The depth of a joke that EnergyStar is was put in stark relief when the GAO (through a fake company set up for this very purpose) managed to get an EnergyStar label for a gasoline-powered alarm clock.
so obviously, we need a strong central authority to monitor and control the economy to keep it healthy.
Caaaaaareful there. While I understand the point you are trying to make, the words "strong central control" and "economy" is basically the approach of Soviet-type Communism, which is as bad than a purely capitalistic one.
The fact is that it has been shown time and time again that the answer to the "Libertarian myth" or "Socialism myth" is not to run to the other extreme, but to sit somewhere in the middle. Reasonable regulation, yes. Central control of the economy, absolutely not. The hard part is to find the definition of "reasonable regulation" as it means something different to everyone.
pending adj (postpositive) 1. not yet decided, confirmed, or finished
While it is true that the patent system is completely broken, you really should cut the USPTO some slack here. The patent was only applied for on Thursday. It hasn't even been looked at yet!
Why was the Google StreetView system collecting this data to begin with?
To build a database of open wifi hotspots for Wi-Fi Geolocation to add location-based services to Android, much like how the iPhone and iPod Touch use Skyhook to do the exact same thing.
As of yet, the internet hasn't failed. How about we wait until it does before we start getting all paranoid
Point well taken, even if it conflicts with the rest of your post. You say that you want to wait here.. but then propose a bunch of changes, most of which would require new laws. You can't have it both ways.
Who says it has to be one centralized one?
You did: Have A regulated (even non-profit) independent company (can't be owned by an ISP) run and maintain the network. I can understand if that is not what you meant, but it is what you implied.
Look at the SEC and what good their regulation did. They totally ignored Bernie Madoff (under Bush) and Enron (under Clinton), giving regular folks a false sense of security in the market. If there was no SEC, people wouldn't have a default assumption that the market isn't rigged and they would invest more carefully.
I really don't like comments like this as they are completely unproductive. Why, Fred over there got robbed for all the good the laws and cops did! Guess we shouldn't have any laws or cops at all, giving the folks a false sense of security that they can leave their homes without being armed to the teeth.
*sigh* The idea is not to abolish something when it fails, the idea is to see where something failed and improve upon it.
The answer isn't to regulate the internet, it's to get rid of the whole monopoly provider system. Have a regulated (even non-profit) independent company (can't be owned by an ISP) run and maintain the network, deriving its revenue from the ISPs wishing to use it.
This fails in a number of ways. First of all, you are just replacing a bunch of local monopolies with one big centralized one. With your suggestion of just regulating THEM, you end up really regulating the Internet. Welcome back to square one. Worse yet, your "centralized non-profit" would likely be a Government Sponsored Enterprise. As you say about the Health Department, GSEs don't have a great track record of providing great service, because they have little motivation to do so.
Lastly, the end-point "provider" companies in your scheme would struggle to find some way to differentiate their product from others. Price can only go so far, so then you'll get into network segmentation, walled gardens, "premium content", etc.... Net Neutrality effectively done for.
So, with your scheme you get the worst of both worlds -- you get a huge centralized (and probably government run) monopoly AND no net neutrality to boot.
More like hours. Right after they were bought, the software was EOL'ed. The "Pro" version was pulled immediately and users were given a week to download the Free version.
Whatever Google plans to do with it, they don't want it available in its current form. This leads me to believe they want to kill it on Windows to use on ChromeOS.
No.. you aren't imagining things. It WAS on Slashdot for about 10 minutes on Monday, specifically talking about the fact that immediately after Google bought them, the software was no longer available for sale and you could only download the free version until... well.. today.
Then it suddenly disappeared, only to reappear just before the BumpTop download cutoff.
There are several ways to make online banking completely secure.
Sorry, but you just lost all credibility right here. Anyone who claims that anything can be "completely secure" is either a) trying to sell something or b) clueless. You can say something is "more secure" or that something provides better security, but nothing, ever, will be "completely secure".
