From the descriptions in this story, Kazaa lite sounds pretty good to me and I just went over to their page to download it. First though, I checked out the FAQ and noticed that they list instructions for removing BDE components in the FAQ (these are the same instructions posted elsewhere for removing it from regular Kazaa). This makes me think that Kazaa lite also has the BDE-ware. So could anyone who has recently installed Kazaa lite confirm if the BDE components are present or not? Thanks.
So I'm not sure what you read on the Blockbuster site, but there's likely something wrong with your math. There are something like 100 million households in the country. By your estimate, an average household rents a movie every two years. This seems really low (at least to me, I'd guess a more realistic average is a movie a month). Of course, Blockbuster has the numbers and I don't, so maybe that's all there is.
So Georgia Tech has an (arguably) sophisticated system for detecting cheating. You'd think what they really need is a decent system for detecting lies on resumes.
For those who don't follow - the former head coach of their football team (George O'Leary) lied on his resume, including degrees from schools he never attended.
A few examples of consumer goods that were created or advanced "for the love of it":
- The Wright brothers design of the airplane
- Many auto-tuner shops (i.e. Callaway, Ruf, AMG etc). This doesn't seem appropriate, but many of their improvements are frequently incorporated back into the next generation of whatever car they are working on.
- And, of course, the previously mentioned example of Linux and other free software.
I'm not so familiar with the early history of the PC, but from what I do remember there was quite a bit of for the love of it work done on the earliest microcomputers.
Seriously, this is the best result anybody interested opposed to the DMCA could possibly have hoped for. It exposes the DMCA for what it is - a crude weapon intended to bully and threaten. There are very few things that could attract as much attention as the thought that purely academic research is being suppressed. Felton's letter will sqay opinions strongly against the tools used to threaten these researchers. I, for one, welcome this as the critical step in the road to seeing these laws repealed (or at least completely rewritten).
I realize the caveats that come with all web-based surveys, but there was an interesting poll on CNN.com's homepage accompanying this survey. When asked "Do you think libraries should be required to use filtering software to block pornography" (Or something similar) about 70% of the votes were for the blocking software. I personally found this surprising, I had assumed that most people would be opposed to this censorship. It was a pretty big sample too (like 50,000 votes).
One pretty good example from the adult industry that might work for regular content are the "Age-checking" services. Essentially, you sign up at one site and then get the right to visit many sites. Then member sites then get some fraction of the total revenue (I assume) probably based on page-views. While this seems like conglomeration, which would ordinarily raise fears of homogenized viewpoints, it might not work out as such. Since the overall service would like to attract as many people as possible, a wide variety of content should be their best bet. The user advantage comes from the convenience of subscribing at one place and hopefully a transparent access system.
I can't say I like this particular suggested legislation. Basically, I've spent the last several months reading on Slashdot "the internet deserves to be treated like any other medium." This is a complete contradiction to that spirit. Even if it makes things more open on the internet than elsewhere, it's still bad to separate the internet from other media.
One of the most interesting points raised in the Discover article is that Americans seem to like to vote on just about anything but elections. Millions of people vote for All-star sports teams with the results debated much more actively than any political discussion I've ever heard. The same with just about any other opportunity for giving your opinion. Seriously, think about how many people have taken the time to write long-winded comments on virtually anything on Slashdot. This suggests there is something fundamentally different about politics. Any thoughts on what that might be? By the way, I don't buy the apathy/uninformed viewpoint - the least informed people are usually the ones most eager to make their limited viewpoint heard.
If you are concerned about censorware sneaking through Congress because the general population is uninformed about the hazards, you should go visit the linked story (or a similar story running now on CNN.com). AP and CNN are businesses, if a story gets a lot of traffic, they will print more like it. Nothing better than co-opting really mass-market media to spread your message.
Something I don't understand about this is (IIRC) 800 phone numbers were ruled property in a sense several years ago. Specifically, it was ruled that AT&T couldn't stop someone (say 1-800-FLOWERS) from switching telephone services by holding the phoe number hostage. It seems that this should similarly apply to URL's. Simply put, people put a lot of money into a URL's (or phone numbers in the previous case) and their company is strongly tied to it. That alone should entitle them to property type protection.
The really big problem I see with their payment structure is that at least $0.25 of each transaction is swallowed up in fees. So if I like one song by an artist and decide to leave him $0.50, over half is going to Visa. While that's way better than the cut for a record company, it's still a pretty hefty share. The only way artists will really benefit from this system is people tipping for (i.e. buying) entire albums for a few dollars.
A real micropayment system would require a lower base fee. For example, maybe you could set up an account at the site and buy a few dollars worth of tips at a time (thus losing only 4 or 5% to Visa), which you would then distribute as you see fit over time. The other advantage of this system is it minimizes the number of times you need to enter your credit card data (which seems like it would improve security, though I know little on the subject).
