You expect "normal" people to read a window at the bottom right hand of the screen?
It would have to be 30 point font for most people. People don't even read pop-up messages, centered on the screen, that have to be closed by user action.
Besides, the phishers would just add to their e-mail: ""This is not an unsigned e-mail. This e-mail is not fraudulent." "This e-mail has a correct signature. It is impossible that its contents are fraudulent."
Not if industry moves offshore. Consider that manufacturing once employed hundreds of engineers (mechanical, industrial, electrical, etc.). It doesn't matter how good of engineer you are, if all of the employers leave, your job is gone. Time to retrain.
I got an electrical/electronic engineering degree in the early 1980's, thinking that I would design consumer electronics. I didn't recognize that the industry was all moving offshore. There is only a very tiny consumer electronics industry left in the US. Except for marketing and sales.
Students would be well advised to consider the state of the industry when chosing a field of study. Right now the IT industry doesn't look very promising long-term. Those chosing to avoid pure IT careers are using solid reasoning.
As I understand it, Overture's anti-clickfraud system is mostly GeoIP (determines the IP address location of web visitors in real-time) to determine if clicks are coming from offshore locales. As a previous poster mentioned "Some sleezebags have set up click fraud offices in these places where people are paid to surf and click on your ads."
This does not catch competitors clicking on competitors, unless the competitors have off-shored the click fraud. Neither does it catch customers clicking on their own links. That would require sending all of the IP addresses through a statisical model. Which is something I expect Google to tackle since they have enough math PhDs to do it.
Prediction: Google will create it's own version of Firefox with one distinguishing feature: no address bar.
Google hates the address bar. They want everything to go through their search box (like the Google toolbar). Solution: get rid of the address bar. Have the search box do an automatic "I feel lucky" search if you type in a URL.
Watch the Google ad revenue grow when Google knows every URL that you type, in addition to your every search.
The highway patrol in Florida used to pull that same "drug checkpoint ahead" scam. And then stop anyone who tried to avoid the checkpoint. I'm not sure that they still do that. A number of minority groups pointed out that a large number of those stopped were minorities who simply distrusted the police (with good reason from past experience). The result was that they were not catching "drug dealers" in their net, but "people afraid of cops".
Also many product reviews are mostly barely rewritten press releases from the manufacturers.
Anytime that you read a glowing review of the latest electronic gadget, you are most likely reading a cut/paste of the manufacturer's press kit.
You should suspect blogs focused on consumer electronic products of having an unhealthly relationship with the product makers. Some sites/blogs are squeeky clean. Some sites/blogs always have their hand out for free samples (in return for good reviews).
Blogs have mass communication power. Power can be corrupted. Blogs can be corrupted.
It wasn't working when I was last in Copenhagen (city bikes). Local teenagers had used most of the bikes for stunt riding. The bikes were mostly broken. It might have worked if the program were limited to those over 18 years of age (or whenever the hormones of teenage boys die down).
This is part of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and it applies to competitive capitalism.
I hope that the followers of John Nash, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_nash , will someday publish an analysis of Google from a perspective of Game theory. (Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that studies strategic situations where players choose different actions in an attempt to maximize their returns.)
The people who can grok Google will become very wealthy.
You just had to bring up bad memories, didn't you. But not many places lived up to the TEMPEST standard, even in a lot of DOD, NSA, CIA, etc. locations.
With this stuff, I could see hospitals repainting thier intensive care units. They could call the paint "TEMPEST lite". It brings a simplified version of the 1980's technology down to a much more useable level.
MSFT/SCOX tried to stop both Linux adoption and development with their shotgun blast of lawsuits (cheered on by media shills who spashed it all over the tech news).
That this point I think that have lost the battle to stop Linux adoption. But as you point out, a multi-year delay while biz people pondered the need for "indemnification" is clearly a small "win", but not a total victory.
I agree that MSFT/SCOX is stopping some Linux development contributions. It's not hard to find examples of companies who have withheld Linux contributions because of the perceived potential risk of legal entanglement in this IP briar patch. With the messy history of Unix/Linux IP, it was only a matter of time before some desperate company tried to make goofy IP claims. The big deal here is the amount of money, and diverse funding schemes, that has gone into backing this lawsuit. I agree that MSFT is the clear winner in this battle.
