...that the internet/web in it's current form was not 'invesnted' by us? Nor did we do much to develop it further. Sure slashdotters would have their fair share of coming up with nifty little tools and gadgets, but who made them main stream? certainly not us. Neither did big-corp. so who did? it's an open secret that the most rapid advancements come from the internet's most profitable line - porn.
not only do adult site owners have the funds to hire the best brains - they were also the first ones that were willing to pay good chunks of cash to techies so they's come up with better ways to dispense smut over the net to payning audiences.
a sort of the first cyberarms race took place in the adult domain. next were the yahoos and ebays, who started small [and more often with smut funds than most of them admit] came up with something new and grew rapidly. but they only grew rapidly because big-corp suddenly realized what potential the net had and started to shovel cash at innovative small companies.
the dot-com frenzy came much later - two years later to be exact. so most of the cybersquatters had ample time to build decent sites under the domain names they occupied - which in turn, might have affected most WIPO decissions.
if you look at sample WIPO cases, you should foremost check the sites that are under the disputed domains.
most of the time the -sux domains consist of a parody logo and a message board, 300 banner ads and an email address to the webmaster [just in case someone wanted to buy the domain name].
cases in which WIPO decided pro corp despite the fact that the owner of a domain had a legitimate well designed site that served a purpose are rather rare.
of course WIPO can not argue that they will take a site away if it's poorly done, because that would result in a feeding frenzy for lawyers, constitutional experts, etc.
so, while WIPO's arguments most of the time are questionable, the decissions seem to be very much based on the quality of the site that is under a domain, rather than only on the name of the domain.
I can't help myself but respect that as rather fair. i still haven't found a corporation that would have gotten a domain via WIPO that belonged to a legitimate small business operator, who had no intention to profit from registering the domain first.
I can also see why ICANN didn't let the @large nominees vote on the TLD issue. they do have to reach a conclusion somewhat soonish. if the @large guys were voting, they would take years to reach a consensus simply because the @large nominees by definition have to oppose whatever the corp nominees want to ensure their reelection and to show the tech community that they won't bow to big-bad-corp.
it's abit as if you askede linux developers to sit in on M$.net strategy meeting and vote on the concept. get my drift?
so, if you look at things from a non-conspiracy point of view and try [hard] to find underlying motives of people involved, without automatiucally assuming that they are pro-corp and anti-user, then you will more often than not end up with reasonable explanations for their behaviour.
you know, not everyone is out there to take 'our net' away - apart from that - we could just sit down and plan day 'x' when we all pull the plugs on all sytems we have access to. how many newsgroups do you know, where corp managers discuss our conspiracy against them and our plans to bring down the corporate www?
o yeah, next we make a supercomputer that gathers intelligence from all those weather satellites the military deploys.
this machine then deploys the 'drones' using the GPS to defend the borders, invade non WTO compliant countries and take the job off trafic police in peace times.
the machine becomes part of a system dubbed command-bot, whiic also comprises an executive computer that is a constitution-buff and which effectively rules the country.
as counter balance to the executive computer we have two beowulf clusters, one represents all the smaller machines and household appliances and the other is busy hacking networks and blackmailing peopel and corporations into donating to AI research in lieu of campaign donations.
once, every four years, the nation votes on who gets to supply the processors and memory to command-bot, and everyone is served.
the people get to vote on something and belive in the system because they are forced to pay for it.
nobody has any control and it all doesn't matter anyway.
superbot for president, beowulf for senate and house!
malaysia ot the philippines to be more precise;
connections are acceptable, beaches are great, cost of living is about 25% of the U.S. average and 10% of the California average, water is pristine - and hey, they build the P4 processors here {AMD is here, too - so everyone else in the whoiswho of IT].
given liberal legislation and attractive tax presents to the industry, all you gotta do is convice your boss to establish a branch office - telecommuting hub...
so they can trace everyone to two main groups if migrants - if that holds true, whatever happened to the kids of the huns [as an example].
the huns pestered the roman empire for a long time and settled in - you guessed it 'hun-garia' or 'hun-gary'.
when they were not busy fighting the romans, they fought FOR them as mercenaries. that would have taken huns to spain, france, britain, germany, libya, syria...etc.
and the certainly were not among the best behaved boyz around, but enjoyed procreative sports and pillaging as favourite pasttimes. and none of them managed to imprint on the gene pool ???
certainly the huns did not come from the near east originally, which preempts the suggestion that they might belong to the farming migrant group.
science suggests that the huns originate from north-western mongolia. which would put them into the A and B-heavy blood groups.
at the same token, only a minority of the population has blood group '0', which can be found in higher concentrations in Northern Europe - and the lower Middle East, but is negligable in between. So where exactly are these guys from? Egyptian traders that where having harbour parties in Scandinavia some 10,000 years ago?
well, of course i read those books - been on 2600, too.
but the fact for me is very much that this is, well, nothing new, really. unless i can put on glasses, lean back and write air-keyboard [ala johnny mnomic] i don't see the advantage of something that will not make my job easier or have any other benefit apart from being kewl and getting aaaaahs out of the secretaries that worship me anyway - cause i mess with their desktops if they don't...
still thanks for the info. after all, you couldn't know if i was a script kiddie... but then, as i said that i had been calculating sprites and using a C64 some 15 years ago, kinda suggests that i've been around for a while, huh?
Okay they suspended the culprits for the past six months with pay [i'd love that!].
They don't say how many of them, but I guess we can assume that those who were suspended are at least the cream of the 160 that used the IRC.
What manager in his right state of mind can just suspend their best IT staffers - for six months?
Either they found someone else to do their jobs - which makes the discussion futile, cause then they will sack the offenders anyway - or, given that it's the CIA - they just leave the work undone...
Think about it. For six long months the creme of CIA techs doesn't get to work. Isn't that an invitation for everyone else to get busy while the yanks got their pants down?
I honestly do believe that the U.S. is the vulnerable to cyber warfare, simply because they have every man and his dog running through the Net.
Then they turn around and suspend the first line of defense, cause they were using their brains [which is what the CIA has hired them for, in the first place].
