With broadcasters buying the data, they would be able to determine what people wanted to see and what they did not by the skipping, stopping, and reply habits of users.
In theory... this should make for a better future broadcasts as they can analyze the feedback from the users.
Anyone can assume that the more extreme and outlandish moments would get more reply but can those episodes really be reproduced? Too much extreme would probably not be agood thing overall. Imagine if breasts were in every show..;)
Make a better product and people will use it. Believe it or not, users drive IT, not us geeks.
Both of those statements would be true if a monopoly did not exist in the field. In the US, "Users" wanted better cheaper local and long distance phone service with more features and options back when Ma Bell was in charge. It only happened after a forced breakup and some form of competition was formed. Same with the airline industry back in the 70's, that was more of a regulatory issue but had the same result. Increased competition resulting in more options and cheaper prices. You have no true competition when a monopoly is involved.
I do not fully agree with your ease of use claim either. In a corporate environment, the desktop is normally tightly controlled. Users are not installing software, fixing workstations, installing patches, worried about security, testing software or adding hardware. If they are, that company has far more issues to deal with then ease of use. All the users do is click on applications to use them and nothing more. Are they naturally more familiar with MS because they use it at home? How many people are using PeopleSoft or an Oracle application at home? How many are using billing software, DB software, purchase order software, joining a domain, use a business related intranet, or time keeping software at home? Not many, they learn to use it at work and do fine. The crutch that MS is at home therefore everyone at work can use it too should not hold as much importance as some believe. Corporate software environments are not all the same either, even in the same office or department, users with different applications, versions of software, specialized DB's and applications all needed to get the job done. They cope and have changed before with no problems. What happens when a company changes MS versions of something? They are required to change and learn. What about when going from Win3.1 --> Win95 --> W2K --> XP and all the different office packages and application changes? None of them is much more different from jumping to KDE/Gnome. The main issue with changing to something other then MS is having an application on the platform of your choice that does what you need.
I use mediaplayer classic. It plays almost anything if you have the correct codecs installed. In order to view some of the codecs from Real and MS, you have to have those players installed (or get the codecs directly without the player like WM9 here) but you don't need to run them to play the media.
If you read here long enough or hang with any specific group of tech type people in the real world, you would find out what frustrations and experience individuals have with MS or any company for that matter. Wether you agree with their individual opinions on what bothers them is up to you. There is no one thing that MS does that everyone here does not like (although there are trends). Slashdot readers and posters can not be globbed under one set of general dislikes and likes. Bottom line, people have been dealing with MS for years in many capacities (administration, end users, tech support, purchasing, development, integration, competing products etc...), they have formed an opinion on the company based on past experience. There is no bulleted list that someone could post that describes what an individual likes and dislikes about MS that would apply to everyone. I work with people that administer MS networks very well, they have very little to complain about with MS, oddly enough, every one of them has NEVER used anything else and probably don't know what CLI means either.. You can take that either way.
They did not specifically mention other protocols so they may be leaving protocols other then http(s) alone. Security and functionality are on the see-saw. PR feedback has not decided who he wants to sit with yet.
In the past, the FCC has changed the rules to make it illegal to listen to cordless phone conversations and illegal to listen to or even have, manufactor, or have equipment hacks that can receive analog cell phone frequncies. If X-10 or any wireless applicance provider had the lobby power of the communications industry, they could get the same laws passed to fool or hide flaws from the consumers also.
Simon Byers, a researcher at AT&T Labs. "It's so easy, and it's highly entertaining. Just look at the amount of people being arrested for being peeping Toms each year, and all the psuedeo-voyeur type porn out there.
Sounds like Simon is a well rounded and experienced voyeur! I wonder if he has any tips for those looking to get into this field.;)
My radar detector *claims* to be radar detector detector undetectable. I've done work with super-heterodyne equipment, communications gear, and military radar systems back in the day but I never really thought about what is done to these detectors to limit spurious leakage. I'd assume these radar detectors have shielding, cancelation circuitry, or use a different or uncommon/different frequency for mixing to accomplish that goal, or it is just a marketting gimmick.
Movix is a useful suite of applications for audio and video files. Not a full media center but allows booting from various devices and auto launching media files on the boot media or can connect to a network resource for media files. I've used it for creating self booting cdroms that launchs some divx movies.
In my area, Walmart pays about $0.50 more an hour, offers stock options, provides employee discounts, and more medical benefits then almost every retailer and grocery store in the area.
