I can imagine the cyber war of RIAA scripts illegally spamming the traffic in inernational scale, and ISPs around the world hunting those bad guys. Welcome to the future?
Of course it would be illegally -- the current DDOS attacks on DALnet are illegal too. Your point is? <wry grin>
Speakking about DDOS and IRC, either IRC will adapt and stand DDOS easily or new generation (decetralized one) will be based on something else. Perhaps Jabber? Or Gnutella?
My guess is that a beefed up version of IRC that uses strong authentication and cryptographic signatures both for IRC servers and for individual users will be needed. But that isn't news -- the exact same things are needed for SMTP, to stop spam; and NNTP, to stop spam and newsgroup flooding. I wouldn't be surprised if most web sites that do anything but post static content have to go to HTTPS, as well.
Unfortunately, a fix to human perversity is beyond the purview of geekdom.:/ The best we can do is build tools that aren't easily abused. Looks like we need to get to work and do it.
They can do it in USA, but fortunately there are many enough IRC servers and users outside of FBI jurisdiction. I seriously doubt they can shut IRC down internationally.
Wanna bet? Look at this thread on DALnet, an IRC network that is almost dead because of DDOS attacks. Script kiddies can break anything. <sigh>
I figure that, if script kiddies can do it, the RIAA probably can learn how.:/
I'd like to see a volunteer group turn this historical treasure trove into digital sound files and put them on DVD or optical media for safekeeping. Many of the recordings are on magnetic tape or other media that deteriorate over time, sometimes quickly.
The expensive part would be getting access to the necessary equipment to play the original recordings. Lots of geeks have DVD burners.
You can't, unless you first do business with the guy. The feedback system is linked to specific transactions -- you "earn" one feedback comment per transaction with a buyer or seller.
Sorry about that. I have an EBAY ID and can lookup a seller's email address and view his rating and feedback. I wanted to make an assessment of his behavior and send him a personal email with my thoughts on his lawsuit.:)
<chuckle> Yes, you can do that. You can definitely do that. (And that's a superb idea -- I believe I will do the same.)
But I think it's important to note that this isn't the same as leaving feedback on eBay, which is a public comment tied to a specific transaction between a particular buyer and a particular seller.
This guy obviously wants attention, so I thought I would give him some. He'd have to come to Michigan to sue me. It's really cold in Michigan this winter and I doubt any Californian would want to leave Sunny CA! I don't even know what the sun looks like anymore.
Well, this Californian certainly isn't anxious to fly to Michigan this time of year. It was nearly 70 and sunny outside today. <BIG wicked grin>
I wonder if the guy will respond to you, or what he'll say?
" The lawsuit also demands that buyers and sellers, who use aliases in eBay transactions, register their screen names with the state of California as fictitious business names, and that eBay be forced to collect state sales tax."
This seems to have little to do with his complaint; but making everyone register with the state Secretary of State would be a big deal! So your name would be Your Name, d.b.a (doing buisines as...) screename.
No kidding that is a BIG deal, and no kidding it has little or nothing to do with the lawyer's complaint. IMHO the lawyer included this proviso to pressure eBay to settle the complaint before a court could consider this demand -- the very idea probably scares eBay's execs into the year 3000.
eBay doesn't censor user feedback, so wouldn't they be considered "common carrier" and therefore immune from liability for libel?
No, because it takes specific action by the government to make a company or industry a "common carrier." I believe eBay's policies are appropriate for a common carrier, but they are not currently a common carrier.
Does anyone know this loser's EBAY ID or email address? I would like to give this guy some direct negative feedback.
You can't, unless you first do business with the guy. The feedback system is linked to specific transactions -- you "earn" one feedback comment per transaction with a buyer or seller.