All media is destroyable. There are shedders that can easily handle disk platters, CD-ROMs, DVDs, etc. The shedders are smaller versions of circuit board shedders that have been common to firms doing defense electronics since the 1950's.
It's not uncommon for an automotive fuel tank to rupture during a high speed rear end collision. Sometimes it's a design flaw, like having a bolt positioned to pierce the tank on impact (the Pinto).
In any case, the fuel spills on the ground, under the vehicle. As the parent suggests, occupants of said vehicle are roasted over the flames.
Although, from what I've seen of airplane accidents, it's not uncommon for passengers to get soaked with kerosene after impact. Fuel gets splashed everywhere.
Lesson learned: high speed impact, humans, and fuel make a toasty warm fire.
... allowed identity thieves posing as legitimate businesses...
From ChoicePoint's perspective, they were legitimate businesses. They paid for the data, they didn't steal it.
From the goverment's perspective, they were legitimate businesses if they paid taxes on their "profits".
Now from the victims perspective, they were a bunch of crooks raiding their credit records and sucking as much out as they could.
Is every employer, landlord, and car dealer a legitimate business just because they actually have a better excuse to get their hand on the data? Some of those businesses are a bunch of crooks too.
The whole system needs better security, not just better control over who can get your info.
You've mentioned several differentiators. For playing cards, graphic design and card stock are big differentiators.
The only differentiator that applies to a music CD is graphic design.
Quality is a huge differentiator for a commodity product, but not for a plastic CD. Packaging is another common differentiator, but not really for a music CD.
I think that it's a business rule: There is no profit in an undifferentiated commodity product.
big music company will get all the CD sales because they can produce and distribute them cheaper than you can.
Wrong.
They will not waste their time reproducing free music. As soon as the CD starts to make any money, a competitor will produce the same CD. What stopping a competitor? There is no differentiator. In the end, competition wipes all profit from producing a CD with free content.
If you're talking about facts and law, you have to review SCO's strategy:
"When the facts are against you, argue the law;
when the law is against you, argue the facts;
when both the facts and the law are against you, pound on the table."
SCO has been pounding on the table for a long time.
Using a "marked" credit cards numbers goes back to the 1970's.
The problem is that the credit card companies are not motivated to stop fraud. They mostly view fraud as an acceptable business loss. Fraud is a very small percentage bump in their profits. They are not the victims of fraud.
The victims are mostly small businesses and credit card holders. They can't afford to ignore the loss. They spend hours of time working through fraud related clean-up measures. But their time and efforts cost the credit card companies nothing.
Motivate the credit card companies to stop fraud and fraud will become very difficult to get away with.
OK, if they catch you standing right there with a hammer in your hand, they might charge you with destruction of evidence. The same would hold true for a magnetic device. Hopefully you're at least 30 seconds ahead of them.
Otherwise, all they will find is a bashed up computer. When the computer was bashed cannot be determined.
You could say that it was running Windows, you lost your temper in frustration, and bashed it with a hammer. The police will just nod and move along...
Oh come on, just use a hammer. One good whack on the hard drive, one second, and it's all over with. You'll crack the platter for sure. If you have enough time, give it a couple of more whacks.
If you need a hint on where to whack, you could draw a nice bulls-eye on the case where the hardrive is located behind. You could hit the hard drive directly if you're like me and leave the case on loose.
Only spooks in the deepest corners of spy world could get good data from the fragments and piece it back together.
I'm guessing that since minors are not allowed to agree to the Sony license, they are in violation of the EULA by listening to the music on the CD.
Unless an adult agrees to the license and plays the music for the minor, the minor just paid $14.99 for a shiny plastic disk. By law, they have no rights to the content and no way to gain those rights.
Slashdot Mirror
You expect "normal" people to read a window at the bottom right hand of the screen?
It would have to be 30 point font for most people. People don't even read pop-up messages, centered on the screen, that have to be closed by user action.
Besides, the phishers would just add to their e-mail: ""This is not an unsigned e-mail. This e-mail is not fraudulent." "This e-mail has a correct signature. It is impossible that its contents are fraudulent."
