So Time Warner Cable is looking into setting insanely low caps in a blatant attempt to kill online streaming video. ("Enhance customer experience" in marketing-speak, though I don't know how severely restricting customers = "enhancing" anything for the customers.) On the other hand, they're working to make their DVR boxes less useful. Looks like they basically want people to 1) Cancel and go OTA-only, 2) Cancel and go to Dish or DirecTV, or 3) Cancel and just watch DVDs (purchased, Netflix, local Library, etc). Way to "enhance" your business plan, Time Warner Cable!
Because you don't have lobbying dollars, but they have massive amounts of lobbying dollars. Therefore they get to buy... I mean influence the laws in their favor.
When my son gets into reading, he's just as fast as I am. He can tear through a book *and* understand what was going on. (Just tearing through it isn't enough if the reader doesn't remember what happened.) Part of the problem is motivating him to pick up that book and begin on page one. I'll admit that we've used the "read for 1 hour and get X minutes of Nintendo DS time" technique. It works nicely. It gives him an initial motivation to read (since he wants to play DS), but then he gets hooked into reading and will do everything possible to complete the book he's reading.
I knew there were some other Asimov books that might be better. I think the slow nature of the first few I, Robot stories might have turned him off slightly. Once we were in the story, he would want me to keep reading so he could find out just why Speedy kept running in circles on Mercury, but it didn't spark an interest in him enough for him to want to hear the rest of the stories.
Ok, people might not "get" Twitter or feel it has a use for them, but since when is anything off-topic on Twitter. It's like a giant mixer where people discuss anything and everything. You aren't forced to focus on just one topic. You can discuss cooking with one tweet and then reply to a political comment with another and then ask your followers about a recently released movie in a third. Why does Mensch think Twitter conversation *needs* to be focused on any one subject (politics)?
Folks like the RIAA and MPAA are at the top of the heap. The way things were 10 years ago, if you wanted music or movies you would likely obtain it from a RIAA/MPAA-approved source. Yes, there was indie stuff, but "nobody" bought from there. (Where "nobody" = a very tiny segment of the population... small enough to ignore.)
Then change came and threatened to shift the heap. Where would the RIAA/MPAA end up? Perhaps they wouldn't really move and would weather the change just fine. Perhaps they would find that the heap grew and they were even higher up (bigger profits). The more likely scenario, though, would be that they'd no longer be at the top of the heap. This scared them and they went to great lengths to prevent change from coming lest they lose their "King of the Heap" status.
I had an idea like this once for responding to phishing e-mails. A phishing URL would be submitted and a fake identity would be created using a database of first names, last names, street names, cities, states, zip codes, etc. A phoney (but real looking) SNN and date of birth would be created as well as any other information. The form would be submitted and the fake identity would be stored in the phisher's database. Repeat this a few thousand times and the database's value would drop. Get enough people using this program and submitting phishing URLs and phishing in general would get harder to do successfully.
Sadly, I never implemented this idea so it can't be claimed as prior art.
(Side note: If anyone wants to take this idea and run with it, go right ahead. Just give me a thanks somewhere and let me know about your project as I'd be interested to see how it works out.)
I really don't subscribe to the "any publicity is good publicity" school of thought. Yes, some people might hear about FunnyJunk now, think "let me visit this site and see what it is all about", and then become long-term members, but that's the minority. Most people now will think "FunnyJunk? Oh they're the ones who stole those comics and then sued the comic's creator when they were found out." People have a negative image of FunnyJunk that FJ will need to counter if they want to attract more users. Then again, given the "quality" of the users they seem to have, this might not be so much of a problem. Sadly, one can always find more 12 year old kids who see nothing wrong with scraping content from across the Internet and posting it somewhere else with no attribution whatsoever.
I scrolled down that list and it all looks better than the school lunches I remember. We had meatballs that literally bounced when you threw them. (Yes, kids would throw them just to see them bounce.) We also had pizza which one girl slammed her fist on. The impression of her fist slowly disappeared as the pizza resumed its previous shape. More often than not, I'd bring my own lunch into school and we now send my oldest son in with his own lunch rather than let him have french fries and pizza as "veggies."
