You have to make sure your name, etc. don't appear anywhere in any registry entry. The only easy way to do this is to build your drive from scratch and give false info every step of the way, any time an app asks for registration info. Otherwise, if you have ever put the data in to register software, etc. it's in there and spy software can get it and send it home. Ever notice how when you install an app in Windoze 98 and it asks you to register, it already has many of the fields pre-filled?
Giving one site false info does not make you anonymous...you must maintain a no exceptions policy of disinformation at all times!:-)
IANAL but...doesn't the fact that you have to put up a file as bait in order to get the ip address mean that this is entrapment? I mean if you offer someone drugs and they take them, you can't use that against them in a legal case, right?
Show me the data...I've posted where I get mine from -- where's yours? You are just making up numbers off the top of your head. News consumption is down across the board, but that is due to the fact that young people are not reading or watching news anywhere...not because the people who were reading it in papers have all moved to online content.
The Pew Research Center survey finds no evidence that Internet use is driving down regular use of cable news channels, daily newspapers, or radio news. However, all news outlets are being affected by the public's slowly declining appetite for the news...
With the viewership of network news declining, and cable news audiences remaining flat, network's lead over cable has narrowed to 11 percentage points...
I don't know how you do math, but last time I checked flat means neither rising nor declining.
If you have data that refutes mine, go ahead and post it so I'll know that you really don't just pull this stuff out of you know where...
I limit Katz articles to 2 minutes of my time. Wherever I get to when the 2 minutes is up, that's where I quit.
Why he insists on preaching to the choir like this is beyond me...although in deference to the newspapers (not this NY Times article in particular) all the recent stats show that they are not losing their audience to online news, only network TV news is suffering. That's because most newspapers are loaded with a lot of important, factual stories that continue to captivate those who want to know what's going on in the world, whereas network news is nothing more than ratings-driven entertainment with a thin veneer of content on top. CNN, MSNBC, et. al (on cable) are also not being hurt by the millions of people who are reading news online for the same reason.
While I agree with you that this is not CyberSquatting in any way, that isn't the only issue here. If you owned a well known brand like say.."Coke"...and someone put up a porno site at www.coke.com because they happened to grab the domain before you did, I think you have a valid trademark infringement case, don't you? Everyone associates the word "coke" with your product, so if someone else uses that name to represent something which has antithetical properties or a different value system they would be:
Diluting your brand
Damaging your brand's reputation
This is kind of sketchy because PETA is a non-profit organization instead of a company, but they could argue that their brand helps them to raise money for their cause. Furthermore, I'm not really sure that peta.org is a parody site -- it seemed more like an opposing viewpoint site with some humor thrown in for good measure. That would definitely be infringement and borderline libelous as well.
Who was stupid enough to invest in this company/technology when it should be blatantly obvious that existing systems could never run an AI that sophisticated as a server app for millions of users? I mean c'mon...everyone is now surprised that it doesn't work? If the AI works, why did they need to include a list of known sex sites? And this bozo would have us believe that:
"I know it works very well. I did accuracy tests on this thing 30, 60 days ago and it was perfect."
But he has no backup copy of the version that worked? Would you buy a used car from this man? If I was an investor, I would be calling my lawyer!
Amazing, isn't it how you have to beat the shit out of every one of these guys before they'll do anything? The only reason they're agreeing now is that the FTC is starting to actually look at the Time Warner merger very closely. "Ooooh, see? We're really good guys...not like MS." Hehehe.
Actually, I think they knew all along they had to open it up...they were just stalling for every day they could possibly get. The longer they held the monopoly, the more substantial their market lead gets, and the harder it is to break the stranglehold. More importantly, the damn thing is always blinking a "Get 500 hours FREE!" message at you which must be getting them tens of thousands of new sign-ups every day. With that kind of customer acquisition, every day they managed to keep the monopoly going was a big plus to the bottom line for them.
THANK GOD! I can now no longer be forced to use an AOL product just because 90% of the people I need to talk to are using it!