Is a printed out list of file names and an ip address enough evidence to award thousands or even the millions of dollars the RIAA was shooting for? Anyone who has ever used a P2P application knows for a fact there are tons of fake material floating around. In fact some sources (here,here, and here indicate RIAA represented companies were behind some of the fakes. Don't forget the people that were sued previously that had nothing illegal. The RIAA's tactics of carpet bombing is not an exact science.
This is a sign that SCO believes they might not win in the courts with existing laws,
Or they are creating one hell of a backup plan and supporting evidence trail to cover their asses for a potential stock fraud case. They can claim they were honestly doing what they "thought" was right and not just trying to manipulate the stock prices on false claims and slight misunderstandings.
There is a big difference between downloading and uploading. If you were offering or posting the file, you are distributing copyrighted material without the owners consent which is illegal. You could argue three football fields in micometers about the rights and legality of the person actually downloading it.
Next hurdle for the RIAA is to PROVE these people were actually offering or distributing actual content the RIAA members own the copyright to. A file name or a list of file names/or mp3 tags is NOT going to stand up in a real court. I would think they should have to prove that person was actually distributing an actual copyrighted file by downloading the whole thing or a major portion of that file from only that one person (not getting it from multiple users either) and have some type of timestamped logs or process of the file transfer to stand behind their evidence gathering. Metallica_-_Ride_the_Lightning_01.mp3 can contain anything. A file name is not a copyright violation and without evidence, you would have to assume what the content was. There is no provision in the DMCA to fall back on that can override actual evidence is there? IANAL but since these RIAA lawsuits are civil and not criminal, I don't believe they can obtain a search warrant to come for your physical equipment either. Who knows.
One thing to note about AntiVir. The free version does not check files opened, accessed, or run from a network share. You can verify this with the eicar test file. They are clear about this fact when using the free version for personal use but a very important point to remeber if you are using this on a home networked computer!! Also being free for home use, I switched to AVG.
That is nice in theory but I have never worked for a place that was not full of yes men or at least one way yes men (they listen to your input but it never makes it out the other side and up the line). One place that was downsizing specifically kept the managers that were yes men and the ones that actually knew what they were doing are gone. It was a joke among us non-management They did not lie or fudge information to the other departments, they told it like it was. We had timelines and guidelines that spelled it all out and they knew what was involved technically with the projects.. They are now gone. The ones left behind tell them, no problem, three days is fine. It never actually gets done in three days but nothing a few phones calls to them and some excuses can't make up for. I gives the appearance they are on their side but since they have no idea what they are doing, it often takes longer.
Bottom line, management wants to hear yes.
At my current job, it is not as bad but we often get complaints about the IT department not being physically manned 24 hours a day (we have on call pagers and a lot of remote access). At budget time, these same people do not want to give the IT department any money to hire more people. The IT department looks stupid asking for money and looks stupid because we are not manning the phones 24/7. I'd have no idea how to bring that obvious issue up to the same people at a round table meeting.
That's probably why 90% of alt.binaries. is still around and not the source of RIAA/MPAA/BSA invasion. They don't want to clue in the newbies that it is there and kicking. It seems to me, usenet would be an easy target for them. I plan on milking out usenet until it dies.
The article states.. It is interesting that this spam attack appears to be originating from a distributed set of zombie cable/DSL modems that someone likely took over in a past virus attack.
Can someone describe one of these "Zombie" networks or exactly how common they are. I frequently hear from an attacked party claiming a zombie network is responsible for something but never hear the a single vendor, firewall, ISP, OS,/., antivirus, or any type of response or description from anyone including the popular security mailing lists. Do these networks really exist somewhere? I would think if they were really that common and easy to setup and control, the security community would have more details on these things and more dialog would appear in the security community about them. Maybe it is common knowledge to everyone except me, if so, lucky thing I am not doing IT security..
