Maybe we could gain better traction when backing this success for personal liberties by talking also about how it makes us safer from organized crime, foreign governments, etc. Not only can law enforcement use this data, but if there are any holes in security of such systems, so can the (evil) hackers and those that wish a nation harm.
First: What's more impressive than the lasers that fry* the mosquitoes is the targeting and detection system that drives this crazy thing. Many people are looking at this and wondering how you pick out your targets. The system first scans the surrounding space and *listens*. What it is listening for is quite interesting. See, Malaria is an interesting disease because only specific mosquitoes carry it, and only the females. Since there could be many side effects to zapping any insects within range, or even any mosquitoes (regardless of species or gender), the laser targeting system listens for the precise wingbeat frequency of the femaleAnopheles Stephensi mosquito and then zaps only those.
*Technically speaking, the mosquitoes will not be fried in the final product. In addition to potential danger to other occupants of this system's effective bubble, it is planned for deployment to very poor areas of the world where electricity will likely be at a premium. As a result, they are also experimenting with the minimum amount of energy a laser strike must possess to render the mosquito infertile, because that interrupts the cycle necessary for Malaria transmission between humans.
Just like speed limits, alcohol prohibition, and the current drug war, most people alter their preferred behavior to comply with the law only to the minimum level required, or to a degree that "aligns with the herd". If the RIAA and other copyright enforcement bodies could consistently enforce penalties like the one leveled against Jammie Thomas, it might alter the broad public's behavior, but that's essentially untenable. Like it or not, I think that's the pragmatic reality, however, widespread enforcement is NOT tenable because the broader public outcry would almost certainly result in Congressional scrutiny. I'm pretty sure the copyright cartels wouldn't like that. I think that most Americans would say that copyrights are too long if relevant examples were given to them (how many people realize that restaurants who sing "Happy Birthday" are breaking the law?).
Thanshin argues the "layman" argument pretty well: saying that the way to respond to unjust or corrupt laws is to patiently work your way through our representational legal system means implies that you should put aside your ethics in the face of Justice! While it's important to make sure that you're aware of and embrace the potential consequences, I wish I could fully endorse Thorough's argument to Civil Disobedience but the engine of our democracy is the blood of the just... And as much as I value our culture and entertainment, I value my personal freedom more. The end result is a gestalt of civil disobedience, ass-covering, and lobbying for change. What I endorse is the following: massive and willful civil disobedience, active (if anonymous) involvement in any surveys/polling of the degree of compliance, and *finally*, communicating with your legislative representation.
I hypothesize that the content providers (Fox/NBC) are caught between a rock and a hard place (of their own making...). One take in an op-ed piece at O'Reilly here. On the one hand, they have existing relationships through various cable and satellite companies that currently provide most of their revenue. On the other, they're seeing interest in on-demand viewing of their content via the web.
I think the pressure is coming from Comcast, Cox, et al. because they stand to lose their lucrative monthly CableTV fees. I'm running a Mac Mini with Boxee connected to my TV (after using an AppleTV quite successfully) and it caused me to cancel my TV service. Between my current DVD/music library, Netflix account, and studio-provided video streams, I have access to much more content than I could get for any price from the cable/sat company. Accessing the internet from my couch is a nice bonus.
Interesting aside: I occasionally miss being able to turn on the tv and let a channel pick content for me (including occasionally entertaining commercials). I can't decide if it's just nostalgia or if I enjoyed the random passivity of the experience. Or if I'll still feel the same in 6 months.
Mr. Beckerman, I frequently enjoy your coverage of legal battles around copyright and the RIAA, but please take care with your superlatives so that your important message remains strong. "creating a climate of *terror*" seems over-the-top. Maybe sticking with "fear" is more appropriate in this case. (Hope this is taken as the constructive criticism that it is intended. I want your message of sensibility to prevail!)
Re:The explanation is obvious
on
Terminal Chaos
·
· Score: 1
As another frequent flyer (like, typically 2+ round trips per week), here's my suggestion:
DO NOT CHECK ANY DAMNED BAGS!
if you learn how (and what) to pack a bag, you can bring everything you need with you in a carry-on and never "lose" your bag due to airline incompetence. If you're worried about things you can't bring in carry on luggage, ie. pocket knife, liquids, MAIL it to yourself express delivery. For the cost of checking 1 bag w/ American Airlines ($25) you can overnight just about whatever you'd like and be insured against its loss.
