So this really only affects sysadmins who don't bother to lock their server down, people who use htr, non-professionally adminned servers, desktops who have IIS enabled accidentally, production servers at colo facilities who wanted to not restrict their customers, any machine at all run by an admin who didn't feel the need to restrict the funcionality they provide to their users really...
Um... yeah... so... how many of those people are going to actually apply the patch after it comes out anyway?
heh, I think I was born AS the event was taking place:-)
Re:Captains Go Down with Ships
on
Dot.Con
·
· Score: 1
The CEO of ValueAmerica (the subject of Dot.Bomb) made off with roughly $50M in profit.
Most of this was made at the the outset of the ipo by an SEC loophole that allowed private shareholders to sell their personal stock to the market at ipo prices if there was sufficient demand and limited supply of ipo stock.
It takes a 5 year old to figure out how to manipulate this loophole, and as five-year-olds go, Craig Winn is one of the better spoken, charismatic ones:-)
Now if you wanna talk CTO's, yes, they get screwed, and left with a few million in debt, and generally walked over by the financial guys... yet somehow, they remain upbeat and happy (Hi Joe!)
Microsoft has no more control over documents I create in Word than you do. I can choose to save them in any format I damned well please, be that straight text, ms word, rtf, wordperfect.
If you want to start a movement to get people to use these formats, by all means please try, but personally, I can't get executives to stop using html in email, so I shudder to think of how you would get beuraucrats to stop simply choosing save instead of save as... which could end up being a problem no matter what desktop software you end up with.
Now if you wanna start talking about whether MS should be required to open their documents formats, I think we'd be in complete agreement:-)
They USED to advertise the service as something you could do without if you so desired. They stopped doing that, because it didn't make musch sense for them (TiVo realizes almost no profit from the sales of boxes that don't come with subscriptions)
Then they had the whole "software update that caused trouble for people without subscriptions" The unit still has to call home to get it's clock updated (I'm sure you could get around this with a hacked box, someone MUST have compiled an ntp client by now) and it get's the latest software at that time... Tivo released a version of software that effectively broke units without subscriptions, and it caused a firestorm of disapproval among those users. It should be noted, however, that Tivo then re-engineered the code in the next release to allow those people their functionality back, something they weren't really required to do, and something that really made them no money at all.
Currently the boxes for sale all say you are required to get the subscription.
Yup, I read that. I'm guessing niether of us are lawyers (I know I'm not, and even I was, it wouldn't be English law I was versed in) but I'm guessing that law wouldn't come into play in regards to the information TiVo collects.
a) TiVo needs to know who you are to bill you. nothing illegal about that.
b) TiVo records information about your viewing habits in the aggregate. Yes they COULD concievably link that information back to the information about who you are, but it would have to be done at a data mining level, the unit itself doesn't actually know who you are.
Therefore, _IF_ TiVo was actually selling your personal information, they MIGHT (depending on how good their lawyers were) be in violation of this law.
correspondingly, _IF_ TiVo was actually selling MY personal information, they DEFINITELY would be in violation of their own privacy agreement, which would open them up to huge lawsuit culpability (I like that word)
So it sounds like the argument comes down to this:
Do you trust your government? or do you trust a company whose product you pay for in a subscription format? Or do you pack it all in and go live in a cave?
Actually any information that is stored on a computer by any company is protected by LAW in the UK United Kingdom Data Protection Act 1988 [http://www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts1998/19980029.htm ] so all our private information is just that private and is not for sale
HEY! That's really FUNNY!
Have you actually read the text on that?
I'll give you the short form:
In this Act "sensitive personal data" means personal data consisting of information as to-
(a) the racial or ethnic origin of the data subject,
(b) his political opinions,
(c) his religious beliefs or other beliefs of a similar nature,
(d) whether he is a member of a trade union (within the meaning of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992),
(e) his physical or mental health or condition,
(f) his sexual life,
(g) the commission or alleged commission by him of any offence, or
(h) any proceedings for any offence committed or alleged to have been committed by him, the disposal of such proceedings or the sentence of any court in such proceedings.
I don't see a damned thing about TV viewing habits in there.
Think about it--they are one step from offering up customized information to the networks for a fortune
uh-huh. "a fortune"
how much, exactly do you think companies pay for this info? and what is your basis for that number? are you in the advertising business? market research?
