Splintering DNS and having each country that disagrees with the US is a crazy notion. One thing that has made the internet so accessible is that it *isn't* splintered.
If the rest of the world thinks that.xxx is a good idea and so sets up its own DNS that allows for the registration of.xxx domains, all is well and good. But then next year a change in US government decides that.xxx isn't such a bad idea. However as there has NEVER been a.xxx in their minds (i.e. they don't see the splinter as legitimate) they start registering domains that ARE ALREADY REGISTERED in the splinter.
Sure, maybe it's unlikely coz you have a huge list of existing.xxx to deny its legitimacy, but what if the splintered.xxx hasn't really taken off and there's only two or three hundred domains? Chances are that ICANN would (a) decide to ignore it as it is too small to bother with or (b) require RE-registration along with a fee for those in the.xxx domain. (Even if it HAD taken off, option b is still likely to happen)
While I disagree with US control over DNS, I'd rather that than a splintered internet. Whoever controls it, however, needs to follow the One Rule: The granting or denial of domain names should only EVER be a technical decision. If you have some company that is willing to be the registrant for.xxx, they pass the technical requirements, can show that it's generic enough that it's worth the DB space on the root servers and they have the ability to follow the One Rule themselves, then grant them the management of.xxx.
I don't get it. So a group of your neighbours get together and decide to form a club in which you're *required* to become a member? Wouldn't freedom of association laws cover this? Surely you have the right to say "I don't want to be in your club, just give me a statement showing communal costs and I'll give you my share"?
Otherwise our homes are becoming like closed source software(1). You're not really buying it, you're just purchasing the right to live in it, and if you lose it, then you have to pay for it all over again. And we'll tell you what color you can paint it and what trees you can plant and if you can put up a windmill. I consider my home to be open-source. I own it and have the right to do anything with it. (However, if my neighbour thinks I've done something ugly they can appeal the planning permit -- like when a local has-been footballer painted Pamela Anderson on the front of his house: http://www.skhs.org.au/SKHSbuildings/22.htm)
(1) Did you like that huh? I managed to find an 'open source' analogy in a HOA discussion! Wow!
I picked a random local university to check their copyright-ownership policy. Some bell rang in my head suggesting that Universities claim they own the rights to the IP of their students while they are students (basically the school wants to produce the brilliant idea rather than letting the students). However before I could find such a thing (I now doubt I was correct) I found that the randomly picked university links to a Turnitin "Legal Opinion" based on Australian copyright law..
One salient point follows: It is a question of fact in each instance as to the extent to which a student may have granted an implied license for reproduction or communication of his or her work when submitting it for assessment. An express license to a university to reproduce a student assignment and communicate it to the Turnitin server would be granted by a student who signs a cover sheet for an assignment which contains the following acknowledgement (for example): I declare that this assignment is original and has not been submitted for assessment elsewhere, and acknowledge that the assessor of this assignment may, for the purpose of assessing this assignment: Reproduce this assignment and provide a copy to another member of faculty; and/or Communicate a copy of this assignment to a plagiarism checking service (which may then retain a copy of the assignment on its database for the purpose of future plagiarism checking).
Meanwhile, the 'no driver installs' holds true for any new prebuilt system.
I'm calling BS here.. neighbour purchased a brand new HP yesterday and as soon as he turned it on it "Found new hardware" and he had to install the Wireless and Bluetooth drivers just to get it to shut up, even though he doesn't need either to work just yet.
So that's not even the printer, it's stuff the manufacturer put in there. You NEVER get that with a mac. It really does 'just work'.
Skjellifetti says: > While the standards are ISO standards, it is clear that, like all standards, there is wiggle room. I once tried to use a US ATM card in a German ATM. The US uses 4 digit pin codes while the German ATM demanded that I give it a 6 digit code.
Your PIN isn't on your card in any way, shape or form. If it were, deciphering the encryption would be (relatively) easy as even in Germany there's only 100,000 possibilities. To decrypt: Get ATM card, get info from mag stripe. Go to bank, change PIN and nothing else. Rinse, repeat. Each time noting what changed. You've now worked out which piece of the data is your PIN. Next do weird mumbo jumbo and get your PIN back out. Steal someone else's card and get their PIN using your algorithm.
