"But making these 1500 IP numbers vanish from the net -- which is exactly what happens for any provider who subscribes to the RBL -- does not stop any spam from getting through"
Isn't that a bit extreme? This may be true if you rely on them for backbone service but, I can only assume, most people use RBL to block mail, not all traffic.
Actually, I've always admired that Sony does their movies as www.sony.com/movienamehere. I don't know if they also try and get www.movienamehere.com etc but the above type of url is the one that they publish.
Sorry, but look at the picture of the ballot in question on CNN. There are huge arrows pointing to the proper locations to punch for each candidate. You would have to be serieously obtuse to find it confusing.
Hmmm. Interesting product. Besides the obvious privacy issues how about the potential for potentially harmful "pranks".
If these are so easy to create and we have a future where you can run your grocery cart through a checkout without any human intervention won't we see the equivelant of electronic "kick me" signs slapped on people?
Take a handful of lables into a store and intersperse them in the pages of a magazine, tuck them into a bag of apples, etc etc.... person goes through the check out and rings up a lot more then they've actually baught and have potentially fowled up the stores inventory.
Didn't really see much on product development in the peice, hopefully enough data can be encoded on the things to make such problems difficulut or impossible.
What other nice little tricks can we come up with for something like this?
amazon.com did but the patent in question came from the company after it was already very well established.
Protecting "on-click" wasn't about protecting their investment in the invention (such as it was) but rather was about holding back their competitors imo.
The need for such a site is indicative of the failings of the patent office and perhaps the concept of patents in general.
Do patents really serve a viable purpose anymore? It would be interesting to know what percentage of patents are held by struggling "inventors" and what percentage are held by huge multinationals who really don't need an inducement to invent. Their existance is dependent on their abilities to perform/provide servics/things to generate profit.
Perhaps we should leave patents as they are for individuals but shorten their duration by more then half for large companies. (perhaps something inbetween for small entities)
In the realms of technology and especially software the patents seem to hurt more then help.
Is it as bad in other fields? What about materials engineering and genetics? Are the same kinds of abuses occuring with the same frequency as in the technology field?
Why was this story posted? This person has no standing in the field, or any other field besides petty crime.
While the subject of the quote is worthy of discussion, couching it in terms of a quote from this guy is no different then the pandering the main stream media engages in.
Not sure of the details here, site is slashdot'd already but... if these folks are being pestered because of a db of upc's what about all the retailers out there? I thought the whole idea of the upc was to provide machine readable id's - they're not proprietary or secret. I would assume that somewhere out there there is a public list of the company identifiers.
Method of getting the data would seem to be irrelevant if it is already public knowledge.
Of course it's something you have control over. You refuse to take ads from their servers.
They go with their browser, pick it up and send it to you to put here. No problem, no fuss, no muss.
This really shouldn't be a big deal, your advertisers should realize that a healthy percentage of your readers ignore all doubleclick stuff regardless so its counter productive for them to insist that you serve them from there.
Every outfit that I've looked at so far has those two nasty clauses in their agreement... They can change the agreement at will and you are bound to the terms, and most make you responsible for discovering the change just to sweeten the deal. And they can revoke/remove/transfer the domain at will. Hopefully they would tell you they were doing that at least but I wouldn't be suprised if they don't.
Anyone have any pointers to a decent place that doesn't have these nasty aspects to their user agreements?
(The Discount Domain Registry has a little gem in their user agreement that allows they and their partners to send you announcements that will "predominately" be informative... Cheap domains with spam on the side?)
While their service looks decent they also have the offending items in their user agreement, namely, "You agree that we may, in our sole discretion, delete or transfer your domain name at any time." and they also have a clause allowing them to change the agreement at will.
15. REVOCATION. You agree that we may delete your domain name or terminate your right to use other Services if the information that you provided to register or reserve your domain name or register for other Services, or subsequently to modify it, contains false or misleading information, or conceals or omits any information we would likely consider material to our decision to register or reserve your domain name. You agree that we may, in our sole discretion, delete or transfer your domain name at any time.
imo we would be served well if the main stream press used neither of these words. Using "theif", "vandal", or "script kiddie" instead. Words have power, some folks get a charge out of being known as a "hacker" regardless of the conotation, it says to the world that they have talents and skills others do not.
Identifying someone as a "script kiddie" is prejorative, no one wants to be branded with that tag, even if you aren't sure what it means it doesn't sound good. "Pety theif" would be better then "theif" actually as it has a cheapness to it
The use of less romanticized words might actually have a bit of a chilling effect.
If you do your browsing from a windows box naviscope is very handy. Actually, though I've not tried it I believe you can allow other machines to use it as a proxy as well as the host machine. So it can take the place of junkbusters.
It's free.
It does lots of stuff. Prefetching, add blocking, dns caching, etc etc etc. Its treatment of cookies is very nice. They allow all cookies into the browser but they don't let any out. Unless you specifically allow a given site to retrieve them. Its very effective and you don't have to restart it every time you add/remove sites.
I would rather have all this functionality built into the browsers but until that becomes a viable choice, this is, as I said, a handy tool.
Although Walnut Creek supported FreeBSD they did not "own" it. Therefore BSDi+Walnut Creek don't currently own it either. What we can look forward to as FreeBSD users is enhanced support as they now have an even larger supporter who is bringing some nice items to the table.
And if it doesn't turn out to be good news... well then there is the beauty of the BSDL... Another group can form and pick up from where the current group leaves off.
The simplest solution to this whole mess is to make it impossible to transfer a name.
You pick up a name, first come first serve, you don't want it any longer the name is retired for at least six months and then at some random time after that it becomes available again on a first come first server basis.
