And I know some copyright (or is it patent?) laws say if you don't go after violators, you loose your rights.
You must protect your trademarks from dillution else you risk losing them. Patents and copyrights don't lose their power unless they expire naturally (17 years for a patent and 95/120 years or life + 70 years for copyright) or you explicitly give up your rights to them by entering the material into the public domain.
does the piece of paper jump up and scream out "You need to put a credit card number here, or I wont let you give me to the clerk"
No... but the clerk does. Ever try to get credit without supplying your SSN? You literally need to fight with the clerk/management about why you value your privacy and why they don't need that info?
If I am drinking a can of soda, and I set it down, I dont need to save it as "mysoda7-7-00.pop"
Ever have concussion with short term memory loss? I have. It was more than a month before I could remember where I set down a can of pop a few minutes before. I frequently had to write notes to remind myself to do certain things or remind me where I set stuff. Ever set a can of pop down and have someone set an identical can down next to it and you were perplexed as to which was which? Ever label a styrofoam cup so you knew it was your drink?
Soda Cans dont need names.
Then why do they have brand names and flavors on them? For identification obviously. Isn't that the point of naming a file rather than just storing it as a raw block on the drive?
Neither do term papers
They do (as to magazines, journals, articles, etc) if you plan on sharing them with people. We have a hard enough time evaulating data based on what it claims to be; Can you imagine if we had to absorb every bit of random information given to us and then figure out what it was that we wanted without any identification?
The excuses that we as developers, designers and implementers use to perpetuate these anomalies are poor. "The user isnt computer literate" "That a training issue" "You arent supposed to do it like THAT"
Why is it that we expect people to learn how to address an envelope, drive a car, or use a stove but we can't expect them to learn how to use a computer? Why is only the computer expected to know exactly what you want to do? "Envelope, send yourself to Bob." "Car, go to the store." "Stove, cook me some soup." Wait, cars, envelopes, stoves, food, stores, etc don't need names either.
Writing a term paper should not involve fiddling with operating systems, playing with the file system, launching applications, saving and storing copies of the "document".
Neither then should it involve finding the properly ruled paper, an appropriate pen, putting it in a folder where you can find it to turn it in, putting your name on it so the grader knows who it belongs to, etc.
Congress has been largely ignoring parts of the Constitution they don't like for a long time, especially in regard to the 10th Amendment. The federal government is too distant from the people to make universal laws which control local issues and often, what's needed in one state isn't needed in another. The federal government has the job of regulating interstate affairs, coining common currency and protecting our country from those who seek to harm it. Article 1, Section 8 clearly defines the scope of the federal government - it doesn't mention making laws on hate crimes, socialistic/welfare programs, retirement programs, etc.
Today, the First Amendment is under attack by both the right (pr0n) and left (religion, campaign finance), the second is under attack by the left, the fourth in the name of drugs and children, and the ninth and tenth have long been forgotten.
The members of Congress often bow to the pressures of lobbyists because their sole goal is to get re-elected. Corporations don't have an inherent right to free speech, as they aren't a person, and thus, they shouldn't be able to contribute to political campaigns/give favors. HOWEVER, all of the money given to politicians by corporations, unions, etc means nothing if they severely piss off their constituents. Most people really don't pay much attention to what their government is doing unless it has a direct and immediate impact on them so most of the crap skates by... however, can you imagine the headlines in the local paper? "Congresscritter votes against bill to protect children from online molesters" Every parent in the district would be screaming for their head - it's political suicide. For as much as the Congress ignores the Constitution when it's convenient, people (en masse) today lack the understanding and foresight to understand the damage of Unconstitutional laws, especially if they convinced they'll get all those "millions" of perverts waiting online, and the harm they will bring.
Every issue tends to be demagogued these days... whether it's how many child seeking perverts are on the internet( probably FAR less than 1 in a million ), how many "innocent" kids died from guns last year( about 4000 child deaths, 85% of which were 16-19, 90% of which were drug/gang related - more innocent kids drowned in pools ), racism, or whatever. Nobody cares about the facts or what's right or wrong anymore, it's all about what makes the mass feel good. Nobody analyzes the harm that can be caused by these laws and proposed Constitutional amendments( the greatest threat of all ). Politicians cave so quickly to their constituents these days that instead of doing what's right they do what won't harm them come re-election. We're quickly approaching tyranny by (often apathetic, always ignorant) majority.
Reply emailed to me from Claire Capuzzi regarding FoxNews story.
Hi,
Saw the posting on slashdot in reference to a story that ran on our site.
The inaccurate story used material from an AP or Reuters story that laid out the situation like this: CNN claimed the site wasn't "hacked." Then the story said "several Web experts" claimed it had been hacked.
This led to a discussion here about what "hacked" meant in the media, and some felt it was being used in the loosest possible sense, to include pranks and minor interference with a Web site. We let the story stand, although it did provoke discussion in the newsroom. No one here thought that it was a "hack" in the real sense of the word. The story also quoted CNN fairly extensively saying that it wasn't a hack.
But that's semantics. Bottom line is the AP or Reuters story was wrong (our their experts were), and it slipped through in our rewrite.
We try to be as responsible as we can when running technology stories, but unfortunately the pace of breaking news and reliance on wire copy may occasionally compromise details. Naturally, we try our very best not to let this happen, and if you'll notice, that story is no longer running on the site.
You're right that there's been lots of inaccurate reporting and poor explanations of the "hacker" story in the struggle to get the news out quickly, from the wires and across new media sites. We're trying hard to explain this story as responsibly as possible.
