As a theory, it strains my credibility, and I just thought it up, but who knows?
Well, the same thing had occurred to me.
In in the wake of the nuclear plant, er, 'problems'... and not getting responses from the company for quite some time when they were asking for updates... I think it highly likely that the Japanese government isn't looking to just simply take companies at their word.
And, yes -- obviously the importance of the nuclear reactors vs the PSN outage are nowhere near one another. But, that doesn't mean that it might not signal a bit of a shift in the way their government is viewing such things -- "trust us" is no longer something they'll accept.
Maybe more governments will realize that if they're the ones who are supposed to be regulating and controlling -- well, then they need to be doing that, and be accountable for it. Not getting updates from TEPCO probably drove home the point that they need to be much more in control where they need to be.
Making a 'comeback'? You keep using that word, but I am not sure it means what you think it means.
Seriously, if almost nobody ever bought an 'ultramobile' computer, and if it was a flop... this isn't a comeback, this is a second attempt at becoming something people care about.
And, as lots of people have pointed out already... it sounds an awful lot like current smartphones.
The 'full range of US interests' include, but are not limited to, a two-tiered internet, painfully slow transfer speeds, and uncontrolled spying and invasions of privacy.
And, make sure that the US is allowed to do things which if "certain governments" tried to do, the US government would talk about how those governments are suppressing freedom and democracy. (Syria, Iran, China for instance)
I really do fully expect to see a bit of a blatant double standard as the US proclaims they need to be able to do this, while at the same time saying governments they disagree with shouldn't.
Of course, it will be justified as serving the cause of Truth and Justice and that we should never worry about the intentions or actions of the US government.
3 of the astronauts had lobster for breakfast, maybe they thought it may well be their last meal on Earth?
Well, it could be. And, even assuming they come back safely (which I hope they do)... if you were about to embark on a period of time where you eat nothing but NASA engineered food out of plastic pouches... I think you'd probably pick the tastiest things you could think of, too.
I think it's more of a matter of enjoying the last comforts of home before you have to poop in a tube and wear diapers in your space suit.;-)
final mission for the youngest vehicle in the space fleet.hurled into space like the fastest fastball ever thrown, going to Mach 25 â" 25 times the speed of sound
mean that this shuttle launch was actually faster than all previous launches? Or is this merely a way of saying "it's really fast".
Is this actually a story, or an anecdote? There is no F'ing A.
How does "cannot be tracked" come from something in which:
Each owner transfers the coin to the next by digitally signing a hash of the previous transaction and the public key of the next owner and adding these to the end of the coin. A payee can verify the signatures to verify the chain of ownership.
It's been a while since I did anything in crypto... but if you can verify the signatures, and they're now attached to the coin... can you just confirm the signatures without knowing who signed it? If it's been signed with my public key, don't you need my public key to verify it?
It seems like either it's traceable, because you can see everyone who has ever held a given set of coins... or it's not trustworthy because all you have is a signature which you don't necessarily trust because you have no idea where it came from, but you trust the cyrpto.
This sounds like getting cash that has a record of everywhere it's ever been, but maybe I'm missing something here. Won't these 'coins' get large over time as they keep getting signed and passed on? (And the amount of verification needed would get quite long, no?)
I don't think I'm all that interested in a virtual currency whose major benefit is that I can buy escorts and drugs on-line without anybody being able to trace it... it just seems like there's more motivation for fraud in a system like this. And, it seems like something which is going to start coming under a lot of scrutiny.
I'm just not getting what need this is intended to fill... and I'm not sure I understand how it's simultaneously untraceable and secure.
Musicians who earn above a certain threshold in annual income shouldn't get any of this money. It's not them who "need" it, even if it's their music being pirated in greater quantities. The idea is to use the money to foster "culture" growth, not just keep some marketing machine for the latest autotuned tween band well lubed.
