Since the FTC (not the FBI) is the US government body that gets most UCE/spam complaints, (FBI seems interested only in some types of fraud -- and then only if there are victims, not just attempts) I'll be curious to see if the two bodies are able to cooperate enough for the FBI to actually make use of the FTC's data, of which ther must by now be a mind-blowingly huge amount.
The understaffed FCC would be powerless to shut them down. Audiences would have substantive content choices. No one would tune into Top-40 radio.
... And Top-40 radio would lobby real hard to be sure the FCC didn't stay understaffed and that the FCC would be adequately empowered to shut them down. In the meantime, they'd probably lobby real hard for the FCC to make examples of some of the more visible microbroadcasters.
Not only does the article offer only very little in the way of evidence, but the whole point of the article appears moot. My favorite quote at http://secunia.com/advisories/11539 (linked from the article):
The 7.6% figure is for Global music sales. The article states that "Global compact disc sales -- the most often cited figure in discussing the health of the industry -- fell 9.1 percent in value in 2003, the IFPI said."
(Of personal interest to me, since I've <shameless plug>just released single on vinyl</shameless plug>: "Total sales of singles, including cassettes and vinyl, which have dipped significantly since the Internet file-sharing and CD-burning craze began in the late 1990s, fell 18.7 percent in value terms between 2002 and 2003." It should be noted, though, that quite probably the majority of independent record labels ' sales aren't included in these numbers: IFPI-related releases compete, possibly increasingly, with small independent labels.)
Why not just create a paid whitelist (or lists) along the same lines as a dnsbl, charge companies to register and require that they abide by certain practices for being listed? What does a new TLD add other than additional ICANN bureaucracy?
More recently (2000), the Chicago group 8-bit Construction Set's Atari vs. Commodore EP included software for both computers. Ironically, they boasted (or joked?):
first use of vinyl for software distribution - ever
I don't have this record, but I remember reading somewhere the mastering engineer for the vinyl didn't understand what it was -- and faded out the end of the program.
Why is it that there "have to be" laws specific to the internet? If a spammer sends an e-mail using forged headers, why doesn't the law go after him (or her) with good old-fashioned anti-fraud laws? Does the main failing of these kinds of old laws lie in ingorance that makes law enforcement unable or unwilling to enforce the laws without further clarification, or is something else going on here?
Whilst the threat these two worms pose shouldn't be to big, both needing a MyDoom backdoor...
Maybe not a big threat in the sense that most of us reading this have been taking precautions against viruses like MyDoom all along (or were on Macs or Linux), but there's still a pretty big secondary threat to all of us who use the internet. I'm still seeing a lot of MyDoom-infected computers out there: a quick look at my mail server shows examples -- sometime multiple examples -- of MyDoom sent from dsl hosts in cerfnet.com, telus.net, sprintbbd.net, and ameritech.net just within the last hour). When Doomjuice and Deadhat get on these machines and start sucking up neighboring bandwidth with their DoS or whatever, it's a problem -- even if it's not actually your machine that's infected.
But why bother when FireBird (now FireFox)/Galeon/Mozilla is just as good (better)?
Well, as far as I know there isn't yet a version of any of these I can run on my Nokia 3650 phone (Symbian OS). That's why I have Opera. (Then again, as long as T-Mobile's t-zones service is apparently blocking access to port 443, having any web browser on the phone's only "partly useful" to begin with...)
"I tell retailers they need to get out of the plastic business," said Josh Bernoff, the Forrester analyst who wrote the report, titled "From Discs to Downloads." "Two-thirds of the people who currently download say that when it comes to music, it isn't important to them to hold a physical object. They're done with the CD. They just care about the songs."
So: even among downloaders there's still a group, one third of the total, that does still find it important to "hold a physical object." I have to believe that among non-downloading music consumers the number of people still interested in the "physical object" is essentially 100 per cent.
The question then is how many non-downloaders purchase music? And among the downloaders that are interested in the physical object: is the physical object really important to them?
Also, from the Forrester "Quick View" of the "Discs to Downloads" report:
Proliferating on-demand media services will overtake piracy.
In five years, 33% of music sales will come from downloads.