- Startup comes up with interesting idea, sees growth in business. - Big Corp sees startup's success and thinks "I want a piece of that action." - Big Corp buys Startup. - Big Corp sees growth due to Startup.
So far so good, until either:
- Big Corp decides to alter Startup to "make it better fit into our corporate structure." - Users flee Startup as it looks like boring Big Corp site. - Big Corp scratches head in wonderment as to why Startup is a failure, kills Startup. - Big Corp looks for another startup to buy.
Or:
- Big Corp doesn't give Startup resources/leeway to grow. - Startup is overtaken by other startups. - Big Corp scratches head in wonderment as to why Startup is a failure, kills Startup. - Big Corp looks for another startup to buy.
I'm actually quite upset when I hear someone say that Jews rule the world. After all, I'm Jewish and nobody's cut me in on this! With my luck, though, I'd get stuck being in charge of the Jersey Shore. *shudders*
My FIOS/Amazon/Hulu scenario was a "what if this was allowed", not a "this is happening now." If deals are allowed to speed up traffic and furthermore exclusive deals are allowed, it could get to the point that the sites that work fast enough to satisfy end users depends on the ISP you use.
I can't speak for the Roma, but on behalf of the Jewish people, I accept the results of this test. This idiot has nothing to do with us genetically. Cue other ethnic groups demanding he test himself so they can wash their hands of him as well. (Sadly, people like this take: "Nobody wants me" to be a compliment rather than an insult.)
Honestly, if he did sue them for that much, I'd feel that his "damages" claims were overblown. Even if every comic from his website was copied, I wouldn't see it being worth $250,000 - $90 million. It was more a mental exercise for FunnyJunk to consider that Matt's legal rights would allow him to launch such a lawsuit. He would be on firmer legal ground than FunnyJunk is in claiming that Matt's calling them out for copyright infringement constitutes defamation and that an ASCII pterodactyl in his HTML constitutes a threat against them.
Plus, there would be the difference that Matt tried to resolve this without lawyers (and continues to try to do so even while under threat of a lawsuit from the people who infringed his content) while the RIAA tends to go the "Sue First, Ask Questions Later (If At All)" route.
1) RIAA finds infringing content on YouTube either: 2a) RIAA files takedown notice at which point YouTube complies. or 2b) RIAA sues YouTube at which point YouTube invokes Safe Harbor clause.
FunnyJunk vs Oatmeal:
1) Matt (aka Oatmeal) finds his comics hosted on FunnyJunk. 2) Matt asks FunnyJunk to take them down. 3) FunnyJunk takes some down, leaves others up, tells their users that Oatmeal is trying to shut FJ down and to harass Matt. 4) Matt decides not to pursue the matter, but makes an angry blog post laying out the facts. 5) FunnyJunk sends Matt a letter threatening a Federal Lawsuit unless he sends them $20,000.
Protecting your IP isn't bad per se. Immediately launching into a lawsuit or threatening to sue for amounts much larger than what your content is actually worth (based on imaginary "lost sales") is bad. Politely asking an infringer to take your content down isn't bad. Having that infringer turn around and threaten to sue you unless you pay them is horrid.
As a side note: If Matt wanted to he could trump their paltry $20,000 lawsuit. He noted 360 instances of infringement (now taken down after his post-legal-threat blog post). Each instance of copyright infringement could cost FunnyJunk between $750 and $250,000 per infringement - or $270,000 to $90 million. I say Matt should agree to pay their "defamation" settlement fee if they pay for the lowest amount of his copyright infringement fee!
The problem lies not in ISPs charging end users more for faster, more reliable connections, but in ISPs charging content creators more for faster, more reliable connections.
The ISPs' dream scenario would be to cut deals with content creators, making them pay them millions of dollars a year so that people who go to those sites will get there faster. The problem with this is that:
1) The ISPs get paid twice for the same data. Once when their user (who paid a monthly fee) says "I want to see this YouTube video" and once when Google (who paid for the faster access responds "Ok, here's the video."