No matter who creates whatever kind of PnP solution for whatever OS and starts supporting internet (or intranet) appliances, somebody is still going to have to overcome some very large hurdles before mainstream adoption is possible.
What percentage of Joe users do you think would be able to install and/or maintain any sort of home network environment with a dozen or more connected devices? Remember: they will probably have all these devices connected to the internet using some sort of TCP/IP protocol as well, so they will have two networks running simultaneously with a number of different devices made by different manufacturers trying to communicate with each other.
haha...HaHa...HAHAHAHAHAHAHA...cough, wheeze...
Sorry...almost hurt myself there. All I know is it was tricky for me to set up a network in my house using four PCs sharing one cable modem. Networking, firewall, cable network connection through a gateway... Now I'm not a systems guy, but I ain't PC illiterate either. Most people can't even figure out how to add some memory to their machines, much less set up a firewall. I can see it now...the kid down the street is laughing his ass off as he turns your microwave on and off at 5 minute intervals and has your refrigerator order four dozen Tombstone pepperoni pizzas!
Protocols and OS network interfaces have a long way to go before more than 1% of US households have the capability to manage any such animal as all these guys are envisioning...
If the RIAA has copies of those memos/emails, Napster will be shut down before the end of next week. Releasing damning RIAA memos may help those trying to crack the record industry monopoly in the future, but it won't save either one of two stupid teenager's asses...Can you say "DONE"..."FINITO"..."OFFLINE"..."404 EVEN"?
Serves them right...never hire a businessman to write an app OR a hacker to run a business. Those two never had a business anyway...all they had was a cool app and an idea they could get real rich riding on the backs of musicians (most of them poor) around the world. It should have remained a free file-sharing utility and never become a corporation with VC funding.
If you have followed Courtney at all throughout her career, you would have already known that she's one of the most intelligent people on the music scene today...all that clothing shedding and swearing is done to make a point.
Like you said, boy would I have loved to have been there in person...
Absolutely true. The very thing the author is hammering Corel for here is just another guise of the MS usability mistake that allows an uninformed user to easily double-click on an email attachment and run a malicious piece of code. We all hammer MS for that faux pas, because the greater portion of users don't know enough to check out the nature of an attachment before running it like we devs do.
Now someone levels a similar criticism at KDE and everyone says "That would be dumbing it down!" Fact is, if you were responsible for systems and an endless line of stupid users kept changing file types because they didn't know any better, you would be complaining because it was too easy to do so.
You can't have it both ways...either all OS GUI functions should be made as dummy-proof as possible, or they should be designed to be as efficient as possible for someone who knows what they're doing. Or maybe, there is actually a level of compromise somewhere in between which is exactly what the Corel GUI designer was trying to suggest???
Of course there are bound to be conflicts when the commercial and open source worlds come into conflict.
Not to mention recursive conflicts...:-)
Absolutely correct...
on
Napster Wars
·
· Score: 1
and as it should be. I'm quite happy with using gnutella and swapping music through a system that has no "Business Model" or "VC Funding" lined up. We're all just people sharing music with no profit motive.
Napster, on the other hand, is a business which is trying to make money off the fruits of other people's labor. They are hardly a member of the "open source" movement in good standing nor are they out to liberate the world from corporate greed...they just want to get a piece of the pie without earning it. I frankly couldn't care less what happens to them.
Having worked as an analyst for both the USAF and USN on classified development, I can only say that this is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. We had to sign out everything from a vault and show photo ids labeled with clearance level to do so. The vaults were manned by multiple librarians at least one of whom was always on duty 24/7. How can someone just walk off with something ten times as sensitive as anything I ever worked on without there being any paper trail, video tape, or obvious suspect. Impossible, unless it was allowed to happen. Whoever is in charge of security in that place needs to be arrested and charged with treason for allowing such unbelievable lapses to even occur.
First they need to apply some voltage to him judiciously though, so they can find out where the stuff went.:-)
Re:All right, confess...who modded this crap up?
on
EU Web Tax Proposed
·
· Score: 1
But there is a slight flaw in your logic. Sure, someone on welfare pays the same sales tax on the same pair of shoes as the millionaire. But over the course of the year, who do you think pays more sales tax? The person who buys the most, and I would guess that would be the millionaire. They tax you based on how much you spend.