They should let h4x0rz run the Agencies. Would save them a pile and get more results...
okay, is it me - or is it cause it's late night/early morning over here - i just don't get it.
what exactly is so unusual outrageous, cool about this? i mean displays are still two dimensional so what's the big deal? i mean the sample graphics they got there remind me a f15 strike eagle a game i used toplay on my commodore 64 some 15 years ago.
which was the same time i built spites by calculating coloured spots on drawing paper...
so, could anyone tell me what eactly is sooo amazing about the think? does it make coffee?
can i take it to the movies?
this is not a 1roll - i really honestly, stupid as i might be, don't get the point.
you never stop to amaze me. who has heard of corporations being treated as 'natural persons'? if that holds true, then i would like to make use my corporate rights as an individual. i mean, if companies have the same rights as a person, should i as a person have the right to use corporate law?
so i'm not born on my birthday but incorporated under trustee management of my parents until, i the company reaches the age of 18 [21 in some states], when i automatically assume all offices in my company. as such, i have the right to own other companies - people - to sell parts of myself to shareholders;
depending on state law - i might be limited to dividing myself into only about 2000 shares and can not offer myself to the public as such.
however, i can file for an initial public offering and then auction off parts of myself to be traded publicly...
wow, even better, i can buy others, chop them up, absorb pieces i like and sell of the remains...
serious, in most western countries corporations are only treated as individuals [or 'entities'] where applicable - meaning in a practical sense, wherever corporate law does not apply. this is specifically the case when corporations deal with individuals.
however, i have never heard about a company claiming what is ver much the equivalent of basic human rights. let's face it the declaration of human rights is in essence a large chunk of what is embedded in the U.S. constitution;
yed, amazingly enough, it is the very U.S.of A. that has one of the worst human rights records on the planet - yep, the u/s are battling against china and peru for rank 92, straight behind australia - another human right advocate.
to the subject matter, well, it's likely that they get away with it just because of those amazing laws you have in your corner of the planet.
while i think human rights as such are unworkable and basically a load of b/s i also think that corporations should have the right to block courts with non-sense suits while actual 'human cases' are waiting years to come to trial.
just my electronic $0,02
As you said so rightly: "as a tourist..."
Of course you get only the trashy open copies and betas of stuff. If you are local and know your way around, then you get copies of the 'factory master disks' at about US$10.00 a piece.
Those are the copies that the copyright owners receive as samples, before confirming production orders.
Neat stuff - Charlie's Angels VCD anyone?
Just kidding... But I watched it last week - not a big deal, the movie that is.
Re:I will be unable to attend...
on
ICANN Meetings
·
· Score: 1
Seems you missed the boat?
ICANN is actually the 'Mother of all CANNs' and everyone - from anywhere - could register to vote for the 'publicly elected' portion of the ICANN reps.
Further, every country has it's own organization, the countryNICs, which issue/assign/sell/register country level domain names. Usually the first step to get involved is to contact your countryNIC, while also visiting the ICANN site [which I bet most of the posters haven't done] and check out how you [and everyone else] can actually try to get invoved...
- stop yapping and start putting your honest concerns into legible language and explain them to ICANN's Chairwoman? I mean, I have mailed her several times, made suggestions, complained [pretty often] and she actually replies, explains and advises proper cause of action, etc.
So, stop this mob-rule rampage when you talk about ICANN until you have at least tried to mail her your concerns. Don't you think this is very much the right thing to do?
Sometimes, fellow slashdotters, you behave pretty much exactly like those imbeciles who keep calling tech support because they can't be bothered to RTFM.
I like to let off steam, too - but alas, you could use that energy and your well-above-average intelligence to try to make a difference by telling ICANN what you think. Maybe, just maybe - if enough of you actually submit constructive critique and make workable suggestions, they might actually listen. Remember, ICANN doesn't realy make money from corporate sponsors - so their main interest is to keep the net running and getting all those yelling techies to write them their thoughts.
Okay, now, I trust that you will NOT {P_L_E_A_S_E) start spamming or flaming her - PLEASE -
The e-mail of the Head of ICANN is: edyson@nospam.edventure.com
[delete the 'nospam']
Firstly a correction: THERE *ARE* copyright laws in Thailand - it's just that they are not much enforced and for open pirates it's easy to pay off cops, buy courts, etc. when Thai authorities are busy bettering their image and raid the public areas where priated material is sold openly.
The cops usually bring the press along, make three token arrests and that's that. Apart from that, all shops suddenly close down shortly before the cops arrive.
Malaysia is slightly more civilized. While you can still find everything pretty much out in the open [music, movies, software] the government is doing slightly more to fix it's image. But then, one has to consider that most of those Thai pirated CDs are made in Malaysia in the first place. It is a bit tougher to enforce the laws here [although they try harder than the Thais], because Malaysia also produces about 60% of all legal CDs sold world-wide.
As to MP3, Napster, etc. The Malaysian press openly condemns the use of pirated material, but tongue in cheek, publishes all relevant links to sources of such bad bad sites in the same article.
On the higher level of understanding, copyright is well and truely not part of the mass psyche here. People happily sacrifice quality in return for cheaper prices [and it is a turn-on to watch a blockbuster movie on VCD a week before the official release in the U.S.].
As to software piracy, if it wasn't for that, the Internet would have not spread that fast and would still be very much a western thing.
Consider this, a good PC is available for about $1,500 while a decent PC clone with not too many gadgets costs from about $500 in Malaysia.
With an original M$ WIN O/S the box would cost around $800.00. Add office and you look at $1,400.00
Yes original software is dearer here than in the U.S.
[It is not an issue here to discuss that they don't have to use M$ and stuff; we are looking at the broad masses that have no idea - just like you didn't when you were born].
So, at an average monthly wage of about $300 for a factory worker and $500 for middle admin, most people could never afford to really buy their kids computers - if it wasn't for software piracy.
Governments know that, but can't really admit it openly...
And as they don't enforce software, they can't really enforce movies and music either - they are all pirated in the same factories after all.
I've been saying it all along...
While Netscape was the Underdog and bigbad M$ came in, people just din't believe me. Now it's obvious. M$ has put it time and effort and came up with the better tools, Netscape has sold out.
