I have lived 5/6 of my life in the EU
What I was trying to say is that it is not obvious, *from a theoretical standpoint* that we need regulation to protect privacy.
By the same token, regulation isn't necessarily effective, as much european privacy protection legislation shows. All it does is to inform you that you don't have privacy. It's something but it ain't privacy.
(Better) Regulations in the EU are needed because markets aren't competitive, so companies can screw the consumer at their pleasure.
You're missing the fact that in the US the market (at least in principle) should take care of selecting companies with preferred privacy policies. Even without regulations, companies that screw too much with denying privacy will (should) be selected out.
So it is true that privacy policies in the US is voluntary but it is also true that companies have to keep an eye at not pissing consumers off too much. Hence the result, from personal experience, that you have more protection in the US than in europe even without explicit government regulations.
you are missing the point: I want a client that turns on automatically after I have stopped typing or moving the mouse. I don't want to bother turning it on and off every 2 hours when I leave my desk. Does distributed.net have that?
Are you kidding me? Are you and the IOC people aware of the shameful way the NBC is going to broadcast the Games?
Aren't the IOC people aware that the popularity of the games is correlated with the way it is shown and that you can't just ignore the new media?
At least on the web I would have a chance to skip the stupidity and fast-forward straight to content.
As it is, NBC is going to broadcast hundreds of hours of programming and not a single one live. Not to mention content: in the US for every minute of event coverage there are four minutes of stupid athlete biographies and the like.
it's not funny: yahoo is NOT a search engine: it's a directory, organized by humans. A search engine crawls and store web pages. This may be one of the smartes moves from yahoo. Let's hope we can still access the lean google.com
Well, technically supporting "OR" is redundant because you can always make two separate searches. You'd need two windows to combine results though and that is kind of annoying.
On the second issue, I think that Internet may not be useful *yet* (as you say) to small rural villages; on the other hand, it has the *potential* to break the cultural barriers, especially for small and poor villages. Let's face it: how many families owned Encyclopaedia Britannica last year, and how many own a PC and access to britannica.com today? Internet is *necessary* and relative cheap way to to improve education to the poor
The question is: is this the right thing to do, or are they being stupid?
I don't think they are being stupid, they are just being overtly cautious. MS is a sinking ship, Ebay is one of the few profitable E-companies. Ebay should have enough power and money to fight those stupid claims; they would improve reputation and respect they get from customers, and it will be good for their market power too. Ebay, show us some guts!!!!!
The judge should better consider creating three companies and give all the source code (OS, applications, explorer) to all of them. Then we'd see real competition!!! A milder measure would be to keep MS as is, and make the code open source. Splitting the company as proposed will create two monopolies and a half. There are theoretical reasons to believe that two monopolies are worse (from a welfare standpoint) than a vertically integrated monopoly.
Because the computer equipment (the hard drive, that is) contains evidence of the felony. The car does not contains any evidence of illegal photocopies you made.
They are not stopping mp3.com but only a few services they provide. Read this from CNN.com:
The lawsuit had claimed that MP3.com's Instant
Listening Service and Beam-it violate copyright laws. Instant Listening Service allows customers to listen to a CD via MP3 if they have bought it online and are waiting for it to be delivered. Beam-it is a program allowing users to add their own CDs to their MP3.com personal playlist online.
Forget about Napster... Gnutella is the future. There is no way they can sue Gnutella, that does not rely on central servers I am not sure they have a case against Napster either, but they may have a point because Napster's servers contain files information. They can sue Gnutella users of course, but who is going to argue with that?
"They're saying I can no longer write or speak about technology issues." Mitnick said in a telephone interview. "I think it is an abrogation of my First Amendment rights...."
Not true. Every punishment is violating some constitutional right: if you go to prison then you have not freedom of movement, you don't have voting rights, etc... The judge can set the appropriate punishment (within the bounds of the law), and that obviously is going to infringe some constitutional right - otherwise there would be no punishment.