What happens is you stick your card in the machine. It has info on it telling the machine which bank the card belongs to. The ATM (or probably the ATM's bank's central server) sends the entered PIN to the card's bank for verification (without knowing, I'd promise it works that way.. security-wise it would be stupid for your bank to send the real PIN to the ATM)
Here in Australia some banks have 4 digits, some have 6 and some let you choose. Every ATM requires that you hit the enter button when you're finished.. I'm *very* surprised that German ATMs don't allow 4-digits. If they don't then they're not on the Maestro (or is it the Cirrus) network.
> The incident would have been illegal if it had been shown on traditional media
No, it wouldn't. It's MA rated content. In fact the only (free-to-air) TV station not to have broadcast it is the Ten Network who broadcast BB here. They got in trouble for broadcasting a similar incident last year that wasn't half as 'permitted' by the girl in question and so don't want to go near it.
> Now I dont know if Big Brother in Oz is streamed free to the public, but I would assume that it is
It's not. You pay for the internet or 3G mobile stream and so you either need a credit card or a credit account on your mobile to receive it. I doubt they give such things to 12 year olds, so lets put the onus of protecting our children back on their parents.
Censorship SHOULD be limited to advising about content, not stopping content from being seen/heard/read by consenting adults.
Sample of 100 people (representing the whole planet) 20 of them are of middle eastern appearance 80 of them are not... How many are terrorists? WE HAVE NO IDEA so you can't put your mathematical model on this. All we can do is say 'we know *at least* 10 people are terroritsts' and work from there. 6 of them are of middle eastern appearance, 4 are not. As we don't have numbers beyond that, you can't calculate the proportion of each sub-population. Maybe you can presume this to be a sampling, but then you have to go the other way.. 6 out of 10 terrorists are of middle eastern appearance, ergo most terrorists are middle-eastern. You can't make up numbers just to put a mathematical model onto it.
Maybe they just get caught more. Or maybe, just maybe, any violent crime committed by someone of middle eastern appearance, including but not limited to protecting their home, is being called Terrorism?
Already done... and it doesn't work much better than blacklisting a voluntary.xxx
The problem with whitelist systems is getting onto the whitelist and staying on the whitelist.
In your scenario someone has to verify that sleazydude.safe really is 'safe' for kids/my mum. So sleazydude.safe's submitted content is OKed by some definition and they're sold the domain name. Then once they own the domain name, they change their content.
The existing whitelist solution is systems like netnanny (et al) that verify websites and continue to reverify them. This is not an easy process as it can't be completely automated, thus someone has to pay for the data, and has to pay for updates too.
I'd love to see the genome project open its data.. then the databases would serve text info for the track that isn't disputable (preferably from the record producer) and then the genome.
Unfortunately many albums on FreeDB and CDDB are all marked with the same genre.. if this *band* is a jazz band, then every track on every album is tagged 'Jazz'. However there's many bands who might be considered Jazz who include a track that just isn't Jazz. Or more often, an 'Acid Jazz' band will include a 'Luisiana Jazz' track. I imagine the same problem exists in the OP's meta-genre of modern dance music.
The genome doesn't care who the band is or what anybody else thinks of them.. they categorise individual songs on various things.. Major Key Tonality, Mildy Synchopated, Strong Vocals...
That's much more useful than 'genre' as it (should) help any music player to find like-music. The genome project have released Pandora for this purpose. Give it a song you like and it will play other similar music based on the genome, not on the band or 'genre'.
No it's not good enough. If you live on a farm, you do a LOT of driving that isn't on public roads, but you're still paying 'gas tax' the same as a city commuter who uses them exclusively. Seems fairer to charge you for the roads you actually travel on..
Actually, no. I'd prefer not to. I prefer to primarily tax people according to their income for the roads we all use. But secondarily, I'd prefer to tax people FOR THE ROADS THEY PERSONALLY USE. In your case, you're buying petrol for your ute which includes 'road tax' for roads you don't use, but taxing you for the roads/tracks you BUILD. Surely this will HELP you by only taxing you for when you actually USE a public road?
