most people aren't experts. Most people aren't geniuses. Most people are within one standard deviation of the mean and are pretty satisfied with their abilities.
most?? Why, I'd go so far as to say that about 85% of people are!
Since the shows are taped, they can't broadcast anything without a signed waiver, for fear of you sueing the bejesus out of them. Just stay clear of signing waivers that pertain to tapings of future events, and you'll be fine.
They can make extensions to enable stuff like ActiveX components. And ActiveX components pretty much require windows to run.
Or better "integration" with Office products (for example, determining filetype based on magic numbers/file extensions instead of filetype).. Things like that.
Now if only all those idiots actually ordering Viagra, Vicodin, larger penisses and mortgage quotes would get the message..
Perhaps a more viable option for enforcement would be sting-operations, where if you buy a spamvertized good, you the exact opposite of the advertized benefit. Higher mortgage! Smaller penis!
So, supposedly, is DVD. It's so open that some manufacturer would rather bet on their own BluRay format.
The bottom line is, it's not open. And it's not free. If you're making legit players, you will be paying license fees, for the codec as well as the rest of the specification/certification/trademark/etc.
The only "open" thing about these sorts of standards is that they charge everybody the same amount of money for licenses, and the same amount of money for being involved in the standardization process. Of course, if your company can't afford to send 10 people to the Caribbean, and, let's say, Microsoft can, they might just outvote you 10-nil in that meeting they scheduled there, but that's just how open it is..
And yes, paying $50 per unit for licensing the format itself may be a bit painful for a small manufacturer, but just remember that all those other companies, including companies that can afford to make a loss on devices since they hope to make it back on content (*cough* Sony, Microsoft), must pay the same. They're open that way.
These aren't open standards in the way that RFCs are.
Credit cards come closest to an international standard for funds transfer, but few Europeans have them
I know of no one who does not have a credit card, with the possible exception of an old relative. I live in the UK. Is it different elsewhere in Europe?
It's hard to find exact statistics. Mastercard claims 3 million cardholders in Belgium, versus 450.000 VISA cardholders. In The Netherlands, the claims are 3 million MC, 2 million Visa. (There may be some overlap there).
Note that Belgium's population numbers 10 million, whereas The Netherlands has 16 million inhabitants, so even if you add up those cardholders, that's only 31% of the Dutch populace, and only 34.5% of the Belgian population that presumably have a credit card (which is not to say they ever use it - I know mine collects dust except for those 4 times a year I use it to buy stuff online; they're also often thrown in as a freebie with a bank's travel insurance).
In other words, if you only accept credit cards, you're scaring away at least 70% of your potential customers.
Note that in the US the number of cards issued stands at more than 700 million. More than 2.3 cards per person.
(This all neglects the fact that only adults can have a card, so the percentages are skewed. Though, not being able to sell to minors is also a disadvantage.)
In my experience, younger people, and people who travel are more likely to have a credit card.
It is said (my sources? google!) that credit card usage in France rivals that of the US, and in the UK and Germany usage levels are about the same.
but good luck getting a form or e-banking page in which you can enter an IBAN acct number - and if you, the bank, or the receiver screws up,
Well one of the biggest banks in the world, the Dutch ABN-Amro, does it. And it works like a charm. You just copy paste the IBAN number in the little insertfield write a comment, type the amount of money you want transfered *click* and your done. One day later the other guy has the money. This really works well, and if you just copy paste the IBAN number it is very hard to fuck things up.
ABN Amro's operations differ from country to country. Besides, it's a lot harder to use IBAN transactions with Postbank (which has the largest number of accounts in The Netherlands) and outfits like SNS, ING, etc. (Rabobank does support it, but makes it easy to select a non-IBAN, non-free method, and, AFAIK will charge you if you make a mistake in someone's name for example).
Also, when you use a method like Credit Card, paypal, direct debit (there is NO pan-European direct debit!) etc. which are integrated into e-commerce software, your payment information is linked to the transaction, whereas if you pay manually, they have to figure out which payment belongs to which transaction. Minor differences in the amount transferred (you DID enter 14.29, NOT 14.30, right?), your initials etc. all offer new opportunities to fuck things up (this is a non-trivial problem called "reconciliation").
There are multi-country payment service providers (such as bibit but typically they don't cover all of the EU.
A Europe-wide IBAN-like scheme for direct debit would be a godsend at this time..
Or even better, some sort of use-your-regular-bank-account-as-a-"credit"-card scheme where you simply enter your IBAN, your bank gets your authorization via e-banking/phone/whatever, and the payment is cleared would be pretty much ideal.
