... is what the lobbyists in DC call their "fake grassroots" efforts. These crop up all the time - the recent "open access" debate was a particularly fertile one, with Astroturfs on both sides drowning out more legitimate voices. And, of course, the DMA, Doubleclick, and friends are creating fake privacy advocates (e.g. the Privacy Leadership Initiative) left and right.
Fortunately, these are generally viewed by legislators as fake, and ignored. Generally.
Check out the Interface Hall of Shame maintained by Isys Information Architects. They utterly trash Apple's QuickTime 4.x, very appropriately in my view, for introducing a wide range of stupid GUI elements, including the "thumbwheel" volume control and a "shirt button" that has no obvious meaning but, when clicked, introduces a "tray" of additional icons. They also provide some good advice on how to produce better UIs, which generally fall into the "don't reinvent the wheel" category.
It is amazing how many developers, including those of Aqua, neglect these basic principles in favor of pretty new designs that are ultimately more difficult to use than the previous - see, for example, their review of EntryPoint, the replacement for PointCast.
Give me my old Mac any day... just without crashing so damn much.
It is, of course, ironic that those arguing for "Open DVD" (remember the billboards: "Only Open DVD delivers") then turned around and have been fighting to keep it closed. But intellectual integrity is a low priority for electronics vendors.
True. Maybe the better way to describe it is that users hated the UI and didn't want to deal with it. (Dial in for permission to play DVD = yuck.) In this case there was a confluence between bad technology, a bad pricing model, bad use of copyright, and bad user interface.
We may not, of course, be able to count on this occurring every time. But Sony's Music Clip, roundly booed in the press as being impossible to use, shows that bad design is still very, very easy to create, particularly if the vendors are fundamentally hostile to their customers.
So don't buy anything that's use licensed. The good news is that you don't have to, yet. In the same way that the old DIVX died a painful death because people were too smart to fall for it, so also will any use-licensed content.
We do need a new fair-use law, though. The attempted destruction of fair use by IP (the bad kind) lawyers is highly inappropriate and needs to stop, now.
There are many reasons why this will fail like all others before it, but the simplest one is user interface. Take a look at the Times' (fawning) description of the user experience:
A chip in the token would tell the music distributor what encryption key to use. The customer could move the token between his MP3 player, home stereo, computer or other device so he could listen to his music library in more than one place, Mr. Crenshaw explained, but because the token would be customized for his devices only, he wouldn't be able to give it to a friend to share digital music illegally.
Now why the )($*#@(*$ would anyone go the trouble of doing this, carrying around his "music token" like a SecurID card, trying not to lose it, trying to remember if a particular tune is encrypted with his token or that of his roommate, stringing LAN wire to the stereo in the shower to enable sharing / rights enforcement, getting the token stolen by his neighbor who doesn't like his music, etc., when he can simply buy the CD, play it in a Discman, and rip it into MP3s if necessary?
There is just no way that the American consumer, who is barely willing to set a clock for Daylight Savings Time, much less program a ReplayTV or other such thing, will put up with this.
Sorry, IP (the wrong kind) lawyers and the engineers who are trying to reap your lawsuit-fueled largess, try again.
Too bad the organizers of this show didn't notify the PETA protesters (People Eating Tasty Animals) who were thinking of holding a Free Speech BBQ in Kansas City.
They would have added hundreds if not thousands of ravenous activists to their audience!
Is it really so that when the required number of signatures is collected, the law comes to be passed?
No, a certain number of signatures collected simply puts the initiative on the ballot, for the electorate to vote "yes" or "no." Only when 50%+1 of the electorate votes "yes" (or 66.67% in the case of certain tax increases in California and some other states) does the initiative pass.
On the contrary, smart politicians have nothing to fear from a smart populace. It's only the clueless ones who are trying to pull stupid crap over on us who will suffer from more direct participation.
It is true that couch potatoes make fewer demands. But couch potatoes also don't walk into City Hall with great ideas. It's the well-informed, active voter who knows what he's talking about who can make the most real, positive change, particularly in the local scene, but nationally as well.
As a recent organizer of a petition campaign (see an archived summary of the resulting initiative), I can state with assurance that electronic signatures, if widely deployed and verifiably never stolen or counterfeited, would be extraordinarily useful for such campaigns.