I'm getting way off topic here and would post a 0 if I could. I am sure many of these points can be argued either way but **IMO**, the after military benefits do not make up for the military life you had, they are more to offset the disadvantages of being in the military to begin with. An example being the job finding benefit or re-education offerings. It is not easy ending your military career in Hawaii after being deployed for the last 6 months and expect to get your stuff back to the mainland and land a decent job in a resonable time. The GI bill used for education is a one time entry after boot camp, you pay $1200 and get $12,000 for qualifying education (these rates have probably changed). Unless you retire, you do not get medical coverage or have any vested interest in any type of retirement plan at all. Many jobs in the military do not match up to a civilian job requirements, you may have general experience but unless you are starting with a government contractor, that is not enough. I quote John Rambo, "Back there I could fly a gunship, I could drive a tank, I was in charge of million dollar equipment, back here I can't even hold a job parking cars". Okay, an extreme example from an old movie but the point is the same. If you made it to a decent rank, getting out often means starting fresh with lower pay then you had. Since you are stationed away from any extended family and gone at random for months at a time, you basically leave behind a single parent to juggle a job, a household, and the kids. The fact that you move often prevents your spouse from getting established and makes it hard for you to build up equity in a house (always renting). VA does provide government backed loans for when you do settle somewhere. The clothing allotment is not much (~$175/year?) and you could easily spend that amount on uniforms anyway, it is not like you can wear those as daily clothes when your not a work so that evens out.
You are right, you do get some benefits you can use now or later in life, but the take home pay for the lower ranks is still not much more then a job at Wal-mart. I am not not in total disagreement with your claim about Wal-Mart, I was trying to point out that they are not much different then anyone else in retail. Can you claim that Target, Best-Buy, Lowes, 7-11, Sheetz, or just about any store in a suburban mall pays any more in money and benefits then Walmart? Those stores and the many more like them are a far larger workforce then Wal-Mart is.
Wal-mart hands out instructions for obtaining public assistance to its own employees and demands huge tax credits to move stores into towns
Did you know Wal-Mart pays out the same exact wages as every retail/cashier/customer service/waitress/clerk job in the US? There are even ranks in the military that make roughly the same amount (although they get free medical). Are you against them all? As for the taxes, the same holds true for any mid/large sized employer, business property developer, stadium/arena complex, entertainment complex, and any others that can bring jobs and are moving into a new area. Wal-Mart is a very thin slice of the pie.
Slashdot Mirror
With broadcasters buying the data, they would be able to determine what people wanted to see and what they did not by the skipping, stopping, and reply habits of users.
;)
In theory... this should make for a better future broadcasts as they can analyze the feedback from the users.
Anyone can assume that the more extreme and outlandish moments would get more reply but can those episodes really be reproduced? Too much extreme would probably not be agood thing overall. Imagine if breasts were in every show..
Link to the whole directory and see more.
For some truely geeky stuff try this, or you can substitute your own terms for some interesting results.
Make a better product and people will use it. Believe it or not, users drive IT, not us geeks.
Both of those statements would be true if a monopoly did not exist in the field. In the US, "Users" wanted better cheaper local and long distance phone service with more features and options back when Ma Bell was in charge. It only happened after a forced breakup and some form of competition was formed. Same with the airline industry back in the 70's, that was more of a regulatory issue but had the same result. Increased competition resulting in more options and cheaper prices. You have no true competition when a monopoly is involved.
I do not fully agree with your ease of use claim either. In a corporate environment, the desktop is normally tightly controlled. Users are not installing software, fixing workstations, installing patches, worried about security, testing software or adding hardware. If they are, that company has far more issues to deal with then ease of use. All the users do is click on applications to use them and nothing more. Are they naturally more familiar with MS because they use it at home? How many people are using PeopleSoft or an Oracle application at home? How many are using billing software, DB software, purchase order software, joining a domain, use a business related intranet, or time keeping software at home? Not many, they learn to use it at work and do fine. The crutch that MS is at home therefore everyone at work can use it too should not hold as much importance as some believe. Corporate software environments are not all the same either, even in the same office or department, users with different applications, versions of software, specialized DB's and applications all needed to get the job done. They cope and have changed before with no problems. What happens when a company changes MS versions of something? They are required to change and learn. What about when going from Win3.1 --> Win95 --> W2K --> XP and all the different office packages and application changes? None of them is much more different from jumping to KDE/Gnome. The main issue with changing to something other then MS is having an application on the platform of your choice that does what you need.
I use mediaplayer classic. It plays almost anything if you have the correct codecs installed. In order to view some of the codecs from Real and MS, you have to have those players installed (or get the codecs directly without the player like WM9 here) but you don't need to run them to play the media.
If you read here long enough or hang with any specific group of tech type people in the real world, you would find out what frustrations and experience individuals have with MS or any company for that matter. Wether you agree with their individual opinions on what bothers them is up to you. There is no one thing that MS does that everyone here does not like (although there are trends). Slashdot readers and posters can not be globbed under one set of general dislikes and likes. Bottom line, people have been dealing with MS for years in many capacities (administration, end users, tech support, purchasing, development, integration, competing products etc...), they have formed an opinion on the company based on past experience. There is no bulleted list that someone could post that describes what an individual likes and dislikes about MS that would apply to everyone.
