Dupes may be fun to bitch about, but half the time I missed the original story, so the dupe is useful information to me. From the non-bitching posts others make on dupes, it appears I'm not alone.
So, yeah, dupe-checking is a good thing so as to avoid chronic redundancy, but the occasional dupe of a more-than-average-interest story is not necessarily such an awful thing.
If you have them all there to look at together, why does it matter which one came in first? It would make more sense to pick the best one that's available at the time you make the selection. That way you reward quality ovdr quantity/spamming, but don't have to sit around waiting for "maybe a better one will come in".
IOW, when you have the option, go with the best of what you've got ready to hand, not the first one to arrive that doesn't make you vomit.
This alone would probably weed out most of the submitters' names that lead to flaming the submitter instead of discussing the topic.
I've been a daily reader and a heavy poster since way back. Even after all this time... I don't *care* who submits stories, or if their personal link is included (no one forces me to follow it!) Likewise, I don't *care* who makes interesting posts, or trolls, or whatever; allowing for the inevitable zealots, the mod system works well enough to bury the utter crap. If you don't want to see trash, don't dumpster-dive.:)
And I'm going to skim the blurbs the same way regardless of where they originated, and look at links/discussions whenever they're of interest. If some are not of interest... well, no one forces me to read them!
IOW, watermark the file to ID its original purchaser. Indeed, DRM is not only unnecessary, it could be counter-profitable. But a watermarking system could be profitable with hardly any cost or hassle:
Instead of suing people whose files wind up on sharing sites -- why not have that same watermark hook into a micropayment system and a nice clean filesharing client? That way ANY media file can *become* "legal" (ie. paid-for) no matter where it's been or who shares/downloads it:
All you'd need to do to avoid being sued is subscribe to the micropayment system, and you'd pay only for the files you *keep* (say, for more than 30 days -- anything kept less than that, you could probably have streamed elsewhere anyway). The question of "I want my money back cuz this song/movie sucks" is thereby avoided, as is file-hoarding. And let people share any files they've paid for (ie. kept) -- since any downloads would in turn be paid for by the next downloader.
Perhaps this could be abused if not secure, but I'm sure it could be made at least as secure as the existing online payment methods. In fact, there's probably no reason it couldn't hook into an existing service like Paypal, making it ridiculously easy for the average downloader to pay some small amount on a completely on-demand basis.
As to people who'd strip the watermark -- let the watermark become the "Quality assurance seal" (file integrity checker) that tells the P2P client that this is indeed the right file and not broken. Who wants to spend all day chasing potentially-bogus files when you could spend a small amount for a known-good file??
Just occurred to me to wonder how much DRM inflates the price of legal downloads, such as iTunes? how much of the cost is their licensing fees paid to whoever developed the DRM?
Relevant portions: ==================== Page did manage to announce some new products.
First off, Google revealed an addition to its video search -- payments. Google secured nice wins by signing up CBS and the NBA to its service, along with a number of other content makers. Customers will be able to pay around $1.99 for CBS shows such as CSI and Survivor and download any NBA game 24-hours after it has been played.
This set-up mimics what Apple has done with iTunes and ABC.
Google, however, does have a unique twist on its video service. Any company can put their content up for sale at any price. (Five cents is the minimum charge for a download.) Google takes a few pennies from the sale, and the content makers take most of the cash.
Google has created its own DRM (digital rights management) system for the service but will support rival systems as well, Page said. Not that the world needed another DRM mechanism. ================
As to my own opinion... I wouldn't mind
1) Paying a small amount for content I really want, in a format I can use and archive however I want. The fact that Google's minimum is "five cents" reflects some understanding of some files' (frex MP3s) realworld value to most people. 2) Files being watermarked to prevent widespread "sharing" (since the initial culprit can be pegged).
However, I'm NOT okay with DRM or locked-in formats (ie. requiring a specific player). I want to time/format/medium/player-shift what I paid for however the hell *I* want, not how someone else dictates. And I don't want to discover that when I upgrade my hardware or switch my OS, I can no longer play the files I paid for, because they're locked to an old setup by their DRM, or that now I have to scrounge up some underworld workaround to regain their usefulness.
