Captcha requires lots of possibly incorrect responses. An answer with a minimum value of 0 and a maximum value of 4 (for example) means there are 5 possible responses. 0,1,2,3,4.
That gives a bot a 20% chance of being correct, which is unacceptably easy.
You've also made the captcha solution language-specific. And if you use colors, color-blindness may be an issue for you now as well.
Don't get me wrong, I can see some applications of picture-based captcha, but I don't see them as terribly more effective than the current "wavy gravy" text you have to dutifully reproduce letter-by-letter.
Should we now install warning labels on bottled water stating that it's wet?
There's a reason most companies that make laptops started renaming them "notebooks", because you shouldn't keep the damned things on your lap. They get hot. People have been burned by them. That doesn't mean we need to add yet another warning label to the sea of ignored little red and yellow stickers already covering every product you buy.
only see them as a bright yellow stain on my upholstery.
"Do you suffer from the horror of WLAS (Warning Label Anxiety Syndrome)? Ask your doctor if Labeloffitall is right for you. Labeloffitall is the first prescription medicine that can actually make excess warning labels invisible to the naked eye! WARNING: Labeloffitall is not right for everyone. If you start seeing bright yellow stains on your upholstery, you may be actually suffering from a urinary tract infection. See your doctor immediately if you suffer from runaway libido, as this may lead to sex and pregnancy, a serious medical condition, especially in men. [pause] Labeloffitall, your label-free future is waiting for you!"
It might work, except that someone who is famous to one person is unknown to another. Were you to put up a picture of Barack Obama or Joe Biden, I could identify either one easily. The same could not be said of all world leaders, however. I read pretty regularly about events involving David Cameron, Christian Wulff, and Nikolas Sarkozy, but I'm not sure if I could accurately identify a photo of any of them given no other context.
Lady Gaga? Show me a picture of her without any context, and I'd have to start guessing or searching names at random until I got a match. The same could be said of many very popular entertainers (singers, actors, etc). I suspect I'm the precise opposite of most Internet users in that regard, though. I know a number of actors by sight, but remember few of their names. Unless I could type their character names on the shows/movies they've appeared in, I'd probably be lost. And if I've got to spend a few minutes on IMDB looking people up, there's a damned good chance I'm not THAT interested in your site.
Picture-based captcha is really effective at filtering out bots. The problem with using a captcha that includes pictures is that you need to be pretty confident you know your intended audience knows what the pictures are of.
The beauty of current captchas is that you don't need specific knowledge to use them. I don't need to speak English or have specific knowledge of American movie stars to pass a letter-based captcha. If I can identify each letter successfully, I can retype it.
It's not a knowledge or skills test, it's a captcha.
To carry your analogy to the appropriate conclusion, a blue tarp might be considered a "permanent" solution to the damaged roof of a specific shed if the structure is expected to fall apart in the next few months.
In this case, even if the artificial heart only lasts 25 years, it'll probably outlast its recipient by at least 10, because very few Duchenne patients make it to 30, much less 40. He's 15 years old, and there's a very good chance that something else will end his life long before he hits the point where this heart is approaching failure.
So this is almost certainly a "permanent" solution to the problem, much as we all hope that medical science progresses to the point where this boy lives long enough to need a replacement.
He's got Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Living to 40 is exceptionally rare, and most people who have this disease don't live to be 30. Sadly, by the time he gets anywhere near 40, another system that cannot be replaced/augmented as easily will probably have failed. The pump they installed will almost certainly outlast him, sad as that concept is.
Still, he was just a few days from death according to the article. Even if he only makes it a few more years, it's a few more than his natural heart could have kept him alive to see, and maybe there will be enough of an advance to patch up whatever other systemic failures lie in his future. I sincerely hope that in 25 years he's looking at a replacement to the pump, but this is sadly probably the last one he'll ever need.
I'm a pilot. Give me a clear stretch of unpopulated land in uncontrolled airspace and a few bucks for some special equipment and I could undoubtedly make it rain cotton candy.
Changing human nature? Sorry, there's only one entity I've heard of that could possibly manage that, and he flies at somewhat higher altitudes than I do. I also strongly suspect he's a work of fiction.
Tolkien wrote LoTR as one large book. His editors made him break it into six sub-books, which were then combined and edited into the three books.
They couldn't have done this with LoTR because there wasn't enough movie-ready material in there. LoTR is a deeply complex story with a lot of subtle subplots going on. Jackson chose the destruction of the Ring as the primary thrust of his story. Bombadil was not a part of that storyline. Bombadil would have been (to a movie-going audience) a complete non-sequitur. He's too subtle and interwoven into the ending of the Third Age. He's an example of the powerful but uninterested, which is a great narrative on why Hobbits are perfect Ringbearers, but is more of a sociological point than an add-on to the Quest to destroy the One Ring. He's a plot device to expose the dangers of some of the remaining bits of the Second Age (barrow-wights) while not killing off any important characters, but again Jackson didn't really cover the differences between the Ages. Bombadil neither contributed toward nor hindered the mission to destroy the One Ring.
The scouring of the Shire would have been drama after the happy ending, which is hard to pull off in movies, and as a 4th (or 6th) movie it would have been largely ignored as a "tidying up loose ends" bit. In the books, it's an interesting afterthought of the lingering consequences of allowing Saruman to live, and the fact that the destruction of the Ring didn't destroy all evil, and even unleashed a little here and there. It was also sort of a final nail in the Third Age's coffin, and the ending of the implied innocence of the Shire, the descent of all other species (elves, dwarves, hobbits) and the powers they wielded, and the ascent of Men and mechanical power. Again, though, none of that has anything to do with the Ring story.
Expressing all of that in movies would put an audience to sleep, and still come off as inadequate. Movies are stories told with a broad and unsubtle brush, and you have to make your stories less subtle as a result. Jackson chose the interesting storyline and dropped the rest.
I mean, look at what Jackson had to do to make The Two Towers interesting to a movie audience. They should have changed the name to "Helm's Deep: A Love Story". Jackson took a largely insignificant battle and made a whole movie out of it, invented a love interest thread between Aragorn and Arwen, and completely recast the Ents in order to add some conflict between them and the other protagonists, and to give them more screen time because the effects were cool. And, let's be honest, it was probably just as well. You'd want to see more "Frodo and Sam trudging through vast empty boringness?" Coverage of Sam's rescue, floor by floor, of Frodo from the Tower of Cirith Ungol?
Jackson took all the important but boring bits as vignettes rather than bits of information woven into a complex story.
