But it's not actually about ISPs detecting whether or not you're doing something that some group or another believes you should not be doing.
I know it's out of fashion to actually RTFA, but:
The program, commonly referred to as "graduated response," requires that ISPs send out one or two educational notices to those customers who are accused of downloading copyrighted content illegally.
That's not about the ISP accusing them - but those groups that are involved with the program.
It may make it easier for those groups to, down the line, suggest that ISPs should just take on that task as well - but that's still quite a leap away from "US ISP's become copyright cops" as the current subject suggests.
Under this program, ISPs would become mailmen (telling people that group X thinks you're doing something illegal), intermediaries (checking whether you got that mail) and executors of court-less verdicts (throttling, cutting off internet access altogether), but that doesn't make them cops.
It's still undesirable behavior to most of their customers, which might make one wonder why ISPs are agreeing to this in the first place. On the other hand, most ISP ToS's already state you can't use the service for illegal activities - which distributing copyrighted material without explicit license to do so falls under - so it's not that far of a stretch for those groups to suggest that ISPs actually enforce their own rules better or be faced with legal action instead.
Wait.. is this actually a Timothy interview? I assumed, but there doesn't seem to be any credit and, come to think of it, it didn't really sound like him (there's a lot of background noise in the part where the interviewer actually speaks, though).
If it's not Timothy - sorry dude-whose-name-wasn't-noted!
Can't say you'd miss much from the video this time around, other than that it becomes clear that it is a relatively simple 2D tile-based environment (at least, that which is shown).
Title: Gamestar Mechanics Teaches Kids to Make Video Games Description: "Level up" from player to designer
[00:00] <TITLE> The Shashdot logo with "News for nerds. Stuff that matters" zooms out from the top-right to the bottom-left corner. A view of the interviewee, Brian Alspach, fades in. He is standing in front of a booth backdrop that reads "... just play games when you can make them?" and "...me Generation" and "...th game design studios"
[00:01] Brian> I'm Brian Alspach I'm the Executive Vice President at E-Line Media, makers of Gamestar Mechanic.
[00:06] Brian> At E-Line we like to make educational games, games that connect things that kids are really interested in [...]
[00:12] <TITLE> A view of a few children behind laptops.
[00:12] Brian> and passionate about with real learning.
[00:14] Brian> So in Gamestar you start out playing a fun game where you're learning to design and make games.
[00:20] <TITLE> Back to the view of Brian talking in front of the booth backdrop.
[00:20] Brian> But then you get a chance to actually make games of your own, and really reinforce critical thinking skills, systems thinking skills, design literacies. So really excited about doing something like that where we take what kids really like to do and connect it with what they can do.
[00:33] <TITLE> The view changes to Brian sitting behind a laptop on a desk with a view of the laptop's screen.
[00:33] Brian> It's really designed for kids age 8 to 14 as their first experience in game design.
[00:38] Brian> We're gonna go ahead and get started. I'm gonna log into my account, I'll show you guys a few things.
[00:43] Brian> Most kids in games start out in our Quest.
[00:46] <TITLE> The view changes to a screen capture of the Gamestar Mechanic website showing the Quest.
[00:46] Brian> The Quest is an adventure game story where you are playing the kind of game you'll eventually be able to make. You play through this fun adventure game, and as you're doing it, you're learning the principles of game design.
[01:00] <TITLE> The view changes back to Brian sitting behind the laptop.
[01:00] Brian> You're also earning all of the tools and the assets you'll eventually be able to use when you make your own games.
[01:06] Brian> We start you off playing the kind of games you'll make and then eventually we'll put you in missions - and this is the very first level you're seeing here - we're sort of teaching you how to move around, but you're also learning about how the enemies, the avatars, the goals, having locks and keys here as a first goal and trying to reach the end of the game as a second goal. How all of that works together to make a vido game system that's fun and challenging for a player.
[01:31] Brian> So as you play through these games and you're learning, you're also earning all of those avatars and characters and blocks you'll be able to use in your game. At any time you can switch over to the design experience in your workshop and make your own game. It's all drag-and-drop parameterized-based design.
[01:49] Brian> So I'm gonna make a really simple game right now. I'm gonna start by adding an avatar - that'll be the guy I'll control - and every game needs to have a goal in it, so I'm gonna add a goal block.
[02:00] <TITLE> The view zooms in on the laptop screen
[02:00] Brian> Then I'm just gonna throw a few more blocks in here just so we have something else going on in our game environment. Just like that, I have a really simple game. It's not a very good game, but it's simple - I've got my Avatar over to his goal block. Now that
What happened to this country that suddenly nationalist sentiments become so popular?
Recession (both pre-official and official), xenophobic fears about Muslims, a generation growing up with certain nationalities that statistically are a greater source of problems (whether cause or effect is up for debate), fear of loss of identity, leading to parties like the PVV, which in turn go for a populist agenda.
Poles, for example, have been singled out for a long time but most people just didn't really care. Example: truck drivers. Whereas Dutch truck drivers need all sorts of papers that cost thousands of their personal money to attain, the Polish ones do not. Thanks to EU directives, there's freedom of travel/commerce, so a lot of Polish drivers manage to land jobs here, and can bid lower because they don't have the loans to pay off. It's only after the popular weblog 'Nostyle' decided to single them out on a variety of issues, in addition to the debacle in Zeeland where a woman was illegally hiring Poles for farmwork (and mistreated them as well), that it became a national issue of political import. That in turn lead to the PVV's website where people can complain about Eastern Europeans. Only complain, you can't say anything nice of course (at least, it's not counted). You also can't complain about Americans or British or even other Dutch. Eastern Europeans are specifically singled out - but they did it wisely enough that it's not against any laws, neither Dutch nor on the EU level. So while the EU has officially asked the Dutch PM to renounce the website, the Dutch PM just shrugs it off and says the website is a matter for the PVV and not him. Whether a matter of principle of because he doesn't want to lose the PVV's support (the ruling parties have a minority and need the PVV vote to push items through a lot of the time) is also up for debate.
This isn't something that only happens in NL, it's just more starkly present because NL used to be seen as being highly tolerant - and now a lot of that is disappearing (pot is slowly being made illegal, prostitution reduced, euthanasia is under fire and if some groups had their way then NL would be ratifying a 'personhood' law (see: Missouri) as well.).
But you need but look at Denmark (wanting to re-instate border controls), France (wanting to curb influx of refugees), Italy (wanting to shield off their southern borders from refugees), Germany (long-standing struggle with Turkish people), Switzerland (ban on minarets) and so forth and so on to see that this is definitely not just an NL thing. ( Poland itself has a very strong anti-gay sentiment, despite relatively accepting policies, but that's not a xenophobic issue. )
tl;dr: it's fear, fear of loss of identify, fear of the unknown future.
They went to that house, found nothing suspicious, and thus nothing to go on with regard to entering the house due to a situation of duress, nor anything to get a warrant for a search.
