Thing with View Only is that, while one can't print or edit the document, or even copy it for someone else, what stops said person from writing notes on a sheet of paper and avoiding the DRM aspect of the document? What stops the person from just remembering what he read and repeating it later, or dictating word for word into a micro cassette recorder? The only thing DRM is going to be usefull for is preventing a direct print, copy/paste, direct copy, and locations of viewing (assumed). If you send said information to a semi-trustworthy source, the information itself might still find it's way out.
Only deal is, even if there were a method in place for people to contest said lawsuits and not suffer mounting legal fees (ie: legal fees for the defendant paid for by the claimant on a lost case), taking a case to trial is too much like gambling. Too many things can go wrong for you in a court of law. The judge could be insane that day and rule against you. Your laywer could misstep a rule and fail to make an appropriate point at the proper moment. The prosecution could bring out evidence or a witness that skews your ability to defend against it. Heck, you might find something out 30 seconds after you lose your defense that would've changed the case, but it's too late because the judge has ruled.
Too many problems, too many ways to lose even if you are 'in the right' for people to want to consider. Only someone who will stand up for themselves and the principle will go to court for something so stupid as this. Everyone else will simply try to minimize their headache from an already stupid situation.
Sadly, spaceflight tends to be rather unforgiving. And, as was stated, were there a contingency plan in place, we could've rescued the crew and experiments, but what about the shuttle? Unless the ISS is going to be capable of providing a 'dry dock' for spacecraft needing emergency repairs in space, nothing that we have now could've repaired the shuttle while in flight. No handholds, no grips, no way to anchor oneself to the underside of the craft unless you did really long straps around the whole length of the wing.
Without a way to repair the shuttle, too, any bail out plan saves the people, and the cost is the same (loss of shuttle to orbit).
1) Orbit only craft for ISS - Cool idea, and usefull, but where do you fuel such a craft from? Emergency only? That's cool, but why put a craft onto the ISS that can only do orbit only, when it'd be better to have one that can do both (maneuver and reenter) to double as an escape vehicle from the ISS if necessary.
2) Second shuttle on the pad - I like this idea most, and think having an emergency light weight rescue vehicle for the purpose of retrieving personel only (perhaps light cargo) would be good. Question is, would it be worth it to have said vehicles on the ground in standby mode during the entire trip, or have one prepped during any mission (or at any time, in case the ISS needs help)? This goes back to the ISS Rescue Vehicle thing, though. Why not just put one up there, save the trouble of rocketing another crew up there through all the trouble when a 'launching pad' from space is a better choice.
3) Carrying an ISS Docking Ring - In order to conserve fuel costs, and simply due to weight restrictions and space concerns, carrying a heavy docking all the time for a potential problem that hasn't come up til now is a huge waste of fuel. Not only that, some cargo that is carried would occupy the entire bay and make carrying a docking ring impossible. Also, considering how much fuel the main engines take, and how much more speed one would have to have in order to boost orbits, reaching the ISS from low orbit is not likely.
3a) Alternate options - Collapsable Docking Ring (fanfold style tube). Vulnerable to space debris (tearing holes). Subject to fuel restrictions as above.
- Built in docking mechanism. Far better to have some kind of designed in docking mechanism into the hull of the ship and the station, a standardized method to dock that is designed into the vehicle. Need to redesign the shuttle fleet for this, or design a 'soft dock' system to do the interface. However, as most access points on the shuttle (exterior) do not have an airlock on them (I think), that might prove more trouble than it's worth.
I figure they aught to have some kind of contingency, instead of skimping down to the last margin. However, the current shuttle fleet is, in my opinion, unsuitable to the task, and we can design better now (use less onboard fuel, no jettisoned parts, less room for pieces to impact). Do wonder, however, since Reentry tends to be rocketing at high speed into the atmosphere and using that to slow down, if there's not some other way to do a slow descent into the atmosphere and skip the burning up part.
Skylink's transmission, using Skylink's Model 39 transmitter, of the same three codes, circumvents Chaimberlan's rolling code technology, thereby eliminating the important protective measure that prevents burglars with a code grabber from gaining unauthorized access to garages of homeowners who have purchased Chamberlain's garage door openers with the copywrited software.
