My guess is that if the Chinese government wants to do this, they'll find the expertise, even if they have to bring it in from abroad. It isn't too surprising, really, that they'd want to do this. Look at the Three Gorges hydro project. The thing is monstrous, and it's been said that something on that scale isn't just being built for practical purposes. It's more of a symbol of Chinese progress, something that the government can point to as an example of how the country is developing and can compete with anyone else in the world. The same holds true for this building. I don't think anyone can honestly say that the same goals can't be accomplished with several smaller buildings, but that isn't the point of building it.
On a side note, can you imagine the propagation pattern of a TV or radio signal broadcast from the top of such a structure? In the U.S., the tallest broadcast towers are usually no more than 2,000 feet. This thing will be almost twice that height.
I'm afraid I'm not your sister. Wrong gender, for one thing. However, I've done my time behind a console. One of the most fun jobs I ever had. I just wish the pay was good enough to live on.:)
You are correct about network radio, but don't be so quick to discount the current wave of consolidation in the industry. Deregulation of ownership caps has been the death of independent radio in this country. You can slam the quality of programming before and after deregulation, but I can tell you that there are a hell of a lot fewer telented people working in the radio business now than there were before this mess occurred. This is because the group owners consolidate their properties under one management and programming strucutre. The role of air talent is reduced to recording computer-assisted shows. (It's amazing how "live" these things can sound if they're done right, when they were in fact done hours or even days earlier.) The same fate has befallen station management: consolidate, consolidate, consolidate, and to hell with the quality of the product. Believe it or not, there have been a hell of a lot of people in radio who really did give a damn about their local communities. I had the pleasure to work at a station owned by one of them, and they are very aware of the service they are entrusted to deliver. Yes, there are lots of sleazeballs out there, but don't think for a minute that radio professionals aren't any less aware of what they do than people at ISPs or the computer industry in general.
Back to deregulation. The person who commented on how the big group owners would like to get rid of local stations altogether may not be far from the truth. IMHO, the only reason you're seeing a shift away from strictly sat-delivered content back to local programming is bacause technology has advanced to the point that getting a computer to handle programming is as cost-effective as using a satellite service, and it sounds better to listeners. So what if you need talent to say a line or two between songs? You need these folks to do your local commercials anyway, and with consolidated facilities, you can get them to handle several stations at once. Meanwhile, the remaining independently-owned stations are struggling to make a go of it against these consolidated giants. How do you, an owner of one station, compete against a company that owns five of them in the same city and can offer ad packages across all of them? It's hard, and so when a company like Cumulus or Clear Channel comes along and offers you a wad of cash to take the station off your hands, it's an offer that's hard to refuse. About the only stations that can't be bought are the public and college stations, and that's where you're going to find the most creative programming nowadays.
When you look at all this, is it any wonder that big media wanted Low Power FM killed? I agree that badly-engineered stations can cause havoc with other ones, but I'm sure what most of the companies are worried about is that someone might come along and actually do something creative, forcing them to get off their collective asses. The Internet has the potential to do this, but you can't get Internet radio in your car or on the beach. This might change, but with cell phone networks bursting at the seams and demanding more bandwidth, I have my doubts about rich multimedia content going wireless in a big way any time soon. I must admit that it's almost reached the point where I'd advocate pirate radio. Having worked on the professional side of radio for a while, I have reservations about it. It's hard enough to run a professional station, even with good management and engineers, so what would happen when anyone could crank up a transmitter and take to the air? You might get a bunch of idiots with enough wherewithal to get a transmitter hogging the airwaves. Still, things have deteriorated to the point that maybe we need some civil disobediance to shake things up a bit.
Actually, the debate over a cashless society has been going on for a while now, but you're right, we still need both cash and pay phones. It'd be nice to see them upgraded to become public access Internet terminals, and maybe that will eventually happen, but they're still useful as they are, especially for people who can't afford or don't want cell phones or for those times when cell phones simply don't work.
As someone else has pointed out already, this isn't a lot different than reporting a spammer. I agree. If someone is distributing movies from their account, then what makes them any different than a spammer? And as for ISPs using resources to track down movie pirates, they're already doing this with spammers.
