Now there will be a managed list of reporters. I'm sure any ISIS related hits will still trigger SOMETHING, which will surely lead to [more] surveillance of the press, even if it doesn't lead to a 'three strikes' letter. What other websites did they visit? Who did they contact? What else are they searching for? Who in the government is leaking information to that reporter? What are their other sources? Are they talking to a known leak? Can we plant a leak for them to speak to? If they're willing to publish that information can we imprison them for leaking 'secrets' to eliminate the chances of reporters talking to whistleblowers?
Now the Vaccine Industry has scared or bribed the other doctors into recanting the evidence and they are going to destroy this Doctor's ability to practice medicine as a warning to anyone else that dares to come forward with the truth.
There isn't a rolleye big enough to express how likely it would be for this to end the discussion.
Isn't this what is already done with Terrestrial radio ownership and everything else the FCC does? 'Yeah, we might look at it at some point, to see if it's going to cause problems. If we think they're problems. Maybe. When we feel like it.'
Unless it is spelled out in 10+ pages of legalese so tight that it can't possibly be rewritten then it won't be enforced reasonably.
John Romero make you John Romero's bitch once John Romero gets out of John Romero's house. But John Romero can't do that without John Romero's friend Superfly, and he's (Superfly, not John Romero) stuck running against a wall:(
Considering Helium is the byproduct of a nuclear Hydrogen reaction in stars, I'd say its VERY important regarding possible origins or histories of life long past.
You're not going about this the right way. Rates would increase by 25% to cut out that 10% of content:
- 5% increase to cover the additional people to cut and bleep the feed
- 5% increase to cover lawyers
- 5% increase to get somebody at the FCC to pre-approve everything
- 5% increase for advertising to fill in that 10% of the content with JAMSTER ads.
Oh, and 5% increase to the CEO. What, making decisions that result in FCC compliance are tough! It's hard work, and that CEO deserves his multi-million dollar bonus for doing the impossible!
I wonder if it's possible for JibJab to show up in court and have their lawyer delay proceedings for a week. And then the next week, do the same thing. And again...and again...and again... I think all violations on a copyright that is more than the original 28 years should be handled like this.
"Why use an obscure technology? That will have more of a chilling effect on active participation than any other factor."
I see it as being even worse than that. Sure, this may sound like a hairbrained conspiracy theory - but this is the first thing that popped into my head. If all this information on high-level government officials is on a medium where a) the originator cannot be easily traced, b) the information may or may not be classified, and c) the viewers and readers of the information cannot be easily traced, GIA and/or P2P will be seen as one or many of the following:
- A possible breach of national security - A breeding grounds for information that can only benifit terrorists and terrorism - A reason why the DMCA and PATRIOT have not done enough, and cannot do enough to counter these threats
I feel this allow the RIAA/MPAA another FUD argument - this one with enough oomph to get the lawmakers to do something about P2P. Remember the outcry from those legislators who got part of their SSN posted after passing the law easing restrictions on what corporations can do with people's private information? Imagine the outcry of any politician when they learn how much of their information is on there. And it will be on a P2P network, encrypted, with all contributors and viewers shielded. The DMCA won't be quick enough for national security to be preserved. And then you'd have to worry about information being tainted by people putting in fake information constantly - just like fake album releases. Those falsities get reported, GIA gets laughed at and legislated to death - along with P2P.
Of course, that very well might not happen. But that's the first thing that came to mind.
> Oh, and they have to have a few ways to get digital music legally...
How about the RIAA actually provides the music that I'm infringing upon? Point me where I can purchase every CD or tape that the RIAA has produced between 1995 and 1985. Some of that material is just plain lost, isn't being produced, and they refuse to spend a dollar to make me a CD that I'd probably be willing to spend $20 on just because of the nostalgia value alone. Say I have a song stuck in my head, and I really want to listen to it, but it's not played on the radio anymore. Ok, well bugger, guess I'll buy it. Hmm, that's odd, Amazon doesn't have it. Woah, and it's not on eBay? Crap! Maybe I'll send a letter to the artist and see if he'll be willing to sell me a copy! I love that song, and I'd love to show him a 'thank you' with $20 just for that one song. What's that, he sold the rights of the song when he signed his contract? Oh. I'll write the RIAA a letter asking to buy the song/CD/tape for $20. Would you think that I would actually get a response? A month later, I hop on Kazaa or whatever filesharing app is OMG so good. Now that my hands are out of my pants long enough to switch from 'movie' to 'song' in my search, I look for that song on a whim.
30 people are sharing it.
There's my beef with the RIAA/MPAA/Video Game/distribution industry. If you provided the song, CD, video game cartridge (or licensed ROM), or movie that I would be more than willing to pay for, I would. Music, movies, video games and television have become part of a shared experience that every man and woman, no matter how different, can use to 95% certainty as a common ground. Find a random person around your age group and ask them about the big band at the time. Odds are they've heard of em and know something about em, and they might even be a big fan. Those three things are, in my opinion, the biggest cultural revolutions that we've seen in the last century. The advent of recorded music has allowed a distant memory of song to be remembered vividly with the press of a button. The invention of VHS tapes and DVD's, allowing for the same thing - a distant memory of a kid seeing Luke and a wookie, or of hearing Kirk complain about some Khan guy, can be experienced perfectly - with the press of a button. Video Games allow for a common challenge to be experienced by millions. Nothing else does that, which is why I'm calling it a cultural revolution. Society is changing because of the availability of mankind to remember and experience things perfectly, and to have the exact same experiences without even knowing eachother. All information and the ability to retrieve it upon a whim - this is the new 'industrial revolution.'
