actually had to demonstrate business existence. Standards have since declined considerably.
We've been doing some automatic SSL certificate checking, and we keep finding dirty laundry. State name instead of ZIP code in the "postal code" field. Even incorrect corporate registration numbers in "extended validation" certificates. And this is in certificates where the information has supposedly been validated by the issuer. One major certificate issuer, asked about this, replied "That's what the customer put there", which gives a hint as to the amount of "checking" going on.
"Domain only" certificates, with no business address, have essentially no value. They shouldn't even turn on the lock icon in browsers.
"Extended validation" certificates actually have what ought to be a decent validation system, but they're incredibly overpriced. $1000 per year is overpriced, considering that all they're doing is validating corporate identity.
It's not that hard to do this right. The way it should work is that, when someone signs up for a SSL certificate of any kind, they have to give the business identity of the business. That's looked up in the appropriate government records, and a passcode is sent by mail to the address associated with the business. For a corporation, the address for service of process is used, which gets it to the company's attorneys. Issuance of the SSL certificate should only happen once that passcode has been entered. This is cheap to do. You need a physical mailing operation, but that can be outsourced easily to any major direct mail firm. For Extended Validation certificates, use FedEx or registered mail, so delivery confirmation comes back.
In fact, domain registration should work like that. When you register a domain, you should get postal mail back with an authorization code, and the domain doesn't go into DNS until that authorization code is input. If you're in a hurry, you can pay extra and get the authorization code sent by FedEx Overnight. This should add about $3 to the cost of registering a domain, and the Whois data would get much better.
If we can get the certificate mess under control, the next step is something in the browser's user interface that prevents putting a credit card number, recognized by its format, into a form field unless the page is secure. That might be worth putting in Firefox.
Meanwhile, over at SiteTruth, we're trying to attack this problem via search rating: lack of valid business identity + selling something = low ranking. We're still at the proof of concept stage, but it looks promising.
I know I've heard the same gunshot noise in 500 movies and video games,
There's an infamous ricochet sound that's appeared in dozens of movies. I once went to a talk by an audio guy from Lucasfilm who showed a collection of about thirty short clips from movies made over several decades, all with the same ricochet sound. It was recorded in the 1940s, used heavily during the Western movie and TV boom of the 1950s, and picked up from old Westerns in later years.
That's an awful web site. Take a look at this page. The Google logo appears with the wrong background color. Another company logo appears with the wrong background color and bad clipping. Stupid slogan: "It's all about results". There's terrible copy, like: "Dale and Thomas plans to use Google Website Optimizer for multivariate testing from now on, from logo results, to which headlines prompt higher conversion rates, to whether a Peanut Butter and White Chocolate DrizzleCorn(TM) picture sells more popcorn than a Toffee Crunch DrizzleCorn(TM) image." That's not even a sentence.
This looks like an amateur eBay "seller"'s first web site. It's embarassing for Google. They're losing their touch.
Worse, Google used to disfavor "landing pages" and "doorway pages" in search ranking. Now, this part of Google is telling people to use them. This raises some questions.
Disclaimer: everything I am saying below is common sense and I am posting as an individual, not on behalf of ReputationDefender, despite my affiliation with the company. And I'm definitely not qualified or authorized to make legal comments about a User Agreement.
Right.
So here's a blog comment by a lawyer:
"As an attorney, there are several troubling issues with this start-up. Since the trigger for removal of negative information is that information being slanderous/libelous, determining what is slanderous/libelous is in the realm of legal practitioners not corporate entities. This may mean that the start-up could be practicing law without a license. Certainly, issuing any "cease and desist" letters on behalf of 3rd parties would have to prepared by attorneys, and these attorneys would not be able to be part of ReputationDefender's staff.
Taking all of the above into consideration, the cost of services rendered by outside counsel would most likely fall out of the price of $15.95 per monthly subscription, making ReputationDefender destined to the great web 2.0 graveyard. (Assuming they don't get charged with practicing law without a license first)"
The ReputationDefender user agreement looks dangerous.
They become your legal agent. But not your attorney. "You authorize us to be your privacy advocates. In this role, we might contact third parties, including creators of unwelcome content, hosts of unwelcome content, and other parties who might have control or authority over such content. You authorize us to take such action on your behalf, and to identify ourselves as acting on your behalf. You recognize that such contact may have unpredictable side-effects, including but not limited to negative responses from others. We are not your lawyer and cannot dispense legal advice, nor does this Agreement or the Services create any attorney-client relationship or legal representation."
Then they try to escape any liability: "You agree that you will hold harmless ReputationDefender, Inc., and its officers, directors, and employees, from all claims arising out of or related to your access or use of, or your inability to access or use, ReputationDefender's services, this Web site, or the information contained in this Web site or other web sites to which it is linked."
As your authorized agent, if they do something they shouldn't, you are liable. That's what "agent" means, legally. ReputationDefender doesn't take responsibility for its own actions. That's a dangerous position to be in contractually.
Usually the people you might let be your agent, in the legal sense, are regulated in some way. Realtors, stockbrokers, accountants, private detectives, employment agents, and lawyers may act as your agent. But those are all regulated businesses, for good reasons. Such people take on liability and usually carry insurance coverage. There are established guidelines for what people in those fields can and can't do. That's not the case here. ReputationDefender, which is unregulated, wants you to take the responsibility for their actions, while being rather vague about what those actions might be. This is an open-ended risk.
It would be a very good idea to consult a lawyer before signing up with ReputationDefender.
Not bad for IE, are you using that on top of Vista or XP?
Firefox 2 on Windows 2000, actually.
Typical. Article about legislation without the bill number or a link to the bill text.
It's SB 328. Hearings on Tuesday in Sacramento.
1) Since when does "dead" mean a company that is no longer feared? True, MS has lost it's fear factor, but that is nothing like being dead. "Dead" means dead, as in SCO.
Our definition of "dead", for Downside, was "stockholders have lost 90% of their investment." Microsoft hasn't reached that point. Although, of course, the company behind Slashdot, VA Systems, has.
The page being linked to has so much advertising-related dreck that it uses 8-12% of the CPU just sitting there. Much more if you move the mouse over it. And that's with popup blocking. There's ad-related Javascript on that page for at least five different ad systems: "Rojackpot", "Google Syndication", "PriceGrabber", "Extreme-DM.com", and "AdSolution". Plus attempts to get the article onto Digg and Reddit.
The article content sucks, too. They don't understand the WHQL process, and don't give any real insight into whether it is broken. It's just a page of junk content intended to fool blogs like Slashdot into feeding them traffic. And Slashdot's "editors" fell for it.