Yes, it's horrible what happened to that woman. On the other hand, I don't think it's desirable that if I, and a few neighbors, just call the police saying there's screaming from your house, that the police come busting though your door, guns drawn, only to find you enjoying a cup of coffee - but hey, that's what you get for partying a little too loudly the week before.
Same here - yeah, the guy claims that the iPad claims it's somewhere. But in NL, that's simply not enough for a search warrant. It should be enough for further investigation, but that's different from a search warrant. On the other hand, with half the population telling the police to go catch some 'real' criminals, a stolen iPad may be very low on the list of priorities for the cops in that department.
Good job on making a polarizing post, though - complaining about speed tickets is always highly popular and suggesting that those cops should go after thieves instead works so well. So popular that a populist party managed to get a few roads changed from 120km/h to 130km/h maximum speed - and already there's people complaining about getting a speeding ticket for going 140km/h. ( note: Longest distance you can drive in NL is about 390km. By driving 86 instead of 80, you save 20 minutes. Presuming traffic, lights, intersections, etc. don't slow you down one bit and you take no breaks. Plus most highways are actually 120km/h and your savings are even lower. But you go you speeder, you. )
Here's the rub, though: when's the last time you remember the police catching murderers, rapists, hit-and-run drivers, etc.? Chances are that you can't - that's not because the police is wholly incompetent, but because you're not nearly as likely to hear about it in the media. And when's the last time you've dealt with the police yourself outside of your speeding, parking, etc. ticket? Probably not anytime recent either. So your opinion of the police is rather easily tainted.
I'm not saying they don't deserve criticism - they do, but sometimes they're just vilified for no well-thought-through reason.
On the up side, these new findings might spur further interest and get them funding via other means. Or they can just try another KickStarter project - many who failed to get funded the first time around just try again.
That said, their original goal was certainly high for the project given and justification for it wasn't really given. Perhaps if they chopped things up into multiple goals, they would more easily reach those.
I'm not above saying that Kari is an attractive young woman (just as the young lady at the EFF booth was very pleasing to the eye).
However, if you've ever done any people watching, or even just hit google images with a random name, you'll know that attractive young women, and attractive young men, are a dime a dozen.
I would much more value Kari for her beliefs, knowledge, etc. than her looks.
And to whom it matters what the person looks like, there's certainly a lot more videos where those persons will exploit it. Unfortunately Slashdot didn't cover this (as far as I know), but it's a good read about how some women are exploiting themselves for some of Google's sweet, sweet advertising money: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/07/alejandra-gaitain-and-you_n_1328195.html
Storage is pretty cheap - I've got 200 ISOs of full DVDs (ripped, only things stripped are the region codes, etc.) - and that's not counting the ones that are just the files not stuck into an ISO container yet (no need, VLC will play them back regardless).
Conversion might make for smaller files, but you also incur a loss of quality - and more often than not you'll lose things either because you choose to or because the program chooses for you (where'd my DVD extras go!? - what do you mean the only subtitles are German? why is this movie in the French dub rather than its original Japanese that was on the DVD!?).
In addition, converting video takes a long time without a dedicated piece of hardware (yes, GPUs can help - dedicated hardware, on the other hand, blasts through it).
This is also what makes me wary of the initiatives in this story - so I pay $2 for content that I already have, in lesser quality, with less stuff - for the convenience of not having to rip it myself? I think I'll save the $2 and just occasionally swap DVDs after the software is done ripping it (can continue working, gaming, whatever while it's doing that).
Maybe if the $2 was an upgrade to HD material for the main movie, at least... then it might be more attractive.
Title: Introducing the League for Gamers Description: A voice for gamers and game developers
[00:00] <TITLE> The Slashdot logo with "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." scrolls across the bottom of the view from left to right. The view is of interviewee Kari Hale in a hallway, standing near exit doors - as good as location as any.
[00:00] Kari> The League for Gamers is a non-profit organization that was started by our CEO at Red Five Studios, Mark Kern and it brings gamers and game developers together to give us a united voice and to support gaming rights.
[00:13] Timothy> How long has the League been around?
[00:15] Kari> It's been around for a couple of months now. We were prompted to start the organization when all the SOPA things were going down. We actually shut down our FireFall and Red Five Studios website and we decided we wanted to make this a longer term thing to pursue.
[00:29] Timothy> What is some examples of what League for Gamers does?
[00:33] Kari> What we do is we try to be politically active. I can give two examples of what we've done in the past:
[00:38] Kari> With SOPA for example I just mentioned we took our websites down, we started a petition where we got thousands of signatures from gamers and game developers to protest SOPA and PIPA.
[00:50] Kari> Another one that we just successfully completed was for the Oklahoma Gaming Tax. What Oklahoma tried to do was put a 1% tax on all games that were rated Teen and above. What we did is we sent a petition out to our members and we protested it and the bill has since been dropped.
[01:08] Timothy> How (? stateful)
[01:09] Kari> A very interesting story, actually, Red Five Studios CEO Mark Kern, we had invested about $15,000 to attend E3. When we found out that the ESA who puts on E3 supports SOPA, we withdrew the money, we canceled our booth at E3, and we took that money and we started League for Gamers. In the future we'll probably be having memberships - within the next month or so - all the people that sign up now won't have to pay dues, but they're more than welcome to donate to the cause.
[01:39] Timothy> Who should be part of League for Gamers? Is it mostly for people in the industry? Is it meant for ordinary people? Who should really be concerned about this?
[1:47] Kari> I think League for Gamers actually casts a pretty wide net. You have the gamer who doesn't want their rights taken away, they want to be able to express themselves freely online. You have the indie game developer that's not properly being represented by organizations like the ESA, that tend to represent the bigger companies. But also, we really do try to work for First Amendment rights, and that's something that applies to anybody who uses the internet and supports free speech.
[02:13] Timothy> One more thing, a question I didn't have until just now, but it's from a game company [...]
[02:19] Kari> Yes.
[02:19.5] Timothy> [...] basically, the background, [...]
[02:20] Kari> Yes.
[02:20.5] Timothy> [...] and, does it benefit everybody in the industry? Is it tied to [?] companies? Talk about how political or apolitical the industry tied it is.
[2:33.5] Kari> The League for Gamers? Well, I can say right now, we're not tied to any... we're not politically affiliated in any way. We're just a group of people that want our voices to be heard. We're not lobbying, we don't have people in Washington that are lobbying for us right now. It's really an organic organization that really does support the smaller gamer that right now - his voice is being lost
[02:54] <TITLE> The Slashdot logo with "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." scrolls across the bottom of the view from left to right.
VLC plays back FLVs quite well - the problem is getting the FLV in the first place.. I couldn't be bothered trying to find out how ooyala tries to keep the file from users.