Although making ISPs common carriers sounds like a good idea, there are negative consequences associated with doing this. The most important of these is that they couldn't turn potential customers away because the ISP knows they're bad people. They'd have to sign anyone up who are able to pay and who don't have some legal impediment to getting service. Although most people can call up their local ISP and open an account, the providers know who the assholes are in their area, and people can and do get banned because the ISP doesn't want to deal with them. That'd get harder to do if ISPs are common carriers. It'd also be harder, if not impossible, for ISPs to block traffic from sites that are disrupting their networks or annoying their users. Is your provider filtering with the RBL, RSS, or DUL? It won't be so easy for them to do this as common carriers. Finally, they'll lose the flexibility of being able to arbitrarily boot users from the Internet. Sure, this may sound like a positive change from the user's point of view, but it really isn't. Think about some little snot-nosed kid making an ass of himself in an IRC channel. You and everone else in that channel wants him gone, and even the ISP wants him gone, but because he isn't doing anything illegal, the ISP can't boot him because they can't discriminate against the content of his messages, since they're now a common carrier.
They'll do it anyway, but...
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CPRM Voted Down
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· Score: 2
While this vote can be seen as a small victory, I predict that the media companies will lean heavily on individual hardware manufacturers to implement content controls with or without a standard. Any manufacturer who wants to provide hardware to the companies that make closed devices such as PVRs and portable music players is going to feel the pressure to "play ball". It's pretty clear that computer technology is moving out of the PC and into consumer electronics. That's where the mass market lies, at least that's where the electronics industry thinks it lies. At any rate, any manufacturer willing to go along is going to get the business. Looking at it that way, IBM could probably care less that this vote went against CPRM because they'll just implement it anyway and have the market for those drives locked up tight.
Now if you really want to piss off the entertainment companies by throwing a monkey wrench into their plans, design an open-source media appliance that is relatively easy and cheap to build with standard parts. Post the plans on the Net and let anyone who wants to get into the act build and sell this thing. Make the thing using open standards, including an open-source OS and the ability to play alternative media content off the Net via a broadband connection, not just the mass-produced content that comes over the airwaves, cable, and satellite. If you think the media companies are scared of the power of the Internet distribution channel now, imagine how they'll feel when anyone can have access to it on their TV and stereo from the comfort of their couch. I can more or less do this now using some gadgets from X10.com, but building this into a neat little box that can fit into the home entertainment center will take things to the next level.
I'm not talking about giving others access, but I wasn't clear on that. Sorry. I meant it to be used for remote access for an authorized user such as the machine's owner. Right now, unless you have VNC, you need to buy a package like PC Anywhere to do that.
Instead of a Napster client, how about a small FTP server? Let users set aside directories to share either anonymously or via passwords. There's your killer app: the ability to transfer files back and forth between your home and office machines. And to get around the dynamic IP problem, connect to usernames rather than IP addresses, but also give folks the ability to connect via IP or a dnyamically-assigned domain name.
And could VNC be bundled into it as well? Anyone knoe what the licensing terms are on VNC?
And what about the option to encrypt all transactions? Maybe even set things up so a user could configure his client only to talk to other clients using the same encryption key, thereby establishing secure groups. This would be good for companies who want secure internal IM systems.
One thing I've always wondered is why no one has released a really robust IM/e-mail client? Many IM clients have an e-mail checking utility, but if my e-mail program is already running, why do I need another program checking for mail? Combine the two. They complement each other quite well, IMHO. Maybe someone could get a programmer like David Harris to bundle this "IM alternative" with Pegasus Mail. Still, don't just limit it to one e-mail program. Integrate it with any program where the developers are willing to get on board.
Finally, if you want to make this thing popular, the Windows client will have to be on an equal footing release-wise as the Linux version.
You know, it occurs to me that companies aren't just willing to sell things to you anymore and let you go on your merry way. Now you not only pay with your hard-earned money but also with your demographics. When was the last Web site you saw where you could just go in, add one or more products to your shopping cart and simply check out without having to register and tell the company everything about yourself, including what you had for breakfast that morning? And this tactic isn't just happening online anymore. This morning's Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a story about how Kroger is now limiting most of its sale items to those who sign up for its discount card. And yes, they can and do keep track of what you buy. And like everyone else, they say that they'll never divulge that data. I wonder how many companies would be willing to write that promise into a legally-binding contract. Not many, I bet.
You'd think that retailers would be happy to just sell us things, but no, they want to also sell us to marketers. And I don't buy the BS that this allows them to lower the prices they charge us. They're doing it to make more money, not so they can give us the benefit of lower prices. If a marketer wants my data, then they can pay me in cold hard cash. After all, it's my data, damn it. You want my demographics? Fine, show me the money! If I like your offer, then maybe we'll talk.
From working at an ISP and dealing with the public, I can tell you that there's a lot of willful ignorance about the Internet out there. I say willful because these people don't know much and don't want to know much. They'll ask you questions like, "Why can't I send or receive a 20 meg file via e-mail?" When you attempt to explain that e-mail was never designed for such things and that they ought to be using something like WhaleMail or FTP (God forbid they should even consider FTP) to do these things, they don't want to hear it. I've been told more than once, "Well, I'll just find an ISP that will let me do it."