Horseshit... this isn't some "feed the starving artists" fund. This is a tax to make up for the (claimed) lost revenues of the recording industry -- by making absolutely everyone pay for it. I'm sure as hell not in favor of paying into a fund just to fund the artists who "need it" on the principal that someone else might not be buying their music either.
The assumption that I'm pirating their music, and that I should be compensating them for their 'lost' revenue basically means they're taxing all of us. And we're all now kicking into a fund to keep corporate profits up and make sure that executive bonuses are at an all time high -- this is a cash grab, pure and simple. Artists likely won't even see a dime of this.
The only thing fund is intended to foster growth in, is their bottom line. And more or less entrench into law the fact that we all owe them their revenue -- even if we don't use their product or want it.
Hell, my parents are in their 70's, and they buy memory cards... they sure as hell don't use them to pirate music. They use them for their digital camera, and their digital picture frames... perfectly legitimate, non-infringing uses of the technology. Yet, this tax just assumes that anything capable of storing electronic bits equated to them losing money.
Just so the Canadian music industry understands...
I use my memory cards for my camera and my cell phones, and I use my USB sticks for work, and I use blank DVDs to make backups... add another copyright tax (don't call it a levy) on my ability to have electronic data, and I will hand around copies of MP3s like they're candy.
I will get my money's worth out of this *&$#( levy -- if you continue the default position that I am pirating your music (which I'm not doing now), then my default position will be that since I've already paid for your music, I am bloody well entitled to it. I won't even draw the line at Canadian music -- I'll just assume you're tithing to the RIAA.
If your business strategy is to charge all of us for the music that we're neither listening to nor pirating... well, I will pirate it just because I've already paid you for it.
In short, if you keep ripping me off, I'll start ripping you off -- and I won't feel even a little bad about it. Is that what they really want?
Man, the Internet of 25 years ago... I think I got my first modem ever in early '89... So that's 22 years at best...
Wow... vt52, pascal, bangpath, TeX, alt.binaries, uudecode, multitasking, c, Linux, code monkey... Ahhh, the memories of youth.:)
Wow, the Internet that came before me... What a mystical place... I can't express the glee when I discovered FTP and free stuff.
Now my mom has a e-reader she's trying to hook up to her wifi. Does anybody else find themselves watching their parents buying technology we could never have possibly explained to them less than a decade ago?
The stuff my parents have as everyday devices didn't exist when I was a kid... And when those devices were in their infancy, my parents had no idea of WTF what was.
Crap, where was I... in conclusion... Get off my damned lawn while i go watch Knight Rider reruns.
Personally, I've hated Flash for almost a decade and don't install it if I can avoid it... usually my work machines end up needing it for some 3rd party site they force us to use. But, I don't make a habit of having it enabled.
I'm not sure I can name one instance where I found Flash to be useful or something I'd want. Although, who knows, maybe I'm missing out on something really cool... but my experience with Flash has primarily been about having half a dozen ads on screen that are all in motion.
Well, that and the fact that it's been a gaping security hole since forever.
Yes, hence my ingenious usage of the word usually... which allows me to express a subset of all, while still being most -- but nowhere near just a few, or even almost none. Also, not to be confused with the very vague "some of the time".
That's why we have patents -- to promote innovation and sharing of knowledge.
And yet... you can get sued for an upgrade button.
The way patents are used now... they do anything but promote innovation. They're mostly used to stifle competition, and seek to extort licensing fees for something obvious.
They can also patent genes that people are born with. I'm afraid I no longer believe that patents serve the purpose they were intended to.
Yes, if its one thing they are know for is not providing new drugs.
No, just drugs that they either didn't adequately test... or that they selectively dropped the results indicating that they gave you a higher likelihood of killing you.
While Big Pharma does crank out drugs, they're not exactly showing a stellar track record of actually making sure they're safe. They mostly assume they're safe if it doesn't kill you in the first few weeks.