The only reason why Netscape always complained was that they knew from day one that they wouldn't stand a chance and that IE would end up being the better browser, simply because M$ has larger resources.
So the milked the underdog thing for what it was worth [to maintain investor's confidence] and then sold out to AOL at a hefty profit.
Nothing wrong with that - just BAU [business as usual].
But isn't it time that people started to boycott Netscape's mess-ups?
For a developer like me, in Asia, where plenty people still use NN because of the original hype, it is frustrating that I can not use all the gadgets and abilities of the standard simply because Netscape choses not to support it
Worse, they don't support things their own earlier versions supported, basically forcing me to rewrite sites each time they come up with a new browser.
Netscape has outlived it's usefulness and it's expiry date was somewhere in 98.
I also have a serious problem with all those 'geeks' who are unable to configure their browsers correctly. I mean, why does everyone have problems with IE carshing apart from me, the rest of our company, our system clients, and most other people I deal with that use IE ???
Lets's send the message, flame Netscape and if they don't react, torch AOL.
Just my 1.14 cents...
I'm sorry if I shocked'cha... not my fault'ough.
As i said, the whole mess wasn't really planned, nor is there any intention to deceive anyone - not even evil double-click.
It was just that we pooled proefssional resources from various countries and everyone is telecommuting. Technically we don't even have an office as such. Ain't the Net great?
Obviously we are driving government departments in several countries bananas [as we don't pay tax for the company, anywhere] and run rings around petty issues like licensing, copyright, etc.
I mean, a commercial license for a software can be shared by set number of individuals in a company - noone says that they have to all in the same building, city, country, continent [and coming soon: planet].
But then, we started this whole thing back in 1991 and then spread out, adding new people, some of which left again to do their own thing.
And by now it's next to impossible to explain just exactly what belongs to which company, who owns whom and who owes whom what.
We've been audited in two countries and the guys went nuts and gave up.
The only pitty is that when IPv6 is starting to spread, then some smart cookies will put IP and IP together and end up with maps of 'organic structures' like ours...
Our office address is in Delaware, our Accounting Dept. is in Australia, Development is in Malaysia, Hosting Service is in California and the servers are in Georgia.
We have aclient that hosts.com.tw domains with us and as we assign static IPs, we tend to get in bulk from whereever available. The last bunch [some of which were assigned to the Taiwanese customer] suggest a sub-net in Latin America.
I'm not even getting into the weird holding structures of our mix-and-match corporate set-up.
I don't believe that any IP can conclusively pinpoint any location.
And I'm talking about static IP's not randomly assigned ones [which should be completely impossible to pin point - other than finding the ISP and checking the server logs and contacting the telco provider to find the address of the number, of course].
This is even more so as their are no identity or address checks or anything when a domain name is being registered.
Obviously the story would be different with IPv6.
As ICANN's Esther says, this will fix everything.
But it will also permit permanent IPs for every gadget on the planet - with IPs likely to replace Social Security and Passport numbers over time.
Every Child born is stamped his/her IP and assigned subs for every future gadget it might own [car, cash, id, house, etc]. everything has the owner's IP embedded...
Brave new world - the only crime that is possible is IP theft and hacking...
Well, check the link to http://www.msnbc.com/news/485240.asp?0nm=-21C
they got a cute little flash animation that basically shows that it's a wedge shaped area.
Also, they say that the guy who announced the 1 in 500 and then downgraded it said that they are supposed to issue warnings within 72 hours after first noticing a possible threat and that it took them 80 hours to finish crunching the data.
He claims that to be the reason for the initial wrong warning and why their initial statement was way out of range.
Guess they are trying to point out that they need bigger supercomps and more funding?
...
as a matter of fact, the U.S. economy is not the strongest one, though at the moment is it the largest single economy. however, it is largely build and run on credit, which means it only works as long as fresh cash flows in.
In the past two years the Eurozone has invested more fresh cash into the US economy than the combines US economy has generated in turn-over.
If the the US economy was a NADAQ listed company, then Clinton, Summers, etc. would be under investigation for Chapter 11 evasion.
That much to that. The fact that the Dollar rules literally is mainly due to the fact that all major world commodities are traded in US dollars. That has nothing to do with strength or trust, it's just convenient. They picked the US dollar after WW2 and stuck to it - for convinience. They could have also picked the Polish Zloty, the Thai Baht or chewing gums, put picked the $.
So, sorry, despite the hey' world we got a lack of culture but you are required to assimilate attitude, the US has only three distinct advantages:
1-- people from all over the world go there and take their investions with them, draining the brains out of other countries
2-- anyone that has a workable idea [or one that sounds like it] and seems to know slightly more than the rest of the place about something gets plenty of cash to give it a shot
3-- the US public is blissfully ignorant of the fact that the US is very much Corporate Europe's mercenary [after all, Europe needed Kuwait's oil... and Germany sold more arms to the Middle East than anyone else after the conflict].
So, to sum up, neither the American people, nor the lobby groups really 'make' politics in the U.S.
The Fed and Media hype do.
The Fed shut up, the media went nuts - the dotcom boom was born. European and Middle Eastern cash flowed and sustained the boom. Europeans and Middle eastern investors made a major killing, grabbed the profit and used it to buy a few more major chunks of the U.S. economy - the media said, that's it - presto: the downturn.