It's completely unfair to the people here. Why should we have to pay for the ills of another city? It's not our problem that the city is in such a terrible state. Let them take care of their own problems and leave us to take care of ours.
Well aren't you lucky to have been born outside such a place?
Taxes are there for this very reason, and are indexed for this very reason. There are many people living in such places who are as bright, cluey and intelligent as you and me, but they're stuck there through circumstances over which they have NO control.
This means it's my job, and it's your job, to help provide what ever we can for them, and make their life just a little better. Don't ever begrudge the opportunity you have to help someone out because one day, you'll need a hand too.
For such a selfish post, you are hereby fined 1% of this weeks income from all sources, to be paid to the charity of your choice in that neighbour city. (Alternately, you can take the 'community service' option and go and talk to some of the people who live there, get to know them.)
I don't drive where I'm not supposed to. I don't drive over the speed limit (well, not much:)). I use the roads, but not all of them. I hate congested traffic.
I can't see that the negatives possibly outweigh the positives. Steal my car and the police and I will just watch where you're going and intercept you. Hacker-turned-car-thief turns it off? You'll get pulled over by the police for not properly identifying your vehicle (just like a rego plate).
My wife has only just got her licence. Imagine if when she's later home than she was going to be if I could just check her car position and realise that she's caught in traffic without having to make her answer her cell phone while driving!
I phone the automobile club because I've broken down and they KNOW where I am because they have my rego.
There's invasion of privacy, and there's useful technology... PLEASE learn to spot the difference.
Who is responsible for this stupidity? Not sure, not really the schools, maybe the Patent Office or whatever organisation deals with copyright. I think the problem here is mainly one of education. The company exists for one purpose, and only one purpose: to make money.
One way to help with that is to scare some poor bugger into taking down his Risk game.. after all it could be seen to be cooler than the product you're selling, and so you may lose some sales.
I don't blame them. I hate corporations that do this sort of thing, but at the same time, their entire reason for existance is to make as much money as possible.
So where does the Patent Office come in?
I'd like to visit their website and click on a button that says "I've been sent a cease-and-desists by some big company, what do I do?". That link would then take me through the various reasons why they might have a case, and why they might not have a case. The game-maker here would click on 'Game' then he'd select the reasons in the C&D... 'Title', 'Rules'. That would then give him plain-spoken information on what rights the corporation DID have. (Can't copyright a title, but can trademark it in a given area; Method of play can be the same, but the written version of the rules is subject to copyright). It would then link to relevent legislation and suggest legal advice from an IP lawyer.
That puts you back in the driver's seat. You can either engage legal representation, or you have the relevent legislation to fight back with. "Dear Hasbro, I understand the position you take, and thank you for bringing it to my attention. I've done some research (which admittedly I should have done earlier) and note from the Patent Office website that your rules are subject to copyright, so as I don't have them on my site, we can agree that there is no problem there. However I now understand that the word 'Risk' when used as the title of a game is subject to trademark law and so I'm sure you'll be pleased to hear I've changed the name of my game to 'domin8'. Sincerely, blah blah"
Should Hasbro fight back, you go back the website, look up whatever rubbish they're now pushing and either respond or get legal representation to fight on your behalf (or, if the website says you're screwed, stop whatever you're doing and appologise)
Do you guys get jealous of the (ahem) "co-hosts" they have on Brainiac?
Friendster? I remember SixDegrees!
on
Top 10 Web Fads
·
· Score: 1
The article lists Friendster as a 'remember when' fad. I's like to protest! People still use Friendster and it's way to recent to look back on as a fad.
Well before friendster existed was a site called SixDegrees.. I'm sure many of you remember it.
I used the premise that every person on the planet is at most six degrees of separation away from anyone else. (In the most famous example, is Kevin Bacon.. I know my mum, my mum went to school with Norm Smith, Norm Smith's best mate in College was Kevin Bacon's cousin)
Once you'd registered with SixDegrees you could see where on the map you fit. Of course the entire world never signed up before it disappeared so we'll never know if it were true of not!