Feedback is also limited to 80 characters (as I recall), and can't include URLs to more info. That means that, if you deal with a fraudulent seller or buyer and set up a web site with all the documentation, you can't leave the URL for people in Feedback.:/
The feedback system isn't a bad idea, and I haven't had any major problems as an eBay buyer. However, after doing a bunch of business on eBay last year and becoming familar with the place, I've grown MUCH more cautious. Feedback is a LONG way from foolproof, and the other mechanisms for troubleshooting are not much help if the seller is a crook rather than just slow and inexperienced.
"No one ever got fired for selecting Oracle, so we asked ourselves, Do we take that option?" he said.
Not true! I know someone who got fired for choosing oracle, then being unable to properly implement it.
Someone who worked for the State of California, perhaps? There were a bunch of people who lost their jobs over that debacle....See here for more info.<wry grin>
First, downloading from Kazaa isn't theft, piracy or copyright infringement if you're using it to find tracks to an artist that someone recommended to you. If you download an entire album or ten, YES, that's wrong, but I regularly track down (with varying success) artists I've heard about to try to find 3-4 songs to see if I like them. If I like them, I go buy the CD, if I don't I delete the tracks.
That's how it should work, if we were living in a sane society. I've downloaded music from the web sites of some of my favorite singers and bands, too.
But those bands post soundtracks on their web sites specifically for people to "try before they buy."
It would make sense for bands or distributors to make music available for sampling online. But most of them don't, as far as I know. And I've never been comfortable helping myself, even though I am a customer and would buy something I liked.
As for no alternative, check out CDBaby [cdbaby.com] when you have a moment. 30,000 artists, artists get everything except $4 an album, and more variety than you can shake your booty at. No contracts, no abusive clauses, and the artists set their prices, not some record labels.
I've checked out a number of alternative sites; a lot of my favorite music isn't something you'd find at CDNOW.:) I'll definitely take a look here -- thanks for the pointer!
Before all these spam companies just move off-shore to avoid litigation?
Good point, but there's also a good answer. The answer is that all spammers are not alike.
Some spammers undoubtedly will move offshore, if they haven't already. Spammers of illegal or otherwise questionable products -- stuff like travel scams, herbal "Viagra", Make*Money*Fast pyramid schemes, 419 Advance Fee Frauds, stock manipulation stuff, and the like -- are the 21st century equivalents of the 20th century boiler room telemarketers. The laws never could do much about them.
But many spammers have established businesses and customers in this country. Businesses like Verisign/Network Solutions, Encyclopedia Britannica, Citibank, Barnes & Noble, and Real Networks (makers of the RealPlayer) have all spammed repeatedly. Some of these have done their own spamming; others have paid "legitimate" marketing companies to spam on their behalf. In either case, they are legally responsible, at least in the United States, because in the U.S. companies are responsible for what their agents do. And, just like laws against abusive telemarketing practices have stopped legitimate companies from doing abusive stuff, laws against spamming would stop legitimate companies.
The moral is that laws won't stop an outright crook, or a crooked company that appears one day and disappears the next. However, they DEFINITELY affect the behavior of companies that have established products, established places of business, an established customer base, and a reputation to loose.
So I'm all for using the laws against spammers. Just don't abandon blacklists, filtering, and other tools.:)
"from the imminent-death-predictions-getting-boring dept"
Then why post it?
To gloat? <wry grin>
The RIAA has made enemies here, and not many friends anywhere. To quote the inimitable Molly Ivins, "My mother may have raised a mean child, but she didn't raise no hypocrites." I'm not an expert, but from where I sit, it looks like the recording industry has jacked up prices unconscionably, reduced the range and variety of music available to the rest of us, and driven independent distributors out of business. I think the recording industry as a whole has become a bunch of parasites, and (worse) parasites that are killing the host.
The wierdest part of this is that I've never downloaded a single illegal song, never did Napster, never installed any version of Kazaa, don't even copy my own CDs. I don't think it's right to steal -- even from thieves. I certainly don't think it's right to steal from artists who create the work I love to listen to.
So I listen mostly to my old CDs these days. I don't think I've bought a dozen CDs in the last three years, and most of those have been from small, independent artists who produce their own stuff.
