I believe the problem with that, though-- and the reason they always go after uploaders-- is that the downloader could plausibly say that the were merely taking advantage of a copy of a file offered to them, and it wasn't their job to determine whether the distributor was properly licensed or not (there's not much ground there, but there's some). On the other hand, the uploader is taking the action of copying and redistributing with a clear lack of upstream consent from anyone. IIRC, the RIAA has never gone after uploaders who aren't distributors as well.
It would (theoretically) hold up as well as any other patent. Things like prior art, obviousness, and the like would (theoretically) still apply. Just like other patents, it would be for a limited time and granted to those who applied. A patent, to my mind, is a good incentive for an innovative game mechanic.
Unless there was extra client software involved, I don't know that this could be safe through a browser. All a phishing site has to do is relay the information back and forth, like the "human CAPTCHA cracker" scheme, wouldn't they? Plus, nothing prevents a phisher from saying "We've streamlined our log-in process! Simply enter your user name and password below."
I would imagine you would have, at most, as many muggings for physical-security devices as you would now for credit cards and wallets. Something like that makes account break-in a completely different game with a different type of player.
My current business card reads "Lead Systems Engineer" -- and yes, it's a real business card from a real company that has very large very real clients. I have a lovely office, with a door and windows and everything.
For most that I've seen, you can turn the phone off (not silent, not vibrate), so it won't even go on the air to check for VM until it gets turned back on.
I could see "verbatim" quoting of speech being a rude or derisive practice, as the specific embodiment of the words in print is that of the reporter, not the speaker, but this is a reprint of a set-in-typ, unambiguous and citable written quote. To reinterpret it while still maintaining it as a "quote" does a disservice to... well... reality. The options of paraphrase and short quotes are still there if you don't wish to call attention to the original poster's grammar style.
Perhaps it's a bit creepy*, but I don't see any real harm in aggregating the information you entered as "About Me" to serve you an ad. I could see the problem if they started storing, aggregating, and data-mining private conversations and chats, but this is information you willingly give to broadcast your identity.
* OTOH, I can see the "creep factor" being what will kill these types of targeted advertising. Finely targeted ads feel less like the person-to-person understanding they're trying for, and more like a robot trying to lure you into camaraderie by regurgitating facts about you from the phone book and the visitor's guide. It's such a creep-out because it's so obviously dishonest-- no anonymous advertiser would care enough to understand and interact with you on that individual a level, so anyone who pretends to by packing their ad with keywords makes you feel like they cared just enough to run your public profile through a machine.
The thing that differentiates CL, though, is that it's locally oriented. You're far less likely to be scammed from someone at a local address, because it's much easier to inspect and reject bum goods. Users can police themselves because they have the practical power to enforce-- they can sniff-test the deal in person, and can back out if it's a scam.
On Ebay, though, transactions are being made miles away, over messageboards, credit cards, and shipped product, so there needs to be binding agreements, policing, and enforcement, otherwise the anonymous nature of the site would have it overrun by scammers and have an unfloatable reputation.
So... get off someone else's land. It's not that difficult-- or at least not as difficult as to be called "feudal".
The enshrined rights and freedoms are there to guarantee that there is no absolute repressive force (law or government). There still may be opposing forces, in the forms of people, in a superior position, exercising their own legitimate rights to oppose you. There are ways around them. You just have to be willing to put in the effort.
Given the range of consumer devices you can perma-brick with a botched firmware update, I'd say it's more likely that it's just more expensive to make a fallback bootloader.
One place I've been pleasantly surprised (a bit of a veer, but...)-- I got myself a Sandisk MP3 player (Sansa e300 series) recently, and I was surprised at how brick-resistant the thing is. If you botch the firmware, you can oftentimes still see it as a flash drive, and just drop in a different firmware file. If that fails, you can fall back to a "Recovery Mode" partition and put the new file there, and even if you screw THAT up, there's still a way (using some program that talks more directly to the USB device, I believe) to unbrick THAT.
Now THAT's how software-upgradable consumer electronics should be made.
That could work the other way, too, though. You could "sanitize" a computer by just sending it to a friendly (but completely unassociated, wink-wink, nudge-nudge) repair shop, and have it "discovered" by a technician.
Really, I've often wondered when "landfill mining" was going to take off as a viable enterprise, as the higher cost of materials justifies the complicated means.
OTOH, that "higher risk factor" helps the rationalization of "if they're in here, they must be legit", because anyone else would supposedly be stupid to try.