The whole dichotomy of Smeagol attempting and failing to assert his personality over the Ring-induced Gollum persona was done in one utterly brilliant self-argument rather than as bits of interwoven story throughout. It was oversimplified, but that's what you do in a movie, and it expressed the complexity of what Smeagol/Gollum was as a character without becoming boring.
Frodo's sympathy with Smeagol and Sam's distrust of Gollum was handled by a few quick events, culminating in the trick Gollum played on Sam, rather than by many small-but-subtle interplays as seen in the books. As a result, Sam was rewritten as a bit thick and foolish enough to leave Frodo's side, rather than the one smart enough to wield Galadriel's Phial after Frodo was already taken out by Shelob.
I certainly have my complaints with the movies. But, given the unsubtle form that is a movie, I think Jackson did a remarkable job of making a movie that non-LoTR geeks could still enjoy, while still telling a story that is true to at least one storyline in the books. The natural result of this, however, is that bits that don't fit the main storyline need to go, or you risk making the movie boring to anyone but a LoTR geek. And you gotta sell lots of asses in seats to pay for an epic production like Jackson's LoTR.
Reading the Silmarillion, though, was like reading a cross between a bible and the world's most boring history book.
I agree, but it also depends on what you are reading for. I tried the Simarillion as a kid, and, umm, no way in hell was I going to willingly slog through it.
I loved the Hobbit and liked LoTR at 13, but I only got through about 20 pages of the Simarillion as a 14-year-old and would rather have removed my own intestines with a dull spoon than continue. But I had only read the Hobbit and LoTR once each, so I had little context as to why the history of that universe might be interesting. I was also 14 years old, and was dealing with too many boring history books as it was.
Now, as an adult way too many years later, I like The Hobbit but find it a hard read (too many blasted exclamation points, for one). I've maybe read that twice as an adult. Love the story, but the writing is too "young". Which is appropriate given that it's more of a kid's book, and that's as it should be. I'd love to see a few of the "lo! Oh Joy!" lines and exclamation points taken out for an adult version as long as the story remains intact.
LoTR is something I keep a leatherbound edition of around and give it a solid re-read every 2-3 years. I've probably read it a dozen times, and I expect I'll continue doing so until I'm dead. It's well worth re-reading repeatedly. As my own life changes, I see myself sympathizing with different characters and reading different things from it each time. It's a complex story full of nuances I missed as a young pup, and it's a slightly different read each time. I know how it ends, but I still love the journey (something a film cannot do, that's always the same journey so there's little point in re-watching it too many times).
I have yet to develop the intestinal fortitude to try the Simarillion again. But, given many reads of LoTR and a few of the Hobbit, and the patience (if not wisdom) imparted by age, I might be able to get through it and even possibly enjoy it now. I still look back on the horror of facing it as a young pup, though, and it's kind of made it something to dread rather than look forward to. The importance of not introducing youngsters to something too "grown up" for their age is worth mentioning. I HATED Shakespeare and Greek tragedies in Junior High School and High School, and it's only by forcing myself to re-read them as an adult that I've discovered that there's some good shit there.
but boring as sin.
I have yet to find a sin that is boring. I'll keep looking. Do you have any suggestions?;)
What I got from both the books and the movie on that was simply that Hobbits don't really give two shits about power. Tolkien hammered on this concept until it hurt, and Jackson remained pretty true to that concept. They intentionally choose a simple life, they have little interest in controlling (or, let's be honest, even helping) anyone outside their borders, so the whole concept of a ring that gives absolute power has little meaning. The Ring can corrupt them (see Smeagol/Gollum and Frodo). Hell, even Bilbo got corrupted by it to an extent, but he managed to hold out for quite a while because he didn't know what it was.
The only people who could bear the Ring are those who could wield it (limited to a population of one, named "Sauron") and those to whom it would not occur to try.
Bilbo never had a clue what the Ring was, or what it represented. At least not until long after it was out of his hands, and I'm not sure he really knew anything other that it was a burden to Frodo, then forgot about that soon after. To him, it was a magical little shiny that allowed him to avoid unpleasant encounters and skulk around. He didn't have buttons the Ring could have pushed to seek absolute power. He didn't know about it, and didn't care, other than the small and insignificant uses he put it to. Even so, it took threats from Gandalf to get him to set it aside, and it still gnawed at him.
Frodo knew what he had from fairly early on, but lacked the sort of desire for power the Ring could leverage. Even so, the Ring did work on Frodo at the end. He was unable to cast it into the fires and actually started to try and wield it, and it fell on Gollum and a bit of clumsiness and happy chance to finally destroy the Ring.
Hobbits are also insignificant to the powerful to the point of near invisibility. Give the Ring to an Eagle, and he'd be spotted and intercepted, probably before he crossed the border into Mordor, if his own sense of power didn't turn his purposes to that of the Ring's first. No one could wield it without Sauron being aware of it (and eventually being subverted by it), and no one could openly fight past Sauron and into Mordor without wielding it. It was only through stealth that Frodo managed to get the Ring into Mordor without being immediately caught.
Remember, all of the people who understood the ring and understood power (Gandalf, Elrond, Aragorn, Faramir, Galadriel, etc) were strong enough to reject the ring but wise enough to understand that they were not strong enough to control it or even handle it. Boromir was weak enough to be unable to reject the ring, and though he managed to reject it briefly it was really only Saruman's orcs killing him off that saved him from eventually succumbing to its appeal and attempting to wield it. Denethor was weak enough that the mere concept that it slipped through Faramir's fingers was enough to drive him batshit crazy.
No one who was strong enough to understand what the Ring truly was would be strong enough to carry it for any length of time. Its power was too appealing.
I'll give Jitterbug credit - they keep it very simple. $15 a month is pricey for 50 minutes, but at least you aren't needing to keep track of expiration dates, etc.
AT&T and Verizon both also offer "prepaid" cellphone plans. I used AT&T's for some years. A $100 "recharge" card buys you minutes that don't expire for a year, and IIRC a $25 card is good for three months. In other words, you can get a light-usage cell phone for a tad over $8 a month. Calls are 25 cents a minute (or ten cents a minute plus a dollar for each day you actually make or receive a call, your choice), and taken out of the prepaid amount. Tracphone and a generous mittenful of others offer similar pricing and features, and there are racks of recharge cards for various plans at any convenience store.
The problem with a lot of prepaid plans is not the per-minute charge (they are generally still cheaper than a payphone), but the expiration dates. Several offer very attractive per-minute rates, but have $50 cards that expire in 45 days or $10 cards that are only good for a week. At that rate, you're almost better off buying a basic voice-only contract plan.