2) Content creators who don't pay get left behind. Success will no longer be determined by who has the better service, but by who can afford to cut deals with every ISP in the world. Joe Startup won't be able to afford this and will be tossed onto the slow lane. Super Mega WebCorp will be able to and their service will be fast.
3) ISPs might sign exclusive deals. If Hulu signed an exclusive deal with all ISPs in the US that would put them on the fast lane while locking Netflix out of entering into any deal, that would constitute an unfair competitive advantage. Or maybe which sites worked would vary by where you lived/what ISP you had. On Comcast? Hulu works fine but Amazon VOD and Netflix are slow. Have Verizon FIOS? Netflix works fine but Amazon VOD and Hulu are slow. Time Warner Cable? Amazon VOD works fast, but Netflix and Hulu are slow. Want to use a different service but it is locked in the slow lane? You'd better consider moving your family to another area/state (and hope that the contracts don't change again).
Interestingly, the brute force haystack tool from GRC rated "1-2-3-4-5" as taking 1.64 hundred centuries to crack in an online (1,000 guesses per second) scenario. Of course, in an offline scenario, it was cracked in an hour and a half.
I don't think the article is saying that humans emerged in Asia and Africa and then intermingled. It's that some primates emerged in Asia. A group of these primates migrated to Africa where some of their descendants evolved into humans who spread across the globe. So while our ancestors came from Africa, they came from Asia before that. (Not really surprising, given the millions of years time-span, that multiple migrations like this would have occurred.)
I got to try the Kinect recently as part of a "workout" game review. While I liked the game itself, the Kinect had serious drawbacks. Mostly, I found that my living room was too small for it. It wouldn't be able to see me (no matter how I situated the Kinect) until my heels were pushing against my couch. Try doing a workout while your feet bump against your couch repeatedly. It's possible, but much harder than if the Kinect let me take a step or two forward. Then, if I was doing any kind of movement that shook the floorboards, the Kinect would vibrate just enough to cause it to "lose" me. My workout would be interrupted (after a second of my avatar doing nothing) and I would need to reestablish contact. Then, I'd continue the workout and it would lose me again.
People with small rooms or floors that don't absorb movement impact should beware that the Kinect might not work as advertised.
What if you think that the Shadow Government of Aliens is spreading the news that he's dead when he's really alive somewhere? Where do you line up then? I'm asking for, um, a friend of mine.
If they keep with the Queue concept, I'd like to see multiple queues. So I can set one up for shows my kids like to see and one for shows I like watching. This way, I don't need to scroll through Bob the Builder Live and Yo Gabba Gabba to find my shows.
I know that when I was there in the mid 00s there were places in downtown nashville without cable OR DSL because they were both too fucking greedy to spend a dime on infrastructure while the places that did have it were oversubscibed horribly.
Of course, whenever the issue of those under-served towns getting municipal broadband comes up, the big ISPs like Comcast suddenly become very interested in developing there. Not enough to actually develop, mind you, but enough to lobby to squash the project on the grounds that it would be unfair competition. You know, should they ever decide to build there.
You might not burn a lot of calories compared with a much faster treadmill at a gym, but if you're putting 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year on this treadmill, you'll wind up developing your leg muscles much more than someone who sat at his computer that whole time. And once you've built muscle, you'll burn more calories even if you are simply sitting around doing nothing.
Besides, if this is in an office, the last thing you want is for your treadmill-desk to make you work up a sweat just before a big meeting.
Yes, I sit at a desk all day and yes, I'd love a treadmill-desk.
My main criticism of NCLB is: What about the children who are ahead? They wind up being held back waiting for their peers to catch up (getting bored in the meantime since they have to learn the same material over and over lest their slower peers bring down test scores). I have no problem with helping the slower kids get up to speed, but we've also got to help the faster kids fulfill their potential which doesn't mean telling them "Just sit there quietly until the rest of the class learns that 8 + 3 = 11."
(And, yes, my son was one of those fast kids who was forced to slow down his learning.)