TiVo doesn't code the guide themselves, they get it from the Chicago Tribune (I believe). They PAY for it, per subscriber. Yes, they probably make some money off the top from month-to-month subscribers, but in the long run they will probably lose money from the lifetime subscriptions members. Hopefully it will balance out with them still making enough money to provide the service.
Also, for those of us WITHOUT digital cable, the program guides are a GODSEND. And frankly, the digital cable guides in my area use up too much screen realestate with ads, untargeted ads, I might add.
You've gone from complaining about privacy to complaining about the guide data. If you are so unhappy with the product, I'll make you an offer on your unit: $75 assuming it's in good working condition. I've been looking to acquire a second one for play purposes.
Have you read anything at all about TiVo besides the paranoid ramblings of various slashdotters?
IMHO the whole point of a Tivo is data collection hence right from the start the units have been designed as profiling devices capturing all available statistical data
Duh. TiVo said they would use this data for marketing and revenue purposes RIGHT FROM THE START. This isn't a big secret. They also allow you to opt out of the service!
the sooner people complain and see these companies for what they really are the better
uh-huh. how insulated is your private information? health records? drivers license info? credit history? and you are worried that someone is going to know you like to watch boobies bounce on tv?
I think Slashdot has finally reached the critical mass of morons
two problems with this, first: the replayTV devices average about $200-$250 more for an equivalent size device (so you _are_ paying for the subscription, just up front)
second: the money made off marketing data isn't enough currently to keep TiVo alive on it's own. Perhaps, someday, if the number of installed boxes approaches levels that could cause TiVo's data to rival that of say Nielsen's this would happen. But even Nielsen only pays you a few dollars a week (or a $50 bond every six months) for their data collection, so I doubt TiVo would stop charging the $10/month
can't we have digital video recording in a stand-alone box like the analog recorders?
Because you have then destroyed most of the functionality of the TiVo. Without the program guide data the machine cannot get you season passes to you favorite shows, it can't give you an on screen display of whats playing on the other channels right now, it can't even name the stuff you've recorded automatically (so you've got to pick what show you want to watch from a list of dates and times)
Why should a company lose money on a product offering? If they can't make money on cable at the current price simple business sense says they need to change the product somehow.
Slashdot denizens seem to view cheap bandwidth as a god given right that these evil companies are interfering with, as opposed to the truth: It's a good/service you have to pay for (and the companies that provide it ALSO have to pay for)
It's possible that they are merely partitioning the 10GB drive to 8GB, viola, no difference in size (though I did see the post saying the maximum it reports as free is 50,000+)
Programmable through a computer (windows only, natch) you can also have it save the learned codes back to that computer as a backup.
Has a touch screen as well as hard buttons (touch screens suck, because you have to look at them to hit the button correctly, which detracts from the darkened room experience of movie watching)
I saw an earlier link to remotecentral, go check out their review, it's why I bought mine.
I agree, this was on Fark yesterday, and there you don't expect to see confirmed news, but when posted to slashdot, I think this article should get a -1 Troll until confirmed.
If you read the article, you would notice that they're using Borland's Object Pascal
Actually,
11. What language is PETROS® written in?
PETROS® is written using an in-house Object Pascal compiler. This enables us to generate machine code with roughly the same efficiency as C or C++, but with very strict type checking. The language is compatible with Borland Delphi Pascal allowing code to be interchanged with many of the existing applications that Trumpet has developed to date.
this doesn't invalidate anything else you said though, I just wanted to point out that they are NOT using Borland's Pascal, but something compatible with it.
The problem isn't always stability, but uniformity plays an important role as well. If he's running 30 different video cards in those machines he's increasing his headache whenever something goes wrong.
The earlier article about usign dedicated XTerm boxes down in Florida seemed to be a more reasonable approach to me.
Slashdot Mirror
So this really only affects sysadmins who don't bother to lock their server down, people who use htr, non-professionally adminned servers, desktops who have IIS enabled accidentally, production servers at colo facilities who wanted to not restrict their customers, any machine at all run by an admin who didn't feel the need to restrict the funcionality they provide to their users really...
Um... yeah... so... how many of those people are going to actually apply the patch after it comes out anyway?
heh, I think I was born AS the event was taking place :-)
The CEO of ValueAmerica (the subject of Dot.Bomb) made off with roughly $50M in profit.