Audacity is an audio recording/editing/playing app - I used it to record the audio so that I more easily seek through it for the transcript. ( I can additionally use it to slow down playback while keeping pitch so I can more easily keep up with what's being said - I'm not a stenographer - but usually it's not needed. )
Well it's not so much the phone (in terms of hardware) as it is the Launcher - it's not the stock Android one but some HTC custom thing. I haven't gotten around to putting CyanogenMod on it yet to get the stock one on there. Then again, quick Google search points out that it's not devoid of crashes. I suppose it might be a widget that's actually interfering - but then I've never had a Today item on WM cause its parent process to crash.
off-topic: apparently we can't have any dissenting voices essentially pointing out that for WM you didn't need an (official) app store - much like Android, although a recent news item pointed out already that Google would like a firmer grip there - and that there were aspects of WM that one can actually think were desirable.
Well, I can't speak for the other one, but I won't miss it much. If anything, it was an atrocity that caused vendor lock-in and made it impossible to find some programs available elsewhere even from the authors' websites.
Can still get plenty of Windows Mobile software from other websites, and new software continues to be made despite the platform's waning presence on the market.
I do enjoy my Android, but there's plenty about Windows Mobile that I miss. inb4 jokes about crashes: haven't had one on my WM(5). On the other hand, the Launcher process on my Android sure likes crashing a lot. At least it restores itself automatically, I suppose.
Funny.. I was just re-watching SGU and while encountering The season 2 episode "Hope", one of the secondary characters goes into end-stage renal failure. As part of his treatment, the medic on board describes how they found a kidney transplant procedure in which The Ancients used a bone marrow transplant beforehand to help prevent the donated organ from being rejected.
Without having read the article, I'm going to guess that this was considered possibly feasible long before and the SGU writers picked up on that, but I still thought it neat that something that might otherwise be considered science fiction is, in fact, quite possible today.
Title: Derek's "Amateur" Rockets Fly to 120,000+ Feet Description: Derek Deville builds amazing rockets. For fun.
[00:00] <TITLE> The Slashdot logo with "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." scrolls and zooms along the left side of the view, superimposed over a 'small' rocket's take-off event.
[00:03] <TITLE> Derek Deville and the Qu8ke (pronounced "Quake") Rocket
[00:03] Timothy> Derek Deville is a serious amateur rocket maker. Today, Derek was kind enough to allow me both into his home workshop, and here in the former Chess Hall of Fame, his current workplace, where many of the parts for Qu8ke were actually fabricated.
[00:16] <TITLE> A picture of a workshop with a large cylindrical casing on struts with a man, Derek Deville, is in view.
[00:16] Derek> This is a filament-wound composite casing, aluminum-wrapped with a phenolic carbon fibre-wrapped nozzle. This is a 5,000lbs thrust hybrid motor. We fired this one already. These have enough fuel to burn for 34 seconds. We've tested full duration burns.
[00:33] <TITLE> A rocket motor test, with large high velocity exhaust plume, is shown.
[00:54] <TITLE>. Back to the workshop, the view pans to a large cylindrical metallic object standing upright and a set of other cylindrical casings stacked up beside it.
[00:54] Derek> This is the aluminum test version of that. I wouldn't even dare to lean this all the way over; it's too heavy, it's still got propellant in it. It's another 12 inch. There's another 12 inch casing over there, and a bunch of 6 inch stuff. The 12 inch ones are what we call the Hyperion Two, and the 6 inch is the Hyperion One.
[01:14] <TITLE> The video pans upward along a set of racks, revealing a rocket with stabilization fins laying across the top struts of the racks.
[01:14] Derek> You can see up there is a 16 inch full-scale nike smoke. It doesn't have a nosecone on it, it's got a different nosecone on it, temporarily.
[01:23] <TITLE> The view changes to a zoomed in view of the rocket being discussed.
[01:24] Derek> But that is one I made a P-motor for and flew at an LDRS [...]
[01:28] <TITLE> The view changes back to the view of the racks, and follows Derek around the workshop.
[01:28] Derek> [...] some years ago. If you swing around over here besides the funky mannequins... Oh, here's a piece of finstock. This is the finstock that was used for Hyperion.
[01:39] <TITLE> Derek is shown holding the piece of finstock.
[01:39] Derek> This is an extrusion that we had made, so it had that profile matched to 6 inch diameter casing and then had the fin... so that when we trim this to be fin profile, and fin profile with leading and trailing edges, and drill it out.. and then this would be secured directly onto the motor casing.
[02:01] Derek> So this is a compression-molded phenolic nozzle that forms the convergence, the throat, and the divergence. These are glued into a XX grade [ia] phenolic liner with another compression-molded phenolic forward closure. The injector would seal right in here and then eject, you can see the tapered cone, the way that the nitrous impinged the fuel grains. This is a fully-consumed fuel grain. This is about a Q motor.
[02:40] Derek> And then 12 inch versions here. Similar to what was done with Qu8ke, we had kevlar molded nose cones made for Hyperions back in the day. That fits the 6 inch motor casing.
[02:55] <TITLE> The same rocket launch from the opening title is shown.
[03:00] <TITLE> Video following Derek around the machine shop is shown.
[03:00] Derek> This is the Syntheon machine shop. This is where all the Qu8ke machining parts were made. We've got a standard lathe and a precision, smaller, lathe. Nose cone parts were fabricated here. Standar
Which is to say that they're using a video player even worse than JWPlayer in terms of performance and stability (seeking leads to the infinite spinning disc, the video catching up to the buffering leads to a complete halt, and the video plays back with drops and hangs (literally, I couldn't interact with the thing for 20 seconds just now).
They don't have much choice if they choose Ooyala as the distribution platform of choice for some reason, but then I have to question the distribution platform of choice.
Audacity, here I come again.
Also, this cowboy needs to slow down because it has been only 4 minutes since I last posted a reply.
I think I covered that!... although, having him be hit over the head is a lot more plausible than the heart attack thing, I suppose. Let's go with your suggestion!:D
I can tell you with what joy it is to live in a city where listening to B-grade hip hop music on tinny cell phone speakers is the norm. That you can't stop
You can't, or you won't?
but when I have to be subjected to a very lengthy screaming match between baby-momma and her baby-daddy, with a push of a button I can cut that nonsense out.
I see...
I can't do much about the panhandlers that pass through the trains hocking bootleg DVDs, scented oils or begging for quarters,
really? you can't? hmm
but I CAN do something about the chaff of society who can't keep their Jerry Springer drama to themselves, and so I shut them down with a jammer
Oh okay, I see what you're saying now.
If you could turn off all the B-grade hip hop music with the push of a button, you would. If you could shut the panhandlers down with a jammer, you would.
In essence, if you could do something about X in practical anonymity with an easily concealed device with little to no chance of getting caught, you would.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not calling you chickenshit. Certainly it's much better to avoid conflict with the baby-momma and her posse by just letting her call drop instead of confronting her in person.