Then, you only have to worry about all those different mail/parcel services and all those different laws, customs and tax offices, etc.
It's legal in The Netherlands, Canada (landmark rulings) and probably a few other European countries. UK, I'm not sure, I think they're pretty much into the Euro-DMCA; as for the US - not legal.
Re:HOW expensive again? Check out allofmp3.com
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iTunes Europe Goes Live
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· Score: 2, Informative
how does that operate so cheap? Anyone?
They're based in Russia, which does not have a separate copyright on downloads, so they get by on the kind of license that your local radio station would have (although some claim they don't even have, others claim they don't need, that licence), which is vastly cheaper seeing as the Russian market won't put up with US/EU levels of licensing prices (with less to be made from advertising).
This is also why the RIAA have their panties in a bunch over digital radio - imagine simply recording CD quality tunes off the airwaves, with the radio stations only chipping in a cent per minute (or whatever they pay. Not $.99 per listener per track, that's for sure).
1) licensing issues. Each European country tends to have their own licensing agency, which licenses, say the latest Madonna track - even though the rights in all countries might be owned by a single company, you still have to go through these intermediaries (monopolies).
While it is in theory possible to negotiate terms with only one intermediary for the whole of Europe (and has been for some time, think only of all the unencrypted pan-European tv and radio stations) it is in practice not only hard to do (these monopolies are bureaucracies which have a hard time understanding the Internet - there IS no standard contract) but you won't be able to shop around for a European tarriff. That is, if you close a deal within a country, you can bargain, but pan-European rights are locked down in a monopoly by way of agreement along all the national intermediaries.
2) Europeans tend to speak different languages from country to country.
They also have entirely different national banking systems, which only pay lip service to a single European transaction system. (e.g. yes, you can transfer money using an IBAN account number at the same rate as national money transfers (sometimes this is free), but good luck getting a form or e-banking page in which you can enter an IBAN acct number - and if you, the bank, or the receiver screws up, the banks don't accept any liability what so ever. Credit cards come closest to an international standard for funds transfer, but few Europeans have them, and even fewer would give out the number on the internet).
Then there's the issue of sales tax, statutory customer rights (the EU wide policies only specify the minimum, so member states could have enacted laws that allow for returns of tunes), etc. etc.
Opening up a pan-European shopping site is no mean feat.
And the fact that we have made mistakes means we are the same as every other country in this world. The only people who don't make mistakes, are the ones who don't do anything.
Yeah. Damn pacifists. Think they're above killing or something. Like that Ghandi guy. Bastards.
Windows: "The application encountered a problem and has to close. We apologise for the incovenience."
Linux : "happy meal: Aieee, transceiver MIF write bolixed"
Now come on, admit it. You'd use windows more if it gave out error messages like that. Even a simple "Ooops. We fucked up that last write operation rather badly. Sorry". Phrases like that just seem to convey a bit more feeling and sincerity than the dry corporate psuedo-regret that windows serves out.
Even better is that those "unprofessional" linux errormessages are pretty creative, and therefore pretty much unique to whatever problem you might be experiencing..
"The application has encountered a problem" is as unspecific as you can get. What problem? Perhaps suppressed sexual anxiety relating to a childhood obsession with its mother, no?
Small ISPs often have a staff count in single figures. They certainly can't afford to have a department set up to handle DMCA violations.
Larger ISPs tend to be less concerned about losing single customers, and they'll just delete without appeal. The cost of losing customers is probably less than the potential hassle of dealing with a dispute, and the big copyright holders are usually happy with this response. The big ISPs will continue this policy until somebody sues.
If ISPs want to avoid being sued for contributory infringement, they have to take down actually infringing pages anyway. No matter how small the ISP. They already have to contact the customer over that, so they might as well ask for a counter-notice while they're at it. It adds almost zero overhead to the process. Even if they don't though, if a customer notices the content deleted, they can send a counter-notice on their own initiative, and if they do the ISP *must* (by force of law, non-compliance is.. well.. a DMCA violation) reinstate the page, unless the complaining party launches a Federal suit.
Even if an ISP takes NO effort to contact their customers, they still have these rights under the DMCA. Of course, whether they can extract any damages from the ISP is another question, but it would seem to me to be a simple breach-of-contract case (customer paid, service was withheld) suitable for small-claims court, and a helluva stink PR-wise..
Re:they EXIST! Re:Checks and Balances
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Testing ISP Censorship
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Exactly. This is how it should work...ISP takes down material NO MATTER WHAT (thus immediately preventing possible further infringements). It's then up to the site owner to prove they own the right to post the material.
This removes the ISP from the role of judge or jury. They are merely the executioner, doing what the law says in either direction. And in turn, they're playing fair with both the content owner and the so-called infringer. What's not to like?