Crank calls used to be a common problem -- back in the era before caller ID, BBSs, the internet, and cell phones. But crank calls petered out in the 1970s, and now are rare. As happens with every generation of tech that can be abused, the loons have all gone off to newer pastures.
The advantage of current tech is that unlike crank calls, where (their era being before CallerID and ubiquitous answering machines) you either had to give up answering your phone or put up with the occasional abusive call -- if you don't like someone's "annoying" writing on a website, you don't have to go there and read it!!
As to abusive email, that should be adequately covered by existing stalking and harrassment laws.
To take that to a logical extreme -- what about advertising? Ads are designed to increase your business, which generally decreases someone else's business. In a truly loony system, honestly offering low prices could be prosectuted as "deleterious to other businesses".
Actually, this is no joke -- it's essentially what happened to a local vertical manufacturer who sold both to businesses and to the public. A bunch of competitors (who are sales outlets only, not actual manufacturers) took them to court because their prices were "too low", and the upshot is that they are no longer allowed to sell to the public.
I ran the test util (linked from somewhere on GRC, I think) on my Win98 box, and it said "not vulnerable", I vaguely suspect thanks to something CorelDraw updated.
Does anyone (er, anyone known to be trustworthy) have a benign proof of concept.WMF that could be used as a more direct test?
[laughing] I don't know the model number of the whopping great hard drive attached to my high school's venerable IBM-1620, but it was of much the same description, and tended to migrate to the end of its cable. And it held a whopping 5 MEGS of data!!
Oh yes, I knew there was a term for it... I last thought seriously about math 30 years ago, and while the concepts remain, all the details have, ah, been rounded off by my brain:)
Meant as a joke, but... I vaguely remember being taught a system in grade school, where cumulative roundoff errors were reduced somewhat by combining the total number of roundoffs, and rounding the main product up or down one or more units depending on whether you'd rounded up or down more in the sub-units. I don't recall the exact system but it does work as a method in everyday life.
Yeah, even the best case for a "new" internet probably won't have much effect on the "old" internet, unless/until (big IF) it reaches the same sort of critical mass that filesharing has now -- and look where THAT got us:( The, er, net result may not be Progress, if using it merely makes one a more easily spotted target.
I've said many times before -- it may be time for a return to the dialup BBS, at least for stuff you really want free from prying eyes and gov't control (such as email). I'd sooner trust my local sysop (hell, I'd BE my local sysop) than trust Uncle Sam and his Big Brother.:(
Cripes, and we used to rag on FidoNet for being built from tin cans and string...
Re:Win98 is vulnerable, and probably older too
on
Trustworthy Computing
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, I read All About It and did wonder why the test applet said "not vulnerable" for this box. Do you know if there's a benign proof-of-concept anywhere, that one could use for a more definitive test?
Tho this box has been completely impervious to every nasty that's ever come down the pipe -- nothing has ever managed to sneak in by any route. I do practice Progressive Paranoia about what gets used or not (firewall yes, IE no, etc.) -- Occurs to me to wonder if CorelDraw might have replaced the vulnerable function with an updated version that lacks the hole. Can't think of anything else on this box that might have touched WMF functions (CorelDraw seems to have something going on at a lower level than other graphic apps, as it's the only one I've seen that apparently talks directly to the video driver for some stuff).
Back when I had a WFWG box (which wasn't retired til 2001) I did occasionally see one thing or another make a foolish attempt to run, become terminally confused, and die without installing. No software firewalls back in its day, and apparently not needed either. Sometimes braindead has its advantages.:)
I do remember back in the DOS era there was much discussion of the theoretical possibility for hiding malware in the comment field of various graphic formats, but it was never seen in the wild -- likely because there was no consensus among users as to what apps handled graphics, thus no expectation of what might execute such malware. Now, of course, the average malware writer can count on Win32 of some species, and even the most halfassed coding has about a 50-50 chance of hitting a compatible system.