Unfortunately, however, it also means you're affecting the person just quietly talking, the person just doing some texting, the person just browsing the web, and - provided that the bus isn't a magic faraday cage for your outgoing jammer signal - anybody in the vicinity of the bus.
Not to mention that...
If an emergency crops up, I turn the device off.
...it's impossible for you to determine that. For one thing, you can't magically know about remote emergencies that require a person to be called.
For another, what if you are the emergency? You're on the highway, you get a heart attack, you fall down, your jammer's still on - nobody can call it in.. they flag down another driver, their phone doesn't work either, they figure it must just be reception there, so (rather than asking another drive to call from somewhere where they can get a signal) they drive the bus further to get a signal again, but still nothing.
I know, society survived without cellphones, I'm sure it will when somebody misses, or can't place, an important call just as well.
But please do choose your jamming moments wisely, and consider the unintended consequences - be that your own untimely demise (I <3 my contrived example!) or somebody's casual game of Wordfeud being cut short.
The DMCA does not require that Flickr take the images down.
...to also cover the "disable access to" part.
If I 'take a page down' on a website I manage, it usually means I'm just making it inaccessible. Even colloquially I'd argue this to be the case... e.g. when we say that "the website is down", we certainly don't mean that the website has been removed - just that it is inaccessible.
The DMCA does not require that Flickr take the images down. Only that they respond appropriately to the DMCA takedown notice. A perfectly reasonable response would be to pass on that notification to the user, and allow them to challenge it BEFORE you take it down.
Legalese is a language all of its own, but maybe an 'IAAL' can clarify... Under USC 512 ( http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#512 ) Section (c) Information Residing on Systems or Networks at Direction of Users. 1c, states:
upon notification of claimed infringement as described in paragraph (3), responds expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity.
(emphasis mine)
Doesn't that mean that the clause does in fact require that Flickr 'take the images down' insofar as making them inaccessible?
Title: NuCaptcha makes video captches Description: Video captchas are hard for machines to decipher, but easy for humans
[00:00] <TITLE> The Slashdot logo with "news for News. Stuff that matters" scrolls into view over a picture of Timothy Lord.
[00:00] Timothy> I talked to a Vancouver-base company called NuCaptcha.
[00:04] <TITLE> NuCaptcha at RSA 2012 Interviewer: Timothy Lord
[00:04] NuCaptcha is trying to make captchas both less annoying and more effective through the use first of all video rather than only still images, and second of behavioral analysis. In other words, if you seem to be a problem user - like a spammer - you actually get a harder question. It's not the same as everyone.
[00:18] <TITLE> Christopher Bailey, NuCaptcha Chief Technology Officer appears over a picture of Christopher Bailey at the NuCaptcha booth.
[00:19] Christopher> Hi, our company is NuCaptcha, and we're based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Christopher> Captchas are predominantly used as authentications, password resets, forms, trying to prevent spam and so on. Christopher> So they're predominently used whereever you'd have a form where somebody's committing information into your site, where you might wanna protect it from an automated attack.
[00:40] <TITLE> http://nucaptcha.com/ says: "NuCaptcha's Behavior Analaysis System Reduces Cybercrime"
[00:40] Christopher> What we've done is really look at the problem from a usability standpoint. Christopher> Trying to say, if we continue with the old method of having software come in and break the captcha, and the response to that is to create a more complex captcha to defeat the software, the result is that the users are having a harder and harder time solving the captcha as well.
[01:00] Christopher> So what we've done is looked at the usability problem and said "How can we make it so users can solve these captchas and continue to present an effective security response?" [01:09] <TITLE> A sample NuCaptcha video captcha challenge appears on screen. The video captcha with a green textured background reads: Security Challenge [a set of icons appears here:'reload', questionmark, speaker] VKN (in red, with each letter turning around its middle point axis) Type the moving letters: [an input form appears here]
[01:09] Christopher> So we've created a behavior analysis system. Christopher> What that does is, we're a cloud-based platform, and as we integrate with our customers, we get behavior information from them of how the user's interacting with the website, what they're doing, and we create a behavior profile and from that we create a risk profile for each user. Christopher> This correlates to an IP-basis.
[01:30] <TITLE> Another NuCaptcha example captcha appears on screen. This captcha is a plain black background, with otherwise similar behavior in the red captcha letters: CKP. The icons have moved to the right side of the video and a Submit button is present next to the input field.
[01:30] Christopher> Based on that risk, we will deploy a different security response; In some cases it's a really easy to solve captcha, so it's really focused on usability. In other cases we will present a captcha that is much stronger and that provides a lot more defense against an OCR or software attack.
[01:45] Christopher> Some of our clients are ad biz, and the social space, O2 - which is a large telecom provider in the U.K. [...]
[01:52] <TITLE> Another NuCaptcha video captcha appears on screen. In this captcha, the background is a set of animated figure moving through the picture, such as a man on a bike and a woman jogging, with the letters: OUTDOORS (in white) SRG (in red) animating across the picture in a waveform pattern, with the red letters moving as in the other captcha examples.
Suppose the hacker in question was _so good_, that they managed to write their tools and enabling hacks, such that the only bandwidth 'stolen', was known, with scientific and engineering accuracy, to have gone completely unused.
That sounds fair, but only in principle.
Let's say you and I both run a web business out of our homes. You've got your website running on your local Apache copy, I've got mine. On that website, you're selling product X, and I'm selling product X as well. As part of your at-home business, you pay your ISP for a 2GB/month upload cap, say, $100. You only ever use a maximum of 1GB, however. The ISP's next lower tier is 500MB/month, so you can't downgrade. So 1GB is left over. I take that 1GB from you. You're not using it anyway, so no harm no foul, right? Except that I'm not paying that $100. I'm not even paying 'my share' of $50. As a result, I price the items in my store lower than yours - as I don't have that additional expense, or I price them the same and simple take in a higher profit. Suddenly, ham/foul.
Now, this is a contrived example, and when you use other analogies (Food banks getting food for free, letting others eat for free while you had to pay top dollar for that same food. The kid next door using a pirated copy of Photoshop and doing their commercial web design while you paid for your legitimate copy.) the opinion of whether harm/foul comes into play is going to differ wildly even within the same person's mind.
But the point is that it's not a third party's decision whether it's okay or not to take any unused good without permission. In the example, you paid for the right to not use that 1GB. Is it a shame to let it go to waste? Perhaps. But that's your decision - you could give somebody permission to use it, for free or otherwise, but still your decision.
Microsoft are planning this, more or less.. mostly less, of course, because they're Microsoft.
That said, one site that I've seen suggested before is: http://ninite.com/
It's not just open source software, and it's not even 100% free-as-in-mythical-free-beer (trial version of MS Office, for example), but it does have a great many open source applications listed and makes installing them and keeping them updated pretty simple.