This is frankly hillarious. Partly, according to prior information, the GDO (Garage door opener) unit must be placed into 'Program' mode before any new transmitters can be accepted for use. Simply owning a Skylink remote is not sufficient for opening anyone's garage door, one must first program the base unit to accept it, and learn the rolling code.
The transmissions should be similar to standard Chamberlain remotes, encrypted to a rolling key so that the base unit can understand it. Code Grabbers would still not be able to open the doors, irreguardless of what Skylink did, unless manufacturered the rolling code and a valid remote ID, and if it can do that, why can't it grab that info from Chaimberlain's own remotes?
Personally, I would tend to agree that this particular issue is a non-issue. To state rather that the effort in exploiting it would be better spent just hard cracking a system open and reading out the data. It's more troublesome for some of us to see the kind of stupid error correction techniques in widely prevolent systems.
Always kind of bothered me why memory freshly allocated could not start at 0. Does that take so much effort to do? How about sanity checking my data structure? How about properly implimenting something? Lazyness seems to be the word of the age, though.
Some Debuggers (GDB specifically that I know) do come with 'on the fly' variable editing. It was very handy to debug a network database server when it got caught in an infinate loop. Linked up to the program, gained control, adjust the faulty variable in order to keep the data sane, and detach from it to let it continue running.
There's a fundamental problem with CD's and Copy Protection as it stands currently, with the published specs. As it is currently, there is no designed method of copy protection built into the CD spec. Now, copy protection can be achieved, barely, by extending or twisting the spec around in order to destroy that ability, at a cost.
I use as an example: Minidiscs.
Minidiscs, while they may have achieved only bare minimum acceptance in the US and slightly better elsewhere, come pre-designed with copy protection a central core of the spec. In fact, the spec even goes so far as to permit a single digital quality copy from an outside source to Minidisc. Afterwards, only degraded analog copies might be made. The Specification for Minidiscs took this into account, it is fundamental to the architecture of all player/recorders, and as such, so far as I have seen, not so easy to get around.
Compact Discs, on the other hand, did not originally care about copying. The spec was based on the premise that only expensive burners that companies could afford would be the only thing to actually make a CD. A truely 'Read Only' format. This lack of foreknowledge of copying data from the CD to another medium has led to this problem. A lack of a redesigned spec incorperating Copy Protection (and, likely, a new name or encoding method (CD-CP, for example)) further complicates this matter.
Unfortunately, the only way I can see this being resolved is if the music companies abandon the CD architecture all together in favor of another medium, one that has protections built in from the start. Either that, or abandon attempts to copy protect CD's.
Re:Why can't anyone see the implications of this?
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This is IT?
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I think of college campuses and cars, and I chuckle a little. Most campuses are incapable of supporting the number of cars it would take for all it's students to commute. Some can, if barely. Depends on the campus, doesn't it? Besides, what's wrong with getting out and walking from class to class? What's wrong with getting a $200-400 bike and riding it quicker than you could stand on this thing for considerably more cash? On a limited-space campus, I rode a bike. So did many people. This isn't the situation that this creation will work in.
Cities? Theme parks? In some cases, you are carrying things, in others, you're there for the excersize and entertainment. And in crowded situations, this thing won't be welcome. Rolling over toes, running down people (even at 10mph. It's just more annoying than fatal). Using one of these things actually INCREASES the space one must have to move compared to walking. 0 turn radius and all that don't make a difference, really, unless you intended to parallel park this thing on the side of a wall.
The notion about this thing being immune from falling over is quite good too. While it may be true this thing is capable of balancing itself, the rider must balance themselves upon it, too. If the rider leans too much, they're falling. And before you say unlikely, just having looked at the design, the riders feet are too close together for easy balance. While sure, some people can't balance a bicycle (though I don't consider it that hard), standing still while on one of these things with your feet close together, while in motion, may prove more interesting than you think.
The apparent market for this thing to me is those too lazy to walk, those that are capable of standing still for long periods of time and are unable to use other modes of transportation, and of course the random geek.
In a bad example, say you went to school and were trained that a wrench was the ideal way to pound nails into a board. You get out into the field, and in keeping your eyes open, you discover a hammer, or even better, a nail gun. Now, do you stick with what you know, the wrench, or do you find a suitable tool for the job you're doing, even if it requires learning that tool? In construction, this example is a 'duh' statement.