Also, keep in mind that with a cell phone there's no such thing as a "local" or a "long distance" call, and there's no differentiation between "incoming" or "outgoing" calls. It's all airtime. If you are on the phone, you are using minutes. If you spend more than two minutes per day on the telephone talking anyone, regardless of whether you called them or they called you, or whether they are in your local exchange or not, the Jitterbug "Simply 14" plan won't have enough minutes for you. Nor will the AT&T prepaid plan at $100 a year. This is a big transition from people who are used to "free local" or "free incoming" calls like the local telcos tend to provide.
If you need more than 150 minutes a month or so of airtime (ie. if you spend about 5 minutes a DAY on the phone), you'll frequently find that a basic cell plan is less expensive than a prepaid. Most prepaids average about 25 cents a minute, meaning that your airtime is going to be nearly $40 a month for 150 minutes. You can get basic 450-minute plans for that kind of money. Buy your own "dumb-phone" unlocked handset off Amazon or whomever (making sure it's compatible with the carrier of your choice) and you won't be committed to a contract with an early termination fee. Freecycle frequently has people disposing of their old phones, and you can just use one of those if you want. Then you just buy a month-to-month account and if the carrier pisses you off you can get another used or unlocked phone for a different carrier and switch.
Of course, if you have Internet access, there's always VoIP companies like Vonage, or computer-based VoIP like Skype. Those lines are really cheap to run. Cheaper than most cell plans.
Keep in mind that, if you drop your landline, you are almost certainly also dropping location-aware 9-1-1 service. The GPS on your cell will almost certainly not work indoors, and cell triangulation is clumsy and inaccurate if it works at all. Vonage and others offer 9-1-1, but it just forwards to their own emergency response center and they may or may not be able to determine your local dispatcher and get your address to them even if they do. So if you want to be able to pick up the phone, dial 911, and gargle incoherently into the handset knowing that someone will show up shortly, losing your landline might not be for you.
"Correctly", yes, but the "accident" isn't really an accident when the phone is set up in such a way as to almost force you to make the mistake frequently.
I've had this same issue with AT&T. My father-in-law chose a phone that has a hard-coded shortcut button in an easy place to accidentally push it, and the button sends you to something requiring data and the button cannot be remapped or disabled (without the careful application of tools, of course, but most people don't want to have to microsolder a button out of their brand-new phone!). We looked around for another "dumb" phone without this button, and they basically don't exist in the AT&T store.
Their obvious hope was that, after a few calls to have the data charge reversed, you'd just accept the $1 or $2 a month of accidental charges because it's more hassle to call them every month and get it reversed. The phone has no way to disable data usage internally (AT&T disabled that option in the setup menu), the button cannot be remapped or disabled (AT&T disabled that option in the setup menu as well), and AT&T doesn't exactly go out of their way to let you know you can block data (or SMS) on your account to prevent accidental usage.
Even if you did elect to block data, what if you wanted to be able to access data occasionally? My father-in-law was quite happy to pay $1 or so when he really did want to check weather or traffic on his phone, but ended up blocking data because he was tapping the AT&T "Shop Ringtones" button almost every time he opened his phone (it was located precisely in the logical spot to grip the phone to flip it open, so, yes, he was "holding it wrong"), and was paying an average of several dollars a month in charges until I told him about data blocking. He's not terribly happy, and AT&T is actually making less money off him than they could, but that was the best solution we could find at the time.
So it basically means that, if you don't intend to use data (even on a "dumb" phone), you have to specifically ask to have data blocked on every handset purchase (which means you need to know the service is available), and when you change handsets you have to ask all over again. It's not hard to do, but it's not something you should have to ask for yourself.
Unlocked phones have the major advantage of not having carrier premapped buttons. Just one of the reasons why I think they are worth the extra money.:)
I certainly hope this is what happens, but in reality it probably just means that the race to the bottom continues apace. Watch for all the other carriers to jump to this model, now that AT&T and Verizon have shattered the barrier.
How many people, when the first airline announced a $25 per bag checkin fee, said "Good, this opens up competition, because the other airlines won't do this and I'll just stop flying XYZ Air from now on!"
How many people, when Verizon announced their increase in the ETF for smartphones, said "hey, here's a reason to go to [insert other carrier here]!"
When a company adds an innovative new way of making money, other companies will follow suit until that becomes the standard. The only way to resist this is to choose a company that doesn't do that, and the US doesn't have enough truly nationwide carriers with acceptable coverage to make that practical. If you want coverage here in Maine, your choices are AT&T and Verizon, and the choice between those two is often dependent upon where you live (which one has a tower closer to you). If you live within 5 miles of the highway south of Augusta, and maybe a few other scattered areas, Sprint may be an option for you.
And, of course, a lot of people are locked into multi-year plans thanks to the model that most cell carriers have adopted - locked phones with a contract. Unlocked phones don't save you a lot of money, often cost a lot upfront, and don't offer a real choice of carriers since pretty much all of the carriers use a different protocol or frequencies. My wife uses an unlocked phone, but I know that since it's a GSM phone my only real choice is AT&T if I want 3G. We only wanted unlocked because she wanted something with data access and we didn't want to have to pay AT&T $30 a month, so we got something with WiFi (and since it's an unlocked phone, AT&T can't turn off the WiFi or force us into a data plan).
So, in reality, Verizon jumping onboard with this pricing model means that the days of even acceptably large (if you consider 5GB a month acceptably large) data plans are over. It's good news for the very casual "get a few emails, check the weather a few times a week" user, and very bad news for people who do video conferencing on their handsets, or want to use data-heavy services like YouTube or streaming TV.
Google isn't even attempting to police theirs - not even a minimal effort.
Yeah, you're right. They don't respond to takedown requests at all. They don't have a "report copyright violations" to allow their users to help them identify violations. They've never suspended an account for repeated violations. They've never responded to a court order with the identity of a copyright violator. They haven't formed partnerships with companies who ask them nicely to scan for their videos and take them down automatically.
Except they've done all of these things. But other than that, you're right, they've probably done nothing meaningful to you. They have repeatedly failed to magically identify copyrighted content and act in the interests of other companies and individuals who are unwilling or unable to act in their own interests.
Its funny how you guys love to consume and share content but are against content providers and their business models.
I'm not at all against your business model, only your implication that the rest of the world somehow owes you everything necessary to protect your profits over the content you produce. It's your content. The rest of the world has given you the right and the tools to protect it.