:-)
Most of this was made at the the outset of the ipo by an SEC loophole that allowed private shareholders to sell their personal stock to the market at ipo prices if there was sufficient demand and limited supply of ipo stock.
It takes a 5 year old to figure out how to manipulate this loophole, and as five-year-olds go, Craig Winn is one of the better spoken, charismatic ones
Now if you wanna talk CTO's, yes, they get screwed, and left with a few million in debt, and generally walked over by the financial guys... yet somehow, they remain upbeat and happy (Hi Joe!)
Seconded. I was there too. dot.Bomb is suck, but David's a nice guy.
:-) See ya at rapture some night
I'm guessing this is scott? greeting from the other cvillebased scott
I understand that, did you read my post?
Microsoft has no more control over documents I create in Word than you do. I can choose to save them in any format I damned well please, be that straight text, ms word, rtf, wordperfect.
:-)
If you want to start a movement to get people to use these formats, by all means please try, but personally, I can't get executives to stop using html in email, so I shudder to think of how you would get beuraucrats to stop simply choosing save instead of save as... which could end up being a problem no matter what desktop software you end up with.
Now if you wanna start talking about whether MS should be required to open their documents formats, I think we'd be in complete agreement
Choosing software JUST because it's open sourced is just as bad as choosing software just because it's closed.
The proper way to choose software is by looking at the individual problems you are trying to solve and deciding what will best fit.
and anyway, how did you THINK Microsoft was going to respond?
They USED to advertise the service as something you could do without if you so desired. They stopped doing that, because it didn't make musch sense for them (TiVo realizes almost no profit from the sales of boxes that don't come with subscriptions)
Then they had the whole "software update that caused trouble for people without subscriptions" The unit still has to call home to get it's clock updated (I'm sure you could get around this with a hacked box, someone MUST have compiled an ntp client by now) and it get's the latest software at that time... Tivo released a version of software that effectively broke units without subscriptions, and it caused a firestorm of disapproval among those users. It should be noted, however, that Tivo then re-engineered the code in the next release to allow those people their functionality back, something they weren't really required to do, and something that really made them no money at all.
Currently the boxes for sale all say you are required to get the subscription.
Yup, I read that. I'm guessing niether of us are lawyers (I know I'm not, and even I was, it wouldn't be English law I was versed in) but I'm guessing that law wouldn't come into play in regards to the information TiVo collects.
a) TiVo needs to know who you are to bill you. nothing illegal about that.
b) TiVo records information about your viewing habits in the aggregate. Yes they COULD concievably link that information back to the information about who you are, but it would have to be done at a data mining level, the unit itself doesn't actually know who you are.
Therefore, _IF_ TiVo was actually selling your personal information, they MIGHT (depending on how good their lawyers were) be in violation of this law.
correspondingly, _IF_ TiVo was actually selling MY personal information, they DEFINITELY would be in violation of their own privacy agreement, which would open them up to huge lawsuit culpability (I like that word)
So it sounds like the argument comes down to this:
Do you trust your government? or do you trust a company whose product you pay for in a subscription format? Or do you pack it all in and go live in a cave?
Actually any information that is stored on a computer by any company is protected by LAW in the UK United Kingdom Data Protection Act 1988 [http://www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts1998/19980029.htm ] so all our private information is just that private and is not for sale
HEY! That's really FUNNY!
Have you actually read the text on that?
I'll give you the short form:
In this Act "sensitive personal data" means personal data consisting of information as to-
(a) the racial or ethnic origin of the data subject,
(b) his political opinions,
(c) his religious beliefs or other beliefs of a similar nature,
(d) whether he is a member of a trade union (within the meaning of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992),
(e) his physical or mental health or condition,
(f) his sexual life,
(g) the commission or alleged commission by him of any offence, or
(h) any proceedings for any offence committed or alleged to have been committed by him, the disposal of such proceedings or the sentence of any court in such proceedings.
I don't see a damned thing about TV viewing habits in there.
Think about it--they are one step from offering up customized information to the networks for a fortune
uh-huh. "a fortune"
how much, exactly do you think companies pay for this info? and what is your basis for that number? are you in the advertising business? market research?