It is frustrating to have no alternative, though, to being ripped off myself, doing without, or starving out the artists and other good guys along with the parasites. I just picked the least objectionable of those alternatives.:/
So I admit it's nice to hear that the parasites are in trouble.:>
I daresay that my ISP will tell them the same, and if it does not, I will move my business to one that does. I have never downloaded pirated music or video (don't like most of the popular stuff anyway), and do not intend to pay for those who do.
If that despicable thieving slimeball Rosen wants fight in court and on the Internet, he's certainly acting in a way that guarantees he will get it.
It isn't illegal anywhere in the United States, yet. But it also isn't "just" annoying. It's unethical, sleazy, and absolutely typical of Real Networks, one of the pioneers in spamming and other forms of abusive and intrusive marketing.
I don't use their product. If I did, it would be a cold day on the planet Mercury before I'd give them a working email address.
I have to side with Microsoft on this one. I don't think the government should have the power to say you must include X in your product.
As I understand it, the issue in this case is that Microsoft signed a contract with Sun some years ago requiring that it implement Java according to Sun specificiations. If this is true (and I can't determine from the CNET story whether it is or not -- it has very few specifics), then the feds are simply ordering Microsoft to live up to the terms of the contract.
I definitely want courts to have the power to make a company (of any size) deliver on the contracts it signs. Otherwise contracts can't be enforced.
...maybe it's the $70+ fine per spam that does it (or the legal threat of that at least), but I've never recieved a single SPAM in Norway.
I assume you mean on SMS. If you mean in email too, I'm moving to Norway, no matter how cold it is this time of year!;P
SMS: intrusive and an invitation to spammers
on
SMS Messaging Unreliable
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
What puzzles me is that anyone cares whether SMS messages arrive or not. Most of us have voice mail on our phones? Why does anyone want to turn their cell phone into the electronic equivalent of a doggy leash?
It's bad enough when you have to carry a pager for work; voluntarily subjecting yourself to that kind of intrusion strikes me as nuts.
In addition, dishonest marketers and at least some cell service providers are using SMS to send unwanted bulk marketing messages -- that is, they are spamming users.:/
AT&T, my cell phone service provider, is apparently one of those. After I read complaints from a number of AT&T users who had been SMS-spammed and who said that AT&T refused to stop, I demanded that AT&T disable all "services" on my cell phone account that I had not specifically authorized, including SMS. The representative tried to claim that they couldn't do that, but I insisted and he eventually gave in.
Don't assume that each new "feature" offered by your cell phone provider (or your ISP) is something you want.
Before anyone mods up a stupid comment - would you be up-in-arms is Microsoft's next server platform was called Minux? Thanks. Next.
Not so fast. I'd be absolutely delighted. If Microsoft did that, it would indicate that they'd accepted that Linux was a major factor in the OS world and was not going away. Why else would they want to associate their company and product with it?
Of course, the same can be said about Lindows -- obviously there's something about Windows (such as name recognition) that they like and want to leverage.
You shouldn't answer questions for other people.;>
Let's face it: the only attraction of UCE for spammers is its cost: sending the same message to thousands, or even millions, of people costs them close to nothing.
Which is why spammers will never adopt a solution such as this one: it would reduce the pool of potential clients (read: complete idiots) willing to receive UCE and it would raise their costs in an unacceptable way.
So? Who cares whether spammers adopt it or not? That's the whole point -- the individual who adopts this wants spammers to go away in disgust! (You didn't really think this was yet another way to make money fast, did you?);>
Since the system described in Fahlman's article allows people to whitelist the email address of anyone that they want to hear from, that takes care of family, friends, mailing lists, etc. The remaining issue is with email a person wants that comes from an unexpected source.
For example, a businessman with an ecommerce web site can't safely adopt Fahlman's system on the web site's contact addresses. I also doubt that an ISP could adopt it for a role account, such as abuse@, without offending people and courting bad publicity.