And, then of course there's the constant commercials for a drug you should "ask your doctor about" -- sometimes they don't say what it treats, but they give a litany of side effects which sound like you'd need to be desperate to try. So, when a patient goes into a doctor insisting they should get some astra-awesome-a or something, the doc just writes a scrip of gives out the free samples the sales rep dropped off.
You'll excuse us for not attributing any concern for our welfare to these companies. They're like the tobacco industry in a lot of ways... it's in their interests to tell you their product is perfectly safe and didn't kill more than half of the 100 rats they tested on. At least, not right away.
Sued for running a computer simulation of administering the drugs?
If they can patent genes which exist in humans naturally... why not sue for running a computer simulation that uses their patented compound?
I don't know that one is any more absurd than the other.
The way research is going, it will be illegal to research anything since the lawyers will have laid claim to everything, or patented a "system of examining the natural world using hypothesis and experimentation to arrive at predictive statements".
I'm wondering where the hell Limewire got $100m in the first place? What part of their model made them that kind of money?
Apparently, because it was a subscription service:
records show the privately owned company generated $26 million in revenue in 2006 and sales climbed dramatically after that. During most of Lime Wire's 10-year history, Gorton was chairman, CEO, and only board member
They also claim he's got over $100M in an IRA account.
I never used it, so I have no idea of what the revenue source was (ads + subscriptions?)... but he must have made a fair pile to have that much banked. And, apparently he made most of it selling someone else's stuff. I've no idea of what kind of business model he had... but apparently it was lucrative, and somewhat illegal.
People sue people in (or break the laws of) other countries all the time. The problem is enforcement.
And, jurisdiction.
If I go out into my backyard and do something that would be illegal in some random country... that doesn't mean I've broken any of that country's laws. That means I've done something which would be illegal if I did it in there. But, I'm not in there, so they can go get stuffed. Nothing I did was on their soil, and wasn't under their jurisdiction.
If America is going to start violating the sovereignty of foreign countries by going in under cover of night and... oh, crap, they've already done this.
Well, then I guess it's time for Iran to start sending in extraction teams to pull out any Americans who have insulted their great, glorious leader who happens to be totally insane, or draw pictures of certain people, or take the lord's name in vain or whatever myriad offenses they can dream up.
After all, if it's OK for the US, it should be OK for everyone else, right?
...but in this case KPN is actually fully authorized to do that (unless DPI is illegal in the Netherlands). After all, the customers who are hit with the extra costs are actually doing something illegal, and they could just as well be brought to court or otherwise penalized in some much worse way.
Ummm... what exactly are the people doing that is 'illegal'??
Reading the linked articles, it would seem that people are using their data plan to provide an IM alternative to SMS, as well as to provide VoIP... are either of these things illegal? Or just not making profit for the company? (Boo hoo, you used our network bandwidth we sold to you for something we'd normally charge you for... so we're going to charge you anyway.)
If you're selling me access to the internet, you don't get to decide which sites I visit. You certainly (so far) don't get to decide to charge me $5/month for Slashdot or Google.
What, exactly are the users doing that is 'illegal'... I'm not getting that from any of the articles. The only thing that I see that is illegal is that it might be a violation of Dutch law for KPN to use DPI... which is precisely what the articles say.
It isn't the customers of KPN who are breaking the law.
If you used a valid "Lab Notebook" stile, where each page is dated, notes are in ink and all non used space was boxed and 'X'ed out, so that new stuff can not be added in. You might have a chance.
Not in actual lab books (though I have those going back to '95 as well).
But, my notes from university are written in ink, on dated pages, with the page number written on them. That's how you take notes -- at least, that's how I've always taken notes.
So can Google use this on appeal? I mean, after all, it is only a fucking garbage-collecting hash table. It's like patenting 2+3.
Wow... I wonder when this patent was filed. I'm pretty sure I wrote a hash-table with LRU drop-off as part of a class project in about 89 or 90... do my notes from university count as prior art for this?
I mean, just how much of what I learned in my education has now been patented?