TiVo doesn't code the guide themselves, they get it from the Chicago Tribune (I believe). They PAY for it, per subscriber. Yes, they probably make some money off the top from month-to-month subscribers, but in the long run they will probably lose money from the lifetime subscriptions members. Hopefully it will balance out with them still making enough money to provide the service.
Also, for those of us WITHOUT digital cable, the program guides are a GODSEND. And frankly, the digital cable guides in my area use up too much screen realestate with ads, untargeted ads, I might add.
You've gone from complaining about privacy to complaining about the guide data. If you are so unhappy with the product, I'll make you an offer on your unit: $75 assuming it's in good working condition. I've been looking to acquire a second one for play purposes.
oh wake up.
Have you read anything at all about TiVo besides the paranoid ramblings of various slashdotters?
IMHO the whole point of a Tivo is data collection hence right from the start the units have been designed as profiling devices capturing all available statistical data
Duh. TiVo said they would use this data for marketing and revenue purposes RIGHT FROM THE START. This isn't a big secret. They also allow you to opt out of the service!
the sooner people complain and see these companies for what they really are the better
uh-huh. how insulated is your private information? health records? drivers license info? credit history? and you are worried that someone is going to know you like to watch boobies bounce on tv?
I think Slashdot has finally reached the critical mass of morons
two problems with this, first: the replayTV devices average about $200-$250 more for an equivalent size device (so you _are_ paying for the subscription, just up front)
second: the money made off marketing data isn't enough currently to keep TiVo alive on it's own. Perhaps, someday, if the number of installed boxes approaches levels that could cause TiVo's data to rival that of say Nielsen's this would happen. But even Nielsen only pays you a few dollars a week (or a $50 bond every six months) for their data collection, so I doubt TiVo would stop charging the $10/month
can't we have digital video recording in a stand-alone box like the analog recorders?
Because you have then destroyed most of the functionality of the TiVo. Without the program guide data the machine cannot get you season passes to you favorite shows, it can't give you an on screen display of whats playing on the other channels right now, it can't even name the stuff you've recorded automatically (so you've got to pick what show you want to watch from a list of dates and times)
Doesn't the little blurb explain itself?
Why should a company lose money on a product offering? If they can't make money on cable at the current price simple business sense says they need to change the product somehow.
Slashdot denizens seem to view cheap bandwidth as a god given right that these evil companies are interfering with, as opposed to the truth: It's a good/service you have to pay for (and the companies that provide it ALSO have to pay for)
It's possible that they are merely partitioning the 10GB drive to 8GB, viola, no difference in size (though I did see the post saying the maximum it reports as free is 50,000+)
boy do I agree, that's what I like about the 1000, you get both the touch screen for the weird buttons, and the "hard" buttons for day to day stuff.
Best money I've ever spent,
Programmable through a computer (windows only, natch) you can also have it save the learned codes back to that computer as a backup.
Has a touch screen as well as hard buttons (touch screens suck, because you have to look at them to hit the button correctly, which detracts from the darkened room experience of movie watching)
I saw an earlier link to remotecentral, go check out their review, it's why I bought mine.
I agree, this was on Fark yesterday, and there you don't expect to see confirmed news, but when posted to slashdot, I think this article should get a -1 Troll until confirmed.
Go read cringely, he says much the same thing without being such an ass.
If you read the article, you would notice that they're using Borland's Object Pascal
Actually,
11. What language is PETROS® written in?
PETROS® is written using an in-house Object Pascal compiler. This enables us to generate machine code with roughly the same efficiency as C or C++, but with very strict type checking. The language is compatible with Borland Delphi Pascal allowing code to be interchanged with many of the existing applications that Trumpet has developed to date.
this doesn't invalidate anything else you said though, I just wanted to point out that they are NOT using Borland's Pascal, but something compatible with it.
*sigh* buried under 300+ posts
These poeple go to an OFFICE in Russia, they don't work from their home.
They have managers, right there, looking over their shoulder.
They produce a product that is sold by a branch office in the US.
The problem isn't always stability, but uniformity plays an important role as well. If he's running 30 different video cards in those machines he's increasing his headache whenever something goes wrong.
The earlier article about usign dedicated XTerm boxes down in Florida seemed to be a more reasonable approach to me.
Smith has already stated he wants to do a Fletch movie. He's got an option on one of the books (Fletch Won?) and no, it will not star Chevy Chase.
Then you've probably not heard of x-entertainment.com either.
Go there, be happy.