Sounds to me like there still a lot of potential for sales of physical media -- even if it's not exactly the mass market it used to be.
Now that the Hutton Report's been released, it turns out the BBC (from Andrew Gilligan all the way up to the BBC governors) does come in for considerable criticism (while Blair's been exonorated, and the the Minister of Defence hasn't been held personally responsible for the criticisms of his Ministry). See "BBC chairman quits after Hutton clears Blair" in The Guardian.
[Lord Hutton] said that nobody involved in the controversy could have "contemplated Dr Kelly would take his own life", no matter what pressures he had been put under.
"Whatever pressures and strains Dr Kelly was subject to by the decisions and actions taken in the weeks before his death, I am satisfied that no one realised or should have realised that these pressures and strains might have driven him to take his own life or contribute to his decision to do so," Lord Hutton said./blockquote
What, no option to "RATE THIS CANDIDATE"? No Customer Reviews? No "6 people recommended Howard Dean instead of Dennis J. Kucinich"? No "1 person recommended Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. in addition to Howard Dean"?...
Seems like a lot of addresses. How were they gathered?
Doesn't look like orkut.com had a sign-up period or anything...
Doesn't look like it was sent to Google-Friends Newsletter (not in the archive; plus RTFA, in which says "Google spokeswoman Eileen Rodriquez said that despite Orkut's affiliation, the service is not part of Google's product portfolio at this time.")
'Wearing jackets with "RIAA" emblazoned upon them, they have taken to busting street vendors in an FBI fashion for selling bootleg CDs and DVDs.'
When I read this -- figuring it was too crazy even for the RIAA -- I initially assumed it was some sort of clever anti-RIAA "performance art." Not so! They are that nuts! From the article, "The RIAA acknowledges it all -- except the notion that its staff presents itself as police." They even quote not just one but two RIAA'ers (John Langley and Jonathan Lamy) in the article.
What's next, dispatching the RIAA goon squad to record stores that refuse to stock the latest release by Britney or other RIAA-endorsed "artist"?
The voters that "did not vote" or "voted but it was not counted" should be able to be located and queried regarding that happened at the polling place.
When voters hit the ''send'' button after failing to select a candidate, the touch screen gives them a warning. But it doesn't prevent them from voting anyway or, in this case, nonvoting.
That's probably what many did, suggested Gisela Salas, the former Miami-Dade deputy elections supervisor who now works for newly appointed Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes.
''It happens in every election,'' Salas said. ``There are people who make the choice not to select any candidates.''
This sounds like a perfectly reasonable explanation of the voters' behaviour and the nonvotes, but it also raises a serious question about the way votes are recorded. Namely: just because a voter chooses not to vote for any candidate in a given race, why on earth would that mean that the voting machine doesn't record that choice? Simply log it as an undervote, "none selected," or whatever, but it would seem a serious oversight if, rather than logging "nothing," the system simply doesn't log anything.
And yes, a verifiable paper trial sure would help in situations where there are questions like this -- of course the paper receipt would have to be printed for and indicate nonvotes.
Slashdot Mirror
... for Monsanto to be sure their seeds "accidentally" end up on as many fields as possible.
Since the FTC (not the FBI) is the US government body that gets most UCE/spam complaints, (FBI seems interested only in some types of fraud -- and then only if there are victims, not just attempts) I'll be curious to see if the two bodies are able to cooperate enough for the FBI to actually make use of the FTC's data, of which ther must by now be a mind-blowingly huge amount.
More TLDs (if they're arbitrary and too many to remember) just makes the short, otherwise easy-to-remember names harder to remember.
... And Top-40 radio would lobby real hard to be sure the FCC didn't stay understaffed and that the FCC would be adequately empowered to shut them down. In the meantime, they'd probably lobby real hard for the FCC to make examples of some of the more visible microbroadcasters.
See http://slashdot.org/articles/99/05/20/1320256.shtm l.
Not only does the article offer only very little in the way of evidence, but the whole point of the article appears moot. My favorite quote at http://secunia.com/advisories/11539 (linked from the article):
"Solution:
Apply Security Update 2004-05-03."
