That's similar to "1 knowledgable bad guy with a computer and modem who stole money/goods/hijacked phone lines, therefore all knowlegable guys with computers and modems are evil".
Yeah, that seems to be the argument, doesn't it? Its certainly not true, but there are plenty of examples where media and polititans have attempted to make that VERY point. After Columbine, 3D FPS made you evil. After Enron, all corporations are fraudulant, and therefore evil. Don't even consider trying to circumvent copyright protection. Evil is the only way to go there.
First off all, the P2P networks by design will generate far more traffic than necessary. Necessary, being of course a single set of central servers that collect data from the entire network and serve out that data ONCE to anyone requesting it. However, Napster as we all know died a painful death because there was a single point of failure. Kazaa, gnutella, and others have no head you can cut off. Even if the company that sponsors Kazaa were to be sued/prosecuted into oblivion, the network would remain. The downside, of course, is an excessive amount of unnecessary traffic.
The second big problem is the fact that as far as I can tell, none of the P2P networks take advantage of the teired nature of the internet, attempting to search local networks first, and searching further ONLY when something can't be found closer. Bandwidth is always more scarce (and therefore more expensive) the closer you reach for the backbone. Any effort to keep the traffic within the local network of the ISP costs THEM less, which means they would be far more willing to promote those types of networks, or at the very least not attempt to restrict them.
The network admins for universities were especially outspoken against Napster at the height of that craze, since that single program was consuming all the upstream bandwidth, where there is a DAMN good chance that with a student population in the tens of thousands, there's probably a 99% chance that anything a student was searching for could be found somewhere on the university network, which typically has much larger pipes than the internet upstream.
Install linux on it (yes.. I know its cliche). You can remote access it and do anything you want with it, just make sure you have a network option available.
Secondly, get a spare laptop, or anything that can access the HD, and just do work on the HD as necessary from a separate computer and "reimplant" it.
My house has numerous wired appliances, to be controlled and observed via the internet. Something I thought of doing was to rig up a mock nuclear bomb, movie style, with the keypad and readout on it, something similar to what was used in "Broken Arrow". The idea is, people could set the timer and start the countdown, and anyone watching could abort the timer. If, for any reason, the timer managed to reach 0 while someone was watching, that person would get automatically added to the firewall rules and wouldn't be able to access the site anymore. For all practical purposes, the entire network would "disappear".
At least, I thought it would be a clever prank that might worry someone for a few minutes anyway. And I'd be sure to put enough casual disclaimers around that it wasn't real. However, after 9/11, even the perceived threat of something like that was likely to result in a lot of "shoot and ask questions later" approaches by your favorite law enforcement agencies, so I just trashed the idea.
That's my primary concern as well. I just bought a 120 gig drive to replace an old 6 gig that was about to die. I still have 90 gigs of it that I haven't even partitioned yet, and half the drive can hold the entire contents of my old system.
So I sit here stewing over the fact that should THIS drive die before I purchase a larger one, I will be in no position to back up the data on it. Granted, anything REALLY important I back up frequently, but stuff I download is typically going to be 120 gigs behind a burn. I'll get lazy and not burn ANYTHING until I have no space left, unlike what I SHOULD do and burn as I download, then just delete when space is required. Oh well. Gotta love the bad habits.
It's not so much a matter of getting permission, but to inform people of what's going on. MOST launches are at least announced, since especially in this day and age, you don't want to launch off rockets without informing anyone. Jittery governments who are in the dark might think its the start of a nuclear attack. This HAS happened in the past. We don't care that you launch rockets, we just want to make sure they're going into space and not somewhere else.
Its also important that if something goes wrong with the spacecraft and all contact is lost, the craft (or debris from it) can be tracked by those who are most concerned about such things. A single screw in low earth orbit can cause major havoc if it impacts a spacecraft. You want to know where it is.
The other issue is to insure compliance with any international treaties with regards to propulsion systems or use of celestial bodies for which someone at one point in time might have signed a treaty for. True, they could launch the rocket anyway, and probably nobody could do much about it. But there's no sense pissing anyone off if a yes answer is overwhelmingly probable anyway.
No scientific evidence here either, but my opinion on the issue of cell phones is one of status. These people aren't made stupid BY the cell phone, they were stupid to begin with. Of course, stupid isn't really the right word. Its more like an inability to concentrate on two things at once. They spend all their cognitive efforts on maintaining the conversation that they tune out the rest of the world. Sure, they can keep an eye on what's going on in front of them, but someone could run them over from the side and they'd never see it coming, hence the first example in the article.
Up until a few years ago, if someone wanted to talk on the phone, they'd be safely in their homes, confined to a single room, or within 3 feet of a payphone booth. The opportunities for trouble due to their all-consuming conversation were minimal. Cordless phones allowed them to wander so the phone wouldn't hold them by a leash any longer, but they were still confined to the house. Cell phones solved that "problem". Now they can wander freely, not paying attention to ANYTHING.
