I work for a phone company.
No, we sure as hell DON'T have a database. (atleast in Canada).
So what do you do when somebody calls in with a dispute on their bill and wants to see an itemized listing of the phone calls you are charging them for?
I'm absolutely certain we store this information here in the US. And bill disputes is one of the reasons. In fact, when I had ISDN, I used to get the itemized listing whether I wanted it or not.
In case you haven't noticed, most people who use the internet couldn't care less about copyright, trademark, patent, or privacy issues.
Of course they don't. But suddenly things like this have a MUCH bigger impact when their ISP sends them a bill that looks like something they might receive from the telephone company, listing every link they've clicked on with its itemized cost. When at the end they have to pay $249 for the month instead of $14.99, they'll really start caring. Not to mention the fact that somebody was invading their privacy and actively tracking their links to pr0n. Yeah, I think PR is going to be a big big issue. If BT loses this, I really hope that our courts issue a rather acid remark about frivilous lawsuits. Maybe somebody at BT will be looking for a new job soon, although not likely.
How does recording based on actor alone threaten that revenue though? (ignoring the commercial removal)
It doesn't. That's just their latest lame method of attacking. I believe that it all boils down to the commercial revenue thing, and they'll use anything they can to protect it.
"To what extent, though, has this ever been a problem? I used a pair of VCRs for timeshifting long before...."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but thought skipping commercials on a TIVO is significantly easier than a VCR (I don't own a PVR). Usually you end up FFing through the commercials on a VCR, so you just watch them at higher speed. At least there's a possibility that one might catch your eye. I've actually had that happen many times, and I would rewind back and actually watch the commercial from the beginning. I know. I'm a sicko.
Do you see this as just the network's problem because they're greedy corporations
I'm not sure I would define this as a consequence of being greedy (although I'm sure they are). Their problem is that the primary source of revenue is being threatened. It's not just a matter of making a little less money. It's more like making a whole lot less money if PVRs become as popular as VCRs.
I think somebody mentioned down below that these corporations need to evolve. It's time to find other sources of revenue. If their only salable "product" is airtime for advertisements, they're in real trouble. Every business that I know that stuck with a single product has gone down the tubes.
I think you would see a lot less concern over this kind of thing if someone could come up with a really good suggestion on how they can stay in business. As you might guess, charging the cable/sat providers isn't going to cut it. That cost will only be passed to consumers who are not willing to pay.
Still, a 37 year old ought to have more than 8 months of income in his 401k.
I disagree. You have to remember two things.
The last year and a half have done some serious damage to investments. I myself have lost nearly 2/3 of what I had saved up. I expect it to go up again dramatically before retirement, but if I had to start burning through it now, it wouldn't last long.
There's a *HUGE* difference investment-wise between 37 and 50. The interest compounds itself over the years, so the older you get, the faster you earn. It's exactly the opposite of paying off your mortgage. Take a look at how much goes towards principle for the first 20 years vs the last 10 years.
Don't know why such would be outside the realm of possibility.
I'm sure it's possible. The real problem is in getting them to "learn on their own." I'm not an expert by any means, but I once dabbled with neural nets, and I wrote a program that learned to speak. It was basically an alternative to rule-based text to speech engines. It would scan a sentence and translate it into a stream of phonemes that could easily be rendered into the correct sounds. In order for it to learn, the correct stream of phonemes was provided for each new sentence. That way, it could "strengthen" the correct neural connections for a sound. In "learning" mode, it would attempt to speak a sentence. Then it would accept the correct input and keep restructuring its connections until it spoke correctly. Then it would proceed onto the next sentence. The results were cool. At first, it was completely unintelligible. After a few hundred sentences, it was getting new sentences about 80% correct.
Anyway, the issue is that I KNEW what the specific desired outputs were, so I was able to give them neural net. I would think that "survival" is a much more abstract concept. It would probably be more difficult to "teach" this concept.
How else could you simulate the behavior of multiple interacting neural networks without building multiple neural networks and let them interact?
I think the concern was in saving on the cost of hardware. You could implement the neural nets as software in a simulated programmed arena. Your guess is as good as mine as to which is actually a more expensive route. I guess people will pay more to see the "live" exhibit.
Your argument does not have much merit, it certainly is not backed up by history, especially with regards to US politics.
I don't really have an argument, but I thought I had made that plain. It's just a feeling. My MAIN point, which you have not seemed to realize, is that I'd like to have the information about what types of people submitted what types of comments because I'm CURIOUS. However, I think modern US politics clearly lend some credibility to the statement that money can be a bigger driver than morals or philosophy. Let's take Enron as a big example.
