I'm sure most of you know this, but let me back up for a minute. One technology tries to keep you from making copies; the other technology assumes you will make copies but will be caught.
The purpose of copy protection is to prevent you from copying something, regardless of legality, illegality, or your rights under the fair use doctrine. All together now, "DUH!"
The purpose of a digital watermark is to identify a data file as authentic, or alternatively to identify its source. Such a watermark will NOT stop you from copying the file, but it may be able to identify that you were the source of the copy. Now, there are several problems with digital audio watermarks, one of which is the difficulty of embedding one without unacceptable loss of sound quality.
Both copy protection and watermarking can theoretically be bypassed by the "play through good speakers and record the output with good microphone and then you have the option of digitally encoding." Such digital recording will in all likelihood be of lower audio quality than the "protected" original, however it will be free of the copy protection and/or watermark. So which is more important, the ability to copy, or the sound quality?
Of course if he does get out on bail or bond, there is the minor issue of how he will support himself until the trial is over. Passport notwithstanding, he has no green card or other work permit. He has no place to live and no way to make a living.
Please do not take this as flamebait, but it's entirely possible that he could be better off as the jailed symbol of oppression pending trial. At least in jail they feed you.
A good number of interesting points have been made, my favorite being that he allegedly broke an American law while in another country (not injuring or killing any American citizens, btw).
But on a more serious note, how many of you have done anything constructive on this matter? I mean in meatspace, not cyberspace. No website is really going to help him much. Have you put up a "Free Dmitri" sign in your business, home, or car? Have you written any public officials? Bought or made a tshirt proclaiming your views on the matter? Attended a protest? Why don't you put down the mouse and show people that hacker != cracker.
Speaking of which, is it possible that the reason The Media can't make the hacker/cracker distinction is that it allows them to make guys like Dmitri seem like evil criminal masterminds who are out defacing websites, stealing credit card numbers, wholesaling warezed copies of MS Office, and ddosing major internet sites?
I have been waiting for someone to point this out. And since, last i checked, the BSA was *not* a governmental and/or law enforcement agency, they are actually going to have to convince some law enforcement agency or DA that this is a big enough deal that they go to a judge to ask for the search warrant.
Now think about this. Is there so little crime in your region that the cops have time for figuring out whether you have the right number of serial numbers for the number of computers running Photoshop? Is it worth the bad publicity of your webcam footage being run on every local news show for 2 days straight?
I think all of you know that AOL/TW is a large company, created from two slightly smaller companies that had been profitable for quite some time. In short, they know what they are doing, they are professionals, do not try this at home, yadda yadda, void where prohibited, ten cent deposit in Michigan.
All of you "know" that AT&T is a large company that has been profitable for somewhere in the region of a century. In reality, AT&T has been having some troubles and is trying to "unlock shareholder value" by splitting into 4 companies. One of these, the wireless division, is already a publicly traded company. The Wall Street types beleived that this was the gem of the company, the division most likely to be in a growth industry when all was said and done. These same Wall Street types also think that the cable division is the dog of the group. AT&T assigned it all the debt they could get away with. And as anybody who has AT&T Broadband knows, they suck more than the average cable company. I could tell stories but hey, anecdotes are not data.
Bottom line, if AOL/TW is stupid enough to take this deal on, then more power to them. That is, assuming that the regulators allow it. I'm just glad I don't own part of it.
This partly explains why nobody uses.us. It's easier to say your url is randomname.com than randomname.citycode.statecode.us. The latter sounds a lot more like some geocities type of page, doesn't it? Who wants to remember the city and state of every business they want to visit online? I think it's kind of a shame that the cityname and state code is required since it prevents such nifty little urls as "dependon.us" and "call.us"
So tell me something. My kid has a set of alphabet blocks that just happen to double as ROT-13 decoders. Aside from being kinda cool, would this be considered an illegal hacking tool under DMCA?
I know this is sort of a Barney Frank "Do I desecrate my tie" question, but isn't there a line to be drawn somewhere?
Seriously, I think the more important issues include arresting a citizen of another company for a crime committed in another country under the laws of this country, a "crime" which by the way didn't kill anybody, didn't cause any children to be molested, and didn't even cause any bodily pain to any citizen of the United States. This may well force Defcon underground, just a few hundred geeks who mysteriously descend upon a randomly selected hotel for a week.....