I work with people that administer MS networks very well, they have very little to complain about with MS, oddly enough, every one of them has NEVER used anything else and probably don't know what CLI means either.. You can take that either way.
They did not specifically mention other protocols so they may be leaving protocols other then http(s) alone.
Security and functionality are on the see-saw. PR feedback has not decided who he wants to sit with yet.
you really never can tell it's an issue before you try it.
You can tell, you spend a few minutes on some research before you buy it.
The @ symbol is required for http-based authentication
That is exactly how MS plans on fixing this problem. Read more here.
There is no law against this "false advertising." There IS a law against fraud
Are you sure about that?
fraud
1. A deception deliberately practiced in order to secure unfair or unlawful gain.
2. A piece of trickery; a trick.
False advertising IS a form of fraud. The state of NY has specific laws and penalties for false advertising, I'm sure other states do also.
In the past, the FCC has changed the rules to make it illegal to listen to cordless phone conversations and illegal to listen to or even have, manufactor, or have equipment hacks that can receive analog cell phone frequncies. If X-10 or any wireless applicance provider had the lobby power of the communications industry, they could get the same laws passed to fool or hide flaws from the consumers also.
From the linked article.
;)
/.
Simon Byers, a researcher at AT&T Labs. "It's so easy, and it's highly entertaining. Just look at the amount of people being arrested for being peeping Toms each year, and all the psuedeo-voyeur type porn out there.
Sounds like Simon is a well rounded and experienced voyeur! I wonder if he has any tips for those looking to get into this field.
PS. This is my 1000th post to
My radar detector *claims* to be radar detector detector undetectable. I've done work with super-heterodyne equipment, communications gear, and military radar systems back in the day but I never really thought about what is done to these detectors to limit spurious leakage. I'd assume these radar detectors have shielding, cancelation circuitry, or use a different or uncommon/different frequency for mixing to accomplish that goal, or it is just a marketting gimmick.
Movix is a useful suite of applications for audio and video files. Not a full media center but allows booting from various devices and auto launching media files on the boot media or can connect to a network resource for media files.
I've used it for creating self booting cdroms that launchs some divx movies.
In my area, Walmart pays about $0.50 more an hour, offers stock options, provides employee discounts, and more medical benefits then almost every retailer and grocery store in the area.
Is a printed out list of file names and an ip address enough evidence to award thousands or even the millions of dollars the RIAA was shooting for? Anyone who has ever used a P2P application knows for a fact there are tons of fake material floating around. In fact some sources (here,here, and here indicate RIAA represented companies were behind some of the fakes. Don't forget the people that were sued previously that had nothing illegal. The RIAA's tactics of carpet bombing is not an exact science.
This is a sign that SCO believes they might not win in the courts with existing laws,
Or they are creating one hell of a backup plan and supporting evidence trail to cover their asses for a potential stock fraud case. They can claim they were honestly doing what they "thought" was right and not just trying to manipulate the stock prices on false claims and slight misunderstandings.
There is a big difference between downloading and uploading. If you were offering or posting the file, you are distributing copyrighted material without the owners consent which is illegal. You could argue three football fields in micometers about the rights and legality of the person actually downloading it.
Next hurdle for the RIAA is to PROVE these people were actually offering or distributing actual content the RIAA members own the copyright to. A file name or a list of file names/or mp3 tags is NOT going to stand up in a real court. I would think they should have to prove that person was actually distributing an actual copyrighted file by downloading the whole thing or a major portion of that file from only that one person (not getting it from multiple users either) and have some type of timestamped logs or process of the file transfer to stand behind their evidence gathering. Metallica_-_Ride_the_Lightning_01.mp3 can contain anything. A file name is not a copyright violation and without evidence, you would have to assume what the content was. There is no provision in the DMCA to fall back on that can override actual evidence is there? IANAL but since these RIAA lawsuits are civil and not criminal, I don't believe they can obtain a search warrant to come for your physical equipment either. Who knows.
He's trying to be like the slashdot editors.
One thing to note about AntiVir. The free version does not check files opened, accessed, or run from a network share. You can verify this with the eicar test file. They are clear about this fact when using the free version for personal use but a very important point to remeber if you are using this on a home networked computer!! Also being free for home use, I switched to AVG.