Sure, 200W in is 200W out... but remember that you're outputting light as well as heat. An incandescent bulb outputs a lot of heat and a fair amount of light, whereas the flourescent bulbs output a lot more light than heat. 200W input == 200W output == (x degrees heat + y Lumens light + z Watts other energy)
The trick this project needs is to find a light source that outputs a given number of ANSI Lumens (as I believe they're called), but that doesn't give out heat (or any other form of energy, such as sound or motion!)
Surely it wouldn't be too hard for someone of sufficient skill to make a 'puppet' type device to fit over the 'blade' end of your pliers? Thus you'd carry your leatherman along with two 'puppets' - one RJ11 and one RJ45. If this isn't clear enough there's a picture here.
Why does everything with an external power supply come with its own supply?
Seems to me (and also to Douglas Adams - Author of Hitchhikers Guide etc [see here]) that it would be much better to wire houses with extra sockets on the powerpoints - thus the point will have (for example) a 250vac, a 5vdc and a 12vdc socket. Then every manufacturer creates their products to work using these sockets and thus you dont have to own 1000 'dongly things'.
There will be some equipment (your PC may be one of them) that would need to do its own conversions - maybe for getting a 0vdc or some such - I'm no expert. But for the most part there would be no need for damned power supplies for everything!
>I'd like to see all TLDs that don't have content hosted on them after, say, 60 days, freed up. Use it or lose it.
The fundamental problem above is that 'content' would seem to indicate a web presence. This of course, as others have pointed out, would not work due to the fact that there are a lot of domains that aren't used for web hosting.
I think a better solution would be to require the owner to make some use of it in a given time period -- however defining 'use' is as slipery as a french fry in gravy. There would be nothing stopping squatters from setting up a mail server on the domain just to give it reasonable 'use'.
Maybe instead ICANN (or whoever it is) should just outlaw the sale of domain names -- if you no longer require it, it goes back into the pool. One arguement against this is that unbeknownst to ICANN a party could 'sub-let' the domain name to a third party. But then this could be policed by other interested parties. That is, if I want bob.com and it is registered to a company 'All Your Names are Belong to Us' but is being used by Bob's Hardware, then I launch an official complaint.
Maybe my solution has more holes than the existing.. I'd love you to respond and show me where!
Cheers!
Rick (whose unusual surname is being cyber-squatted for no apparent reason)
Slashdot Mirror
Splintering DNS and having each country that disagrees with the US is a crazy notion. One thing that has made the internet so accessible is that it *isn't* splintered.
.xxx is a good idea and so sets up its own DNS that allows for the registration of .xxx domains, all is well and good. But then next year a change in US government decides that .xxx isn't such a bad idea. However as there has NEVER been a .xxx in their minds (i.e. they don't see the splinter as legitimate) they start registering domains that ARE ALREADY REGISTERED in the splinter.
.xxx to deny its legitimacy, but what if the splintered .xxx hasn't really taken off and there's only two or three hundred domains? Chances are that ICANN would (a) decide to ignore it as it is too small to bother with or (b) require RE-registration along with a fee for those in the .xxx domain. (Even if it HAD taken off, option b is still likely to happen)
.xxx, they pass the technical requirements, can show that it's generic enough that it's worth the DB space on the root servers and they have the ability to follow the One Rule themselves, then grant them the management of .xxx.
If the rest of the world thinks that
Sure, maybe it's unlikely coz you have a huge list of existing
While I disagree with US control over DNS, I'd rather that than a splintered internet. Whoever controls it, however, needs to follow the One Rule: The granting or denial of domain names should only EVER be a technical decision. If you have some company that is willing to be the registrant for
You missed:
* ???
* Profit
Bah! Offline is so 1997
I don't get it. So a group of your neighbours get together and decide to form a club in which you're *required* to become a member? Wouldn't freedom of association laws cover this? Surely you have the right to say "I don't want to be in your club, just give me a statement showing communal costs and I'll give you my share"?
Otherwise our homes are becoming like closed source software(1). You're not really buying it, you're just purchasing the right to live in it, and if you lose it, then you have to pay for it all over again. And we'll tell you what color you can paint it and what trees you can plant and if you can put up a windmill. I consider my home to be open-source. I own it and have the right to do anything with it. (However, if my neighbour thinks I've done something ugly they can appeal the planning permit -- like when a local has-been footballer painted Pamela Anderson on the front of his house: http://www.skhs.org.au/SKHSbuildings/22.htm)
(1) Did you like that huh? I managed to find an 'open source' analogy in a HOA discussion! Wow!