If Dr. Dre went after everyone that downloaded his music it would really make no sense
They don't have to go after everyone. They just need to go after a few of them and this will scare everyone off. That's the power of incentives. For each copyright violation you're liable up to $20,000. If you have a 1 in 1,000 chance of getting caught, your expected fine is $20 (per song). That is more than the cost of a cd.
Let's face it, PalmOS is a great program, but palm devices are good only thanks to third party applications. Palm is a bad company that is behaving exactly like a monopolist should bahave. Think about: 1) How they handled their shipping of maany defective screens on their new PalmIIIx: the streaking problem was solved by a third party programmer: they should have bought the code and given it away to all who spent $300+ for the new device 2) Crappy built-in applications: for example addressbook not integrated with to-do: we're lucky there is datebk3 (and I have seen a prerelease of db4, oh boy it's goooood) 3) Lack of a speaker capable of dialing phone numbers: I have seen someone claiming that a dialing speaker would cost only 50c more than the current speaker 4) Crappy synchronization: why is it synchronizing only built-in applications? 5) USB: what in the hell are they waiting for? I only hope that the new competition will force them to think seriously about trivial feature they should have improved long ago. I love palm, but if it weren't for the third party applications I wouldn't be so impressed.
Let's face it, PalmOS is a great OS and the PalmOS devices are great because of the plethora of third party applications. Palm computing is a bad company, just think about: 1) how they handled the release of manyPalm IIIx with defective screens (the "streaking problem" had to be solved by a third party programmer, whose code should have been bought by Palm and distributed free to whoever bought the $300+ devices 2) lack of integrated addressbook and to-do: they're lucky that someone thought of datebook3 (and I have seen a pre-release of datebk4, oh boy, it's goooood - integrated the address book+linking) 3) lack of dialing speaker: someone said that a speaker capable of dialing would cost only 50c more than the current speaker 4) serious syncronization: the standard sync program only synchronizes the standard built-in applications: whyyyyy? 5) USB port: what are they waiting for? I'm sure there are many other features that can and should be improved; they haven't bothered so far because they are a monopoly. I hope they'll be forced to think seriously about it now that they have some competition.
Slashdot Mirror
I have lived 5/6 of my life in the EU
What I was trying to say is that it is not obvious, *from a theoretical standpoint* that we need regulation to protect privacy.
By the same token, regulation isn't necessarily effective, as much european privacy protection legislation shows. All it does is to inform you that you don't have privacy. It's something but it ain't privacy.
(Better) Regulations in the EU are needed because markets aren't competitive, so companies can screw the consumer at their pleasure. You're missing the fact that in the US the market (at least in principle) should take care of selecting companies with preferred privacy policies. Even without regulations, companies that screw too much with denying privacy will (should) be selected out. So it is true that privacy policies in the US is voluntary but it is also true that companies have to keep an eye at not pissing consumers off too much. Hence the result, from personal experience, that you have more protection in the US than in europe even without explicit government regulations.
you are missing the point: I want a client that turns on automatically after I have stopped typing or moving the mouse. I don't want to bother turning it on and off every 2 hours when I leave my desk. Does distributed.net have that?
Why the hell do they keep a cr. card database? I'd be happier if they didn't. And it's not necessary for them to do so.
Are you kidding me? Are you and the IOC people aware of the shameful way the NBC is going to broadcast the Games? Aren't the IOC people aware that the popularity of the games is correlated with the way it is shown and that you can't just ignore the new media? At least on the web I would have a chance to skip the stupidity and fast-forward straight to content. As it is, NBC is going to broadcast hundreds of hours of programming and not a single one live. Not to mention content: in the US for every minute of event coverage there are four minutes of stupid athlete biographies and the like.
it's not funny: yahoo is NOT a search engine: it's a directory, organized by humans.