Limiting or taxing "profits" is good in theory, but fails in practice. Don't forget that if a company makes $1million in profit in year one, then increases the salaries of the executive team by a total of $1million dollars, it makes $0 in profit the next year (because it's "operating costs" have gone up).
I don't really have a good solution, but taxing/regulating profits results in that cost being passed on to the consumer or in those profits being redistributed internally in most cases. There's a reason that most economists favor using incentives to influence corporate decision-making instead of taxation.
My dad once said that the reason certain companies and industries have unions is that the deserve them. As an airline pilot and union member, he was not a fan of unions, but even less a fan of airline management.
The industry knows (and wants very badly to speed this up) that the end of the life of CD's is in the near future. Online delivery is clearly the end goal for everyone. The reason they so badly need to somehow make DRM stick is so they can maintain control and also resell their music again. At this point, they'd LOVE it if Apple went out of business and Microsoft or whoever became a market leader. Why? All those iTunes tracks don't work on anything else, so guess what? That's right. Buy your music again, but this time from Napster, next year again, this time from Microsoft, ad nauseaum. It's about control in the future until they can buy more restrictive copyright laws.
If he can't hear it, I think the easy fix is to wait until he is gone, then replace the batteries with dead ones, snip the power cord someplace where it won't be immediately obvious, or disable the device in some other way. Since he can't hear it, he'll just assume that it's working and no escalation is necessary.
This one is rather old, but one of the funniest things I've read on the internets. It's a transcript of a hypothetical version of Adventure, but set in a college dorm.
I'm a little confused here, everyone acts like Google had a third option here. They could do business in China with restrictions and censorship (but some stuff would slip through the cracks) or they could not do business and instead let Google pick some other search engine who'd do the same thing or create a Chinese search engine built from the ground up with information restriction built in.
Not that I endorse China's human right's abuse, or think that Google is perfect, but I'm really surprised by the Black vs. White outlook expressed here by people who constantly complain that the White House frames everything as Black or White. I think that polarizing issues is often a Bad Idea(TM), but that shouldn't stop at Bush.
Everyone is critical of Google here, but it seems like they really have done their best to "do no evil" by balancing a "no-win" situation in the best way possible. Chinese citizens may still perform many google searches (including all those "disident" ideas that the authorities don't think about, eg. "fr33 t1bet"), they're reminded of their government's censorship when it occurs (via Google's little note), and Google can continue to do business and press for more freedom. It seems likely that last one will occur if you consider that better search is good for Chinese and thus for Google's bottom line.
People like to use Apple's iTMS DRM as an example of non-intrusive DRM. I DISAGREE and give the following examples of things I have been unable do with Fairplay encoded music files. Please note that I know one can rip and reencode iTMS songs to circumvent the DRM. That would just demonstrate how the DRM got in my way, aside from being illegal per the DMCA, and representing quality loss.
- If I make a home movie in a program like iMovie, I cannot use iTMS tracks.
- If I have a PMP other than an iPod, I can't listen to the tracks.
- If I want to listen to that music on another computer and I don't have internet access, no dice.
- If I want to stream my music over iTunes sharing, I can't with iTMS tracks.
Start up as an MVNO and don't deal with the headache of managing copper and expensive switching technology, especially when it is most certainly NOT in line with Apple's core business. The whole point (at least as so far evidenced by existing players) of MVNOs is to take a strong brand and apply it to the otherwise boring business of selling mobile services. Apple could run as an MVNO and hit a niche market with 1-3 solid phone models that leverage the Apple brand, ease of use, good aesthetics, etc. If they pick a carrier with strong data services, they'd have a perfect tie-in to.MAC and say, free data access for.MAC members. They could even position themselves as something other than direct competition with the iPod by controlling both product lines (as opposed to insisting on arbitrary song limits eg. ROKR).
Ideally, I see them creating a phone with around 512MB of music storage (perhaps ending the shuffle line), BT A2DP (stereo bluetooth), and an accompanying attachment for iPods that allows people to listen to music on the Pod wirelessly, then switch over to the phone as necessary. This is already existing technology and will be widespread by 2H 2006. One nice aspect to this is that video will always have larger space requirements, so if it takes off, they could transition music over to the phone and let the iPod function for video.
So far, it's been pretty cheap (I wonder if they're actually making money at it) for the RIAA to threaten potential infringers with lawsuit since virtually every one (all?) of their suits has been settled. Cost equation is something like: Cost of searching for infringers + lawyer time to right a boilerplate letter=big settlement and no court time. If more people were to fight these cases I think this approach would end real quick, or there would be a big landmark case where they sue an individual for a hojillion dollars. At that point, I think people on both sides of the issue might need to reevaluate what they're doing.