It's not a complete set, but it is probably 'enough' for the casual user - and the concept could easily grow to accommodate more applications without losing sight of the fact that having 100 applications that all do the same thing is more confusing than helpful.
Slashdot Mirror
But it's not actually about ISPs detecting whether or not you're doing something that some group or another believes you should not be doing.
I know it's out of fashion to actually RTFA, but:
That's not about the ISP accusing them - but those groups that are involved with the program.
It may make it easier for those groups to, down the line, suggest that ISPs should just take on that task as well - but that's still quite a leap away from "US ISP's become copyright cops" as the current subject suggests.
Under this program, ISPs would become mailmen (telling people that group X thinks you're doing something illegal), intermediaries (checking whether you got that mail) and executors of court-less verdicts (throttling, cutting off internet access altogether), but that doesn't make them cops.
It's still undesirable behavior to most of their customers, which might make one wonder why ISPs are agreeing to this in the first place. On the other hand, most ISP ToS's already state you can't use the service for illegal activities - which distributing copyrighted material without explicit license to do so falls under - so it's not that far of a stretch for those groups to suggest that ISPs actually enforce their own rules better or be faced with legal action instead.
Wait.. is this actually a Timothy interview? I assumed, but there doesn't seem to be any credit and, come to think of it, it didn't really sound like him (there's a lot of background noise in the part where the interviewer actually speaks, though).
If it's not Timothy - sorry dude-whose-name-wasn't-noted!
Can't say you'd miss much from the video this time around, other than that it becomes clear that it is a relatively simple 2D tile-based environment (at least, that which is shown).
Title: Gamestar Mechanics Teaches Kids to Make Video Games
Description: "Level up" from player to designer
[00:00] <TITLE>
The Shashdot logo with "News for nerds. Stuff that matters" zooms out from the top-right to the bottom-left corner.
A view of the interviewee, Brian Alspach, fades in. He is standing in front of a booth backdrop that reads "... just play games when you can make them?" and "...me Generation" and "...th game design studios"
[00:01] Brian>
I'm Brian Alspach I'm the Executive Vice President at E-Line Media, makers of Gamestar Mechanic.
[00:06] Brian>
At E-Line we like to make educational games, games that connect things that kids are really interested in [...]
[00:12] <TITLE>
A view of a few children behind laptops.
[00:12] Brian>
and passionate about with real learning.
[00:14] Brian>
So in Gamestar you start out playing a fun game where you're learning to design and make games.
[00:20] <TITLE>
Back to the view of Brian talking in front of the booth backdrop.
[00:20] Brian>
But then you get a chance to actually make games of your own, and really reinforce critical thinking skills, systems thinking skills, design literacies.
So really excited about doing something like that where we take what kids really like to do and connect it with what they can do.
[00:33] <TITLE>
The view changes to Brian sitting behind a laptop on a desk with a view of the laptop's screen.
[00:33] Brian>
It's really designed for kids age 8 to 14 as their first experience in game design.
[00:38] Brian>
We're gonna go ahead and get started.
I'm gonna log into my account, I'll show you guys a few things.
[00:43] Brian>
Most kids in games start out in our Quest.
[00:46] <TITLE>
The view changes to a screen capture of the Gamestar Mechanic website showing the Quest.
[00:46] Brian>
The Quest is an adventure game story where you are playing the kind of game you'll eventually be able to make.
You play through this fun adventure game, and as you're doing it, you're learning the principles of game design.
[01:00] <TITLE>
The view changes back to Brian sitting behind the laptop.
[01:00] Brian>
You're also earning all of the tools and the assets you'll eventually be able to use when you make your own games.
[01:06] Brian>
We start you off playing the kind of games you'll make and then eventually we'll put you in missions - and this is the very first level you're seeing here - we're sort of teaching you how to move around, but you're also learning about how the enemies, the avatars, the goals, having locks and keys here as a first goal and trying to reach the end of the game as a second goal.
How all of that works together to make a vido game system that's fun and challenging for a player.
[01:31] Brian>
So as you play through these games and you're learning, you're also earning all of those avatars and characters and blocks you'll be able to use in your game.
At any time you can switch over to the design experience in your workshop and make your own game.
It's all drag-and-drop parameterized-based design.
[01:49] Brian>
So I'm gonna make a really simple game right now.
I'm gonna start by adding an avatar - that'll be the guy I'll control - and every game needs to have a goal in it, so I'm gonna add a goal block.
[02:00] <TITLE>
The view zooms in on the laptop screen
[02:00] Brian>
Then I'm just gonna throw a few more blocks in here just so we have something else going on in our game environment.
Just like that, I have a really simple game.
It's not a very good game, but it's simple - I've got my Avatar over to his goal block.
Now that
Recession (both pre-official and official), xenophobic fears about Muslims, a generation growing up with certain nationalities that statistically are a greater source of problems (whether cause or effect is up for debate), fear of loss of identity, leading to parties like the PVV, which in turn go for a populist agenda.
Poles, for example, have been singled out for a long time but most people just didn't really care.
Example: truck drivers. Whereas Dutch truck drivers need all sorts of papers that cost thousands of their personal money to attain, the Polish ones do not. Thanks to EU directives, there's freedom of travel/commerce, so a lot of Polish drivers manage to land jobs here, and can bid lower because they don't have the loans to pay off.
It's only after the popular weblog 'Nostyle' decided to single them out on a variety of issues, in addition to the debacle in Zeeland where a woman was illegally hiring Poles for farmwork (and mistreated them as well), that it became a national issue of political import.
That in turn lead to the PVV's website where people can complain about Eastern Europeans. Only complain, you can't say anything nice of course (at least, it's not counted). You also can't complain about Americans or British or even other Dutch. Eastern Europeans are specifically singled out - but they did it wisely enough that it's not against any laws, neither Dutch nor on the EU level. So while the EU has officially asked the Dutch PM to renounce the website, the Dutch PM just shrugs it off and says the website is a matter for the PVV and not him. Whether a matter of principle of because he doesn't want to lose the PVV's support (the ruling parties have a minority and need the PVV vote to push items through a lot of the time) is also up for debate.
This isn't something that only happens in NL, it's just more starkly present because NL used to be seen as being highly tolerant - and now a lot of that is disappearing (pot is slowly being made illegal, prostitution reduced, euthanasia is under fire and if some groups had their way then NL would be ratifying a 'personhood' law (see: Missouri) as well.).
But you need but look at Denmark (wanting to re-instate border controls), France (wanting to curb influx of refugees), Italy (wanting to shield off their southern borders from refugees), Germany (long-standing struggle with Turkish people), Switzerland (ban on minarets) and so forth and so on to see that this is definitely not just an NL thing.
( Poland itself has a very strong anti-gay sentiment, despite relatively accepting policies, but that's not a xenophobic issue. )
tl;dr: it's fear, fear of loss of identify, fear of the unknown future.