Now it's up to you to exercise that right and use those tools.
If you can't or won't police the uses of your own work, don't expect anyone else to be able to, much less willing to.
Asking copyright holders to police every possible infringing website is like requiring me to monitor every pawn shop for items that have been taken from my car.
Ever had something stolen? That's pretty much what it boils down to.
Who else is going to do that for you? The police? When you haven't even bothered to report something stolen?
The pawnshops? How do they know what your stuff is so they can identify it and get it back to you?
Usually, the term "pre-alpha" means mostly throwaway prototype code. I strongly suspect "grow", in this case, means "throw away and replace with something workable once you get a few hundred volunteer OSS coders intrigued by the idea".
But a concept with not of much use without any usefull implementation.
And the Diaspora team is asking for help in developing that implementation. Which is not their current codebase.
And security is not something you can add after you write the code.
True. But the code is a prototype. I doubt much of what is there will make it to Beta. It's an effective way of expressing the concept to seasoned coders who might be interested in taking up a few objects and redoing them, though.
That they made these mistakes so early on speaks wonders about how inexperienced these programmers were (and hopefully are no longer now that they've learned their lesson).
Look at any other OSS project on Sourceforge that is in "alpha" or "pre-alpha" stage. You'll see similar code. That's what demos are. They frequently don't do everything the final version will do, but they demonstrate what the code is intended to do. This is an advert for geeks to get interested in this approach to social networking.
The current version has flaws. So do early automaker prototypes and concept cars. You don't spend years developing a perfect car before showing it off a few times and seeing how people like it.
In this case, Diaspora needs seasoned OSS geeks to flesh out the concept. The current version of Diaspora is an early prototype to get a team interested in that concept. I doubt many of the lines of code currently in the codebase will make it past the early alpha stage.
You're confusing the quality of the code with the quality of the concept.
Diaspora's "security" concept isn't about writing code that scrubs inputs. I agree that it's wrong to release any sort of code intended for implementation that doesn't scrub inputs and do myriad other things in the name of secure coding. And this codebase is a large fat FAIL in that manner. But this code wasn't released for implementation, it was released as a prototype framework for the concept.
The concept is about storing the data in a way that one monolithic and for-profit company doesn't own every scrap of data about everyone who uses it.
Agreed, there are chunks of the codebase that are poorly written, but the code was put out to be reviewed and improved (and undoubtedly large swaths of it will be completely tossed out and replaced, at least I certainly hope so!).
It's a demonstration of a new approach.
This happens with a lot of OSS projects. Someone comes up with an idea of something they want, writes a prototype that frequently has huge bugs and looks shitty, and posts the code on Sourceforge or somewhere else hoping to attract a project team that is interested in their idea. If a team develops, sometimes you get a great product out of it (Pidgin, GiMP, VLC, etc). If no one else is interested in the idea, the original writer might take a shot at it until he has something attractive enough to get a team interested in it, or he might abandon the project.
It's only that Diaspora is trying to solve a problem that so many people appear interested in that this is even news. If this was a new web browser or utility, we wouldn't be hearing about it until it was much further along in the development process.
The Diaspora team are not the programming equivalent of construction workers. More like back-of-napkin architects. They dropped a codebase that describes an approach to social networking that may or may not have merit. The codebase was never intended to be compiled and implemented as-is, and anyone who has done so has acted incredibly foolishly.
So, if you want your analogy to hold, it's like relying on architects and construction workers to come in and build the house you described, and you've conveniently spray-painted the rough outline of the house on the ground and maybe started some of the digging with a shovel to maybe save them some time.
This would be true if (and only if) the whole point of Diaspora wasn't to improve the security of your data.
And, as I understand it, it still is. By providing a different foundation than a single privately-held company in possession of complete and unfettered access to all of that data. The concept may (or may not) still be valid now that it's been described by throwing out a demo framework that obviously still needs a lot of work.
And they didn't get that part close to right before launching?
If you can see into the future, can I get a few stock quotes from a year from now, please? Diaspora hasn't launched.
They released some code for public review. The codebase is full of holes and flaws, about like you'd expect any college student to put out.
If there's any interest, then a bunch of OSS geeks will get behind it, probably throw out or at least significantly rewrite all the code Diaspora has put out, and release something that may or may not be useful.
I hear Office 2025 really sucks, too. Care to comment?
This isn't a love of Google in particular, it's a love of an interactive Internet where I can freely post my thoughts and others can, too.
Google, if they have the resources to even attempt this policing, would in effect own most user-contributed content on the Internet. If they have the resources to police it, they'd pretty much be the only ones big enough to even try.
So, actually, this is pretty much the opposite of a love for Google. I don't want user-contributed content confined to only companies huge and vast enough to police the content they host.
The content POSTERS need to be held liable for what they POST. The PROVIDERS have a liability that ends with taking down the content in response to a valid takedown request, and if the copyright holder decides to pursue the matter, responding to a valid and legal court order as to the identity of the person who POSTED the content.
So, of the tens of thousands of videos submitted every day, a staff of 200 people is going to compare that to the myriad pieces of copyrighted works in existence today and successfully identify the original content copyright holder, contact them, and ensure that permission has been obtained?
No, sorry, that would take a staff of one person per day for each video uploaded, and it still wouldn't be very successful.
If you want to me to support laws to protect your intellectual property, fine. But you have to be part of the solution, not just sitting there after profiting from the work and expecting the rest of the world to protect your property for you for generations. If others are profiting from your work without your permission, that's wrong. But only you know whether the work was authorized for that purpose, and you need to be the one to identify it.
I realize this is a burden. But it's a burden that someone must bear. Should that be you, the person who has a vested interest in the property and is profiting from it, or the rest of the population of humanity who honestly doesn't really give a flying fuck whether you make any money, but will try to right a wrong if you tell us about it?
I'd say that's true, as long as the torrent site has a solid track record of responding appropriately to takedown requests. I'm sure that, given their long history of immediate and dutiful responses to valid takedown requests submitted by the copyright holder, The Pirate Bay could safely move to Spain and... ah, screw it, I can't even TYPE that with a straight face.
There is simply no way for Google or any other enterprise to monitor user postings for the billions of bits of copyrighted material out there. It's not only impractical, it's impossible. The onus is, has always been, and always should be on the copyright holder to defend their works
If hosting companies are required to monitor everything hosted on their sites and start being held liable for copyright or other issues with the content, then you'll see every content provider that allows user submissions shut down within a few days.
Slashdot Mirror
Better, but still problematic for another reason.