How this trick works is I have someone - camera at the ready pointing at your laptop, filming... and then I email you a NSFW image. When your email client previews the image, ZOMG you are looking at porn. Guilty!
After seeing the video, I have to admit I was wondering why there was a camera zoomed in SOOOoooo close onto a senator's laptop computer.
I mean, it's not like this was a senator caught playing solitaire in a wider shot. Also, there was supposedly something more interesting going on, like a speech about an abortion bill. Why would a cameraman think to himself, "I know! Let's ignore the speech and zoom in on $randomSenator's laptop screen! That's interesting!" unless he knew something interesting was about to happen....
This guy is not paying attention, yet will be voting on bills that will affect our entire country.
Speaking of people not paying attention.....I realize that you might not have read the article, but you could have at least read the TITLE, which said he's a state senator -- meaning that he votes don't affect the entire country -- just Florida.
Out of interest, what are the great tech buyouts that have worked int he last 15 years? What are the top 5 synergy-tastic deals and where are they now?
I can think of quite a few actually.
Of the top of my head, Google's purchase of YouTube ended up working out very well. I honestly think that without Google's support, YouTube would have died by now (or at least be a few orders of magnitude smaller entity).
Another one I can think of is IBM's purchase of OTI, which led to VisualAge then to Eclipse, which is now used as the platform for just about every IBM software product, from Lotus Notes to WebSphere.
No one said that satire is illegal. What was said is that using someone else's copyrighted material without permission as part of the satire is not protected by fair use. Big, BIG difference.
- Using clips of a movie to make fun of that movie = parody = fair use - Using clips of a movie to make fun of something else entirely = satire = not fair use
You can agree or disagree with the above, but that's where the courts currently stand on the issue.
(As an aside, Twain, et al, didn't use other people's copyrighted works in their satires)
I still use Emacs proudly. I find big bloaty IDEs like Eclipse get in the way
Really, the only thing you are saying here is that you like YOUR big, bloaty thing over someone else's big, bloaty thing. There's really nothing insightful about that at all.
You have a set of tools you are comfortable with, and others have theirs. Each have their merits and each have their drawbacks. What is new is not necessarily an improvement and what is old is not necessarily the best. To discard either out of hand on their "whiz-bangedness" or "tried-and-truedness" rather than on its merits is the mark of a fool.
The kind of thing that's never been tested in court
Except it has been tested in court. Many times.
Step-Saver Data Systems, Inc. v. Wyse Technology - EULA Invalid Vault Corp. v. Quaid Software Ltd. - EULA Invalid ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg - EULA valid Microsoft v. Harmony Computers - EULA valid Novell v. Network Trade Center - EULA valid
Sure, you'll get a few phone calls - that's what call display is for. And with the new Do Not Call list, such calls net the caller an $11,000 fine. Haven't gotten one since I put my number on the list, so even if they harvest the phone number, they can't use it.
So wait, guys trying to get illegitimate access to my machines and/or steal my identity and calling through "unavailable" VoIP lines from Russia and Nigeria are going to respect the US's Do Not Call list? Get real.
Also, even though my contact information is unavailable TO YOU, it is not unavailable. If there is an issue, my registrar does have my full and complete information (and they are required by ICANN to confirm it is correct periodically, which they do). Perhaps not all registrars follow the ICANN rules, but that's ICANN's problem, not mine. Getting rid of private domains won't solve that problem at all. If a registrar is sloppy enough to not keep the full information on file, I'm pretty sure they are sloppy enough to put fake information in WHOIS too, so what's the point? It solves nothing and harms only the legitimate domain owners.
For the record, I didn't complain. I solved the problem by removing my WHOIS information from a public database. There's no reason for it to be out there. If there's a legitimate issue with my domain, my registrar is required by ICANN to contact me on their behalf. If there is not a legitimate issue with my domain, people don't need to know my information at all.
Getting rid of "private" domains won't do a damn thing except INCREASE the amount of spam that domain holders get. Spammers don't hide behind private domains, they hide behind huge botnets!