While there is no guarantee that the notice isn't lying, there is ALSO no guarantee that the counter-notice isn't lying.
If you put, let's say, Celine Dion's latest album on your website (which is a hanging offense by any standard, really), and you claim in your counter-notice that Celine's record company is full of shit when they take you down, the ISP will put your page back ASAP.
This is designed mainly to let ISPs off the hook for their user's intentional behavior, whilst also giving "good faith" copyright holders the ability to smack down on casual (i.e. non-counter-notice claiming) infringers without resorting to Federal court at the very first whiff of trouble.
And they can't send a DMCA-notice twice, they MUST put up (go to court) or shut up. At which point they can find out your identity only by a court-ordered subpoena to your ISP (although court oversight of subpoenas isn't that much of a big deal these days).
BTW, if you ever contributed stuff to a GPL'ed program that you notice is being distributed by some company without providing source code -- guess what the cheapest legal option you have is?
It's not perfect (what if you're on a trip around the world and the ISP can't contact you?) but it's a good effort.
This is actually about the only good part in the DMCA, and an example that the UK should follow.
All the rest of the DMCA, now there's the real trouble..
BT apparently is doing this not as a wholesale provider, but at the ISP level. They're certainly not the first to do so. Especially in the UK there has been massive blocking of usenet groups for example, I don't remember the specifics, but Demon Internet was derided for being the only ISP *not* blocking newsgroups (or the other way around really, this was years ago).
In my own neck of the woods, even the widely held as enlightened, geek-run, freedom-of-information-positive provider xs4all blocks kiddy porn newsgroups on usenet. And there are multiple "Christian" themed providers that provide an internetfeed that is filtered beyond belief (usually using some sort of server-side implementation of wildly inaccurate blacklists like netnanny); most public primary/secondary schools also get filtered (if any) access.
It's a matter of consumer choice really. At least BT (and the aforementioned "Christian" themed/school ISPs) are upfront about it. And let's hope the "error message" people get does inform people how to get innocent sites delisted.
Now, if BT was doing this as a part of their wholesale operations, that would be A Bad Thing.
I know for a fact that BT subsidiaries like to restrict their internal networks a whole lot; even browsing to another ISP's webmail is blocked, on the theory you might receive or send some (*gasp*) non-work related e-mails. That's pretty evil (not to mention counter-productive).
It's worse than 3 times as expensive. Three minutes of standard GSM-encoded voice traffic equals about 9600 * 60 * 3 / 8 = 216000 bytes of traffic (ignoring encoding etc, since we're looking at payload). Those 140 bytes (7 bits * 160 chars) in an SMS message are 0.065% of that amount of data. Round it up to 0.1% to allow for reliable delivery and routing overhead, that's 1000 times as expensive.
No, it's an immediate shutdown, a shutdown can't be cancelled when it's in progress. The shutdown dialogue you see in the case of sasser is a 1 minute countdown, which gives you time to do shutdown -a, which cancels the shutdown. When the countdown reaches 0, you won't be able to cancel the shutdown in progress either.
When you check it out, don't rely on the sales pitch, tech specs or your first impression; ask a friend.
The nokia smartphones they've been making so far aren't too hot. They suffer from quite a lot of glitches in the software (typical nokia operating procedure; rush the hardware out before the firmware is ready, then have people update it -- at service centers, no downloads!).
The OS isn't straight symbian either - they use an UI called series 60, which is being expanded all the time. Regretably, Nokia is a lot less forthcoming with APIs etc than Psion was.
The hardware of nokia smartphones is a lot better than the hardware on their normal phones which typically fall apart after a year, or two at the most in my experience. Even their business phone range, the 6110/6210/6310 range had a *known* problem with the battery getting loose (requiring a slip of paper to be put underneath to keep things tight) for years and years. Not good QA.
I had great hopes for the SonyEricsson P800/900, but they're dog slow:-(
I've now bought the Qtek 2020, and in less than a day, I've got myself IRC, PocketPutty (ssh, so I can pretend it's linux - works really well!), VNC, a cool homemade theme, and I haven't even begun downloading games.. It's as good as psion was when it comes to third party (free!) software.
Too bad the underlying OS is so closed (but then, so is Symbian). And "activesync" will only sync to outlook, but I wasn't using any calendering/contacts software yet, I'm sure there's a replacement so you can use something else.
The sad thing is, I have considered the Symbian models. I absolutely loved my second-hand Psion 5 organizer/PDA (until it stopped working), it had the most wonderful UI, a vibrant community of programmers, a lot of things going for it.