And that's just one example. I really do think that people like this (Rep. Garcia included) think that computers and the Internet are somehow magical, in that it's utterly impossible for the average human being to understand them, so they don't even make the effort to try. Since they personally do not understrand how to accomplish certain tasks such as downloading and installing software, they just assume that no one else can, so it therefore should be done for them.
And don't overlook the religious right in all this. Although conservatives like to publicly justify their actions by saying their goal is to protect children, I've always believed this is just a smokescreen. I think their real aim is to do away with whatever they don't want to see or hear, and the "protect our children" line is just a way to make their activities more palatable to the general public. At any rate, a bill such as this would be a way to score some political points with them. Rep. Garcia wouldn't even have to say anything. The people who want everything censored will understand his actions without a word being spoken.
There are several bills working their way through Congress. And there's one that addresses spam in SMS messages. You can read about it here. If you want to see a list of several bills pending in Congress, CAUCE has a page describing them.
You are exactly right, but good luck convincing the masses. A few examples:
We don't want our kids having sex, so we won't teach sex education classes. So instead of getting real answers, our kids get often-incorrect information passed to them from other kids.
We don't want our kids looking at porn, so we censor it as much as we can, making it even more attractive to them.
We don't want our kids drinking, so instead of demystifying what alcohol is, what it tastes like, and what effects it has, we try to put it out of reach to the point that kids want it even more.
Terrorists do what they do to destroy our way of life, to make us prisoners in our own cities. We claim that we will never give in to them. We then use draconian measures to try to protect ourselves against the perceived threat, thereby destroying our way of life and making us prisoners in our own cities.
As I said, you are exactly right. And when the human race has evolved to the point that logic makes sense, you might have a shot at convincing people that you are right. The only problem is, the whole process of natural selection has been undermined by our technological society. Since stupid people have just as much of an opportunity to breed these days, how will we continue to evolve and get smarter?
My understanding of the situation was that the material in question was not available on the French site but on the U.S. site. If I am mistaken, someone please correct me.
Assuming I'm right, Yahoo should have told France where to shove their court order. If France doesn't want Nazi items (or any other things) imported into France, then that's a problem for their customs inspectors, not sites in other countries.
What I'm waiting for is for some country with an extradition treaty with the U.S. to demand that a U.S. citizen be extradited for doing something on the Net that is legal here but illegal in the other nation. That's when things will get interesting.
It could be that the information is a little out of date. But two-way access is definitely the way of the future. Satellite is going to be a niche service, IMHO, for folks who can't get broadband any other way, but considering how hard it can be to get anything faster than 56k in some areas, there's a market for it out there. The thing is, as old as ISDN is, it ought to be available everywhere, but the telcos have pissed around for years and not deployed it. Even the RBOCs don't have it everywhere, and don't even get me started on the smaller local telcos. Some are remarkably good, but some resemble what you'd get in a third-world country. Pathetic.
When I was teaching, I never had this happen, but if I had, I would have thrown the student out of the room immediately and failed them on any assignments given after they left. That ought to be the standard response. And for anyone who says a professor can't do that, if it's in the sylabus or given in some other form of prior notice, they most certainly can.
If the summary of the article is correct (I can't say because it looks like the article is Slashdotted), I'm all for it. I have nothing against cell phones. Hell, I'm shopping for one right now. However, I do have something against the jerks who won't turn them off in places like restaurants and movie theaters, then insist on yakking away and disturbing everyone around them. It's too bad it's come to this because cell phones in places like restaurants wouldn't be so bad every now and then, if the call was really necessary, but it seems that some folks think it's cool to make everyone around them painfully aware that they're "connected". These are the same people who don't heed the signs asking them to turn off the ringers or set them to vibrate. These are also, I suspect, the same people driving along, ignoring everything around them, like the woman who smashed into a friend's new truck not long ago because she was so absorbed in her phone call that she ran a red light.
IMHO, common courtesy should be voluntary, but if we need cell phone jammers to shut these boors up, so be it.
I don't have a problem with such a chip, as long as its use is voluntary. If parents want to restrict what games their kids can play, then I don't have a problem with giving them the tools to do that. Not that I like the idea a whole lot, either.