Captcha requires lots of possibly incorrect responses. An answer with a minimum value of 0 and a maximum value of 4 (for example) means there are 5 possible responses. 0,1,2,3,4.
That gives a bot a 20% chance of being correct, which is unacceptably easy.
You've also made the captcha solution language-specific. And if you use colors, color-blindness may be an issue for you now as well.
Don't get me wrong, I can see some applications of picture-based captcha, but I don't see them as terribly more effective than the current "wavy gravy" text you have to dutifully reproduce letter-by-letter.
The upholstery company forgot to put the "warning: not for use on humans" label on.
Should we now install warning labels on bottled water stating that it's wet?
There's a reason most companies that make laptops started renaming them "notebooks", because you shouldn't keep the damned things on your lap. They get hot. People have been burned by them. That doesn't mean we need to add yet another warning label to the sea of ignored little red and yellow stickers already covering every product you buy.
only see them as a bright yellow stain on my upholstery.
"Do you suffer from the horror of WLAS (Warning Label Anxiety Syndrome)? Ask your doctor if Labeloffitall is right for you. Labeloffitall is the first prescription medicine that can actually make excess warning labels invisible to the naked eye! WARNING: Labeloffitall is not right for everyone. If you start seeing bright yellow stains on your upholstery, you may be actually suffering from a urinary tract infection. See your doctor immediately if you suffer from runaway libido, as this may lead to sex and pregnancy, a serious medical condition, especially in men. [pause] Labeloffitall, your label-free future is waiting for you!"
It might work, except that someone who is famous to one person is unknown to another. Were you to put up a picture of Barack Obama or Joe Biden, I could identify either one easily. The same could not be said of all world leaders, however. I read pretty regularly about events involving David Cameron, Christian Wulff, and Nikolas Sarkozy, but I'm not sure if I could accurately identify a photo of any of them given no other context.
Lady Gaga? Show me a picture of her without any context, and I'd have to start guessing or searching names at random until I got a match. The same could be said of many very popular entertainers (singers, actors, etc). I suspect I'm the precise opposite of most Internet users in that regard, though. I know a number of actors by sight, but remember few of their names. Unless I could type their character names on the shows/movies they've appeared in, I'd probably be lost. And if I've got to spend a few minutes on IMDB looking people up, there's a damned good chance I'm not THAT interested in your site.
Picture-based captcha is really effective at filtering out bots. The problem with using a captcha that includes pictures is that you need to be pretty confident you know your intended audience knows what the pictures are of.
The beauty of current captchas is that you don't need specific knowledge to use them. I don't need to speak English or have specific knowledge of American movie stars to pass a letter-based captcha. If I can identify each letter successfully, I can retype it.
It's not a knowledge or skills test, it's a captcha.
To carry your analogy to the appropriate conclusion, a blue tarp might be considered a "permanent" solution to the damaged roof of a specific shed if the structure is expected to fall apart in the next few months.
In this case, even if the artificial heart only lasts 25 years, it'll probably outlast its recipient by at least 10, because very few Duchenne patients make it to 30, much less 40. He's 15 years old, and there's a very good chance that something else will end his life long before he hits the point where this heart is approaching failure.
So this is almost certainly a "permanent" solution to the problem, much as we all hope that medical science progresses to the point where this boy lives long enough to need a replacement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duchenne_muscular_dystrophy
He's got Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Living to 40 is exceptionally rare, and most people who have this disease don't live to be 30. Sadly, by the time he gets anywhere near 40, another system that cannot be replaced/augmented as easily will probably have failed. The pump they installed will almost certainly outlast him, sad as that concept is.
Still, he was just a few days from death according to the article. Even if he only makes it a few more years, it's a few more than his natural heart could have kept him alive to see, and maybe there will be enough of an advance to patch up whatever other systemic failures lie in his future. I sincerely hope that in 25 years he's looking at a replacement to the pump, but this is sadly probably the last one he'll ever need.
I'm a pilot. Give me a clear stretch of unpopulated land in uncontrolled airspace and a few bucks for some special equipment and I could undoubtedly make it rain cotton candy.
Changing human nature? Sorry, there's only one entity I've heard of that could possibly manage that, and he flies at somewhat higher altitudes than I do. I also strongly suspect he's a work of fiction.
Tolkien wrote LoTR as one large book. His editors made him break it into six sub-books, which were then combined and edited into the three books.
They couldn't have done this with LoTR because there wasn't enough movie-ready material in there. LoTR is a deeply complex story with a lot of subtle subplots going on. Jackson chose the destruction of the Ring as the primary thrust of his story. Bombadil was not a part of that storyline. Bombadil would have been (to a movie-going audience) a complete non-sequitur. He's too subtle and interwoven into the ending of the Third Age. He's an example of the powerful but uninterested, which is a great narrative on why Hobbits are perfect Ringbearers, but is more of a sociological point than an add-on to the Quest to destroy the One Ring. He's a plot device to expose the dangers of some of the remaining bits of the Second Age (barrow-wights) while not killing off any important characters, but again Jackson didn't really cover the differences between the Ages. Bombadil neither contributed toward nor hindered the mission to destroy the One Ring.
The scouring of the Shire would have been drama after the happy ending, which is hard to pull off in movies, and as a 4th (or 6th) movie it would have been largely ignored as a "tidying up loose ends" bit. In the books, it's an interesting afterthought of the lingering consequences of allowing Saruman to live, and the fact that the destruction of the Ring didn't destroy all evil, and even unleashed a little here and there. It was also sort of a final nail in the Third Age's coffin, and the ending of the implied innocence of the Shire, the descent of all other species (elves, dwarves, hobbits) and the powers they wielded, and the ascent of Men and mechanical power. Again, though, none of that has anything to do with the Ring story.
Expressing all of that in movies would put an audience to sleep, and still come off as inadequate. Movies are stories told with a broad and unsubtle brush, and you have to make your stories less subtle as a result. Jackson chose the interesting storyline and dropped the rest.
I mean, look at what Jackson had to do to make The Two Towers interesting to a movie audience. They should have changed the name to "Helm's Deep: A Love Story". Jackson took a largely insignificant battle and made a whole movie out of it, invented a love interest thread between Aragorn and Arwen, and completely recast the Ents in order to add some conflict between them and the other protagonists, and to give them more screen time because the effects were cool. And, let's be honest, it was probably just as well. You'd want to see more "Frodo and Sam trudging through vast empty boringness?" Coverage of Sam's rescue, floor by floor, of Frodo from the Tower of Cirith Ungol?