Agreed. Let's not forget, however, the Other Operating System that works on that Other Hardware. Yes, I mean the Macintosh. A computer so easy to use that even a teacher, er, child, can use it.
Macs have always been used in some schools, and were formerly used in many others. They were pushed out of the latter for reasons that included the (false) perception that Wintel Boxen were cheaper (sure the Packard Bell is cheap but will it work next week? And what exactly is your time worth?) and the idea that "everybody uses Windows." The problem with the last statement is twofold. Not only is it false, but a class of junior high school kids is 5-10 years out of the workforce. Think back, what OS and hardware were you using 5 years ago? Ten?
So in the end, educators have choices, if they have the guts to choose. They can Just Say No to the Wintel Duopoly.
If delivering groceries were profitable...
on
Webvan Out Of Gas
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· Score: 1
If delivering groceries were profitable then Kroger, Safeway, Albertsons and Hooper's Store would still be doing it. This is an example of something that the Internet was supposed to make cheaper, faster, and easier, and it did not work out. The Grocer business is famous for thin margins. Sorry that Webvan is just now finding that out.
Of course repainting all the HomeGrocer trucks and all the various free stuff they gave away (sample bags, delivery, the 3 magnets on my fridge) did not help!
Well, it isn't so much that banner ads are ineffective, but rather that it is so easy to tell how ineffective they are. It is more feedback than advertisors ever had, and much more than they really want.
Imagine if you had a button on your tv remote that would get you a nice cold Pepsi if you pressed it every time you saw a Pepsi ad. Realistically you would not press that button very often. Then, no matter how much Pepsi might be in your fridge, the folks at PepsiCo would think that advertising did not work.
All things considered I'd much rather have banners than pop-* windows.
True enough. Let's not forget the fact that Connery is not getting any younger (There can be only one!!!) and Ford is not particularly young anymore. It's been over a decade since the last Indy film, and at this point the character might have to be recast to be filmed. Sure, you could say it didn't take place until the '50's but that's hardly the golden age of archaeology.
*Sigh* It was nice to see my two favorite actors ever in one film together anyway.
Don't get me wrong, I like looking at online MLS listings. It's fun and it gives you an idea of the current market. But there is no substitute for a good realtor. For the record, we have purchased two homes and had two great realtors in two different areas of the country. In each case, the home we selected had been listed less than 24 hours before, so certainly the issue of when properties go online would have been an issue. In one case, our realtor took the announcement that the house was for sale off the office fax machine before any of her co-workers knew about it.
Many people look at the fees a realtor gets and think it's a big rip off. Let me give you my thoughts on why it is not. In fact whenever I see a house with a "For Sale By Owner Sign" I think "for sale by idiot."
A Realtor is licensed professional whose job includes knowing all the law and rules regarding buying and selling real estate. ALL of them. Anybody who has ever spent time dealing with a bureaucracy and found themselves going through the line again for the lack of *one* crucial document should understand the value of this. They want you to suceed in buying or selling property, because if it doesn't go through they don't get paid!
The next important thing the Realtor is good for is knowing the local market. They know which schools are better, which neighborhood is best for people who like to walk/bike/whatever, and where they are planning to build the new 24 hr megasuperhypergammamart. They also know and can tell you things like "This isn't the first time that house has been on the market. The price has come down but you might be able to get them to accept a lower bid." Try getting that off a website.
The final reason I respect realtors is that the good ones (and yes I know there are bad ones) really want to do the right thing for you. They want to hook you up with a good mortgage company. They want to refer you to a good home inspection service. They know it is good for business and that if you are happy you will let your friends know.
The Supremes have already said on several occasions that school children have limited rights on school property. The parking lot is school property. Of course the car is private property, but nobody made the student take the car to school. They could have walked or taken the bus or even had dad drop them off in the morning.
Now, that being said, I did attend a high school where a contraband sniffing dog was used (not just drugs, Tillie sniffed for booze and firearms too). Much to the credit of the administration, they were able to deal with cases of false positives and accidental incidents in a reasonable fashion. But of course you can't do that when you have a zero thinking -- er, I mean tolerance -- policy.