Agreed. However, if you were to calculate the amount of sales tax paid as a percentage of the person's disposable income you would find that the percentages were practically identical. That is the problem with sales taxes...they aren't paid on a progressive scale which means that the poor DO carry an unfair portion of the burden. With income tax, the poor pay 10% or even less of their income in the case of the poorest, whereas I have to pay 31% of mine.
Like it or not, if we're going to pay taxes at all, this is the way to do it. I can afford to give a bit more and spend a bit less on filet mignon, German automobiles, French wine, etc. Because the bottom line is: even after I pay the 31%, I still have more than enough left to live in a style that most of the poor can't even properly imagine. Sales tax is little more than a small tip to me (and probably you as well), but it's crippling to someone trying to feed a family of four on $15K a year.
mp3.com's contention is that they TRIED to do this from the start and the record companies refused to even discuss it. That's why they went ahead and did it without them...in order to force their hand.
Quite frankly, I'm inclined to believe them. The big five and the RIAA weren't interested in messing with the status quo and it wasn't until mp3.com, napster, et. al. started hitting them hard that they decided this phenomenon was here to stay and they'd better come to the table and negotiate.
Good news for everybody! I can't wait for the complete adoption of music formats that will allow me to listen to anything I've purchased, anywhere, without having to carry artifacts around. Rock on, dudes...
All right, confess...who modded this crap up?
on
EU Web Tax Proposed
·
· Score: 1
Not only is it blatantly incorrect (states with no sales tax) it's uninformed. Sales taxes are the most unfair form of taxation in the US because they make everyone, regardless of income level, pay the same tax rate. Income taxes are weighted to place the burden onto those of us with higher incomes, but sales taxes make people below the poverty line pay the same amount of tax on a pair of shoes as the guy who makes $200K a year.
People like you who make statements about social issues without any knowledge of the consequences should have their right to vote taken away. Yeah, yeah, poor people don't have internet access...but they soon will thanks to RCN and others, and you want to take the tax break away right before they get it. The worst part of it is that at least three other uninformed idiots modded your crap up as if you knew what you were talking about because they were just as uninformed as you are.
You want to raise taxes like a socialist idiot -- raise income taxes. At least that way you won't be crippling the people who can least afford to pay.
Hey, I'm a gamer through and through from back in the days of Mule, Zork, Seven Cities of Gold, you name it. Online? MUDs, M59, UO, The Realm, Asheron's Call. I'm still waiting for my reserved copy of Shogun to arrive when it gets released and I'm not even going to mention how badly I need Oni. (Hehe, you KNOW what I meant, you sickos!) But I think what you're doing here is taking your hopes (dreams, wishes, ideas...) for the medium and putting them forth as fact.
First of all, I read a couple of the opinion pieces on the site, and frankly, they were mediocre. I've seen much better in PC Gamer and CGW many times...maybe even every month.
Secondly, while I've been glued to a monitor or TV for endless hours many, many times in my life, that hardly makes games high art. Rather, the allure is that you have a story and visuals that you can interact with in ways you can't do with books, movies, paintings, plays, etc. And that's a great thing, too...but you don't seriously believe that Command and Conquer, Starcraft, Myst, Unreal Tournament, Civilization (insert your favorite game here) are even remotely on the same level as a book by Hemingway, Phil Dick, Gene Wolfe? a movie by Stanley Kubrick? a painting by Picasso or a statue by Michelangelo? a play by William Shakespeare?
I think you need to take a step back and get real here. I know, I know...you're just saying that it is beginning to come into the realm of art as the technology advances and becomes more accesible. Web "art" can't possibly hold a candle to the fact of a real life painting on canvas with its brushstrokes bringing the artist's emotions directly into play. The story-writing in games may have improved since 1980, but it hardly qualifies as great literature, and while our conversation and actions on AC were pretty amusing last night, I don't think they will go down in history.
