Seriously. Not that Craigslist was sued for this name, or that the awards organizers are so willing to co-opt "security" as their excuse for this action, but think about it... could CL have won?
Here's a handy tip I've come up with to determine, in a business vs. business lawsuit, who will win: Who has the most money to spend on lawyers?
If CL had attempted to fight the suit, with its meager resources, it would have lost. Then, the case may have stood as a precedent to future such cases.
CL was smart, not only for its own limited resources, but also for the larger communities that it and others serve, to not attempt to fight this suit. Let someone with deep pockets stand in and try to win a case that can stand.
Specifically, the cable companies have agreed to use NCMEC's list of active websites identified as containing child pornography, to ensure that no such site is hosted on servers owned or controlled by those companies. The companies will also report these instances to NCMEC's CyberTipline and where appropriate revise their policies around other potential sources of child pornography, such as, for example, newsgroups.
-----
Not just newsgroups, but also websites that are known chi1d pr0n purveyors.
Will it really help? Not sure. One thing is certain - the anonymity and reach of the Internet have made it easier than ever for those who want chi1d pr0n. These kinds of changes won't stop the hard-core users, but they may reduce the more casual dabblers. Is that enough? Not likely.
I recently quit WoW after a little less than two years. I amd 35 and have two kids, who are now 14 and almost 3. In 22 months of play, I have (had) two level 70s and about 110 days/played.
Just to put that in perspective, it's about 900 hours in 650 days - about 1:25 a day, every day, seven days a week. Truthfully, that was about my playschedule, too - of those 650 days, I was logged in at least 600 of them... maybe more. My typical morning included 30-60 minutes of playing before work, as that was the only time I could be certain of getting on. Evenings and weekends were spotty with kid duty and "wife agro".
My son played, too, though he never got as far into it as I did. The nice thing was that it gave us something to talk about and do together. The bad thing was that it was almost all we ever talked about or did together.
Ultimately, I quit for several reasons. First and foremost, the game wasn't really fun anymore. It felt like work just to keep up with it. Second, a lot of the people in the game weren't fun to play with. That's part of #1, but it's also a separate item. There's jerks in the world, and maybe more on teh interwebz than elsewhere, but it seemed WoW had a disproportionate share. Third, the time was just too much. You couldn't sit down for a couple of hours and play the game and have fun, or at least I couldn't. So, after losing two jobs during those two years (related or not? you decide), I finally quit.
These last couple of months have been like coming out of a fog. Am I suddenly using an "extra" ten hours a week productively? Not necessarily. Am I no longer wasting time on the computer? Well, there's plenty of ways to waste time besides WoW. However, I can clearly say I'm better for dropping it - a better husband, a better father, a better employee, and better for myself, too.
Is WoW an addiction? Maybe. Did WoW cause my problems? I don't think so - I always saw my WoW as symptomatic of other issues in my life, not causal - but one could certainly draw some strong correlations.
As a parent, though, I'm glad to be out of that "world". I did have some fun, and there are things I miss, but overall the real world beats WoW hands-down.
True - if you live longer, you're likely to cost more over that lifetime. Makes sense, from a cost perspective.
_
However, did they consider the revenue side of the equation? If you live longer, aren't you working longer and paying more taxes over your lifetime? I would imagine that even if the total costs were the same (fatties/smokers cost more/year for fewer years), the net would end up favoring having people live longer as productive members of society.
If you want flat rates, either you want to subsidize people who use more bandwidth than you, or you want people who use less than you to subsidize you. Which is it?
The fact is that it *does* cost more to call across the country than next door. Calling the house next door uses two switch ports, no trunking between switches, and the capital investment/maintenance on the physical network from the switch to your homes. Calling across the country involves multiple switches, multiple trunks between switches, and a physical network that someone had to invest in to build and must still maintain.
Flat rates for low-usage users make sense, but only because they're convenient for the users and typically very profitable for the providers. With all the competition we do have, if there's an inefficiency, someone will take advantage of it and start offering a lower price. In the TW case, they're betting that people would rather pay for what they actually use than subsidize the high-bandwidth user next door who's hosting 1800 torrents and "sharing" a bunch of music and videos.
Disclaimer: though I just left the telecom industry, I spent the last 12 years working for competitive (read: small) telecom companies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hue_and_cry
In common law, a hue and cry (Latin, hutesium et clamor, "a horn and shouting") was a process by which bystanders were summoned to assist in the apprehension of a criminal who had been witnessed in the act of committing a crime.
------------
On the OT, it makes sense to charge for BW used. That's how the ISPs typically have to pay for it. The unlimited model only works when overall usage is low. Personally, I am a frequent but not high-bandwidth user, and would prefer to pay a rate that reflects my actual usage instead of subsidizing all the torrent uploaders.
It seems to me that simply charging for BW utilization would solve the file-sharing problem overnight.