Still, I have to wonder why such a tool is needed if parents did their jobs. If you don't want your children playing certain games, listening to certain music, or watching certain movies, don't let them buy them or bring them into the house. It's that simple. And in case anyone says that parents can't possibly watch their kids 24/7, that may be true. My parents didn't watch me 24/7, but I knew the rules of the house, and I knew what would happen if I broke them. I personally think that being engaged in your kids' lives and communicating expectations of good behavior is a hell of a lot more effective than all the filtering programs and v-chips in the world. My parents didn't need a v-chip in their TV. They simply told me what I was and wasn't allowed to watch, and that was enough. Some might say that kids will try to break whatever rules get set out by parents, and that's also true, but kids have been doing that since the beginning of time. Besides, getting away with something your parents didn't allow once in a while added a little excitement to a kid's life, and it doesn't do that much harm. Who here isn't guilty of getting a brief look at a copy of Playboy when they were a teenager? And who didn't get a feeling of excitement from the notion that they were getting away with something (not to mention excitement for other reasons)? IMHO, kids don't get to be criminals because of what they may see from time to time; they become criminals because their parents aren't there to guide them to maturity. I don't care how good at blocking objectionable content technology gets, it isn't a replacement for good parenting, and it never will be. The thing that baffles me, however, is that we've known this fact for a long time, but very few people seem to take heed. Perhaps they think that they're being good parents by working the long hours to be able to afford a nice house in the suburbs and to send their kids to the best schools money can buy, never mind that their kids spend more time in front of the TV than with them.
Then we can have a period for them to get their trademarked names, provided...
They can only register within appropriate TLDs. In other words, IBM would have no right to ibm.museum, unless it happens to run a bona fide museum.
They can only register a domain if the company attempting to register it can prove that there are no other trademark holders who will be affected. If they can't show that no one else has a similar claim to that domain, no dice. Perhaps a solution here would be to mandate a period for anyone who wants to dispute the registration to come forward. This would apply only during this pre-registration period, however because...
After the pre-registration period ends, if a trademark holder hasn't registered a name, they're SOL as far as a trademark claim goes. If IBM didn't get ibm.biz by then, too bad.
I don't like this pre-registration idea too much, but if we must have it, then there has to be a balance struck.
While I like the idea of more TLDs, having competing alternate registries could create some messy problems. What if two different registries each tried to use the same TLD? You could end up with a situation where different users ended up at different sites using the same address, depending on which alternate registry the user was searching. This would create utter chaos. And God help you if you decided to use alternate TLDs in e-mail addresses.
If something like this is going to work, then there should be one unified alternate registry structure. At least then you'd have a fighting chance of getting ISPs to get on board. If you have enough interesting sites available, then ISPs might see a competitive advantage in offering access, since it would expand the variety of sites a user could visit. Well, it really wouldn't necessarily expand it unless these sites were unavailable in the traditional TLDs, but it would at least create the perception.
I'm not too crazy about using a browser plugin to access alternate TLDs for the same reasons others have pointed out, but it does make some amount of sense for Idealab to go this route, at least until ISPs reconfigure their DNS servers. Still, if all the alternate registries could come together and cooperate, they'd be much better off. Maybe they could even build an alternative organization to ICANN. I don't think anyone outside of ICANN, including the U.S. government, is very happy with them right now. Perhaps a little competition would be a good thing. Gee, maybe we could even end up with an organization that would be representative of Internet users and not Network Solutions.
Right. The concept has been used before. Radio stations pay groups such as BMI and ASCAP a percentage of their profits to gain the right to play music on the air.
On a related note, someone needs to address the issue of the inequality between radio broadcasters and streaming audio providers. Anyne streaming audio over the Net is going to not only have to pay the above fees, but they will also have to pay the RIAA a licensing fee. The NAB is suing to exempt radio broadcasters who also happen to offer Internet streams, but that isn't going to help anyone who doesn't own a traditional radio station. Yet another little gift brought to you by the DMCA.
But if you write open source software, you have to let people see your source code. MS may want to use source that is currently available under the GPL without disclosing the modifications they make and releasing the source of the final product. They probably view this as stifling innovation, since anyone could come along and use their "innovations" in competing software. Never mind that they'd be using someone else's work at the outset, but hasn't MS been known for doing that already?
It may be that MS is going to build the argument that if they take publicly-available code and make "significant modifications" to it, they should be able to copyright the resulting program and not have to disclose its inner workings or make it freely available.
Not a bad idea. Many times, the packaging is what counts most, and a name such as "freedom software" would force MS to have to work much harder. Before they could attack the philosophy of "freedom software" itself, they'd have to get past all the connotations the name implies. Look at Carnivore. My guess is it wouldn't have received half the publicity it did if it hadn't had that name. Now the FBI is attempting to rename it DSC1000, but it's really too late for that. "Carnivore" and all its bad connotations have stuck to it like glue.