But what I would like to know is why you cannot accept the fact that there are people in this world who would defend the settlement who are not employed by Microsoft.
I have no problem accepting this. I'm certain that there are some who would defend the settlement. My main curiosity would be in knowing just how many people both defended and disputed the settlement without any monetary or significant political motivation.
Strangely, it's that very zealotry that makes your position so easy to discredit.:(
I'm not sure where you're reading zealotry into this. I'm also not sure why you think you've discredited me. Saying that my argument has no merit and isn't backed up by historical US polictics is insufficient without examples. I never really stated whether I agreed with the settlement or not. I was pretty clear about indicating that I think many people on BOTH sides of the coin were motivated by monetary reasons. I also prefaced everything I said with the word "think" so that no one would mistake what I said for fact. I also made it pretty clear that seeing the results would ultimately prove me either right or wrong.
Now, so that it's really clear for you, I will tell you my position. Yes, I do believe that Microsoft has obtained an maintained a monopoly through illegal means. Yes, I do believe that this monopoly has hurt other business and stifled competition. However, I also believe that Microsoft has given us many good things, both through actual innovation or purchasing and marketing new ideas. Being a programmer, I really appreciate and respect the development environments that Microsoft has created and I find it difficult to replace these on any platform. I also believe that they have done wonders for UI design. All of this aside, any company that has abused its monopoly power ultimately may become a serious threat to the people. Having read the summary of the settlement, I don't believe it comes close to removing that threat, and it appears to actually make the threat worse in some respects (see specifics on education). Do I think Microsoft is "The Beast?" Not any more so than any other large modern company. Today's companies ALL seem to cross the ethics boundary. If it makes them richer or more powerful, they do it and call it "good business." Since the Sherman Antitrust Act, it has become the responsibility of our government to make it difficult for "good business" to breach reasonable ethics and completely ignore what's good for the people. I firmly believe that the settlement does not meet this responsibility. But understand: I did not respond with an opinion of my own, nor did I sign any petition. I did not feel that I had anything constructive to add to the legal process, and I felt that the petitions would be largely ignored because they were looking more for quality than quantity. I'm content to wait and see what our government does. If they fail to make the right choices now, it will ultimately come back to haunt them.
Also, let me explain my Linux position, since you obviously feel I'm a Linux zealot. I like Linux a lot, and I believe that Open Source software has many merits. However, I believe in using the right tool for the job. I have four computers. Two are running Linux, and the other two are running Windows. If I were truly a zealot, I wouldn't allow a Microsoft product in my house or office.
Now I must apologize for making my next words personal, but you really appear to be trying to create arguments where nobody is willing to argue with you. I might be mistaken, but I think you and I have gone 'round about this in the past. If not, I again apologize. That leaves me with three thoughts:
Either you are really a computer program that someone is experimenting with, and you don't have a full understanding of the dialog, so you are reacting with unnecessarily strong statements.
Or, you shouldn't have stopped taking your lithium.
Or, you need to get involved in a debate team or something because you clearly have a desire to argue with people and you have the extra energy to do it. It would be best for you to find some real arguments that are worth the time.
Get a clue, dude. Cmowire made no comments about supporting piracy or "software should be free." The major point here, in case your head has been too dense to absorb it, is that these guys are going after people who have legimately paid for their software licenses, but no longer have all the paperwork to back up their purchase. Almost nobody keeps receipts for too long. And the license sometimes finds its way into the garbage accidentally. On top of that, changes in licensing requirements have left some businesses who didn't understand the change in a questionable status. But here's the most disturbing thing. These jerks are intruding into peoples' businesses without what I'd consider probable cause and using other questionable scare tactics. My opinion is that unless they have an "inside tip" from a company, they have no authority or business auditing you. Mere failure on one's part to dignify their questioning with a response should not be considered grounds for a search warrant.
Would you consider linux a major MS competator? Would having close ties to the linux community make you a biased opinion giver any less than having close ties to sun?
I was about to ask what this had to do with the price of tea in China, but I think I understand your slant. Tell me if I'm wrong. I think you're arguing that members of the Linux (or similar) community would have just as much as incentive to express anti-Settlement opinion as those who get their incentive from a paycheck.
It's an interesting thought. I would tend to think that in capitalist America, people are more likely to respond to the paycheck than the philosophy. I believe that those who had significant monetary incentive would be more likely to voice their opinion, regardless of the direction of bias, than those who have a certain belief. Although there are certainly exceptions to this, I think it's true more often than not. But that's why I'd be interested in seeing that kind of information. It would tell me whether I'm right or wrong.