Jackson took all the important but boring bits as vignettes rather than bits of information woven into a complex story.
The whole dichotomy of Smeagol attempting and failing to assert his personality over the Ring-induced Gollum persona was done in one utterly brilliant self-argument rather than as bits of interwoven story throughout. It was oversimplified, but that's what you do in a movie, and it expressed the complexity of what Smeagol/Gollum was as a character without becoming boring.
Frodo's sympathy with Smeagol and Sam's distrust of Gollum was handled by a few quick events, culminating in the trick Gollum played on Sam, rather than by many small-but-subtle interplays as seen in the books. As a result, Sam was rewritten as a bit thick and foolish enough to leave Frodo's side, rather than the one smart enough to wield Galadriel's Phial after Frodo was already taken out by Shelob.
I certainly have my complaints with the movies. But, given the unsubtle form that is a movie, I think Jackson did a remarkable job of making a movie that non-LoTR geeks could still enjoy, while still telling a story that is true to at least one storyline in the books. The natural result of this, however, is that bits that don't fit the main storyline need to go, or you risk making the movie boring to anyone but a LoTR geek. And you gotta sell lots of asses in seats to pay for an epic production like Jackson's LoTR.
Reading the Silmarillion, though, was like reading a cross between a bible and the world's most boring history book.
I agree, but it also depends on what you are reading for. I tried the Simarillion as a kid, and, umm, no way in hell was I going to willingly slog through it.
I loved the Hobbit and liked LoTR at 13, but I only got through about 20 pages of the Simarillion as a 14-year-old and would rather have removed my own intestines with a dull spoon than continue. But I had only read the Hobbit and LoTR once each, so I had little context as to why the history of that universe might be interesting. I was also 14 years old, and was dealing with too many boring history books as it was.
Now, as an adult way too many years later, I like The Hobbit but find it a hard read (too many blasted exclamation points, for one). I've maybe read that twice as an adult. Love the story, but the writing is too "young". Which is appropriate given that it's more of a kid's book, and that's as it should be. I'd love to see a few of the "lo! Oh Joy!" lines and exclamation points taken out for an adult version as long as the story remains intact.
LoTR is something I keep a leatherbound edition of around and give it a solid re-read every 2-3 years. I've probably read it a dozen times, and I expect I'll continue doing so until I'm dead. It's well worth re-reading repeatedly. As my own life changes, I see myself sympathizing with different characters and reading different things from it each time. It's a complex story full of nuances I missed as a young pup, and it's a slightly different read each time. I know how it ends, but I still love the journey (something a film cannot do, that's always the same journey so there's little point in re-watching it too many times).
I have yet to develop the intestinal fortitude to try the Simarillion again. But, given many reads of LoTR and a few of the Hobbit, and the patience (if not wisdom) imparted by age, I might be able to get through it and even possibly enjoy it now. I still look back on the horror of facing it as a young pup, though, and it's kind of made it something to dread rather than look forward to. The importance of not introducing youngsters to something too "grown up" for their age is worth mentioning. I HATED Shakespeare and Greek tragedies in Junior High School and High School, and it's only by forcing myself to re-read them as an adult that I've discovered that there's some good shit there.
but boring as sin.
I have yet to find a sin that is boring. I'll keep looking. Do you have any suggestions? ;)
What I got from both the books and the movie on that was simply that Hobbits don't really give two shits about power. Tolkien hammered on this concept until it hurt, and Jackson remained pretty true to that concept. They intentionally choose a simple life, they have little interest in controlling (or, let's be honest, even helping) anyone outside their borders, so the whole concept of a ring that gives absolute power has little meaning. The Ring can corrupt them (see Smeagol/Gollum and Frodo). Hell, even Bilbo got corrupted by it to an extent, but he managed to hold out for quite a while because he didn't know what it was.
The only people who could bear the Ring are those who could wield it (limited to a population of one, named "Sauron") and those to whom it would not occur to try.
Bilbo never had a clue what the Ring was, or what it represented. At least not until long after it was out of his hands, and I'm not sure he really knew anything other that it was a burden to Frodo, then forgot about that soon after. To him, it was a magical little shiny that allowed him to avoid unpleasant encounters and skulk around. He didn't have buttons the Ring could have pushed to seek absolute power. He didn't know about it, and didn't care, other than the small and insignificant uses he put it to. Even so, it took threats from Gandalf to get him to set it aside, and it still gnawed at him.
Frodo knew what he had from fairly early on, but lacked the sort of desire for power the Ring could leverage. Even so, the Ring did work on Frodo at the end. He was unable to cast it into the fires and actually started to try and wield it, and it fell on Gollum and a bit of clumsiness and happy chance to finally destroy the Ring.
Hobbits are also insignificant to the powerful to the point of near invisibility. Give the Ring to an Eagle, and he'd be spotted and intercepted, probably before he crossed the border into Mordor, if his own sense of power didn't turn his purposes to that of the Ring's first. No one could wield it without Sauron being aware of it (and eventually being subverted by it), and no one could openly fight past Sauron and into Mordor without wielding it. It was only through stealth that Frodo managed to get the Ring into Mordor without being immediately caught.
Remember, all of the people who understood the ring and understood power (Gandalf, Elrond, Aragorn, Faramir, Galadriel, etc) were strong enough to reject the ring but wise enough to understand that they were not strong enough to control it or even handle it. Boromir was weak enough to be unable to reject the ring, and though he managed to reject it briefly it was really only Saruman's orcs killing him off that saved him from eventually succumbing to its appeal and attempting to wield it. Denethor was weak enough that the mere concept that it slipped through Faramir's fingers was enough to drive him batshit crazy.
No one who was strong enough to understand what the Ring truly was would be strong enough to carry it for any length of time. Its power was too appealing.
I'll give Jitterbug credit - they keep it very simple. $15 a month is pricey for 50 minutes, but at least you aren't needing to keep track of expiration dates, etc.
AT&T and Verizon both also offer "prepaid" cellphone plans. I used AT&T's for some years. A $100 "recharge" card buys you minutes that don't expire for a year, and IIRC a $25 card is good for three months. In other words, you can get a light-usage cell phone for a tad over $8 a month. Calls are 25 cents a minute (or ten cents a minute plus a dollar for each day you actually make or receive a call, your choice), and taken out of the prepaid amount. Tracphone and a generous mittenful of others offer similar pricing and features, and there are racks of recharge cards for various plans at any convenience store.