Slashdot Mirror
My guess is that if the Chinese government wants to do this, they'll find the expertise, even if they have to bring it in from abroad. It isn't too surprising, really, that they'd want to do this. Look at the Three Gorges hydro project. The thing is monstrous, and it's been said that something on that scale isn't just being built for practical purposes. It's more of a symbol of Chinese progress, something that the government can point to as an example of how the country is developing and can compete with anyone else in the world. The same holds true for this building. I don't think anyone can honestly say that the same goals can't be accomplished with several smaller buildings, but that isn't the point of building it. On a side note, can you imagine the propagation pattern of a TV or radio signal broadcast from the top of such a structure? In the U.S., the tallest broadcast towers are usually no more than 2,000 feet. This thing will be almost twice that height.
I'm afraid I'm not your sister. Wrong gender, for one thing. However, I've done my time behind a console. One of the most fun jobs I ever had. I just wish the pay was good enough to live on. :)
You are correct about network radio, but don't be so quick to discount the current wave of consolidation in the industry. Deregulation of ownership caps has been the death of independent radio in this country. You can slam the quality of programming before and after deregulation, but I can tell you that there are a hell of a lot fewer telented people working in the radio business now than there were before this mess occurred. This is because the group owners consolidate their properties under one management and programming strucutre. The role of air talent is reduced to recording computer-assisted shows. (It's amazing how "live" these things can sound if they're done right, when they were in fact done hours or even days earlier.) The same fate has befallen station management: consolidate, consolidate, consolidate, and to hell with the quality of the product. Believe it or not, there have been a hell of a lot of people in radio who really did give a damn about their local communities. I had the pleasure to work at a station owned by one of them, and they are very aware of the service they are entrusted to deliver. Yes, there are lots of sleazeballs out there, but don't think for a minute that radio professionals aren't any less aware of what they do than people at ISPs or the computer industry in general. Back to deregulation. The person who commented on how the big group owners would like to get rid of local stations altogether may not be far from the truth. IMHO, the only reason you're seeing a shift away from strictly sat-delivered content back to local programming is bacause technology has advanced to the point that getting a computer to handle programming is as cost-effective as using a satellite service, and it sounds better to listeners. So what if you need talent to say a line or two between songs? You need these folks to do your local commercials anyway, and with consolidated facilities, you can get them to handle several stations at once. Meanwhile, the remaining independently-owned stations are struggling to make a go of it against these consolidated giants. How do you, an owner of one station, compete against a company that owns five of them in the same city and can offer ad packages across all of them? It's hard, and so when a company like Cumulus or Clear Channel comes along and offers you a wad of cash to take the station off your hands, it's an offer that's hard to refuse. About the only stations that can't be bought are the public and college stations, and that's where you're going to find the most creative programming nowadays. When you look at all this, is it any wonder that big media wanted Low Power FM killed? I agree that badly-engineered stations can cause havoc with other ones, but I'm sure what most of the companies are worried about is that someone might come along and actually do something creative, forcing them to get off their collective asses. The Internet has the potential to do this, but you can't get Internet radio in your car or on the beach. This might change, but with cell phone networks bursting at the seams and demanding more bandwidth, I have my doubts about rich multimedia content going wireless in a big way any time soon. I must admit that it's almost reached the point where I'd advocate pirate radio. Having worked on the professional side of radio for a while, I have reservations about it. It's hard enough to run a professional station, even with good management and engineers, so what would happen when anyone could crank up a transmitter and take to the air? You might get a bunch of idiots with enough wherewithal to get a transmitter hogging the airwaves. Still, things have deteriorated to the point that maybe we need some civil disobediance to shake things up a bit.
Actually, the debate over a cashless society has been going on for a while now, but you're right, we still need both cash and pay phones. It'd be nice to see them upgraded to become public access Internet terminals, and maybe that will eventually happen, but they're still useful as they are, especially for people who can't afford or don't want cell phones or for those times when cell phones simply don't work.
Yep, you're right. And besides, the drug dealers and prostitutes just got beepers and cell phones anyway.
As someone else has pointed out already, this isn't a lot different than reporting a spammer. I agree. If someone is distributing movies from their account, then what makes them any different than a spammer? And as for ISPs using resources to track down movie pirates, they're already doing this with spammers. Although making ISPs common carriers sounds like a good idea, there are negative consequences associated with doing this. The most important of these is that they couldn't turn potential customers away because the ISP knows they're bad people. They'd have to sign anyone up who are able to pay and who don't have some legal impediment to getting service. Although most people can call up their local ISP and open an account, the providers know who the assholes are in their area, and people can and do get banned because the ISP doesn't want to deal with them. That'd get harder to do if ISPs are common carriers. It'd also be harder, if not impossible, for ISPs to block traffic from sites that are disrupting their networks or annoying their users. Is your provider filtering with the RBL, RSS, or DUL? It won't be so easy for them to do this as common carriers. Finally, they'll lose the flexibility of being able to arbitrarily boot users from the Internet. Sure, this may sound like a positive change from the user's point of view, but it really isn't. Think about some little snot-nosed kid making an ass of himself in an IRC channel. You and everone else in that channel wants him gone, and even the ISP wants him gone, but because he isn't doing anything illegal, the ISP can't boot him because they can't discriminate against the content of his messages, since they're now a common carrier.