---
Back on topic: Let them do what they can legally do and sue infringers, and give amnesty to others. I will still be able to do what I can legally do - refuse to purchase their product, and attempt to get others to understand that if you're not getting a product in a way that you want to use it and be able to use it, DON'T BUY IT.
I do software beta testing as well as technical support. The people that call me want help; I want to help them fix their problem. But when John Q Public starts cussing me out, not following directions, doing extra steps without telling me, and flat out LYING (Really, I DIDN'T install anything recently!)...I can't help them.
If people want to learn, I'll teach them. If people don't want to take the time or effort, screw em. I don't need to hear people bitching me out on the phones because they have a 2MB S3 ViRGE and they wonder why DirectX won't work with their system. I explain it to them in simple terms: the program -- all pictures, documents, and data -- needs the equivalent of 8 square feet of space for all if its workload. But your video card -- the desk -- only has 2 square feet. And then they yell at me: WHY DIDN'T IT SAY SO?... turn the box over. Read. I DON'T KNOW WHAT I HAVE IN HERE, HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW? So I have to walk them through getting their system specs, etc. That's why computers have large red stickers all over that say what is inside. As well as an invoice sheet (Dell/Gateway/et al).
Mechanics are in a very similar situation. They fix machines for an hourly wage. Some do it for fun, some do it for work, some do it to learn. But if a customer comes in raging and fuming, mechanics aren't going to take any crap. And neither will I.
THAT is where the 'elitist computer world' comes from: arrogant, pissy customers who call you up for help, but then refuse to let you help them. As one of the 'elitist computer' people, getting called twice a day for friends' and family's problems gets REALLY annoying, real fast. If you try and teach them, and they refuse to learn, it's their own fault.
Don't blame us techs for people's ignorance. It's just like blaming teachers for the educational system -- there may be some bad teachers, but learning is a two-way street.
And Katz: I used to like your articles. But truly, I think YOU are detached a bit from the tech world. I challenge you to do a month of tech support. Even a week would do. See it from our eyes. Pushed calls, 2 15-minute breaks during a day, call notes, a forced 90% utilization and more. Deal with customers who call you up for all sorts of issues that have NOTHING to do with the product supported. Deal with customers that will not be happy until they talk to a manager, even though it is their first call. Deal with unbelievable scrutiny on every single phone call, email, call note, and resolution. Deal with logging in, and seeing the phone software display 90+ calls in the queue with 50 minute hold times. Deal with all of those customers, from late December through mid-February. Deal with being on a 2 hour call that starts 5 minutes before your work day ends. Deal with a 4 hour Windows 95/98 rebuild talking to someone that doesn't know a colon from a semicolon, or a forwardslash from a backslash. And do it all for $10/hour.
Do that, then come talk to us.
You should've also looked at a few other statistics: The turnover rate for tech support. The average amount of training before being put on phones. Before you go spouting about the 'computer elite,' see how often those 'elite' end up changing jobs because of unbelievable stress.
Something similar was already argued, insofar as whether or not the Betamax VCR was a tool for copyright infringement and should be removed from consumer use.
http://www.virtualrecordings.com/betamax.htm
The ruling of the case was that, more or less, Sony was in the realms of 'Fair Use' and, since it can be used for things besides copyright infringement, cannot be blocked.
MPAA lost that one.
Time for RIAA to lose this new one. Bring it to the courts. I want to see another decision like this just to shut them up.
Saitek made the P8000 a while back to do the same thing. The only difference is that its more or less a simple programmable membrane interface that passes through the keyboard port. The user designs a layout, complete with icons and keybindings, and then prints it out. The printout has a barcode that gets scanned which programs the device to activate certain keypresses for each selection.
The P8000 is essentially a programmable computer keyboard that allows you to assign any command to any button - making it a truly unique peripheral that enables users to play games, surf the net and use application software with much greater ease. This device can be used on your lap or desktop - which makes all your web-browsing, office and gaming needs incredibly easy and lots more fun.
I've used these things, and it IS really good for RTS's and for Flightsims. And, it is really bad for FPS's, as can be assumed.
Ok, here's a little quick lesson in mangeral speak with some background.
Increase Productivity = restrict anything that isn't productive.
You're work 8 hours a day. Company-related email checking, meetings, etc take, say, an hour out of that. 7 hours a day of real work. Anything personal - personal emails, personal calls, resume touch-ups, etc - is being non-productive.
Duh. Increase productivity by removing everything else.
The differences could be attributed to things besides race relations:
- Adults (at least female adults): "Which dress would look good on me?" or "Which color of the dress do I like?" This would equate to about 50/50
- Children: "Which 'Barbie' do we get barraged with on TV?" Well...the white Barbie, obviously. You mean there's another barbie?
- Adults might be looking at 'color coordination' and the contrast of brown on lavendar might be more appealing to their senses than flesh-tone on whatever the other color was. Hey, why not?:)
- Children might be exposing the subtle racist teaching of their parents. Hey, you never know. Kids can find out the darndest things by watching their parents' reactions. If mommy backs away a little further when a gentleman of color walks past her, perhaps little Sally or little Bobby will interpret that specific skin tones are more dangerous. Yeah, it's extreme. But you never know.
Of course, insert argument against censorship *HERE*. But can you truly blame the school for doing this? WHAT you may say? A/.er trying to remove blame from the schools? GASP!
Imagine an auditorium with 50 or 100 science projects lined up in a few rows. Let's say Missus Funda Mentalist, Miz Pea Sea, and Mister Ray Cist are looking at the exhibits. We have your usual assortment of science projects. "Do plants grow better in light or darkness," "Will plants grow better in Sugar Water, Salt Water, Regular Water, or soda," "Why does mercury rise in a thermometer." Then..."Do people like White Barbie or Black Barbie better?"