Slashdot Mirror
So Time Warner Cable is looking into setting insanely low caps in a blatant attempt to kill online streaming video. ("Enhance customer experience" in marketing-speak, though I don't know how severely restricting customers = "enhancing" anything for the customers.) On the other hand, they're working to make their DVR boxes less useful. Looks like they basically want people to 1) Cancel and go OTA-only, 2) Cancel and go to Dish or DirecTV, or 3) Cancel and just watch DVDs (purchased, Netflix, local Library, etc). Way to "enhance" your business plan, Time Warner Cable!
Because you don't have lobbying dollars, but they have massive amounts of lobbying dollars. Therefore they get to buy... I mean influence the laws in their favor.
When my son gets into reading, he's just as fast as I am. He can tear through a book *and* understand what was going on. (Just tearing through it isn't enough if the reader doesn't remember what happened.) Part of the problem is motivating him to pick up that book and begin on page one. I'll admit that we've used the "read for 1 hour and get X minutes of Nintendo DS time" technique. It works nicely. It gives him an initial motivation to read (since he wants to play DS), but then he gets hooked into reading and will do everything possible to complete the book he's reading.
I knew there were some other Asimov books that might be better. I think the slow nature of the first few I, Robot stories might have turned him off slightly. Once we were in the story, he would want me to keep reading so he could find out just why Speedy kept running in circles on Mercury, but it didn't spark an interest in him enough for him to want to hear the rest of the stories.
Ok, people might not "get" Twitter or feel it has a use for them, but since when is anything off-topic on Twitter. It's like a giant mixer where people discuss anything and everything. You aren't forced to focus on just one topic. You can discuss cooking with one tweet and then reply to a political comment with another and then ask your followers about a recently released movie in a third. Why does Mensch think Twitter conversation *needs* to be focused on any one subject (politics)?
Folks like the RIAA and MPAA are at the top of the heap. The way things were 10 years ago, if you wanted music or movies you would likely obtain it from a RIAA/MPAA-approved source. Yes, there was indie stuff, but "nobody" bought from there. (Where "nobody" = a very tiny segment of the population... small enough to ignore.)
Then change came and threatened to shift the heap. Where would the RIAA/MPAA end up? Perhaps they wouldn't really move and would weather the change just fine. Perhaps they would find that the heap grew and they were even higher up (bigger profits). The more likely scenario, though, would be that they'd no longer be at the top of the heap. This scared them and they went to great lengths to prevent change from coming lest they lose their "King of the Heap" status.
I had an idea like this once for responding to phishing e-mails. A phishing URL would be submitted and a fake identity would be created using a database of first names, last names, street names, cities, states, zip codes, etc. A phoney (but real looking) SNN and date of birth would be created as well as any other information. The form would be submitted and the fake identity would be stored in the phisher's database. Repeat this a few thousand times and the database's value would drop. Get enough people using this program and submitting phishing URLs and phishing in general would get harder to do successfully.
Sadly, I never implemented this idea so it can't be claimed as prior art.
(Side note: If anyone wants to take this idea and run with it, go right ahead. Just give me a thanks somewhere and let me know about your project as I'd be interested to see how it works out.)
Forget FunnyJunk, but you should definitely check out TheOatmeal. It's a very funny webcomic.
I really don't subscribe to the "any publicity is good publicity" school of thought. Yes, some people might hear about FunnyJunk now, think "let me visit this site and see what it is all about", and then become long-term members, but that's the minority. Most people now will think "FunnyJunk? Oh they're the ones who stole those comics and then sued the comic's creator when they were found out." People have a negative image of FunnyJunk that FJ will need to counter if they want to attract more users. Then again, given the "quality" of the users they seem to have, this might not be so much of a problem. Sadly, one can always find more 12 year old kids who see nothing wrong with scraping content from across the Internet and posting it somewhere else with no attribution whatsoever.
I scrolled down that list and it all looks better than the school lunches I remember. We had meatballs that literally bounced when you threw them. (Yes, kids would throw them just to see them bounce.) We also had pizza which one girl slammed her fist on. The impression of her fist slowly disappeared as the pizza resumed its previous shape. More often than not, I'd bring my own lunch into school and we now send my oldest son in with his own lunch rather than let him have french fries and pizza as "veggies."