The referring page (which I can't find again offhand but is one of the links from GRC) said not to take it as gospel, since it only tests for one of several possible entry points, but it's better than nothing.
"Or the other side of 70 age: Why the hell can't I afford to pay somebody else to do it?"
I'll have to add that to the Existing Bit O'Wisdom:)
Wow, you're a BUSY old fart:) Your skills are way beyond me (I can almost drive a nail straight if I bend a few first:)...and sadly beyond almost everyone at this point; such skills are now seldom taught and even less often of interest to the younger generation. Then they wonder why everything is made so chintzy:(
Thanks for the varnish recommendation -- I need to find something better for my front door. What's sold as "spar varnish" these days is at best a temporary fix (the synthetic stuff is worthless). Wish I knew what brand of spar varnish I put on a plywood box (cheap interior grade stuff) some decades past... box sat outdoors in Montana for several years and was none the worse for it.
I don't think "information overload" exists as such. What I have observed, tho, are people who have an obsessive/compulsive need to "know everything". Before Google, these were the newspaper and TV-news junkies -- who would often literally have panic attacks if they were prevented from seeing the day's news, or reading the paper cover to cover.
But before the "information age", their addiction was self-limiting, because the newspaper only has NN pages and the TV news is only on NN hours a day (not counting rotating repeats like CNN). Now there's the internet, which for practical purposes goes on forever. So there is no natural stopping point for people with this obsessive behaviour -- hence they become "overloaded".
Normal people automatically filter information that is useful, vs. "junk information" that isn't relevant to their own lives and needs. Info-junkies are unable to do that, so feel like they need to see it ALL (that is, ALL the information even vaguely related to their personal interests).
First time I've seen ADD and math put together like that, but in fact it makes sense (pull your foot back outta your mouth before you develop a taste for toe-jam:)
What with the newfangled teaching methods where everything has to be "fun", and the focus on "learning through computers", we've raised an amazingly ignorant generation.
I've noticed that computer-based education doesn't focus on learning skills; it focuses on getting the computer to do the work for you. So kids learn how to input numbers into Calculator, but not how to add them for themselves. "Educational games" teach the kid how to *get the game to spit back the desired response*, but nothing of the fundamental skill needed to generate the correct response.
This sort of thing is by its nature both boring and noninvolving (it's akin to my rant about games that do the playing for the child) so it's no wonder that kids no longer learn to have decent attention spans. They're not taught how to accept and perform mental WORK, because everything has to be "fun" and "engaging" -- and if the kid wants to blow it off, they're allowed to do so.
Rote learning may have fallen into disrepute, but the fact remains that the generations who learned fundamentals by rote, and had no choice about doing so (and no one worrying about their "self esteem" or lack of it), came out of school better-equipped for the real world -- and for that matter, feeling better about their own worth.
[eyeing your entertainment system, from a safe distance] My brain hurts just from thinking about all those connectors [g]. So do my eyes and ears, tho they're probably just jealous:) -- I make do with a few fuzzy channels off broadcast (we could get satellite, but there's not that much I care to watch), an ancient 15" TV (it has KNOBS) and whatever playback the PCs can manage. Damn, now I feel like electronic trailer trash!!;)
You do woodworking? My granddad built cabinets where you could barely *find* the seams, let alone drive a razor blade into 'em. I don't have that skill, but I do rescue and refinish discarded real-wood furniture. *Hate* the pressboard crap!!
The last time a band gave me a bunch of free songs, I fell in love with them and bought all three of their CDs -- straight from the band. The band netted about $20, instead of the 20 cents or so they'd have got from a big label. Of course this doesn't show as a sale anywhere a big label would notice, so by the labels' definitions, there must have been a "theft" somewhere!!
Slashdot Mirror
Dupes may be fun to bitch about, but half the time I missed the original story, so the dupe is useful information to me. From the non-bitching posts others make on dupes, it appears I'm not alone.
So, yeah, dupe-checking is a good thing so as to avoid chronic redundancy, but the occasional dupe of a more-than-average-interest story is not necessarily such an awful thing.
