> Even without reading/etc/passwd or the windows regitry, [sic]
> they can very easily generate an unique ID and track you
> with this.
Can, but don't!.
This is Opera we're talking about here. They simply don't do that!
Please fling your wild allegations at someone (M$, for example) who deserves them! (After all, it's possible for a word processor to track (and tag) every document that you write... but surely no decent person or company would release such a product.)
Perhaps this is a bit off topic, but let me chime in here.
I recently grabbed Mozilla M18 and started using it (on Windows NT:-( ). I'm actually pretty happy with it... I'm used to Netscape 4.7 and IE5.x, and to me it seems pretty-much as fast as those for normal daily use.
The one problem that I have is that it won't work with any secure (https) site. I haven't had a chance yet to investigate and find out if it's Mozilla not handling it properly, or just that the sites refuse the connection from a browser they don't recognize... but either way it effectively makes the browser unusable for such purposes. And a lot of what I do requires access to secure sites.
It's unfortunate... because in all other ways I really like the browser.
"So they see my pictures of my dog, a letter to a girlfriend and some poetry I've written. Big freakin' deal"
And just for fun, they insert a back door which gives them remote access (BackOrifice, etc).
And then, since this is some "script kiddie" (your words), they get boored some day and decide to delete the hard drive.
Now do you still say "Big freakin' deal."? Because I don't. And I've seen it happen, so this is NOT a hypethetical example.
EVERYONE needs security.
If you said that we need an APPROPRIATE balance between security and other issues, then I would agree. And the balance is different for the president and for Joe User.
But in MY OPINION, Joe User should have encrypted email. It's easy (to implement), automatic (with the right tools), doesn't impose much CPU load (emails aren't very long and CPUs are fast these days), and requires no special knowledge on the part of Joe User. So there's hardly any downside. The ONLY reason it's not there is the lack of widely-distributed clients.
Your point comparing this to "security through obscurity" is a valid one. If we count on accidents of the protocal to keep our identities private, then it's doomed to failure. Only if privacy services are offered (anonomizers of various sorts, preferably with the logs wiped daily) with an ACTIVE, INTENTIONAL approach to annonominity (did I get the spelling right?) which is well documented will it be reliable.
No, the real solution isn't for technically qualified people to give up their current jobs ($90K or not) to work for the patent office -- it's for the patent office to allow qualified people to review the pattent applications. They can do this by hiring these people (but as you point out, that's expensive), *OR* we can find another way, by allowing qualified people to review and comment on applications.
Or, instead, we can allow the situation to continue to deteriorate until Congress steps in and changes the patent rules. That might be good... or it might be very, very bad. We just don't know.
Gmhowell is onto our game. She (or he... we haven't discovered which yet) is implementing extensive security schemes. These are pretty much going to rule out plans A and B, so we'll have to go with Plan C.
Plan C should be completely unaffeted by gmhowell's defenses. After all, once the CEO goes home leaving his now-desktop machine behind, we should have no problem picking him up in the parking lot. I'm sure that after a little time with Tiny, he'll be glad to tell us everything we want to know about their business plan. And since he's no longer able to take his laptop with him to give presentations, he'll have put even MORE effort into memorizing the company's numbers.
I am REALLY glad I don't work for your company. In fact, if I did, I would probably quit. I do not wish to live like that. I'm glad that there are people like you who ARE willing to put up with it, so that those jobs which require such absurd levels of security can be staffed.
To: General Contact
To: Bob Stern <bstern@crcpress.com>
To: David J. Packer <dpacker@crcpress.com>
To: Cindy Carelli <rpowers@crcpress.com>
CC: Eric Weisstein <e.weisstein@wolfram.com>
To CRC Press:
I am extremely disappointed to hear that the MathWeb site has been taken down due to a lawsuit filed by CRC press. This website is a treasure -- one which I browse from time to time in order to expand my mind, and to which I have referred curious high-school students. I believe (though I have little but my own convictions to go on) that this wonderful site can only HELP sales of the book version CRC published, by making a great number of people aware of its existence. I also believe (and I am much more sure of this, as I will play my own role in it) that the bad press and poor public opinion that CRC earns by closing down a site as well-respected as MathWeb's will FAR outvalue any possible increased sales of this single book.
Finally, I would argue that even if you DID hope to profit from this lawsuit, that it is nonetheless inappropriate on purely moral grounds. A resource like Eric Weissteins MathWeb should be made available to every middle-income black child in South Africa, every underpaid inner-city Chicago schoolteacher, and every assistant professor of mathematics at Princeton -- of the three, only one has a realistic opportunity to purchase your book.