Then, things got stagnant. Until Nokia and Ericsson picked it up. The Nokia models I've seen so far are pretty much Nokia-quality; i.e. fall apart in about a year, and both the Nokia and the SonyEricsson models are sooo slow..
There also seems to be less developer interest in hacking these things, partly because the Dark Side OS on the MDA(2) is basically PocketPC 2003, which is (perhaps regrettably) widely used on other PDAs.
Nevertheless, you're quite right, I'll take a second look at them. But I'm leaning towards the MDA2. (Besides, T-mobile is discounting them quite a bit at the moment, at least here in.nl)
It could be relatively easy to establish a hierarchy of places to contact a person starting with VOIP, then progressing on down to sending a voice to text message at the very last.
I've got a special number that I can program to route people to several of my real phone numbers (ringing simultaneously if I want to, different numbers at differents times in the week, etc.) - if I don't get to the phone at all, you can leave a voicemail message (or decide to text me). I imagine that whichever country you're in, there are "universal messaging" services that provide the same sort of functionality. Maybe not as cool as VOIP on your PCS phone, but then it would also have to do WiFi, find open hotspots etc.
Right now at least, we do have phones (V600) that will automatically negotiate networks (so I can have one phone to travel with internationally rather than having to keep two or three depending upon the networks), but most of these phones have maddening interfaces and that in of itself could use some thought and effort. I'm at a bit of a loss here.. All GSM phones I know of are perfectly capable of selecting which network they should use, and on most you can select networks you prefer (e.g. because the network it picks because it's a partner of your own provider charges higher roaming charges - unlikely, but it does happen).
Look, placing GUI interfaces on lots of stuff is OK if it streamlines your operation of the device, but the phone companies and even automobile manufacturers are using lousy GUI interfaces to perform simple tasks. (I absolutely refuse to consider the new BMW's because of that stupid GUI that has to be navigated through three screens to change the radio station or move the seat or change the temperature.
Abdo-fucking-lutely. I only wish my phone had a "skinnable" UI, or was open source, or at least some way to change the damn UI from always requiring one buttonmash to many for menial tasks. That's why I love the fact that my mp3 player (an Archos jukebox) has third party open source firmware to replace the stock firmware. Its UI is a lot better, even though it's made by geeks and no marketing decisions went into it.
Also, tomorrow I will be purchasing one of them nifty smart phones that runs (GASP) pocketpc, because at least you can rip out the firmware and dick around with it, or do stuff like buy a $16 voice dialling application to extend the functionality of the thing. Plus, no more T9, just tap or jog text.. When the need arises I can even buy a GPS module and plug it in..
The postbank in the Netherlands used to rely on a accountcode, and two 6-number PINs, of which you could only change one, and a list of TANs.
Nowadays you can choose your own username and password (a vast improvement as you're less likely to write it down) and have the option of either getting TANs printed and mailed (you have to show the postman ID) beforehand, OR sent by text message (again, your GSM number is confirmed via a code sent via registered and to-be-IDed-for mail).
The neat thing about the TANs sent by on-demand text message is that if the transaction is above a certain amount they include details about the transaction, like last digits of the account number and the amount.
This means that even MITM by infecting your computer with a trojan that fudges up what you see in your browser is way out.
Although GSM and SMS security is.. well.. lacking, on-demand TANs seem preferable to having a list of TANs printed.
It seems that there is prior art to this patent, but it might not matter. This patent could be used by NAI to lock out others filtering spam.
Let's hope they do.
It would signal the end of e-mail. That would be sad, seeing how it has served us well for so long. But in the end, a new system for e-mail is all but unavoidable anyway. Currently, instant messengers, online "contact us" forms and forums are replacing e-mail's functionality for more and more users every day that goes by.
To a certain extent that isn't such a bad thing, really.
Yes, most IM systems lock you into some vendor, they're not open, forum contributions and the like aren't as easily forwarded and sorted as e-mail, etc. But in the end, all those systems will catch up. Let's not forget that some of the most useful new uses for e-mail are webbased; that the underlying technology is SMTP doesn't really matter to most people.
More and more people chose to use whitelists on their e-mail inboxes, akin to the whitelist approach of IM. It would be a better world if you didn't have to, but it's happening.
The end of e-mail (as we know it) appears to be nigh for many reasons. If it dies an ungracious death, it might as well be SPAM and software patents that kill off the killer application, as a warning to future generations. Or at least, to politicians.
Slashdot Mirror
Its also encrypted. Good stuff.
And skype Inc. has the keys. They don't? How do you know? It's not like it's open source or anything.