I think part of it is:
- Startup comes up with interesting idea, sees growth in business.
- Big Corp sees startup's success and thinks "I want a piece of that action."
- Big Corp buys Startup.
- Big Corp sees growth due to Startup.
So far so good, until either:
- Big Corp decides to alter Startup to "make it better fit into our corporate structure."
- Users flee Startup as it looks like boring Big Corp site.
- Big Corp scratches head in wonderment as to why Startup is a failure, kills Startup.
- Big Corp looks for another startup to buy.
Or:
- Big Corp doesn't give Startup resources/leeway to grow.
- Startup is overtaken by other startups.
- Big Corp scratches head in wonderment as to why Startup is a failure, kills Startup.
- Big Corp looks for another startup to buy.
I'm actually quite upset when I hear someone say that Jews rule the world. After all, I'm Jewish and nobody's cut me in on this! With my luck, though, I'd get stuck being in charge of the Jersey Shore. *shudders*
My FIOS/Amazon/Hulu scenario was a "what if this was allowed", not a "this is happening now." If deals are allowed to speed up traffic and furthermore exclusive deals are allowed, it could get to the point that the sites that work fast enough to satisfy end users depends on the ISP you use.
I can't speak for the Roma, but on behalf of the Jewish people, I accept the results of this test. This idiot has nothing to do with us genetically. Cue other ethnic groups demanding he test himself so they can wash their hands of him as well. (Sadly, people like this take: "Nobody wants me" to be a compliment rather than an insult.)
Honestly, if he did sue them for that much, I'd feel that his "damages" claims were overblown. Even if every comic from his website was copied, I wouldn't see it being worth $250,000 - $90 million. It was more a mental exercise for FunnyJunk to consider that Matt's legal rights would allow him to launch such a lawsuit. He would be on firmer legal ground than FunnyJunk is in claiming that Matt's calling them out for copyright infringement constitutes defamation and that an ASCII pterodactyl in his HTML constitutes a threat against them.
Plus, there would be the difference that Matt tried to resolve this without lawyers (and continues to try to do so even while under threat of a lawsuit from the people who infringed his content) while the RIAA tends to go the "Sue First, Ask Questions Later (If At All)" route.
Except the facts of the cases are such:
RIAA vs YouTube:
1) RIAA finds infringing content on YouTube
either:
2a) RIAA files takedown notice at which point YouTube complies.
or
2b) RIAA sues YouTube at which point YouTube invokes Safe Harbor clause.
FunnyJunk vs Oatmeal:
1) Matt (aka Oatmeal) finds his comics hosted on FunnyJunk.
2) Matt asks FunnyJunk to take them down.
3) FunnyJunk takes some down, leaves others up, tells their users that Oatmeal is trying to shut FJ down and to harass Matt.
4) Matt decides not to pursue the matter, but makes an angry blog post laying out the facts.
5) FunnyJunk sends Matt a letter threatening a Federal Lawsuit unless he sends them $20,000.
Protecting your IP isn't bad per se. Immediately launching into a lawsuit or threatening to sue for amounts much larger than what your content is actually worth (based on imaginary "lost sales") is bad. Politely asking an infringer to take your content down isn't bad. Having that infringer turn around and threaten to sue you unless you pay them is horrid.
As a side note: If Matt wanted to he could trump their paltry $20,000 lawsuit. He noted 360 instances of infringement (now taken down after his post-legal-threat blog post). Each instance of copyright infringement could cost FunnyJunk between $750 and $250,000 per infringement - or $270,000 to $90 million. I say Matt should agree to pay their "defamation" settlement fee if they pay for the lowest amount of his copyright infringement fee!
The problem lies not in ISPs charging end users more for faster, more reliable connections, but in ISPs charging content creators more for faster, more reliable connections.