I've been maintaining a spam filter for a good many years now (The SpamBouncer), but all that filters do is allow users to manage the spam onslaught a bit better. They don't solve the problem of spam. Neither will this, but it could provide another tool to manage it.
I'd be willing to try it with my private email address, at any rate. So anyone who builds this system -- let me know about it. You can find my email address on the SpamBouncer web page or my personal home page. (But a word to the wise -- that is NOT a safe address to spam.);>
The problem is collecting that money. There is no way that the spammers - who forge their headers and identity - will pay up.
Actually, if they don't pay up first, using a guaranteed method of payment, their spam never gets to you at all. You should read the actual proposal before commenting.:)
It will indeed. I am a technical writer with well over ten years experience in the field. Among technical writers, FrameMaker is used more than all other tools combined for producing printed documentation. It predominates because it is by far the best tool for that purpose. Microsoft Word was not designed to typeset books, and is not suitable for the purpose. Anyone who has tried to use it for that purpose can testify to that. <wry grin>
In addition, FrameMaker has some truly wonderful electronic publishing capabilities. I've used it for years to produce fully hyperlinked PDF versions of printed manuals and online help for web-based applications. I have even set up single source documentation systems using it -- systems that allowed me to produce printed documents and online help from the same source files.
Without FrameMaker or Acrobat, I'd have a much harder time doing my job.
In my opinion (along with the rest of you), the DCMA is a wonderful example of outright legislative malpractice. The congressmen that wrote it and sponsored it probably deserve to be tossed out on their asses when they come up for re-election. This particular case is an embarrassment and black eye to the United States. Adobe should have known better than to get within a light year of the thing, much less actively work to get anyone prosecuted under it.:/
But none of that has anything to do with the quality of Adobe's products.
The government is the absolute antithesis of decentralization. Look at the heirarchy - if there's anything that public servants and the government structure as a whole is known for, it's a pecking order. Government doesn't understand decentralization....
The Internet was developed under the watchful guidance, and using the money, of none other than Uncle Sam -- the U.S. government. Way back in the early days of the ARPAnet, it was deliberately made decentralized, and designed to treat any blockage to the free flow of information as damage, to survive a nuclear attack.
Perhaps the government won't be willing to pay the bills to keep today's Internet from becoming overly centralized, but it knows how.
Point of fact this is unbelievably dumb and is right up there with converting Russian to German for an English speaker to read.
Very well put!
I've had deaf friends, one of whom attended Gallaudet University. (Famous liberal arts college for the deaf.) In addition, I lost most of my hearing for some years as a child -- fortunately, I got it back after surgery. I've thought about deafness, and dealt with it.
Lip-reading works best for people who were hearing at one point and lost some or all of their hearing. I went deaf after I learned to talk, and went deaf slowly, which means I relied heavily upon it. People who have always been deaf often find lip-reading very difficult, or even impossible. When you have no concept of hearing or sound, trying to figure out what meaning is associated with specific lip movements is tough.
This is true of learning to read, as well. A person who was already speaking, or could read, before going deaf has no real problem with reading. If you can't hear and never have heard, though, the concept of an alphabet and "sounding it out" makes no sense. A congenitally deaf person who wants to learn to read must learn each word as a whole, much as a Chinese or Japanese person who learns to read his/her language must learn each character separately.
Since a congenitally deaf person faces a humongous task regardless of whether he/she is learning to read lips, or read and write, just which one do you think he/she would rather have to learn? In most cases, learning to read and write is going to be a lot more useful.
From where I sit, speech to text would work better for most deaf people, congenitally deaf or not.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course it would be illegally -- the current DDOS attacks on DALnet are illegal too. Your point is? <wry grin>
My guess is that a beefed up version of IRC that uses strong authentication and cryptographic signatures both for IRC servers and for individual users will be needed. But that isn't news -- the exact same things are needed for SMTP, to stop spam; and NNTP, to stop spam and newsgroup flooding. I wouldn't be surprised if most web sites that do anything but post static content have to go to HTTPS, as well.