While this vote can be seen as a small victory, I predict that the media companies will lean heavily on individual hardware manufacturers to implement content controls with or without a standard. Any manufacturer who wants to provide hardware to the companies that make closed devices such as PVRs and portable music players is going to feel the pressure to "play ball". It's pretty clear that computer technology is moving out of the PC and into consumer electronics. That's where the mass market lies, at least that's where the electronics industry thinks it lies. At any rate, any manufacturer willing to go along is going to get the business. Looking at it that way, IBM could probably care less that this vote went against CPRM because they'll just implement it anyway and have the market for those drives locked up tight. Now if you really want to piss off the entertainment companies by throwing a monkey wrench into their plans, design an open-source media appliance that is relatively easy and cheap to build with standard parts. Post the plans on the Net and let anyone who wants to get into the act build and sell this thing. Make the thing using open standards, including an open-source OS and the ability to play alternative media content off the Net via a broadband connection, not just the mass-produced content that comes over the airwaves, cable, and satellite. If you think the media companies are scared of the power of the Internet distribution channel now, imagine how they'll feel when anyone can have access to it on their TV and stereo from the comfort of their couch. I can more or less do this now using some gadgets from X10.com, but building this into a neat little box that can fit into the home entertainment center will take things to the next level.
I'm not talking about giving others access, but I wasn't clear on that. Sorry. I meant it to be used for remote access for an authorized user such as the machine's owner. Right now, unless you have VNC, you need to buy a package like PC Anywhere to do that.
Instead of a Napster client, how about a small FTP server? Let users set aside directories to share either anonymously or via passwords. There's your killer app: the ability to transfer files back and forth between your home and office machines. And to get around the dynamic IP problem, connect to usernames rather than IP addresses, but also give folks the ability to connect via IP or a dnyamically-assigned domain name. And could VNC be bundled into it as well? Anyone knoe what the licensing terms are on VNC? And what about the option to encrypt all transactions? Maybe even set things up so a user could configure his client only to talk to other clients using the same encryption key, thereby establishing secure groups. This would be good for companies who want secure internal IM systems. One thing I've always wondered is why no one has released a really robust IM/e-mail client? Many IM clients have an e-mail checking utility, but if my e-mail program is already running, why do I need another program checking for mail? Combine the two. They complement each other quite well, IMHO. Maybe someone could get a programmer like David Harris to bundle this "IM alternative" with Pegasus Mail. Still, don't just limit it to one e-mail program. Integrate it with any program where the developers are willing to get on board. Finally, if you want to make this thing popular, the Windows client will have to be on an equal footing release-wise as the Linux version.
You know, it occurs to me that companies aren't just willing to sell things to you anymore and let you go on your merry way. Now you not only pay with your hard-earned money but also with your demographics. When was the last Web site you saw where you could just go in, add one or more products to your shopping cart and simply check out without having to register and tell the company everything about yourself, including what you had for breakfast that morning? And this tactic isn't just happening online anymore. This morning's Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a story about how Kroger is now limiting most of its sale items to those who sign up for its discount card. And yes, they can and do keep track of what you buy. And like everyone else, they say that they'll never divulge that data. I wonder how many companies would be willing to write that promise into a legally-binding contract. Not many, I bet. You'd think that retailers would be happy to just sell us things, but no, they want to also sell us to marketers. And I don't buy the BS that this allows them to lower the prices they charge us. They're doing it to make more money, not so they can give us the benefit of lower prices. If a marketer wants my data, then they can pay me in cold hard cash. After all, it's my data, damn it. You want my demographics? Fine, show me the money! If I like your offer, then maybe we'll talk.
You've never lived in the South, have you? :)
Down here, party affiliations don't mean much when you get into social issues.