In San Francisco, where I live, you need 10 percent of registered voters to get a charter amendment on the ballot - this is very difficult to do by hand, but could be done much more quickly if online tools were used. Dirty tricks like "do not sign" campaigns, in which opponents picket petition circulators (it happened to us) would be rendered impotent, and the value of paid signature gatherers might be reduced in favor of a good, well-designed electronic pitch and media campaign.
I will leave it up to the reader to determine if ultimately the outcome would be good or bad. Peter Schrag, an eloquent critic of the initiative process in California, notes in Paradise Lost (not the Milton classic, of course) that initiatives such as Proposition 13 and 198 have done serious damage to California's public schools, and that others have had significant unintended consequences as well. Then again, the legislatures pass bad laws all the time (e.g. UCITA), and it's very hard to upset entrenched interests without citizen initiatives, so they have very real benefits as well. My organization certainly felt last year that the San Francisco establishment would do nothing about the terrible bus system unless the public acted - so we did, and we seem to have had some effect.
If there's RTFM, there should be RTFA: Read the F* Article.
Seriously, though, this is old news. Firewalls have sorted and prioritized or trashed packets based on application for years. Back in '96 I remember hearing a Check Point presentation on "stateful inspection" and why it was so nice; and on virus checking (clearly an application level service) and so on.
Sounds like they added Napster and Gnutella to the filter list and issued a press release. Big frickin' deal.
Now if an ISP were to filter based on application, then that would be outrageous. But once you do that, you stop being a common carrier and open yourself up to all sorts of liability (think viruses). And you lose all of your customers, which can't be fun.
sulli
What Junkbusters had to say: p3p equiv. in music
on
Pretty Poor Privacy
·
· Score: 2
Jason Caslett can be annoying, but he's right on this one. He had a great comment in response to the P3P proposal last fall:
To see the absurdity of the current state of American privacy and P3P's part in it, imagine switching the interest concerned from privacy to copyright, a very similar right concerning the restriction of dataflows. Suppose that in response to the music industry's alarm about unauthorized distribution of songs over the Internet, a consumer group proposed a technology called the "Platform for Piracy Promises". Each consumer would configure his own "piracy policy" in his browser, stating the circumstances under which he promises to copy, modify, transmit or broadcast certain different kinds of recordings, such as poetry, country music, and heavy metal containing profane lyrics. A rich language will be developed to express information about the various uses, owners and types of content. When the consumer visits the site of a recording company to download MP3 tracks, his browser would automatically "negotiate" with the company's server to determine whether the consumer's piracy policy "matches" recording company's "preferences" for use of its property.
If the music industry is suing like mad to fight piracy, perhaps the "identity industry" (i.e. consumers) might want to do the same to fight privacy invasion!
To be more specific, the late, great John Postel wrote in RFC 1591 that dot-orgs can be any damn organization they want:
ORG - This domain is intended as the miscellaneous TLD for organizations that didn't fit anywhere else. Some non- government organizations may fit here.
So peta.org didn't really have any special rights, according to my interpretation.
Now this is a damn good idea. It would show, among other things, that the "net community" has a sense of humor about things, which the oh-so-sanctimonious PETA clearly lacks.
There could be a veggie BBQ as well. No reason to exclude those, ethical or evil, who for whatever reason prefer to eat mushrooms and zucchini instead of KC (actually I slightly prefer Memphis) BBQ.
Which reminds me, it's late and I haven't eaten yet...
Now this is a damn good idea. It would show, among other things, that the "net community" has a sense of humor about things, which the oh-so-sanctimonious PETA clearly lacks.
There could be a veggie BBQ as well. No reason to exclude those, ethical or evil, who for whatever reason prefer to eat mushrooms and zucchini instead of KC (actually I slightly prefer Memphis) BBQ.
Which reminds me, it's late and I haven't eaten yet...
What about the obvious terrorist threat - to Sealand itself? Suppose Havenco begins to make a lot of money in gambling and porn (a likely possibility given the questionable legal status of both in various jurisdictions). Or suppose that opposition parties in less than friendly nations (Yugoslavia, China, Zimbabwe) began to post their websites there, beyond the range of local authorities, like B92 does with xs4all.nl.
In this case, of course authoritarian ISPs (Singnet, China Telecom, AOL) would block the IPs.. but couldn't a fatwa-equipped terrorist show up with a bunch of plastique and simply suicide-bomb it away?