I picked a random local university to check their copyright-ownership policy. Some bell rang in my head suggesting that Universities claim they own the rights to the IP of their students while they are students (basically the school wants to produce the brilliant idea rather than letting the students). However before I could find such a thing (I now doubt I was correct) I found that the randomly picked university links to a Turnitin "Legal Opinion" based on Australian copyright law ..
One salient point follows:
It is a question of fact in each instance as to the extent to which a student may have granted an implied license for reproduction or communication of his or her work when submitting it for assessment. An express license to a university to reproduce a student assignment and communicate it to the Turnitin server would be granted by a student who signs a cover sheet for an assignment which contains the following acknowledgement (for example): I declare that this assignment is original and has not been submitted for assessment elsewhere, and acknowledge that the assessor of this assignment may, for the purpose of assessing this assignment: Reproduce this assignment and provide a copy to another member of faculty; and/or Communicate a copy of this assignment to a plagiarism checking service (which may then retain a copy of the assignment on its database for the purpose of future plagiarism checking).
I'm calling BS here .. neighbour purchased a brand new HP yesterday and as soon as he turned it on it "Found new hardware" and he had to install the Wireless and Bluetooth drivers just to get it to shut up, even though he doesn't need either to work just yet.
So that's not even the printer, it's stuff the manufacturer put in there. You NEVER get that with a mac. It really does 'just work'.
Skjellifetti says:
.. security-wise it would be stupid for your bank to send the real PIN to the ATM)
.. I'm *very* surprised that German ATMs don't allow 4-digits. If they don't then they're not on the Maestro (or is it the Cirrus) network.
> While the standards are ISO standards, it is clear that, like all standards, there is wiggle room. I once tried to use a US ATM card in a German ATM. The US uses 4 digit pin codes while the German ATM demanded that I give it a 6 digit code.
Your PIN isn't on your card in any way, shape or form. If it were, deciphering the encryption would be (relatively) easy as even in Germany there's only 100,000 possibilities. To decrypt: Get ATM card, get info from mag stripe. Go to bank, change PIN and nothing else. Rinse, repeat. Each time noting what changed. You've now worked out which piece of the data is your PIN. Next do weird mumbo jumbo and get your PIN back out. Steal someone else's card and get their PIN using your algorithm.
What happens is you stick your card in the machine. It has info on it telling the machine which bank the card belongs to. The ATM (or probably the ATM's bank's central server) sends the entered PIN to the card's bank for verification (without knowing, I'd promise it works that way
Here in Australia some banks have 4 digits, some have 6 and some let you choose. Every ATM requires that you hit the enter button when you're finished
Cheers!
Rick Measham
> The incident would have been illegal if it had been shown on traditional media
No, it wouldn't. It's MA rated content. In fact the only (free-to-air) TV station not to have broadcast it is the Ten Network who broadcast BB here. They got in trouble for broadcasting a similar incident last year that wasn't half as 'permitted' by the girl in question and so don't want to go near it.
> Now I dont know if Big Brother in Oz is streamed free to the public, but I would assume that it is
It's not. You pay for the internet or 3G mobile stream and so you either need a credit card or a credit account on your mobile to receive it. I doubt they give such things to 12 year olds, so lets put the onus of protecting our children back on their parents.
Censorship SHOULD be limited to advising about content, not stopping content from being seen/heard/read by consenting adults.
More Mathematics..
... .. 6 out of 10 terrorists are of middle eastern appearance, ergo most terrorists are middle-eastern. You can't make up numbers just to put a mathematical model onto it.
Sample of 100 people (representing the whole planet)
20 of them are of middle eastern appearance
80 of them are not
How many are terrorists? WE HAVE NO IDEA so you can't put your mathematical model on this. All we can do is say 'we know *at least* 10 people are terroritsts' and work from there. 6 of them are of middle eastern appearance, 4 are not. As we don't have numbers beyond that, you can't calculate the proportion of each sub-population. Maybe you can presume this to be a sampling, but then you have to go the other way
Maybe they just get caught more.