Perhaps you should save this story and post it again in 2020 when I might be able to see a glimmer of reality in your assertions.
Last time I checked, this is exactly the way cable tv has worked for years. The channels who got on board early and signed special deals got low, attractive channel numbers. I have QVC on channel 11 -- you don't think that happens because QVC is entitled to channel 11 do you? They pay for the placement I assure you. And guess what else...as a user I can pay for basic cable and get crap, pay for premium cable and get more crap, pay for movie channels and get some movies and crap, or even pay more and get digital cable and all kinds of weird crap on like 300 channels. And for another $40 a month I also get a modem and 512k down, 128k up. So I now pay the freaking cable company like $130 a month.
And that my friends, is capitalism in all it's glory. If I don't care for all the crap, the three major TV networks are still free to anyone who puts up a big antenna. Same on the net...get a free account at NetZero and use it to your hearts' content or get high-speed access and take the good with the bad for a price. They call that a "FREE MARKET ECONOMY." Live with it, or move to a socialist country...those are the choices.
this story is missing all sorts of pertinent info and sounds like a troll if there ever was a troll..
First, if the ISP was getting hammered, then I assume it's a dial-up because if the user had a static ip, they could just DoS him directly.
So, if it's a dial-up and his ISP can't stop these people from DoSing them to death, then they deserve whatever they get. It is hard to stop a DoS, but not when the same group of people keep doing it to the same servers day in and day out...the repetition is exactly what makes it traceable.
Furthermore, as someone else already stated, what good would it do to DoS a dial-up user? As soon as he changes ISPs, you lost him. Hell, he can sign up for a free NetZero account and annoy you from there if he wants. Try DoSing them to death and see how many days you can do it for before they can irrefutably nail you.
So if it's a not a dial-up, then why would they need to cancel his account? Methinks our anonymous submitter has pulled a fast one on/.
Umm...isn't that exactly what all the directory and search engine services do?
actually, no...a search engine grabs the title and description for a page (or uses one you submitted to them) in order to help the searcher decide if the page would be something they are looking for...in order for your statement to be true, the search engine would have to take a selected portion of the content and repackage it so as to give a searcher the information from the site without the searcher having to visit it. This is what the case is trying to prevent happening and I think eBay and others are correct to put a stop to it.
Let me ask you this...if you built a site and spent a hundred hours a week updating and refining until you had a great following of repeat visitors and then I came along and decided that using a neat little script I would spider your site daily and copy all the best parts off it to create my site, what would you do? Even better, what if I used this stolen content to sell advertising on my site and I started raking in big bucks off it? Hmmmm? Nothing wrong with me stealing the fruits of your labor here and making mucho dinero off you??? Bah!
I wasn't complaining...just giving an example...I am well above both the poverty level and the median income, and I already own a house here...I had to rent before to save money for the ridiculously-high down payment:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Giving one site false info does not make you anonymous...you must maintain a no exceptions policy of disinformation at all times! :-)
Thanks for the tip...teach me to assume the poster knew what he was talking about....
IANAL but...doesn't the fact that you have to put up a file as bait in order to get the ip address mean that this is entrapment? I mean if you offer someone drugs and they take them, you can't use that against them in a legal case, right?
Show me the data...I've posted where I get mine from -- where's yours? You are just making up numbers off the top of your head. News consumption is down across the board, but that is due to the fact that young people are not reading or watching news anywhere...not because the people who were reading it in papers have all moved to online content.
If you have data that refutes mine, go ahead and post it so I'll know that you really don't just pull this stuff out of you know where...
Why he insists on preaching to the choir like this is beyond me...although in deference to the newspapers (not this NY Times article in particular) all the recent stats show that they are not losing their audience to online news, only network TV news is suffering. That's because most newspapers are loaded with a lot of important, factual stories that continue to captivate those who want to know what's going on in the world, whereas network news is nothing more than ratings-driven entertainment with a thin veneer of content on top. CNN, MSNBC, et. al (on cable) are also not being hurt by the millions of people who are reading news online for the same reason.