That's why scriptkiddies hack into your box via a pre-rooted box that they do not own.
most people aren't experts. Most people aren't geniuses. Most people are within one standard deviation of the mean and are pretty satisfied with their abilities.
most?? Why, I'd go so far as to say that about 85% of people are!
Since the shows are taped, they can't broadcast anything without a signed waiver, for fear of you sueing the bejesus out of them. Just stay clear of signing waivers that pertain to tapings of future events, and you'll be fine.
They can make extensions to enable stuff like ActiveX components. And ActiveX components pretty much require windows to run.
Or better "integration" with Office products (for example, determining filetype based on magic numbers/file extensions instead of filetype).. Things like that.
spammers lie.
Great the FTC caught on to that..
Now if only all those idiots actually ordering Viagra, Vicodin, larger penisses and mortgage quotes would get the message..
Perhaps a more viable option for enforcement would be sting-operations, where if you buy a spamvertized good, you the exact opposite of the advertized benefit. Higher mortgage! Smaller penis!
Sony's stuff is never particularly cheap, but what direct competitors do they have for this thing? What's the low-price whitebox alternative?
Something like this?
Or this?
Or this,
this,
this,
this,
this
or
this?
(Add (bluetooth) keyboard where appropriate.. Or something like this.)
So, supposedly, is DVD. It's so open that some manufacturer would rather bet on their own BluRay format.
The bottom line is, it's not open. And it's not free. If you're making legit players, you will be paying license fees, for the codec as well as the rest of the specification/certification/trademark/etc.
The only "open" thing about these sorts of standards is that they charge everybody the same amount of money for licenses, and the same amount of money for being involved in the standardization process. Of course, if your company can't afford to send 10 people to the Caribbean, and, let's say, Microsoft can, they might just outvote you 10-nil in that meeting they scheduled there, but that's just how open it is..
And yes, paying $50 per unit for licensing the format itself may be a bit painful for a small manufacturer, but just remember that all those other companies, including companies that can afford to make a loss on devices since they hope to make it back on content (*cough* Sony, Microsoft), must pay the same. They're open that way.
These aren't open standards in the way that RFCs are.
Credit cards come closest to an international standard for funds transfer, but few Europeans have them
I know of no one who does not have a credit card, with the possible exception of an old relative. I live in the UK. Is it different elsewhere in Europe?
It's hard to find exact statistics. Mastercard claims 3 million cardholders in Belgium, versus 450.000 VISA cardholders. In The Netherlands, the claims are 3 million MC, 2 million Visa. (There may be some overlap there).
Note that Belgium's population numbers 10 million, whereas The Netherlands has 16 million inhabitants, so even if you add up those cardholders, that's only 31% of the Dutch populace, and only 34.5% of the Belgian population that presumably have a credit card (which is not to say they ever use it - I know mine collects dust except for those 4 times a year I use it to buy stuff online; they're also often thrown in as a freebie with a bank's travel insurance).
In other words, if you only accept credit cards, you're scaring away at least 70% of your potential customers.
Note that in the US the number of cards issued stands at more than 700 million. More than 2.3 cards per person.
(This all neglects the fact that only adults can have a card, so the percentages are skewed. Though, not being able to sell to minors is also a disadvantage.)
In my experience, younger people, and people who travel are more likely to have a credit card.
It is said (my sources? google!) that credit card usage in France rivals that of the US, and in the UK and Germany usage levels are about the same.
but good luck getting a form or e-banking page in which you can enter an IBAN acct number - and if you, the bank, or the receiver screws up,
Well one of the biggest banks in the world, the Dutch ABN-Amro, does it. And it works like a charm. You just copy paste the IBAN number in the little insertfield write a comment, type the amount of money you want transfered *click* and your done. One day later the other guy has the money.
This really works well, and if you just copy paste the IBAN number it is very hard to fuck things up.
ABN Amro's operations differ from country to country. Besides, it's a lot harder to use IBAN transactions with Postbank (which has the largest number of accounts in The Netherlands) and outfits like SNS, ING, etc. (Rabobank does support it, but makes it easy to select a non-IBAN, non-free method, and, AFAIK will charge you if you make a mistake in someone's name for example).
Also, when you use a method like Credit Card, paypal, direct debit (there is NO pan-European direct debit!) etc. which are integrated into e-commerce software, your payment information is linked to the transaction, whereas if you pay manually, they have to figure out which payment belongs to which transaction. Minor differences in the amount transferred (you DID enter 14.29, NOT 14.30, right?), your initials etc. all offer new opportunities to fuck things up (this is a non-trivial problem called "reconciliation").
There are multi-country payment service providers (such as bibit but typically they don't cover all of the EU.