In fact, short of carrier pigeons it's probably one of the most painstaking methods I've heard of to send a message.
You've never received email through UUCP bang-path addressing then or set it up then.
This is how people used to communicate when they had need of security... hell, it's probably straight out of a CIA handbook from the 50s or 60s (or a KGB manual from the same era).
It's not even a new technique... substitute a thumb drive for a piece of paper with a cipher, and the technique is probably centuries old.
Maybe for someone who grew up in a world where everyone has text messages and email this sounds convoluted... the to rest of it, it's pretty much old hat. Hell, read a spy novel -- this is a very well known technique for maintaining security and secrecy.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the same thing had occurred to me.
In in the wake of the nuclear plant, er, 'problems' ... and not getting responses from the company for quite some time when they were asking for updates ... I think it highly likely that the Japanese government isn't looking to just simply take companies at their word.
And, yes -- obviously the importance of the nuclear reactors vs the PSN outage are nowhere near one another. But, that doesn't mean that it might not signal a bit of a shift in the way their government is viewing such things -- "trust us" is no longer something they'll accept.
Maybe more governments will realize that if they're the ones who are supposed to be regulating and controlling -- well, then they need to be doing that, and be accountable for it. Not getting updates from TEPCO probably drove home the point that they need to be much more in control where they need to be.
Making a 'comeback'? You keep using that word, but I am not sure it means what you think it means.
Seriously, if almost nobody ever bought an 'ultramobile' computer, and if it was a flop ... this isn't a comeback, this is a second attempt at becoming something people care about.
And, as lots of people have pointed out already ... it sounds an awful lot like current smartphones.
And, make sure that the US is allowed to do things which if "certain governments" tried to do, the US government would talk about how those governments are suppressing freedom and democracy. (Syria, Iran, China for instance)
I really do fully expect to see a bit of a blatant double standard as the US proclaims they need to be able to do this, while at the same time saying governments they disagree with shouldn't.
Of course, it will be justified as serving the cause of Truth and Justice and that we should never worry about the intentions or actions of the US government.
The US strategy will be:
1) Look for copyright infringement (or poker, maybe even porn)
2) Seize domains
3) Profit
Well, it could be. And, even assuming they come back safely (which I hope they do) ... if you were about to embark on a period of time where you eat nothing but NASA engineered food out of plastic pouches ... I think you'd probably pick the tastiest things you could think of, too.
I think it's more of a matter of enjoying the last comforts of home before you have to poop in a tube and wear diapers in your space suit. ;-)
Does
mean that this shuttle launch was actually faster than all previous launches? Or is this merely a way of saying "it's really fast".
Is this actually a story, or an anecdote? There is no F'ing A.
How does "cannot be tracked" come from something in which:
It's been a while since I did anything in crypto ... but if you can verify the signatures, and they're now attached to the coin ... can you just confirm the signatures without knowing who signed it? If it's been signed with my public key, don't you need my public key to verify it?
It seems like either it's traceable, because you can see everyone who has ever held a given set of coins ... or it's not trustworthy because all you have is a signature which you don't necessarily trust because you have no idea where it came from, but you trust the cyrpto.
This sounds like getting cash that has a record of everywhere it's ever been, but maybe I'm missing something here. Won't these 'coins' get large over time as they keep getting signed and passed on? (And the amount of verification needed would get quite long, no?)
I don't think I'm all that interested in a virtual currency whose major benefit is that I can buy escorts and drugs on-line without anybody being able to trace it ... it just seems like there's more motivation for fraud in a system like this. And, it seems like something which is going to start coming under a lot of scrutiny.
I'm just not getting what need this is intended to fill ... and I'm not sure I understand how it's simultaneously untraceable and secure.
Horseshit ... this isn't some "feed the starving artists" fund. This is a tax to make up for the (claimed) lost revenues of the recording industry -- by making absolutely everyone pay for it. I'm sure as hell not in favor of paying into a fund just to fund the artists who "need it" on the principal that someone else might not be buying their music either.