I agree with you. I didn't mean to say it that way, but that's how it came out. I think the purpose was to examine the content all along, but I believe there are a lot of disappointed petition signers out there who would have taken the time and thought to submit their own opinions if they had realized how the information was to be handled. Also, my guess is that these rules are clearly spelled out somewhere, but nobody bothered to check.
Excellent question. I did note that either in the attached article or one I read earlier today, they stated that responses from a FORM letter, as provided by both Microsoft advocates and opponents were considered not applicable. This would then indicate that the 15,000 responses only contained individual opinions. What might be more interesting is to find out how many of the pro-Settlement comments came from Microsoft employees or others with key relationships to Microsoft, and how many of the anti-Settlement comments came from people with relationships to heavy Microsoft competitors.
I think the process that they used to weed out the "useless" content clearly indicates that they are not in the slightest concerned with majority opinion, but are more interested in the actual content of opinions. Of course, it's also possible that it's just a formality. Hopefully the fact that 2/3 of the opinions are dissenting will make them think a bit.
Excellent point. Moreover, the question does not mention anything about the age of the children or their background. This is a meaningless question.
Did you miss something?
"The idea is to bring together children ages 10 to 15 years old from around the world at 8 or 9 centers scattered about all continents except Antarctica."
My whole problem with this incident has been RMS's apparent willingness to admonish in public. It's not like Miguel is particularly difficult to get ahold of. It's not like he's not a regular on at least a few public email lists.
And I suppose it's also not like Miguel made a highly controversial statement during a high profile interview. RMS was asked about it IN PUBLIC. He had no choice but to respond IN PUBLIC. You might argue that he could have said "I need to check with Miguel on that," but I think he was genuinely shocked by what he heard. Miguel chose some of his words very poorly during the interview and, after reading it, I myself was shocked and dismayed. Call it kneejerk if you like. I call it normal.
I'm fairly suprised. If the free version of.NET is licensed as free software, who gives a damn?
Yes, but he didn't say that GNOME would be based on MONO technology. He said it would be based on ".NET" technology. While we all know that it would have to be MONO to run on Linux, his statement becomes an extremely powerful marketing tool for Microsoft. As such, RMS would rightly be opposed to such a statement.
Does anyone else think that old Miguel is looking for financial support from Microsoft. Follow the beast and it will eventually repay you?
This is exactly what I was thinking. If that's what he's after, he's clearly forgotten history as well. Let's look at the long series of "embrace, extend and alienate," "embrace and extinguish," "buy and dissolve." I can just see it now. Microsoft announces GNOME 4.0, the alternative desktop for Windows. They'll have a little footnote about how GNOME 4.0 isn't compatible with Linux....
OK, so I'm exaggerating, but this is really an about face. I don't care how good the.NET platform is. You don't base core pieces of Linux distributions on the products and designs of a company who is quite openly hostile to Linux. Enjoy "sleeping with the enemy", Miguel.
Whoever modded this as "Troll" needs to be taken out and shot. It might be slightly tongue in cheek, but it represents an interesting viewpoint and, darnit, it's a question that needs to be answered.
Or, is this what cable providers are looking for, a high bandwith solution cable of sending multiple HTDV channels as well as very high-speed broadband.
I would say that this is exactly what they are looking for. It gives them:
Much more bandwidth for an existing cable modem connections. This provides leverage against the argument that DSL always tries to use against the "shared connection" issue.
Less need to build out as much in new areas to meet anticipated capacity requirements.
The ability to send many many more channels down the same line, making customers feel happier even though there still won't be anything worth watching.
The ability to meet Federal proposals on pushing HDTV without angering older customers who want to wait for their TV to die before they switch.
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So what do you do when somebody calls in with a dispute on their bill and wants to see an itemized listing of the phone calls you are charging them for?
I'm absolutely certain we store this information here in the US. And bill disputes is one of the reasons. In fact, when I had ISDN, I used to get the itemized listing whether I wanted it or not.
Of course they don't. But suddenly things like this have a MUCH bigger impact when their ISP sends them a bill that looks like something they might receive from the telephone company, listing every link they've clicked on with its itemized cost. When at the end they have to pay $249 for the month instead of $14.99, they'll really start caring. Not to mention the fact that somebody was invading their privacy and actively tracking their links to pr0n. Yeah, I think PR is going to be a big big issue. If BT loses this, I really hope that our courts issue a rather acid remark about frivilous lawsuits. Maybe somebody at BT will be looking for a new job soon, although not likely.