And not only an issue of convienence, it might also be one of status. 10 years ago, some people had cell phones, but the majority of the public was still somewhat in awe of them. Most people with cell phones back then didn't wander around conversing about the products on the grocery store shelves because it was TOO DAMN EXPENSIVE. They kept the conversations to important, serious things. Others in public that witnessed this equated cell phones with an artifical importantance. If only they could get one of their very own.....
And eventually the phones became economical for everyone and their dog to have one, or two or three. And with the average plan including enough minutes to pretty much occupy all waking hours of the month, and even some of the sleeping hours, there was no reason NOT to jabber aimlessly at all hours of the day. And since once upon a time only important people had cell phones in public, they figured the best way to look important is to talk on their cell phone in public. AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. Movie theatres, restaurants, anywhere is acceptable to take that important call about who's dating who at that particular moment. I mean, this kind of information simply CAN'T WAIT.
Still, I think the most appropriate comment I saw once was a cartoon of someone sitting in an outside diner, talking on his phone and he says "Sorry, I need to let you go now. Nobody can see me talking on the phone"
I have to agree on the X10 stuff. Even if the equipment was extremely reliable, the underlying protocols are flawed. There's no security built in. Anyone with an X10 remote can control my house, and even if I disabled the wireless interface, they could plug in one of my outdoor plugs to interface the network. While the ability to turn my lights on might not be a drastic security concern, it limits my ability to make use of some of the more custom features, like using one of the X10 unit codes to activate computer events. If security is the least bit important in those matters, X10 is not a viable option.
Its also slow. While the time between a button press and the lamp turning on is almost instantanious, if you're detecting an event then responding to it separately, it will take a minimum of two seconds to get feedback, which is almost useless if you're you're using motion sensors to capture pictures or anything else where responses in the milliseconds are preferred.
Still, for low cost consumer grade products, they serve their purpose well. Even if you despise X10 for obvious reasons, you can wire your entire house with X10 compatible products from different companies. However, anyone planning to wire every single electrical device in the house probably can justify a different approach.
Check it out here. Oh well, at least now I have more goals to shoot for. I'll probably have to forgo the movie theatre for now. His house is about 10x larger than mine.:)
They're just crusing high crime areas (where the probabability is greater that a resident will be involved in criminal activity), then they find someone who's doing anything that's even remotely in violation of the law (loitering for instance), then adding them to the probability list.
And of course, they cite numbers of "successful guesses" but fail to mention how many misses. Its not necessarily meaningful. Very VERY few people are completely 100% in compliance with the law. I wouldn't go so far to say that someone who occasionally speeds is to be considered a criminal, but if you look at the teeth many laws have, especially copyright law, many of us are in violation to the degree that we could spend many thousands of years in prison and be fined billions of dollars, should they bring those cases to court and press the maximums.
6.6 Million americans (about 3%) are currently under supervision of a correctional institution, either in prison, or on parole or probation. And that's RIGHT NOW. That's a significant percentage of the population. To drive around someplace where that percentage is signficantly higher, it wouldn't be terribly unlikely to get a 10% matchup with pure guessing by pointing out random people who will one day end up in trouble with the law. To tout statistical probabilities as indications that this system is any more useful than pursusing criminals after the crime has been commmited is nothing more than a lazy effort to create the impression that something is being done about the "problem".
What is the point of this anyway? So someone's name is on a "future criminals" list. Does that make any difference when a trial comes up? I suppose if there's a murder, and one of the suspects happens to be on the list, that might be something, but if the only critiera for being added to the list was the fact that you once jaywalked 5 years ago, there would be little grounds to take it seriously, and defense lawyers would have a field day if someone was held longer than necessary based only on such inconsequencial evidence.
I had an ex girlfriend who's family spent about $300 a month on various multi level marketing things, scams, pyramid schemes, envelope stuffing, etc. If someone mailed it to their house, they'd immediately send in the money for the get rich quick scheme of the week (or of the last 20 years... didn't matter).
And despite the fact that none of them ever worked, and most likely they'd never follow through on any of them long enough to find out, they'd just keep buying them up. Hell, there was one that wanted $10,000 to get started, and if they actually had the money they would have spent it.
Sadly, there are plenty of people like that. And they're not likely to suddenly wake up one day and smack themselves over the head and figure it out. They'll just keep doing it, because getting rich without any effort or work is the only thing that means anything to them.
There are markets that would be willing to subscribe to a service for a flat rate and be able to download music, in unrestricted, unencumbered fashion. Why?? because the P2P networks, as awesome as they are, still have problems. You still have to hunt around for songs, songs are named incorrectly, people are hosting them from a 56K connection sometimes that 20 poeple are trying to share, some people flat out refuse to share files, too many connections, etc.
