The non-cyber world has had this sort of thing going on since forever. I personally have witnessed a television station threatened with advertising cancellation by Coca Cola over a story on how much sugar is in soft drinks like Coke. Most magazines and newspapers keep at least a partial eye on their editorial content for fear of offending an advertiser. While it's not pretty or the way I would structure the world if I were God, it's not surprising that a company would exercise whatever power it has to gain an advantage. The nice thing about the web is that now we have forums like SlashDot and others to call them on it. If they catch enough flack for heavyhanded tactics, we may see much less of this sort of thing in the future.
If you have zillions of posts, you can ask Deja to remove them en masse, assuming they're identifiable and you can establish that they're yours. I've known people who did that by email negotiations with Deja, so presumably it would be an option for you as well.
It's NOT I don't want to see the silly hyperlinks, it that they are, effectively, misquoting me!
Deja has given you the perfect remedy: go to their link and nuke your articles. Get them out of Deja's hands. Unfortunately, your words die forever, but that's the price you pay. If they should be timeless, create a web page of your own to preserve them.
This is going too far. I get carded trying to buy an R-Rated movie, get carded to buy Soldier of Fortune in BC, get carded to play video games in Indiana but don't get carded when I walk into a bar. Go figure where our priorities are.
Explanation: Society wants you drunk, not sexually aroused or hiring yourself out as a hit man.
Librarians have taken the position of unrestricted, unfiltered access to the web, even for children. If children under 18 found violent games on the web and played them on library computers, could Indianapolis libraries be in violation of this ordinance, or does this only apply to businesses? If the latter, how can the city justify penalizing private companies for what is allowed in public buildings? If the former, will librarians denounce this ordinance as 'censorship'? Interesting questions.
Re:Something to remember about video cards...
on
ATI Radeon Released
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· Score: 2
2010: Graphics Cards with liquid helium baths.
Re:Something to remember about video cards...
on
ATI Radeon Released
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· Score: 2
If typical video RAM in 1980 was about ~4K, then the 8MB used now (not one tweaked for games) is right in line for what would be expected;
Well, that 4kb was before the video cards became little video computers on their own. Their job has changed from one of just displaying text on a monitor to generating polygons, anti-aliasing, hidden surface removal, etc. etc. etc. What the military calls 'mission creep'. That would be one justification for their straying outside of the normal Moore's Law envelope. Or maybe it's like the hard disk drives lately. They've really accelerated beyond the confines of Mooore's Law.
How about a spin-off with that bunch of geeks that appear occasionally? The few times I've caught the show and they were on, I found them much more entertaining than the stars.
I partly agree. In my past experience, the people stealing things like long-distance or satellite tv were mainly adventureres who just got off on puttin' to 'the man.' They're weren't much of a threat to the bottom line of the companys involved, because their methods were too complicated and too much trouble for the average person. Services like Napster, however, have started making it much easier and have lowered the barriers for the masses. As I see it, the only real barrier that remains for pirated movies is the bandwidth needed to transfer them. I think that most people won't knowingly buy a pirate DVD. For whatever reason, that seems much more 'wrong' than getting it thru a Napster.
I tried using CDROM for backup for a while, but it turned out to be a pain. While it was nice to have this pretty rock-solid copy of my data, I always had to be careful not to run anything else on the machine driving the CD writer, or the buffer would underrun. Tape backup can run in the background and work can continue. I don't know anything about DVD writing, but if it has the same buffer underrun problems, I'd probably avoid it too. Just my own prejudices.
I guess my point here is where is the transition to illegality?
If I were EBay's attorney, I'd argue that you were infringing EBay's copyright when you let your friends access your compilation of EBay's information. Interestingly, the article didn't list this as one of the causes of action in the lawsuit. Instead, EBay contended trademark infringement. And even that didn't fly - instead, the judge found some oddball theory of trespass. Of the 3, the last one is shakiest, IMO. Guess I just don't have a legal mind...
It's not really stealing their customers to make info available about what's being sold. Customers still must go to EBay in order to buy. How is spidering EBay auctions different from strolling through your supermarket aisle, noting the prices, and then posting them to a web page?
I don't think the loss of sites offering meta-browsing (for example, culling stories from a variety of newspapers)is necessarily a big deal. It's always possible to create that capability at the client end browser (although it's possible to screw even that up as well: the lamebrains in Redmond made IE pay attention to robots.txt when crawling a site, which makes it useless for creating personal collections, IMO.) The real loss will be to the generation of databases of data that would be too time-consuming or difficult for an individual to do. Search engines like Google could (theoretically) be barred from sites that didn't want them intruding (although, that capability would seemingly be available already in robots.txt - just set it to "don't index anything.")