Or maybe, just maybe, any violent crime committed by someone of middle eastern appearance, including but not limited to protecting their home, is being called Terrorism?
Already done ... and it doesn't work much better than blacklisting a voluntary .xxx
The problem with whitelist systems is getting onto the whitelist and staying on the whitelist.
In your scenario someone has to verify that sleazydude.safe really is 'safe' for kids/my mum. So sleazydude.safe's submitted content is OKed by some definition and they're sold the domain name. Then once they own the domain name, they change their content.
The existing whitelist solution is systems like netnanny (et al) that verify websites and continue to reverify them. This is not an easy process as it can't be completely automated, thus someone has to pay for the data, and has to pay for updates too.
I'd love to see the genome project open its data .. then the databases would serve text info for the track that isn't disputable (preferably from the record producer) and then the genome.
.. if this *band* is a jazz band, then every track on every album is tagged 'Jazz'. However there's many bands who might be considered Jazz who include a track that just isn't Jazz. Or more often, an 'Acid Jazz' band will include a 'Luisiana Jazz' track. I imagine the same problem exists in the OP's meta-genre of modern dance music.
.. they categorise individual songs on various things .. Major Key Tonality, Mildy Synchopated, Strong Vocals ...
Unfortunately many albums on FreeDB and CDDB are all marked with the same genre
The genome doesn't care who the band is or what anybody else thinks of them
That's much more useful than 'genre' as it (should) help any music player to find like-music. The genome project have released Pandora for this purpose. Give it a song you like and it will play other similar music based on the genome, not on the band or 'genre'.
Cheers!
Rick
No it's not good enough. If you live on a farm, you do a LOT of driving that isn't on public roads, but you're still paying 'gas tax' the same as a city commuter who uses them exclusively. Seems fairer to charge you for the roads you actually travel on
Actually, no. I'd prefer not to. I prefer to primarily tax people according to their income for the roads we all use. But secondarily, I'd prefer to tax people FOR THE ROADS THEY PERSONALLY USE. In your case, you're buying petrol for your ute which includes 'road tax' for roads you don't use, but taxing you for the roads/tracks you BUILD. Surely this will HELP you by only taxing you for when you actually USE a public road?
Taxes are there for this very reason, and are indexed for this very reason. There are many people living in such places who are as bright, cluey and intelligent as you and me, but they're stuck there through circumstances over which they have NO control.
This means it's my job, and it's your job, to help provide what ever we can for them, and make their life just a little better. Don't ever begrudge the opportunity you have to help someone out because one day, you'll need a hand too.
For such a selfish post, you are hereby fined 1% of this weeks income from all sources, to be paid to the charity of your choice in that neighbour city. (Alternately, you can take the 'community service' option and go and talk to some of the people who live there, get to know them.)
I don't drive where I'm not supposed to. :)).
... PLEASE learn to spot the difference.
I don't drive over the speed limit (well, not much
I use the roads, but not all of them.
I hate congested traffic.
I can't see that the negatives possibly outweigh the positives. Steal my car and the police and I will just watch where you're going and intercept you. Hacker-turned-car-thief turns it off? You'll get pulled over by the police for not properly identifying your vehicle (just like a rego plate).
My wife has only just got her licence. Imagine if when she's later home than she was going to be if I could just check her car position and realise that she's caught in traffic without having to make her answer her cell phone while driving!
I phone the automobile club because I've broken down and they KNOW where I am because they have my rego.
There's invasion of privacy, and there's useful technology
Who is responsible for this stupidity? Not sure, not really the schools, maybe the Patent Office or whatever organisation deals with copyright. I think the problem here is mainly one of education. The company exists for one purpose, and only one purpose: to make money.
.. after all it could be seen to be cooler than the product you're selling, and so you may lose some sales.
... 'Title', 'Rules'. That would then give him plain-spoken information on what rights the corporation DID have. (Can't copyright a title, but can trademark it in a given area; Method of play can be the same, but the written version of the rules is subject to copyright). It would then link to relevent legislation and suggest legal advice from an IP lawyer.