In Software, the situation is the same. If you have mission critical servers that need to be up, no matter how well your software works on Windows (though the argument could be made that Windows works better now), odds are that that tool is going to fail you when you need it to work. Do you fight with that tool, because it's what you know, or do you find a suitable replacement that does what you want, even if it means retraining?
Frankly, I don't feel stupid. I feel uninformed. I feel more informed now.
How many other people know that you can do this? And does it take away the problem of rejecting all bulk mail to your place, or just those listed as to 'Resident'? When did they plan to advertise the whole 'opt out' from the direct marketing scheme?
Oh wait, they don't want to advertise that you can get away from advertisements (irony?) because it stunts commercial development (gasp).
Wonder when they're going to start an 'opt-in', where you willingly subject yourself to ads from a particular company, instead of forcing you to opt out if you don't want it.
I know this is somewhat off topic, but I found it an amusing thought.
We have the term 'market share' for how much of a particular consumer market a corperation owns.
We have the term 'mindshare'. Going on this same basis, and assuming that the corperations are using this term in similar ways, that would mean that this is how much of the way of thinking that a particular corperation owns.
Is this something we really really want? Do we want to have our thoughts quantified by 'how much we think like Company X'? Worse yet, are people so blind and ignorant that using a piece of software constitutes 'I must use this from now til forever'?
Sad state, when terms like Mindshare start cropping up.
Whatever costs are involved between Direct Marketing and Email spam tend to be only barely relevent. Spam is literally unwanted solicitations. I don't recall ever signing up for Direct Marketing ads to be shipped to my mailbox. I don't seem to recall ever agreeing to receipt of 5-6 credit card offers a week. While they do tend to provide me a good laugh, they all wind up in the garbage.
Spam is spam is spam. Email, direct mail, or telepathy. Unwanted advertisements are just that, unwanted. Personally, I'd like to see something done about spam that includes direct mail as well, since direct mail has one added problem associated with it. Large expendature of limited resources on the hope of a 10-20% return.
First, it's important to know just what pieces of information they've decide the public no longer needs to know. Locations of buildings, aqueducts, water filtering plants, etc? I'm sure copies of this information are already beyond the government's reach. What is location going to tell you anyways other than where to strike? They could find that out other ways, it just takes more time.
Second, the whole concept of 'ignorance is bliss' and 'information kills' is totally bogus. Nothing about information intrinsically kills, or is dangerous. It's what's done with the information that makes a difference. Will the government census be locked up now, because it shows the greatest concentration of people as a potential target? That could be construed as 'sensitive information' in such a light. Sequestering information does 2 things. It makes it difficult for the "nameless" terrorists from finding out about us. It also makes it more difficult for citizens to know what is going on around them. Overall, I forsee the result of terrorists maintaining their knowledge base, and citizens losing access to such information for a long time.
Considering how the 4 planes were hijacked, it really brings home one notion. For all the information that we have here in the US, the population of the US is nieve (or was highly so before the attacks). Nieve in the fact that simple things as boxcutters could be used to take over a plane without ever first damaging the plane. Nieve in the fact that the pilots seemed to forget the first rule of vehicles, a rule which basically states that any vehicle is a leathal weapon. Adding fuel into the mix adds explosive power behind that weapon. It seems just puzzling to wonder why the pilots ever considered placing themselves in a position where their vehicle could have been taken over.
For all the information that the US had, none of it stopped the attacks, none of it kept us informed of what we should do in the event of attack or threat, and almost none of it was used prior to the attacks. Suddenly, we want to sequester more information away from the people, and expect that the people will feel comfortable and safe?
It ultimately comes down to one thing. What information has the government decided we are no longer safe in knowing? What information has been censored that does not need to be? What information that has been published should not have been in the public's hands in the first place? (Specific structural integrety tests on dams and other installations should not necessarily be public knowledge, but information on where the dam is should be)
Spammers never needed email before to 'get the message out'. It's called Direct Marketing for snail mail. Buy a product once, you go in their database. Periodically, whenever some new 'deal' comes out, no matter what your fealings are on the store, they feel compelled to issue you out a letter/flyer/etc informing you of what great new products they have just for you!
Email just makes it easier, and harder to trace back, if you know what you're doing.