As for the "calm" factor, you may have something, but OTOH, I would expect that a successful social engineer has worked their way through a fair amount of less-dangerous situations to build up their in-character cool. If you're smart, you don't start at the "These? Backup tapes? Whatever are you implying?" level. You start with "Sorry... where's the bathroom?"-grade infiltration and work your way up.
Then again, I tend to give the criminal mind too much credit, so perhaps I'm wrong.
There can be as many copies as can be made, but only one is the source original. Rarity is the challenge, and finding the original is the sport. If you're merely looking to decorate your home or look upon the art, a reproduction works well enough. However, if you're someone who is into the game of collection, the pedigree is important.
I would imagine originals are just as much in demand now as in the past with collectors, even in this age of mass-produced media. The difference now, though, is that copies of work are far more available, and that means that most owners are not collectors any more, so it just seems-- by way of diluting the percentage-- that no one is as interested in originals.
Why should they waste energy and money running lines out to where people aren't?
If you want to be out in the sticks, away from where people are (or you want something else that depends upon that fact), deal with the consequences of not being in a dense enough population to warrant higher-level service-- the same way people who want to be more closely connected live with the downsides of being in more urban areas. While I can get behind rolling basic services out to everyone (power, phone, dialup), once you have "access", anything past that is something you have to figure out or deal without.
In something as simple as a console (or a phone, or an MP3 player...), there shouldn't be such a thing as "bricking" through software methods. Why can't they put in a fail-safe bootstrap ROM-- one that either reverts to the original firmware, or boots off an external device-- and have a pinhole on the back to activate it? Make it a hard-wired, unchangable ROM, and the worst that would happen is that you lose your savegames and have to spend a while on "System Update".
Of course, I understand that in the case of the Wii and other consoles, it's often more a detrimental matter to take steps to allow third-party software (as they make money from licensing), but countless consumer electronics have this problem that all of the low functions are rewritable and the device is brickable through software.
I think another factor adding to the possibility of VOIP tapping is that your conversation is liable to be sent over a range of different midpoints and hardware, owned by a variety of people. Plus, tapping in and copying the information stream has very little chance of creating noticeable interference.
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I believe the problem with that, though-- and the reason they always go after uploaders-- is that the downloader could plausibly say that the were merely taking advantage of a copy of a file offered to them, and it wasn't their job to determine whether the distributor was properly licensed or not (there's not much ground there, but there's some). On the other hand, the uploader is taking the action of copying and redistributing with a clear lack of upstream consent from anyone. IIRC, the RIAA has never gone after uploaders who aren't distributors as well.
It would (theoretically) hold up as well as any other patent. Things like prior art, obviousness, and the like would (theoretically) still apply. Just like other patents, it would be for a limited time and granted to those who applied. A patent, to my mind, is a good incentive for an innovative game mechanic.
Well, since you're mucking in the guts of the forum anyway, just make it so he's the only one who sees his own posts.
Okay, scratch that last bit-- brain not in gear. They'd still need the personal info in order to actually use the name and password. Right.
Unless there was extra client software involved, I don't know that this could be safe through a browser. All a phishing site has to do is relay the information back and forth, like the "human CAPTCHA cracker" scheme, wouldn't they? Plus, nothing prevents a phisher from saying "We've streamlined our log-in process! Simply enter your user name and password below."
I would imagine you would have, at most, as many muggings for physical-security devices as you would now for credit cards and wallets. Something like that makes account break-in a completely different game with a different type of player.
My current business card reads "Lead Systems Engineer" -- and yes, it's a real business card from a real company that has very large very real clients. I have a lovely office, with a door and windows and everything.
So... you work for a printer?
For most that I've seen, you can turn the phone off (not silent, not vibrate), so it won't even go on the air to check for VM until it gets turned back on.
I could see "verbatim" quoting of speech being a rude or derisive practice, as the specific embodiment of the words in print is that of the reporter, not the speaker, but this is a reprint of a set-in-typ, unambiguous and citable written quote. To reinterpret it while still maintaining it as a "quote" does a disservice to... well... reality. The options of paraphrase and short quotes are still there if you don't wish to call attention to the original poster's grammar style.
Perhaps it's a bit creepy*, but I don't see any real harm in aggregating the information you entered as "About Me" to serve you an ad. I could see the problem if they started storing, aggregating, and data-mining private conversations and chats, but this is information you willingly give to broadcast your identity.
* OTOH, I can see the "creep factor" being what will kill these types of targeted advertising. Finely targeted ads feel less like the person-to-person understanding they're trying for, and more like a robot trying to lure you into camaraderie by regurgitating facts about you from the phone book and the visitor's guide. It's such a creep-out because it's so obviously dishonest-- no anonymous advertiser would care enough to understand and interact with you on that individual a level, so anyone who pretends to by packing their ad with keywords makes you feel like they cared just enough to run your public profile through a machine.