In Pecunia Veritas
well, i have first hand experience in that; the f/o and finger to taxation and government went great; the moving even better; the transformation of our business into a pure netplay is also coming along well, but then, oops - immigration.
let's face it, if someone leaves his/her country, then in the new place he/she is a foreigner and has to abide by rules that were 'for others' back home.
worse than that, if your government wants you to come back and explain just exactly where all you tax-deducted assets went, all they have to do, is wait till your passport expires. no worries you think and cue in line at the next consulate - oops the computer says that we should not issue you a passport, cause big-bro back home wants to have a chat with you... and then? well, it's tough for any lawyer to defend you years after you packed up and left, cause the court somehow doesn't want to believe that you hate the weather back home and don't like the people - they simply claim that you left in order to evade whatever it is they claim - and then - well, then, even in western systems, any court issues pratically blanko warrants and the vultures have a field day.
so, as long as there is something like a validity date in passports and immigration regulations in your new host country, then there is always a way to enforce the government's will --- well almost, there is ways around that as well, but most people aren't that lucky/smart/well-connected/bold/stupid/whatever...
basically it depends who you work for.
i guess everywhere old economy companies won't have any of this 'techie extra stuff', while start-ups think they have to follow the california star example.
however, we do have a distinct southeast asian flavour:
1- high profile startup:
grrls are okay, but outside the office - they'll bill the company;
splendid restaurant visits are all right, boss picks up the tab;
everyone has a cellphone anyway, so nothing at that end;
arrive after lunch, stay till dinner;
play quake/doom/etc. on the office LAN, but let the boss win if he finds out about it;
2- low profile start-up
nothing; they are eating the paint off the wall and the marketing gang gets all the goodies
3- old economy dot-com entrant (dot-cummer?)
nothing; marketing and admin spends everything on golf tours and working holidays;
i'm lucky in that respect, as i was here before the whole craze started and could write my own ticket.
my package includes:
- i set my own expense account and don't need to account for it [ie. i can blow the cash as i see fit] but am expected to be reasonable about it;
- free ticket for hardware, software, gadgets as long as i can justify them [afterwards i get to take them home and keep them]
- i come and go as i please, have no 'working hours' per say and work when and where i want [as long as the job gets done]
- workstation and net access, phone, utilities, etc. at home is being paid for
- i get shares issued after the second, third, fifth and tenth year at no cost
dreamjob? well, sort of. added benefit is that i can oversee the production plants of all major IT companies from my window and get to mess around with new stuff [confidential of course] long before it's available anywhere [like Pentium 4 processors in May 2000]
- i can't justify grrls, cause my wife'd kill me...
Okay, this will send a shockwave and everyone will say that i have no understanding of the subject matter...
polarity/pairs, etc. okay i buy that - but, what if -
what if our bi-polarity thinking is wrong?
what if it's not '0' or '1' but '0', '1', 'or' ?
what if there is a third player on the field?
what if the actual 'state of existence'/'matter'/'on'/'horizontal'
and 'nonexitence'/'off'/'vertical' are not the answer to all questions?
what if both need a third defining factor?
what if that factor is either 'when' or 'where'?
when we talk about 'intantaneous communication between tow photons' we still are bound by the thingking pattern of three dimensions and are spooked by the appearance.
but if we assumed that 'where' plays a role beyond the mere location in relation to one another, then this raises the interesting thought that if you eliminate the point of reference altogether, then there is nothing spooky about it anymore.
furthermore, if you then bring it the 'when' without point of refernce, then it only becomes natural that all actions and reaction happen at the time/space or zeitgleich.
of course, this theory would burn every scientific theory and idea that has ever been published. but then, imagine if you can, that any distance is only relative to the point of reference and that the time to cover that distance is only relevant if you confin yourself to three dimensions.
now, if the speed of light is breached and time begins to slow, relative to a point of reference, of course, and if you then keep accelarating, what happens? can time slow indefinitely? wouldn't time stand still after a given [as yet undefined] speed is achived? would then time start spinning backwards if that speed was again breached?
those assumptions are of course very unlikely [despite the good reading they make in sci-fi].
so, if that is not the case, then our three dimensional approach to the subject matter is very questionable to say the least.
therefore, i now claim that the two photons do not communicate at all - instead, they both 'knew' what they would decide before they even started. they also had passed through the filters before at the exact same instant that they were sent on their respective paths, as they had no distance at all to cover and where in essence never apart from each other.
think wormwhole and folding space...
unless of course the IBM geeks were subject to vaporware hype when Linus joined Transmeta.
Let's face it, a company like IBM can't afford to go with upstarts in established markets [this is not the time when they ae fishing for an O/S anymore]
Imagine they came out with new notebooks and the processor wasn't up to scraps. It's not as if IBM had a majority stake in the laptop market - and to my knowledge they don't have too many 'nerd' clients either.
It seems to me that IBM was trying to get some geek customers by announcing that they'd use Transmeta - and that strategy is likely to have worked, considering the Linus-for-god cults among script kiddies.
Then they did a few benchmark tests and started to doubt their own idea. Next they realized that Transmeta is unlikely to be a reliable suppier, because of component shortages [after all IBM was contracted to produce the baby, wasn't it?].
And in a tightening market it's always safer to listen to the PR and Marketing departments and drop a questionable project rather than stick with it for geek's sake and risk having production bottlenecks or worse recalls of malfunctioning units...
just my 0.02 Euros...
Your Honor, further to our expert findings that the Plaintiff is web-il[l]iterate, which permits to question, if not doubt his technological expertise and understanding, we would like to submit to the record: ---
[a]
The Untitled Document tag points to the conclusion that the people who committed the crime of wasting valuable cyberspace did not use FrontPage [which by default calls everything "New Page".
[a.1]
It also seems to permit the assumption that they never bothered to look at the source code of their own page, because they would have been likely to change the title if they had done so.
[a.2]
Which in turn permits the assumption that no commercial strength html editing software was employed, as such software packages usally insert tags which identify the software used.
[a.2.1]
These tags can be manually removed, but require accessing the source code, which seem to have not been the case as claimed and resonably assumed in a.1.
[b]
The facts as established in a.ff point to the assumption that plaintiff's site was indeed generated through the employment and use of an online template.
[c]
It is the opinion of the experts of this online panel that a the credibility of a hightech company that lays claim to many relevant patents in all fields of information and internet technologies ids highly questionable
[d]
based on that questionability the expert panel strongly advises the defendant to question the validity of any statements, claim, patents copyrights, ideas, visions, dreams including but not limited to 'cyber-wet[TM]'ones, made by the plaintiff
------
we will also sue everyone that has wet cyberdreams - a controlled or uncontrolled thought that willfully or unwillfully, knowingly or unknowingly causes or results in sexual arrrrousal where such thought or thought pattern includes any type of object or objects and/or person or persons in conjunction with any type of technology.
oops that means you can't dream of a vibrator anymore...