The ISPs' dream scenario would be to cut deals with content creators, making them pay them millions of dollars a year so that people who go to those sites will get there faster. The problem with this is that:
1) The ISPs get paid twice for the same data. Once when their user (who paid a monthly fee) says "I want to see this YouTube video" and once when Google (who paid for the faster access responds "Ok, here's the video."
2) Content creators who don't pay get left behind. Success will no longer be determined by who has the better service, but by who can afford to cut deals with every ISP in the world. Joe Startup won't be able to afford this and will be tossed onto the slow lane. Super Mega WebCorp will be able to and their service will be fast.
3) ISPs might sign exclusive deals. If Hulu signed an exclusive deal with all ISPs in the US that would put them on the fast lane while locking Netflix out of entering into any deal, that would constitute an unfair competitive advantage. Or maybe which sites worked would vary by where you lived/what ISP you had. On Comcast? Hulu works fine but Amazon VOD and Netflix are slow. Have Verizon FIOS? Netflix works fine but Amazon VOD and Hulu are slow. Time Warner Cable? Amazon VOD works fast, but Netflix and Hulu are slow. Want to use a different service but it is locked in the slow lane? You'd better consider moving your family to another area/state (and hope that the contracts don't change again).
Interestingly, the brute force haystack tool from GRC rated "1-2-3-4-5" as taking 1.64 hundred centuries to crack in an online (1,000 guesses per second) scenario. Of course, in an offline scenario, it was cracked in an hour and a half.
I don't think the article is saying that humans emerged in Asia and Africa and then intermingled. It's that some primates emerged in Asia. A group of these primates migrated to Africa where some of their descendants evolved into humans who spread across the globe. So while our ancestors came from Africa, they came from Asia before that. (Not really surprising, given the millions of years time-span, that multiple migrations like this would have occurred.)
I got to try the Kinect recently as part of a "workout" game review. While I liked the game itself, the Kinect had serious drawbacks. Mostly, I found that my living room was too small for it. It wouldn't be able to see me (no matter how I situated the Kinect) until my heels were pushing against my couch. Try doing a workout while your feet bump against your couch repeatedly. It's possible, but much harder than if the Kinect let me take a step or two forward. Then, if I was doing any kind of movement that shook the floorboards, the Kinect would vibrate just enough to cause it to "lose" me. My workout would be interrupted (after a second of my avatar doing nothing) and I would need to reestablish contact. Then, I'd continue the workout and it would lose me again.
People with small rooms or floors that don't absorb movement impact should beware that the Kinect might not work as advertised.
What if you think that the Shadow Government of Aliens is spreading the news that he's dead when he's really alive somewhere? Where do you line up then? I'm asking for, um, a friend of mine.
If they keep with the Queue concept, I'd like to see multiple queues. So I can set one up for shows my kids like to see and one for shows I like watching. This way, I don't need to scroll through Bob the Builder Live and Yo Gabba Gabba to find my shows.
Of course, whenever the issue of those under-served towns getting municipal broadband comes up, the big ISPs like Comcast suddenly become very interested in developing there. Not enough to actually develop, mind you, but enough to lobby to squash the project on the grounds that it would be unfair competition. You know, should they ever decide to build there.
You might not burn a lot of calories compared with a much faster treadmill at a gym, but if you're putting 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year on this treadmill, you'll wind up developing your leg muscles much more than someone who sat at his computer that whole time. And once you've built muscle, you'll burn more calories even if you are simply sitting around doing nothing.
Besides, if this is in an office, the last thing you want is for your treadmill-desk to make you work up a sweat just before a big meeting.
Yes, I sit at a desk all day and yes, I'd love a treadmill-desk.
My main criticism of NCLB is: What about the children who are ahead? They wind up being held back waiting for their peers to catch up (getting bored in the meantime since they have to learn the same material over and over lest their slower peers bring down test scores). I have no problem with helping the slower kids get up to speed, but we've also got to help the faster kids fulfill their potential which doesn't mean telling them "Just sit there quietly until the rest of the class learns that 8 + 3 = 11."
(And, yes, my son was one of those fast kids who was forced to slow down his learning.)