I sincerely hope that you consider these issues and decide to withdraw your suit against Eric and others, allowing MathWeb to be reinstated. If you do so, please write me at mcherm@destiny.com to let me know.
Yes, I have to say that it's quite amusing that this is so clearly off topic (having been posted in the wrong forum by mistake) yet somehow, subtly it is exactly and precisely ON topic.
Because not ONLY do you (the company offering the free computer) get to keep some of the cycles, but you ALSO get to have YOUR computer in somebody's home. You can do all of the things that free pc companies do now, like giving them your own browser that tracks where they go (then sell the info) or showing them ads. And on top of that you get the massive amount of goodwill deserved for giving them a free computer. Of course this is all counterbalenced by the massive amount of bad will from those who don't think your tech support is good enough...
You can tack in a sailboat because you have the water to push off of. Without anything to push off of, there's no way to work your way upstream using solar sails.
-- Michael Chermside
"a sub-linear time algorithm". It sounds funny... an algorithm which would NOT take longer as the size of the problem increased. In fact, it's really just a joke, because "obviously" no such thing could exist.
Or that's what I thought.
Then I discovered hashing. It performs lookup (which I would SWEAR I could prove must take at least log(n)) in constant time. Yeah, yeah, I know... it's not a fancy advanced technique, but something taught in a first or second level computing course.
But sometimes it's worthwhile to step back and look at things and admire the amazing beauty of the world. That such a thing could exist!
I know I'm chiming in with a "me too" but thanks for posting this, and for following up with the details in a few days (which I'm sure you will). I know it goes without saying that/. would want this kind of thing out in the open, but it DOESN'T go without saying most places, so it's GOOD that it does on/..
Secondly, I think a letter-writing campaign is in order. If 200 letters are received speaking critically of this judge for seriously oversteping judicial perogatives as well as good sense, then even if the comment period is over, they will be listened to.
Especially if they all accuse the judge of extending the gag order for such a large length of time in order to help protect her own reappointment.
Actually, smiling at people on the street is subject to a cease and desist letter under US law. In fact, ANYTHING is subject to a cease and desist letter... it's just a letter! The letter has no legal significance EXCEPT for one small thing: after having received such a letter, the recipient cannot claim "I didn't know about it" as a defense. So they're used only in cases of IP infringement, where "I didn't know about it" is sometimes a valid defense. If you think that you have a RIGHT to use the image/text/soundbite/idea/whatever, then you can go ahead and use it despite having received the letter... however, if you consult a lawyer, then the odds are VERY good that they will advise you to play it safe and stop "infringing". But the letter itself has NO legal significance.
Also worth noting is the fact that "fair use" does not apply to trademark law (as far as I know, IANAL).
I think that this is a wonderful example of Fair Use. The Fair Use exception was built into copyright law EXPLICITLY to permit people to criticize, and/or make light of things in situations where the owner of the copyright might object.
Unfortunately, IANAL, but as far as I know there IS NO exception for "fair use" built into TRADEMARK law. Which is what this is. So f*ckedcompany should create a parody of the logo, and use that. This IS protected by fair use.
Slashdot Mirror
-- Michael Chermside
-- Michael Chermside
> they can very easily generate an unique ID and track you
> with this.
Can, but don't!.
This is Opera we're talking about here. They simply don't do that!
Please fling your wild allegations at someone (M$, for example) who deserves them! (After all, it's possible for a word processor to track (and tag) every document that you write... but surely no decent person or company would release such a product.)
-- Michael Chermside
I recently grabbed Mozilla M18 and started using it (on Windows NT :-( ). I'm actually pretty happy with it... I'm used to Netscape 4.7 and IE5.x, and to me it seems pretty-much as fast as those for normal daily use.
The one problem that I have is that it won't work with any secure (https) site. I haven't had a chance yet to investigate and find out if it's Mozilla not handling it properly, or just that the sites refuse the connection from a browser they don't recognize... but either way it effectively makes the browser unusable for such purposes. And a lot of what I do requires access to secure sites.
It's unfortunate... because in all other ways I really like the browser.
-- Michael Chermside
"So they see my pictures of my dog, a letter to a girlfriend and some poetry I've written. Big freakin' deal"
And just for fun, they insert a back door which gives them remote access (BackOrifice, etc).
And then, since this is some "script kiddie" (your words), they get boored some day and decide to delete the hard drive.
Now do you still say "Big freakin' deal."? Because I don't. And I've seen it happen, so this is NOT a hypethetical example.
EVERYONE needs security.
If you said that we need an APPROPRIATE balance between security and other issues, then I would agree. And the balance is different for the president and for Joe User.