One way to help with that is to scare some poor bugger into taking down his Risk game
I don't blame them. I hate corporations that do this sort of thing, but at the same time, their entire reason for existance is to make as much money as possible.
So where does the Patent Office come in?
I'd like to visit their website and click on a button that says "I've been sent a cease-and-desists by some big company, what do I do?". That link would then take me through the various reasons why they might have a case, and why they might not have a case. The game-maker here would click on 'Game' then he'd select the reasons in the C&D
That puts you back in the driver's seat. You can either engage legal representation, or you have the relevent legislation to fight back with. "Dear Hasbro, I understand the position you take, and thank you for bringing it to my attention. I've done some research (which admittedly I should have done earlier) and note from the Patent Office website that your rules are subject to copyright, so as I don't have them on my site, we can agree that there is no problem there. However I now understand that the word 'Risk' when used as the title of a game is subject to trademark law and so I'm sure you'll be pleased to hear I've changed the name of my game to 'domin8'. Sincerely, blah blah"
Should Hasbro fight back, you go back the website, look up whatever rubbish they're now pushing and either respond or get legal representation to fight on your behalf (or, if the website says you're screwed, stop whatever you're doing and appologise)
Do you guys get jealous of the (ahem) "co-hosts" they have on Brainiac?
The article lists Friendster as a 'remember when' fad. I's like to protest! People still use Friendster and it's way to recent to look back on as a fad.
.. I'm sure many of you remember it.
.. I know my mum, my mum went to school with Norm Smith, Norm Smith's best mate in College was Kevin Bacon's cousin)
Well before friendster existed was a site called SixDegrees
I used the premise that every person on the planet is at most six degrees of separation away from anyone else. (In the most famous example, is Kevin Bacon
Once you'd registered with SixDegrees you could see where on the map you fit. Of course the entire world never signed up before it disappeared so we'll never know if it were true of not!
Sure, 200W in is 200W out ... but remember that you're outputting light as well as heat. An incandescent bulb outputs a lot of heat and a fair amount of light, whereas the flourescent bulbs output a lot more light than heat.
200W input == 200W output == (x degrees heat + y Lumens light + z Watts other energy)
The trick this project needs is to find a light source that outputs a given number of ANSI Lumens (as I believe they're called), but that doesn't give out heat (or any other form of energy, such as sound or motion!)
Any chance of a URL?
Surely it wouldn't be too hard for someone of sufficient skill to make a 'puppet' type device to fit over the 'blade' end of your pliers? Thus you'd carry your leatherman along with two 'puppets' - one RJ11 and one RJ45. If this isn't clear enough there's a picture here.
Seems to me (and also to Douglas Adams - Author of Hitchhikers Guide etc [see here]) that it would be much better to wire houses with extra sockets on the powerpoints - thus the point will have (for example) a 250vac, a 5vdc and a 12vdc socket. Then every manufacturer creates their products to work using these sockets and thus you dont have to own 1000 'dongly things' .
There will be some equipment (your PC may be one of them) that would need to do its own conversions - maybe for getting a 0vdc or some such - I'm no expert. But for the most part there would be no need for damned power supplies for everything!
The fundamental problem above is that 'content' would seem to indicate a web presence. This of course, as others have pointed out, would not work due to the fact that there are a lot of domains that aren't used for web hosting.
I think a better solution would be to require the owner to make some use of it in a given time period -- however defining 'use' is as slipery as a french fry in gravy. There would be nothing stopping squatters from setting up a mail server on the domain just to give it reasonable 'use'.
Maybe instead ICANN (or whoever it is) should just outlaw the sale of domain names -- if you no longer require it, it goes back into the pool. One arguement against this is that unbeknownst to ICANN a party could 'sub-let' the domain name to a third party. But then this could be policed by other interested parties. That is, if I want bob.com and it is registered to a company 'All Your Names are Belong to Us' but is being used by Bob's Hardware, then I launch an official complaint.
Maybe my solution has more holes than the existing .. I'd love you to respond and show me where!
Cheers!
Rick (whose unusual surname is being cyber-squatted for no apparent reason)