Let me start by saying that I'm an avid FoxNews viewer and am usually pleased with the reporting. However, in your article online regarding the CNN chat with Clinton, I see very poor journalism. You quote several unnamed "experts" that said the disruption was a "hack". Firstly, if you look at the IRC protocol, RFC 1459, specifically section 4.1.2, you would notice that IRC allows one to change their nickname to anything they want. Because CNN chose poor IRC server software, they have several moments which knocked off all of the users and required them to reconnect. Because they had no security restricting who could own the nick President_Clinton, they were open to someone impersonating him. Because CNN chose poor software and didn't bother to install any type of security, there was no hacking needed.
In related news, I found the television reports on the "hacking" of major online powerhouses to be filled with buzzwords and little content. PLEASE, if you're going to report technical news, have someone who knows modern technology report it. At least go down to the server room and as one of your network administrators before running a story. Of course, with the mail problems over the last week, I'm not sure they know much anyways... they don't seem to know about things like redundant servers.
Find the FACTS, then report, so we can decide. Also, I'd like to see a report on the DeCSS lawsuits filed by the MPAA and DVDCCA in recent months, and not just from the MPAA's side.
I've recently written an article to the editorial board of my local newspaper which they are going to print in the opinion section. I was limited to 175 words so it was hard to explain every facet of the case, merely to get the beef across.
I would suggest more people write to their newspaper to help spread the word. Here's the article I wrote if you would like something concise that conveys the point:
Recently, the Motion Picture Association of America as well as the DVD Content Control Association filed lawsuits in New York and California claiming that a computer program named DeCSS allows people to steal DVDs. This claim is misleading because DVDs can be copied without the use of DeCSS. What DeCSS does is allows you to watch DVDs on systems not supported by DVD player manufacturers. All the 16 year old author of DeCSS wanted was a means to watch a DVD on his computer rather than a TV. He was arrested for it. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act allows any content producing company to dictate where and how you can use the information you purchased. It would be like buying a newspaper that you can only read in your kitchen but not in your living room. What ever happened to the idea of fair use? If you value your freedoms, write to your legislators and boycott the major film companies to let them know that your freedom is more important than their greed.
Anyway, posting as an AC ensures that people don't harrass me while posting on Slashdot.
In other words, it removes the respsonsibility that goes with calling someone a bigot. How strong of you to not be able to stand behind your words. There is a time and place for being an AC, when you post something that can get your fired or similar circumstances.
No, I don't mean Jackson. If I were to name specific others, I doubt you'd know who they are because they don't get the spotlight as Jackson does.
I would hope you are referring to groups like CORE and BOND who are trying to help us all get along rather than trying to wedge racism between us for some personal goal.
Hey, what I ment before was that someone who murders someone else because the victim is black, then it is ethnic intimidation.
So, it's more important simply because it affects more people? Those people in the parking lot aren't any less scared or intimidated just because they're a smaller subset.
I've heard the same arguments come out of the mouths of those who think that we can just 'start on a clean slate' where histories of discrimination can simply be ignored. Hey, if we do this, then I guess we can start saying that the Holocaust was nothing but mass murder rather than genocide.
If Hitler and the Germans were to forget about those who "discriminated" against them post WWI, would it have been possible to incite the people in the way he did? Would it have prevented the Holocaust? We need to learn from our mistakes, not be doomed to repeat them because we think it's going to make things equal.
It should also be pointed out that this was an INTERNATIONAL issue; thus all the pontificating about First Amendment rights is a bit irrelevant.
We, in the US, are guaranteed our freedom of speech. Congress doesn't have the power to subject us to an international, or even a federal, law limiting our free speech. This IS a first ammendment issue because Americans have the explicit right to say whatever they want and if Congress were to allow an internation body to trample upon that right, we might as well bag the whole Constitution.
I shouldn't respond to someone cowardess enough to call me a bigot and not use his name but...
No, they don't have that right but they do it anyway. Do you think having to put up with burning crosses in your front lawn is the same is having the right to the pursuit of happiness?
We're talking words... not physical action. If they burn a cross on your property, they're trespassing and harassing you... Both are punishable under the law as a violation of your rights.
Why would you want to create an organization for a group of people who obviously don't need 'advancement'? Do you honestly think that White people are experiencing the same type of discrimination that Blacks and others experience? I don't, judging from the employment rate, standard of living, etc.
There are more poor white people than blacks. The assumption is otherwise due to their relative percentages but in sheer numbers it's different. Why should the son of a black lawyer have favoritism that the son of a white garbage man can't get?
Have you talked to someone who is involved with the non-profit organizations?
You mean like the race-baiter, Jesse Jackson's, Rainbow Coalition that extorts large companies into hiring blacks or else face his wrath?
If the intent is at ethnic intimidation, then yes, because the crime is targeted at a whole group of people, as in "this is gonna be you" or "you're next".
So, if someone murders multiple people who park in the 7th parking space from the left of center, he's not intimidating a group of people from parking in that space? A crime is a crime REGARDLESS of motivation. Nobody should have greater importance simply because they meet some artificial criteria.
Affirmative Action is meant to get people to overlook gender, race, ethnicity in matters such as employment, education, etc
Is this why _I've personally_ seen people hired to meet quotas?
Yeah, and threats are just violent words.
Ask the police... if someone threatens you, their hands are tied until an actual crime is committed. In cases of repeated threat, it IS a crime... called herassment.
When you begin banning opinions and start waiving special protections for certain groups, you're giving people a reason to hate MORE.
Wrong. There is never, ever, ever a valid reason to hate someone. You might disagree, or oppose them, or even violently oppose them because they rely on violence. But you must never allow yourself to hate.