That is nice in theory but I have never worked for a place that was not full of yes men or at least one way yes men (they listen to your input but it never makes it out the other side and up the line). One place that was downsizing specifically kept the managers that were yes men and the ones that actually knew what they were doing are gone. It was a joke among us non-management They did not lie or fudge information to the other departments, they told it like it was. We had timelines and guidelines that spelled it all out and they knew what was involved technically with the projects.. They are now gone. The ones left behind tell them, no problem, three days is fine. It never actually gets done in three days but nothing a few phones calls to them and some excuses can't make up for. I gives the appearance they are on their side but since they have no idea what they are doing, it often takes longer.
Bottom line, management wants to hear yes.
At my current job, it is not as bad but we often get complaints about the IT department not being physically manned 24 hours a day (we have on call pagers and a lot of remote access). At budget time, these same people do not want to give the IT department any money to hire more people. The IT department looks stupid asking for money and looks stupid because we are not manning the phones 24/7. I'd have no idea how to bring that obvious issue up to the same people at a round table meeting.
That's probably why 90% of alt.binaries. is still around and not the source of RIAA/MPAA/BSA invasion. They don't want to clue in the newbies that it is there and kicking. It seems to me, usenet would be an easy target for them. I plan on milking out usenet until it dies.
The article states..
/., antivirus, or any type of response or description from anyone including the popular security mailing lists. Do these networks really exist somewhere? I would think if they were really that common and easy to setup and control, the security community would have more details on these things and more dialog would appear in the security community about them. Maybe it is common knowledge to everyone except me, if so, lucky thing I am not doing IT security..
It is interesting that this spam attack appears to be originating from a distributed set of zombie cable/DSL modems that someone likely took over in a past virus attack.
Can someone describe one of these "Zombie" networks or exactly how common they are. I frequently hear from an attacked party claiming a zombie network is responsible for something but never hear the a single vendor, firewall, ISP, OS,
I'm getting way off topic here and would post a 0 if I could. I am sure many of these points can be argued either way but **IMO**, the after military benefits do not make up for the military life you had, they are more to offset the disadvantages of being in the military to begin with. An example being the job finding benefit or re-education offerings. It is not easy ending your military career in Hawaii after being deployed for the last 6 months and expect to get your stuff back to the mainland and land a decent job in a resonable time. The GI bill used for education is a one time entry after boot camp, you pay $1200 and get $12,000 for qualifying education (these rates have probably changed). Unless you retire, you do not get medical coverage or have any vested interest in any type of retirement plan at all. Many jobs in the military do not match up to a civilian job requirements, you may have general experience but unless you are starting with a government contractor, that is not enough. I quote John Rambo, "Back there I could fly a gunship, I could drive a tank, I was in charge of million dollar equipment, back here I can't even hold a job parking cars". Okay, an extreme example from an old movie but the point is the same. If you made it to a decent rank, getting out often means starting fresh with lower pay then you had. Since you are stationed away from any extended family and gone at random for months at a time, you basically leave behind a single parent to juggle a job, a household, and the kids. The fact that you move often prevents your spouse from getting established and makes it hard for you to build up equity in a house (always renting). VA does provide government backed loans for when you do settle somewhere. The clothing allotment is not much (~$175/year?) and you could easily spend that amount on uniforms anyway, it is not like you can wear those as daily clothes when your not a work so that evens out.
You are right, you do get some benefits you can use now or later in life, but the take home pay for the lower ranks is still not much more then a job at Wal-mart. I am not not in total disagreement with your claim about Wal-Mart, I was trying to point out that they are not much different then anyone else in retail. Can you claim that Target, Best-Buy, Lowes, 7-11, Sheetz, or just about any store in a suburban mall pays any more in money and benefits then Walmart? Those stores and the many more like them are a far larger workforce then Wal-Mart is.
Wal-mart hands out instructions for obtaining public assistance to its own employees and demands huge tax credits to move stores into towns
Did you know Wal-Mart pays out the same exact wages as every retail/cashier/customer service/waitress/clerk job in the US? There are even ranks in the military that make roughly the same amount (although they get free medical). Are you against them all?
As for the taxes, the same holds true for any mid/large sized employer, business property developer, stadium/arena complex, entertainment complex, and any others that can bring jobs and are moving into a new area. Wal-Mart is a very thin slice of the pie.