From working at an ISP and dealing with the public, I can tell you that there's a lot of willful ignorance about the Internet out there. I say willful because these people don't know much and don't want to know much. They'll ask you questions like, "Why can't I send or receive a 20 meg file via e-mail?" When you attempt to explain that e-mail was never designed for such things and that they ought to be using something like WhaleMail or FTP (God forbid they should even consider FTP) to do these things, they don't want to hear it. I've been told more than once, "Well, I'll just find an ISP that will let me do it." And that's just one example. I really do think that people like this (Rep. Garcia included) think that computers and the Internet are somehow magical, in that it's utterly impossible for the average human being to understand them, so they don't even make the effort to try. Since they personally do not understrand how to accomplish certain tasks such as downloading and installing software, they just assume that no one else can, so it therefore should be done for them. And don't overlook the religious right in all this. Although conservatives like to publicly justify their actions by saying their goal is to protect children, I've always believed this is just a smokescreen. I think their real aim is to do away with whatever they don't want to see or hear, and the "protect our children" line is just a way to make their activities more palatable to the general public. At any rate, a bill such as this would be a way to score some political points with them. Rep. Garcia wouldn't even have to say anything. The people who want everything censored will understand his actions without a word being spoken.
There are several bills working their way through Congress. And there's one that addresses spam in SMS messages. You can read about it here. If you want to see a list of several bills pending in Congress, CAUCE has a page describing them.
You are exactly right, but good luck convincing the masses. A few examples: We don't want our kids having sex, so we won't teach sex education classes. So instead of getting real answers, our kids get often-incorrect information passed to them from other kids. We don't want our kids looking at porn, so we censor it as much as we can, making it even more attractive to them. We don't want our kids drinking, so instead of demystifying what alcohol is, what it tastes like, and what effects it has, we try to put it out of reach to the point that kids want it even more. Terrorists do what they do to destroy our way of life, to make us prisoners in our own cities. We claim that we will never give in to them. We then use draconian measures to try to protect ourselves against the perceived threat, thereby destroying our way of life and making us prisoners in our own cities. As I said, you are exactly right. And when the human race has evolved to the point that logic makes sense, you might have a shot at convincing people that you are right. The only problem is, the whole process of natural selection has been undermined by our technological society. Since stupid people have just as much of an opportunity to breed these days, how will we continue to evolve and get smarter?
My understanding of the situation was that the material in question was not available on the French site but on the U.S. site. If I am mistaken, someone please correct me. Assuming I'm right, Yahoo should have told France where to shove their court order. If France doesn't want Nazi items (or any other things) imported into France, then that's a problem for their customs inspectors, not sites in other countries. What I'm waiting for is for some country with an extradition treaty with the U.S. to demand that a U.S. citizen be extradited for doing something on the Net that is legal here but illegal in the other nation. That's when things will get interesting.
I admit that I laughed my ass off. I haven't even been interested in getting the game, but after reading that, I might have to reconsider.
It could be that the information is a little out of date. But two-way access is definitely the way of the future. Satellite is going to be a niche service, IMHO, for folks who can't get broadband any other way, but considering how hard it can be to get anything faster than 56k in some areas, there's a market for it out there. The thing is, as old as ISDN is, it ought to be available everywhere, but the telcos have pissed around for years and not deployed it. Even the RBOCs don't have it everywhere, and don't even get me started on the smaller local telcos. Some are remarkably good, but some resemble what you'd get in a third-world country. Pathetic.
When I was teaching, I never had this happen, but if I had, I would have thrown the student out of the room immediately and failed them on any assignments given after they left. That ought to be the standard response. And for anyone who says a professor can't do that, if it's in the sylabus or given in some other form of prior notice, they most certainly can.
If the summary of the article is correct (I can't say because it looks like the article is Slashdotted), I'm all for it. I have nothing against cell phones. Hell, I'm shopping for one right now. However, I do have something against the jerks who won't turn them off in places like restaurants and movie theaters, then insist on yakking away and disturbing everyone around them. It's too bad it's come to this because cell phones in places like restaurants wouldn't be so bad every now and then, if the call was really necessary, but it seems that some folks think it's cool to make everyone around them painfully aware that they're "connected". These are the same people who don't heed the signs asking them to turn off the ringers or set them to vibrate. These are also, I suspect, the same people driving along, ignoring everything around them, like the woman who smashed into a friend's new truck not long ago because she was so absorbed in her phone call that she ran a red light. IMHO, common courtesy should be voluntary, but if we need cell phone jammers to shut these boors up, so be it.