If you have them all there to look at together, why does it matter which one came in first? It would make more sense to pick the best one that's available at the time you make the selection. That way you reward quality ovdr quantity/spamming, but don't have to sit around waiting for "maybe a better one will come in".
IOW, when you have the option, go with the best of what you've got ready to hand, not the first one to arrive that doesn't make you vomit.
This alone would probably weed out most of the submitters' names that lead to flaming the submitter instead of discussing the topic.
I've been a daily reader and a heavy poster since way back. Even after all this time... I don't *care* who submits stories, or if their personal link is included (no one forces me to follow it!) Likewise, I don't *care* who makes interesting posts, or trolls, or whatever; allowing for the inevitable zealots, the mod system works well enough to bury the utter crap. If you don't want to see trash, don't dumpster-dive. :)
And I'm going to skim the blurbs the same way regardless of where they originated, and look at links/discussions whenever they're of interest. If some are not of interest... well, no one forces me to read them!
IOW, watermark the file to ID its original purchaser. Indeed, DRM is not only unnecessary, it could be counter-profitable. But a watermarking system could be profitable with hardly any cost or hassle:
Instead of suing people whose files wind up on sharing sites -- why not have that same watermark hook into a micropayment system and a nice clean filesharing client? That way ANY media file can *become* "legal" (ie. paid-for) no matter where it's been or who shares/downloads it:
All you'd need to do to avoid being sued is subscribe to the micropayment system, and you'd pay only for the files you *keep* (say, for more than 30 days -- anything kept less than that, you could probably have streamed elsewhere anyway). The question of "I want my money back cuz this song/movie sucks" is thereby avoided, as is file-hoarding. And let people share any files they've paid for (ie. kept) -- since any downloads would in turn be paid for by the next downloader.
Perhaps this could be abused if not secure, but I'm sure it could be made at least as secure as the existing online payment methods. In fact, there's probably no reason it couldn't hook into an existing service like Paypal, making it ridiculously easy for the average downloader to pay some small amount on a completely on-demand basis.
As to people who'd strip the watermark -- let the watermark become the "Quality assurance seal" (file integrity checker) that tells the P2P client that this is indeed the right file and not broken. Who wants to spend all day chasing potentially-bogus files when you could spend a small amount for a known-good file??
Just occurred to me to wonder how much DRM inflates the price of legal downloads, such as iTunes? how much of the cost is their licensing fees paid to whoever developed the DRM?
Related article:
s _pack/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/07/google_ce
Relevant portions:
====================
Page did manage to announce some new products.
First off, Google revealed an addition to its video search -- payments. Google secured nice wins by signing up CBS and the NBA to its service, along with a number of other content makers. Customers will be able to pay around $1.99 for CBS shows such as CSI and Survivor and download any NBA game 24-hours after it has been played.
This set-up mimics what Apple has done with iTunes and ABC.
Google, however, does have a unique twist on its video service. Any company can put their content up for sale at any price. (Five cents is the minimum charge for a download.) Google takes a few pennies from the sale, and the content makers take most of the cash.
Google has created its own DRM (digital rights management) system for the service but will support rival systems as well, Page said. Not that the world needed another DRM mechanism.
================
As to my own opinion... I wouldn't mind
1) Paying a small amount for content I really want, in a format I can use and archive however I want. The fact that Google's minimum is "five cents" reflects some understanding of some files' (frex MP3s) realworld value to most people.
2) Files being watermarked to prevent widespread "sharing" (since the initial culprit can be pegged).
However, I'm NOT okay with DRM or locked-in formats (ie. requiring a specific player). I want to time/format/medium/player-shift what I paid for however the hell *I* want, not how someone else dictates. And I don't want to discover that when I upgrade my hardware or switch my OS, I can no longer play the files I paid for, because they're locked to an old setup by their DRM, or that now I have to scrounge up some underworld workaround to regain their usefulness.
Crank calls used to be a common problem -- back in the era before caller ID, BBSs, the internet, and cell phones. But crank calls petered out in the 1970s, and now are rare. As happens with every generation of tech that can be abused, the loons have all gone off to newer pastures.