I didn't say that it was a valid reason or that hate was a good thing. What I DID say was that when you begin banning opinions and have state sanctioned discrimination, you give someone a reason to hate. Frank Smith, who is an extremely qualified white guy looking for a promotion, didn't get it because it went to, in his mind, some nigger who doesn't have half the knowledge and skill that he does. The system was just racist towards Frank because he didn't meet some artificial racial quota designated by the state. Is Frank supposed to feel happy that he was rejected for someone less qualified because he doesn't have the right skin color? Wouldn't it be natural for him to blame his hatred on the fact that the guy/girl who got the job was black? Now Frank posts a website claiming his disgust... should he be sanctioned for promoting hate and racism on a website? If he is, would it not fuel his hatred even more? I'm not a racist and I'm sure you're not either... but how would you feel if you were that guy?
One of the things that makes the US a great country is the fact that we have the freedom to speak what is on our mind whenever we'd like. If someone wants to be a racist, they have the First Ammendment right to be a racist. Do they have a right to harm another's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness or the other rights proclaimed by the founders of the US? No... that's why things like murder are illegal.
When you start nitpicking on what people can and can't say, you have fiascos like the Seattle "riots" over the WTO. When you silence your opposition, you are infringing on their right to express their ideas how they see fit. You don't have to endorse them but if you value your freedom of speech, you have to respect theirs. Who are you going to let judge whether your words and ideas are deserving of censorship? Are you going make the courts determine whether any word you utter is proper? What if you piss off the wrong group, like with the DVD case? What about the guy whom was fired for using the word niggerdly because someone thought it referred to black people in a derogative way or the guy who was fired for talking about a Seinfeld episode?
If someone were to start the National Association for the Advancement of White People, would the NAACP get to have them shut down for being racist by excluding blacks? What if someone started the United White Guy college fund? Are they more discriminitory that the United Negro College Fund? What of so called reverse discrimination? Do proclaimed minorities have greater rights than the "white male majority?"
Is is worse to kill someone because they're black than it is to kill someone because they parked in the 7th parking space from the left of the center of the parking lot? Is it appropriate to hire a less qualified minority rather than hire a better qualified white male? Affirmative action and so called hate crimes only create further tension between the races. When you begin banning opinions and start waiving special protections for certain groups, you're giving people a reason to hate MORE.
When it comes down to it, words are just words. Regardless of how someone feels, words are necessary to convey how people feel and they have the right to express their feelings whether or not a single other person agrees with them. Judge by actions, not words.
1. The re-introduction of slavery for the unemployed, 2. Flogging of servants.
You mean like dependency on government and forced re-election of democrats( gee.. the republicans just want to take away all your entitlements that you're not guaranteed to under the constitution. They're mean so you better vote for your master.. er, I mean democratic candidate )
3. Shooting all poor people.
Losing your self-respect and becoming dependent on others for every facet of your daily life is far a worse punishment than death. Why is it that they're poor? Because they're too lazy to work? I've had a TON of people on welfare work for me... they do just enough to not get fired for 30 days and then do their damndest... why? Because if they "attempt" to get a job, they can go back to sitting around doing nothing.
It's about time for Americans to realize they need to take responsibility for their own lives. There's been enough government engulfment of everyone's responsibilities... Hell, most criminals don't even pay their full penance to society, only to go out and commit more crime. Of course, it's not their fault... they are disenfrachised because everyone else had it easier than him.
Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll eat for the rest of his life.
For those that don't know and are jumping the gun blaming open source for this patent, their patents basically cover receiving a guide electronically, then rendering it on some piece of equipment
How is this different than getting a table of links in HTML that will bring up info on what I select? You receive the HTML and tables electronically and then it is rendered by a browser to give literally identical functionality to their guide technology.
Basically what you people are doing is akin to being annoyed that you neighbor paints his house a certain color or decided to have a barbecue or something with some of his/her friends and they drank beer (which you may not like). Then you decide to throw a hand grenade into the house to "teach em'" I mean this move was quasi-legal at best and you know it.
Flat out wrong... nobody's forcing @Home to shutodown their servers... A more correct analogy would be automatically burning anything in your snail mailbox that has a bulk postage rate stamped on it. Sure, some of that mail may be interesting but the large majority of it is useless junk that you don't care about coming from someone trying to scam you. Are you saying that it's "quasi-legal" at best for me to burn my mail? Are you now dictating what I can and can't do with the mail in my mailbox? The USPTO still delivers the snail mail spam just like the usenet backbone will still offer usenet spam... the UDP is simply a bunch of citizens collectively burning their junkmail.
I agree with you up until your last sentance, religious "morality" has no place in the US Government.
Let me disclose first, that I'm an atheist. That being sad, I didn't say we need to go to a religious morality, even though the Constitution is founded upon Judeo-Christian morality. The simple definition of morality is the rightness and wrongness of an action. Is it wrong to kill? Most people would think so... it's not a religous centered idea. The premise behind the general laws of the US is, or at least should be, to prevent that which hurts someone else.
Also note, the separation of church and state is a mythical lie in the revisionist history books today. There is no article in the Constitution that says that the religion and government entities have to be mutually exclusive; the only thing mentioned is that "Congress shall make no law prohibiting the exercise or the worship of religion". Even as an atheist, I see the importance of allowing things like school prayer if the kid wants to.
Start getting into more blurred things like homosexual marriage and it becomes more obfuscated. IMHO, marriage is the public bond between a man and a woman who seek to have a family in order to procreate. Yeah, not very PC but it's my opinion. That being said, although I don't care what someone does behind closed doors, I don't think homosexual marriage itself is proper even if they adopt kids( who knows what kind of impact a gay relationship could have on someone... some may handle it well but some may be devastated as they get older ). I don't have a problem with insurance companies offering coverage for gay partners IF THEY CHOOSE TO. It shouldn't be a government mandated thing much like government shouldn't be banning smoking in restaurants and bars. If some company decides to offer partnership benefits, they'll be rewarded by the gay community.