I would suspect that the Taliban, Hezbollah, Focus on the Family, or other fundamentalist types would be able to come up with a guy with a motorboat and some Semtex. Will the Royal Navy come out to save the former outpost? Survey says no. And I don't see Havenco suddenly developing a global intelligence service and high-powered navy to keep the NON-cyber terrorists away.
It brings new meaning to the term "denial of service." And "single point of failure."
I do think they can and do work. If you have a community of people who have some common interest, the old favorite online tools (/. and related web community systems, listserv, usenet, IM, etc.) are a great way to bring people together. There are many people I've met through thoughtful online discussion, and I don't see any serious reason why this can't continue in the future. I moderate several discussion groups and think they work just fine.
Commercialization of the net doesn't really make a difference here, except that applications vulnerable to spam can lose utility. Features such as/. distributed moderation are useful to prevent this. Otherwise, I don't really see the threat.
I certainly remember, in my college days, playing a little fast and loose with answers to those "What College Kids Think Abut XYZ" polls. The pollsters were just too easy to mess with!
Still, the survey is probably more right than not.
Slashdot Mirror
Fortunately, these are generally viewed by legislators as fake, and ignored. Generally.
sulli
It is amazing how many developers, including those of Aqua, neglect these basic principles in favor of pretty new designs that are ultimately more difficult to use than the previous - see, for example, their review of EntryPoint, the replacement for PointCast.
Give me my old Mac any day ... just without crashing so damn much.
sulli
sulli
We may not, of course, be able to count on this occurring every time. But Sony's Music Clip, roundly booed in the press as being impossible to use, shows that bad design is still very, very easy to create, particularly if the vendors are fundamentally hostile to their customers.
sulli
sulli
We do need a new fair-use law, though. The attempted destruction of fair use by IP (the bad kind) lawyers is highly inappropriate and needs to stop, now.
sulli
A chip in the token would tell the music distributor what encryption key to use. The customer could move the token between his MP3 player, home stereo, computer or other device so he could listen to his music library in more than one place, Mr. Crenshaw explained, but because the token would be customized for his devices only, he wouldn't be able to give it to a friend to share digital music illegally.
Now why the )($*#@(*$ would anyone go the trouble of doing this, carrying around his "music token" like a SecurID card, trying not to lose it, trying to remember if a particular tune is encrypted with his token or that of his roommate, stringing LAN wire to the stereo in the shower to enable sharing / rights enforcement, getting the token stolen by his neighbor who doesn't like his music, etc., when he can simply buy the CD, play it in a Discman, and rip it into MP3s if necessary?
There is just no way that the American consumer, who is barely willing to set a clock for Daylight Savings Time, much less program a ReplayTV or other such thing, will put up with this.
Sorry, IP (the wrong kind) lawyers and the engineers who are trying to reap your lawsuit-fueled largess, try again.
sulli
They would have added hundreds if not thousands of ravenous activists to their audience!
sulli
No, a certain number of signatures collected simply puts the initiative on the ballot, for the electorate to vote "yes" or "no." Only when 50%+1 of the electorate votes "yes" (or 66.67% in the case of certain tax increases in California and some other states) does the initiative pass.
sulli
It is true that couch potatoes make fewer demands. But couch potatoes also don't walk into City Hall with great ideas. It's the well-informed, active voter who knows what he's talking about who can make the most real, positive change, particularly in the local scene, but nationally as well.
sulli
In San Francisco, where I live, you need 10 percent of registered voters to get a charter amendment on the ballot - this is very difficult to do by hand, but could be done much more quickly if online tools were used. Dirty tricks like "do not sign" campaigns, in which opponents picket petition circulators (it happened to us) would be rendered impotent, and the value of paid signature gatherers might be reduced in favor of a good, well-designed electronic pitch and media campaign.
I will leave it up to the reader to determine if ultimately the outcome would be good or bad. Peter Schrag, an eloquent critic of the initiative process in California, notes in Paradise Lost (not the Milton classic, of course) that initiatives such as Proposition 13 and 198 have done serious damage to California's public schools, and that others have had significant unintended consequences as well. Then again, the legislatures pass bad laws all the time (e.g. UCITA), and it's very hard to upset entrenched interests without citizen initiatives, so they have very real benefits as well. My organization certainly felt last year that the San Francisco establishment would do nothing about the terrible bus system unless the public acted - so we did, and we seem to have had some effect.
sulli
Seriously, though, this is old news. Firewalls have sorted and prioritized or trashed packets based on application for years. Back in '96 I remember hearing a Check Point presentation on "stateful inspection" and why it was so nice; and on virus checking (clearly an application level service) and so on.