Here's a random, probably impractical, thought: the search engines could agree on what indexing policy ecommerce sites should allow, and boycott those that won't agree. The boycott could take the form of putting a normally-off checkbox next to the search button, saying "check this if you also want to search for sites run by evil corporate bastards." Just a fantasy:-)
Because I hoped to make a humorous point about for-profit businesses and.org, I went to mafia.org. Just a little place-keeper page there. Then I went to mafia.com and got taken to idrive.com. Now I'm wondering if iDrive is a wholely-owned subsidiary of the Legitimate Businessman's Club.:-)
It's one of those stories where you know it's coming but just not exactly when. Kind of like a birth announcement. You probably already know the sex and what the parents are naming it, but it's still news when it happens.
Unless there's some legislation forthcoming, this is going to be a litigation factory. Currently, trademark law (at least in the U.S.) permits companies who are engaged in widely different lines of business to have the same or similar names. If the established companies try to corner their names in every single domain space, even unrelated ones, there are going to be some ticked off folks. Just because I have salon.com, does that mean I get to have salon.banc if I don't actually have a bank? And what if I later establish a bank, does salon.banc have to hand it over to me? Just thinking about all this makes me appreciate why they've been haggling over this change for 5 years.
I don't think it was Mitnik, since conditions of his parole says he can't touch a computer for years to come, and this guy is someone they're after right now. If it was his computer, he couldn't have it anyway.
Perhaps they've cracked it but they can't use it unless the guy gives the code.
You mean they already know what's on it, that's it's incriminating, but don't want to reveal that they have the ability to crack the code? Maybe, but it seems far-fetched. If that were true, they'd know the guy could never turn the key over to them, and that their using the computer as leverage would be ineffective. In which case, their only options are either to forget about using the computer contents or reveal that they've broken the code. The fact that they're not letting the matter drop makes me believe that they haven't cracked the code and desperately want what's on that computer.
"Harmful" is just their excuse for keeping it, while they try to force the guy to disclose the key. They claim they can't turn it over until they examine it for things like nuclear bomb secrets or some such rubbish. What they're really after is incriminating evidence that would support their prosecution of the guy for whatever suspected crime caused them to seize it in the first place. I've now forgotten what that was, but my best guess is cracking other computer systems.
Slashdot Mirror
The non-cyber world has had this sort of thing going on since forever. I personally have witnessed a television station threatened with advertising cancellation by Coca Cola over a story on how much sugar is in soft drinks like Coke. Most magazines and newspapers keep at least a partial eye on their editorial content for fear of offending an advertiser. While it's not pretty or the way I would structure the world if I were God, it's not surprising that a company would exercise whatever power it has to gain an advantage. The nice thing about the web is that now we have forums like SlashDot and others to call them on it. If they catch enough flack for heavyhanded tactics, we may see much less of this sort of thing in the future.
If you have zillions of posts, you can ask Deja to remove them en masse, assuming they're identifiable and you can establish that they're yours. I've known people who did that by email negotiations with Deja, so presumably it would be an option for you as well.
It's NOT I don't want to see the silly hyperlinks, it that they are, effectively, misquoting me!
Deja has given you the perfect remedy: go to their link and nuke your articles. Get them out of Deja's hands. Unfortunately, your words die forever, but that's the price you pay. If they should be timeless, create a web page of your own to preserve them.
A squat, top-vented computer might not be completely nuts. It would make a good foot stool/warmer.
This is going too far. I get carded trying to buy an R-Rated movie, get carded to buy Soldier of Fortune in BC, get carded to play video games in Indiana but don't get carded when I walk into a bar. Go figure where our priorities are.
Explanation: Society wants you drunk, not sexually aroused or hiring yourself out as a hit man.
Librarians have taken the position of unrestricted, unfiltered access to the web, even for children. If children under 18 found violent games on the web and played them on library computers, could Indianapolis libraries be in violation of this ordinance, or does this only apply to businesses? If the latter, how can the city justify penalizing private companies for what is allowed in public buildings? If the former, will librarians denounce this ordinance as 'censorship'? Interesting questions.
2010: Graphics Cards with liquid helium baths.
If typical video RAM in 1980 was about ~4K, then the 8MB used now (not one tweaked for games) is right in line for what would be expected;
Well, that 4kb was before the video cards became little video computers on their own. Their job has changed from one of just displaying text on a monitor to generating polygons, anti-aliasing, hidden surface removal, etc. etc. etc. What the military calls 'mission creep'. That would be one justification for their straying outside of the normal Moore's Law envelope. Or maybe it's like the hard disk drives lately. They've really accelerated beyond the confines of Mooore's Law.
You have absolutely made my day with that news. Thanks!
I thought John LeCarre had taken up writing for television.