It takes time to hunt, and it can be slow. And just because you found one song you like, doesn't mean that you can easily find ALL the songs in that album. And they still require you have an idea of what you're looking for. If you just want to sample some random music in a certain genre, your options are still rather limited. Usenet is great for this, and people pay money to major news servers for the privilage of being exposed to music they've never heard of before, yet someone else thought enough of to bother to post it in the first place. Not everything is great, but I've discovered a lot of cool stuff that way, and I probably never would have found it any other way.
So if a service was to offer fast downloads, accurate names, full albums, quick searches that return results, and random samplings, or even a full archive list available, sorted by genre and other means, they could make it. And of course, no silly encryption crap. It's not really necessary anyway.
Deep linking is one of those "it doesn't matter" issues. Is it legal to stop people from posting deep links? Can it be legally enforced? Who cares? 30 seconds with the web server configuration and the entire problem is solved forever. It would be like suing google for posting links to the site, without even going to the effort of adding a robots.txt file.
I get the feeling that its not the IT departments of these companies that are making these demands. I can't imagine that they would be so hopelessly inept as to propose such solutions to problems that can be easily solved without ever talking to a lawyer.
Fine. I'll give them this. If the ISP blocks the RIAA from accessing their network, I'll agree that the RIAA is perfectly within their rights to block the ISP from accessing THEIR network. I promise I won't raise a fuss about it. And neither will the ISP.:)
Many ISP's have top level filters. My ISP scans my email for viruses and replaces the message when it finds one. Some ISP's offer (or enforce) content filters. Many cable providers block all the below 1024 ports to prevent people from running servers. Saying that it is the policy of the ISP to block a specific website because they consider that site to be dangerous is well within their rights and doesn't tread on the rights of their customers.
If our tax money goes to pay programmers for a public agency, such as, the NSA for instance, then the fruits of those efforts should be made available to the public that paid for it. Granted, software that deals with national security does not need to be opened to the world, but the NSA recognizes, as do many others in the security business, that having secure systems in the public leads to greater security overall. One insecure system by itself can't cause much damage, but when thousands, millions of them are exploitable, it is not only the owners of those individual systems that suffer, but others on the same network. The world survives if Yahoo and Ebay go down for a day due to the juvinile maliciousness of a 15 year old. But as our lives become ever more intertwined with public networks, there will be those with far less honorable intentions who can cause REAL damage.
The NSA had chosen to work on a product that will assist in making some of these systems more secure. They even did so in such a way that the conspiracy theorists out there can be satisfied without a doubt that there are no hidden NSA backdoors. And since they probably did so with the aim of using such software in house, at least to some extent, the lack of significant license expenses will result in less budget requirements, or at the very least, more efficient use of the current budget.
Microsoft may be upset over the double blow. One, because the NSA won't be purchasing as much of their software, and two because they'll be releasing their efforts back into the open source (read PUBLIC) community for no additional cost, therefore offering more competition to Microsoft. Of course, it's the very actions of companies like Microsoft that gave rise to the open source communities in the first place. Its a shame they feel the need to whine about it now.
Region coding is about movie industry control. There simply is no other way to put it. They can scream bloody murder about decss being used to make pirated copies of their movies, and at least that has some small infitesimal nugget of truth to it. Region coding however, is not to prevent someone from using the product in an illegal manner, but to prevent someone from using a product in a legal, and more importantly PREFERED manner.
People in other regions would prefer to purchase a DVD at a cheaper rate, and they could, but the cost has been artificially set such that it can't compete with other regions. Movies show later in countries outside of the US and the industry doesn't want to lose money on the theatre sales if the movie is already available on DVD.
But unlike the descrambling issue, they can't scream bloody murder about piracy. Anyone and everyone that attempts to bypass region coding bought the movie. And if one DVD player comes out that is multiregion, once the price on it comes in line with other players, and it will, those other players will be unable to compete, especially in markets where the desire for a multi-region player is high. The other manufacturers WILL go multi-region as well, or they won't be able to compete. The DVD consortium won't like it, but they'll have to find a battlecry other than piracy to rally people to their cause.
From what I recall, the internet capabilities reside mostly on the ability to start and stop the mower, at which point it's a random wander around and mow everything within set boundaries. Even if it were scriptkiddied, the most you could do is turn it on at unscheduled time, unless more precise control was available. Other than the internet based option, lawn mowers that do exactly this are available as consumer products.
As for the mentality that all toasters should be online, it seems silly, and I can agree to some point, even though my website is devoted to this very activity. The internet is simply an additional medium through which you can control your appliances. And while 99.99% of the time, you're going to turn your oven on and off while standing in front of it, there could be times you wish you could turn it off while you were away. Forget to close your garage? Forget to set the VCR to record something? Front door locked? Want to give the AC a 15 minute head start? None of these features are REQUIRED, but they add benefits to our lives, sometimes in unexpected ways. To deny the possible because it serves no immediate useful purpose, will fail to inspire someone else to take some halfbaked idea and turn it into the next remarkable invention that we can't live without.