A Europe-wide IBAN-like scheme for direct debit would be a godsend at this time..
Or even better, some sort of use-your-regular-bank-account-as-a-"credit"-card scheme where you simply enter your IBAN, your bank gets your authorization via e-banking/phone/whatever, and the payment is cleared would be pretty much ideal.
Then, you only have to worry about all those different mail/parcel services and all those different laws, customs and tax offices, etc.
It's legal in The Netherlands, Canada (landmark rulings) and probably a few other European countries. UK, I'm not sure, I think they're pretty much into the Euro-DMCA; as for the US - not legal.
how does that operate so cheap? Anyone?
They're based in Russia, which does not have a separate copyright on downloads, so they get by on the kind of license that your local radio station would have (although some claim they don't even have, others claim they don't need, that licence), which is vastly cheaper seeing as the Russian market won't put up with US/EU levels of licensing prices (with less to be made from advertising).
This is also why the RIAA have their panties in a bunch over digital radio - imagine simply recording CD quality tunes off the airwaves, with the radio stations only chipping in a cent per minute (or whatever they pay. Not $.99 per listener per track, that's for sure).
This is probably due to two things;
1) licensing issues. Each European country tends to have their own licensing agency, which licenses, say the latest Madonna track - even though the rights in all countries might be owned by a single company, you still have to go through these intermediaries (monopolies).
While it is in theory possible to negotiate terms with only one intermediary for the whole of Europe (and has been for some time, think only of all the unencrypted pan-European tv and radio stations) it is in practice not only hard to do (these monopolies are bureaucracies which have a hard time understanding the Internet - there IS no standard contract) but you won't be able to shop around for a European tarriff. That is, if you close a deal within a country, you can bargain, but pan-European rights are locked down in a monopoly by way of agreement along all the national intermediaries.
2) Europeans tend to speak different languages from country to country.
They also have entirely different national banking systems, which only pay lip service to a single European transaction system. (e.g. yes, you can transfer money using an IBAN account number at the same rate as national money transfers (sometimes this is free), but good luck getting a form or e-banking page in which you can enter an IBAN acct number - and if you, the bank, or the receiver screws up, the banks don't accept any liability what so ever. Credit cards come closest to an international standard for funds transfer, but few Europeans have them, and even fewer would give out the number on the internet).
Then there's the issue of sales tax, statutory customer rights (the EU wide policies only specify the minimum, so member states could have enacted laws that allow for returns of tunes), etc. etc.
Opening up a pan-European shopping site is no mean feat.
And the fact that we have made mistakes means we are the same as every other country in this world.
The only people who don't make mistakes, are the ones who don't do anything.
Yeah. Damn pacifists. Think they're above killing or something. Like that Ghandi guy. Bastards.
Windows: "The application encountered a problem and has to close. We apologise for the incovenience."
Linux : "happy meal: Aieee, transceiver MIF write bolixed"
Now come on, admit it. You'd use windows more if it gave out error messages like that. Even a simple "Ooops. We fucked up that last write operation rather badly. Sorry". Phrases like that just seem to convey a bit more feeling and sincerity than the dry corporate psuedo-regret that windows serves out.
Even better is that those "unprofessional" linux errormessages are pretty creative, and therefore pretty much unique to whatever problem you might be experiencing..
"The application has encountered a problem" is as unspecific as you can get. What problem? Perhaps suppressed sexual anxiety relating to a childhood obsession with its mother, no?
At least the linux error messages are googlable..
Small ISPs often have a staff count in single figures. They certainly can't afford to have a department set up to handle DMCA violations.
Larger ISPs tend to be less concerned about losing single customers, and they'll just delete without appeal. The cost of losing customers is probably less than the potential hassle of dealing with a dispute, and the big copyright holders are usually happy with this response. The big ISPs will continue this policy until somebody sues.
If ISPs want to avoid being sued for contributory infringement, they have to take down actually infringing pages anyway. No matter how small the ISP. They already have to contact the customer over that, so they might as well ask for a counter-notice while they're at it. It adds almost zero overhead to the process. Even if they don't though, if a customer notices the content deleted, they can send a counter-notice on their own initiative, and if they do the ISP *must* (by force of law, non-compliance is.. well.. a DMCA violation) reinstate the page, unless the complaining party launches a Federal suit.
Even if an ISP takes NO effort to contact their customers, they still have these rights under the DMCA. Of course, whether they can extract any damages from the ISP is another question, but it would seem to me to be a simple breach-of-contract case (customer paid, service was withheld) suitable for small-claims court, and a helluva stink PR-wise..