Slashdot Mirror
...that the internet/web in it's current form was not 'invesnted' by us? Nor did we do much to develop it further. Sure slashdotters would have their fair share of coming up with nifty little tools and gadgets, but who made them main stream? certainly not us. Neither did big-corp. so who did? it's an open secret that the most rapid advancements come from the internet's most profitable line - porn.
.net strategy meeting and vote on the concept. get my drift?
not only do adult site owners have the funds to hire the best brains - they were also the first ones that were willing to pay good chunks of cash to techies so they's come up with better ways to dispense smut over the net to payning audiences.
a sort of the first cyberarms race took place in the adult domain. next were the yahoos and ebays, who started small [and more often with smut funds than most of them admit] came up with something new and grew rapidly. but they only grew rapidly because big-corp suddenly realized what potential the net had and started to shovel cash at innovative small companies.
the dot-com frenzy came much later - two years later to be exact. so most of the cybersquatters had ample time to build decent sites under the domain names they occupied - which in turn, might have affected most WIPO decissions.
if you look at sample WIPO cases, you should foremost check the sites that are under the disputed domains.
most of the time the -sux domains consist of a parody logo and a message board, 300 banner ads and an email address to the webmaster [just in case someone wanted to buy the domain name].
cases in which WIPO decided pro corp despite the fact that the owner of a domain had a legitimate well designed site that served a purpose are rather rare.
of course WIPO can not argue that they will take a site away if it's poorly done, because that would result in a feeding frenzy for lawyers, constitutional experts, etc.
so, while WIPO's arguments most of the time are questionable, the decissions seem to be very much based on the quality of the site that is under a domain, rather than only on the name of the domain.
I can't help myself but respect that as rather fair. i still haven't found a corporation that would have gotten a domain via WIPO that belonged to a legitimate small business operator, who had no intention to profit from registering the domain first.
I can also see why ICANN didn't let the @large nominees vote on the TLD issue. they do have to reach a conclusion somewhat soonish. if the @large guys were voting, they would take years to reach a consensus simply because the @large nominees by definition have to oppose whatever the corp nominees want to ensure their reelection and to show the tech community that they won't bow to big-bad-corp.
it's abit as if you askede linux developers to sit in on M$
so, if you look at things from a non-conspiracy point of view and try [hard] to find underlying motives of people involved, without automatiucally assuming that they are pro-corp and anti-user, then you will more often than not end up with reasonable explanations for their behaviour.
you know, not everyone is out there to take 'our net' away - apart from that - we could just sit down and plan day 'x' when we all pull the plugs on all sytems we have access to. how many newsgroups do you know, where corp managers discuss our conspiracy against them and our plans to bring down the corporate www?
get real, get a life - instal win2k for thrills.
o yeah, next we make a supercomputer that gathers intelligence from all those weather satellites the military deploys. this machine then deploys the 'drones' using the GPS to defend the borders, invade non WTO compliant countries and take the job off trafic police in peace times. the machine becomes part of a system dubbed command-bot, whiic also comprises an executive computer that is a constitution-buff and which effectively rules the country. as counter balance to the executive computer we have two beowulf clusters, one represents all the smaller machines and household appliances and the other is busy hacking networks and blackmailing peopel and corporations into donating to AI research in lieu of campaign donations. once, every four years, the nation votes on who gets to supply the processors and memory to command-bot, and everyone is served. the people get to vote on something and belive in the system because they are forced to pay for it. nobody has any control and it all doesn't matter anyway. superbot for president, beowulf for senate and house!
Three Words:
South East Asia.
malaysia ot the philippines to be more precise;
connections are acceptable, beaches are great, cost of living is about 25% of the U.S. average and 10% of the California average, water is pristine - and hey, they build the P4 processors here {AMD is here, too - so everyone else in the whoiswho of IT].
given liberal legislation and attractive tax presents to the industry, all you gotta do is convice your boss to establish a branch office - telecommuting hub...
for ageek malaysia is almost heaven.
so they can trace everyone to two main groups if migrants - if that holds true, whatever happened to the kids of the huns [as an example].
the huns pestered the roman empire for a long time and settled in - you guessed it 'hun-garia' or 'hun-gary'.
when they were not busy fighting the romans, they fought FOR them as mercenaries. that would have taken huns to spain, france, britain, germany, libya, syria...etc.
and the certainly were not among the best behaved boyz around, but enjoyed procreative sports and pillaging as favourite pasttimes. and none of them managed to imprint on the gene pool ???
certainly the huns did not come from the near east originally, which preempts the suggestion that they might belong to the farming migrant group.
science suggests that the huns originate from north-western mongolia. which would put them into the A and B-heavy blood groups.
at the same token, only a minority of the population has blood group '0', which can be found in higher concentrations in Northern Europe - and the lower Middle East, but is negligable in between. So where exactly are these guys from? Egyptian traders that where having harbour parties in Scandinavia some 10,000 years ago?
well, of course i read those books - been on 2600, too.
but the fact for me is very much that this is, well, nothing new, really. unless i can put on glasses, lean back and write air-keyboard [ala johnny mnomic] i don't see the advantage of something that will not make my job easier or have any other benefit apart from being kewl and getting aaaaahs out of the secretaries that worship me anyway - cause i mess with their desktops if they don't...
still thanks for the info. after all, you couldn't know if i was a script kiddie... but then, as i said that i had been calculating sprites and using a C64 some 15 years ago, kinda suggests that i've been around for a while, huh?
Okay they suspended the culprits for the past six months with pay [i'd love that!].
They don't say how many of them, but I guess we can assume that those who were suspended are at least the cream of the 160 that used the IRC.
What manager in his right state of mind can just suspend their best IT staffers - for six months?
Either they found someone else to do their jobs - which makes the discussion futile, cause then they will sack the offenders anyway - or, given that it's the CIA - they just leave the work undone...
Think about it. For six long months the creme of CIA techs doesn't get to work. Isn't that an invitation for everyone else to get busy while the yanks got their pants down?
I honestly do believe that the U.S. is the vulnerable to cyber warfare, simply because they have every man and his dog running through the Net.
Then they turn around and suspend the first line of defense, cause they were using their brains [which is what the CIA has hired them for, in the first place].