To add to technical problems, what about conflict between business mentality and consumer mentality? The pages that have autorefresh and non-absolute URL's? Would you get charged for both the main page (autorefreshing) as well as the page it took you to? In terms of Searches, would you be charged for bad search results? In terms of popup ads, would they charge for those, too, or would they go away?
Too much of the corperate way of thinking would be to add this to their existing revenue streams. End result would be us customers being screwed as usual
That's a nice thought, but you forget one guiding vision of pretty much all corperations. That vision is that your customer is a buyable commodity, something that can be bought and sold, traded and aquired between their compeditors. Customers do not think. Customers are like that stapler on your desk. They exist for the Corperation's benefit.
The "Security Community" thinks, and has dangerous ideas to the Corperation. That idea is that the Corperation is wrong.
Worse yet, what happens when you're given the choice of ferret something out in the Real World, or find it conveniently online with Passport (since noone accepts anything "less")?
While I know this is a 'tentative' agreement, and that what we say on slashdot here makes little to no difference in the case's eyes (after all, do they read this board?), I come up with one question.
Where do we go to state how ticked off we are at this agreement?
Perhaps someone can share an insight into a mail address, an email, some sort of way to feed public opinion into this public case. After all, is the Fed not representing the people in this case? If the people are disatisfied, should their "champion" (and I use that term very loosely) not strive harder to make right what has been PROVEN and UPHELD as the truth?
Insight is appreciated. Addresses are better. Let's let our representative in this case know just what we think of their settlement.
Keep track of them, sure. But what do they do with them once they find them? What other little perversions of their monopoly have they instituted beneath prying eyes and away from public view? It wasn't til the trial that it came to light that Microsoft used it's licensing deals with OEM's to basically punish those that didn't play nice with their wants, and to institute the 'Windows Tax' we're so familiar with now.
This is basically a sham deal. As people point out, they are Guilty of using a monopoly position and leveraging their competition out. That stands firm. Probation is the equivilent of a light slap on the wrist, and a warning not to blatently abuse people anymore (though subtly doing so is ok)
Just as there are variations in manufacturing for CPU chips, there are variations in manufacturing for things such as Hinges. One batch may not be as rugged as the other batch.
I can't say what he did to break the hinges, but even using a laptop reasonably can still cause it to break when crappy or bad parts are put in.
Yes, I've known people to do this. It's called hydrolics, and pilot skill. Did you need software to drive an old, carburated car? I didn't think so.
Not everything requires software. Oddly enough, there are ways to get around using it, it's just less convenient. Of course, this reminds me of a near-crash I saw of a passanger plane.
Autopilot/crash warning system was confused, kept the nose of the plane too high for landing. Pilot tries to correct, only to have the plane force it's nose higher, and higher, till it stalled and fell groundwards again. Did this 2 or 3 times, WITH PASSANGERS, before the pilot was able to beat the program into submission and land the plane.
This type of software already came from a "certified" company. That didn't seem to make it any better, did it? Perhaps this is a case of "peer review" being necessary for critical systems. Do they peer review building plans before signing off on it?
Removing words from a language-defining text (dictionary, thesaurus) is a subtle form of censorship. Ever heard the phrase "Out of sight, out of mind"? If it's never presented to you as a possibility to use, then what's going to keep the word in use?
Manipulating language isn't the same as manipulating a market place. To manipulate a language to a major degree, you have to have wide distribution (Websters, Microsoft), and think 'very long thoughts'. You have to be subtle, tweaking the meaning of a word over the span of decades, or centuries. Subtly take out word references from the thesaurus, breaking apart meanings.
While I have no clue what Microsoft intended, it should not be removing "common use" word references from their Thesaurus. Adhere to the defining standard, or don't include said language reference at all.
in Visa's case, there are alternatives (Discover) that do not charge merchant fees. This is also not stating that, as Visa, we'll offer you access to do business with our sponsored cards as a whole for $1,000 for a small business (per year), and $250 per major variant of card you'll accept.
What if you didn't want to be forced to register your.Net program with Microsoft, but rather permit your customers to use it direct from your servers. Will Microsoft permit this? Is it even possible, of will the.Net My Services setup forbid any and all access if it don't come from Microsoft's own servers? What about alternatives? Not that many people seem to be intending to jump on the XP bandwagon if they can help it (ie: not buying a new PC from a major OEM).