The theory is that white people will like white barbie better. It's an innocent enough hypothesis, and well, it makes sense. The method of testing is simple. Let there be two color differences: the color of Barbie and the color of the dress. You can easily compare the number of people that like the dress compared to the color of the Barbie. After the survey, wow, looks like our friend here is wrong. Adults like both Barbies just fine. But Children on the other hand...children like the White Barbie.
WARNING: INCOMING SARCASM, FICTIONAL SITUATION, AND STEREOTYPES!
Ms. Sea goes over angrily to have a word with the Principal. How dare you allow something like this as a Science Project? Whites and Blacks are equal and I demand that this is brought up at the next PTA! I demand to speak to this child's parents! Well, Mrs. Mentalist and Mr. Cyst hear this and jump in on the conversation. Mr. Cyst goes on to say that of course children should like White Barbie. White Barbie was there first, and there's no room for Black Barbie. Mrs. Mentalist is disgusted by this and goes off to tell her Church Buddies.
This ends with PTA, unnecessary Media Coverage, 'proof' that Whites are liked more by children than Blacks, KKK rallies, Nation of Islam...the school is made a mockery, teachers get fired and the principal gets transferred.
Or, you could just hide the kid's project. And since the media complains before the parents have a chance to hear about it from their gossip buddies, it loses momentum. No grassroots effort is really in place to dislodge the uncomfortable silent acceptance of the race problem as it is. And after a little while, it all blows over and is forgotten about.
If you were a Principal in a school, and have been dealing with race issues for 5, 10, 15, 25 years in a publicly funded school...what decision would you make?
Simple. The costs are actually multiples of assumption that NO work has been done during the disinfection of the virus.
Assume if you will the following:
Small business of 200 employees.
IS/IT department of 5 people.
Virus infects 100 of the computers.
Now, disenfection isn't just enough. The user will have to back up all of his/her current relevant data, have it scanned, and then the machine is restored using Ghost or some such program. Then, the user has to retrieve their data again, set up any other software necessary (or have it set up for them by IS/IT), re-customize their computer, and get things running smoothly.
Now, where do the costs come in?
- 'Downtime' of employees having their systems restored
- 'Downtime' of employees recustomizing their system to working order
- Additional time paid to IS/IT just because of the virus
Ok, so 100 employees were infected. Say it takes about a half-hour for IS to ghost a machine (50 hours for all machines), and only 5 machines can be ghosted at a time because of the bandwidth tax on the poor network. 10 machines an hour, for a total of 50 IS/IT hours.
* FIRST COST: 50 IS/IT hours. *
Allright, then you have 100 employees that aren't billing for a total of 50 hours because of the time it takes to ghost the machines.
* SECOND COST: 50 worker hours. *
Now, you have the amount of time it takes for an employee to restore their machine is another hour per machine infected.
* THIRD COST: 100 worker hours. *
And lastly, you have the billable time that could have been charged to a client if those machines were up and running.
* FOURTH COST: 150 billed worker hours *
So the total is 50 IS/IT hours, 150 Worker pay hours, and 150 worker billed hours.
Say IS/IT gets paid $20/hour. Say workers get paid $20/hour. Say clients get charged $75/hour.
- Additional hours for backing up data
- Additional costs of Anti-Virus software
- Additional time costs (same rate) for scanning machines
- Additional time costs (same rate) for backing up data
- Ghosting *ALL* machines
- Costs of Memos, bulletins, et al regarding virus procedures.
Imagine that instead of just infected machines being ghosted, nearly all of the machines get ghosted. That's $100,000 for one working day. Of course, these things spend multiple days for multiple networks clearing data, so one medium-sized company can easily bill $5,000,000 to ILOVEYOU.
Technically, by Geek standards, IS/IT is doing their job (fixing machines). By our standards, their pay shouldn't be applied to squashing virii. Also, there should be other machines for all of the other drones to work on, and other tasks that don't require machines.
However, hardware and software isn't the issue. It's the time that clients are billed for, time is what workers get money for, and time that is lost in the eyes of the CEO/CFO. So, $5,000,000 is the combined amount of income that would have been exchanged (not earned, just exchanged) during that time. So, their losses come to $5 million.
Logically, let's see why the DoD would be interested in something like this.
First, the aggregate log data would deal with IP addresses, computer names, workgroups, dates, times, attempted websites, and perhaps even a deeper explaination as to why it was blocked (Nudity, graphic violence, what have you).
One would also probably know which sites were most visited, and as such, which sites were set as the home pages for the school (if they were set to outside of the local network, at least). From there, ad affiliates would be listed, so one would be able to find out which companies (doubleclick, et al.) were most prevalent. From there, you could determine what cookies were being set on the browsers, and coordinate with doubleclick to see a refined view of what is being served.
So what we would have is, possibly parsed by school topology, what grade teachers and grade students (I've seen schools where grades are seperated by location) are going to what websites, what sites are blocked, how often the blocked sites are hit, and manages to go through.
Maybe DoD wants to know how many people are visiting/., reading JK's article, and trying to order a copy of Voices in the Hellmouth;) I highly doubt that the DoD would be looking for successfully visited sites. Advertising wouldn't have much to do with National Defense. Of course, maybe they're in cahoots with the NSA in looking for brainwashing ad services. Who knows.
Let's deal now with sites being blocked. It's well known that most, if not all of the filtering software out there doesn't publish which sites are blocked. There's just a huge string database and a list of blocked domains and IP addresses, or what have you. Maybe further information is being blocked through there.