It doesn't. That's just their latest lame method of attacking. I believe that it all boils down to the commercial revenue thing, and they'll use anything they can to protect it.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but thought skipping commercials on a TIVO is significantly easier than a VCR (I don't own a PVR). Usually you end up FFing through the commercials on a VCR, so you just watch them at higher speed. At least there's a possibility that one might catch your eye. I've actually had that happen many times, and I would rewind back and actually watch the commercial from the beginning. I know. I'm a sicko.
I'm not sure I would define this as a consequence of being greedy (although I'm sure they are). Their problem is that the primary source of revenue is being threatened. It's not just a matter of making a little less money. It's more like making a whole lot less money if PVRs become as popular as VCRs.
I think somebody mentioned down below that these corporations need to evolve. It's time to find other sources of revenue. If their only salable "product" is airtime for advertisements, they're in real trouble. Every business that I know that stuck with a single product has gone down the tubes.
I think you would see a lot less concern over this kind of thing if someone could come up with a really good suggestion on how they can stay in business. As you might guess, charging the cable/sat providers isn't going to cut it. That cost will only be passed to consumers who are not willing to pay.
I disagree. You have to remember two things.
I'm sure it's possible. The real problem is in getting them to "learn on their own." I'm not an expert by any means, but I once dabbled with neural nets, and I wrote a program that learned to speak. It was basically an alternative to rule-based text to speech engines. It would scan a sentence and translate it into a stream of phonemes that could easily be rendered into the correct sounds. In order for it to learn, the correct stream of phonemes was provided for each new sentence. That way, it could "strengthen" the correct neural connections for a sound. In "learning" mode, it would attempt to speak a sentence. Then it would accept the correct input and keep restructuring its connections until it spoke correctly. Then it would proceed onto the next sentence. The results were cool. At first, it was completely unintelligible. After a few hundred sentences, it was getting new sentences about 80% correct.
Anyway, the issue is that I KNEW what the specific desired outputs were, so I was able to give them neural net. I would think that "survival" is a much more abstract concept. It would probably be more difficult to "teach" this concept.
How else could you simulate the behavior of multiple interacting neural networks without building multiple neural networks and let them interact?
I think the concern was in saving on the cost of hardware. You could implement the neural nets as software in a simulated programmed arena. Your guess is as good as mine as to which is actually a more expensive route. I guess people will pay more to see the "live" exhibit.
Or go buy a LinkSys router with NAT and IPSec passthru. :)
Wholeheartedly agreed.
I don't really have an argument, but I thought I had made that plain. It's just a feeling. My MAIN point, which you have not seemed to realize, is that I'd like to have the information about what types of people submitted what types of comments because I'm CURIOUS. However, I think modern US politics clearly lend some credibility to the statement that money can be a bigger driver than morals or philosophy. Let's take Enron as a big example.
But what I would like to know is why you cannot accept the fact that there are people in this world who would defend the settlement who are not employed by Microsoft.
I have no problem accepting this. I'm certain that there are some who would defend the settlement. My main curiosity would be in knowing just how many people both defended and disputed the settlement without any monetary or significant political motivation.
Strangely, it's that very zealotry that makes your position so easy to discredit. :(
I'm not sure where you're reading zealotry into this. I'm also not sure why you think you've discredited me. Saying that my argument has no merit and isn't backed up by historical US polictics is insufficient without examples. I never really stated whether I agreed with the settlement or not. I was pretty clear about indicating that I think many people on BOTH sides of the coin were motivated by monetary reasons. I also prefaced everything I said with the word "think" so that no one would mistake what I said for fact. I also made it pretty clear that seeing the results would ultimately prove me either right or wrong.
Now, so that it's really clear for you, I will tell you my position. Yes, I do believe that Microsoft has obtained an maintained a monopoly through illegal means. Yes, I do believe that this monopoly has hurt other business and stifled competition. However, I also believe that Microsoft has given us many good things, both through actual innovation or purchasing and marketing new ideas. Being a programmer, I really appreciate and respect the development environments that Microsoft has created and I find it difficult to replace these on any platform. I also believe that they have done wonders for UI design. All of this aside, any company that has abused its monopoly power ultimately may become a serious threat to the people. Having read the summary of the settlement, I don't believe it comes close to removing that threat, and it appears to actually make the threat worse in some respects (see specifics on education). Do I think Microsoft is "The Beast?" Not any more so than any other large modern company. Today's companies ALL seem to cross the ethics boundary. If it makes them richer or more powerful, they do it and call it "good business." Since the Sherman Antitrust Act, it has become the responsibility of our government to make it difficult for "good business" to breach reasonable ethics and completely ignore what's good for the people. I firmly believe that the settlement does not meet this responsibility. But understand: I did not respond with an opinion of my own, nor did I sign any petition. I did not feel that I had anything constructive to add to the legal process, and I felt that the petitions would be largely ignored because they were looking more for quality than quantity. I'm content to wait and see what our government does. If they fail to make the right choices now, it will ultimately come back to haunt them.