(The article is dated "04 May 2004")
The 7.6% figure is for Global music sales. The article states that "Global compact disc sales -- the most often cited figure in discussing the health of the industry -- fell 9.1 percent in value in 2003, the IFPI said."
(Of personal interest to me, since I've <shameless plug>just released single on vinyl</shameless plug>: "Total sales of singles, including cassettes and vinyl, which have dipped significantly since the Internet file-sharing and CD-burning craze began in the late 1990s, fell 18.7 percent in value terms between 2002 and 2003." It should be noted, though, that quite probably the majority of independent record labels ' sales aren't included in these numbers: IFPI-related releases compete, possibly increasingly, with small independent labels.)
Or just streaming mp3 -- which would play fine in both Real Player and Windows Media Player (and iTunes).
Available in PDF format via Koleman Strumpf's site.
Actually, see fashion Borg here (18th Century Borg Queen Gown with Standing Collar).
Why not just create a paid whitelist (or lists) along the same lines as a dnsbl, charge companies to register and require that they abide by certain practices for being listed? What does a new TLD add other than additional ICANN bureaucracy?
I don't have this record, but I remember reading somewhere the mastering engineer for the vinyl didn't understand what it was -- and faded out the end of the program.
Why is it that there "have to be" laws specific to the internet? If a spammer sends an e-mail using forged headers, why doesn't the law go after him (or her) with good old-fashioned anti-fraud laws? Does the main failing of these kinds of old laws lie in ingorance that makes law enforcement unable or unwilling to enforce the laws without further clarification, or is something else going on here?
Maybe not a big threat in the sense that most of us reading this have been taking precautions against viruses like MyDoom all along (or were on Macs or Linux), but there's still a pretty big secondary threat to all of us who use the internet. I'm still seeing a lot of MyDoom-infected computers out there: a quick look at my mail server shows examples -- sometime multiple examples -- of MyDoom sent from dsl hosts in cerfnet.com, telus.net, sprintbbd.net, and ameritech.net just within the last hour). When Doomjuice and Deadhat get on these machines and start sucking up neighboring bandwidth with their DoS or whatever, it's a problem -- even if it's not actually your machine that's infected.
But why bother when FireBird (now FireFox)/Galeon/Mozilla is just as good (better)? Well, as far as I know there isn't yet a version of any of these I can run on my Nokia 3650 phone (Symbian OS). That's why I have Opera. (Then again, as long as T-Mobile's t-zones service is apparently blocking access to port 443, having any web browser on the phone's only "partly useful" to begin with...)
So: even among downloaders there's still a group, one third of the total, that does still find it important to "hold a physical object." I have to believe that among non-downloading music consumers the number of people still interested in the "physical object" is essentially 100 per cent.
The question then is how many non-downloaders purchase music? And among the downloaders that are interested in the physical object: is the physical object really important to them? Also, from the Forrester "Quick View" of the "Discs to Downloads" report:
- Proliferating on-demand media services will overtake piracy.
- In five years, 33% of music sales will come from downloads.
Sounds to me like there still a lot of potential for sales of physical media -- even if it's not exactly the mass market it used to be.What, no option to "RATE THIS CANDIDATE"? No Customer Reviews? No "6 people recommended Howard Dean instead of Dennis J. Kucinich"? No "1 person recommended Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. in addition to Howard Dean"? ...
Seems like a lot of addresses. How were they gathered?
Doesn't look like orkut.com had a sign-up period or anything...
Doesn't look like it was sent to Google-Friends Newsletter (not in the archive; plus RTFA, in which says "Google spokeswoman Eileen Rodriquez said that despite Orkut's affiliation, the service is not part of Google's product portfolio at this time.")
Or, at least as scary: off-duty cops.
What's next, dispatching the RIAA goon squad to record stores that refuse to stock the latest release by Britney or other RIAA-endorsed "artist"?
How would this be different from checking which voters voted for which candidate? Wouldn't this would violate the rights of Florida voters to a "direct and secret vote"?
And yes, a verifiable paper trial sure would help in situations where there are questions like this -- of course the paper receipt would have to be printed for and indicate nonvotes.