Exactly. This is how it should work...ISP takes down material NO MATTER WHAT (thus immediately preventing possible further infringements). It's then up to the site owner to prove they own the right to post the material.
This removes the ISP from the role of judge or jury. They are merely the executioner, doing what the law says in either direction. And in turn, they're playing fair with both the content owner and the so-called infringer. What's not to like?
While there is no guarantee that the notice isn't lying, there is ALSO no guarantee that the counter-notice isn't lying.
If you put, let's say, Celine Dion's latest album on your website (which is a hanging offense by any standard, really), and you claim in your counter-notice that Celine's record company is full of shit when they take you down, the ISP will put your page back ASAP.
This is designed mainly to let ISPs off the hook for their user's intentional behavior, whilst also giving "good faith" copyright holders the ability to smack down on casual (i.e. non-counter-notice claiming) infringers without resorting to Federal court at the very first whiff of trouble.
And they can't send a DMCA-notice twice, they MUST put up (go to court) or shut up. At which point they can find out your identity only by a court-ordered subpoena to your ISP (although court oversight of subpoenas isn't that much of a big deal these days).
BTW, if you ever contributed stuff to a GPL'ed program that you notice is being distributed by some company without providing source code -- guess what the cheapest legal option you have is?
It's not perfect (what if you're on a trip around the world and the ISP can't contact you?) but it's a good effort.
This is actually about the only good part in the DMCA, and an example that the UK should follow.
All the rest of the DMCA, now there's the real trouble..
BT apparently is doing this not as a wholesale provider, but at the ISP level. They're certainly not the first to do so. Especially in the UK there has been massive blocking of usenet groups for example, I don't remember the specifics, but Demon Internet was derided for being the only ISP *not* blocking newsgroups (or the other way around really, this was years ago).
In my own neck of the woods, even the widely held as enlightened, geek-run, freedom-of-information-positive provider xs4all blocks kiddy porn newsgroups on usenet. And there are multiple "Christian" themed providers that provide an internetfeed that is filtered beyond belief (usually using some sort of server-side implementation of wildly inaccurate blacklists like netnanny); most public primary/secondary schools also get filtered (if any) access.
It's a matter of consumer choice really. At least BT (and the aforementioned "Christian" themed/school ISPs) are upfront about it. And let's hope the "error message" people get does inform people how to get innocent sites delisted.
Now, if BT was doing this as a part of their wholesale operations, that would be A Bad Thing.
I know for a fact that BT subsidiaries like to restrict their internal networks a whole lot; even browsing to another ISP's webmail is blocked, on the theory you might receive or send some (*gasp*) non-work related e-mails. That's pretty evil (not to mention counter-productive).
It's worse than 3 times as expensive. Three minutes of standard GSM-encoded voice traffic equals about 9600 * 60 * 3 / 8 = 216000 bytes of traffic (ignoring encoding etc, since we're looking at payload). Those 140 bytes (7 bits * 160 chars) in an SMS message are 0.065% of that amount of data. Round it up to 0.1% to allow for reliable delivery and routing overhead, that's 1000 times as expensive.
No, it's an immediate shutdown, a shutdown can't be cancelled when it's in progress. The shutdown dialogue you see in the case of sasser is a 1 minute countdown, which gives you time to do shutdown -a, which cancels the shutdown. When the countdown reaches 0, you won't be able to cancel the shutdown in progress either.
When you check it out, don't rely on the sales pitch, tech specs or your first impression; ask a friend.
:-(
The nokia smartphones they've been making so far aren't too hot. They suffer from quite a lot of glitches in the software (typical nokia operating procedure; rush the hardware out before the firmware is ready, then have people update it -- at service centers, no downloads!).
The OS isn't straight symbian either - they use an UI called series 60, which is being expanded all the time. Regretably, Nokia is a lot less forthcoming with APIs etc than Psion was.
The hardware of nokia smartphones is a lot better than the hardware on their normal phones which typically fall apart after a year, or two at the most in my experience. Even their business phone range, the 6110/6210/6310 range had a *known* problem with the battery getting loose (requiring a slip of paper to be put underneath to keep things tight) for years and years. Not good QA.
I had great hopes for the SonyEricsson P800/900, but they're dog slow
I've now bought the Qtek 2020, and in less than a day, I've got myself IRC, PocketPutty (ssh, so I can pretend it's linux - works really well!), VNC, a cool homemade theme, and I haven't even begun downloading games.. It's as good as psion was when it comes to third party (free!) software.
Too bad the underlying OS is so closed (but then, so is Symbian). And "activesync" will only sync to outlook, but I wasn't using any calendering/contacts software yet, I'm sure there's a replacement so you can use something else.