Also, let me explain my Linux position, since you obviously feel I'm a Linux zealot. I like Linux a lot, and I believe that Open Source software has many merits. However, I believe in using the right tool for the job. I have four computers. Two are running Linux, and the other two are running Windows. If I were truly a zealot, I wouldn't allow a Microsoft product in my house or office.
Now I must apologize for making my next words personal, but you really appear to be trying to create arguments where nobody is willing to argue with you. I might be mistaken, but I think you and I have gone 'round about this in the past. If not, I again apologize. That leaves me with three thoughts:
Get a clue, dude. Cmowire made no comments about supporting piracy or "software should be free." The major point here, in case your head has been too dense to absorb it, is that these guys are going after people who have legimately paid for their software licenses, but no longer have all the paperwork to back up their purchase. Almost nobody keeps receipts for too long. And the license sometimes finds its way into the garbage accidentally. On top of that, changes in licensing requirements have left some businesses who didn't understand the change in a questionable status. But here's the most disturbing thing. These jerks are intruding into peoples' businesses without what I'd consider probable cause and using other questionable scare tactics. My opinion is that unless they have an "inside tip" from a company, they have no authority or business auditing you. Mere failure on one's part to dignify their questioning with a response should not be considered grounds for a search warrant.
And let's not forget this earlier selection. It has the capability to make cable oversubscription a little bit further off.
Absolutely agreed.
I was about to ask what this had to do with the price of tea in China, but I think I understand your slant. Tell me if I'm wrong. I think you're arguing that members of the Linux (or similar) community would have just as much as incentive to express anti-Settlement opinion as those who get their incentive from a paycheck.
It's an interesting thought. I would tend to think that in capitalist America, people are more likely to respond to the paycheck than the philosophy. I believe that those who had significant monetary incentive would be more likely to voice their opinion, regardless of the direction of bias, than those who have a certain belief. Although there are certainly exceptions to this, I think it's true more often than not. But that's why I'd be interested in seeing that kind of information. It would tell me whether I'm right or wrong.
I agree with you. I didn't mean to say it that way, but that's how it came out. I think the purpose was to examine the content all along, but I believe there are a lot of disappointed petition signers out there who would have taken the time and thought to submit their own opinions if they had realized how the information was to be handled. Also, my guess is that these rules are clearly spelled out somewhere, but nobody bothered to check.
I think the process that they used to weed out the "useless" content clearly indicates that they are not in the slightest concerned with majority opinion, but are more interested in the actual content of opinions. Of course, it's also possible that it's just a formality. Hopefully the fact that 2/3 of the opinions are dissenting will make them think a bit.
Did you miss something?
"The idea is to bring together children ages 10 to 15 years old from around the world at 8 or 9 centers scattered about all continents except Antarctica."
And I suppose it's also not like Miguel made a highly controversial statement during a high profile interview. RMS was asked about it IN PUBLIC. He had no choice but to respond IN PUBLIC. You might argue that he could have said "I need to check with Miguel on that," but I think he was genuinely shocked by what he heard. Miguel chose some of his words very poorly during the interview and, after reading it, I myself was shocked and dismayed. Call it kneejerk if you like. I call it normal.
But he might have to change the name, too. Or at least the definition of the acronym.
Take a look at www.gnome.org. It says, "GNOME is part of the GNU project...". I would say this substantially complicates who owns the project.
Yes, but he didn't say that GNOME would be based on MONO technology. He said it would be based on ".NET" technology. While we all know that it would have to be MONO to run on Linux, his statement becomes an extremely powerful marketing tool for Microsoft. As such, RMS would rightly be opposed to such a statement.
This is exactly what I was thinking. If that's what he's after, he's clearly forgotten history as well. Let's look at the long series of "embrace, extend and alienate," "embrace and extinguish," "buy and dissolve." I can just see it now. Microsoft announces GNOME 4.0, the alternative desktop for Windows. They'll have a little footnote about how GNOME 4.0 isn't compatible with Linux....
OK, so I'm exaggerating, but this is really an about face. I don't care how good the .NET platform is. You don't base core pieces of Linux distributions on the products and designs of a company who is quite openly hostile to Linux. Enjoy "sleeping with the enemy", Miguel.
Whoever modded this as "Troll" needs to be taken out and shot. It might be slightly tongue in cheek, but it represents an interesting viewpoint and, darnit, it's a question that needs to be answered.
I would say that this is exactly what they are looking for. It gives them:
No, that was James. :)