Which do you think users would read?
if you're good, then you'll do well
Not if industry moves offshore. Consider that manufacturing once employed hundreds of engineers (mechanical, industrial, electrical, etc.). It doesn't matter how good of engineer you are, if all of the employers leave, your job is gone. Time to retrain.
I got an electrical/electronic engineering degree in the early 1980's, thinking that I would design consumer electronics. I didn't recognize that the industry was all moving offshore. There is only a very tiny consumer electronics industry left in the US. Except for marketing and sales.
Students would be well advised to consider the state of the industry when chosing a field of study. Right now the IT industry doesn't look very promising long-term. Those chosing to avoid pure IT careers are using solid reasoning.
As I understand it, Overture's anti-clickfraud system is mostly GeoIP (determines the IP address location of web visitors in real-time) to determine if clicks are coming from offshore locales. As a previous poster mentioned "Some sleezebags have set up click fraud offices in these places where people are paid to surf and click on your ads."
This does not catch competitors clicking on competitors, unless the competitors have off-shored the click fraud. Neither does it catch customers clicking on their own links. That would require sending all of the IP addresses through a statisical model. Which is something I expect Google to tackle since they have enough math PhDs to do it.
Not only Google Linux..
Prediction: Google will create it's own version of Firefox with one distinguishing feature: no address bar.
Google hates the address bar. They want everything to go through their search box (like the Google toolbar). Solution: get rid of the address bar. Have the search box do an automatic "I feel lucky" search if you type in a URL.
Watch the Google ad revenue grow when Google knows every URL that you type, in addition to your every search.
The highway patrol in Florida used to pull that same "drug checkpoint ahead" scam. And then stop anyone who tried to avoid the checkpoint. I'm not sure that they still do that. A number of minority groups pointed out that a large number of those stopped were minorities who simply distrusted the police (with good reason from past experience). The result was that they were not catching "drug dealers" in their net, but "people afraid of cops".
Also many product reviews are mostly barely rewritten press releases from the manufacturers.
Anytime that you read a glowing review of the latest electronic gadget, you are most likely reading a cut/paste of the manufacturer's press kit.
You should suspect blogs focused on consumer electronic products of having an unhealthly relationship with the product makers. Some sites/blogs are squeeky clean. Some sites/blogs always have their hand out for free samples (in return for good reviews).
Blogs have mass communication power. Power can be corrupted. Blogs can be corrupted.
Welcome to our corporate world.
It wasn't working when I was last in Copenhagen (city bikes). Local teenagers had used most of the bikes for stunt riding. The bikes were mostly broken. It might have worked if the program were limited to those over 18 years of age (or whenever the hormones of teenage boys die down).
The act of observing something changes it ,
This is part of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and it applies to competitive capitalism.
I hope that the followers of John Nash, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_nash , will someday publish an analysis of Google from a perspective of Game theory. (Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that studies strategic situations where players choose different actions in an attempt to maximize their returns.)
The people who can grok Google will become very wealthy.
TEMPEST in a teapot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TEMPEST
You just had to bring up bad memories, didn't you. But not many places lived up to the TEMPEST standard, even in a lot of DOD, NSA, CIA, etc. locations.
With this stuff, I could see hospitals repainting thier intensive care units. They could call the paint "TEMPEST lite". It brings a simplified version of the 1980's technology down to a much more useable level.
I think that yor're only partially correct.
MSFT/SCOX tried to stop both Linux adoption and development with their shotgun blast of lawsuits (cheered on by media shills who spashed it all over the tech news).
That this point I think that have lost the battle to stop Linux adoption. But as you point out, a multi-year delay while biz people pondered the need for "indemnification" is clearly a small "win", but not a total victory.
I agree that MSFT/SCOX is stopping some Linux development contributions. It's not hard to find examples of companies who have withheld Linux contributions because of the perceived potential risk of legal entanglement in this IP briar patch. With the messy history of Unix/Linux IP, it was only a matter of time before some desperate company tried to make goofy IP claims. The big deal here is the amount of money, and diverse funding schemes, that has gone into backing this lawsuit. I agree that MSFT is the clear winner in this battle.
I'm one day late to mod this up.
I had mod points yesterday....
Anna Kournikova.jpg.pif
Please make this link clickable. I've tried to click on it a number of times now.
signed,
Born Yesterday
Always do backups to destroyable media.