Basically, the way I see it, government shouldn't have its tentacles in your personal, private life but to some extent marriage itself is a societal contract. If there is enough demand for something, healthcare or whatever, someone will come in to fill the niche market if they could be convinced that they could profit. You might raise questions about boycotting but it sure didn't seem to hurt disney.
The feds should get out of all the unecessary areas that they have their claws in and get back to national defense and interstate regulation. Last year, the government spent $359 billion on necessities and $953 billion on social programs. Regardless of what the democrats and the heavily liberal media say, it sure wasn't defense spending that got us into debt and I'll let you guess which has decreased and which has increased. Under Bradley and Gore, expect to see the second number double to pay for their socialized medicine programs( and while everyone's at it, ask why canadians come here for medical treatment ).
But I can tell you this: my vote ain't goin to a 'Publican. I'm tired of all those Christian fucks pushing their totalitarian moral agendas and the Republican party has too many of 'em on board
And I can tell you there's no way in hell I'm voting for a Democrat. I'm tired of all those socialist totalitarians taxing the crap out of me, biasedly creating difference classes of crime based on mere intent( hate crimes ), burning funds at the federal level that belong at the local level( taxes that get "returned" to the local community ), exploiting the "isms" to promote their agenda( Jessie Jackson and his ilk are as bad as David Duke ), attacking symptoms rather than problems( welfare ), trying to remove my guaranteed Second Ammendment right to protect myself, etc. I'd settle for the country getting back to morality, ie what's right and wrong, rather than just trying to make feel good legislation.
But I'm just disgusted with huge soft money donations, lobbyists writing the bills that our legislators pass (along with another contribution), and the many riders and procedural tricks legislators use to subvert debate in what was supposed to be an open and public legislative forum.... I'm actually considering joining the Republican party just so I can vote for McCain in the primary, because of his support for the McCain/Feingold campaign finance reform
Did you know that the McCain/Feingold plan stops soft money but doesn't do anything to regulate the labor unions from their lobbying activity? What it will effectively do is kill the republicans' ability to motivate their base via media outlets since their soft money is limited but still allow the democrats to motivate their base via the labor unions. It's still not the answer and it's DEFINATELY not better than the current system since it's completely one sided...
Some 40 years ago, cigarettes were found to be carcenogous and a label was put on the pack saying they were harmful to your health. People ignored the fact and smoked anyways only later to sue saying they didn't know it was bad for them. They won. States sued saying that it cost billions in health care even though they made billions by taxing cigarettes. They sued. They won.
The Second Ammendment protects the right to ban arms, as in military armaments. After trying to nullify the Second Ammendment and failing, the executive branches, federally and locally, are now trying to sue the manufacturers out of business by claiming they make a defective product even though it does exactly what it was designed to do.
Everyone is now seeking to patent everything in sight regardless of how much it took to actually "innovate" it and blatently lying about how unique and "non-obvious" it was to come up with. Now everyone is sueing everyone else over patent infringement involving patents anyone familiar with the area could have thought up in minutes.
If you can't get your way via conventional methods, arm your lawyers and fire away at everything in sight. After all, what do the companies/government have to fear? All of their lawyers get paid whether they bring a case or not... They risk losing quite little in the hopes of winning big... I can't remember the last time I heard of a corporate lawyer being disbarred for bringing a false/misleading case. The corporations government can control public influence with their marketing budgets or by buying up their favorite media outlet( whether outright buying it or making enticing offers like an exclusive interviews). Not to mention our heading towards a plutocracy
Is this what we've come to? Have we become slaves to our corporate masters only to bow down to their orders? How many average people actually understand the gravity behind serious cases like this? Hell, depending on some polls, 20% more people think Clinton should have been impeached last year. A large part of the problem today is the general apathy of the public towards anything that doesn't affect their daily personal lives and the ignorace that the mass have because of their apathy.
How do we get the public at large to wake up and see what's going on around them if they don't care? How do we stop the lawyers from trampling over everyone's rights in sight? How do we remove the bias that the media inevitably has since they're owned by big corporations? What of the precidents these cases set? While important, protesting this single case is just fixing the symptom and not going after the real problem.
See, the fact that Product X enables one to achieve a nasty objective DOES NOT make Company X liable. This has been established time and time again in the court system. And it holds, so long as Product X's primary purpose is NOT to assist in achieving the nasty objective. The software in question IS NOT written to aid in copying DVDs. It's NOT written to aid distributing illegal copys. It's primary objective was to make DVD's playable on Linux. Quite legal, if ya ask me.
Much of the US legal system works on precindent. With the current attempts to sue gun manufacturers, who make a product primarily used for protection and food harvesting( hunting ) and is fully protected by the Second Ammendment, we might see a very negative precident set which will give basis for further lawsuits regarding non-primary use which not only will affect the big corporations, but countless individuals whom design products/software/etc that could be mis-used as well. It seems to be an extension of the idea that it's not the criminal's fault they commit a crime, it's the fault of those who indirectly facilitate them( she was dressing provocatively, it's her fault... he called me a name so I beat the hell out of him... etc ) or some politically correct "illness." It's about time for society to recognize the people who commit illegal acts are the criminals and the people who make tools which may be misused by criminals aren't at fault unless the tool only has a criminal use( say the ACME Portable Nuclear Bomb corporation ).
The point is not having a monopoly in every market, rather every market having an interest in microsoft. In addition to markets with interest you listed, we see home cable and satellite units connected to MS( AT&T deal and DiSH 7100 ), miscellaneous toys connected to MS, gaming systems connected to MS, network services connected to MS, airports connected to MS, the government connected to MS, etc. The more markets MS has an interest in, the more markets that have an interest in MS and not seeing them harmed. Thus you have an enormous PAC, if you will, who's sole goal is to prevent MS from being sanctioned else they lose too. Do you want to sanction MS now when they have their hands in 20% of the markets or try to later when they have their hands in 70% of the markets? Single market domination isn't the issue here.