A search engine crawls and store web pages. This may be one of the smartes moves from yahoo. Let's hope we can still access the lean google.com
...what is wrong with www.google.com/unclesam?
...around the world here
Secure digital signature is already legally binding in Italy since 1997. Here is some info (in Italian)
My monkey uses google too.
Well, technically supporting "OR" is redundant because you can always make two separate searches. You'd need two windows to combine results though and that is kind of annoying.
On the second issue, I think that Internet may not be useful *yet* (as you say) to small rural villages; on the other hand, it has the *potential* to break the cultural barriers, especially for small and poor villages. Let's face it: how many families owned Encyclopaedia Britannica last year, and how many own a PC and access to britannica.com today?
Internet is *necessary* and relative cheap way to to improve education to the poor
MS is a sinking ship, Ebay is one of the few profitable E-companies. Ebay should have enough power and money to fight those stupid claims; they would improve reputation and respect they get from customers, and it will be good for their market power too.
Ebay, show us some guts!!!!!
The judge should better consider creating three companies and give all the source code (OS, applications, explorer) to all of them. Then we'd see real competition!!!
A milder measure would be to keep MS as is, and make the code open source.
Splitting the company as proposed will create two monopolies and a half. There are theoretical reasons to believe that two monopolies are worse (from a welfare standpoint) than a vertically integrated monopoly.
Because the computer equipment (the hard drive, that is) contains evidence of the felony.
The car does not contains any evidence of illegal photocopies you made.
Read this from CNN.com:
Forget about Napster... Gnutella is the future.
There is no way they can sue Gnutella, that does not rely on central servers I am not sure they have a case against Napster either, but they may have a point because Napster's servers contain files information.
They can sue Gnutella users of course, but who is going to argue with that?
The judge can set the appropriate punishment (within the bounds of the law), and that obviously is going to infringe some constitutional right - otherwise there would be no punishment.
They don't have to go after everyone. They just need to go after a few of them and this will scare everyone off.
That's the power of incentives. For each copyright violation you're liable up to $20,000. If you have a 1 in 1,000 chance of getting caught, your expected fine is $20 (per song). That is more than the cost of a cd.
Let's face it, PalmOS is a great program, but palm devices are good only thanks to third party applications. Palm is a bad company that is behaving exactly like a monopolist should bahave. Think about:
1) How they handled their shipping of maany defective screens on their new PalmIIIx: the streaking problem was solved by a third party programmer: they should have bought the code and given it away to all who spent $300+ for the new device
2) Crappy built-in applications: for example addressbook not integrated with to-do: we're lucky there is datebk3 (and I have seen a prerelease of db4, oh boy it's goooood)
3) Lack of a speaker capable of dialing phone numbers: I have seen someone claiming that a dialing speaker would cost only 50c more than the current speaker
4) Crappy synchronization: why is it synchronizing only built-in applications? 5) USB: what in the hell are they waiting for?
I only hope that the new competition will force them to think seriously about trivial feature they should have improved long ago. I love palm, but if it weren't for the third party applications I wouldn't be so impressed.
Let's face it, PalmOS is a great OS and the PalmOS devices are great because of the plethora of third party applications. Palm computing is a bad company, just think about: 1) how they handled the release of manyPalm IIIx with defective screens (the "streaking problem" had to be solved by a third party programmer, whose code should have been bought by Palm and distributed free to whoever bought the $300+ devices 2) lack of integrated addressbook and to-do: they're lucky that someone thought of datebook3 (and I have seen a pre-release of datebk4, oh boy, it's goooood - integrated the address book+linking) 3) lack of dialing speaker: someone said that a speaker capable of dialing would cost only 50c more than the current speaker 4) serious syncronization: the standard sync program only synchronizes the standard built-in applications: whyyyyy? 5) USB port: what are they waiting for? I'm sure there are many other features that can and should be improved; they haven't bothered so far because they are a monopoly. I hope they'll be forced to think seriously about it now that they have some competition.