Nice thinking. I always thought we could just burn California to power a steam turbine generator (I mean, since it's always on fire anyway..) but political hot air is a great idea too. A collection device on top of the Capitol could probably provide enough energy to power a small continent.
Pfft, yeah, I guess.. I mean, if you consider an average speed of 26,539MPH to be fast. If going from LA to New York in 6 minutes is your idea of fast, then sure, this thing is just whizzing along.
FWIW, this story is a non-issue. They requested search logs without identifying information about the searchers. Big deal. It would take man-years to pore over the millions of entries individually, so it's not likely to be used for anything other than statistics anyway. A better choice probably would have been typing random words into Yahoogle and seeing what results turn up.
Anyway, to summarize:
With identifying data -- issue. Without identifying data -- nonissue.
Sure, the advances are great, but when the worst thing that happens is that the benefits of phone service go out for a couple of days, life is pretty good.
Sometime, they have no clue where the cut is and that is a big bitch when you have several hundred or thousand miles of fiber. The dude makes 400$/hr and is well known.
Finding a break is trivial.. there's specialized equipment to do just that. See: OTDR
Splicing is also fairly easy nowadays. The only difficult part, usually, is getting to the break. If this guy's making $400/hr, it's because he's got the people-kind of networking skills, not because he can perform the same task as an average DeVry graduate.
You mean somebody posted a "blog" about using BeyondTV right smack on the middle of BeyondTV's website? Somebody should let them know so they can remove it immediately. Good thing you spotted it, or who knows how long they might have gone on inadvertantly advertising their products!
I thought it was pretty damn awful too.... but then I'm not American (it was clearly in the 'Western' style to appeal to am american audience).
Right, because Westerns are at the peak of their popularity in the states. Hollywood's pumping them out like candy. Also it's a big hit with the Asians because they use Chinese from time to time.
With stereotypes that bad, you should be living here.
You mean like WMP has been doing for years without anyone batting an eye? This is the most ridiculous thing I've heard yet, and I'm pretty anti-spyware. I realize there are some folks out there who are concerned that people will find out they listen to Air Supply, but really.. nobody cares.*
Furthermore, your hypothetical example of "what could go wrong," is flawed. First and foremost, children have no expectation of privacy from their parents, at least not with respect to what they listen to, or basically anything else that doesn't violate some criminal/natural law. I'm not saying it's good to give children no privacy, but it's a parent's perrogative. The point is: it wouldn't be an abuse of such information for a parent to find out. But regardless, the fact that such a suit has already occurred means there's precident, and the case would be tossed anyway.
Second, they already know what you're listening to because you bought it from them. (At least, I hope you did since there's little other reason to open iTunes.) The sales data itself is certainly much more sensitive.
I can't even begin to imagine the level of paranioa required to feel threatened by iTunes displaying information relevant to the current song. It's crap like this that distracts from legitimate privacy issues, and makes everyone who's pro-privacy look a little more nuts.
*Just kidding, and if I find out you listen to that crap, you're never going to hear the end of it. You know who you are!
Well, in all likelyhood I expect the ratings will go back down. What's probably happening is a blip -- those who downloaded the first part of the season now want to see the latest episode, which presumably wouldn't be available on iTunes before it aired. Once more shows are available for legal download online, I expect the ratings will settle back down, perhaps to below previous levels as people get accustomed to the concept of exclusively viewing downloaded content. Once this happens, I'm sure we'll hear executives crying foul and demanding iTunes raise its price, or some other nonsense.
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Then perhaps you can explain this?
Nice thinking. I always thought we could just burn California to power a steam turbine generator (I mean, since it's always on fire anyway..) but political hot air is a great idea too. A collection device on top of the Capitol could probably provide enough energy to power a small continent.
Pfft, yeah, I guess.. I mean, if you consider an average speed of 26,539MPH to be fast. If going from LA to New York in 6 minutes is your idea of fast, then sure, this thing is just whizzing along.
That's arguable, but in either case it's not a privacy issue which, if that was unclear, is what I meant.
They've been liberated! Guess we should've conserved some...
FWIW, this story is a non-issue. They requested search logs without identifying information about the searchers. Big deal. It would take man-years to pore over the millions of entries individually, so it's not likely to be used for anything other than statistics anyway. A better choice probably would have been typing random words into Yahoogle and seeing what results turn up.
Anyway, to summarize:
With identifying data -- issue.