But in MY OPINION, Joe User should have encrypted email. It's easy (to implement), automatic (with the right tools), doesn't impose much CPU load (emails aren't very long and CPUs are fast these days), and requires no special knowledge on the part of Joe User. So there's hardly any downside. The ONLY reason it's not there is the lack of widely-distributed clients.
-- Michael Chermside
-- Michael Chermside
-- Michael Chermside
Or, instead, we can allow the situation to continue to deteriorate until Congress steps in and changes the patent rules. That might be good... or it might be very, very bad. We just don't know.
-- Michael Chermside
Um... er... it USED to take umpty-ump billion years.
(Unless you use NSA's backdoor...)
(No, wait... pretend I didn't say that...)
-- Michael Chermside
Gmhowell is onto our game. She (or he... we haven't discovered which yet) is implementing extensive security schemes. These are pretty much going to rule out plans A and B, so we'll have to go with Plan C.
Plan C should be completely unaffeted by gmhowell's defenses. After all, once the CEO goes home leaving his now-desktop machine behind, we should have no problem picking him up in the parking lot. I'm sure that after a little time with Tiny, he'll be glad to tell us everything we want to know about their business plan. And since he's no longer able to take his laptop with him to give presentations, he'll have put even MORE effort into memorizing the company's numbers.
-- Agent 47
-- Michael Chermside
To: General Contact
To: Bob Stern <bstern@crcpress.com>
To: David J. Packer <dpacker@crcpress.com>
To: Cindy Carelli <rpowers@crcpress.com>
CC: Eric Weisstein <e.weisstein@wolfram.com>
To CRC Press:
I am extremely disappointed to hear that the MathWeb site has been taken down due to a lawsuit filed by CRC press. This website is a treasure -- one which I browse from time to time in order to expand my mind, and to which I have referred curious high-school students. I believe (though I have little but my own convictions to go on) that this wonderful site can only HELP sales of the book version CRC published, by making a great number of people aware of its existence. I also believe (and I am much more sure of this, as I will play my own role in it) that the bad press and poor public opinion that CRC earns by closing down a site as well-respected as MathWeb's will FAR outvalue any possible increased sales of this single book.
Finally, I would argue that even if you DID hope to profit from this lawsuit, that it is nonetheless inappropriate on purely moral grounds. A resource like Eric Weissteins MathWeb should be made available to every middle-income black child in South Africa, every underpaid inner-city Chicago schoolteacher, and every assistant professor of mathematics at Princeton -- of the three, only one has a realistic opportunity to purchase your book.
I sincerely hope that you consider these issues and decide to withdraw your suit against Eric and others, allowing MathWeb to be reinstated. If you do so, please write me at mcherm@destiny.com to let me know.
-- Michael Chermside
*shrug* what can you do?
-- Michael Chermside
-- Michael Chermside
After 15 min of writing out details I got to the end of the proof. And in that last step I proved... that you were right.
Thanks. That was educational.
(PS: I'm still impressed with the beauty of hashing as an algorithm.)
-- Michael Chermside
What 3 commonly used words/devices? "Grok", "Waldo" and what else?
-- Michael Chermside
-- Michael Chermside
-- Michael Chermside
You can tack in a sailboat because you have the water to push off of. Without anything to push off of, there's no way to work your way upstream using solar sails. -- Michael Chermside
-- Michael Chermside
Or that's what I thought.
Then I discovered hashing. It performs lookup (which I would SWEAR I could prove must take at least log(n)) in constant time. Yeah, yeah, I know... it's not a fancy advanced technique, but something taught in a first or second level computing course.
But sometimes it's worthwhile to step back and look at things and admire the amazing beauty of the world. That such a thing could exist!
-- Michael Chermside
-- Michael Chermside
SOMEONE MODERATE UP YARDLEY'S ARTICLE!
Secondly, I think a letter-writing campaign is in order. If 200 letters are received speaking critically of this judge for seriously oversteping judicial perogatives as well as good sense, then even if the comment period is over, they will be listened to.
Especially if they all accuse the judge of extending the gag order for such a large length of time in order to help protect her own reappointment.
Please join me in this!
Write me at mike.chermside@destiny.com.
-- Michael Chermside
Also worth noting is the fact that "fair use" does not apply to trademark law (as far as I know, IANAL).
-- Michael Chermside
Unfortunately, IANAL, but as far as I know there IS NO exception for "fair use" built into TRADEMARK law. Which is what this is. So f*ckedcompany should create a parody of the logo, and use that. This IS protected by fair use.
-- Michael Chermside