You don't need YOUR lawn mower on the internet. And right now, neither does anyone else. But there will always be those that will find it beneficial, and someday you may directly or indirectly reap the benefits as well.
The only decent alternative I can see is something similar to what fark.com does. Have a subscriber base that's allowed to see the links a couple hours before they get posted to the main site. This will allow subscribers an advantage when viewing slashdotable sites, and may give them the opportunity to mirror those sites if they feel it might be needed. It will also give the webmaster a warning of what is soon to come and allow them to make whatever changes are needed to prepare for the onslaught. It will also make first-poster's jobs completely useless (unless they want to buy a lot of subscriptions).
Of course, this means that articles might grow stale by a couple hours, but CNN and other sites that will have no problem with the traffic can still be posted normally. Oh well, just an idea. Happy moderating.
First off, it makes dell more money without having to change the pricing structure. If they sold them cheaper than computers with Windows, more people would buy them, including a lot of people that really shouldn't. There would be more support calls coming in, etc. If the price is the same, nobody's going to go with the Windows free option unless they really WANT a Windows free computer. Still, better to give it to Dell than to give it to Microsoft.
The article seemed to try to create the same tension that the Y2K bug did. This doesn't even come close. No nuclear reactors will blow up and no planes will crash, and no electric grids will go offline when UPC codes change in size.
Retaillers are businesses. They need to sell products to survive. The UPC code is a vital component of the databases that make things work. Coupons, inventory, everything is based on it. So we're adding another digit and your ancient, poorly written accounting software didn't make room for a future expansion. So upgrade already. You're a business, you WILL find a way. Because if you don't, you'll be left in the dust. And while you're at it, perhaps you might want to make sure the UPC code space is larger than 13 digits. You never know when they might expand it AGAIN. Since the cost involved to jump from 12 to 13 is the same as the jump from 12 to 18, make a wise decision now.
This is just a normal part of the world as we know it. Things change. Phone numbers get longer, UPC codes get longer, computers get faster, operating systems redesign themselves. You have to adapt with it. Regardless, there's no sense in losing sleep over this.
I don't see much that the government can do about this. First of all, a person who isn't addicted to Evercrack and can play it 30 minutes a day and go on with his/her life won't suffer any physical/mental/emotional side effects. Drugs, even the legal ones, present a real physical danger to those who abuse them. Evercrack presents no such danger. Someone might run their life into the ground while playing it 14 hours a day, but there are plenty of other activities they could waste their time on if they felt so compelled.
I was addicted to UO once, for the first six months of its release. I played it a bare minimum of 8 hours a day. One day I saw the light and quit playing it cold turkey and never even felt the desire to go back. It might have been an addiction, but it wasn't a dependancy. Walking away was no problem, just so long as I didn't PLAY it. However, after I quit, I haven't spent any less time on the computer. I just now spend my time on other things, some of which are more productive.
At least now though, I don't spend every minute away from the computer eagarly awaiting an opportunity to get back on it. I no longer spend my entire day at work planning strategies and reading message boards for a game. I no longer dream about a video game every night (like I used to).
I'm willing to believe that no matter how hooked on Evercrack or some other game someone is, they could walk away from it and let it go if they really wanted to. The government has no place telling that person what to do with their life. When they can no longer afford internet access, they'll become productive again by necessity.
Who cares if its a lot or not? Its PROFIT. Certainly Everquest might only be a small percentage of Sony's business, but Sony has a lot of fingers in a lot of different pies. As long as each one of their ventures is making money, who cares if one single investment isn't making a LOT. Any tech company making a profit these days is in good shape.
It wasn't that the equipment implemented was too much too soon. Had growth, or at least the perception of growth, continued at the rate it was, much of the equipment was exactly what was needed. The only misguided decisions were those assuming that the economy would continue as it was.
However, even if you had people that could predict the bust far enough in advance to make more sensible purchases with regards to equipment, they would then be perceived as falling behind the rest of the industry and would lose market share as a result. After the bust, making a profit was all that mattered, but you had to survive long enough to get there.
Worldcom and others have suffered from the same fate. Certainly there were unethical, bad, and quite likely illegal accounting practices by the some companies at the time, however it was a viable risk assuming the economy was going to continue at the same pace. Nobody cares if you're cooking the books when your stock price is going up, when your projected revenue exceeds your projected expenses, even with all the bookcooking thrown in.
But when the economy goes sour, projected revenues drop significantly, but projected expenses do not, and poor bookkeeping will come back to bite you in the ass. Worldcom, in the middle of the dotcom boom had to grow. And grow they did, despite whatever it took to carry it out. Now its time to pay the piper.
Slashdot Mirror
That's similar to "1 knowledgable bad guy with a computer and modem who stole money/goods/hijacked phone lines, therefore all knowlegable guys with computers and modems are evil".
Yeah, that seems to be the argument, doesn't it?