What choices do you, as a consumer, have concerning this Software as a Service? And while 'Take it or leave it' is a valid option, it often isn't a sound business option in the long run.
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Thing with View Only is that, while one can't print or edit the document, or even copy it for someone else, what stops said person from writing notes on a sheet of paper and avoiding the DRM aspect of the document? What stops the person from just remembering what he read and repeating it later, or dictating word for word into a micro cassette recorder? The only thing DRM is going to be usefull for is preventing a direct print, copy/paste, direct copy, and locations of viewing (assumed). If you send said information to a semi-trustworthy source, the information itself might still find it's way out.
Only deal is, even if there were a method in place for people to contest said lawsuits and not suffer mounting legal fees (ie: legal fees for the defendant paid for by the claimant on a lost case), taking a case to trial is too much like gambling. Too many things can go wrong for you in a court of law. The judge could be insane that day and rule against you. Your laywer could misstep a rule and fail to make an appropriate point at the proper moment. The prosecution could bring out evidence or a witness that skews your ability to defend against it. Heck, you might find something out 30 seconds after you lose your defense that would've changed the case, but it's too late because the judge has ruled.
Too many problems, too many ways to lose even if you are 'in the right' for people to want to consider. Only someone who will stand up for themselves and the principle will go to court for something so stupid as this. Everyone else will simply try to minimize their headache from an already stupid situation.
Sadly, spaceflight tends to be rather unforgiving. And, as was stated, were there a contingency plan in place, we could've rescued the crew and experiments, but what about the shuttle? Unless the ISS is going to be capable of providing a 'dry dock' for spacecraft needing emergency repairs in space, nothing that we have now could've repaired the shuttle while in flight. No handholds, no grips, no way to anchor oneself to the underside of the craft unless you did really long straps around the whole length of the wing.
Without a way to repair the shuttle, too, any bail out plan saves the people, and the cost is the same (loss of shuttle to orbit).
Heh. Few problems with that.
1) Orbit only craft for ISS - Cool idea, and usefull, but where do you fuel such a craft from? Emergency only? That's cool, but why put a craft onto the ISS that can only do orbit only, when it'd be better to have one that can do both (maneuver and reenter) to double as an escape vehicle from the ISS if necessary.
2) Second shuttle on the pad - I like this idea most, and think having an emergency light weight rescue vehicle for the purpose of retrieving personel only (perhaps light cargo) would be good. Question is, would it be worth it to have said vehicles on the ground in standby mode during the entire trip, or have one prepped during any mission (or at any time, in case the ISS needs help)? This goes back to the ISS Rescue Vehicle thing, though. Why not just put one up there, save the trouble of rocketing another crew up there through all the trouble when a 'launching pad' from space is a better choice.
3) Carrying an ISS Docking Ring - In order to conserve fuel costs, and simply due to weight restrictions and space concerns, carrying a heavy docking all the time for a potential problem that hasn't come up til now is a huge waste of fuel. Not only that, some cargo that is carried would occupy the entire bay and make carrying a docking ring impossible. Also, considering how much fuel the main engines take, and how much more speed one would have to have in order to boost orbits, reaching the ISS from low orbit is not likely.
3a) Alternate options
- Collapsable Docking Ring (fanfold style tube). Vulnerable to space debris (tearing holes). Subject to fuel restrictions as above.
- Built in docking mechanism. Far better to have some kind of designed in docking mechanism into the hull of the ship and the station, a standardized method to dock that is designed into the vehicle. Need to redesign the shuttle fleet for this, or design a 'soft dock' system to do the interface. However, as most access points on the shuttle (exterior) do not have an airlock on them (I think), that might prove more trouble than it's worth.
I figure they aught to have some kind of contingency, instead of skimping down to the last margin. However, the current shuttle fleet is, in my opinion, unsuitable to the task, and we can design better now (use less onboard fuel, no jettisoned parts, less room for pieces to impact). Do wonder, however, since Reentry tends to be rocketing at high speed into the atmosphere and using that to slow down, if there's not some other way to do a slow descent into the atmosphere and skip the burning up part.
This is frankly hillarious. Partly, according to prior information, the GDO (Garage door opener) unit must be placed into 'Program' mode before any new transmitters can be accepted for use. Simply owning a Skylink remote is not sufficient for opening anyone's garage door, one must first program the base unit to accept it, and learn the rolling code.