They can only legally rent it out if you allow them to. It's your copyright.
A friend of mine bought a painting several years ago for the low five figures. I remember the discussion with the salesperson at the gallery about making/selling prints - he can't. He owns the painting, not the right to reproduce it.
This sounds like a simple case of a large company abusing its power, and apparently the judge agrees.
Ebay is also not much better in this regard. Their policy is always to close first and ask questions later, or not at all. I still can't re-open an account with them after someone used my account without permission 5+ years ago. They only respond to companies like Autodesk that have enough money to sue them meaningfully.
While I don't support Comcast's business or network management practices, it is fair to say that P2P is *not* ISP-friendly. BitTorrent and its peers (pun intended) are actually designed to chew up bandwidth, under the premise of "there's plenty and it's free".
More broadly, though, Comcast continues to use any means possible to drag out their disruption of P2P traffic. They want to avoid and/or delay any legal input by the government, so they will try to keep up appearances of being open to "appropriate" P2P. This investment certainly seems to be another step down that path.
Great response from Xconomy.
The need for an aircraft that can be used for limited driving is real. Some GA (general aviation) airports have very limited and/or very expensive hangar space. In fact, some airports have no available hangar space, in part because companies lease hangar space and use it for business operations rather than aircraft storage. In CA a few years ago, small aircraft were forced out of a hangar so it could be leased to a company that used it for business operations. That's still not right, but at least with the ability to park their airplanes at home and drive to the airport, small aircraft pilots still have options.
At the other end, if you're traveling point-to-point, the ability to skip car rental and use your airplane might be an option as well.
Obviously, a driveable airplane would be designed for short-distance driving. It's not a car replacement by any stretch of the imagination.
(Yes, I am a certificated pilot.)
Is the leading quote: "DRM system requires that it phone home every 10 days." going to be fixed? It's completely wrong.
1. You must activate online.
2. The software then wants to activate one more time. It starts trying after five days, and will shut down at ten days if it hasn't gotten through by then.
3. That's it. After the second check, you don't ever need an Internet connection ever again.
Now, I'm not saying I love it - but it's a pretty reasonable measure to keep keys from being shared. It's also a heck of a lot better than "every ten days", which could be onerous.
This error has gotten a lot of unnecessary attention. In addition to slashdot, it's also on Fark, and probably a variety of other places that all source to slashdot. Fix it already!
Count me among those who were worried. I have been getting, say about a hundred a week for the last few weeks. At first I thought my mail provider had been hijacked, then I realized that the spammers were just using my return address. It is really, really frustrating.
At least now I know that I'm not the only one suffering... small consolation, but perhaps this will mean that some attention gets focused to it and a resolution will be coming.
Slashdot Mirror
...and letting athletes do whatever they want can't be much worse than simply accepting government-issued passports as proof of being 16.
Looks like 9 September will be a good day to charge up my HEV suit and sharpen my crowbar...
Here's a handy tip I've come up with to determine, in a business vs. business lawsuit, who will win: Who has the most money to spend on lawyers?
If CL had attempted to fight the suit, with its meager resources, it would have lost. Then, the case may have stood as a precedent to future such cases.
CL was smart, not only for its own limited resources, but also for the larger communities that it and others serve, to not attempt to fight this suit. Let someone with deep pockets stand in and try to win a case that can stand.
(IANAL)
I would be willing to take a lifetime of spam
This has already been arranged.
-----
Not just newsgroups, but also websites that are known chi1d pr0n purveyors.
Will it really help? Not sure. One thing is certain - the anonymity and reach of the Internet have made it easier than ever for those who want chi1d pr0n. These kinds of changes won't stop the hard-core users, but they may reduce the more casual dabblers. Is that enough? Not likely.
Just to put that in perspective, it's about 900 hours in 650 days - about 1:25 a day, every day, seven days a week. Truthfully, that was about my playschedule, too - of those 650 days, I was logged in at least 600 of them... maybe more. My typical morning included 30-60 minutes of playing before work, as that was the only time I could be certain of getting on. Evenings and weekends were spotty with kid duty and "wife agro".
My son played, too, though he never got as far into it as I did. The nice thing was that it gave us something to talk about and do together. The bad thing was that it was almost all we ever talked about or did together.
Ultimately, I quit for several reasons. First and foremost, the game wasn't really fun anymore. It felt like work just to keep up with it. Second, a lot of the people in the game weren't fun to play with. That's part of #1, but it's also a separate item. There's jerks in the world, and maybe more on teh interwebz than elsewhere, but it seemed WoW had a disproportionate share. Third, the time was just too much. You couldn't sit down for a couple of hours and play the game and have fun, or at least I couldn't. So, after losing two jobs during those two years (related or not? you decide), I finally quit.