I mean, if the RIAA were to actually take one of these big cases to court and win all the money the law says they're entitled to against someone with multiple thousands of "illegally" shared files, they could be looking at a several million dollars. Regardless of whether or not the defendant could afford it, that might actually make other people scared. However, clearly they can't support the court fees of suing as many people as they are currently threatening, so I'm just wondering what the actual deterring effect would be...
It is not necessary to whitelist every possible "trusted" application for it to be useful and effective, especially if you are writing your own code. Rules for the whitelist would suffice.
One possible example would be that anything that you write locally is automatically added to a your personal list (which could still present problems if the system is able to save/modify code without alerting you).
It seems that if you're competent enough to write your own scripts, you should be able to verify new apps as they open the first time and if not, be responsible when you get hosed.
True story: Back in college I received a call at 7:30 in the morning asking me about my long distance phone service (some poor guy cold calling for AT&T). He asked how much I paid for long distance and I told him honestly 2.9cents/minute (is bigzoo.com still around?) and asked if they could do better... Uh, no, no they couldn't, he said. What is this bigzoo thing anyway, he wanted to know? Well, I explained to him a little bit about it, then my curiousity getting the better of me, I asked him why he was doing such an obviously rewardless job. Turns out that he's a poor college student too. Meanwhile, I guess he was looking up bigzoo.com on his computer while chatting with me. I end the conversation by saying, "you should check bigzoo out, it's pretty nice" to which he responded, "yeah, I've been looking at it as we talked. That is sweet, I'm signing up right now"
So yeah, I think that qualifies as ironic or something.
There are 2 tricks I've learned customer service experience:
*assume positive intent on behalf of the customer. most people are nice and not out to screw the company, so have your support people treat them that way. how many people here giving free tech support to family, friends, etc, have run across a doctor, lawyer, historian, etc. that starts telling you their problem with, "I'm so stupid, I can't work my computer"? I remember the first time I stopped to think, "wow, this is a person with 8 years more formal education telling me they are stupid...".
*kill em with kindness. one of my managers once noted to me that it's actually hard for customers who have had a problem to appreciate your help. the issue is that they get themselves worked up because they've had bad support experiences in the past. once they're angry, they have to do something with the adrenaline oozing through their brain. this manager was the master at so consumately sympathizing with them, that the customer couldn't be angry with him any more. they would still have the adrenalin going, however, so when their problem was fixed, they turned to excitement and enthusiasm for his help. now here's a person who was ready to complain to anyone about our product instead falling over himself to tell everyone how awesome we are!
in summary, the best thing you can do to render good customer service is to hire and train employees to be positive and respectful to customers even and especially when the customers are angry, upset, and frustrated. I don't think the customer is always right, nor should you grab your ankles to serve them, but everyone deserves respect and the presumption of positive intent until proven otherwise.
Keyspan Express remote has been available for approximately 2 months. I know because I've sold them. Interestingly, it is the first (and only?) device to make use of the USB port on an AirportExpress other than a printer.
That seems kind of silly. By your logic, wouldn't smart forgers simply "loosen" up if they could manage to get more than 1 or 2 examples of their target's signature and then mix it up a little each time? I understand that a perfect copy would give them away, but the way that I see it, the system is damning either way. If your signatures are too similar the system flags you as a potential forger. If they vary too much, then anyone could copy them with any small sample group and we're back to square one... (I say screw the signature anyway, photo ID's, PIN's, and pass-phrases in various and potentially random combinations seem like the way to go)
(marketing drone sitting around table with other marketers. All sipping lattes)
"so, get this: Are you ready? We release computer displays. TA DA!!
BUT WAIT, there's more. Not only do we release displays that are the same as our current ones, but we will demonstrate the innovation... BY CHANGING THEM TO BE MADE OUT OF METAL!!!!
Everyone knows metal is faster than plastic. But, wait for it, wait for it, get this: we'll keep them the same price that they have been for over a year!!!!!!!!"
(thank you's and hugs for everyone followed by a power lunch, martinis and more fucking crazy pills)
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe we could gain better traction when backing this success for personal liberties by talking also about how it makes us safer from organized crime, foreign governments, etc. Not only can law enforcement use this data, but if there are any holes in security of such systems, so can the (evil) hackers and those that wish a nation harm.