Unfortunately, a fix to human perversity is beyond the purview of geekdom. :/ The best we can do is build tools that aren't easily abused. Looks like we need to get to work and do it.
Wanna bet? Look at this thread on DALnet, an IRC network that is almost dead because of DDOS attacks. Script kiddies can break anything. <sigh>
I figure that, if script kiddies can do it, the RIAA probably can learn how. :/
I'd like to see a volunteer group turn this historical treasure trove into digital sound files and put them on DVD or optical media for safekeeping. Many of the recordings are on magnetic tape or other media that deteriorate over time, sometimes quickly.
The expensive part would be getting access to the necessary equipment to play the original recordings. Lots of geeks have DVD burners.
<chuckle> Yes, you can do that. You can definitely do that. (And that's a superb idea -- I believe I will do the same.)
But I think it's important to note that this isn't the same as leaving feedback on eBay, which is a public comment tied to a specific transaction between a particular buyer and a particular seller.
Well, this Californian certainly isn't anxious to fly to Michigan this time of year. It was nearly 70 and sunny outside today. <BIG wicked grin>
I wonder if the guy will respond to you, or what he'll say?
No kidding that is a BIG deal, and no kidding it has little or nothing to do with the lawyer's complaint. IMHO the lawyer included this proviso to pressure eBay to settle the complaint before a court could consider this demand -- the very idea probably scares eBay's execs into the year 3000.
No, because it takes specific action by the government to make a company or industry a "common carrier." I believe eBay's policies are appropriate for a common carrier, but they are not currently a common carrier.
IANAL, of course....
You can't, unless you first do business with the guy. The feedback system is linked to specific transactions -- you "earn" one feedback comment per transaction with a buyer or seller.
Feedback is also limited to 80 characters (as I recall), and can't include URLs to more info. That means that, if you deal with a fraudulent seller or buyer and set up a web site with all the documentation, you can't leave the URL for people in Feedback. :/
The feedback system isn't a bad idea, and I haven't had any major problems as an eBay buyer. However, after doing a bunch of business on eBay last year and becoming familar with the place, I've grown MUCH more cautious. Feedback is a LONG way from foolproof, and the other mechanisms for troubleshooting are not much help if the seller is a crook rather than just slow and inexperienced.
Someone who worked for the State of California, perhaps? There were a bunch of people who lost their jobs over that debacle.... See here for more info.<wry grin>
That's how it should work, if we were living in a sane society. I've downloaded music from the web sites of some of my favorite singers and bands, too.
But those bands post soundtracks on their web sites specifically for people to "try before they buy."
It would make sense for bands or distributors to make music available for sampling online. But most of them don't, as far as I know. And I've never been comfortable helping myself, even though I am a customer and would buy something I liked.
I've checked out a number of alternative sites; a lot of my favorite music isn't something you'd find at CDNOW. :) I'll definitely take a look here -- thanks for the pointer!
Good point, but there's also a good answer. The answer is that all spammers are not alike.
Some spammers undoubtedly will move offshore, if they haven't already. Spammers of illegal or otherwise questionable products -- stuff like travel scams, herbal "Viagra", Make*Money*Fast pyramid schemes, 419 Advance Fee Frauds, stock manipulation stuff, and the like -- are the 21st century equivalents of the 20th century boiler room telemarketers. The laws never could do much about them.
But many spammers have established businesses and customers in this country. Businesses like Verisign/Network Solutions, Encyclopedia Britannica, Citibank, Barnes & Noble, and Real Networks (makers of the RealPlayer) have all spammed repeatedly. Some of these have done their own spamming; others have paid "legitimate" marketing companies to spam on their behalf. In either case, they are legally responsible, at least in the United States, because in the U.S. companies are responsible for what their agents do. And, just like laws against abusive telemarketing practices have stopped legitimate companies from doing abusive stuff, laws against spamming would stop legitimate companies.