Let's also look at the issues at hand: the ruling about public facilities paid by the government will have to use censorware to continue receiving funding. Public facilities are exactly that: any Joe Schmoe can come off the street and get to a computer.
Toss a little paranoia onto the fray, and anyone could come off of the street and get instructions on building bombs, or somehow get some subversive material, hate-mongering information, etc at your local library.
Let's go full scale in paranoia. Our own governmental facilities would be its own falldown! Criminals (or potential criminals) could come off the street, fire up IE or Netscape, and go to bombs.com or nuke-your-government.net or maybe suicide-bombers.middle-east.gov or something. And that would be a sad day in history, my friends, a sad day indeed that another domestic terrorist attack goes on that could have been prevented, if only we had the sense and decency to remove that demon-spawn, evil-filled internet!
If only we knew from whence that evil was spawned!...oh yeah, that's right. ARPAnet. Something about government. I don't remember. But it wasn't OUR government. Must've been them damn Iraqis or something. Saddam Hussein's granddad did it.
Anyways.
My guess is that DoD is looking for aggregate ratios of visited to blocked sites. Maybe comparing that against information received from Pinkerton, comparing that against the Student Violence Prevention hotlines or whatever they're called. Find out where the next Columbine is going to go down. Maybe figure out what grade said students are in, and what area is most likely to break out. Then put a little more pressure on the Hive Students to rat out the 'dangerous' ones. Who knows. All kidding aside, I believe it's more for the blocked site information than kiddie marketing information. Don't look at the Black Text on the White Background, look at the White background itself. Something like that.
Which brings another issue: if the DoD is buying this, than we as taxpayers are paying for this information as well. I'm going to spend some time going over the Annual Defense Report for 2001 and see if there's any reason, or any other possible links, for buying this information.
This result on searching for "Children" shows survey results for of-age teens going into the military, and how often they thought about it. Maybe DoD is doing some research. If a lot of.gov hits are coming from one school, toss a few more recruiters there? About halfway down on that site is a listing of 10 objectives that the DoD has on youth support. It's a good read, I won't toss em on here. Let's get a lot of seperate IP addresses hitting a few specific gov pages, just for fun;)
"So two years ago, we asked McKinsey and Company to start a very large marketing study for the Army and, as a result of a lot of their work, some of the insights they gave us is that we needed to do research-based advertising, understanding youth attitudes and needs. We had the Rand Corporation do a very large marketing study of more than 7,000 individuals, focusing precisely on youth attitudes and needs and how to communicate with today's 18- to 24-year-old. Every generation of 18-year-olds is different. Gen X is different from Gen Y, is different from today's 18- to 24-year-olds, is different from the one that will be here in a couple of years. So that research that we're doing, that market research, will now be an ongoing part of how the Army thinks about how it communicates with young people.
And later on...
"You will also note that in this advertising, we talk about 212 ways to be a soldier. We identify specific military specialties. Part of what we want them to understand is that the kind of interests they have in occupational training and work experience, they can get it through the Army; that they should come and explore those 212 ways to be a soldier to find the one that's right for them, whether it is as an infantryman, or as an artilleryman, or as a medical technician, a computer repairman, a helicopter repairman, a wheeled-vehicle generator repairman. We want to drive them to the web site where they're going to get more of that information about the opportunities that are available, and help them make an informed decision. Our goal is to make the Army one of the options that they are considering for the future."
And on the costs...
"Q: Could you talk about the budget for this and how much the -- particularly how much the spot will be that's debuting tomorrow night, and then the overall budget numbers?
Caldera: It's about $150 million for the advertising campaign. Over the last few years, actually, the amount of money we put into advertising has not kept pace with inflation in advertising. So it's fairly consistent with what we've done in the past. We are trying to take advantage of the ability to buy earlier and get better prices and be more targeted in the shows that actually fit the demographic that we're trying to reach.
And once more...
Wolf: The key with any advertising is understanding the target that that advertising is directed at. And that's we did, is we dug into our target and really understood them. To our target, to those young adults, "Be all you can be" was not motivating.
This report was dated the 10th of January, this year.
From what I recall, doesn't COPA (Child Online Protection Act) keep companies from collecting any data of anyone under the age of 13 years? Ironic, considering COPA is the reasoning, IIRC, for the installing the censorware to begin with.
Bah. This is all another form of Child Exploitation, in a completely other form. There seems to be this image of children as the great innocents, and the quintessence of purity. Ask any kid that's in Kindergarten or First Grade what bad words he's learned. Trust me, he'll be able to spew a few off already. Children aren't any purer than the parents that raise them, and the lowest common denomiator is highly frightening.
So up come these companies: NetNanny, N2H2, what have you, and prey on the very fears of all parents -- What is my little pure one learning that he shouldn't? -- and putting a price on it and turning a profit.
Wasn't that the point of child labor laws? Exploitation of Children was defined as using them for cheap labor, another means for turning a profit. So now, let's exploit children again -- this time, exploit the supposed innocence and purity -- and turn a quick million or two.
Instead of being afraid of children and wanting to protect them from the world -- up to and including age 18+ -- try to listen to them. Talk to them. Be open with them. Don't tell them that it's wrong to look at pictures of people having sex because you said so. Tell them that it's wrong because of the conditions that desperate women undergo to achieve the dream body or the dream relationship. Don't obscure, explain. Children may act childish, but reports show that children, as young as age seven, can come to rational conclusions and informed decisions about the world around them. All they need is guidance -- not censorship. Censorship is another form of obfuscation, and as we've learned from security, code, and other other geekly things around us, obfuscation just doesn't work in the real world.