Yes, you more or less have it right, but let's put it in another example. The cops have reason to beleive you have some kind of evidence or illegal thingamajig (a ton of heroin, kiddy porn, the knife that killed Nicole Simpson, whatever). It's 5:00 PM, you are getting home from work. One cop prevents you from entering your home while his partner goes for the search warrant. Perfectly legal, Supreme Court Sanctified.
Perhaps the nice folks at DTE should work on actually providing reliable energy. Weeklong power outages are routine after any kind of storm. And they have the absolute chutzva to claim that burying cable wouldn't reduce outages, only make them more expensive to fix. So tell me, how does hail, wind, rain, ice, or tornadoes effect underground cables?
"Creating a CD is almost 400% lower than making a cassette yet CD's are more expensive for some unknown reason."
Perhaps you ought to study math. A cassette may indeed cost 400% more to produce than a CD (you did mean 5 times the cost, didn't you?) but what you said is just wrong. Since "100% less" would be ZERO, "400% less" would mean the manufacturer pays you for the privilege of making the product!
Now then, since you are having trouble with this, I suspect math is also the "unknown reason" CDs cost more than tapes. Oh, that and the fact that a CD lasts longer than a tape, can be used to manufacture your own tape, and gives you higher recording quality than a tape (all generally speaking of course).
Yes, ironic that this lamentation on the lack of freebies should occur today. It's free ice cream day. No, really, check out http://www.baskinrobbins.com/promo/index.shtml or http://www.benandjerrys.com/indexg.tmpl and see for yourself.
If I understand correctly, Sean's father most wants to know what to do now. He knows that this school has done his child wrong. He knows that zero-tolerance policies are zero-thinking policies. That does not help Sean.
First thing, look into GRE requirements. If he has a GRE at 16 then nobody is going to ask much about high school. Second thing, look into early college admissions. I'd start next county over at Texas Wesleyan, which 10 years ago had nice early admissions and nice scholarship programs, and he wouldn't even have to stay in the dorm if you get him a car. Okay, not exactly ivy league. Nobody said he has to spend all 4 years there and nobody said he can't do grad work someplace "big". Write off this bunch of high school bozos, except perhaps for legal action to get this nonsense off his transcript.
I'm sorry this happened to your family. I don't know that you can do anything to change the system without a lot of support from other parents in your district.
I read this article earlier and was frankly amazed. In the course of my job I use the Internet as my primary research tool every day. I guess I must just be better at searching than those people!
We all know that a computer does what you tell it, not what you want. If you search for "cars" you will of course get much more useless information than if you search for "cars sedan mid-sized" or whatever other modifiers you have in mind. I remember once talking to a new internet user who tried to find information about "ants" through some search engine and ended up wading through links about restarurANTS and consultANTS. Okay, so all search engines are not created equal. Isn't that why most of us like Google?
Perhaps it helps that I am researching very specific topics. Yes the Web is getting bigger, yes there are things it is hard to search for, but I don't really think it is getting worse. As the song says, "If she knew what she wants he'd be giving it to her now."
Yep, y'all are right about that. Did you know that they actually had to pass a state law saying that landlords have to change apartment locks between residents? Oh well, in Texas it's also legal for your landlord to take your television hostage if you don't pay your rent. So I guess the answer is for you to run for the State Legislature. Oh wait, the job pays a pittance so you have to be independently wealthy to hold the job. They can't really raise the pay to a reasonable level without the Dallas Morning News running a story with the headline "Legislature to Give Itself 900% Pay Raise". Rock, meet hard spot.
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The purpose of copy protection is to prevent you from copying something, regardless of legality, illegality, or your rights under the fair use doctrine. All together now, "DUH!"
The purpose of a digital watermark is to identify a data file as authentic, or alternatively to identify its source. Such a watermark will NOT stop you from copying the file, but it may be able to identify that you were the source of the copy. Now, there are several problems with digital audio watermarks, one of which is the difficulty of embedding one without unacceptable loss of sound quality.
Both copy protection and watermarking can theoretically be bypassed by the "play through good speakers and record the output with good microphone and then you have the option of digitally encoding." Such digital recording will in all likelihood be of lower audio quality than the "protected" original, however it will be free of the copy protection and/or watermark. So which is more important, the ability to copy, or the sound quality?