These last couple of months have been like coming out of a fog. Am I suddenly using an "extra" ten hours a week productively? Not necessarily. Am I no longer wasting time on the computer? Well, there's plenty of ways to waste time besides WoW. However, I can clearly say I'm better for dropping it - a better husband, a better father, a better employee, and better for myself, too.
Is WoW an addiction? Maybe. Did WoW cause my problems? I don't think so - I always saw my WoW as symptomatic of other issues in my life, not causal - but one could certainly draw some strong correlations.
As a parent, though, I'm glad to be out of that "world". I did have some fun, and there are things I miss, but overall the real world beats WoW hands-down.
_
However, did they consider the revenue side of the equation? If you live longer, aren't you working longer and paying more taxes over your lifetime? I would imagine that even if the total costs were the same (fatties/smokers cost more/year for fewer years), the net would end up favoring having people live longer as productive members of society.
The fact is that it *does* cost more to call across the country than next door. Calling the house next door uses two switch ports, no trunking between switches, and the capital investment/maintenance on the physical network from the switch to your homes. Calling across the country involves multiple switches, multiple trunks between switches, and a physical network that someone had to invest in to build and must still maintain.
Flat rates for low-usage users make sense, but only because they're convenient for the users and typically very profitable for the providers. With all the competition we do have, if there's an inefficiency, someone will take advantage of it and start offering a lower price. In the TW case, they're betting that people would rather pay for what they actually use than subsidize the high-bandwidth user next door who's hosting 1800 torrents and "sharing" a bunch of music and videos.
Disclaimer: though I just left the telecom industry, I spent the last 12 years working for competitive (read: small) telecom companies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hue_and_cry In common law, a hue and cry (Latin, hutesium et clamor, "a horn and shouting") was a process by which bystanders were summoned to assist in the apprehension of a criminal who had been witnessed in the act of committing a crime. ------------ On the OT, it makes sense to charge for BW used. That's how the ISPs typically have to pay for it. The unlimited model only works when overall usage is low. Personally, I am a frequent but not high-bandwidth user, and would prefer to pay a rate that reflects my actual usage instead of subsidizing all the torrent uploaders. It seems to me that simply charging for BW utilization would solve the file-sharing problem overnight.
They can only legally rent it out if you allow them to. It's your copyright. A friend of mine bought a painting several years ago for the low five figures. I remember the discussion with the salesperson at the gallery about making/selling prints - he can't. He owns the painting, not the right to reproduce it. This sounds like a simple case of a large company abusing its power, and apparently the judge agrees. Ebay is also not much better in this regard. Their policy is always to close first and ask questions later, or not at all. I still can't re-open an account with them after someone used my account without permission 5+ years ago. They only respond to companies like Autodesk that have enough money to sue them meaningfully.
While I don't support Comcast's business or network management practices, it is fair to say that P2P is *not* ISP-friendly. BitTorrent and its peers (pun intended) are actually designed to chew up bandwidth, under the premise of "there's plenty and it's free". More broadly, though, Comcast continues to use any means possible to drag out their disruption of P2P traffic. They want to avoid and/or delay any legal input by the government, so they will try to keep up appearances of being open to "appropriate" P2P. This investment certainly seems to be another step down that path.
Great response from Xconomy. The need for an aircraft that can be used for limited driving is real. Some GA (general aviation) airports have very limited and/or very expensive hangar space. In fact, some airports have no available hangar space, in part because companies lease hangar space and use it for business operations rather than aircraft storage. In CA a few years ago, small aircraft were forced out of a hangar so it could be leased to a company that used it for business operations. That's still not right, but at least with the ability to park their airplanes at home and drive to the airport, small aircraft pilots still have options. At the other end, if you're traveling point-to-point, the ability to skip car rental and use your airplane might be an option as well. Obviously, a driveable airplane would be designed for short-distance driving. It's not a car replacement by any stretch of the imagination. (Yes, I am a certificated pilot.)
Is the leading quote: "DRM system requires that it phone home every 10 days." going to be fixed? It's completely wrong. 1. You must activate online. 2. The software then wants to activate one more time. It starts trying after five days, and will shut down at ten days if it hasn't gotten through by then. 3. That's it. After the second check, you don't ever need an Internet connection ever again. Now, I'm not saying I love it - but it's a pretty reasonable measure to keep keys from being shared. It's also a heck of a lot better than "every ten days", which could be onerous. This error has gotten a lot of unnecessary attention. In addition to slashdot, it's also on Fark, and probably a variety of other places that all source to slashdot. Fix it already!
Count me among those who were worried. I have been getting, say about a hundred a week for the last few weeks. At first I thought my mail provider had been hijacked, then I realized that the spammers were just using my return address. It is really, really frustrating. At least now I know that I'm not the only one suffering... small consolation, but perhaps this will mean that some attention gets focused to it and a resolution will be coming.