UNICEF has a portion of their site dedicated to children's rights. Included in those rights is a right to education is the right to expression and information. Article 17 states that "Children shall have access to information from national and international sources. These materials should be beneficial, and those that are harmful to children shall be discouraged." (emphesis added). Not censored, but discouraged.
Teach your children the truth of what they see around them. The world is not a pretty place with dancing squirrels and singing birds, where rabbits and deer talk and frolick. No, the world is always in a state of chaos -- sometimes its simply less harmful at times. Wars occur, people get murdered, men and women get raped. Children take candy from strangers every day. Give them some ray of hope though, and let them think for themselves.
Children aren't pets or toys, they're human beings. Listen to them. Even the student teaches the master something new now and again.
Slashdot Mirror
Now there will be a managed list of reporters. I'm sure any ISIS related hits will still trigger SOMETHING, which will surely lead to [more] surveillance of the press, even if it doesn't lead to a 'three strikes' letter. What other websites did they visit? Who did they contact? What else are they searching for? Who in the government is leaking information to that reporter? What are their other sources? Are they talking to a known leak? Can we plant a leak for them to speak to? If they're willing to publish that information can we imprison them for leaking 'secrets' to eliminate the chances of reporters talking to whistleblowers?
No sir, I don't like it.
Once India's space program takes off maybe we can outsource our space exploration there, too.
Now the Vaccine Industry has scared or bribed the other doctors into recanting the evidence and they are going to destroy this Doctor's ability to practice medicine as a warning to anyone else that dares to come forward with the truth.
There isn't a rolleye big enough to express how likely it would be for this to end the discussion.
What if the AP sells you a license for text copyrighted by Reuters or any of the other wire services? Woah, man!
I always found blue on black to be relatively painless in very low light conditions.
Isn't this what is already done with Terrestrial radio ownership and everything else the FCC does? 'Yeah, we might look at it at some point, to see if it's going to cause problems. If we think they're problems. Maybe. When we feel like it.'
Unless it is spelled out in 10+ pages of legalese so tight that it can't possibly be rewritten then it won't be enforced reasonably.
Come on! And you call yourselves nerds! Hand in your pocket protector and shave that neckbeard already! >:(
I don't think Introversion has had that problem, and DEFCON is more fun than a lot of EA games out there.
John Romero make you John Romero's bitch once John Romero gets out of John Romero's house. But John Romero can't do that without John Romero's friend Superfly, and he's (Superfly, not John Romero) stuck running against a wall :(
Considering Helium is the byproduct of a nuclear Hydrogen reaction in stars, I'd say its VERY important regarding possible origins or histories of life long past.
- 5% increase to cover the additional people to cut and bleep the feed
- 5% increase to cover lawyers
- 5% increase to get somebody at the FCC to pre-approve everything
- 5% increase for advertising to fill in that 10% of the content with JAMSTER ads.
Oh, and 5% increase to the CEO. What, making decisions that result in FCC compliance are tough! It's hard work, and that CEO deserves his multi-million dollar bonus for doing the impossible!
Silly consumer!
I wonder if it's possible for JibJab to show up in court and have their lawyer delay proceedings for a week. And then the next week, do the same thing. And again...and again...and again...
I think all violations on a copyright that is more than the original 28 years should be handled like this.
"Why use an obscure technology? That will have more of a chilling effect on active participation than any other factor."
I see it as being even worse than that. Sure, this may sound like a hairbrained conspiracy theory - but this is the first thing that popped into my head. If all this information on high-level government officials is on a medium where a) the originator cannot be easily traced, b) the information may or may not be classified, and c) the viewers and readers of the information cannot be easily traced, GIA and/or P2P will be seen as one or many of the following:
- A possible breach of national security
- A breeding grounds for information that can only benifit terrorists and terrorism
- A reason why the DMCA and PATRIOT have not done enough, and cannot do enough to counter these threats
I feel this allow the RIAA/MPAA another FUD argument - this one with enough oomph to get the lawmakers to do something about P2P. Remember the outcry from those legislators who got part of their SSN posted after passing the law easing restrictions on what corporations can do with people's private information? Imagine the outcry of any politician when they learn how much of their information is on there. And it will be on a P2P network, encrypted, with all contributors and viewers shielded. The DMCA won't be quick enough for national security to be preserved. And then you'd have to worry about information being tainted by people putting in fake information constantly - just like fake album releases. Those falsities get reported, GIA gets laughed at and legislated to death - along with P2P.
Of course, that very well might not happen. But that's the first thing that came to mind.
> Oh, and they have to have a few ways to get digital music legally...
How about the RIAA actually provides the music that I'm infringing upon? Point me where I can purchase every CD or tape that the RIAA has produced between 1995 and 1985. Some of that material is just plain lost, isn't being produced, and they refuse to spend a dollar to make me a CD that I'd probably be willing to spend $20 on just because of the nostalgia value alone. Say I have a song stuck in my head, and I really want to listen to it, but it's not played on the radio anymore. Ok, well bugger, guess I'll buy it. Hmm, that's odd, Amazon doesn't have it. Woah, and it's not on eBay? Crap! Maybe I'll send a letter to the artist and see if he'll be willing to sell me a copy! I love that song, and I'd love to show him a 'thank you' with $20 just for that one song. What's that, he sold the rights of the song when he signed his contract? Oh. I'll write the RIAA a letter asking to buy the song/CD/tape for $20. Would you think that I would actually get a response? A month later, I hop on Kazaa or whatever filesharing app is OMG so good. Now that my hands are out of my pants long enough to switch from 'movie' to 'song' in my search, I look for that song on a whim.
30 people are sharing it.