Has no one really considered the implications that no more microsoft would mean? Think of all the businesses depending upon them for tech support etc. Let's face it, Microsoft is so entrenched in, well, everything, that destroying it would likely manage to cause major economic consequences to the whole country.
Isn't that part of the problem? Microsoft has enough cash on hand to tie itself into every major industry it wants to here in the US and abroad. If we let MS run free, they'll only reach their tentatcles into other areas making them even more important to the economy and thus, harder to sanction without severe reprocussions. We need to take care of the problem NOW before it gets even worse. Which is better for the economy in the long run, a severe whack now or a slow agonizing death as MS gains influence over every market?
Microsoft estimates that an e-commerce customer who needs more than 50 CALs would be better off paying a flat rate of $2,000
So, it's $40 per authorization? How many pron sites, ecommerce sites, etc are going to pay that much for each of their subscribers/consumers? Or will they add a $40 overhead charge? How many customers will that drive away? Looks like they're making linux+apache a more viable alternative for a lot of people simply based on cost.
ok, now go for a walk. see that woman there? use a cheesey pickup line on her. yeah. there you go. now ask her some questions..
Interaction really isn't my problem. Since I grew out of that strange teenage "what if she rejects me" thing, I've always figured the worst that'll happen is they'll say no. That being said, the hardest part for me is finding a good place to meet someone decent( she doesn't have to be some obscure fantasy woman, merely someone who I can converse somewhat intelligently( not how to debug an 11 million line program but enough to be somewhat intellegent when an interesting topic comes up ) with and not be scary to look at ). Also, good luck, I know how tough it is and the end of long term relationships.
Slashdot Mirror
You must protect your trademarks from dillution else you risk losing them. Patents and copyrights don't lose their power unless they expire naturally (17 years for a patent and 95/120 years or life + 70 years for copyright) or you explicitly give up your rights to them by entering the material into the public domain.
No... but the clerk does. Ever try to get credit without supplying your SSN? You literally need to fight with the clerk/management about why you value your privacy and why they don't need that info?
If I am drinking a can of soda, and I set it down, I dont need to save it as "mysoda7-7-00.pop"
Ever have concussion with short term memory loss? I have. It was more than a month before I could remember where I set down a can of pop a few minutes before. I frequently had to write notes to remind myself to do certain things or remind me where I set stuff. Ever set a can of pop down and have someone set an identical can down next to it and you were perplexed as to which was which? Ever label a styrofoam cup so you knew it was your drink?
Soda Cans dont need names.
Then why do they have brand names and flavors on them? For identification obviously. Isn't that the point of naming a file rather than just storing it as a raw block on the drive?
Neither do term papers
They do (as to magazines, journals, articles, etc) if you plan on sharing them with people. We have a hard enough time evaulating data based on what it claims to be; Can you imagine if we had to absorb every bit of random information given to us and then figure out what it was that we wanted without any identification?
The excuses that we as developers, designers and implementers use to perpetuate these anomalies are poor. "The user isnt computer literate" "That a training issue" "You arent supposed to do it like THAT"
Why is it that we expect people to learn how to address an envelope, drive a car, or use a stove but we can't expect them to learn how to use a computer? Why is only the computer expected to know exactly what you want to do? "Envelope, send yourself to Bob." "Car, go to the store." "Stove, cook me some soup." Wait, cars, envelopes, stoves, food, stores, etc don't need names either.
Writing a term paper should not involve fiddling with operating systems, playing with the file system, launching applications, saving and storing copies of the "document".
Neither then should it involve finding the properly ruled paper, an appropriate pen, putting it in a folder where you can find it to turn it in, putting your name on it so the grader knows who it belongs to, etc.
Today, the First Amendment is under attack by both the right (pr0n) and left (religion, campaign finance), the second is under attack by the left, the fourth in the name of drugs and children, and the ninth and tenth have long been forgotten.
The members of Congress often bow to the pressures of lobbyists because their sole goal is to get re-elected. Corporations don't have an inherent right to free speech, as they aren't a person, and thus, they shouldn't be able to contribute to political campaigns/give favors. HOWEVER, all of the money given to politicians by corporations, unions, etc means nothing if they severely piss off their constituents. Most people really don't pay much attention to what their government is doing unless it has a direct and immediate impact on them so most of the crap skates by... however, can you imagine the headlines in the local paper? "Congresscritter votes against bill to protect children from online molesters" Every parent in the district would be screaming for their head - it's political suicide. For as much as the Congress ignores the Constitution when it's convenient, people (en masse) today lack the understanding and foresight to understand the damage of Unconstitutional laws, especially if they convinced they'll get all those "millions" of perverts waiting online, and the harm they will bring.
Every issue tends to be demagogued these days... whether it's how many child seeking perverts are on the internet( probably FAR less than 1 in a million ), how many "innocent" kids died from guns last year( about 4000 child deaths, 85% of which were 16-19, 90% of which were drug/gang related - more innocent kids drowned in pools ), racism, or whatever. Nobody cares about the facts or what's right or wrong anymore, it's all about what makes the mass feel good. Nobody analyzes the harm that can be caused by these laws and proposed Constitutional amendments( the greatest threat of all ). Politicians cave so quickly to their constituents these days that instead of doing what's right they do what won't harm them come re-election. We're quickly approaching tyranny by (often apathetic, always ignorant) majority.
Hi,
Saw the posting on slashdot in reference to a story that ran on our site.
The inaccurate story used material from an AP or Reuters story that laid out the situation like this: CNN claimed the site wasn't "hacked." Then the story said "several Web experts" claimed it had been hacked.