The big problem with industrial funding of scientific research in academia is NOT the impact on the scientific research. It's the fact that the money earned becomes an essential part of the universities budget.
What happens when the biology department discovers the toxic effects of a chemical that the university holds a patent on? Do you think this research will be released as quickly as it would be in the ideal "ivory-tower" university?
There's an article on Salon.com about this focusing on the email screening element. It makes some pretty good points about the difficulty of the screening process (for example). One interesting example is an old friend you haven't heard from in years, who happens to be in town for a day. I just hope there is some way to disable this option (which I'll bet will be pretty difficult in a work environment).
While it seems ridiculous to claim a trademark over a word that's thousands of years old, this case is specifically empowered by Congress. The US olympic committee (and I guess by extention the IOC) were given the trademark rights to the word Olympic (despite its very common use) by Congress a something like fifty years ago. So it's actually very likely that this will stand up in court. I think a really interesting question is the one of the remedies the olympic committee is seeking. They seem to want Network Solutions to use a filter to automatically reject any registration with the words olympic in it. This seems pretty extreme and is the part of the suit I'd really like (and expect) to see thrown out.
The really obvious problem with ANY sort of trojan horse scheme on Napster etc. is that as soon as one person gets the trojan track they will immediately delete it. There is no real opportunity for propogating the trojan horses. This is one of the overlooked values of Napster, etc. - people will only keep the songs they like, since it's so easy to delete a song and disk space certainly isn't free yet. So the only songs available for more than a very short while are those that somebody thinks are worth the disk space.
The definition in the lecture is a pretty reasonable one for trustworthy. Trust means that you believe software will behave as you expect all the time. This is best handled through a detailed spec. There was an article on Slashdot pretty recently about the code design for the space shuttle (a pretty good example of software that has to be trustworthy). The essence of the article was that the detailed spec and the rigorous adherence to it were big parts of the reason the code was so good. That said, they also pointed out the intensive review process (which open-source may even do one better) was a big component as well.
It's pretty interesting that a week after MP3.com settles with RIAA (at least in some part), they've started offering supporting statements in court. I wonder if there's a connection...
>Really, this just sounds like a souped-up firewall + Tripwire. Nothing too revolutionary. Wanna bet >that a properly-configured OpenBSD box could have held off those four script kiddies (err, >"experienced hackers") for 16 hours, too?
Script kiddies? Don't you think that Sandia can come up with some pretty competent testers? (There's a link to a description of the Red Team above). What I really wonder about is the possibility mentioned at the end of the article - distributed cracker bots. I know this isn't a popular opinion around here, but that's really the sort of technology I don't want to see too publicly available.
Slashdot Mirror
From the descriptions in this story, Kazaa lite sounds pretty good to me and I just went over to their page to download it. First though, I checked out the FAQ and noticed that they list instructions for removing BDE components in the FAQ (these are the same instructions posted elsewhere for removing it from regular Kazaa). This makes me think that Kazaa lite also has the BDE-ware. So could anyone who has recently installed Kazaa lite confirm if the BDE components are present or not? Thanks.
So I'm not sure what you read on the Blockbuster site, but there's likely something wrong with your math. There are something like 100 million households in the country. By your estimate, an average household rents a movie every two years. This seems really low (at least to me, I'd guess a more realistic average is a movie a month). Of course, Blockbuster has the numbers and I don't, so maybe that's all there is.
So Georgia Tech has an (arguably) sophisticated system for detecting cheating. You'd think what they really need is a decent system for detecting lies on resumes.
For those who don't follow - the former head coach of their football team (George O'Leary) lied on his resume, including degrees from schools he never attended.
A few examples of consumer goods that were created or advanced "for the love of it":
- The Wright brothers design of the airplane
- Many auto-tuner shops (i.e. Callaway, Ruf, AMG etc). This doesn't seem appropriate, but many of their improvements are frequently incorporated back into the next generation of whatever car they are working on.
- And, of course, the previously mentioned example of Linux and other free software.
I'm not so familiar with the early history of the PC, but from what I do remember there was quite a bit of for the love of it work done on the earliest microcomputers.
Seriously, this is the best result anybody interested opposed to the DMCA could possibly have hoped for. It exposes the DMCA for what it is - a crude weapon intended to bully and threaten. There are very few things that could attract as much attention as the thought that purely academic research is being suppressed. Felton's letter will sqay opinions strongly against the tools used to threaten these researchers. I, for one, welcome this as the critical step in the road to seeing these laws repealed (or at least completely rewritten).
I realize the caveats that come with all web-based surveys, but there was an interesting poll on CNN.com's homepage accompanying this survey. When asked "Do you think libraries should be required to use filtering software to block pornography" (Or something similar) about 70% of the votes were for the blocking software. I personally found this surprising, I had assumed that most people would be opposed to this censorship. It was a pretty big sample too (like 50,000 votes).