The transmissions should be similar to standard Chamberlain remotes, encrypted to a rolling key so that the base unit can understand it. Code Grabbers would still not be able to open the doors, irreguardless of what Skylink did, unless manufacturered the rolling code and a valid remote ID, and if it can do that, why can't it grab that info from Chaimberlain's own remotes?
Stupidity of these companies is staggering.
Personally, I would tend to agree that this particular issue is a non-issue. To state rather that the effort in exploiting it would be better spent just hard cracking a system open and reading out the data. It's more troublesome for some of us to see the kind of stupid error correction techniques in widely prevolent systems.
Always kind of bothered me why memory freshly allocated could not start at 0. Does that take so much effort to do? How about sanity checking my data structure? How about properly implimenting something? Lazyness seems to be the word of the age, though.
Some Debuggers (GDB specifically that I know) do come with 'on the fly' variable editing. It was very handy to debug a network database server when it got caught in an infinate loop. Linked up to the program, gained control, adjust the faulty variable in order to keep the data sane, and detach from it to let it continue running.
There's a fundamental problem with CD's and Copy Protection as it stands currently, with the published specs. As it is currently, there is no designed method of copy protection built into the CD spec. Now, copy protection can be achieved, barely, by extending or twisting the spec around in order to destroy that ability, at a cost. I use as an example: Minidiscs. Minidiscs, while they may have achieved only bare minimum acceptance in the US and slightly better elsewhere, come pre-designed with copy protection a central core of the spec. In fact, the spec even goes so far as to permit a single digital quality copy from an outside source to Minidisc. Afterwards, only degraded analog copies might be made. The Specification for Minidiscs took this into account, it is fundamental to the architecture of all player/recorders, and as such, so far as I have seen, not so easy to get around. Compact Discs, on the other hand, did not originally care about copying. The spec was based on the premise that only expensive burners that companies could afford would be the only thing to actually make a CD. A truely 'Read Only' format. This lack of foreknowledge of copying data from the CD to another medium has led to this problem. A lack of a redesigned spec incorperating Copy Protection (and, likely, a new name or encoding method (CD-CP, for example)) further complicates this matter. Unfortunately, the only way I can see this being resolved is if the music companies abandon the CD architecture all together in favor of another medium, one that has protections built in from the start. Either that, or abandon attempts to copy protect CD's.
I think of college campuses and cars, and I chuckle a little. Most campuses are incapable of supporting the number of cars it would take for all it's students to commute. Some can, if barely. Depends on the campus, doesn't it? Besides, what's wrong with getting out and walking from class to class? What's wrong with getting a $200-400 bike and riding it quicker than you could stand on this thing for considerably more cash? On a limited-space campus, I rode a bike. So did many people. This isn't the situation that this creation will work in.
Cities? Theme parks? In some cases, you are carrying things, in others, you're there for the excersize and entertainment. And in crowded situations, this thing won't be welcome. Rolling over toes, running down people (even at 10mph. It's just more annoying than fatal). Using one of these things actually INCREASES the space one must have to move compared to walking. 0 turn radius and all that don't make a difference, really, unless you intended to parallel park this thing on the side of a wall.
The notion about this thing being immune from falling over is quite good too. While it may be true this thing is capable of balancing itself, the rider must balance themselves upon it, too. If the rider leans too much, they're falling. And before you say unlikely, just having looked at the design, the riders feet are too close together for easy balance. While sure, some people can't balance a bicycle (though I don't consider it that hard), standing still while on one of these things with your feet close together, while in motion, may prove more interesting than you think.
The apparent market for this thing to me is those too lazy to walk, those that are capable of standing still for long periods of time and are unable to use other modes of transportation, and of course the random geek.
In a bad example, say you went to school and were trained that a wrench was the ideal way to pound nails into a board. You get out into the field, and in keeping your eyes open, you discover a hammer, or even better, a nail gun. Now, do you stick with what you know, the wrench, or do you find a suitable tool for the job you're doing, even if it requires learning that tool? In construction, this example is a 'duh' statement.