This led to a discussion here about what "hacked" meant in the media, and some felt it was being used in the loosest possible sense, to include pranks and minor interference with a Web site. We let the story stand, although it did provoke discussion in the newsroom. No one here thought that it was a "hack" in the real sense of the word. The story also quoted CNN fairly extensively saying that it wasn't a hack.
But that's semantics. Bottom line is the AP or Reuters story was wrong (our their experts were), and it slipped through in our rewrite.
We try to be as responsible as we can when running technology stories, but unfortunately the pace of breaking news and reliance on wire copy may occasionally compromise details. Naturally, we try our very best not to let this happen, and if you'll notice, that story is no longer running on the site.
You're right that there's been lots of inaccurate reporting and poor explanations of the "hacker" story in the struggle to get the news out quickly, from the wires and across new media sites. We're trying hard to explain this story as responsibly as possible.
Thanks for the comments.
Let me start by saying that I'm an avid FoxNews viewer and am usually pleased with the reporting. However, in your article online regarding the CNN chat with Clinton, I see very poor journalism. You quote several unnamed "experts" that said the disruption was a "hack". Firstly, if you look at the IRC protocol, RFC 1459, specifically section 4.1.2, you would notice that IRC allows one to change their nickname to anything they want. Because CNN chose poor IRC server software, they have several moments which knocked off all of the users and required them to reconnect. Because they had no security restricting who could own the nick President_Clinton, they were open to someone impersonating him. Because CNN chose poor software and didn't bother to install any type of security, there was no hacking needed.
In related news, I found the television reports on the "hacking" of major online powerhouses to be filled with buzzwords and little content. PLEASE, if you're going to report technical news, have someone who knows modern technology report it. At least go down to the server room and as one of your network administrators before running a story. Of course, with the mail problems over the last week, I'm not sure they know much anyways... they don't seem to know about things like redundant servers.
Find the FACTS, then report, so we can decide. Also, I'd like to see a report on the DeCSS lawsuits filed by the MPAA and DVDCCA in recent months, and not just from the MPAA's side.
I've recently written an article to the editorial board of my local newspaper which they are going to print in the opinion section. I was limited to 175 words so it was hard to explain every facet of the case, merely to get the beef across.
I would suggest more people write to their newspaper to help spread the word. Here's the article I wrote if you would like something concise that conveys the point:
Recently, the Motion Picture Association of America as well as the
DVD Content Control Association filed lawsuits in New York and
California claiming that a computer program named DeCSS allows
people to steal DVDs. This claim is misleading because DVDs can be
copied without the use of DeCSS. What DeCSS does is allows you
to watch DVDs on systems not supported by DVD player
manufacturers. All the 16 year old author of DeCSS wanted
was a means to watch a DVD on his computer rather than a TV. He
was arrested for it. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act allows any
content producing company to dictate where and how you can use
the information you purchased. It would be like buying a newspaper
that you can only read in your kitchen but not in your living room.
What ever happened to the idea of fair use? If you value your
freedoms, write to your legislators and boycott the major film
companies to let them know that your freedom is more important
than their greed.
In other words, it removes the respsonsibility that goes with calling someone a bigot. How strong of you to not be able to stand behind your words. There is a time and place for being an AC, when you post something that can get your fired or similar circumstances.
No, I don't mean Jackson. If I were to name specific others, I doubt you'd know who they are because they don't get the spotlight as Jackson does.
I would hope you are referring to groups like CORE and BOND who are trying to help us all get along rather than trying to wedge racism between us for some personal goal.
Hey, what I ment before was that someone who murders someone else because the victim is black, then it is ethnic intimidation.
So, it's more important simply because it affects more people? Those people in the parking lot aren't any less scared or intimidated just because they're a smaller subset.
If Hitler and the Germans were to forget about those who "discriminated" against them post WWI, would it have been possible to incite the people in the way he did? Would it have prevented the Holocaust? We need to learn from our mistakes, not be doomed to repeat them because we think it's going to make things equal.
We, in the US, are guaranteed our freedom of speech. Congress doesn't have the power to subject us to an international, or even a federal, law limiting our free speech. This IS a first ammendment issue because Americans have the explicit right to say whatever they want and if Congress were to allow an internation body to trample upon that right, we might as well bag the whole Constitution.
No, they don't have that right but they do it anyway. Do you think having to put up with burning crosses in your front lawn is the same is having the right to the pursuit of happiness?
We're talking words... not physical action. If they burn a cross on your property, they're trespassing and harassing you... Both are punishable under the law as a violation of your rights.
Why would you want to create an organization for a group of people who obviously don't need 'advancement'? Do you honestly think that White people are experiencing the same type of discrimination that Blacks and others experience? I don't, judging from the employment rate, standard of living, etc.
There are more poor white people than blacks. The assumption is otherwise due to their relative percentages but in sheer numbers it's different. Why should the son of a black lawyer have favoritism that the son of a white garbage man can't get?
Have you talked to someone who is involved with the non-profit organizations?
You mean like the race-baiter, Jesse Jackson's, Rainbow Coalition that extorts large companies into hiring blacks or else face his wrath?
If the intent is at ethnic intimidation, then yes, because the crime is targeted at a whole group of people, as in "this is gonna be you" or "you're next".
So, if someone murders multiple people who park in the 7th parking space from the left of center, he's not intimidating a group of people from parking in that space? A crime is a crime REGARDLESS of motivation. Nobody should have greater importance simply because they meet some artificial criteria.
Affirmative Action is meant to get people to overlook gender, race, ethnicity in matters such as employment, education, etc
Is this why _I've personally_ seen people hired to meet quotas?
Yeah, and threats are just violent words.
Ask the police... if someone threatens you, their hands are tied until an actual crime is committed. In cases of repeated threat, it IS a crime... called herassment.