They should let h4x0rz run the Agencies. Would save them a pile and get more results...
okay, is it me - or is it cause it's late night/early morning over here - i just don't get it. what exactly is so unusual outrageous, cool about this? i mean displays are still two dimensional so what's the big deal? i mean the sample graphics they got there remind me a f15 strike eagle a game i used toplay on my commodore 64 some 15 years ago. which was the same time i built spites by calculating coloured spots on drawing paper... so, could anyone tell me what eactly is sooo amazing about the think? does it make coffee? can i take it to the movies? this is not a 1roll - i really honestly, stupid as i might be, don't get the point.
you never stop to amaze me. who has heard of corporations being treated as 'natural persons'? if that holds true, then i would like to make use my corporate rights as an individual. i mean, if companies have the same rights as a person, should i as a person have the right to use corporate law? so i'm not born on my birthday but incorporated under trustee management of my parents until, i the company reaches the age of 18 [21 in some states], when i automatically assume all offices in my company. as such, i have the right to own other companies - people - to sell parts of myself to shareholders; depending on state law - i might be limited to dividing myself into only about 2000 shares and can not offer myself to the public as such. however, i can file for an initial public offering and then auction off parts of myself to be traded publicly... wow, even better, i can buy others, chop them up, absorb pieces i like and sell of the remains... serious, in most western countries corporations are only treated as individuals [or 'entities'] where applicable - meaning in a practical sense, wherever corporate law does not apply. this is specifically the case when corporations deal with individuals. however, i have never heard about a company claiming what is ver much the equivalent of basic human rights. let's face it the declaration of human rights is in essence a large chunk of what is embedded in the U.S. constitution; yed, amazingly enough, it is the very U.S.of A. that has one of the worst human rights records on the planet - yep, the u/s are battling against china and peru for rank 92, straight behind australia - another human right advocate. to the subject matter, well, it's likely that they get away with it just because of those amazing laws you have in your corner of the planet. while i think human rights as such are unworkable and basically a load of b/s i also think that corporations should have the right to block courts with non-sense suits while actual 'human cases' are waiting years to come to trial. just my electronic $0,02
As you said so rightly: "as a tourist..." Of course you get only the trashy open copies and betas of stuff. If you are local and know your way around, then you get copies of the 'factory master disks' at about US$10.00 a piece. Those are the copies that the copyright owners receive as samples, before confirming production orders. Neat stuff - Charlie's Angels VCD anyone? Just kidding... But I watched it last week - not a big deal, the movie that is.
Seems you missed the boat?
ICANN is actually the 'Mother of all CANNs' and everyone - from anywhere - could register to vote for the 'publicly elected' portion of the ICANN reps.
Further, every country has it's own organization, the countryNICs, which issue/assign/sell/register country level domain names. Usually the first step to get involved is to contact your countryNIC, while also visiting the ICANN site [which I bet most of the posters haven't done] and check out how you [and everyone else] can actually try to get invoved...
- stop yapping and start putting your honest concerns into legible language and explain them to ICANN's Chairwoman? I mean, I have mailed her several times, made suggestions, complained [pretty often] and she actually replies, explains and advises proper cause of action, etc.
So, stop this mob-rule rampage when you talk about ICANN until you have at least tried to mail her your concerns. Don't you think this is very much the right thing to do?
Sometimes, fellow slashdotters, you behave pretty much exactly like those imbeciles who keep calling tech support because they can't be bothered to RTFM.
I like to let off steam, too - but alas, you could use that energy and your well-above-average intelligence to try to make a difference by telling ICANN what you think. Maybe, just maybe - if enough of you actually submit constructive critique and make workable suggestions, they might actually listen. Remember, ICANN doesn't realy make money from corporate sponsors - so their main interest is to keep the net running and getting all those yelling techies to write them their thoughts.
Okay, now, I trust that you will NOT {P_L_E_A_S_E) start spamming or flaming her - PLEASE -
The e-mail of the Head of ICANN is: edyson@nospam.edventure.com
[delete the 'nospam']
Of coursehe lost his home state - people there actually know him...
Because the only reason why someone would care about Down-Under would be Hanson running for PM...
;-)))
Firstly a correction: THERE *ARE* copyright laws in Thailand - it's just that they are not much enforced and for open pirates it's easy to pay off cops, buy courts, etc. when Thai authorities are busy bettering their image and raid the public areas where priated material is sold openly.
The cops usually bring the press along, make three token arrests and that's that. Apart from that, all shops suddenly close down shortly before the cops arrive.
Malaysia is slightly more civilized. While you can still find everything pretty much out in the open [music, movies, software] the government is doing slightly more to fix it's image. But then, one has to consider that most of those Thai pirated CDs are made in Malaysia in the first place. It is a bit tougher to enforce the laws here [although they try harder than the Thais], because Malaysia also produces about 60% of all legal CDs sold world-wide.
As to MP3, Napster, etc. The Malaysian press openly condemns the use of pirated material, but tongue in cheek, publishes all relevant links to sources of such bad bad sites in the same article.
On the higher level of understanding, copyright is well and truely not part of the mass psyche here. People happily sacrifice quality in return for cheaper prices [and it is a turn-on to watch a blockbuster movie on VCD a week before the official release in the U.S.].
As to software piracy, if it wasn't for that, the Internet would have not spread that fast and would still be very much a western thing.
Consider this, a good PC is available for about $1,500 while a decent PC clone with not too many gadgets costs from about $500 in Malaysia.
With an original M$ WIN O/S the box would cost around $800.00. Add office and you look at $1,400.00
Yes original software is dearer here than in the U.S.
[It is not an issue here to discuss that they don't have to use M$ and stuff; we are looking at the broad masses that have no idea - just like you didn't when you were born].
So, at an average monthly wage of about $300 for a factory worker and $500 for middle admin, most people could never afford to really buy their kids computers - if it wasn't for software piracy.
Governments know that, but can't really admit it openly...
And as they don't enforce software, they can't really enforce movies and music either - they are all pirated in the same factories after all.