In Software, the situation is the same. If you have mission critical servers that need to be up, no matter how well your software works on Windows (though the argument could be made that Windows works better now), odds are that that tool is going to fail you when you need it to work. Do you fight with that tool, because it's what you know, or do you find a suitable replacement that does what you want, even if it means retraining?
Frankly, I don't feel stupid. I feel uninformed. I feel more informed now.
How many other people know that you can do this? And does it take away the problem of rejecting all bulk mail to your place, or just those listed as to 'Resident'? When did they plan to advertise the whole 'opt out' from the direct marketing scheme?
Oh wait, they don't want to advertise that you can get away from advertisements (irony?) because it stunts commercial development (gasp).
Wonder when they're going to start an 'opt-in', where you willingly subject yourself to ads from a particular company, instead of forcing you to opt out if you don't want it.
I know this is somewhat off topic, but I found it an amusing thought.
We have the term 'market share' for how much of a particular consumer market a corperation owns.
We have the term 'mindshare'. Going on this same basis, and assuming that the corperations are using this term in similar ways, that would mean that this is how much of the way of thinking that a particular corperation owns.
Is this something we really really want? Do we want to have our thoughts quantified by 'how much we think like Company X'? Worse yet, are people so blind and ignorant that using a piece of software constitutes 'I must use this from now til forever'?
Sad state, when terms like Mindshare start cropping up.
Whatever costs are involved between Direct Marketing and Email spam tend to be only barely relevent. Spam is literally unwanted solicitations. I don't recall ever signing up for Direct Marketing ads to be shipped to my mailbox. I don't seem to recall ever agreeing to receipt of 5-6 credit card offers a week. While they do tend to provide me a good laugh, they all wind up in the garbage.
Spam is spam is spam. Email, direct mail, or telepathy. Unwanted advertisements are just that, unwanted. Personally, I'd like to see something done about spam that includes direct mail as well, since direct mail has one added problem associated with it. Large expendature of limited resources on the hope of a 10-20% return.
Second, the whole concept of 'ignorance is bliss' and 'information kills' is totally bogus. Nothing about information intrinsically kills, or is dangerous. It's what's done with the information that makes a difference. Will the government census be locked up now, because it shows the greatest concentration of people as a potential target? That could be construed as 'sensitive information' in such a light. Sequestering information does 2 things. It makes it difficult for the "nameless" terrorists from finding out about us. It also makes it more difficult for citizens to know what is going on around them. Overall, I forsee the result of terrorists maintaining their knowledge base, and citizens losing access to such information for a long time.
Considering how the 4 planes were hijacked, it really brings home one notion. For all the information that we have here in the US, the population of the US is nieve (or was highly so before the attacks). Nieve in the fact that simple things as boxcutters could be used to take over a plane without ever first damaging the plane. Nieve in the fact that the pilots seemed to forget the first rule of vehicles, a rule which basically states that any vehicle is a leathal weapon. Adding fuel into the mix adds explosive power behind that weapon. It seems just puzzling to wonder why the pilots ever considered placing themselves in a position where their vehicle could have been taken over.
For all the information that the US had, none of it stopped the attacks, none of it kept us informed of what we should do in the event of attack or threat, and almost none of it was used prior to the attacks. Suddenly, we want to sequester more information away from the people, and expect that the people will feel comfortable and safe?
It ultimately comes down to one thing. What information has the government decided we are no longer safe in knowing? What information has been censored that does not need to be? What information that has been published should not have been in the public's hands in the first place? (Specific structural integrety tests on dams and other installations should not necessarily be public knowledge, but information on where the dam is should be)
Spammers never needed email before to 'get the message out'. It's called Direct Marketing for snail mail. Buy a product once, you go in their database. Periodically, whenever some new 'deal' comes out, no matter what your fealings are on the store, they feel compelled to issue you out a letter/flyer/etc informing you of what great new products they have just for you!
Email just makes it easier, and harder to trace back, if you know what you're doing.
While the patent is silly, it begs the question of "if this is a silly/stupid patent, why should it be granted?"
If you don't have any intention of enforcing a patent, what exactally is the point of having it?
To add to technical problems, what about conflict between business mentality and consumer mentality? The pages that have autorefresh and non-absolute URL's? Would you get charged for both the main page (autorefreshing) as well as the page it took you to? In terms of Searches, would you be charged for bad search results? In terms of popup ads, would they charge for those, too, or would they go away?