Its certainly not true, but there are plenty of examples where media and polititans have attempted to make that VERY point. After Columbine, 3D FPS made you evil. After Enron, all corporations are fraudulant, and therefore evil. Don't even consider trying to circumvent copyright protection. Evil is the only way to go there.
-Restil
First off all, the P2P networks by design will generate far more traffic than necessary. Necessary, being of course a single set of central servers that collect data from the entire network and serve out that data ONCE to anyone requesting it. However, Napster as we all know died a painful death because there was a single point of failure. Kazaa, gnutella, and others have no head you can cut off. Even if the company that sponsors Kazaa were to be sued/prosecuted into oblivion, the network would remain. The downside, of course, is an excessive amount of unnecessary traffic.
The second big problem is the fact that as far as I can tell, none of the P2P networks take advantage of the teired nature of the internet, attempting to search local networks first, and searching further ONLY when something can't be found closer. Bandwidth is always more scarce (and therefore more expensive) the closer you reach for the backbone. Any effort to keep the traffic within the local network of the ISP costs THEM less, which means they would be far more willing to promote those types of networks, or at the very least not attempt to restrict them.
The network admins for universities were especially outspoken against Napster at the height of that craze, since that single program was consuming all the upstream bandwidth, where there is a DAMN good chance that with a student population in the tens of thousands, there's probably a 99% chance that anything a student was searching for could be found somewhere on the university network, which typically has much larger pipes than the internet upstream.
-Restil
Several options.
Install linux on it (yes.. I know its cliche). You can remote access it and do anything you want with it, just make sure you have a network option available.
Secondly, get a spare laptop, or anything that can access the HD, and just do work on the HD as necessary from a separate computer and "reimplant" it.
-Restil
An idea I had, prior to 9/11 anyway....
My house has numerous wired appliances, to be controlled and observed via the internet. Something I thought of doing was to rig up a mock nuclear bomb, movie style, with the keypad and readout on it, something similar to what was used in "Broken Arrow". The idea is, people could set the timer and start the countdown, and anyone watching could abort the timer. If, for any reason, the timer managed to reach 0 while someone was watching, that person would get automatically added to the firewall rules and wouldn't be able to access the site anymore. For all practical purposes, the entire network would "disappear".
At least, I thought it would be a clever prank that might worry someone for a few minutes anyway. And I'd be sure to put enough casual disclaimers around that it wasn't real. However, after 9/11, even the perceived threat of something like that was likely to result in a lot of "shoot and ask questions later" approaches by your favorite law enforcement agencies, so I just trashed the idea.
-Restil
That's my primary concern as well. I just bought a 120 gig drive to replace an old 6 gig that was about to die. I still have 90 gigs of it that I haven't even partitioned yet, and half the drive can hold the entire contents of my old system.
So I sit here stewing over the fact that should THIS drive die before I purchase a larger one, I will be in no position to back up the data on it. Granted, anything REALLY important I back up frequently, but stuff I download is typically going to be 120 gigs behind a burn. I'll get lazy and not burn ANYTHING until I have no space left, unlike what I SHOULD do and burn as I download, then just delete when space is required. Oh well. Gotta love the bad habits.
-Restil
It's not so much a matter of getting permission, but to inform people of what's going on. MOST launches are at least announced, since especially in this day and age, you don't want to launch off rockets without informing anyone. Jittery governments who are in the dark might think its the start of a nuclear attack. This HAS happened in the past. We don't care that you launch rockets, we just want to make sure they're going into space and not somewhere else.
Its also important that if something goes wrong with the spacecraft and all contact is lost, the craft (or debris from it) can be tracked by those who are most concerned about such things. A single screw in low earth orbit can cause major havoc if it impacts a spacecraft. You want to know where it is.
The other issue is to insure compliance with any international treaties with regards to propulsion systems or use of celestial bodies for which someone at one point in time might have signed a treaty for. True, they could launch the rocket anyway, and probably nobody could do much about it. But there's no sense pissing anyone off if a yes answer is overwhelmingly probable anyway.
-Restil
No scientific evidence here either, but my opinion on the issue of cell phones is one of status. These people aren't made stupid BY the cell phone, they were stupid to begin with. Of course, stupid isn't really the right word. Its more like an inability to concentrate on two things at once. They spend all their cognitive efforts on maintaining the conversation that they tune out the rest of the world. Sure, they can keep an eye on what's going on in front of them, but someone could run them over from the side and they'd never see it coming, hence the first example in the article.
Up until a few years ago, if someone wanted to talk on the phone, they'd be safely in their homes, confined to a single room, or within 3 feet of a payphone booth. The opportunities for trouble due to their all-consuming conversation were minimal. Cordless phones allowed them to wander so the phone wouldn't hold them by a leash any longer, but they were still confined to the house. Cell phones solved that "problem". Now they can wander freely, not paying attention to ANYTHING.