Wrong. There is never, ever, ever a valid reason to hate someone. You might disagree, or oppose them, or even violently oppose them because they rely on violence. But you must never allow yourself to hate.
I didn't say that it was a valid reason or that hate was a good thing. What I DID say was that when you begin banning opinions and have state sanctioned discrimination, you give someone a reason to hate. Frank Smith, who is an extremely qualified white guy looking for a promotion, didn't get it because it went to, in his mind, some nigger who doesn't have half the knowledge and skill that he does. The system was just racist towards Frank because he didn't meet some artificial racial quota designated by the state. Is Frank supposed to feel happy that he was rejected for someone less qualified because he doesn't have the right skin color? Wouldn't it be natural for him to blame his hatred on the fact that the guy/girl who got the job was black? Now Frank posts a website claiming his disgust... should he be sanctioned for promoting hate and racism on a website? If he is, would it not fuel his hatred even more? I'm not a racist and I'm sure you're not either... but how would you feel if you were that guy?
When you start nitpicking on what people can and can't say, you have fiascos like the Seattle "riots" over the WTO. When you silence your opposition, you are infringing on their right to express their ideas how they see fit. You don't have to endorse them but if you value your freedom of speech, you have to respect theirs. Who are you going to let judge whether your words and ideas are deserving of censorship? Are you going make the courts determine whether any word you utter is proper? What if you piss off the wrong group, like with the DVD case? What about the guy whom was fired for using the word niggerdly because someone thought it referred to black people in a derogative way or the guy who was fired for talking about a Seinfeld episode?
If someone were to start the National Association for the Advancement of White People, would the NAACP get to have them shut down for being racist by excluding blacks? What if someone started the United White Guy college fund? Are they more discriminitory that the United Negro College Fund? What of so called reverse discrimination? Do proclaimed minorities have greater rights than the "white male majority?"
Is is worse to kill someone because they're black than it is to kill someone because they parked in the 7th parking space from the left of the center of the parking lot? Is it appropriate to hire a less qualified minority rather than hire a better qualified white male? Affirmative action and so called hate crimes only create further tension between the races. When you begin banning opinions and start waiving special protections for certain groups, you're giving people a reason to hate MORE.
When it comes down to it, words are just words. Regardless of how someone feels, words are necessary to convey how people feel and they have the right to express their feelings whether or not a single other person agrees with them. Judge by actions, not words.
You mean like dependency on government and forced re-election of democrats( gee.. the republicans just want to take away all your entitlements that you're not guaranteed to under the constitution. They're mean so you better vote for your master.. er, I mean democratic candidate )
3. Shooting all poor people.
Losing your self-respect and becoming dependent on others for every facet of your daily life is far a worse punishment than death. Why is it that they're poor? Because they're too lazy to work? I've had a TON of people on welfare work for me... they do just enough to not get fired for 30 days and then do their damndest... why? Because if they "attempt" to get a job, they can go back to sitting around doing nothing.
It's about time for Americans to realize they need to take responsibility for their own lives. There's been enough government engulfment of everyone's responsibilities... Hell, most criminals don't even pay their full penance to society, only to go out and commit more crime. Of course, it's not their fault... they are disenfrachised because everyone else had it easier than him.
Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll eat for the rest of his life.
How is this different than getting a table of links in HTML that will bring up info on what I select? You receive the HTML and tables electronically and then it is rendered by a browser to give literally identical functionality to their guide technology.
Flat out wrong... nobody's forcing @Home to shutodown their servers... A more correct analogy would be automatically burning anything in your snail mailbox that has a bulk postage rate stamped on it. Sure, some of that mail may be interesting but the large majority of it is useless junk that you don't care about coming from someone trying to scam you. Are you saying that it's "quasi-legal" at best for me to burn my mail? Are you now dictating what I can and can't do with the mail in my mailbox? The USPTO still delivers the snail mail spam just like the usenet backbone will still offer usenet spam... the UDP is simply a bunch of citizens collectively burning their junkmail.
Let me disclose first, that I'm an atheist. That being sad, I didn't say we need to go to a religious morality, even though the Constitution is founded upon Judeo-Christian morality. The simple definition of morality is the rightness and wrongness of an action. Is it wrong to kill? Most people would think so... it's not a religous centered idea. The premise behind the general laws of the US is, or at least should be, to prevent that which hurts someone else.
Also note, the separation of church and state is a mythical lie in the revisionist history books today. There is no article in the Constitution that says that the religion and government entities have to be mutually exclusive; the only thing mentioned is that "Congress shall make no law prohibiting the exercise or the worship of religion". Even as an atheist, I see the importance of allowing things like school prayer if the kid wants to.
Start getting into more blurred things like homosexual marriage and it becomes more obfuscated. IMHO, marriage is the public bond between a man and a woman who seek to have a family in order to procreate. Yeah, not very PC but it's my opinion. That being said, although I don't care what someone does behind closed doors, I don't think homosexual marriage itself is proper even if they adopt kids( who knows what kind of impact a gay relationship could have on someone... some may handle it well but some may be devastated as they get older ). I don't have a problem with insurance companies offering coverage for gay partners IF THEY CHOOSE TO. It shouldn't be a government mandated thing much like government shouldn't be banning smoking in restaurants and bars. If some company decides to offer partnership benefits, they'll be rewarded by the gay community.
Basically, the way I see it, government shouldn't have its tentacles in your personal, private life but to some extent marriage itself is a societal contract. If there is enough demand for something, healthcare or whatever, someone will come in to fill the niche market if they could be convinced that they could profit. You might raise questions about boycotting but it sure didn't seem to hurt disney.