Too much of the corperate way of thinking would be to add this to their existing revenue streams. End result would be us customers being screwed as usual
That's a nice thought, but you forget one guiding vision of pretty much all corperations. That vision is that your customer is a buyable commodity, something that can be bought and sold, traded and aquired between their compeditors. Customers do not think. Customers are like that stapler on your desk. They exist for the Corperation's benefit.
The "Security Community" thinks, and has dangerous ideas to the Corperation. That idea is that the Corperation is wrong.
Worse yet, what happens when you're given the choice of ferret something out in the Real World, or find it conveniently online with Passport (since noone accepts anything "less")?
While I know this is a 'tentative' agreement, and that what we say on slashdot here makes little to no difference in the case's eyes (after all, do they read this board?), I come up with one question.
Where do we go to state how ticked off we are at this agreement?
Perhaps someone can share an insight into a mail address, an email, some sort of way to feed public opinion into this public case. After all, is the Fed not representing the people in this case? If the people are disatisfied, should their "champion" (and I use that term very loosely) not strive harder to make right what has been PROVEN and UPHELD as the truth?
Insight is appreciated. Addresses are better. Let's let our representative in this case know just what we think of their settlement.
Keep track of them, sure. But what do they do with them once they find them? What other little perversions of their monopoly have they instituted beneath prying eyes and away from public view? It wasn't til the trial that it came to light that Microsoft used it's licensing deals with OEM's to basically punish those that didn't play nice with their wants, and to institute the 'Windows Tax' we're so familiar with now.
This is basically a sham deal. As people point out, they are Guilty of using a monopoly position and leveraging their competition out. That stands firm. Probation is the equivilent of a light slap on the wrist, and a warning not to blatently abuse people anymore (though subtly doing so is ok)
Just as there are variations in manufacturing for CPU chips, there are variations in manufacturing for things such as Hinges. One batch may not be as rugged as the other batch.
I can't say what he did to break the hinges, but even using a laptop reasonably can still cause it to break when crappy or bad parts are put in.
I'll bite on this one too.
Yes, I've known people to do this. It's called hydrolics, and pilot skill. Did you need software to drive an old, carburated car? I didn't think so.
Not everything requires software. Oddly enough, there are ways to get around using it, it's just less convenient. Of course, this reminds me of a near-crash I saw of a passanger plane.
Autopilot/crash warning system was confused, kept the nose of the plane too high for landing. Pilot tries to correct, only to have the plane force it's nose higher, and higher, till it stalled and fell groundwards again. Did this 2 or 3 times, WITH PASSANGERS, before the pilot was able to beat the program into submission and land the plane.
This type of software already came from a "certified" company. That didn't seem to make it any better, did it? Perhaps this is a case of "peer review" being necessary for critical systems. Do they peer review building plans before signing off on it?
Removing words from a language-defining text (dictionary, thesaurus) is a subtle form of censorship. Ever heard the phrase "Out of sight, out of mind"? If it's never presented to you as a possibility to use, then what's going to keep the word in use?
Manipulating language isn't the same as manipulating a market place. To manipulate a language to a major degree, you have to have wide distribution (Websters, Microsoft), and think 'very long thoughts'. You have to be subtle, tweaking the meaning of a word over the span of decades, or centuries. Subtly take out word references from the thesaurus, breaking apart meanings.
While I have no clue what Microsoft intended, it should not be removing "common use" word references from their Thesaurus. Adhere to the defining standard, or don't include said language reference at all.
in Visa's case, there are alternatives (Discover) that do not charge merchant fees. This is also not stating that, as Visa, we'll offer you access to do business with our sponsored cards as a whole for $1,000 for a small business (per year), and $250 per major variant of card you'll accept.
.Net program with Microsoft, but rather permit your customers to use it direct from your servers. Will Microsoft permit this? Is it even possible, of will the .Net My Services setup forbid any and all access if it don't come from Microsoft's own servers? What about alternatives? Not that many people seem to be intending to jump on the XP bandwagon if they can help it (ie: not buying a new PC from a major OEM).
What if you didn't want to be forced to register your
What choices do you, as a consumer, have concerning this Software as a Service? And while 'Take it or leave it' is a valid option, it often isn't a sound business option in the long run.