One pretty good example from the adult industry that might work for regular content are the "Age-checking" services. Essentially, you sign up at one site and then get the right to visit many sites. Then member sites then get some fraction of the total revenue (I assume) probably based on page-views. While this seems like conglomeration, which would ordinarily raise fears of homogenized viewpoints, it might not work out as such. Since the overall service would like to attract as many people as possible, a wide variety of content should be their best bet. The user advantage comes from the convenience of subscribing at one place and hopefully a transparent access system.
I can't say I like this particular suggested legislation. Basically, I've spent the last several months reading on Slashdot "the internet deserves to be treated like any other medium." This is a complete contradiction to that spirit. Even if it makes things more open on the internet than elsewhere, it's still bad to separate the internet from other media.
One of the most interesting points raised in the Discover article is that Americans seem to like to vote on just about anything but elections. Millions of people vote for All-star sports teams with the results debated much more actively than any political discussion I've ever heard. The same with just about any other opportunity for giving your opinion. Seriously, think about how many people have taken the time to write long-winded comments on virtually anything on Slashdot. This suggests there is something fundamentally different about politics. Any thoughts on what that might be? By the way, I don't buy the apathy/uninformed viewpoint - the least informed people are usually the ones most eager to make their limited viewpoint heard.
If you are concerned about censorware sneaking through Congress because the general population is uninformed about the hazards, you should go visit the linked story (or a similar story running now on CNN.com). AP and CNN are businesses, if a story gets a lot of traffic, they will print more like it. Nothing better than co-opting really mass-market media to spread your message.
Something I don't understand about this is (IIRC) 800 phone numbers were ruled property in a sense several years ago. Specifically, it was ruled that AT&T couldn't stop someone (say 1-800-FLOWERS) from switching telephone services by holding the phoe number hostage. It seems that this should similarly apply to URL's. Simply put, people put a lot of money into a URL's (or phone numbers in the previous case) and their company is strongly tied to it. That alone should entitle them to property type protection.
A real micropayment system would require a lower base fee. For example, maybe you could set up an account at the site and buy a few dollars worth of tips at a time (thus losing only 4 or 5% to Visa), which you would then distribute as you see fit over time. The other advantage of this system is it minimizes the number of times you need to enter your credit card data (which seems like it would improve security, though I know little on the subject).
The big problem with industrial funding of scientific research in academia is NOT the impact on the scientific research. It's the fact that the money earned becomes an essential part of the universities budget. What happens when the biology department discovers the toxic effects of a chemical that the university holds a patent on? Do you think this research will be released as quickly as it would be in the ideal "ivory-tower" university?
There's an article on Salon.com about this focusing on the email screening element. It makes some pretty good points about the difficulty of the screening process (for example). One interesting example is an old friend you haven't heard from in years, who happens to be in town for a day. I just hope there is some way to disable this option (which I'll bet will be pretty difficult in a work environment).
While it seems ridiculous to claim a trademark over a word that's thousands of years old, this case is specifically empowered by Congress. The US olympic committee (and I guess by extention the IOC) were given the trademark rights to the word Olympic (despite its very common use) by Congress a something like fifty years ago. So it's actually very likely that this will stand up in court. I think a really interesting question is the one of the remedies the olympic committee is seeking. They seem to want Network Solutions to use a filter to automatically reject any registration with the words olympic in it. This seems pretty extreme and is the part of the suit I'd really like (and expect) to see thrown out.
The really obvious problem with ANY sort of trojan horse scheme on Napster etc. is that as soon as one person gets the trojan track they will immediately delete it. There is no real opportunity for propogating the trojan horses. This is one of the overlooked values of Napster, etc. - people will only keep the songs they like, since it's so easy to delete a song and disk space certainly isn't free yet. So the only songs available for more than a very short while are those that somebody thinks are worth the disk space.
The definition in the lecture is a pretty reasonable one for trustworthy. Trust means that you believe software will behave as you expect all the time. This is best handled through a detailed spec. There was an article on Slashdot pretty recently about the code design for the space shuttle (a pretty good example of software that has to be trustworthy). The essence of the article was that the detailed spec and the rigorous adherence to it were big parts of the reason the code was so good. That said, they also pointed out the intensive review process (which open-source may even do one better) was a big component as well.
It's pretty interesting that a week after MP3.com settles with RIAA (at least in some part), they've started offering supporting statements in court. I wonder if there's a connection ...
>Really, this just sounds like a souped-up firewall + Tripwire. Nothing too revolutionary. Wanna bet >that a properly-configured OpenBSD box could have held off those four script kiddies (err, >"experienced hackers") for 16 hours, too?
Script kiddies? Don't you think that Sandia can come up with some pretty competent testers? (There's a link to a description of the Red Team above). What I really wonder about is the possibility mentioned at the end of the article - distributed cracker bots. I know this isn't a popular opinion around here, but that's really the sort of technology I don't want to see too publicly available.