There's my beef with the RIAA/MPAA/Video Game/distribution industry. If you provided the song, CD, video game cartridge (or licensed ROM), or movie that I would be more than willing to pay for, I would. Music, movies, video games and television have become part of a shared experience that every man and woman, no matter how different, can use to 95% certainty as a common ground. Find a random person around your age group and ask them about the big band at the time. Odds are they've heard of em and know something about em, and they might even be a big fan. Those three things are, in my opinion, the biggest cultural revolutions that we've seen in the last century. The advent of recorded music has allowed a distant memory of song to be remembered vividly with the press of a button. The invention of VHS tapes and DVD's, allowing for the same thing - a distant memory of a kid seeing Luke and a wookie, or of hearing Kirk complain about some Khan guy, can be experienced perfectly - with the press of a button. Video Games allow for a common challenge to be experienced by millions. Nothing else does that, which is why I'm calling it a cultural revolution. Society is changing because of the availability of mankind to remember and experience things perfectly, and to have the exact same experiences without even knowing eachother. All information and the ability to retrieve it upon a whim - this is the new 'industrial revolution.'
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Back on topic: Let them do what they can legally do and sue infringers, and give amnesty to others. I will still be able to do what I can legally do - refuse to purchase their product, and attempt to get others to understand that if you're not getting a product in a way that you want to use it and be able to use it, DON'T BUY IT.
It's not just that.
... turn the box over. Read. I DON'T KNOW WHAT I HAVE IN HERE, HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW? So I have to walk them through getting their system specs, etc. That's why computers have large red stickers all over that say what is inside. As well as an invoice sheet (Dell/Gateway/et al).
I do software beta testing as well as technical support. The people that call me want help; I want to help them fix their problem. But when John Q Public starts cussing me out, not following directions, doing extra steps without telling me, and flat out LYING (Really, I DIDN'T install anything recently!)...I can't help them.
If people want to learn, I'll teach them. If people don't want to take the time or effort, screw em. I don't need to hear people bitching me out on the phones because they have a 2MB S3 ViRGE and they wonder why DirectX won't work with their system. I explain it to them in simple terms: the program -- all pictures, documents, and data -- needs the equivalent of 8 square feet of space for all if its workload. But your video card -- the desk -- only has 2 square feet. And then they yell at me: WHY DIDN'T IT SAY SO?
Mechanics are in a very similar situation. They fix machines for an hourly wage. Some do it for fun, some do it for work, some do it to learn. But if a customer comes in raging and fuming, mechanics aren't going to take any crap. And neither will I.
THAT is where the 'elitist computer world' comes from: arrogant, pissy customers who call you up for help, but then refuse to let you help them. As one of the 'elitist computer' people, getting called twice a day for friends' and family's problems gets REALLY annoying, real fast. If you try and teach them, and they refuse to learn, it's their own fault.
Don't blame us techs for people's ignorance. It's just like blaming teachers for the educational system -- there may be some bad teachers, but learning is a two-way street.
And Katz: I used to like your articles. But truly, I think YOU are detached a bit from the tech world. I challenge you to do a month of tech support. Even a week would do. See it from our eyes. Pushed calls, 2 15-minute breaks during a day, call notes, a forced 90% utilization and more. Deal with customers who call you up for all sorts of issues that have NOTHING to do with the product supported. Deal with customers that will not be happy until they talk to a manager, even though it is their first call. Deal with unbelievable scrutiny on every single phone call, email, call note, and resolution. Deal with logging in, and seeing the phone software display 90+ calls in the queue with 50 minute hold times. Deal with all of those customers, from late December through mid-February. Deal with being on a 2 hour call that starts 5 minutes before your work day ends. Deal with a 4 hour Windows 95/98 rebuild talking to someone that doesn't know a colon from a semicolon, or a forwardslash from a backslash. And do it all for $10/hour.
Do that, then come talk to us.
You should've also looked at a few other statistics: The turnover rate for tech support. The average amount of training before being put on phones. Before you go spouting about the 'computer elite,' see how often those 'elite' end up changing jobs because of unbelievable stress.
Something similar was already argued, insofar as whether or not the Betamax VCR was a tool for copyright infringement and should be removed from consumer use. http://www.virtualrecordings.com/betamax.htm The ruling of the case was that, more or less, Sony was in the realms of 'Fair Use' and, since it can be used for things besides copyright infringement, cannot be blocked. MPAA lost that one. Time for RIAA to lose this new one. Bring it to the courts. I want to see another decision like this just to shut them up.
The Fish virus, IIRC, would remove the Stoned/Michaelangelo virus if it was found, and then infect the machine itself.
Further info about the virus is found here from Datafellow's virus database.
The thing is, management only sees $. They could care less about psychology. Only results.
And their red Slimline stapler. Bastards.
Ok, here's a little quick lesson in mangeral speak with some background.
Increase Productivity = restrict anything that isn't productive.
You're work 8 hours a day. Company-related email checking, meetings, etc take, say, an hour out of that. 7 hours a day of real work. Anything personal - personal emails, personal calls, resume touch-ups, etc - is being non-productive.
Duh. Increase productivity by removing everything else.
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- Adults (at least female adults): "Which dress would look good on me?" or "Which color of the dress do I like?" This would equate to about 50/50
- Children: "Which 'Barbie' do we get barraged with on TV?" Well...the white Barbie, obviously. You mean there's another barbie?
- Adults might be looking at 'color coordination' and the contrast of brown on lavendar might be more appealing to their senses than flesh-tone on whatever the other color was. Hey, why not? :)
- Children might be exposing the subtle racist teaching of their parents. Hey, you never know. Kids can find out the darndest things by watching their parents' reactions. If mommy backs away a little further when a gentleman of color walks past her, perhaps little Sally or little Bobby will interpret that specific skin tones are more dangerous. Yeah, it's extreme. But you never know.