Hindsight is 20/20, isn't it?
They went to that house, found nothing suspicious, and thus nothing to go on with regard to entering the house due to a situation of duress, nor anything to get a warrant for a search.
Yes, it's horrible what happened to that woman. On the other hand, I don't think it's desirable that if I, and a few neighbors, just call the police saying there's screaming from your house, that the police come busting though your door, guns drawn, only to find you enjoying a cup of coffee - but hey, that's what you get for partying a little too loudly the week before.
Same here - yeah, the guy claims that the iPad claims it's somewhere. But in NL, that's simply not enough for a search warrant.
It should be enough for further investigation, but that's different from a search warrant. On the other hand, with half the population telling the police to go catch some 'real' criminals, a stolen iPad may be very low on the list of priorities for the cops in that department.
Good job on making a polarizing post, though - complaining about speed tickets is always highly popular and suggesting that those cops should go after thieves instead works so well. So popular that a populist party managed to get a few roads changed from 120km/h to 130km/h maximum speed - and already there's people complaining about getting a speeding ticket for going 140km/h.
( note: Longest distance you can drive in NL is about 390km. By driving 86 instead of 80, you save 20 minutes. Presuming traffic, lights, intersections, etc. don't slow you down one bit and you take no breaks. Plus most highways are actually 120km/h and your savings are even lower. But you go you speeder, you. )
Here's the rub, though: when's the last time you remember the police catching murderers, rapists, hit-and-run drivers, etc.?
Chances are that you can't - that's not because the police is wholly incompetent, but because you're not nearly as likely to hear about it in the media.
And when's the last time you've dealt with the police yourself outside of your speeding, parking, etc. ticket? Probably not anytime recent either.
So your opinion of the police is rather easily tainted.
I'm not saying they don't deserve criticism - they do, but sometimes they're just vilified for no well-thought-through reason.
Greetings, co-sad.
On the up side, these new findings might spur further interest and get them funding via other means. Or they can just try another KickStarter project - many who failed to get funded the first time around just try again.
That said, their original goal was certainly high for the project given and justification for it wasn't really given. Perhaps if they chopped things up into multiple goals, they would more easily reach those.
Hopefully, many.
I'm not above saying that Kari is an attractive young woman (just as the young lady at the EFF booth was very pleasing to the eye).
However, if you've ever done any people watching, or even just hit google images with a random name, you'll know that attractive young women, and attractive young men, are a dime a dozen.
I would much more value Kari for her beliefs, knowledge, etc. than her looks.
And to whom it matters what the person looks like, there's certainly a lot more videos where those persons will exploit it. Unfortunately Slashdot didn't cover this (as far as I know), but it's a good read about how some women are exploiting themselves for some of Google's sweet, sweet advertising money:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/07/alejandra-gaitain-and-you_n_1328195.html
Why are you converting, though?
Storage is pretty cheap - I've got 200 ISOs of full DVDs (ripped, only things stripped are the region codes, etc.) - and that's not counting the ones that are just the files not stuck into an ISO container yet (no need, VLC will play them back regardless).
Conversion might make for smaller files, but you also incur a loss of quality - and more often than not you'll lose things either because you choose to or because the program chooses for you (where'd my DVD extras go!? - what do you mean the only subtitles are German? why is this movie in the French dub rather than its original Japanese that was on the DVD!?).
In addition, converting video takes a long time without a dedicated piece of hardware (yes, GPUs can help - dedicated hardware, on the other hand, blasts through it).
This is also what makes me wary of the initiatives in this story - so I pay $2 for content that I already have, in lesser quality, with less stuff - for the convenience of not having to rip it myself? I think I'll save the $2 and just occasionally swap DVDs after the software is done ripping it (can continue working, gaming, whatever while it's doing that).
Maybe if the $2 was an upgrade to HD material for the main movie, at least... then it might be more attractive.
Title: Introducing the League for Gamers
Description: A voice for gamers and game developers
[00:00] <TITLE>
The Slashdot logo with "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." scrolls across the bottom of the view from left to right.
The view is of interviewee Kari Hale in a hallway, standing near exit doors - as good as location as any.
[00:00] Kari>
The League for Gamers is a non-profit organization that was started by our CEO at Red Five Studios, Mark Kern and it brings gamers and game developers together to give us a united voice and to support gaming rights.
[00:13] Timothy>
How long has the League been around?
[00:15] Kari>
It's been around for a couple of months now.
We were prompted to start the organization when all the SOPA things were going down.
We actually shut down our FireFall and Red Five Studios website and we decided we wanted to make this a longer term thing to pursue.
[00:29] Timothy>
What is some examples of what League for Gamers does?
[00:33] Kari>
What we do is we try to be politically active.
I can give two examples of what we've done in the past:
[00:38] Kari>
With SOPA for example I just mentioned we took our websites down, we started a petition where we got thousands of signatures from gamers and game developers to protest SOPA and PIPA.
[00:50] Kari>
Another one that we just successfully completed was for the Oklahoma Gaming Tax.
What Oklahoma tried to do was put a 1% tax on all games that were rated Teen and above.
What we did is we sent a petition out to our members and we protested it and the bill has since been dropped.
[01:08] Timothy>
How (? stateful)
[01:09] Kari>
A very interesting story, actually, Red Five Studios CEO Mark Kern, we had invested about $15,000 to attend E3.
When we found out that the ESA who puts on E3 supports SOPA, we withdrew the money, we canceled our booth at E3, and we took that money and we started League for Gamers.
In the future we'll probably be having memberships - within the next month or so - all the people that sign up now won't have to pay dues, but they're more than welcome to donate to the cause.
[01:39] Timothy>
Who should be part of League for Gamers?
Is it mostly for people in the industry?
Is it meant for ordinary people?
Who should really be concerned about this?
[1:47] Kari>
I think League for Gamers actually casts a pretty wide net.
You have the gamer who doesn't want their rights taken away, they want to be able to express themselves freely online.
You have the indie game developer that's not properly being represented by organizations like the ESA, that tend to represent the bigger companies.
But also, we really do try to work for First Amendment rights, and that's something that applies to anybody who uses the internet and supports free speech.
[02:13] Timothy>
One more thing, a question I didn't have until just now, but it's from a game company [...]
[02:19] Kari>
Yes.
[02:19.5] Timothy>
[...] basically, the background, [...]
[02:20] Kari>
Yes.
[02:20.5] Timothy>
[...] and, does it benefit everybody in the industry?
Is it tied to [?] companies?
Talk about how political or apolitical the industry tied it is.
[2:33.5] Kari> ... we're not politically affiliated in any way.
The League for Gamers?
Well, I can say right now, we're not tied to any
We're just a group of people that want our voices to be heard.
We're not lobbying, we don't have people in Washington that are lobbying for us right now.
It's really an organic organization that really does support the smaller gamer that right now - his voice is being lost
[02:54] <TITLE>
The Slashdot logo with "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." scrolls across the bottom of the view from left to right.