Without identifying data -- nonissue.
As of July, 2005:
2 156431
Google: 36.5%
Yahoo: 30.5%
MSN: 15.5%
AOL: 9.9%
Ask: 6.1%
InfoSpace: 0.9%
Others: 0.6%
Soure: http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/
Probably more recent numbers around, but I doubt anything's changed dramatically in the past 6 months.
Sure, the advances are great, but when the worst thing that happens is that the benefits of phone service go out for a couple of days, life is pretty good.
OMG.. there must have been way more crime before they had phones. Or way more police.
Sometime, they have no clue where the cut is and that is a big bitch when you have several hundred or thousand miles of fiber. The dude makes 400$/hr and is well known.
Finding a break is trivial.. there's specialized equipment to do just that. See: OTDR
Splicing is also fairly easy nowadays. The only difficult part, usually, is getting to the break. If this guy's making $400/hr, it's because he's got the people-kind of networking skills, not because he can perform the same task as an average DeVry graduate.
"These guys" are SnapStream too.
a) It's a proof-of-concept built by the people who sell BeyondTV (a point most people seem to have missed).
b) Nobody's going to spend $4,500 for an HTPC; at least not any of the same people who are going to bitch about the price of DVDs.
c) Most TV isn't available on DVD, and what is available isn't typically released until well after the season is over.
It's a giant ad!
You mean somebody posted a "blog" about using BeyondTV right smack on the middle of BeyondTV's website? Somebody should let them know so they can remove it immediately. Good thing you spotted it, or who knows how long they might have gone on inadvertantly advertising their products!
Yeah, that seems like a lot of effort, but it's probably worth it. If only college students had computers of their own, and cable in the dorm rooms...
So THAT'S why Peter always seems to be missing whenever Spider-Man shows up!
Arguably it would have been a better translation if, perhaps, it wasn't written in pseudo-German. Good work missing the joke though.
Ah, the repetitive joke, it never gets old.
Ah, the repetitive joke, it never gets old.
Don't pretend you're not Paul. How's the new job going?
Because, as it turns out, your patented concept doesn't have to be possible.
Agreed.. "Joe Sixpack" is the worst euphamism I see commonly used. As if half of /. doesn't pound a 6 pack every night just to fend off the lonliness.
I thought it was pretty damn awful too.... but then I'm not American (it was clearly in the 'Western' style to appeal to am american audience).
Right, because Westerns are at the peak of their popularity in the states. Hollywood's pumping them out like candy. Also it's a big hit with the Asians because they use Chinese from time to time.
With stereotypes that bad, you should be living here.
If you just randomly tuned in and saw one episode, it wouldn't be very interesting.
OMG.. they invented the serial.
This country is done for, whoever has to mop up this mess has their work cut out for them.
I'll give you a hint: Grab a mop.
You mean like WMP has been doing for years without anyone batting an eye? This is the most ridiculous thing I've heard yet, and I'm pretty anti-spyware. I realize there are some folks out there who are concerned that people will find out they listen to Air Supply, but really.. nobody cares.*
Furthermore, your hypothetical example of "what could go wrong," is flawed. First and foremost, children have no expectation of privacy from their parents, at least not with respect to what they listen to, or basically anything else that doesn't violate some criminal/natural law. I'm not saying it's good to give children no privacy, but it's a parent's perrogative. The point is: it wouldn't be an abuse of such information for a parent to find out. But regardless, the fact that such a suit has already occurred means there's precident, and the case would be tossed anyway.
Second, they already know what you're listening to because you bought it from them. (At least, I hope you did since there's little other reason to open iTunes.) The sales data itself is certainly much more sensitive.
I can't even begin to imagine the level of paranioa required to feel threatened by iTunes displaying information relevant to the current song. It's crap like this that distracts from legitimate privacy issues, and makes everyone who's pro-privacy look a little more nuts.
*Just kidding, and if I find out you listen to that crap, you're never going to hear the end of it. You know who you are!
Well, in all likelyhood I expect the ratings will go back down. What's probably happening is a blip -- those who downloaded the first part of the season now want to see the latest episode, which presumably wouldn't be available on iTunes before it aired. Once more shows are available for legal download online, I expect the ratings will settle back down, perhaps to below previous levels as people get accustomed to the concept of exclusively viewing downloaded content. Once this happens, I'm sure we'll hear executives crying foul and demanding iTunes raise its price, or some other nonsense.