The feds should get out of all the unecessary areas that they have their claws in and get back to national defense and interstate regulation. Last year, the government spent $359 billion on necessities and $953 billion on social programs. Regardless of what the democrats and the heavily liberal media say, it sure wasn't defense spending that got us into debt and I'll let you guess which has decreased and which has increased. Under Bradley and Gore, expect to see the second number double to pay for their socialized medicine programs( and while everyone's at it, ask why canadians come here for medical treatment ).
And I can tell you there's no way in hell I'm voting for a Democrat. I'm tired of all those socialist totalitarians taxing the crap out of me, biasedly creating difference classes of crime based on mere intent( hate crimes ), burning funds at the federal level that belong at the local level( taxes that get "returned" to the local community ), exploiting the "isms" to promote their agenda( Jessie Jackson and his ilk are as bad as David Duke ), attacking symptoms rather than problems( welfare ), trying to remove my guaranteed Second Ammendment right to protect myself, etc. I'd settle for the country getting back to morality, ie what's right and wrong, rather than just trying to make feel good legislation.
Did you know that the McCain/Feingold plan stops soft money but doesn't do anything to regulate the labor unions from their lobbying activity? What it will effectively do is kill the republicans' ability to motivate their base via media outlets since their soft money is limited but still allow the democrats to motivate their base via the labor unions. It's still not the answer and it's DEFINATELY not better than the current system since it's completely one sided...
Some 40 years ago, cigarettes were found to be carcenogous and a label was put on the pack saying they were harmful to your health. People ignored the fact and smoked anyways only later to sue saying they didn't know it was bad for them. They won. States sued saying that it cost billions in health care even though they made billions by taxing cigarettes. They sued. They won.
The Second Ammendment protects the right to ban arms, as in military armaments. After trying to nullify the Second Ammendment and failing, the executive branches, federally and locally, are now trying to sue the manufacturers out of business by claiming they make a defective product even though it does exactly what it was designed to do.
Everyone is now seeking to patent everything in sight regardless of how much it took to actually "innovate" it and blatently lying about how unique and "non-obvious" it was to come up with. Now everyone is sueing everyone else over patent infringement involving patents anyone familiar with the area could have thought up in minutes.
If you can't get your way via conventional methods, arm your lawyers and fire away at everything in sight. After all, what do the companies/government have to fear? All of their lawyers get paid whether they bring a case or not... They risk losing quite little in the hopes of winning big... I can't remember the last time I heard of a corporate lawyer being disbarred for bringing a false/misleading case. The corporations government can control public influence with their marketing budgets or by buying up their favorite media outlet( whether outright buying it or making enticing offers like an exclusive interviews). Not to mention our heading towards a plutocracy
Is this what we've come to? Have we become slaves to our corporate masters only to bow down to their orders? How many average people actually understand the gravity behind serious cases like this? Hell, depending on some polls, 20% more people think Clinton should have been impeached last year. A large part of the problem today is the general apathy of the public towards anything that doesn't affect their daily personal lives and the ignorace that the mass have because of their apathy.
How do we get the public at large to wake up and see what's going on around them if they don't care? How do we stop the lawyers from trampling over everyone's rights in sight? How do we remove the bias that the media inevitably has since they're owned by big corporations? What of the precidents these cases set? While important, protesting this single case is just fixing the symptom and not going after the real problem.
Much of the US legal system works on precindent. With the current attempts to sue gun manufacturers, who make a product primarily used for protection and food harvesting( hunting ) and is fully protected by the Second Ammendment, we might see a very negative precident set which will give basis for further lawsuits regarding non-primary use which not only will affect the big corporations, but countless individuals whom design products/software/etc that could be mis-used as well. It seems to be an extension of the idea that it's not the criminal's fault they commit a crime, it's the fault of those who indirectly facilitate them( she was dressing provocatively, it's her fault... he called me a name so I beat the hell out of him... etc ) or some politically correct "illness." It's about time for society to recognize the people who commit illegal acts are the criminals and the people who make tools which may be misused by criminals aren't at fault unless the tool only has a criminal use( say the ACME Portable Nuclear Bomb corporation ).
Remember the old motto...
If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.
The point is not having a monopoly in every market, rather every market having an interest in microsoft. In addition to markets with interest you listed, we see home cable and satellite units connected to MS( AT&T deal and DiSH 7100 ), miscellaneous toys connected to MS, gaming systems connected to MS, network services connected to MS, airports connected to MS, the government connected to MS, etc. The more markets MS has an interest in, the more markets that have an interest in MS and not seeing them harmed. Thus you have an enormous PAC, if you will, who's sole goal is to prevent MS from being sanctioned else they lose too. Do you want to sanction MS now when they have their hands in 20% of the markets or try to later when they have their hands in 70% of the markets? Single market domination isn't the issue here.
Isn't that part of the problem? Microsoft has enough cash on hand to tie itself into every major industry it wants to here in the US and abroad. If we let MS run free, they'll only reach their tentatcles into other areas making them even more important to the economy and thus, harder to sanction without severe reprocussions. We need to take care of the problem NOW before it gets even worse. Which is better for the economy in the long run, a severe whack now or a slow agonizing death as MS gains influence over every market?
So, it's $40 per authorization? How many pron sites, ecommerce sites, etc are going to pay that much for each of their subscribers/consumers? Or will they add a $40 overhead charge? How many customers will that drive away? Looks like they're making linux+apache a more viable alternative for a lot of people simply based on cost.
Interaction really isn't my problem. Since I grew out of that strange teenage "what if she rejects me" thing, I've always figured the worst that'll happen is they'll say no. That being said, the hardest part for me is finding a good place to meet someone decent( she doesn't have to be some obscure fantasy woman, merely someone who I can converse somewhat intelligently( not how to debug an 11 million line program but enough to be somewhat intellegent when an interesting topic comes up ) with and not be scary to look at ). Also, good luck, I know how tough it is and the end of long term relationships.