This particular form of protest killed Divx, and it can kill this too.
Please do not take this as flamebait, but it's entirely possible that he could be better off as the jailed symbol of oppression pending trial. At least in jail they feed you.
But on a more serious note, how many of you have done anything constructive on this matter? I mean in meatspace, not cyberspace. No website is really going to help him much. Have you put up a "Free Dmitri" sign in your business, home, or car? Have you written any public officials? Bought or made a tshirt proclaiming your views on the matter? Attended a protest? Why don't you put down the mouse and show people that hacker != cracker.
Speaking of which, is it possible that the reason The Media can't make the hacker/cracker distinction is that it allows them to make guys like Dmitri seem like evil criminal masterminds who are out defacing websites, stealing credit card numbers, wholesaling warezed copies of MS Office, and ddosing major internet sites?
Yeah, I need a large pepperoni, a couple of cokes, and whatever Metallica MP3's you've got....
I have been waiting for someone to point this out. And since, last i checked, the BSA was *not* a governmental and/or law enforcement agency, they are actually going to have to convince some law enforcement agency or DA that this is a big enough deal that they go to a judge to ask for the search warrant.
Now think about this. Is there so little crime in your region that the cops have time for figuring out whether you have the right number of serial numbers for the number of computers running Photoshop? Is it worth the bad publicity of your webcam footage being run on every local news show for 2 days straight?
All of you "know" that AT&T is a large company that has been profitable for somewhere in the region of a century. In reality, AT&T has been having some troubles and is trying to "unlock shareholder value" by splitting into 4 companies. One of these, the wireless division, is already a publicly traded company. The Wall Street types beleived that this was the gem of the company, the division most likely to be in a growth industry when all was said and done. These same Wall Street types also think that the cable division is the dog of the group. AT&T assigned it all the debt they could get away with. And as anybody who has AT&T Broadband knows, they suck more than the average cable company. I could tell stories but hey, anecdotes are not data.
Bottom line, if AOL/TW is stupid enough to take this deal on, then more power to them. That is, assuming that the regulators allow it. I'm just glad I don't own part of it.
This partly explains why nobody uses .us. It's easier to say your url is randomname.com than randomname.citycode.statecode.us. The latter sounds a lot more like some geocities type of page, doesn't it? Who wants to remember the city and state of every business they want to visit online? I think it's kind of a shame that the cityname and state code is required since it prevents such nifty little urls as "dependon.us" and "call.us"
I know this is sort of a Barney Frank "Do I desecrate my tie" question, but isn't there a line to be drawn somewhere?
Seriously, I think the more important issues include arresting a citizen of another company for a crime committed in another country under the laws of this country, a "crime" which by the way didn't kill anybody, didn't cause any children to be molested, and didn't even cause any bodily pain to any citizen of the United States. This may well force Defcon underground, just a few hundred geeks who mysteriously descend upon a randomly selected hotel for a week.....
Macs have always been used in some schools, and were formerly used in many others. They were pushed out of the latter for reasons that included the (false) perception that Wintel Boxen were cheaper (sure the Packard Bell is cheap but will it work next week? And what exactly is your time worth?) and the idea that "everybody uses Windows." The problem with the last statement is twofold. Not only is it false, but a class of junior high school kids is 5-10 years out of the workforce. Think back, what OS and hardware were you using 5 years ago? Ten?
So in the end, educators have choices, if they have the guts to choose. They can Just Say No to the Wintel Duopoly.
Of course repainting all the HomeGrocer trucks and all the various free stuff they gave away (sample bags, delivery, the 3 magnets on my fridge) did not help!
Imagine if you had a button on your tv remote that would get you a nice cold Pepsi if you pressed it every time you saw a Pepsi ad. Realistically you would not press that button very often. Then, no matter how much Pepsi might be in your fridge, the folks at PepsiCo would think that advertising did not work.
All things considered I'd much rather have banners than pop-* windows.
*Sigh* It was nice to see my two favorite actors ever in one film together anyway.
I need to set up a kiosk there selling hats and those novelty eyeglasses with the big nose and mustache!
