But is it more portable / convenient?
on
Speak To Your Palm
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· Score: 3
I for one severely question the value of this one, as most users will have their Palms with them when they need the data. I guess voice recognition would be good in the car while driving, or while walking down the street and making cell calls, but both of those environments are so noisy that the quality would have to be fairly poor.
As for Palm data "in the cloud," I for one wouldn't trust my 1000s of records and schedule items to a service provider. Just wait until the divorce lawyers get their hands on this one.
Maybe it's a strategic relationship, in which "Ask Intervideo" moves to Slashdot, and "Ask Slashdot" moves to Intervideo. Think Synergy! Alliances! Coopetition for the New Millennium!
The press release promised this! "[T]hree chilies will be a badge of honor."
Perhaps/. will be next. Imagine a special moderation category for flamebait; flames could be original, nasty, brutish, lengthy, etc; you'd acquire "Dogma" for successfully moderated-up flames.
But many magazines, newspapers, and so on accept advertising and yet produce quality work. In some cases the ads make the paper MORE useful. Also, may fewer people would by newspapers, for example, if they cost $2.50 per copy. So ads do serve an important purpose, in my view.
Well, he may have signed a termination agreement that requires him to continue to sign off on patents in exchange for stock options or some such. So don't assume he's off the hook.
I too graduated in 1993 and remember many "student-themed" media that were, to a page, useless. Generally glossy and chock-full of ads, these pretended to have content on "the campus life" (whatever that was!) but didn't inform, entertain, or anything else. So straight into the garbage they went - or the recycling, for certain of my more politically correct peers.
Clearly someone got paid to distribute these. I suppose the university may have benefited slightly, but I certainly didn't see the value, not after my folks and I had forked over big bucks to get me there.
Sure, the advertising and crap are going to be there. But it is incumbent on the university to make good decisions about same. Seems like Campus Pipeline is one that the good universities should forget about.
Besides, if your university can't even run an email server, what the fuck do you expect to learn there?
The awards are filled with industry people, and put on by Viacom, an MPAA (and RIAA?) member. Try an audience of actual fans, and you'll have a different reaction.
I think it's time for a Napster category, like Anime or Transmeta or whatever. That way/. readers who aren't Napster fans / foes can exclude these stories like they do with JonKatz, and we can also track the story or kill time more easily by clicking on the logo.
Credible 3d party candidates
on
Lawsuits Suck
·
· Score: 2
Take a look at Minnesota. Dear God, some third party professional wrestler is the governor over there! Those idiots who
voted for him wasted their votes!
Yes, but Gov. Ventura was very much the exception. He had a mainstream message and a well-organized movement that made him both attractive to John Q Public and credible as an opponent to the major-party candidates. Unfortunately, many third-party candidates just don't have either of these, and so they lose.
Case in point: the/. favorite Ralph Nader. He's Mr. Clean - but he is also against free trade and the independence of the Federal Reserve, and potentially in favor of censorship of internet and/or television. I for one would never vote for the guy, because he'd be an unmitigated disaster for the economy.
The key to a workable opposition is not to scare the masses while you're building your movement. This can absolutely be done by a pro-free-speech, anti-corruption candidate -- who doesn't also want to either (a) destroy capitalism or (b) shut down the government. It just hasn't happened yet. Any volunteers?
Infoworld has an anti-UCITA section, with links to an organization called 4CITE that's out to defeat or reform this very bad law.
The critical thing about online activism is to make it simple to participate. IW goes part of the way but doesn't itself mobilize opponents... maybe a "Fight DMCA" slashbox would be a good way to start.
And then mp3.com did something incredibly stupid: they started their my.mp3.com service.
Exactly. If you think about it, really, this is much more willful infringement than Napster: they ripped the CDs, put them on a jukebox, and offered them to the public without permission as part of a commercial service with ads.
I would really like to know why they played into the RIAA's hands so foolishly. The only thing I can think of is that they may have wanted to use this to kill SDMI dead, and they may have figured that they'd get all the labels to settle. But it was a pretty dangerous thing to do, when they really didn't have to.
(ii) that is primarily marketed and most commonly used by
consumers either for the purpose of making copies of motion
pictures or other audiovisual works or for the purpose of
making copies of nonmusical literary works, including computer
programs or data bases.
Sounds like this excludes something that makes copies of computer programs, like a high-speed cd duplicator, but not a PC as that is not its primary purpose.
But they DID NOT give customers the opportunity to delete their information. So I would consider their move to be sleazy at best. Yet another reason to forget about Amazon for now.
More seriously, though, most privacy policies are garbage. I'm not a big fan of regulation, but there has got to be something that enforces good practices here, since the vendors clearly don't give a shit.
Prices are higher at the last minute since most last minute travellers are business people who have little sensitivity to prices in these cases. I don't
really know if you call that screwing someone or not.
Well, I do. It's screwing the business people, and their purchasing departments, as well as the casual last-minute travelers - not because the price reflects higher costs but because they can. Sure, costs are a little higher because there's a higher risk of unsold seats, but certainly not by a factor of 4 as is common on some transcon routes.