The problem with a lot of prepaid plans is not the per-minute charge (they are generally still cheaper than a payphone), but the expiration dates. Several offer very attractive per-minute rates, but have $50 cards that expire in 45 days or $10 cards that are only good for a week. At that rate, you're almost better off buying a basic voice-only contract plan.
Also, keep in mind that with a cell phone there's no such thing as a "local" or a "long distance" call, and there's no differentiation between "incoming" or "outgoing" calls. It's all airtime. If you are on the phone, you are using minutes. If you spend more than two minutes per day on the telephone talking anyone, regardless of whether you called them or they called you, or whether they are in your local exchange or not, the Jitterbug "Simply 14" plan won't have enough minutes for you. Nor will the AT&T prepaid plan at $100 a year. This is a big transition from people who are used to "free local" or "free incoming" calls like the local telcos tend to provide.
If you need more than 150 minutes a month or so of airtime (ie. if you spend about 5 minutes a DAY on the phone), you'll frequently find that a basic cell plan is less expensive than a prepaid. Most prepaids average about 25 cents a minute, meaning that your airtime is going to be nearly $40 a month for 150 minutes. You can get basic 450-minute plans for that kind of money. Buy your own "dumb-phone" unlocked handset off Amazon or whomever (making sure it's compatible with the carrier of your choice) and you won't be committed to a contract with an early termination fee. Freecycle frequently has people disposing of their old phones, and you can just use one of those if you want. Then you just buy a month-to-month account and if the carrier pisses you off you can get another used or unlocked phone for a different carrier and switch.
Of course, if you have Internet access, there's always VoIP companies like Vonage, or computer-based VoIP like Skype. Those lines are really cheap to run. Cheaper than most cell plans.
Keep in mind that, if you drop your landline, you are almost certainly also dropping location-aware 9-1-1 service. The GPS on your cell will almost certainly not work indoors, and cell triangulation is clumsy and inaccurate if it works at all. Vonage and others offer 9-1-1, but it just forwards to their own emergency response center and they may or may not be able to determine your local dispatcher and get your address to them even if they do. So if you want to be able to pick up the phone, dial 911, and gargle incoherently into the handset knowing that someone will show up shortly, losing your landline might not be for you.
"Correctly", yes, but the "accident" isn't really an accident when the phone is set up in such a way as to almost force you to make the mistake frequently.
I've had this same issue with AT&T. My father-in-law chose a phone that has a hard-coded shortcut button in an easy place to accidentally push it, and the button sends you to something requiring data and the button cannot be remapped or disabled (without the careful application of tools, of course, but most people don't want to have to microsolder a button out of their brand-new phone!). We looked around for another "dumb" phone without this button, and they basically don't exist in the AT&T store.
Their obvious hope was that, after a few calls to have the data charge reversed, you'd just accept the $1 or $2 a month of accidental charges because it's more hassle to call them every month and get it reversed. The phone has no way to disable data usage internally (AT&T disabled that option in the setup menu), the button cannot be remapped or disabled (AT&T disabled that option in the setup menu as well), and AT&T doesn't exactly go out of their way to let you know you can block data (or SMS) on your account to prevent accidental usage.
Even if you did elect to block data, what if you wanted to be able to access data occasionally? My father-in-law was quite happy to pay $1 or so when he really did want to check weather or traffic on his phone, but ended up blocking data because he was tapping the AT&T "Shop Ringtones" button almost every time he opened his phone (it was located precisely in the logical spot to grip the phone to flip it open, so, yes, he was "holding it wrong"), and was paying an average of several dollars a month in charges until I told him about data blocking. He's not terribly happy, and AT&T is actually making less money off him than they could, but that was the best solution we could find at the time.
So it basically means that, if you don't intend to use data (even on a "dumb" phone), you have to specifically ask to have data blocked on every handset purchase (which means you need to know the service is available), and when you change handsets you have to ask all over again. It's not hard to do, but it's not something you should have to ask for yourself.
Unlocked phones have the major advantage of not having carrier premapped buttons. Just one of the reasons why I think they are worth the extra money. :)
I certainly hope this is what happens, but in reality it probably just means that the race to the bottom continues apace. Watch for all the other carriers to jump to this model, now that AT&T and Verizon have shattered the barrier.
How many people, when the first airline announced a $25 per bag checkin fee, said "Good, this opens up competition, because the other airlines won't do this and I'll just stop flying XYZ Air from now on!"
How many people, when Verizon announced their increase in the ETF for smartphones, said "hey, here's a reason to go to [insert other carrier here]!"
When a company adds an innovative new way of making money, other companies will follow suit until that becomes the standard. The only way to resist this is to choose a company that doesn't do that, and the US doesn't have enough truly nationwide carriers with acceptable coverage to make that practical. If you want coverage here in Maine, your choices are AT&T and Verizon, and the choice between those two is often dependent upon where you live (which one has a tower closer to you). If you live within 5 miles of the highway south of Augusta, and maybe a few other scattered areas, Sprint may be an option for you.
And, of course, a lot of people are locked into multi-year plans thanks to the model that most cell carriers have adopted - locked phones with a contract. Unlocked phones don't save you a lot of money, often cost a lot upfront, and don't offer a real choice of carriers since pretty much all of the carriers use a different protocol or frequencies. My wife uses an unlocked phone, but I know that since it's a GSM phone my only real choice is AT&T if I want 3G. We only wanted unlocked because she wanted something with data access and we didn't want to have to pay AT&T $30 a month, so we got something with WiFi (and since it's an unlocked phone, AT&T can't turn off the WiFi or force us into a data plan).
So, in reality, Verizon jumping onboard with this pricing model means that the days of even acceptably large (if you consider 5GB a month acceptably large) data plans are over. It's good news for the very casual "get a few emails, check the weather a few times a week" user, and very bad news for people who do video conferencing on their handsets, or want to use data-heavy services like YouTube or streaming TV.
Google isn't even attempting to police theirs - not even a minimal effort.
Yeah, you're right. They don't respond to takedown requests at all. They don't have a "report copyright violations" to allow their users to help them identify violations. They've never suspended an account for repeated violations. They've never responded to a court order with the identity of a copyright violator. They haven't formed partnerships with companies who ask them nicely to scan for their videos and take them down automatically.
Except they've done all of these things. But other than that, you're right, they've probably done nothing meaningful to you. They have repeatedly failed to magically identify copyrighted content and act in the interests of other companies and individuals who are unwilling or unable to act in their own interests.
Its funny how you guys love to consume and share content but are against content providers and their business models.
I'm not at all against your business model, only your implication that the rest of the world somehow owes you everything necessary to protect your profits over the content you produce. It's your content. The rest of the world has given you the right and the tools to protect it.