This was the KickStarter project:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/704089843/the-search-for-the-lost-da-vinci
In the mean time, the Double Fine Adventure game has raised $3M (including KickStarter's/Amazon's take).
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure
Patronage type project vs appeals-to-the-masses type project, I suppose.
VLC plays back FLVs quite well - the problem is getting the FLV in the first place.. I couldn't be bothered trying to find out how ooyala tries to keep the file from users.
Audacity is an audio recording/editing/playing app - I used it to record the audio so that I more easily seek through it for the transcript.
( I can additionally use it to slow down playback while keeping pitch so I can more easily keep up with what's being said - I'm not a stenographer - but usually it's not needed. )
Well it's not so much the phone (in terms of hardware) as it is the Launcher - it's not the stock Android one but some HTC custom thing. I haven't gotten around to putting CyanogenMod on it yet to get the stock one on there. Then again, quick Google search points out that it's not devoid of crashes. I suppose it might be a widget that's actually interfering - but then I've never had a Today item on WM cause its parent process to crash.
off-topic: apparently we can't have any dissenting voices essentially pointing out that for WM you didn't need an (official) app store - much like Android, although a recent news item pointed out already that Google would like a firmer grip there - and that there were aspects of WM that one can actually think were desirable.
Well, I can't speak for the other one, but I won't miss it much. If anything, it was an atrocity that caused vendor lock-in and made it impossible to find some programs available elsewhere even from the authors' websites.
Can still get plenty of Windows Mobile software from other websites, and new software continues to be made despite the platform's waning presence on the market.
I do enjoy my Android, but there's plenty about Windows Mobile that I miss. inb4 jokes about crashes: haven't had one on my WM(5). On the other hand, the Launcher process on my Android sure likes crashing a lot. At least it restores itself automatically, I suppose.
Funny.. I was just re-watching SGU and while encountering The season 2 episode "Hope", one of the secondary characters goes into end-stage renal failure. As part of his treatment, the medic on board describes how they found a kidney transplant procedure in which The Ancients used a bone marrow transplant beforehand to help prevent the donated organ from being rejected.
Without having read the article, I'm going to guess that this was considered possibly feasible long before and the SGU writers picked up on that, but I still thought it neat that something that might otherwise be considered science fiction is, in fact, quite possible today.
Title: Derek's "Amateur" Rockets Fly to 120,000+ Feet
Description: Derek Deville builds amazing rockets. For fun.
[00:00] <TITLE>
The Slashdot logo with "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." scrolls and zooms along the left side of the view, superimposed over a 'small' rocket's take-off event.
[00:03] <TITLE>
Derek Deville and the Qu8ke (pronounced "Quake") Rocket
[00:03] Timothy>
Derek Deville is a serious amateur rocket maker.
Today, Derek was kind enough to allow me both into his home workshop, and here in the former Chess Hall of Fame, his current workplace, where many of the parts for Qu8ke were actually fabricated.
[00:16] <TITLE>
A picture of a workshop with a large cylindrical casing on struts with a man, Derek Deville, is in view.
[00:16] Derek>
This is a filament-wound composite casing, aluminum-wrapped with a phenolic carbon fibre-wrapped nozzle.
This is a 5,000lbs thrust hybrid motor.
We fired this one already.
These have enough fuel to burn for 34 seconds.
We've tested full duration burns.
[00:33] <TITLE>
A rocket motor test, with large high velocity exhaust plume, is shown.
[00:54] <TITLE>.
Back to the workshop, the view pans to a large cylindrical metallic object standing upright and a set of other cylindrical casings stacked up beside it.
[00:54] Derek>
This is the aluminum test version of that.
I wouldn't even dare to lean this all the way over; it's too heavy, it's still got propellant in it.
It's another 12 inch.
There's another 12 inch casing over there, and a bunch of 6 inch stuff.
The 12 inch ones are what we call the Hyperion Two, and the 6 inch is the Hyperion One.
[01:14] <TITLE>
The video pans upward along a set of racks, revealing a rocket with stabilization fins laying across the top struts of the racks.
[01:14] Derek>
You can see up there is a 16 inch full-scale nike smoke.
It doesn't have a nosecone on it, it's got a different nosecone on it, temporarily.
[01:23] <TITLE>
The view changes to a zoomed in view of the rocket being discussed.
[01:24] Derek>
But that is one I made a P-motor for and flew at an LDRS [...]
[01:28] <TITLE>
The view changes back to the view of the racks, and follows Derek around the workshop.
[01:28] Derek> ...
[...] some years ago.
If you swing around over here besides the funky mannequins
Oh, here's a piece of finstock.
This is the finstock that was used for Hyperion.
[01:39] <TITLE>
Derek is shown holding the piece of finstock.
[01:39] Derek>
This is an extrusion that we had made, so it had that profile matched to 6 inch diameter casing and then had the fin... so that when we trim this to be fin profile, and fin profile with leading and trailing edges, and drill it out.. and then this would be secured directly onto the motor casing.
[02:01] Derek>
So this is a compression-molded phenolic nozzle that forms the convergence, the throat, and the divergence.
These are glued into a XX grade [ia] phenolic liner with another compression-molded phenolic forward closure.
The injector would seal right in here and then eject, you can see the tapered cone, the way that the nitrous impinged the fuel grains.
This is a fully-consumed fuel grain.
This is about a Q motor.
[02:40] Derek>
And then 12 inch versions here.
Similar to what was done with Qu8ke, we had kevlar molded nose cones made for Hyperions back in the day.
That fits the 6 inch motor casing.
[02:55] <TITLE>
The same rocket launch from the opening title is shown.
[03:00] <TITLE>
Video following Derek around the machine shop is shown.
[03:00] Derek>
This is the Syntheon machine shop.
This is where all the Qu8ke machining parts were made.
We've got a standard lathe and a precision, smaller, lathe.
Nose cone parts were fabricated here.
Standar
No, they're 'rethinking video with Ooyala'.
Which is to say that they're using a video player even worse than JWPlayer in terms of performance and stability (seeking leads to the infinite spinning disc, the video catching up to the buffering leads to a complete halt, and the video plays back with drops and hangs (literally, I couldn't interact with the thing for 20 seconds just now).
They don't have much choice if they choose Ooyala as the distribution platform of choice for some reason, but then I have to question the distribution platform of choice.
Audacity, here I come again.
Also, this cowboy needs to slow down because it has been only 4 minutes since I last posted a reply.
yes, you're supposed to forget that there's a "t" in 8.
The video does mention how this is pronounced.. specifically.. at 3 seconds in:
I think I covered that! ... although, having him be hit over the head is a lot more plausible than the heart attack thing, I suppose. Let's go with your suggestion! :D
You can't, or you won't?
I see...
really? you can't? hmm
Oh okay, I see what you're saying now.