I don't have a problem with such a chip, as long as its use is voluntary. If parents want to restrict what games their kids can play, then I don't have a problem with giving them the tools to do that. Not that I like the idea a whole lot, either. Still, I have to wonder why such a tool is needed if parents did their jobs. If you don't want your children playing certain games, listening to certain music, or watching certain movies, don't let them buy them or bring them into the house. It's that simple. And in case anyone says that parents can't possibly watch their kids 24/7, that may be true. My parents didn't watch me 24/7, but I knew the rules of the house, and I knew what would happen if I broke them. I personally think that being engaged in your kids' lives and communicating expectations of good behavior is a hell of a lot more effective than all the filtering programs and v-chips in the world. My parents didn't need a v-chip in their TV. They simply told me what I was and wasn't allowed to watch, and that was enough. Some might say that kids will try to break whatever rules get set out by parents, and that's also true, but kids have been doing that since the beginning of time. Besides, getting away with something your parents didn't allow once in a while added a little excitement to a kid's life, and it doesn't do that much harm. Who here isn't guilty of getting a brief look at a copy of Playboy when they were a teenager? And who didn't get a feeling of excitement from the notion that they were getting away with something (not to mention excitement for other reasons)? IMHO, kids don't get to be criminals because of what they may see from time to time; they become criminals because their parents aren't there to guide them to maturity. I don't care how good at blocking objectionable content technology gets, it isn't a replacement for good parenting, and it never will be. The thing that baffles me, however, is that we've known this fact for a long time, but very few people seem to take heed. Perhaps they think that they're being good parents by working the long hours to be able to afford a nice house in the suburbs and to send their kids to the best schools money can buy, never mind that their kids spend more time in front of the TV than with them.
Then we can have a period for them to get their trademarked names, provided... They can only register within appropriate TLDs. In other words, IBM would have no right to ibm.museum, unless it happens to run a bona fide museum. They can only register a domain if the company attempting to register it can prove that there are no other trademark holders who will be affected. If they can't show that no one else has a similar claim to that domain, no dice. Perhaps a solution here would be to mandate a period for anyone who wants to dispute the registration to come forward. This would apply only during this pre-registration period, however because... After the pre-registration period ends, if a trademark holder hasn't registered a name, they're SOL as far as a trademark claim goes. If IBM didn't get ibm.biz by then, too bad. I don't like this pre-registration idea too much, but if we must have it, then there has to be a balance struck.
While I like the idea of more TLDs, having competing alternate registries could create some messy problems. What if two different registries each tried to use the same TLD? You could end up with a situation where different users ended up at different sites using the same address, depending on which alternate registry the user was searching. This would create utter chaos. And God help you if you decided to use alternate TLDs in e-mail addresses. If something like this is going to work, then there should be one unified alternate registry structure. At least then you'd have a fighting chance of getting ISPs to get on board. If you have enough interesting sites available, then ISPs might see a competitive advantage in offering access, since it would expand the variety of sites a user could visit. Well, it really wouldn't necessarily expand it unless these sites were unavailable in the traditional TLDs, but it would at least create the perception. I'm not too crazy about using a browser plugin to access alternate TLDs for the same reasons others have pointed out, but it does make some amount of sense for Idealab to go this route, at least until ISPs reconfigure their DNS servers. Still, if all the alternate registries could come together and cooperate, they'd be much better off. Maybe they could even build an alternative organization to ICANN. I don't think anyone outside of ICANN, including the U.S. government, is very happy with them right now. Perhaps a little competition would be a good thing. Gee, maybe we could even end up with an organization that would be representative of Internet users and not Network Solutions.
Right. The concept has been used before. Radio stations pay groups such as BMI and ASCAP a percentage of their profits to gain the right to play music on the air. On a related note, someone needs to address the issue of the inequality between radio broadcasters and streaming audio providers. Anyne streaming audio over the Net is going to not only have to pay the above fees, but they will also have to pay the RIAA a licensing fee. The NAB is suing to exempt radio broadcasters who also happen to offer Internet streams, but that isn't going to help anyone who doesn't own a traditional radio station. Yet another little gift brought to you by the DMCA.
But if you write open source software, you have to let people see your source code. MS may want to use source that is currently available under the GPL without disclosing the modifications they make and releasing the source of the final product. They probably view this as stifling innovation, since anyone could come along and use their "innovations" in competing software. Never mind that they'd be using someone else's work at the outset, but hasn't MS been known for doing that already? It may be that MS is going to build the argument that if they take publicly-available code and make "significant modifications" to it, they should be able to copyright the resulting program and not have to disclose its inner workings or make it freely available.
Not a bad idea. Many times, the packaging is what counts most, and a name such as "freedom software" would force MS to have to work much harder. Before they could attack the philosophy of "freedom software" itself, they'd have to get past all the connotations the name implies. Look at Carnivore. My guess is it wouldn't have received half the publicity it did if it hadn't had that name. Now the FBI is attempting to rename it DSC1000, but it's really too late for that. "Carnivore" and all its bad connotations have stuck to it like glue.