How about a spin-off with that bunch of geeks that appear occasionally? The few times I've caught the show and they were on, I found them much more entertaining than the stars.
Whoa. Majorly cool. I'm up to my eyeballs in silvery coasters :-).
You could be right that the IDE was responsible. My plan is to use SCSI in the future, and I might give it another try when I have that.
I partly agree. In my past experience, the people stealing things like long-distance or satellite tv were mainly adventureres who just got off on puttin' to 'the man.' They're weren't much of a threat to the bottom line of the companys involved, because their methods were too complicated and too much trouble for the average person. Services like Napster, however, have started making it much easier and have lowered the barriers for the masses. As I see it, the only real barrier that remains for pirated movies is the bandwidth needed to transfer them. I think that most people won't knowingly buy a pirate DVD. For whatever reason, that seems much more 'wrong' than getting it thru a Napster.
I tried using CDROM for backup for a while, but it turned out to be a pain. While it was nice to have this pretty rock-solid copy of my data, I always had to be careful not to run anything else on the machine driving the CD writer, or the buffer would underrun. Tape backup can run in the background and work can continue. I don't know anything about DVD writing, but if it has the same buffer underrun problems, I'd probably avoid it too. Just my own prejudices.
There's also a salon.com article about this here.
I guess my point here is where is the transition to illegality?
...
If I were EBay's attorney, I'd argue that you were infringing EBay's copyright when you let your friends access your compilation of EBay's information. Interestingly, the article didn't list this as one of the causes of action in the lawsuit. Instead, EBay contended trademark infringement. And even that didn't fly - instead, the judge found some oddball theory of trespass. Of the 3, the last one is shakiest, IMO. Guess I just don't have a legal mind
It's not really stealing their customers to make info available about what's being sold. Customers still must go to EBay in order to buy. How is spidering EBay auctions different from strolling through your supermarket aisle, noting the prices, and then posting them to a web page?
I don't think the loss of sites offering meta-browsing (for example, culling stories from a variety of newspapers)is necessarily a big deal. It's always possible to create that capability at the client end browser (although it's possible to screw even that up as well: the lamebrains in Redmond made IE pay attention to robots.txt when crawling a site, which makes it useless for creating personal collections, IMO.) The real loss will be to the generation of databases of data that would be too time-consuming or difficult for an individual to do. Search engines like Google could (theoretically) be barred from sites that didn't want them intruding (although, that capability would seemingly be available already in robots.txt - just set it to "don't index anything.")
:-)
Here's a random, probably impractical, thought: the search engines could agree on what indexing policy ecommerce sites should allow, and boycott those that won't agree. The boycott could take the form of putting a normally-off checkbox next to the search button, saying "check this if you also want to search for sites run by evil corporate bastards." Just a fantasy
Because I hoped to make a humorous point about for-profit businesses and .org, I went to mafia.org. Just a little place-keeper page there. Then I went to mafia.com and got taken to idrive.com. Now I'm wondering if iDrive is a wholely-owned subsidiary of the Legitimate Businessman's Club. :-)
It's one of those stories where you know it's coming but just not exactly when. Kind of like a birth announcement. You probably already know the sex and what the parents are naming it, but it's still news when it happens.
Unless there's some legislation forthcoming, this is going to be a litigation factory. Currently, trademark law (at least in the U.S.) permits companies who are engaged in widely different lines of business to have the same or similar names. If the established companies try to corner their names in every single domain space, even unrelated ones, there are going to be some ticked off folks. Just because I have salon.com, does that mean I get to have salon.banc if I don't actually have a bank? And what if I later establish a bank, does salon.banc have to hand it over to me? Just thinking about all this makes me appreciate why they've been haggling over this change for 5 years.
I don't think it was Mitnik, since conditions of his parole says he can't touch a computer for years to come, and this guy is someone they're after right now. If it was his computer, he couldn't have it anyway.
Perhaps they've cracked it but they can't use it unless the guy gives the code.
You mean they already know what's on it, that's it's incriminating, but don't want to reveal that they have the ability to crack the code? Maybe, but it seems far-fetched. If that were true, they'd know the guy could never turn the key over to them, and that their using the computer as leverage would be ineffective. In which case, their only options are either to forget about using the computer contents or reveal that they've broken the code. The fact that they're not letting the matter drop makes me believe that they haven't cracked the code and desperately want what's on that computer.
"Harmful" is just their excuse for keeping it, while they try to force the guy to disclose the key. They claim they can't turn it over until they examine it for things like nuclear bomb secrets or some such rubbish. What they're really after is incriminating evidence that would support their prosecution of the guy for whatever suspected crime caused them to seize it in the first place. I've now forgotten what that was, but my best guess is cracking other computer systems.