The moral is that laws won't stop an outright crook, or a crooked company that appears one day and disappears the next. However, they DEFINITELY affect the behavior of companies that have established products, established places of business, an established customer base, and a reputation to loose.
So I'm all for using the laws against spammers. Just don't abandon blacklists, filtering, and other tools. :)
To gloat? <wry grin>
The RIAA has made enemies here, and not many friends anywhere. To quote the inimitable Molly Ivins, "My mother may have raised a mean child, but she didn't raise no hypocrites." I'm not an expert, but from where I sit, it looks like the recording industry has jacked up prices unconscionably, reduced the range and variety of music available to the rest of us, and driven independent distributors out of business. I think the recording industry as a whole has become a bunch of parasites, and (worse) parasites that are killing the host.
The wierdest part of this is that I've never downloaded a single illegal song, never did Napster, never installed any version of Kazaa, don't even copy my own CDs. I don't think it's right to steal -- even from thieves. I certainly don't think it's right to steal from artists who create the work I love to listen to.
So I listen mostly to my old CDs these days. I don't think I've bought a dozen CDs in the last three years, and most of those have been from small, independent artists who produce their own stuff.
It is frustrating to have no alternative, though, to being ripped off myself, doing without, or starving out the artists and other good guys along with the parasites. I just picked the least objectionable of those alternatives. :/
So I admit it's nice to hear that the parasites are in trouble. :>
I daresay that my ISP will tell them the same, and if it does not, I will move my business to one that does. I have never downloaded pirated music or video (don't like most of the popular stuff anyway), and do not intend to pay for those who do.
If that despicable thieving slimeball Rosen wants fight in court and on the Internet, he's certainly acting in a way that guarantees he will get it.
It isn't illegal anywhere in the United States, yet. But it also isn't "just" annoying. It's unethical, sleazy, and absolutely typical of Real Networks, one of the pioneers in spamming and other forms of abusive and intrusive marketing.
I don't use their product. If I did, it would be a cold day on the planet Mercury before I'd give them a working email address.
As I understand it, the issue in this case is that Microsoft signed a contract with Sun some years ago requiring that it implement Java according to Sun specificiations. If this is true (and I can't determine from the CNET story whether it is or not -- it has very few specifics), then the feds are simply ordering Microsoft to live up to the terms of the contract.
I definitely want courts to have the power to make a company (of any size) deliver on the contracts it signs. Otherwise contracts can't be enforced.
The first. That way, when I'm not on call, I can leave it at home, and my cell phone isn't polluted. :)
I assume you mean on SMS. If you mean in email too, I'm moving to Norway, no matter how cold it is this time of year! ;P
What puzzles me is that anyone cares whether SMS messages arrive or not. Most of us have voice mail on our phones? Why does anyone want to turn their cell phone into the electronic equivalent of a doggy leash?
It's bad enough when you have to carry a pager for work; voluntarily subjecting yourself to that kind of intrusion strikes me as nuts.
In addition, dishonest marketers and at least some cell service providers are using SMS to send unwanted bulk marketing messages -- that is, they are spamming users. :/
AT&T, my cell phone service provider, is apparently one of those. After I read complaints from a number of AT&T users who had been SMS-spammed and who said that AT&T refused to stop, I demanded that AT&T disable all "services" on my cell phone account that I had not specifically authorized, including SMS. The representative tried to claim that they couldn't do that, but I insisted and he eventually gave in.
Don't assume that each new "feature" offered by your cell phone provider (or your ISP) is something you want.
Not so fast. I'd be absolutely delighted. If Microsoft did that, it would indicate that they'd accepted that Linux was a major factor in the OS world and was not going away. Why else would they want to associate their company and product with it?
Of course, the same can be said about Lindows -- obviously there's something about Windows (such as name recognition) that they like and want to leverage.