- Diluting your brand
- Damaging your brand's reputation
This is kind of sketchy because PETA is a non-profit organization instead of a company, but they could argue that their brand helps them to raise money for their cause. Furthermore, I'm not really sure that peta.org is a parody site -- it seemed more like an opposing viewpoint site with some humor thrown in for good measure. That would definitely be infringement and borderline libelous as well.Actually, I think they knew all along they had to open it up...they were just stalling for every day they could possibly get. The longer they held the monopoly, the more substantial their market lead gets, and the harder it is to break the stranglehold. More importantly, the damn thing is always blinking a "Get 500 hours FREE!" message at you which must be getting them tens of thousands of new sign-ups every day. With that kind of customer acquisition, every day they managed to keep the monopoly going was a big plus to the bottom line for them.
THANK GOD! I can now no longer be forced to use an AOL product just because 90% of the people I need to talk to are using it!
What percentage of Joe users do you think would be able to install and/or maintain any sort of home network environment with a dozen or more connected devices? Remember: they will probably have all these devices connected to the internet using some sort of TCP/IP protocol as well, so they will have two networks running simultaneously with a number of different devices made by different manufacturers trying to communicate with each other.
haha...HaHa...HAHAHAHAHAHAHA...cough, wheeze...
Sorry...almost hurt myself there. All I know is it was tricky for me to set up a network in my house using four PCs sharing one cable modem. Networking, firewall, cable network connection through a gateway... Now I'm not a systems guy, but I ain't PC illiterate either. Most people can't even figure out how to add some memory to their machines, much less set up a firewall. I can see it now...the kid down the street is laughing his ass off as he turns your microwave on and off at 5 minute intervals and has your refrigerator order four dozen Tombstone pepperoni pizzas!
Protocols and OS network interfaces have a long way to go before more than 1% of US households have the capability to manage any such animal as all these guys are envisioning...
Serves them right...never hire a businessman to write an app OR a hacker to run a business. Those two never had a business anyway...all they had was a cool app and an idea they could get real rich riding on the backs of musicians (most of them poor) around the world. It should have remained a free file-sharing utility and never become a corporation with VC funding.
Like you said, boy would I have loved to have been there in person...
Now someone levels a similar criticism at KDE and everyone says "That would be dumbing it down!" Fact is, if you were responsible for systems and an endless line of stupid users kept changing file types because they didn't know any better, you would be complaining because it was too easy to do so.
You can't have it both ways...either all OS GUI functions should be made as dummy-proof as possible, or they should be designed to be as efficient as possible for someone who knows what they're doing. Or maybe, there is actually a level of compromise somewhere in between which is exactly what the Corel GUI designer was trying to suggest???
Not to mention recursive conflicts... :-)
Napster, on the other hand, is a business which is trying to make money off the fruits of other people's labor. They are hardly a member of the "open source" movement in good standing nor are they out to liberate the world from corporate greed...they just want to get a piece of the pie without earning it. I frankly couldn't care less what happens to them.
First they need to apply some voltage to him judiciously though, so they can find out where the stuff went. :-)
Agreed. However, if you were to calculate the amount of sales tax paid as a percentage of the person's disposable income you would find that the percentages were practically identical. That is the problem with sales taxes...they aren't paid on a progressive scale which means that the poor DO carry an unfair portion of the burden. With income tax, the poor pay 10% or even less of their income in the case of the poorest, whereas I have to pay 31% of mine.
Like it or not, if we're going to pay taxes at all, this is the way to do it. I can afford to give a bit more and spend a bit less on filet mignon, German automobiles, French wine, etc. Because the bottom line is: even after I pay the 31%, I still have more than enough left to live in a style that most of the poor can't even properly imagine. Sales tax is little more than a small tip to me (and probably you as well), but it's crippling to someone trying to feed a family of four on $15K a year.
Quite frankly, I'm inclined to believe them. The big five and the RIAA weren't interested in messing with the status quo and it wasn't until mp3.com, napster, et. al. started hitting them hard that they decided this phenomenon was here to stay and they'd better come to the table and negotiate.