Of course, insert argument against censorship *HERE*. But can you truly blame the school for doing this? WHAT you may say? A /.er trying to remove blame from the schools? GASP!
Imagine an auditorium with 50 or 100 science projects lined up in a few rows. Let's say Missus Funda Mentalist, Miz Pea Sea, and Mister Ray Cist are looking at the exhibits. We have your usual assortment of science projects. "Do plants grow better in light or darkness," "Will plants grow better in Sugar Water, Salt Water, Regular Water, or soda," "Why does mercury rise in a thermometer." Then..."Do people like White Barbie or Black Barbie better?"
The theory is that white people will like white barbie better. It's an innocent enough hypothesis, and well, it makes sense. The method of testing is simple. Let there be two color differences: the color of Barbie and the color of the dress. You can easily compare the number of people that like the dress compared to the color of the Barbie. After the survey, wow, looks like our friend here is wrong. Adults like both Barbies just fine. But Children on the other hand...children like the White Barbie.
WARNING: INCOMING SARCASM, FICTIONAL SITUATION, AND STEREOTYPES!
Ms. Sea goes over angrily to have a word with the Principal. How dare you allow something like this as a Science Project? Whites and Blacks are equal and I demand that this is brought up at the next PTA! I demand to speak to this child's parents! Well, Mrs. Mentalist and Mr. Cyst hear this and jump in on the conversation. Mr. Cyst goes on to say that of course children should like White Barbie. White Barbie was there first, and there's no room for Black Barbie. Mrs. Mentalist is disgusted by this and goes off to tell her Church Buddies.
This ends with PTA, unnecessary Media Coverage, 'proof' that Whites are liked more by children than Blacks, KKK rallies, Nation of Islam...the school is made a mockery, teachers get fired and the principal gets transferred.
Or, you could just hide the kid's project. And since the media complains before the parents have a chance to hear about it from their gossip buddies, it loses momentum. No grassroots effort is really in place to dislodge the uncomfortable silent acceptance of the race problem as it is. And after a little while, it all blows over and is forgotten about.
If you were a Principal in a school, and have been dealing with race issues for 5, 10, 15, 25 years in a publicly funded school...what decision would you make?
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Heh, not in management, but I'm just a few offices down...I guess the virus Managerius Stupidus is a little catchy.
Assume if you will the following:
Small business of 200 employees.
IS/IT department of 5 people.
Virus infects 100 of the computers.
Now, disenfection isn't just enough. The user will have to back up all of his/her current relevant data, have it scanned, and then the machine is restored using Ghost or some such program. Then, the user has to retrieve their data again, set up any other software necessary (or have it set up for them by IS/IT), re-customize their computer, and get things running smoothly.
Now, where do the costs come in?
- 'Downtime' of employees having their systems restored
- 'Downtime' of employees recustomizing their system to working order
- Additional time paid to IS/IT just because of the virus
Ok, so 100 employees were infected. Say it takes about a half-hour for IS to ghost a machine (50 hours for all machines), and only 5 machines can be ghosted at a time because of the bandwidth tax on the poor network. 10 machines an hour, for a total of 50 IS/IT hours.
* FIRST COST: 50 IS/IT hours. *
Allright, then you have 100 employees that aren't billing for a total of 50 hours because of the time it takes to ghost the machines.
* SECOND COST: 50 worker hours. *
Now, you have the amount of time it takes for an employee to restore their machine is another hour per machine infected.
* THIRD COST: 100 worker hours. *
And lastly, you have the billable time that could have been charged to a client if those machines were up and running.
* FOURTH COST: 150 billed worker hours *
So the total is 50 IS/IT hours, 150 Worker pay hours, and 150 worker billed hours.
Say IS/IT gets paid $20/hour. Say workers get paid $20/hour. Say clients get charged $75/hour.
Let's add that up.
(20*50) = $ 1000
(20*150) = $ 3000
(75*150) = $11250
Total: $15250 for 100 infected machines.
Now, also realize that the workers aren't getting paid that much, and the clients aren't getting charged that much.
Now, let's change this to a law firm of 100 infected computers, with the exact same numbers as far as hours concerned.
Say IS/IT gets paid $50/hour. Say the workers get paid $75/hour. Say the clients get charged $200/hour.
(50*50) = $ 2500
(75*150) = $11250
(200*150) = $30000
Total: $43750 for 100 infected machines
Of course, scale that for extra precautions:
- Additional hours for backing up data
- Additional costs of Anti-Virus software
- Additional time costs (same rate) for scanning machines
- Additional time costs (same rate) for backing up data
- Ghosting *ALL* machines
- Costs of Memos, bulletins, et al regarding virus procedures.
Imagine that instead of just infected machines being ghosted, nearly all of the machines get ghosted. That's $100,000 for one working day. Of course, these things spend multiple days for multiple networks clearing data, so one medium-sized company can easily bill $5,000,000 to ILOVEYOU.
Technically, by Geek standards, IS/IT is doing their job (fixing machines). By our standards, their pay shouldn't be applied to squashing virii. Also, there should be other machines for all of the other drones to work on, and other tasks that don't require machines.
However, hardware and software isn't the issue. It's the time that clients are billed for, time is what workers get money for, and time that is lost in the eyes of the CEO/CFO. So, $5,000,000 is the combined amount of income that would have been exchanged (not earned, just exchanged) during that time. So, their losses come to $5 million.