All media is destroyable. There are shedders that can easily handle disk platters, CD-ROMs, DVDs, etc. The shedders are smaller versions of circuit board shedders that have been common to firms doing defense electronics since the 1950's.
It's not uncommon for an automotive fuel tank to rupture during a high speed rear end collision. Sometimes it's a design flaw, like having a bolt positioned to pierce the tank on impact (the Pinto).
In any case, the fuel spills on the ground, under the vehicle. As the parent suggests, occupants of said vehicle are roasted over the flames.
Although, from what I've seen of airplane accidents, it's not uncommon for passengers to get soaked with kerosene after impact. Fuel gets splashed everywhere.
Lesson learned: high speed impact, humans, and fuel make a toasty warm fire.
From ChoicePoint's perspective, they were legitimate businesses. They paid for the data, they didn't steal it.
From the goverment's perspective, they were legitimate businesses if they paid taxes on their "profits".
Now from the victims perspective, they were a bunch of crooks raiding their credit records and sucking as much out as they could.
Is every employer, landlord, and car dealer a legitimate business just because they actually have a better excuse to get their hand on the data? Some of those businesses are a bunch of crooks too.
The whole system needs better security, not just better control over who can get your info.
vb
You've mentioned several differentiators. For playing cards, graphic design and card stock are big differentiators.
The only differentiator that applies to a music CD is graphic design.
Quality is a huge differentiator for a commodity product, but not for a plastic CD. Packaging is another common differentiator, but not really for a music CD.
I think that it's a business rule: There is no profit in an undifferentiated commodity product.
You think they would have figured out how to get the equipment off-site.
..and copy the stuff on their own time? No way!
big music company will get all the CD sales because they can produce and distribute them cheaper than you can.
Wrong.
They will not waste their time reproducing free music. As soon as the CD starts to make any money, a competitor will produce the same CD. What stopping a competitor? There is no differentiator. In the end, competition wipes all profit from producing a CD with free content.
To get to the Barnes & Noble web site, I just type into the address bar "bn" control-enter. That works on both IE and Firefox.
I order way too many books to know that shortcut.
Also, you can get to a lot of content without Google by typing in keywords. Like www.books.com also goes to the Barnes & Noble web site.
If you're talking about facts and law, you have to review SCO's strategy:
"When the facts are against you, argue the law;
when the law is against you, argue the facts;
when both the facts and the law are against you, pound on the table."
SCO has been pounding on the table for a long time.
Using a "marked" credit cards numbers goes back to the 1970's.
The problem is that the credit card companies are not motivated to stop fraud. They mostly view fraud as an acceptable business loss. Fraud is a very small percentage bump in their profits. They are not the victims of fraud.
The victims are mostly small businesses and credit card holders. They can't afford to ignore the loss. They spend hours of time working through fraud related clean-up measures. But their time and efforts cost the credit card companies nothing.
Motivate the credit card companies to stop fraud and fraud will become very difficult to get away with.
OK, if they catch you standing right there with a hammer in your hand, they might charge you with destruction of evidence. The same would hold true for a magnetic device. Hopefully you're at least 30 seconds ahead of them.
Otherwise, all they will find is a bashed up computer. When the computer was bashed cannot be determined.
You could say that it was running Windows, you lost your temper in frustration, and bashed it with a hammer. The police will just nod and move along...
Oh come on, just use a hammer. One good whack on the hard drive, one second, and it's all over with. You'll crack the platter for sure. If you have enough time, give it a couple of more whacks.
If you need a hint on where to whack, you could draw a nice bulls-eye on the case where the hardrive is located behind. You could hit the hard drive directly if you're like me and leave the case on loose.
Only spooks in the deepest corners of spy world could get good data from the fragments and piece it back together.
Oh the irony: speaking about the "offtopic" mod war got you modded as "offtopic".
It's like pointing out the truth and being modded a liar for doing so.
vb
Great question!
I'm guessing that since minors are not allowed to agree to the Sony license, they are in violation of the EULA by listening to the music on the CD.
Unless an adult agrees to the license and plays the music for the minor, the minor just paid $14.99 for a shiny plastic disk. By law, they have no rights to the content and no way to gain those rights.