I've been saying it all along... While Netscape was the Underdog and bigbad M$ came in, people just din't believe me. Now it's obvious. M$ has put it time and effort and came up with the better tools, Netscape has sold out. The only reason why Netscape always complained was that they knew from day one that they wouldn't stand a chance and that IE would end up being the better browser, simply because M$ has larger resources. So the milked the underdog thing for what it was worth [to maintain investor's confidence] and then sold out to AOL at a hefty profit. Nothing wrong with that - just BAU [business as usual]. But isn't it time that people started to boycott Netscape's mess-ups? For a developer like me, in Asia, where plenty people still use NN because of the original hype, it is frustrating that I can not use all the gadgets and abilities of the standard simply because Netscape choses not to support it Worse, they don't support things their own earlier versions supported, basically forcing me to rewrite sites each time they come up with a new browser. Netscape has outlived it's usefulness and it's expiry date was somewhere in 98. I also have a serious problem with all those 'geeks' who are unable to configure their browsers correctly. I mean, why does everyone have problems with IE carshing apart from me, the rest of our company, our system clients, and most other people I deal with that use IE ??? Lets's send the message, flame Netscape and if they don't react, torch AOL. Just my 1.14 cents...
I'm sorry if I shocked'cha... not my fault'ough.
As i said, the whole mess wasn't really planned, nor is there any intention to deceive anyone - not even evil double-click.
It was just that we pooled proefssional resources from various countries and everyone is telecommuting. Technically we don't even have an office as such. Ain't the Net great?
Obviously we are driving government departments in several countries bananas [as we don't pay tax for the company, anywhere] and run rings around petty issues like licensing, copyright, etc.
I mean, a commercial license for a software can be shared by set number of individuals in a company - noone says that they have to all in the same building, city, country, continent [and coming soon: planet].
But then, we started this whole thing back in 1991 and then spread out, adding new people, some of which left again to do their own thing.
And by now it's next to impossible to explain just exactly what belongs to which company, who owns whom and who owes whom what.
We've been audited in two countries and the guys went nuts and gave up.
The only pitty is that when IPv6 is starting to spread, then some smart cookies will put IP and IP together and end up with maps of 'organic structures' like ours...
Our office address is in Delaware, our Accounting Dept. is in Australia, Development is in Malaysia, Hosting Service is in California and the servers are in Georgia.
.com.tw domains with us and as we assign static IPs, we tend to get in bulk from whereever available. The last bunch [some of which were assigned to the Taiwanese customer] suggest a sub-net in Latin America.
We have aclient that hosts
I'm not even getting into the weird holding structures of our mix-and-match corporate set-up.
I don't believe that any IP can conclusively pinpoint any location.
And I'm talking about static IP's not randomly assigned ones [which should be completely impossible to pin point - other than finding the ISP and checking the server logs and contacting the telco provider to find the address of the number, of course].
This is even more so as their are no identity or address checks or anything when a domain name is being registered.
Obviously the story would be different with IPv6.
As ICANN's Esther says, this will fix everything.
But it will also permit permanent IPs for every gadget on the planet - with IPs likely to replace Social Security and Passport numbers over time.
Every Child born is stamped his/her IP and assigned subs for every future gadget it might own [car, cash, id, house, etc]. everything has the owner's IP embedded...
Brave new world - the only crime that is possible is IP theft and hacking...
"Never trust a statistic that you have not forged yourself"
attributed to Rockefeller [sen.]
Well, check the link to http://www.msnbc.com/news/485240.asp?0nm=-21C
they got a cute little flash animation that basically shows that it's a wedge shaped area.
Also, they say that the guy who announced the 1 in 500 and then downgraded it said that they are supposed to issue warnings within 72 hours after first noticing a possible threat and that it took them 80 hours to finish crunching the data.
He claims that to be the reason for the initial wrong warning and why their initial statement was way out of range.
Guess they are trying to point out that they need bigger supercomps and more funding?
...
as a matter of fact, the U.S. economy is not the strongest one, though at the moment is it the largest single economy. however, it is largely build and run on credit, which means it only works as long as fresh cash flows in. In the past two years the Eurozone has invested more fresh cash into the US economy than the combines US economy has generated in turn-over. If the the US economy was a NADAQ listed company, then Clinton, Summers, etc. would be under investigation for Chapter 11 evasion. That much to that. The fact that the Dollar rules literally is mainly due to the fact that all major world commodities are traded in US dollars. That has nothing to do with strength or trust, it's just convenient. They picked the US dollar after WW2 and stuck to it - for convinience. They could have also picked the Polish Zloty, the Thai Baht or chewing gums, put picked the $. So, sorry, despite the hey' world we got a lack of culture but you are required to assimilate attitude, the US has only three distinct advantages: 1-- people from all over the world go there and take their investions with them, draining the brains out of other countries 2-- anyone that has a workable idea [or one that sounds like it] and seems to know slightly more than the rest of the place about something gets plenty of cash to give it a shot 3-- the US public is blissfully ignorant of the fact that the US is very much Corporate Europe's mercenary [after all, Europe needed Kuwait's oil... and Germany sold more arms to the Middle East than anyone else after the conflict]. So, to sum up, neither the American people, nor the lobby groups really 'make' politics in the U.S. The Fed and Media hype do. The Fed shut up, the media went nuts - the dotcom boom was born. European and Middle Eastern cash flowed and sustained the boom. Europeans and Middle eastern investors made a major killing, grabbed the profit and used it to buy a few more major chunks of the U.S. economy - the media said, that's it - presto: the downturn. In Pecunia Veritas
well, i have first hand experience in that; the f/o and finger to taxation and government went great; the moving even better; the transformation of our business into a pure netplay is also coming along well, but then, oops - immigration.