Amazon is clearly trying to do the same thing, and for that reason alone I'm less willing to buy from them.
I'm not saying that we should go back to the days of the Civil Aeronautics Board handing out routes - far from it. But I AM saying that a lack of competition causes gouging - when was the last time you were gouged on a route flown by Southwest? - and this is a Bad Thing.
As for pricing, try flying last-minute on a non-competitive route (e.g. to a funeral in Charlotte or MSP) and then think again about airline pricing policies. They'll take every chance they can to screw you.
Back to Amazon: there's lots of competition, so we can just take our business elsewhere.
Okay, who here actually likes what the airlines do - gouging customers they think have some additional willingness to pay? They get away with it because they have monopoly or oligopoly control of their routes. They also play very carefully with fare rules and so on to avoid antitrust prosecution for price discrimination.
The good news is that Amazon doesn't have this kind of market power, and it probably won't, because the barriers to entry to this business are fairly low. But if they do get sufficient market power, then they may need to get scrutinized, unfortunate as that may be.
It's really too bad, if you think about it, that vendors keep pushing the limits of fair play. It's just like privacy practices - it's as if they want the heavy hand of the Feds cracking down on them.
My letter:
Your Message was sent to Federal Communications Commission.
From:
Andrew Sullivan
Subject:
PP Docket No. 00-67
I understand the Commission soon will be deciding whether VCRs
can be hooked up to digital cable systems, and whether home
recording from digital cable will be allowed. Hollywood studios
apparently claim that home recording is the same as theft of service
and that this justifies limiting home taping.
The studios are DEAD WRONG on this issue. It is CRITICAL that
the right to record signals at home, digital or analog, be preserved; this
is basic FAIR USE that has been protected under copyright law.
The Agency needs to follow the Betamax precedent and preserve
consumers' rights in this case. The rights of millions of consumers are
more important, and stronger, than the onerous claims of the studios
for control of their films and their marginal profits from repeated
viewing.
Thank you for your consideration of this critical issue.
Okay, so the plaintiffs won't make much off the suit. They don't usually in class actions, so this is not a surprise:
I personally will receive one weeks back pay for the Federal suit, the person who started the DOL investigation will not receive a dime, Mr
Williams will not receive much in monetary compensation either, this suit was not created for money nor:revenge", it was created because
America's Largest ISP is breaking Federal and State Labor Laws, as well as tax laws.
But I must ask Mr. Hallissey: how much money will the lawyers get? Clearly they're doing this on contingency. If the class gets a few million bucks, do the lawyers get 30%? As a stakeholder in the outcome (I participate in online forums like/. that benefit significantly from volunteer involvement), I demand a full and complete disclosure.
An adverse outcome to this lawsuit could destroy Slashdot, and thousands of other sites like it. Can you imagine the sharks (and that is what they are) suing CmdrTaco to force payment for the time spent moderating? It would mean that moderation would have to revert to the old "400 lucky winners" scheme or worse. Not to mention the trouble that would come from involvement of people from overseas, once the xenophobic Prop-187 types smell blood.
This is yet another example of how the law has totally failed to evolve to reflect reality, except as defined by the powerful and connected. In this case the old-economy forces such as labor unions and employment lawyers are trying to maintain power based on technicalities as opposed to the merits.
What's the EFF doing about this? Are they coming up with any recommendations on where to draw lines between volunteers and staff? Clearly someone in the tech community needs to take a stand here, or we will wake up one morning and discover that yet another of the great things we've worked so hard to build is gone.
I guess I don't understand what's so wrong with "firing" a volunteer. Think of Slashdot: people moderate. Sometimes moderators abuse the privilege. So they get meta-moderated as unfair and may be deleted from the moderation list. What's the problem here?
I do think that AOL abused its relationship with its volunteers, particularly by asking them to provide customer support. But I would be very, very angry as a frequent participant in online communities if this suit had the outcome of prohibiting volunteerism in for-profit sites.
Slashdot Mirror
As for Palm data "in the cloud," I for one wouldn't trust my 1000s of records and schedule items to a service provider. Just wait until the divorce lawyers get their hands on this one.
sulli
OK, someone had to say it...
Maybe it's a strategic relationship, in which "Ask Intervideo" moves to Slashdot, and "Ask Slashdot" moves to Intervideo. Think Synergy! Alliances! Coopetition for the New Millennium!
Perhaps /. will be next. Imagine a special moderation category for flamebait; flames could be original, nasty, brutish, lengthy, etc; you'd acquire "Dogma" for successfully moderated-up flames.
I fuckin' love it. Sign me up.
sulli
Who said tampons and jobs are irrelevant? Lots of geeks need both...
sulli
But many magazines, newspapers, and so on accept advertising and yet produce quality work. In some cases the ads make the paper MORE useful. Also, may fewer people would by newspapers, for example, if they cost $2.50 per copy. So ads do serve an important purpose, in my view.
sulli
But you hate advertising. So how do you expect that the reporters will get paid? Or do you expect that they'll all volunteer?
sulli
Clearly someone got paid to distribute these. I suppose the university may have benefited slightly, but I certainly didn't see the value, not after my folks and I had forked over big bucks to get me there.