If you could turn off all the B-grade hip hop music with the push of a button, you would.
If you could shut the panhandlers down with a jammer, you would.
In essence, if you could do something about X in practical anonymity with an easily concealed device with little to no chance of getting caught, you would.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not calling you chickenshit. Certainly it's much better to avoid conflict with the baby-momma and her posse by just letting her call drop instead of confronting her in person.
Unfortunately, however, it also means you're affecting the person just quietly talking, the person just doing some texting, the person just browsing the web, and - provided that the bus isn't a magic faraday cage for your outgoing jammer signal - anybody in the vicinity of the bus.
Not to mention that...
For another, what if you are the emergency? You're on the highway, you get a heart attack, you fall down, your jammer's still on - nobody can call it in.. they flag down another driver, their phone doesn't work either, they figure it must just be reception there, so (rather than asking another drive to call from somewhere where they can get a signal) they drive the bus further to get a signal again, but still nothing.
I know, society survived without cellphones, I'm sure it will when somebody misses, or can't place, an important call just as well.
But please do choose your jamming moments wisely, and consider the unintended consequences - be that your own untimely demise (I <3 my contrived example!) or somebody's casual game of Wordfeud being cut short.
I understood WiglyWorm's statement...
If I 'take a page down' on a website I manage, it usually means I'm just making it inaccessible. Even colloquially I'd argue this to be the case... e.g. when we say that "the website is down", we certainly don't mean that the website has been removed - just that it is inaccessible.
Maybe that's just me, though :)
Legalese is a language all of its own, but maybe an 'IAAL' can clarify...
Under USC 512 ( http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#512 )
Section (c) Information Residing on Systems or Networks at Direction of Users.
1c, states:
(emphasis mine)
Doesn't that mean that the clause does in fact require that Flickr 'take the images down' insofar as making them inaccessible?
Title: NuCaptcha makes video captches
Description: Video captchas are hard for machines to decipher, but easy for humans
[00:00] <TITLE>
The Slashdot logo with "news for News. Stuff that matters" scrolls into view over a picture of Timothy Lord.
[00:00]
Timothy> I talked to a Vancouver-base company called NuCaptcha.
[00:04] <TITLE>
NuCaptcha at RSA 2012
Interviewer: Timothy Lord
[00:04]
NuCaptcha is trying to make captchas both less annoying and more effective through the use first of all video rather than only still images, and second of behavioral analysis.
In other words, if you seem to be a problem user - like a spammer - you actually get a harder question.
It's not the same as everyone.
[00:18] <TITLE>
Christopher Bailey, NuCaptcha
Chief Technology Officer
appears over a picture of Christopher Bailey at the NuCaptcha booth.
[00:19]
Christopher> Hi, our company is NuCaptcha, and we're based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Christopher> Captchas are predominantly used as authentications, password resets, forms, trying to prevent spam and so on.
Christopher> So they're predominently used whereever you'd have a form where somebody's committing information into your site, where you might wanna protect it from an automated attack.
[00:40] <TITLE>
http://nucaptcha.com/ says: "NuCaptcha's Behavior Analaysis System Reduces Cybercrime"
[00:40]
Christopher> What we've done is really look at the problem from a usability standpoint.
Christopher> Trying to say, if we continue with the old method of having software come in and break the captcha, and the response to that is to create a more complex captcha to defeat the software, the result is that the users are having a harder and harder time solving the captcha as well.
[01:00]
Christopher> So what we've done is looked at the usability problem and said "How can we make it so users can solve these captchas and continue to present an effective security response?"
[01:09] <TITLE>
A sample NuCaptcha video captcha challenge appears on screen.
The video captcha with a green textured background reads:
Security Challenge [a set of icons appears here:'reload', questionmark, speaker]
VKN (in red, with each letter turning around its middle point axis)
Type the moving letters: [an input form appears here]
[01:09]
Christopher> So we've created a behavior analysis system.
Christopher> What that does is, we're a cloud-based platform, and as we integrate with our customers, we get behavior information from them of how the user's interacting with the website, what they're doing, and we create a behavior profile and from that we create a risk profile for each user.
Christopher> This correlates to an IP-basis.
[01:30] <TITLE>
Another NuCaptcha example captcha appears on screen.
This captcha is a plain black background, with otherwise similar behavior in the red captcha letters: CKP.
The icons have moved to the right side of the video and a Submit button is present next to the input field.
[01:30]
Christopher> Based on that risk, we will deploy a different security response; In some cases it's a really easy to solve captcha, so it's really focused on usability. In other cases we will present a captcha that is much stronger and that provides a lot more defense against an OCR or software attack.
[01:45]
Christopher> Some of our clients are ad biz, and the social space, O2 - which is a large telecom provider in the U.K. [...]
[01:52] <TITLE>
Another NuCaptcha video captcha appears on screen.
In this captcha, the background is a set of animated figure moving through the picture, such as a man on a bike and a woman jogging, with the letters:
OUTDOORS (in white) SRG (in red)
animating across the picture in a waveform pattern, with the red letters moving as in the other captcha examples.
[01:52]
That sounds fair, but only in principle.
Let's say you and I both run a web business out of our homes. You've got your website running on your local Apache copy, I've got mine. On that website, you're selling product X, and I'm selling product X as well.
As part of your at-home business, you pay your ISP for a 2GB/month upload cap, say, $100. You only ever use a maximum of 1GB, however. The ISP's next lower tier is 500MB/month, so you can't downgrade. So 1GB is left over.
I take that 1GB from you. You're not using it anyway, so no harm no foul, right? Except that I'm not paying that $100. I'm not even paying 'my share' of $50.
As a result, I price the items in my store lower than yours - as I don't have that additional expense, or I price them the same and simple take in a higher profit. Suddenly, ham/foul.
Now, this is a contrived example, and when you use other analogies (Food banks getting food for free, letting others eat for free while you had to pay top dollar for that same food. The kid next door using a pirated copy of Photoshop and doing their commercial web design while you paid for your legitimate copy.) the opinion of whether harm/foul comes into play is going to differ wildly even within the same person's mind.
But the point is that it's not a third party's decision whether it's okay or not to take any unused good without permission. In the example, you paid for the right to not use that 1GB. Is it a shame to let it go to waste? Perhaps. But that's your decision - you could give somebody permission to use it, for free or otherwise, but still your decision.
Microsoft are planning this, more or less.. mostly less, of course, because they're Microsoft.
That said, one site that I've seen suggested before is:
http://ninite.com/
It's not just open source software, and it's not even 100% free-as-in-mythical-free-beer (trial version of MS Office, for example), but it does have a great many open source applications listed and makes installing them and keeping them updated pretty simple.
It's not a complete set, but it is probably 'enough' for the casual user - and the concept could easily grow to accommodate more applications without losing sight of the fact that having 100 applications that all do the same thing is more confusing than helpful.