Careful shopping can do wonders. Some things are hard to know just by comparing offerings unfortunatley. IMO one of the most important features you want to look for in a web hosting outfit is customer service and accessibility.
For what its worth we've had very good luck with World Wide Mart. Good prices, good equipment, excellent reseller package, good connections and very good customer service.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't that a bit extreme? This may be true if you rely on them for backbone service but, I can only assume, most people use RBL to block mail, not all traffic.
Actually, I've always admired that Sony does their movies as www.sony.com/movienamehere. I don't know if they also try and get www.movienamehere.com etc but the above type of url is the one that they publish.
Strange, I was always under the impression that the senatorial power was balanced out by the house who's number are determined by population.
Sorry, but look at the picture of the ballot in question on CNN. There are huge arrows pointing to the proper locations to punch for each candidate. You would have to be serieously obtuse to find it confusing.
58% is an overwhelming majority? I suppose compared to this years election it would seem so but in reality that's hardly overwhelming.
You see it all the time in adult life as well as in school. You most definitely see it on-line.
Is there anyone that hasn't witnessed it on mailing lists, message boards or games?
If these are so easy to create and we have a future where you can run your grocery cart through a checkout without any human intervention won't we see the equivelant of electronic "kick me" signs slapped on people?
Take a handful of lables into a store and intersperse them in the pages of a magazine, tuck them into a bag of apples, etc etc.... person goes through the check out and rings up a lot more then they've actually baught and have potentially fowled up the stores inventory.
Didn't really see much on product development in the peice, hopefully enough data can be encoded on the things to make such problems difficulut or impossible.
What other nice little tricks can we come up with for something like this?
Protecting "on-click" wasn't about protecting their investment in the invention (such as it was) but rather was about holding back their competitors imo.
It does conjur up visions of the old west.
The need for such a site is indicative of the failings of the patent office and perhaps the concept of patents in general.
Do patents really serve a viable purpose anymore? It would be interesting to know what percentage of patents are held by struggling "inventors" and what percentage are held by huge multinationals who really don't need an inducement to invent. Their existance is dependent on their abilities to perform/provide servics/things to generate profit.
Perhaps we should leave patents as they are for individuals but shorten their duration by more then half for large companies. (perhaps something inbetween for small entities)
In the realms of technology and especially software the patents seem to hurt more then help.
Is it as bad in other fields? What about materials engineering and genetics? Are the same kinds of abuses occuring with the same frequency as in the technology field?
While the subject of the quote is worthy of discussion, couching it in terms of a quote from this guy is no different then the pandering the main stream media engages in.
Not sure of the details here, site is slashdot'd already but... if these folks are being pestered because of a db of upc's what about all the retailers out there? I thought the whole idea of the upc was to provide machine readable id's - they're not proprietary or secret. I would assume that somewhere out there there is a public list of the company identifiers. Method of getting the data would seem to be irrelevant if it is already public knowledge.
They go with their browser, pick it up and send it to you to put here. No problem, no fuss, no muss.
This really shouldn't be a big deal, your advertisers should realize that a healthy percentage of your readers ignore all doubleclick stuff regardless so its counter productive for them to insist that you serve them from there.
Will be fun to see all the new law suits on domain names now. Will MS now try to claim the whole .net TLD?
Anyone have any pointers to a decent place that doesn't have these nasty aspects to their user agreements?
(The Discount Domain Registry has a little gem in their user agreement that allows they and their partners to send you announcements that will "predominately" be informative... Cheap domains with spam on the side?)
While their service looks decent they also have the offending items in their user agreement, namely, "You agree that we may, in our sole discretion, delete or transfer your domain name at any time." and they also have a clause allowing them to change the agreement at will.
And how is DomainMonger, other then price, any better then NSI....
From their service agreement:
15. REVOCATION. You agree that we may delete your domain name or terminate your right to use other Services if the information that you provided to register or reserve your domain name or register for other Services, or subsequently to modify it, contains false or misleading information, or conceals or omits any information we would likely consider material to our decision to register or reserve your domain name. You agree that we may, in our sole discretion, delete or transfer your domain name at any time.
Note that last line.
Identifying someone as a "script kiddie" is prejorative, no one wants to be branded with that tag, even if you aren't sure what it means it doesn't sound good. "Pety theif" would be better then "theif" actually as it has a cheapness to it
The use of less romanticized words might actually have a bit of a chilling effect.
If you do your browsing from a windows box naviscope is very handy. Actually, though I've not tried it I believe you can allow other machines to use it as a proxy as well as the host machine. So it can take the place of junkbusters.
It's free.
It does lots of stuff. Prefetching, add blocking, dns caching, etc etc etc. Its treatment of cookies is very nice. They allow all cookies into the browser but they don't let any out. Unless you specifically allow a given site to retrieve them. Its very effective and you don't have to restart it every time you add/remove sites.
I would rather have all this functionality built into the browsers but until that becomes a viable choice, this is, as I said, a handy tool.
Although Walnut Creek supported FreeBSD they did not "own" it. Therefore BSDi+Walnut Creek don't currently own it either. What we can look forward to as FreeBSD users is enhanced support as they now have an even larger supporter who is bringing some nice items to the table.
And if it doesn't turn out to be good news... well then there is the beauty of the BSDL... Another group can form and pick up from where the current group leaves off.
The simplest solution to this whole mess is to make it impossible to transfer a name.
You pick up a name, first come first serve, you don't want it any longer the name is retired for at least six months and then at some random time after that it becomes available again on a first come first server basis.
Careful shopping can do wonders. Some things are hard to know just by comparing offerings unfortunatley. IMO one of the most important features you want to look for in a web hosting outfit is customer service and accessibility.
For what its worth we've had very good luck with World Wide Mart. Good prices, good equipment, excellent reseller package, good connections and very good customer service.