First: What's more impressive than the lasers that fry* the mosquitoes is the targeting and detection system that drives this crazy thing. Many people are looking at this and wondering how you pick out your targets. The system first scans the surrounding space and *listens*. What it is listening for is quite interesting. See, Malaria is an interesting disease because only specific mosquitoes carry it, and only the females. Since there could be many side effects to zapping any insects within range, or even any mosquitoes (regardless of species or gender), the laser targeting system listens for the precise wingbeat frequency of the female Anopheles Stephensi mosquito and then zaps only those.
*Technically speaking, the mosquitoes will not be fried in the final product. In addition to potential danger to other occupants of this system's effective bubble, it is planned for deployment to very poor areas of the world where electricity will likely be at a premium. As a result, they are also experimenting with the minimum amount of energy a laser strike must possess to render the mosquito infertile, because that interrupts the cycle necessary for Malaria transmission between humans.
Cheers,
Makr
Just like speed limits, alcohol prohibition, and the current drug war, most people alter their preferred behavior to comply with the law only to the minimum level required, or to a degree that "aligns with the herd". If the RIAA and other copyright enforcement bodies could consistently enforce penalties like the one leveled against Jammie Thomas, it might alter the broad public's behavior, but that's essentially untenable. Like it or not, I think that's the pragmatic reality, however, widespread enforcement is NOT tenable because the broader public outcry would almost certainly result in Congressional scrutiny. I'm pretty sure the copyright cartels wouldn't like that. I think that most Americans would say that copyrights are too long if relevant examples were given to them (how many people realize that restaurants who sing "Happy Birthday" are breaking the law?).
Thanshin argues the "layman" argument pretty well: saying that the way to respond to unjust or corrupt laws is to patiently work your way through our representational legal system means implies that you should put aside your ethics in the face of Justice! While it's important to make sure that you're aware of and embrace the potential consequences, I wish I could fully endorse Thorough's argument to Civil Disobedience but the engine of our democracy is the blood of the just... And as much as I value our culture and entertainment, I value my personal freedom more. The end result is a gestalt of civil disobedience, ass-covering, and lobbying for change. What I endorse is the following:
massive and willful civil disobedience, active (if anonymous) involvement in any surveys/polling of the degree of compliance, and *finally*, communicating with your legislative representation.
I hypothesize that the content providers (Fox/NBC) are caught between a rock and a hard place (of their own making...). One take in an op-ed piece at O'Reilly here. On the one hand, they have existing relationships through various cable and satellite companies that currently provide most of their revenue. On the other, they're seeing interest in on-demand viewing of their content via the web.
I think the pressure is coming from Comcast, Cox, et al. because they stand to lose their lucrative monthly CableTV fees. I'm running a Mac Mini with Boxee connected to my TV (after using an AppleTV quite successfully) and it caused me to cancel my TV service. Between my current DVD/music library, Netflix account, and studio-provided video streams, I have access to much more content than I could get for any price from the cable/sat company. Accessing the internet from my couch is a nice bonus.
Interesting aside: I occasionally miss being able to turn on the tv and let a channel pick content for me (including occasionally entertaining commercials). I can't decide if it's just nostalgia or if I enjoyed the random passivity of the experience. Or if I'll still feel the same in 6 months.
Mr. Beckerman, I frequently enjoy your coverage of legal battles around copyright and the RIAA, but please take care with your superlatives so that your important message remains strong. "creating a climate of *terror*" seems over-the-top. Maybe sticking with "fear" is more appropriate in this case. (Hope this is taken as the constructive criticism that it is intended. I want your message of sensibility to prevail!)
As another frequent flyer (like, typically 2+ round trips per week), here's my suggestion:
DO NOT CHECK ANY DAMNED BAGS!
if you learn how (and what) to pack a bag, you can bring everything you need with you in a carry-on and never "lose" your bag due to airline incompetence. If you're worried about things you can't bring in carry on luggage, ie. pocket knife, liquids, MAIL it to yourself express delivery. For the cost of checking 1 bag w/ American Airlines ($25) you can overnight just about whatever you'd like and be insured against its loss.
Limiting or taxing "profits" is good in theory, but fails in practice. Don't forget that if a company makes $1million in profit in year one, then increases the salaries of the executive team by a total of $1million dollars, it makes $0 in profit the next year (because it's "operating costs" have gone up).