First, the aggregate log data would deal with IP addresses, computer names, workgroups, dates, times, attempted websites, and perhaps even a deeper explaination as to why it was blocked (Nudity, graphic violence, what have you).
One would also probably know which sites were most visited, and as such, which sites were set as the home pages for the school (if they were set to outside of the local network, at least). From there, ad affiliates would be listed, so one would be able to find out which companies (doubleclick, et al.) were most prevalent. From there, you could determine what cookies were being set on the browsers, and coordinate with doubleclick to see a refined view of what is being served.
So what we would have is, possibly parsed by school topology, what grade teachers and grade students (I've seen schools where grades are seperated by location) are going to what websites, what sites are blocked, how often the blocked sites are hit, and manages to go through.
Maybe DoD wants to know how many people are visiting /., reading JK's article, and trying to order a copy of Voices in the Hellmouth ;) I highly doubt that the DoD would be looking for successfully visited sites. Advertising wouldn't have much to do with National Defense. Of course, maybe they're in cahoots with the NSA in looking for brainwashing ad services. Who knows.
Let's deal now with sites being blocked. It's well known that most, if not all of the filtering software out there doesn't publish which sites are blocked. There's just a huge string database and a list of blocked domains and IP addresses, or what have you. Maybe further information is being blocked through there.
Let's also look at the issues at hand: the ruling about public facilities paid by the government will have to use censorware to continue receiving funding. Public facilities are exactly that: any Joe Schmoe can come off the street and get to a computer.
Toss a little paranoia onto the fray, and anyone could come off of the street and get instructions on building bombs, or somehow get some subversive material, hate-mongering information, etc at your local library.
Let's go full scale in paranoia. Our own governmental facilities would be its own falldown! Criminals (or potential criminals) could come off the street, fire up IE or Netscape, and go to bombs.com or nuke-your-government.net or maybe suicide-bombers.middle-east.gov or something. And that would be a sad day in history, my friends, a sad day indeed that another domestic terrorist attack goes on that could have been prevented, if only we had the sense and decency to remove that demon-spawn, evil-filled internet!
If only we knew from whence that evil was spawned! ...oh yeah, that's right. ARPAnet. Something about government. I don't remember. But it wasn't OUR government. Must've been them damn Iraqis or something. Saddam Hussein's granddad did it.
Anyways.
My guess is that DoD is looking for aggregate ratios of visited to blocked sites. Maybe comparing that against information received from Pinkerton, comparing that against the Student Violence Prevention hotlines or whatever they're called. Find out where the next Columbine is going to go down. Maybe figure out what grade said students are in, and what area is most likely to break out. Then put a little more pressure on the Hive Students to rat out the 'dangerous' ones. Who knows. All kidding aside, I believe it's more for the blocked site information than kiddie marketing information. Don't look at the Black Text on the White Background, look at the White background itself. Something like that.
Which brings another issue: if the DoD is buying this, than we as taxpayers are paying for this information as well. I'm going to spend some time going over the Annual Defense Report for 2001 and see if there's any reason, or any other possible links, for buying this information.
This result on searching for "Children" shows survey results for of-age teens going into the military, and how often they thought about it. Maybe DoD is doing some research. If a lot of .gov hits are coming from one school, toss a few more recruiters there? About halfway down on that site is a listing of 10 objectives that the DoD has on youth support. It's a good read, I won't toss em on here. Let's get a lot of seperate IP addresses hitting a few specific gov pages, just for fun ;)
Actually...I may have found it right here.
And later on...
And on the costs...
And once more...
This report was dated the 10th of January, this year.
Anyways...if anyone finds anything else, please reply =)
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Bah. This is all another form of Child Exploitation, in a completely other form. There seems to be this image of children as the great innocents, and the quintessence of purity. Ask any kid that's in Kindergarten or First Grade what bad words he's learned. Trust me, he'll be able to spew a few off already. Children aren't any purer than the parents that raise them, and the lowest common denomiator is highly frightening.
So up come these companies: NetNanny, N2H2, what have you, and prey on the very fears of all parents -- What is my little pure one learning that he shouldn't? -- and putting a price on it and turning a profit.
Wasn't that the point of child labor laws? Exploitation of Children was defined as using them for cheap labor, another means for turning a profit. So now, let's exploit children again -- this time, exploit the supposed innocence and purity -- and turn a quick million or two.
Instead of being afraid of children and wanting to protect them from the world -- up to and including age 18+ -- try to listen to them. Talk to them. Be open with them. Don't tell them that it's wrong to look at pictures of people having sex because you said so. Tell them that it's wrong because of the conditions that desperate women undergo to achieve the dream body or the dream relationship. Don't obscure, explain. Children may act childish, but reports show that children, as young as age seven, can come to rational conclusions and informed decisions about the world around them. All they need is guidance -- not censorship. Censorship is another form of obfuscation, and as we've learned from security, code, and other other geekly things around us, obfuscation just doesn't work in the real world.
UNICEF has a portion of their site dedicated to children's rights. Included in those rights is a right to education is the right to expression and information. Article 17 states that "Children shall have access to information from national and international sources. These materials should be beneficial, and those that are harmful to children shall be discouraged." (emphesis added). Not censored, but discouraged.
Teach your children the truth of what they see around them. The world is not a pretty place with dancing squirrels and singing birds, where rabbits and deer talk and frolick. No, the world is always in a state of chaos -- sometimes its simply less harmful at times. Wars occur, people get murdered, men and women get raped. Children take candy from strangers every day. Give them some ray of hope though, and let them think for themselves.
Children aren't pets or toys, they're human beings. Listen to them. Even the student teaches the master something new now and again.
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