.
let's face it, if someone leaves his/her country, then in the new place he/she is a foreigner and has to abide by rules that were 'for others' back home.
worse than that, if your government wants you to come back and explain just exactly where all you tax-deducted assets went, all they have to do, is wait till your passport expires. no worries you think and cue in line at the next consulate - oops the computer says that we should not issue you a passport, cause big-bro back home wants to have a chat with you... and then? well, it's tough for any lawyer to defend you years after you packed up and left, cause the court somehow doesn't want to believe that you hate the weather back home and don't like the people - they simply claim that you left in order to evade whatever it is they claim - and then - well, then, even in western systems, any court issues pratically blanko warrants and the vultures have a field day.
so, as long as there is something like a validity date in passports and immigration regulations in your new host country, then there is always a way to enforce the government's will --- well almost, there is ways around that as well, but most people aren't that lucky/smart/well-connected/bold/stupid/whatever..
basically it depends who you work for.
i guess everywhere old economy companies won't have any of this 'techie extra stuff', while start-ups think they have to follow the california star example.
however, we do have a distinct southeast asian flavour:
1- high profile startup:
grrls are okay, but outside the office - they'll bill the company;
splendid restaurant visits are all right, boss picks up the tab;
everyone has a cellphone anyway, so nothing at that end;
arrive after lunch, stay till dinner;
play quake/doom/etc. on the office LAN, but let the boss win if he finds out about it;
2- low profile start-up
nothing; they are eating the paint off the wall and the marketing gang gets all the goodies
3- old economy dot-com entrant (dot-cummer?)
nothing; marketing and admin spends everything on golf tours and working holidays;
i'm lucky in that respect, as i was here before the whole craze started and could write my own ticket.
my package includes:
- i set my own expense account and don't need to account for it [ie. i can blow the cash as i see fit] but am expected to be reasonable about it;
- free ticket for hardware, software, gadgets as long as i can justify them [afterwards i get to take them home and keep them]
- i come and go as i please, have no 'working hours' per say and work when and where i want [as long as the job gets done]
- workstation and net access, phone, utilities, etc. at home is being paid for
- i get shares issued after the second, third, fifth and tenth year at no cost
dreamjob? well, sort of. added benefit is that i can oversee the production plants of all major IT companies from my window and get to mess around with new stuff [confidential of course] long before it's available anywhere [like Pentium 4 processors in May 2000]
- i can't justify grrls, cause my wife'd kill me...
Okay, this will send a shockwave and everyone will say that i have no understanding of the subject matter... polarity/pairs, etc. okay i buy that - but, what if - what if our bi-polarity thinking is wrong? what if it's not '0' or '1' but '0', '1', 'or' ? what if there is a third player on the field? what if the actual 'state of existence'/'matter'/'on'/'horizontal' and 'nonexitence'/'off'/'vertical' are not the answer to all questions? what if both need a third defining factor? what if that factor is either 'when' or 'where'? when we talk about 'intantaneous communication between tow photons' we still are bound by the thingking pattern of three dimensions and are spooked by the appearance. but if we assumed that 'where' plays a role beyond the mere location in relation to one another, then this raises the interesting thought that if you eliminate the point of reference altogether, then there is nothing spooky about it anymore. furthermore, if you then bring it the 'when' without point of refernce, then it only becomes natural that all actions and reaction happen at the time/space or zeitgleich. of course, this theory would burn every scientific theory and idea that has ever been published. but then, imagine if you can, that any distance is only relative to the point of reference and that the time to cover that distance is only relevant if you confin yourself to three dimensions. now, if the speed of light is breached and time begins to slow, relative to a point of reference, of course, and if you then keep accelarating, what happens? can time slow indefinitely? wouldn't time stand still after a given [as yet undefined] speed is achived? would then time start spinning backwards if that speed was again breached? those assumptions are of course very unlikely [despite the good reading they make in sci-fi]. so, if that is not the case, then our three dimensional approach to the subject matter is very questionable to say the least. therefore, i now claim that the two photons do not communicate at all - instead, they both 'knew' what they would decide before they even started. they also had passed through the filters before at the exact same instant that they were sent on their respective paths, as they had no distance at all to cover and where in essence never apart from each other. think wormwhole and folding space...
unless of course the IBM geeks were subject to vaporware hype when Linus joined Transmeta. Let's face it, a company like IBM can't afford to go with upstarts in established markets [this is not the time when they ae fishing for an O/S anymore] Imagine they came out with new notebooks and the processor wasn't up to scraps. It's not as if IBM had a majority stake in the laptop market - and to my knowledge they don't have too many 'nerd' clients either. It seems to me that IBM was trying to get some geek customers by announcing that they'd use Transmeta - and that strategy is likely to have worked, considering the Linus-for-god cults among script kiddies. Then they did a few benchmark tests and started to doubt their own idea. Next they realized that Transmeta is unlikely to be a reliable suppier, because of component shortages [after all IBM was contracted to produce the baby, wasn't it?]. And in a tightening market it's always safer to listen to the PR and Marketing departments and drop a questionable project rather than stick with it for geek's sake and risk having production bottlenecks or worse recalls of malfunctioning units... just my 0.02 Euros...
Your Honor, further to our expert findings that the Plaintiff is web-il[l]iterate, which permits to question, if not doubt his technological expertise and understanding, we would like to submit to the record: ---
[a]
The Untitled Document tag points to the conclusion that the people who committed the crime of wasting valuable cyberspace did not use FrontPage [which by default calls everything "New Page".
[a.1]
It also seems to permit the assumption that they never bothered to look at the source code of their own page, because they would have been likely to change the title if they had done so.
[a.2]
Which in turn permits the assumption that no commercial strength html editing software was employed, as such software packages usally insert tags which identify the software used.
[a.2.1]
These tags can be manually removed, but require accessing the source code, which seem to have not been the case as claimed and resonably assumed in a.1.
[b]
The facts as established in a.ff point to the assumption that plaintiff's site was indeed generated through the employment and use of an online template.
[c]
It is the opinion of the experts of this online panel that a the credibility of a hightech company that lays claim to many relevant patents in all fields of information and internet technologies ids highly questionable
[d]
based on that questionability the expert panel strongly advises the defendant to question the validity of any statements, claim, patents copyrights, ideas, visions, dreams including but not limited to 'cyber-wet[TM]'ones, made by the plaintiff
------
we will also sue everyone that has wet cyberdreams - a controlled or uncontrolled thought that willfully or unwillfully, knowingly or unknowingly causes or results in sexual arrrrousal where such thought or thought pattern includes any type of object or objects and/or person or persons in conjunction with any type of technology.
oops that means you can't dream of a vibrator anymore...