Many people look at the fees a realtor gets and think it's a big rip off. Let me give you my thoughts on why it is not. In fact whenever I see a house with a "For Sale By Owner Sign" I think "for sale by idiot."
A Realtor is licensed professional whose job includes knowing all the law and rules regarding buying and selling real estate. ALL of them. Anybody who has ever spent time dealing with a bureaucracy and found themselves going through the line again for the lack of *one* crucial document should understand the value of this. They want you to suceed in buying or selling property, because if it doesn't go through they don't get paid!
The next important thing the Realtor is good for is knowing the local market. They know which schools are better, which neighborhood is best for people who like to walk/bike/whatever, and where they are planning to build the new 24 hr megasuperhypergammamart. They also know and can tell you things like "This isn't the first time that house has been on the market. The price has come down but you might be able to get them to accept a lower bid." Try getting that off a website.
The final reason I respect realtors is that the good ones (and yes I know there are bad ones) really want to do the right thing for you. They want to hook you up with a good mortgage company. They want to refer you to a good home inspection service. They know it is good for business and that if you are happy you will let your friends know.
Now, that being said, I did attend a high school where a contraband sniffing dog was used (not just drugs, Tillie sniffed for booze and firearms too). Much to the credit of the administration, they were able to deal with cases of false positives and accidental incidents in a reasonable fashion. But of course you can't do that when you have a zero thinking -- er, I mean tolerance -- policy.
Damn, now I have a reason to visit England.
What to do about it? Can't say.
Perhaps the nice folks at DTE should work on actually providing reliable energy. Weeklong power outages are routine after any kind of storm. And they have the absolute chutzva to claim that burying cable wouldn't reduce outages, only make them more expensive to fix. So tell me, how does hail, wind, rain, ice, or tornadoes effect underground cables?
Do your own paper and be sure to footnote absolutely every reference.
Perhaps you ought to study math. A cassette may indeed cost 400% more to produce than a CD (you did mean 5 times the cost, didn't you?) but what you said is just wrong. Since "100% less" would be ZERO, "400% less" would mean the manufacturer pays you for the privilege of making the product!
Now then, since you are having trouble with this, I suspect math is also the "unknown reason" CDs cost more than tapes. Oh, that and the fact that a CD lasts longer than a tape, can be used to manufacture your own tape, and gives you higher recording quality than a tape (all generally speaking of course).
Yes, ironic that this lamentation on the lack of freebies should occur today. It's free ice cream day. No, really, check out http://www.baskinrobbins.com/promo/index.shtml or http://www.benandjerrys.com/indexg.tmpl and see for yourself.
First thing, look into GRE requirements. If he has a GRE at 16 then nobody is going to ask much about high school. Second thing, look into early college admissions. I'd start next county over at Texas Wesleyan, which 10 years ago had nice early admissions and nice scholarship programs, and he wouldn't even have to stay in the dorm if you get him a car. Okay, not exactly ivy league. Nobody said he has to spend all 4 years there and nobody said he can't do grad work someplace "big". Write off this bunch of high school bozos, except perhaps for legal action to get this nonsense off his transcript.
I'm sorry this happened to your family. I don't know that you can do anything to change the system without a lot of support from other parents in your district.
We all know that a computer does what you tell it, not what you want. If you search for "cars" you will of course get much more useless information than if you search for "cars sedan mid-sized" or whatever other modifiers you have in mind. I remember once talking to a new internet user who tried to find information about "ants" through some search engine and ended up wading through links about restarurANTS and consultANTS. Okay, so all search engines are not created equal. Isn't that why most of us like Google?
Perhaps it helps that I am researching very specific topics. Yes the Web is getting bigger, yes there are things it is hard to search for, but I don't really think it is getting worse. As the song says, "If she knew what she wants he'd be giving it to her now."
Yep, y'all are right about that. Did you know that they actually had to pass a state law saying that landlords have to change apartment locks between residents? Oh well, in Texas it's also legal for your landlord to take your television hostage if you don't pay your rent. So I guess the answer is for you to run for the State Legislature. Oh wait, the job pays a pittance so you have to be independently wealthy to hold the job. They can't really raise the pay to a reasonable level without the Dallas Morning News running a story with the headline "Legislature to Give Itself 900% Pay Raise". Rock, meet hard spot.