The advantage of current tech is that unlike crank calls, where (their era being before CallerID and ubiquitous answering machines) you either had to give up answering your phone or put up with the occasional abusive call -- if you don't like someone's "annoying" writing on a website, you don't have to go there and read it!!
As to abusive email, that should be adequately covered by existing stalking and harrassment laws.
To take that to a logical extreme -- what about advertising? Ads are designed to increase your business, which generally decreases someone else's business. In a truly loony system, honestly offering low prices could be prosectuted as "deleterious to other businesses".
Actually, this is no joke -- it's essentially what happened to a local vertical manufacturer who sold both to businesses and to the public. A bunch of competitors (who are sales outlets only, not actual manufacturers) took them to court because their prices were "too low", and the upshot is that they are no longer allowed to sell to the public.
I ran the test util (linked from somewhere on GRC, I think) on my Win98 box, and it said "not vulnerable", I vaguely suspect thanks to something CorelDraw updated.
.WMF that could be used as a more direct test?
Does anyone (er, anyone known to be trustworthy) have a benign proof of concept
[laughing] I don't know the model number of the whopping great hard drive attached to my high school's venerable IBM-1620, but it was of much the same description, and tended to migrate to the end of its cable. And it held a whopping 5 MEGS of data!!
And remembering that sometimes it's a specific manufacturing batch that was bad, not inherently a problem with the drive or model itself.
Oh! Good info. You've just radically improved my grok of dithering. (IANAMathematician. :)
Interesting! And now my brain (which in another post I accuse of rounding off old data) ...hurts. :)
Oh yes, I knew there was a term for it... I last thought seriously about math 30 years ago, and while the concepts remain, all the details have, ah, been rounded off by my brain :)
Meant as a joke, but... I vaguely remember being taught a system in grade school, where cumulative roundoff errors were reduced somewhat by combining the total number of roundoffs, and rounding the main product up or down one or more units depending on whether you'd rounded up or down more in the sub-units. I don't recall the exact system but it does work as a method in everyday life.
Yeah, even the best case for a "new" internet probably won't have much effect on the "old" internet, unless/until (big IF) it reaches the same sort of critical mass that filesharing has now -- and look where THAT got us :( The, er, net result may not be Progress, if using it merely makes one a more easily spotted target.
:(
I've said many times before -- it may be time for a return to the dialup BBS, at least for stuff you really want free from prying eyes and gov't control (such as email). I'd sooner trust my local sysop (hell, I'd BE my local sysop) than trust Uncle Sam and his Big Brother.
Cripes, and we used to rag on FidoNet for being built from tin cans and string...
Yeah, I read All About It and did wonder why the test applet said "not vulnerable" for this box. Do you know if there's a benign proof-of-concept anywhere, that one could use for a more definitive test?
:)
Tho this box has been completely impervious to every nasty that's ever come down the pipe -- nothing has ever managed to sneak in by any route. I do practice Progressive Paranoia about what gets used or not (firewall yes, IE no, etc.) -- Occurs to me to wonder if CorelDraw might have replaced the vulnerable function with an updated version that lacks the hole. Can't think of anything else on this box that might have touched WMF functions (CorelDraw seems to have something going on at a lower level than other graphic apps, as it's the only one I've seen that apparently talks directly to the video driver for some stuff).
Back when I had a WFWG box (which wasn't retired til 2001) I did occasionally see one thing or another make a foolish attempt to run, become terminally confused, and die without installing. No software firewalls back in its day, and apparently not needed either. Sometimes braindead has its advantages.
I do remember back in the DOS era there was much discussion of the theoretical possibility for hiding malware in the comment field of various graphic formats, but it was never seen in the wild -- likely because there was no consensus among users as to what apps handled graphics, thus no expectation of what might execute such malware. Now, of course, the average malware writer can count on Win32 of some species, and even the most halfassed coding has about a 50-50 chance of hitting a compatible system.