I don't really have a good solution, but taxing/regulating profits results in that cost being passed on to the consumer or in those profits being redistributed internally in most cases. There's a reason that most economists favor using incentives to influence corporate decision-making instead of taxation.
My dad once said that the reason certain companies and industries have unions is that the deserve them. As an airline pilot and union member, he was not a fan of unions, but even less a fan of airline management.
The industry knows (and wants very badly to speed this up) that the end of the life of CD's is in the near future. Online delivery is clearly the end goal for everyone. The reason they so badly need to somehow make DRM stick is so they can maintain control and also resell their music again. At this point, they'd LOVE it if Apple went out of business and Microsoft or whoever became a market leader. Why? All those iTunes tracks don't work on anything else, so guess what? That's right. Buy your music again, but this time from Napster, next year again, this time from Microsoft, ad nauseaum. It's about control in the future until they can buy more restrictive copyright laws.
If he can't hear it, I think the easy fix is to wait until he is gone, then replace the batteries with dead ones, snip the power cord someplace where it won't be immediately obvious, or disable the device in some other way. Since he can't hear it, he'll just assume that it's working and no escalation is necessary.
This one is rather old, but one of the funniest things I've read on the internets. It's a transcript of a hypothetical version of Adventure, but set in a college dorm.
College Adventure
There is a militant lesbian here, blocking your path.
kick lesbian
She enjoys it. She points out that you are a fascist sexist bastard.
This page has mouse-overs to compare the difference in quality between Return of the King from DVD and HD.
I'd mod the parent as Redundant, but then I couldn't make this post!
I'm a little confused here, everyone acts like Google had a third option here. They could do business in China with restrictions and censorship (but some stuff would slip through the cracks) or they could not do business and instead let Google pick some other search engine who'd do the same thing or create a Chinese search engine built from the ground up with information restriction built in.
Not that I endorse China's human right's abuse, or think that Google is perfect, but I'm really surprised by the Black vs. White outlook expressed here by people who constantly complain that the White House frames everything as Black or White. I think that polarizing issues is often a Bad Idea(TM), but that shouldn't stop at Bush.
Everyone is critical of Google here, but it seems like they really have done their best to "do no evil" by balancing a "no-win" situation in the best way possible. Chinese citizens may still perform many google searches (including all those "disident" ideas that the authorities don't think about, eg. "fr33 t1bet"), they're reminded of their government's censorship when it occurs (via Google's little note), and Google can continue to do business and press for more freedom. It seems likely that last one will occur if you consider that better search is good for Chinese and thus for Google's bottom line.
People like to use Apple's iTMS DRM as an example of non-intrusive DRM. I DISAGREE and give the following examples of things I have been unable do with Fairplay encoded music files. Please note that I know one can rip and reencode iTMS songs to circumvent the DRM. That would just demonstrate how the DRM got in my way, aside from being illegal per the DMCA, and representing quality loss.
- If I make a home movie in a program like iMovie, I cannot use iTMS tracks.
- If I have a PMP other than an iPod, I can't listen to the tracks.
- If I want to listen to that music on another computer and I don't have internet access, no dice.
- If I want to stream my music over iTunes sharing, I can't with iTMS tracks.
Start up as an MVNO and don't deal with the headache of managing copper and expensive switching technology, especially when it is most certainly NOT in line with Apple's core business. The whole point (at least as so far evidenced by existing players) of MVNOs is to take a strong brand and apply it to the otherwise boring business of selling mobile services. Apple could run as an MVNO and hit a niche market with 1-3 solid phone models that leverage the Apple brand, ease of use, good aesthetics, etc. If they pick a carrier with strong data services, they'd have a perfect tie-in to .MAC and say, free data access for .MAC members. They could even position themselves as something other than direct competition with the iPod by controlling both product lines (as opposed to insisting on arbitrary song limits eg. ROKR).
Ideally, I see them creating a phone with around 512MB of music storage (perhaps ending the shuffle line), BT A2DP (stereo bluetooth), and an accompanying attachment for iPods that allows people to listen to music on the Pod wirelessly, then switch over to the phone as necessary. This is already existing technology and will be widespread by 2H 2006. One nice aspect to this is that video will always have larger space requirements, so if it takes off, they could transition music over to the phone and let the iPod function for video.
So far, it's been pretty cheap (I wonder if they're actually making money at it) for the RIAA to threaten potential infringers with lawsuit since virtually every one (all?) of their suits has been settled. Cost equation is something like: Cost of searching for infringers + lawyer time to right a boilerplate letter=big settlement and no court time. If more people were to fight these cases I think this approach would end real quick, or there would be a big landmark case where they sue an individual for a hojillion dollars. At that point, I think people on both sides of the issue might need to reevaluate what they're doing.