And not only an issue of convienence, it might also be one of status. 10 years ago, some people had cell phones, but the majority of the public was still somewhat in awe of them. Most people with cell phones back then didn't wander around conversing about the products on the grocery store shelves because it was TOO DAMN EXPENSIVE. They kept the conversations to important, serious things. Others in public that witnessed this equated cell phones with an artifical importantance. If only they could get one of their very own.....
And eventually the phones became economical for everyone and their dog to have one, or two or three. And with the average plan including enough minutes to pretty much occupy all waking hours of the month, and even some of the sleeping hours, there was no reason NOT to jabber aimlessly at all hours of the day. And since once upon a time only important people had cell phones in public, they figured the best way to look important is to talk on their cell phone in public. AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. Movie theatres, restaurants, anywhere is acceptable to take that important call about who's dating who at that particular moment. I mean, this kind of information simply CAN'T WAIT.
Still, I think the most appropriate comment I saw once was a cartoon of someone sitting in an outside diner, talking on his phone and he says "Sorry, I need to let you go now. Nobody can see me talking on the phone"
-Restil
I have to agree on the X10 stuff. Even if the equipment was extremely reliable, the underlying protocols are flawed. There's no security built in. Anyone with an X10 remote can control my house, and even if I disabled the wireless interface, they could plug in one of my outdoor plugs to interface the network. While the ability to turn my lights on might not be a drastic security concern, it limits my ability to make use of some of the more custom features, like using one of the X10 unit codes to activate computer events. If security is the least bit important in those matters, X10 is not a viable option.
Its also slow. While the time between a button press and the lamp turning on is almost instantanious, if you're detecting an event then responding to it separately, it will take a minimum of two seconds to get feedback, which is almost useless if you're you're using motion sensors to capture pictures or anything else where responses in the milliseconds are preferred.
Still, for low cost consumer grade products, they serve their purpose well. Even if you despise X10 for obvious reasons, you can wire your entire house with X10 compatible products from different companies. However, anyone planning to wire every single electrical device in the house probably can justify a different approach.
-Restil
Check it out here. Oh well, at least now I have more goals to shoot for. I'll probably have to forgo the movie theatre for now. His house is about 10x larger than mine. :)
-Restil
Just like slashdot. Heck, they even cover stories they already covered... you know.. just in case we missed it the first time. :)
-Restil
Yes... yes.. I know.. mod me down.. its ok.
They're just crusing high crime areas (where the probabability is greater that a resident will be involved in criminal activity), then they find someone who's doing anything that's even remotely in violation of the law (loitering for instance), then adding them to the probability list.
And of course, they cite numbers of "successful guesses" but fail to mention how many misses. Its not necessarily meaningful. Very VERY few people are completely 100% in compliance with the law. I wouldn't go so far to say that someone who occasionally speeds is to be considered a criminal, but if you look at the teeth many laws have, especially copyright law, many of us are in violation to the degree that we could spend many thousands of years in prison and be fined billions of dollars, should they bring those cases to court and press the maximums.
6.6 Million americans (about 3%) are currently under supervision of a correctional institution, either in prison, or on parole or probation. And that's RIGHT NOW. That's a significant percentage of the population. To drive around someplace where that percentage is signficantly higher, it wouldn't be terribly unlikely to get a 10% matchup with pure guessing by pointing out random people who will one day end up in trouble with the law. To tout statistical probabilities as indications that this system is any more useful than pursusing criminals after the crime has been commmited is nothing more than a lazy effort to create the impression that something is being done about the "problem".
What is the point of this anyway? So someone's name is on a "future criminals" list. Does that make any difference when a trial comes up? I suppose if there's a murder, and one of the suspects happens to be on the list, that might be something, but if the only critiera for being added to the list was the fact that you once jaywalked 5 years ago, there would be little grounds to take it seriously, and defense lawyers would have a field day if someone was held longer than necessary based only on such inconsequencial evidence.
-Restil
I had an ex girlfriend who's family spent about $300 a month on various multi level marketing things, scams, pyramid schemes, envelope stuffing, etc. If someone mailed it to their house, they'd immediately send in the money for the get rich quick scheme of the week (or of the last 20 years... didn't matter).
And despite the fact that none of them ever worked, and most likely they'd never follow through on any of them long enough to find out, they'd just keep buying them up. Hell, there was one that wanted $10,000 to get started, and if they actually had the money they would have spent it.
Sadly, there are plenty of people like that. And they're not likely to suddenly wake up one day and smack themselves over the head and figure it out. They'll just keep doing it, because getting rich without any effort or work is the only thing that means anything to them.
-Restil
There are markets that would be willing to subscribe to a service for a flat rate and be able to download music, in unrestricted, unencumbered fashion. Why?? because the P2P networks, as awesome as they are, still have problems. You still have to hunt around for songs, songs are named incorrectly, people are hosting them from a 56K connection sometimes that 20 poeple are trying to share, some people flat out refuse to share files, too many connections, etc.