You shouldn't answer questions for other people. ;>
Yeah, and don't take a job with Intel. <wry grin>
So? Who cares whether spammers adopt it or not? That's the whole point -- the individual who adopts this wants spammers to go away in disgust! (You didn't really think this was yet another way to make money fast, did you?) ;>
Since the system described in Fahlman's article allows people to whitelist the email address of anyone that they want to hear from, that takes care of family, friends, mailing lists, etc. The remaining issue is with email a person wants that comes from an unexpected source.
For example, a businessman with an ecommerce web site can't safely adopt Fahlman's system on the web site's contact addresses. I also doubt that an ISP could adopt it for a role account, such as abuse@, without offending people and courting bad publicity.
I've been maintaining a spam filter for a good many years now ( The SpamBouncer ), but all that filters do is allow users to manage the spam onslaught a bit better. They don't solve the problem of spam. Neither will this, but it could provide another tool to manage it.
I'd be willing to try it with my private email address, at any rate. So anyone who builds this system -- let me know about it. You can find my email address on the SpamBouncer web page or my personal home page. (But a word to the wise -- that is NOT a safe address to spam.) ;>
Actually, if they don't pay up first, using a guaranteed method of payment, their spam never gets to you at all. You should read the actual proposal before commenting. :)
It will indeed. I am a technical writer with well over ten years experience in the field. Among technical writers, FrameMaker is used more than all other tools combined for producing printed documentation. It predominates because it is by far the best tool for that purpose. Microsoft Word was not designed to typeset books, and is not suitable for the purpose. Anyone who has tried to use it for that purpose can testify to that. <wry grin>
In addition, FrameMaker has some truly wonderful electronic publishing capabilities. I've used it for years to produce fully hyperlinked PDF versions of printed manuals and online help for web-based applications. I have even set up single source documentation systems using it -- systems that allowed me to produce printed documents and online help from the same source files.
Without FrameMaker or Acrobat, I'd have a much harder time doing my job.
In my opinion (along with the rest of you), the DCMA is a wonderful example of outright legislative malpractice. The congressmen that wrote it and sponsored it probably deserve to be tossed out on their asses when they come up for re-election. This particular case is an embarrassment and black eye to the United States. Adobe should have known better than to get within a light year of the thing, much less actively work to get anyone prosecuted under it. :/
But none of that has anything to do with the quality of Adobe's products.
Or pipes, anyway....
The Internet was developed under the watchful guidance, and using the money, of none other than Uncle Sam -- the U.S. government. Way back in the early days of the ARPAnet, it was deliberately made decentralized, and designed to treat any blockage to the free flow of information as damage, to survive a nuclear attack.
Perhaps the government won't be willing to pay the bills to keep today's Internet from becoming overly centralized, but it knows how.
Very well put!
I've had deaf friends, one of whom attended Gallaudet University. (Famous liberal arts college for the deaf.) In addition, I lost most of my hearing for some years as a child -- fortunately, I got it back after surgery. I've thought about deafness, and dealt with it.
Lip-reading works best for people who were hearing at one point and lost some or all of their hearing. I went deaf after I learned to talk, and went deaf slowly, which means I relied heavily upon it. People who have always been deaf often find lip-reading very difficult, or even impossible. When you have no concept of hearing or sound, trying to figure out what meaning is associated with specific lip movements is tough.
This is true of learning to read, as well. A person who was already speaking, or could read, before going deaf has no real problem with reading. If you can't hear and never have heard, though, the concept of an alphabet and "sounding it out" makes no sense. A congenitally deaf person who wants to learn to read must learn each word as a whole, much as a Chinese or Japanese person who learns to read his/her language must learn each character separately.
Since a congenitally deaf person faces a humongous task regardless of whether he/she is learning to read lips, or read and write, just which one do you think he/she would rather have to learn? In most cases, learning to read and write is going to be a lot more useful.
From where I sit, speech to text would work better for most deaf people, congenitally deaf or not.