Sure, the advertising and crap are going to be there. But it is incumbent on the university to make good decisions about same. Seems like Campus Pipeline is one that the good universities should forget about.
Besides, if your university can't even run an email server, what the fuck do you expect to learn there?
sulli
sulli
You Bastards!
sulli
Deep linking will get you sued!
Yes, but Gov. Ventura was very much the exception. He had a mainstream message and a well-organized movement that made him both attractive to John Q Public and credible as an opponent to the major-party candidates. Unfortunately, many third-party candidates just don't have either of these, and so they lose.
Case in point: the /. favorite Ralph Nader. He's Mr. Clean - but he is also against free trade and the independence of the Federal Reserve, and potentially in favor of censorship of internet and/or television. I for one would never vote for the guy, because he'd be an unmitigated disaster for the economy.
The key to a workable opposition is not to scare the masses while you're building your movement. This can absolutely be done by a pro-free-speech, anti-corruption candidate -- who doesn't also want to either (a) destroy capitalism or (b) shut down the government. It just hasn't happened yet. Any volunteers?
sulli
The critical thing about online activism is to make it simple to participate. IW goes part of the way but doesn't itself mobilize opponents... maybe a "Fight DMCA" slashbox would be a good way to start.
sulli
Exactly. If you think about it, really, this is much more willful infringement than Napster: they ripped the CDs, put them on a jukebox, and offered them to the public without permission as part of a commercial service with ads.
I would really like to know why they played into the RIAA's hands so foolishly. The only thing I can think of is that they may have wanted to use this to kill SDMI dead, and they may have figured that they'd get all the labels to settle. But it was a pretty dangerous thing to do, when they really didn't have to.
sulli
Sounds like this excludes something that makes copies of computer programs, like a high-speed cd duplicator, but not a PC as that is not its primary purpose.
sulli
More seriously, though, most privacy policies are garbage. I'm not a big fan of regulation, but there has got to be something that enforces good practices here, since the vendors clearly don't give a shit.
sulli
Well, I do. It's screwing the business people, and their purchasing departments, as well as the casual last-minute travelers - not because the price reflects higher costs but because they can. Sure, costs are a little higher because there's a higher risk of unsold seats, but certainly not by a factor of 4 as is common on some transcon routes.
Amazon is clearly trying to do the same thing, and for that reason alone I'm less willing to buy from them.
sulli
As for pricing, try flying last-minute on a non-competitive route (e.g. to a funeral in Charlotte or MSP) and then think again about airline pricing policies. They'll take every chance they can to screw you.
Back to Amazon: there's lots of competition, so we can just take our business elsewhere.
sulli
The good news is that Amazon doesn't have this kind of market power, and it probably won't, because the barriers to entry to this business are fairly low. But if they do get sufficient market power, then they may need to get scrutinized, unfortunate as that may be.
It's really too bad, if you think about it, that vendors keep pushing the limits of fair play. It's just like privacy practices - it's as if they want the heavy hand of the Feds cracking down on them.
sulli
My letter:
Your Message was sent to Federal Communications Commission.
From:
Andrew Sullivan
Subject:
PP Docket No. 00-67
I understand the Commission soon will be deciding whether VCRs
can be hooked up to digital cable systems, and whether home
recording from digital cable will be allowed. Hollywood studios
apparently claim that home recording is the same as theft of service
and that this justifies limiting home taping.
The studios are DEAD WRONG on this issue. It is CRITICAL that
the right to record signals at home, digital or analog, be preserved; this
is basic FAIR USE that has been protected under copyright law.
The Agency needs to follow the Betamax precedent and preserve
consumers' rights in this case. The rights of millions of consumers are
more important, and stronger, than the onerous claims of the studios
for control of their films and their marginal profits from repeated
viewing.
Thank you for your consideration of this critical issue.
Best regards,
Andrew Sullivan
I personally will receive one weeks back pay for the Federal suit, the person who started the DOL investigation will not receive a dime, Mr Williams will not receive much in monetary compensation either, this suit was not created for money nor :revenge", it was created because
America's Largest ISP is breaking Federal and State Labor Laws, as well as tax laws.
But I must ask Mr. Hallissey: how much money will the lawyers get? Clearly they're doing this on contingency. If the class gets a few million bucks, do the lawyers get 30%? As a stakeholder in the outcome (I participate in online forums like /. that benefit significantly from volunteer involvement), I demand a full and complete disclosure.
sulli
This is yet another example of how the law has totally failed to evolve to reflect reality, except as defined by the powerful and connected. In this case the old-economy forces such as labor unions and employment lawyers are trying to maintain power based on technicalities as opposed to the merits.
What's the EFF doing about this? Are they coming up with any recommendations on where to draw lines between volunteers and staff? Clearly someone in the tech community needs to take a stand here, or we will wake up one morning and discover that yet another of the great things we've worked so hard to build is gone.
sulli
I do think that AOL abused its relationship with its volunteers, particularly by asking them to provide customer support. But I would be very, very angry as a frequent participant in online communities if this suit had the outcome of prohibiting volunteerism in for-profit sites.
sulli