Good news for everybody! I can't wait for the complete adoption of music formats that will allow me to listen to anything I've purchased, anywhere, without having to carry artifacts around. Rock on, dudes...
People like you who make statements about social issues without any knowledge of the consequences should have their right to vote taken away. Yeah, yeah, poor people don't have internet access...but they soon will thanks to RCN and others, and you want to take the tax break away right before they get it. The worst part of it is that at least three other uninformed idiots modded your crap up as if you knew what you were talking about because they were just as uninformed as you are.
You want to raise taxes like a socialist idiot -- raise income taxes. At least that way you won't be crippling the people who can least afford to pay.
why did they apply for the patent then? kinda makes you go hmmmmmmmm?!?
First of all, I read a couple of the opinion pieces on the site, and frankly, they were mediocre. I've seen much better in PC Gamer and CGW many times...maybe even every month.
Secondly, while I've been glued to a monitor or TV for endless hours many, many times in my life, that hardly makes games high art. Rather, the allure is that you have a story and visuals that you can interact with in ways you can't do with books, movies, paintings, plays, etc. And that's a great thing, too...but you don't seriously believe that Command and Conquer, Starcraft, Myst, Unreal Tournament, Civilization (insert your favorite game here) are even remotely on the same level as a book by Hemingway, Phil Dick, Gene Wolfe? a movie by Stanley Kubrick? a painting by Picasso or a statue by Michelangelo? a play by William Shakespeare?
I think you need to take a step back and get real here. I know, I know...you're just saying that it is beginning to come into the realm of art as the technology advances and becomes more accesible. Web "art" can't possibly hold a candle to the fact of a real life painting on canvas with its brushstrokes bringing the artist's emotions directly into play. The story-writing in games may have improved since 1980, but it hardly qualifies as great literature, and while our conversation and actions on AC were pretty amusing last night, I don't think they will go down in history.
Perhaps you should save this story and post it again in 2020 when I might be able to see a glimmer of reality in your assertions.
And that my friends, is capitalism in all it's glory. If I don't care for all the crap, the three major TV networks are still free to anyone who puts up a big antenna. Same on the net...get a free account at NetZero and use it to your hearts' content or get high-speed access and take the good with the bad for a price. They call that a "FREE MARKET ECONOMY." Live with it, or move to a socialist country...those are the choices.
First, if the ISP was getting hammered, then I assume it's a dial-up because if the user had a static ip, they could just DoS him directly.
So, if it's a dial-up and his ISP can't stop these people from DoSing them to death, then they deserve whatever they get. It is hard to stop a DoS, but not when the same group of people keep doing it to the same servers day in and day out...the repetition is exactly what makes it traceable.
Furthermore, as someone else already stated, what good would it do to DoS a dial-up user? As soon as he changes ISPs, you lost him. Hell, he can sign up for a free NetZero account and annoy you from there if he wants. Try DoSing them to death and see how many days you can do it for before they can irrefutably nail you.
So if it's a not a dial-up, then why would they need to cancel his account? Methinks our anonymous submitter has pulled a fast one on /.
actually, no...a search engine grabs the title and description for a page (or uses one you submitted to them) in order to help the searcher decide if the page would be something they are looking for...in order for your statement to be true, the search engine would have to take a selected portion of the content and repackage it so as to give a searcher the information from the site without the searcher having to visit it. This is what the case is trying to prevent happening and I think eBay and others are correct to put a stop to it.
Let me ask you this...if you built a site and spent a hundred hours a week updating and refining until you had a great following of repeat visitors and then I came along and decided that using a neat little script I would spider your site daily and copy all the best parts off it to create my site, what would you do? Even better, what if I used this stolen content to sell advertising on my site and I started raking in big bucks off it? Hmmmm? Nothing wrong with me stealing the fruits of your labor here and making mucho dinero off you??? Bah!
I wasn't complaining...just giving an example...I am well above both the poverty level and the median income, and I already own a house here...I had to rent before to save money for the ridiculously-high down payment :-)