The assumption that I'm pirating their music, and that I should be compensating them for their 'lost' revenue basically means they're taxing all of us. And we're all now kicking into a fund to keep corporate profits up and make sure that executive bonuses are at an all time high -- this is a cash grab, pure and simple. Artists likely won't even see a dime of this.
The only thing fund is intended to foster growth in, is their bottom line. And more or less entrench into law the fact that we all owe them their revenue -- even if we don't use their product or want it.
Hell, my parents are in their 70's, and they buy memory cards ... they sure as hell don't use them to pirate music. They use them for their digital camera, and their digital picture frames ... perfectly legitimate, non-infringing uses of the technology. Yet, this tax just assumes that anything capable of storing electronic bits equated to them losing money.
Just so the Canadian music industry understands ...
I use my memory cards for my camera and my cell phones, and I use my USB sticks for work, and I use blank DVDs to make backups ... add another copyright tax (don't call it a levy) on my ability to have electronic data, and I will hand around copies of MP3s like they're candy.
I will get my money's worth out of this *&$#( levy -- if you continue the default position that I am pirating your music (which I'm not doing now), then my default position will be that since I've already paid for your music, I am bloody well entitled to it. I won't even draw the line at Canadian music -- I'll just assume you're tithing to the RIAA.
If your business strategy is to charge all of us for the music that we're neither listening to nor pirating ... well, I will pirate it just because I've already paid you for it.
In short, if you keep ripping me off, I'll start ripping you off -- and I won't feel even a little bad about it. Is that what they really want?
I got "session closed", what did you get? ;-p
Man, the Internet of 25 years ago ... I think I got my first modem ever in early '89 ... So that's 22 years at best ...
Wow ... vt52, pascal, bangpath, TeX, alt.binaries, uudecode, multitasking, c, Linux, code monkey ... Ahhh, the memories of youth. :)
Wow, the Internet that came before me ... What a mystical place ... I can't express the glee when I discovered FTP and free stuff.
Now my mom has a e-reader she's trying to hook up to her wifi. Does anybody else find themselves watching their parents buying technology we could never have possibly explained to them less than a decade ago?
The stuff my parents have as everyday devices didn't exist when I was a kid ... And when those devices were in their infancy, my parents had no idea of WTF what was.
Crap, where was I ... in conclusion ... Get off my damned lawn while i go watch Knight Rider reruns.
Or, you don't install it.
Personally, I've hated Flash for almost a decade and don't install it if I can avoid it ... usually my work machines end up needing it for some 3rd party site they force us to use. But, I don't make a habit of having it enabled.
I'm not sure I can name one instance where I found Flash to be useful or something I'd want. Although, who knows, maybe I'm missing out on something really cool ... but my experience with Flash has primarily been about having half a dozen ads on screen that are all in motion.
Well, that and the fact that it's been a gaping security hole since forever.
Yes, hence my ingenious usage of the word usually ... which allows me to express a subset of all, while still being most -- but nowhere near just a few, or even almost none. Also, not to be confused with the very vague "some of the time".
Because I'm sneaky like that.
And yet ... you can get sued for an upgrade button.
The way patents are used now ... they do anything but promote innovation. They're mostly used to stifle competition, and seek to extort licensing fees for something obvious.
They can also patent genes that people are born with. I'm afraid I no longer believe that patents serve the purpose they were intended to.
Bastard! ;-)
No, just drugs that they either didn't adequately test ... or that they selectively dropped the results indicating that they gave you a higher likelihood of killing you.
While Big Pharma does crank out drugs, they're not exactly showing a stellar track record of actually making sure they're safe. They mostly assume they're safe if it doesn't kill you in the first few weeks.
And, then of course there's the constant commercials for a drug you should "ask your doctor about" -- sometimes they don't say what it treats, but they give a litany of side effects which sound like you'd need to be desperate to try. So, when a patient goes into a doctor insisting they should get some astra-awesome-a or something, the doc just writes a scrip of gives out the free samples the sales rep dropped off.