I ran the test util on my Win98 box (http://www.hexblog.com/security/files/wmf_checker _hexblog.exe small download)
It said -- Not Vulnerable.
The referring page (which I can't find again offhand but is one of the links from GRC) said not to take it as gospel, since it only tests for one of several possible entry points, but it's better than nothing.
"Or the other side of 70 age: Why the hell can't I afford to pay somebody else to do it?"
:)
:) Your skills are way beyond me (I can almost drive a nail straight if I bend a few first :) ...and sadly beyond almost everyone at this point; such skills are now seldom taught and even less often of interest to the younger generation. Then they wonder why everything is made so chintzy :(
I'll have to add that to the Existing Bit O'Wisdom
Wow, you're a BUSY old fart
Thanks for the varnish recommendation -- I need to find something better for my front door. What's sold as "spar varnish" these days is at best a temporary fix (the synthetic stuff is worthless). Wish I knew what brand of spar varnish I put on a plywood box (cheap interior grade stuff) some decades past... box sat outdoors in Montana for several years and was none the worse for it.
I don't think "information overload" exists as such. What I have observed, tho, are people who have an obsessive/compulsive need to "know everything". Before Google, these were the newspaper and TV-news junkies -- who would often literally have panic attacks if they were prevented from seeing the day's news, or reading the paper cover to cover.
But before the "information age", their addiction was self-limiting, because the newspaper only has NN pages and the TV news is only on NN hours a day (not counting rotating repeats like CNN). Now there's the internet, which for practical purposes goes on forever. So there is no natural stopping point for people with this obsessive behaviour -- hence they become "overloaded".
Normal people automatically filter information that is useful, vs. "junk information" that isn't relevant to their own lives and needs. Info-junkies are unable to do that, so feel like they need to see it ALL (that is, ALL the information even vaguely related to their personal interests).
First time I've seen ADD and math put together like that, but in fact it makes sense (pull your foot back outta your mouth before you develop a taste for toe-jam :)
What with the newfangled teaching methods where everything has to be "fun", and the focus on "learning through computers", we've raised an amazingly ignorant generation.
I've noticed that computer-based education doesn't focus on learning skills; it focuses on getting the computer to do the work for you. So kids learn how to input numbers into Calculator, but not how to add them for themselves. "Educational games" teach the kid how to *get the game to spit back the desired response*, but nothing of the fundamental skill needed to generate the correct response.
This sort of thing is by its nature both boring and noninvolving (it's akin to my rant about games that do the playing for the child) so it's no wonder that kids no longer learn to have decent attention spans. They're not taught how to accept and perform mental WORK, because everything has to be "fun" and "engaging" -- and if the kid wants to blow it off, they're allowed to do so.
Rote learning may have fallen into disrepute, but the fact remains that the generations who learned fundamentals by rote, and had no choice about doing so (and no one worrying about their "self esteem" or lack of it), came out of school better-equipped for the real world -- and for that matter, feeling better about their own worth.
[eyeing your entertainment system, from a safe distance] My brain hurts just from thinking about all those connectors [g]. So do my eyes and ears, tho they're probably just jealous :) -- I make do with a few fuzzy channels off broadcast (we could get satellite, but there's not that much I care to watch), an ancient 15" TV (it has KNOBS) and whatever playback the PCs can manage. Damn, now I feel like electronic trailer trash!! ;)
h tm) some years back:
You do woodworking? My granddad built cabinets where you could barely *find* the seams, let alone drive a razor blade into 'em. I don't have that skill, but I do rescue and refinish discarded real-wood furniture. *Hate* the pressboard crap!!
And as to youth vs. age [brandishes junkmail from AARP]... here's what *I* had to say about it (http://home.earthlink.net/~rividh/asylum/random.
The quintessential difference between youth and old age:
Youth: Why the hell should I pay someone else to do that when I can do it myself?
Old age: Why the hell should I do that myself when I can pay someone else to do it?
[thinking] "Steal this sig!" oughta be sufficient :)
Well, in tha case, let's declare it public domain and make it everyone's anti-DRM slogan :)