I mean, if the RIAA were to actually take one of these big cases to court and win all the money the law says they're entitled to against someone with multiple thousands of "illegally" shared files, they could be looking at a several million dollars. Regardless of whether or not the defendant could afford it, that might actually make other people scared. However, clearly they can't support the court fees of suing as many people as they are currently threatening, so I'm just wondering what the actual deterring effect would be...
It is not necessary to whitelist every possible "trusted" application for it to be useful and effective, especially if you are writing your own code. Rules for the whitelist would suffice.
One possible example would be that anything that you write locally is automatically added to a your personal list (which could still present problems if the system is able to save/modify code without alerting you).
It seems that if you're competent enough to write your own scripts, you should be able to verify new apps as they open the first time and if not, be responsible when you get hosed.
True story:
Back in college I received a call at 7:30 in the morning asking me about my long distance phone service (some poor guy cold calling for AT&T). He asked how much I paid for long distance and I told him honestly 2.9cents/minute (is bigzoo.com still around?) and asked if they could do better... Uh, no, no they couldn't, he said. What is this bigzoo thing anyway, he wanted to know? Well, I explained to him a little bit about it, then my curiousity getting the better of me, I asked him why he was doing such an obviously rewardless job. Turns out that he's a poor college student too. Meanwhile, I guess he was looking up bigzoo.com on his computer while chatting with me. I end the conversation by saying, "you should check bigzoo out, it's pretty nice" to which he responded, "yeah, I've been looking at it as we talked. That is sweet, I'm signing up right now"
So yeah, I think that qualifies as ironic or something.
There are 2 tricks I've learned customer service experience:
*assume positive intent on behalf of the customer. most people are nice and not out to screw the company, so have your support people treat them that way. how many people here giving free tech support to family, friends, etc, have run across a doctor, lawyer, historian, etc. that starts telling you their problem with, "I'm so stupid, I can't work my computer"? I remember the first time I stopped to think, "wow, this is a person with 8 years more formal education telling me they are stupid...".
*kill em with kindness. one of my managers once noted to me that it's actually hard for customers who have had a problem to appreciate your help. the issue is that they get themselves worked up because they've had bad support experiences in the past. once they're angry, they have to do something with the adrenaline oozing through their brain. this manager was the master at so consumately sympathizing with them, that the customer couldn't be angry with him any more. they would still have the adrenalin going, however, so when their problem was fixed, they turned to excitement and enthusiasm for his help. now here's a person who was ready to complain to anyone about our product instead falling over himself to tell everyone how awesome we are!
in summary, the best thing you can do to render good customer service is to hire and train employees to be positive and respectful to customers even and especially when the customers are angry, upset, and frustrated. I don't think the customer is always right, nor should you grab your ankles to serve them, but everyone deserves respect and the presumption of positive intent until proven otherwise.
OB/GYN Kenobi you say?
c tid=457
http://www.tshirthell.com/store/product.php?produ
Keyspan Express remote has been available for approximately 2 months. I know because I've sold them. Interestingly, it is the first (and only?) device to make use of the USB port on an AirportExpress other than a printer.
That seems kind of silly. By your logic, wouldn't smart forgers simply "loosen" up if they could manage to get more than 1 or 2 examples of their target's signature and then mix it up a little each time? I understand that a perfect copy would give them away, but the way that I see it, the system is damning either way. If your signatures are too similar the system flags you as a potential forger. If they vary too much, then anyone could copy them with any small sample group and we're back to square one... (I say screw the signature anyway, photo ID's, PIN's, and pass-phrases in various and potentially random combinations seem like the way to go)
(marketing drone sitting around table with other marketers. All sipping lattes)
"so, get this: Are you ready? We release computer displays. TA DA!!
BUT WAIT, there's more. Not only do we release displays that are the same as our current ones, but we will demonstrate the innovation... BY CHANGING THEM TO BE MADE OUT OF METAL!!!!
Everyone knows metal is faster than plastic. But, wait for it, wait for it, get this: we'll keep them the same price that they have been for over a year!!!!!!!!"
(thank you's and hugs for everyone followed by a power lunch, martinis and more fucking crazy pills)
(though typically it is a modified BS model.)
heh, did anyone else read this and wonder why the parent hasn't been modded up +1 Funny?