It takes time to hunt, and it can be slow. And just because you found one song you like, doesn't mean that you can easily find ALL the songs in that album. And they still require you have an idea of what you're looking for. If you just want to sample some random music in a certain genre, your options are still rather limited. Usenet is great for this, and people pay money to major news servers for the privilage of being exposed to music they've never heard of before, yet someone else thought enough of to bother to post it in the first place. Not everything is great, but I've discovered a lot of cool stuff that way, and I probably never would have found it any other way.
So if a service was to offer fast downloads, accurate names, full albums, quick searches that return results, and random samplings, or even a full archive list available, sorted by genre and other means, they could make it. And of course, no silly encryption crap. It's not really necessary anyway.
-Restil
Deep linking is one of those "it doesn't matter" issues. Is it legal to stop people from posting deep links? Can it be legally enforced? Who cares? 30 seconds with the web server configuration and the entire problem is solved forever. It would be like suing google for posting links to the site, without even going to the effort of adding a robots.txt file.
I get the feeling that its not the IT departments of these companies that are making these demands. I can't imagine that they would be so hopelessly inept as to propose such solutions to problems that can be easily solved without ever talking to a lawyer.
-Restil
Fine. I'll give them this. If the ISP blocks the RIAA from accessing their network, I'll agree that the RIAA is perfectly within their rights to block the ISP from accessing THEIR network. I promise I won't raise a fuss about it. And neither will the ISP. :)
Many ISP's have top level filters. My ISP scans my email for viruses and replaces the message when it finds one. Some ISP's offer (or enforce) content filters. Many cable providers block all the below 1024 ports to prevent people from running servers. Saying that it is the policy of the ISP to block a specific website because they consider that site to be dangerous is well within their rights and doesn't tread on the rights of their customers.
-Restil
Don't forget to include a section on how to properly solicit help from others without getting accused of cheating.
-Restil
If our tax money goes to pay programmers for a public agency, such as, the NSA for instance, then the fruits of those efforts should be made available to the public that paid for it. Granted, software that deals with national security does not need to be opened to the world, but the NSA recognizes, as do many others in the security business, that having secure systems in the public leads to greater security overall. One insecure system by itself can't cause much damage, but when thousands, millions of them are exploitable, it is not only the owners of those individual systems that suffer, but others on the same network. The world survives if Yahoo and Ebay go down for a day due to the juvinile maliciousness of a 15 year old. But as our lives become ever more intertwined with public networks, there will be those with far less honorable intentions who can cause REAL damage.
The NSA had chosen to work on a product that will assist in making some of these systems more secure. They even did so in such a way that the conspiracy theorists out there can be satisfied without a doubt that there are no hidden NSA backdoors. And since they probably did so with the aim of using such software in house, at least to some extent, the lack of significant license expenses will result in less budget requirements, or at the very least, more efficient use of the current budget.
Microsoft may be upset over the double blow. One, because the NSA won't be purchasing as much of their software, and two because they'll be releasing their efforts back into the open source (read PUBLIC) community for no additional cost, therefore offering more competition to Microsoft. Of course, it's the very actions of companies like Microsoft that gave rise to the open source communities in the first place. Its a shame they feel the need to whine about it now.
-Restil
Region coding is about movie industry control. There simply is no other way to put it. They can scream bloody murder about decss being used to make pirated copies of their movies, and at least that has some small infitesimal nugget of truth to it.
Region coding however, is not to prevent someone from using the product in an illegal manner, but to prevent someone from using a product in a legal, and more importantly PREFERED manner.
People in other regions would prefer to purchase a DVD at a cheaper rate, and they could, but the cost has been artificially set such that it can't compete with other regions. Movies show later in countries outside of the US and the industry doesn't want to lose money on the theatre sales if the movie is already available on DVD.
But unlike the descrambling issue, they can't scream bloody murder about piracy. Anyone and everyone that attempts to bypass region coding bought the movie. And if one DVD player comes out that is multiregion, once the price on it comes in line with other players, and it will, those other players will be unable to compete, especially in markets where the desire for a multi-region player is high. The other manufacturers WILL go multi-region as well, or they won't be able to compete. The DVD consortium won't like it, but they'll have to find a battlecry other than piracy to rally people to their cause.
From what I recall, the internet capabilities reside mostly on the ability to start and stop the mower, at which point it's a random wander around and mow everything within set boundaries. Even if it were scriptkiddied, the most you could do is turn it on at unscheduled time, unless more precise control was available. Other than the internet based option, lawn mowers that do exactly this are available as consumer products.
As for the mentality that all toasters should be online, it seems silly, and I can agree to some point, even though my website is devoted to this very activity. The internet is simply an additional medium through which you can control your appliances. And while 99.99% of the time, you're going to turn your oven on and off while standing in front of it, there could be times you wish you could turn it off while you were away. Forget to close your garage? Forget to set the VCR to record something? Front door locked? Want to give the AC a 15 minute head start? None of these features are REQUIRED, but they add benefits to our lives, sometimes in unexpected ways. To deny the possible because it serves no immediate useful purpose, will fail to inspire someone else to take some halfbaked idea and turn it into the next remarkable invention that we can't live without.