Now it's up to you to exercise that right and use those tools.
If you can't or won't police the uses of your own work, don't expect anyone else to be able to, much less willing to.
Asking copyright holders to police every possible infringing website is like requiring me to monitor every pawn shop for items that have been taken from my car.
Ever had something stolen? That's pretty much what it boils down to.
Who else is going to do that for you? The police? When you haven't even bothered to report something stolen?
The pawnshops? How do they know what your stuff is so they can identify it and get it back to you?
Usually, the term "pre-alpha" means mostly throwaway prototype code. I strongly suspect "grow", in this case, means "throw away and replace with something workable once you get a few hundred volunteer OSS coders intrigued by the idea".
But a concept with not of much use without any usefull implementation.
And the Diaspora team is asking for help in developing that implementation. Which is not their current codebase.
And security is not something you can add after you write the code.
True. But the code is a prototype. I doubt much of what is there will make it to Beta. It's an effective way of expressing the concept to seasoned coders who might be interested in taking up a few objects and redoing them, though.
That they made these mistakes so early on speaks wonders about how inexperienced these programmers were (and hopefully are no longer now that they've learned their lesson).
Look at any other OSS project on Sourceforge that is in "alpha" or "pre-alpha" stage. You'll see similar code. That's what demos are. They frequently don't do everything the final version will do, but they demonstrate what the code is intended to do. This is an advert for geeks to get interested in this approach to social networking.
The current version has flaws. So do early automaker prototypes and concept cars. You don't spend years developing a perfect car before showing it off a few times and seeing how people like it.
In this case, Diaspora needs seasoned OSS geeks to flesh out the concept. The current version of Diaspora is an early prototype to get a team interested in that concept. I doubt many of the lines of code currently in the codebase will make it past the early alpha stage.
You're confusing the quality of the code with the quality of the concept.
Diaspora's "security" concept isn't about writing code that scrubs inputs. I agree that it's wrong to release any sort of code intended for implementation that doesn't scrub inputs and do myriad other things in the name of secure coding. And this codebase is a large fat FAIL in that manner. But this code wasn't released for implementation, it was released as a prototype framework for the concept.
The concept is about storing the data in a way that one monolithic and for-profit company doesn't own every scrap of data about everyone who uses it.
Agreed, there are chunks of the codebase that are poorly written, but the code was put out to be reviewed and improved (and undoubtedly large swaths of it will be completely tossed out and replaced, at least I certainly hope so!).
It's a demonstration of a new approach.
This happens with a lot of OSS projects. Someone comes up with an idea of something they want, writes a prototype that frequently has huge bugs and looks shitty, and posts the code on Sourceforge or somewhere else hoping to attract a project team that is interested in their idea. If a team develops, sometimes you get a great product out of it (Pidgin, GiMP, VLC, etc). If no one else is interested in the idea, the original writer might take a shot at it until he has something attractive enough to get a team interested in it, or he might abandon the project.
It's only that Diaspora is trying to solve a problem that so many people appear interested in that this is even news. If this was a new web browser or utility, we wouldn't be hearing about it until it was much further along in the development process.
The Diaspora team are not the programming equivalent of construction workers. More like back-of-napkin architects. They dropped a codebase that describes an approach to social networking that may or may not have merit. The codebase was never intended to be compiled and implemented as-is, and anyone who has done so has acted incredibly foolishly.
So, if you want your analogy to hold, it's like relying on architects and construction workers to come in and build the house you described, and you've conveniently spray-painted the rough outline of the house on the ground and maybe started some of the digging with a shovel to maybe save them some time.
This would be true if (and only if) the whole point of Diaspora wasn't to improve the security of your data.
And, as I understand it, it still is. By providing a different foundation than a single privately-held company in possession of complete and unfettered access to all of that data. The concept may (or may not) still be valid now that it's been described by throwing out a demo framework that obviously still needs a lot of work.
And they didn't get that part close to right before launching?
If you can see into the future, can I get a few stock quotes from a year from now, please? Diaspora hasn't launched.
They released some code for public review. The codebase is full of holes and flaws, about like you'd expect any college student to put out.
If there's any interest, then a bunch of OSS geeks will get behind it, probably throw out or at least significantly rewrite all the code Diaspora has put out, and release something that may or may not be useful.
I hear Office 2025 really sucks, too. Care to comment?
This isn't a love of Google in particular, it's a love of an interactive Internet where I can freely post my thoughts and others can, too.
Google, if they have the resources to even attempt this policing, would in effect own most user-contributed content on the Internet. If they have the resources to police it, they'd pretty much be the only ones big enough to even try.
So, actually, this is pretty much the opposite of a love for Google. I don't want user-contributed content confined to only companies huge and vast enough to police the content they host.
The content POSTERS need to be held liable for what they POST. The PROVIDERS have a liability that ends with taking down the content in response to a valid takedown request, and if the copyright holder decides to pursue the matter, responding to a valid and legal court order as to the identity of the person who POSTED the content.
So, of the tens of thousands of videos submitted every day, a staff of 200 people is going to compare that to the myriad pieces of copyrighted works in existence today and successfully identify the original content copyright holder, contact them, and ensure that permission has been obtained?
No, sorry, that would take a staff of one person per day for each video uploaded, and it still wouldn't be very successful.
If you want to me to support laws to protect your intellectual property, fine. But you have to be part of the solution, not just sitting there after profiting from the work and expecting the rest of the world to protect your property for you for generations. If others are profiting from your work without your permission, that's wrong. But only you know whether the work was authorized for that purpose, and you need to be the one to identify it.
I realize this is a burden. But it's a burden that someone must bear. Should that be you, the person who has a vested interest in the property and is profiting from it, or the rest of the population of humanity who honestly doesn't really give a flying fuck whether you make any money, but will try to right a wrong if you tell us about it?
I'd say that's true, as long as the torrent site has a solid track record of responding appropriately to takedown requests. I'm sure that, given their long history of immediate and dutiful responses to valid takedown requests submitted by the copyright holder, The Pirate Bay could safely move to Spain and... ah, screw it, I can't even TYPE that with a straight face.
There is simply no way for Google or any other enterprise to monitor user postings for the billions of bits of copyrighted material out there. It's not only impractical, it's impossible. The onus is, has always been, and always should be on the copyright holder to defend their works
If hosting companies are required to monitor everything hosted on their sites and start being held liable for copyright or other issues with the content, then you'll see every content provider that allows user submissions shut down within a few days.