Sounds like they added Napster and Gnutella to the filter list and issued a press release. Big frickin' deal.
Now if an ISP were to filter based on application, then that would be outrageous. But once you do that, you stop being a common carrier and open yourself up to all sorts of liability (think viruses). And you lose all of your customers, which can't be fun.
sulli
http://www.junkbusters.com/h t/en/standards.html#supply
To see the absurdity of the current state of American privacy and P3P's part in it, imagine switching the interest concerned from privacy to copyright, a very similar right concerning the restriction of dataflows. Suppose that in response to the music industry's alarm about unauthorized distribution of songs over the Internet, a consumer group proposed a technology called the "Platform for Piracy Promises". Each consumer would configure his own "piracy policy" in his browser, stating the circumstances under which he promises to copy, modify, transmit or broadcast certain different kinds of recordings, such as poetry, country music, and heavy metal containing profane lyrics. A rich language will be developed to express information about the various uses, owners and types of content. When the consumer visits the site of a recording company to download MP3 tracks, his browser would automatically "negotiate" with the company's server to determine whether the consumer's piracy policy "matches" recording company's "preferences" for use of its property.
If the music industry is suing like mad to fight piracy, perhaps the "identity industry" (i.e. consumers) might want to do the same to fight privacy invasion!
sulli
To be more specific, the late, great John Postel wrote in RFC 1591 that dot-orgs can be any damn organization they want:
ORG - This domain is intended as the miscellaneous TLD for
organizations that didn't fit anywhere else. Some non-
government organizations may fit here.
So peta.org didn't really have any special rights, according to my interpretation.
sulli
Now this is a damn good idea. It would show, among other things, that the "net community" has a sense of humor about things, which the oh-so-sanctimonious PETA clearly lacks.
There could be a veggie BBQ as well. No reason to exclude those, ethical or evil, who for whatever reason prefer to eat mushrooms and zucchini instead of KC (actually I slightly prefer Memphis) BBQ.
Which reminds me, it's late and I haven't eaten yet...
sulli
Now this is a damn good idea. It would show, among other things, that the "net community" has a sense of humor about things, which the oh-so-sanctimonious PETA clearly lacks.
There could be a veggie BBQ as well. No reason to exclude those, ethical or evil, who for whatever reason prefer to eat mushrooms and zucchini instead of KC (actually I slightly prefer Memphis) BBQ.
Which reminds me, it's late and I haven't eaten yet...
sulli
I can't believe nobody pointed this out. All you have to do is do to the Duron website to see that it's a brand of paints and wallcoverings.
Does this mean I can get my chips in custom-mixed glossy pastels?
What about the obvious terrorist threat - to Sealand itself? Suppose Havenco begins to make a lot of money in gambling and porn (a likely possibility given the questionable legal status of both in various jurisdictions). Or suppose that opposition parties in less than friendly nations (Yugoslavia, China, Zimbabwe) began to post their websites there, beyond the range of local authorities, like B92 does with xs4all.nl.
.. but couldn't a fatwa-equipped terrorist show up with a bunch of plastique and simply suicide-bomb it away?
In this case, of course authoritarian ISPs (Singnet, China Telecom, AOL) would block the IPs
I would suspect that the Taliban, Hezbollah, Focus on the Family, or other fundamentalist types would be able to come up with a guy with a motorboat and some Semtex. Will the Royal Navy come out to save the former outpost? Survey says no. And I don't see Havenco suddenly developing a global intelligence service and high-powered navy to keep the NON-cyber terrorists away.
It brings new meaning to the term "denial of service." And "single point of failure."
Andrew
Commercialization of the net doesn't really make a difference here, except that applications vulnerable to spam can lose utility. Features such as /. distributed moderation are useful to prevent this. Otherwise, I don't really see the threat.
was bankrupt.
I certainly remember, in my college days, playing a little fast and loose with answers to those "What College Kids Think Abut XYZ" polls. The pollsters were just too easy to mess with!
Still, the survey is probably more right than not.