The thing that differentiates CL, though, is that it's locally oriented. You're far less likely to be scammed from someone at a local address, because it's much easier to inspect and reject bum goods. Users can police themselves because they have the practical power to enforce-- they can sniff-test the deal in person, and can back out if it's a scam.
On Ebay, though, transactions are being made miles away, over messageboards, credit cards, and shipped product, so there needs to be binding agreements, policing, and enforcement, otherwise the anonymous nature of the site would have it overrun by scammers and have an unfloatable reputation.
So... get off someone else's land. It's not that difficult-- or at least not as difficult as to be called "feudal".
The enshrined rights and freedoms are there to guarantee that there is no absolute repressive force (law or government). There still may be opposing forces, in the forms of people, in a superior position, exercising their own legitimate rights to oppose you. There are ways around them. You just have to be willing to put in the effort.
Given the range of consumer devices you can perma-brick with a botched firmware update, I'd say it's more likely that it's just more expensive to make a fallback bootloader.
One place I've been pleasantly surprised (a bit of a veer, but...)-- I got myself a Sandisk MP3 player (Sansa e300 series) recently, and I was surprised at how brick-resistant the thing is. If you botch the firmware, you can oftentimes still see it as a flash drive, and just drop in a different firmware file. If that fails, you can fall back to a "Recovery Mode" partition and put the new file there, and even if you screw THAT up, there's still a way (using some program that talks more directly to the USB device, I believe) to unbrick THAT.
Now THAT's how software-upgradable consumer electronics should be made.
That could work the other way, too, though. You could "sanitize" a computer by just sending it to a friendly (but completely unassociated, wink-wink, nudge-nudge) repair shop, and have it "discovered" by a technician.
Really, I've often wondered when "landfill mining" was going to take off as a viable enterprise, as the higher cost of materials justifies the complicated means.
OTOH, that "higher risk factor" helps the rationalization of "if they're in here, they must be legit", because anyone else would supposedly be stupid to try.
As for the "calm" factor, you may have something, but OTOH, I would expect that a successful social engineer has worked their way through a fair amount of less-dangerous situations to build up their in-character cool. If you're smart, you don't start at the "These? Backup tapes? Whatever are you implying?" level. You start with "Sorry... where's the bathroom?"-grade infiltration and work your way up.
Then again, I tend to give the criminal mind too much credit, so perhaps I'm wrong.
Are you sure it wasn't the merchant getting hit with those charges, though?
There can be as many copies as can be made, but only one is the source original. Rarity is the challenge, and finding the original is the sport. If you're merely looking to decorate your home or look upon the art, a reproduction works well enough. However, if you're someone who is into the game of collection, the pedigree is important.
I would imagine originals are just as much in demand now as in the past with collectors, even in this age of mass-produced media. The difference now, though, is that copies of work are far more available, and that means that most owners are not collectors any more, so it just seems-- by way of diluting the percentage-- that no one is as interested in originals.
Why do the cremation step?
Why should they waste energy and money running lines out to where people aren't?
If you want to be out in the sticks, away from where people are (or you want something else that depends upon that fact), deal with the consequences of not being in a dense enough population to warrant higher-level service-- the same way people who want to be more closely connected live with the downsides of being in more urban areas. While I can get behind rolling basic services out to everyone (power, phone, dialup), once you have "access", anything past that is something you have to figure out or deal without.
Consumer-level printers get replaced very frequently.
Lexmarks, extremely so.
Although I understand... even agree, it's a real pain to get used software, then realize you needed a serial key that's nowhere on the box.
Of course, that's why the first thing I do when I buy any new software is write the CD key on the disc.
In something as simple as a console (or a phone, or an MP3 player...), there shouldn't be such a thing as "bricking" through software methods. Why can't they put in a fail-safe bootstrap ROM-- one that either reverts to the original firmware, or boots off an external device-- and have a pinhole on the back to activate it? Make it a hard-wired, unchangable ROM, and the worst that would happen is that you lose your savegames and have to spend a while on "System Update".
Of course, I understand that in the case of the Wii and other consoles, it's often more a detrimental matter to take steps to allow third-party software (as they make money from licensing), but countless consumer electronics have this problem that all of the low functions are rewritable and the device is brickable through software.
True.
I think another factor adding to the possibility of VOIP tapping is that your conversation is liable to be sent over a range of different midpoints and hardware, owned by a variety of people. Plus, tapping in and copying the information stream has very little chance of creating noticeable interference.