You don't need YOUR lawn mower on the internet. And right now, neither does anyone else. But there will always be those that will find it beneficial, and someday you may directly or indirectly reap the benefits as well.
-Restil
The only decent alternative I can see is something similar to what fark.com does. Have a subscriber base that's allowed to see the links a couple hours before they get posted to the main site. This will allow subscribers an advantage when viewing slashdotable sites, and may give them the opportunity to mirror those sites if they feel it might be needed. It will also give the webmaster a warning of what is soon to come and allow them to make whatever changes are needed to prepare for the onslaught. It will also make first-poster's jobs completely useless (unless they want to buy a lot of subscriptions).
Of course, this means that articles might grow stale by a couple hours, but CNN and other sites that will have no problem with the traffic can still be posted normally. Oh well, just an idea.
Happy moderating.
-Restil
First off, it makes dell more money without having to change the pricing structure. If they sold them cheaper than computers with Windows, more people would buy them, including a lot of people that really shouldn't. There would be more support calls coming in, etc. If the price is the same, nobody's going to go with the Windows free option unless they really WANT a Windows free computer. Still, better to give it to Dell than to give it to Microsoft.
-Restil
The article seemed to try to create the same tension that the Y2K bug did. This doesn't even come close. No nuclear reactors will blow up and no planes will crash, and no electric grids will go offline when UPC codes change in size.
Retaillers are businesses. They need to sell products to survive. The UPC code is a vital component of the databases that make things work. Coupons, inventory, everything is based on it. So we're adding another digit and your ancient, poorly written accounting software didn't make room for a future expansion. So upgrade already. You're a business, you WILL find a way. Because if you don't, you'll be left in the dust. And while you're at it, perhaps you might want to make sure the UPC code space is larger than 13 digits. You never know when they might expand it AGAIN. Since the cost involved to jump from 12 to 13 is the same as the jump from 12 to 18, make a wise decision now.
This is just a normal part of the world as we know it. Things change. Phone numbers get longer, UPC codes get longer, computers get faster, operating systems redesign themselves. You have to adapt with it. Regardless, there's no sense in losing sleep over this.
-Restil
I don't see much that the government can do about this. First of all, a person who isn't addicted to Evercrack and can play it 30 minutes a day and go on with his/her life won't suffer any physical/mental/emotional side effects. Drugs, even the legal ones, present a real physical danger to those who abuse them. Evercrack presents no such danger. Someone might run their life into the ground while playing it 14 hours a day, but there are plenty of other activities they could waste their time on if they felt so compelled.
I was addicted to UO once, for the first six months of its release. I played it a bare minimum of 8 hours a day. One day I saw the light and quit playing it cold turkey and never even felt the desire to go back. It might have been an addiction, but it wasn't a dependancy. Walking away was no problem, just so long as I didn't PLAY it. However, after I quit, I haven't
spent any less time on the computer. I just now spend my time on other things, some of which are more productive.
At least now though, I don't spend every minute away from the computer eagarly awaiting an opportunity to get back on it. I no longer spend my entire day at work planning strategies and reading message boards for a game. I no longer dream about a video game every night (like I used to).
I'm willing to believe that no matter how hooked on Evercrack or some other game someone is, they could walk away from it and let it go if they really wanted to. The government has no place telling that person what to do with their life. When they can no longer afford internet access, they'll become productive again by necessity.
-Restil
Who cares if its a lot or not? Its PROFIT. Certainly Everquest might only be a small percentage of Sony's business, but Sony has a lot of fingers in a lot of different pies. As long as each one of their ventures is making money, who cares if one single investment isn't making a LOT. Any tech company making a profit these days is in good shape.
-Restil
It wasn't that the equipment implemented was too much too soon. Had growth, or at least the perception of growth, continued at the rate it was, much of the equipment was exactly what was needed. The only misguided decisions were those assuming that the economy would continue as it was.
However, even if you had people that could predict the bust far enough in advance to make more sensible purchases with regards to equipment, they would then be perceived as falling behind the rest of the industry and would lose market share as a result. After the bust, making a profit was all that mattered, but you had to survive long enough to get there.
Worldcom and others have suffered from the same fate. Certainly there were unethical, bad, and quite likely illegal accounting practices by the some companies at the time, however it was a viable risk assuming the economy was going to continue at the same pace. Nobody cares if you're cooking the books when your stock price is going up, when your projected revenue exceeds your projected expenses, even with all the bookcooking thrown in.
But when the economy goes sour, projected revenues drop significantly, but projected expenses do not, and poor bookkeeping will come back to bite you in the ass. Worldcom, in the middle of the dotcom boom had to grow. And grow they did, despite whatever it took to carry it out. Now its time to pay the piper.
-Restil