You'll excuse us for not attributing any concern for our welfare to these companies. They're like the tobacco industry in a lot of ways ... it's in their interests to tell you their product is perfectly safe and didn't kill more than half of the 100 rats they tested on. At least, not right away.
If they can patent genes which exist in humans naturally ... why not sue for running a computer simulation that uses their patented compound?
I don't know that one is any more absurd than the other.
The way research is going, it will be illegal to research anything since the lawyers will have laid claim to everything, or patented a "system of examining the natural world using hypothesis and experimentation to arrive at predictive statements".
We buy the same drugs, from the same companies, and usually once the USFDA approves it ... Canada just rubber stamps it for use.
So, yeah. Pretty much.
Apparently, because it was a subscription service:
They also claim he's got over $100M in an IRA account.
I never used it, so I have no idea of what the revenue source was (ads + subscriptions?)... but he must have made a fair pile to have that much banked. And, apparently he made most of it selling someone else's stuff. I've no idea of what kind of business model he had ... but apparently it was lucrative, and somewhat illegal.
And, jurisdiction.
If I go out into my backyard and do something that would be illegal in some random country ... that doesn't mean I've broken any of that country's laws. That means I've done something which would be illegal if I did it in there. But, I'm not in there, so they can go get stuffed. Nothing I did was on their soil, and wasn't under their jurisdiction.
If America is going to start violating the sovereignty of foreign countries by going in under cover of night and ... oh, crap, they've already done this.
Well, then I guess it's time for Iran to start sending in extraction teams to pull out any Americans who have insulted their great, glorious leader who happens to be totally insane, or draw pictures of certain people, or take the lord's name in vain or whatever myriad offenses they can dream up.
After all, if it's OK for the US, it should be OK for everyone else, right?
Ummm ... what exactly are the people doing that is 'illegal'??
Reading the linked articles, it would seem that people are using their data plan to provide an IM alternative to SMS, as well as to provide VoIP ... are either of these things illegal? Or just not making profit for the company? (Boo hoo, you used our network bandwidth we sold to you for something we'd normally charge you for ... so we're going to charge you anyway.)
If you're selling me access to the internet, you don't get to decide which sites I visit. You certainly (so far) don't get to decide to charge me $5/month for Slashdot or Google.
What, exactly are the users doing that is 'illegal' ... I'm not getting that from any of the articles. The only thing that I see that is illegal is that it might be a violation of Dutch law for KPN to use DPI ... which is precisely what the articles say.
It isn't the customers of KPN who are breaking the law.
Not in actual lab books (though I have those going back to '95 as well).
But, my notes from university are written in ink, on dated pages, with the page number written on them. That's how you take notes -- at least, that's how I've always taken notes.
Well, I'm glad to hear that scientists are still treating teledildonics as a viable research area.
Me, I don't think I want a phone that attempt to perform anything which resembles physical intimacy ... that just sounds nasty.
Wow ... I wonder when this patent was filed. I'm pretty sure I wrote a hash-table with LRU drop-off as part of a class project in about 89 or 90 ... do my notes from university count as prior art for this?
I mean, just how much of what I learned in my education has now been patented?
You've never received email through UUCP bang-path addressing then or set it up then.
This is how people used to communicate when they had need of security ... hell, it's probably straight out of a CIA handbook from the 50s or 60s (or a KGB manual from the same era).
It's not even a new technique ... substitute a thumb drive for a piece of paper with a cipher, and the technique is probably centuries old.
Maybe for someone who grew up in a world where everyone has text messages and email this sounds convoluted ... the to rest of it, it's pretty much old hat. Hell, read a spy novel -- this is a very well known technique for maintaining security and secrecy.
Oh, you so get geek demerit points ... the term sneakernet is old ... like maybe the 70s.
Essentially, it is the same as any other packet switching network ... like carreir pigeons. :-P