The sad thing is, I have considered the Symbian models. I absolutely loved my second-hand Psion 5 organizer/PDA (until it stopped working), it had the most wonderful UI, a vibrant community of programmers, a lot of things going for it.
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Then, things got stagnant. Until Nokia and Ericsson picked it up. The Nokia models I've seen so far are pretty much Nokia-quality; i.e. fall apart in about a year, and both the Nokia and the SonyEricsson models are sooo slow..
There also seems to be less developer interest in hacking these things, partly because the Dark Side OS on the MDA(2) is basically PocketPC 2003, which is (perhaps regrettably) widely used on other PDAs.
Nevertheless, you're quite right, I'll take a second look at them. But I'm leaning towards the MDA2. (Besides, T-mobile is discounting them quite a bit at the moment, at least here in
It could be relatively easy to establish a hierarchy of places to contact a person starting with VOIP, then progressing on down to sending a voice to text message at the very last.
I've got a special number that I can program to route people to several of my real phone numbers (ringing simultaneously if I want to, different numbers at differents times in the week, etc.) - if I don't get to the phone at all, you can leave a voicemail message (or decide to text me). I imagine that whichever country you're in, there are "universal messaging" services that provide the same sort of functionality. Maybe not as cool as VOIP on your PCS phone, but then it would also have to do WiFi, find open hotspots etc.
Right now at least, we do have phones (V600) that will automatically negotiate networks (so I can have one phone to travel with internationally rather than having to keep two or three depending upon the networks), but most of these phones have maddening interfaces and that in of itself could use some thought and effort.
I'm at a bit of a loss here.. All GSM phones I know of are perfectly capable of selecting which network they should use, and on most you can select networks you prefer (e.g. because the network it picks because it's a partner of your own provider charges higher roaming charges - unlikely, but it does happen).
Look, placing GUI interfaces on lots of stuff is OK if it streamlines your operation of the device, but the phone companies and even automobile manufacturers are using lousy GUI interfaces to perform simple tasks. (I absolutely refuse to consider the new BMW's because of that stupid GUI that has to be navigated through three screens to change the radio station or move the seat or change the temperature.
Abdo-fucking-lutely. I only wish my phone had a "skinnable" UI, or was open source, or at least some way to change the damn UI from always requiring one buttonmash to many for menial tasks. That's why I love the fact that my mp3 player (an Archos jukebox) has third party open source firmware to replace the stock firmware. Its UI is a lot better, even though it's made by geeks and no marketing decisions went into it.
Also, tomorrow I will be purchasing one of them nifty smart phones that runs (GASP) pocketpc, because at least you can rip out the firmware and dick around with it, or do stuff like buy a $16 voice dialling application to extend the functionality of the thing. Plus, no more T9, just tap or jog text.. When the need arises I can even buy a GPS module and plug it in..
Now, a way to have it run linux...
The postbank in the Netherlands used to rely on a accountcode, and two 6-number PINs, of which you could only change one, and a list of TANs.
Nowadays you can choose your own username and password (a vast improvement as you're less likely to write it down) and have the option of either getting TANs printed and mailed (you have to show the postman ID) beforehand, OR sent by text message (again, your GSM number is confirmed via a code sent via registered and to-be-IDed-for mail).
The neat thing about the TANs sent by on-demand text message is that if the transaction is above a certain amount they include details about the transaction, like last digits of the account number and the amount.
This means that even MITM by infecting your computer with a trojan that fudges up what you see in your browser is way out.
Although GSM and SMS security is.. well.. lacking, on-demand TANs seem preferable to having a list of TANs printed.
It seems that there is prior art to this patent, but it might not matter. This patent could be used by NAI to lock out others filtering spam.
Let's hope they do.
It would signal the end of e-mail. That would be sad, seeing how it has served us well for so long. But in the end, a new system for e-mail is all but unavoidable anyway. Currently, instant messengers, online "contact us" forms and forums are replacing e-mail's functionality for more and more users every day that goes by.
To a certain extent that isn't such a bad thing, really.
Yes, most IM systems lock you into some vendor, they're not open, forum contributions and the like aren't as easily forwarded and sorted as e-mail, etc. But in the end, all those systems will catch up. Let's not forget that some of the most useful new uses for e-mail are webbased; that the underlying technology is SMTP doesn't really matter to most people.
More and more people chose to use whitelists on their e-mail inboxes, akin to the whitelist approach of IM. It would be a better world if you didn't have to, but it's happening.
The end of e-mail (as we know it) appears to be nigh for many reasons. If it dies an ungracious death, it might as well be SPAM and software patents that kill off the killer application, as a warning to future generations. Or at least, to politicians.