I used to not hide my whois information. In fact, I was proud to display my contact information in my whois entry when owning my own domain was a novel thing. Then the spam started on the contact accounts. Annoying, but I could handle it. Soon after, I started getting phone calls from people who barely spoke English claiming to be from my "hosting company" or from NetSol and they need access to my host right away or there was a "billing problem" and they need my credit card information to resolve it.
I set my domain information private right after that and never looked back.
No thank you. I use private domains to HIDE from spammers and scammers.
Re:Apple has made Microsoft look "open".
on
The Apple Two
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
You people are the scum of the earth, and enemies of freedom.
Oh the irony! So, let me get this straight: if we don't buy things the way _you_ want us to, _we_ are enemies of freedom?
Does anyone know of a place this is not the case where intelligent adults can converse about topics without people too lazy to read swamping any useful comments?
You must be new here. Welcome to the Internet! Enjoy your stay.
Slashdot Mirror
The depth of a joke that EnergyStar is was put in stark relief when the GAO (through a fake company set up for this very purpose) managed to get an EnergyStar label for a gasoline-powered alarm clock.
Plus please remove the gentiles of the employees of BP
While I can understand your frustration, I'm not sure how reducing BP to nothing but Jews and Israelis will help.
Really? I got a sponsored link right off the bat on "oil spill"
1. Sponsored link
BP
www.BP.com/OilSpillNews Info about the Gulf of Mexico Spill Learn More about How BP is Helping.
so obviously, we need a strong central authority to monitor and control the economy to keep it healthy.
Caaaaaareful there. While I understand the point you are trying to make, the words "strong central control" and "economy" is basically the approach of Soviet-type Communism, which is as bad than a purely capitalistic one.
The fact is that it has been shown time and time again that the answer to the "Libertarian myth" or "Socialism myth" is not to run to the other extreme, but to sit somewhere in the middle. Reasonable regulation, yes. Central control of the economy, absolutely not. The hard part is to find the definition of "reasonable regulation" as it means something different to everyone.
Published Thursday. Filed November 14, 2008. But still probably not examined.
Good catch... Published, not applied for.
pending
adj (postpositive)
1. not yet decided, confirmed, or finished
While it is true that the patent system is completely broken, you really should cut the USPTO some slack here. The patent was only applied for on Thursday. It hasn't even been looked at yet!
Why was the Google StreetView system collecting this data to begin with?
To build a database of open wifi hotspots for Wi-Fi Geolocation to add location-based services to Android, much like how the iPhone and iPod Touch use Skyhook to do the exact same thing.
Glad I could help.
WOOSH!!!
As of yet, the internet hasn't failed. How about we wait until it does before we start getting all paranoid
Point well taken, even if it conflicts with the rest of your post. You say that you want to wait here.. but then propose a bunch of changes, most of which would require new laws. You can't have it both ways.
Who says it has to be one centralized one?
You did: Have A regulated (even non-profit) independent company (can't be owned by an ISP) run and maintain the network. I can understand if that is not what you meant, but it is what you implied.
Look at the SEC and what good their regulation did. They totally ignored Bernie Madoff (under Bush) and Enron (under Clinton), giving regular folks a false sense of security in the market. If there was no SEC, people wouldn't have a default assumption that the market isn't rigged and they would invest more carefully.
I really don't like comments like this as they are completely unproductive. Why, Fred over there got robbed for all the good the laws and cops did! Guess we shouldn't have any laws or cops at all, giving the folks a false sense of security that they can leave their homes without being armed to the teeth.
*sigh* The idea is not to abolish something when it fails, the idea is to see where something failed and improve upon it.
The answer isn't to regulate the internet, it's to get rid of the whole monopoly provider system. Have a regulated (even non-profit) independent company (can't be owned by an ISP) run and maintain the network, deriving its revenue from the ISPs wishing to use it.
This fails in a number of ways. First of all, you are just replacing a bunch of local monopolies with one big centralized one. With your suggestion of just regulating THEM, you end up really regulating the Internet. Welcome back to square one. Worse yet, your "centralized non-profit" would likely be a Government Sponsored Enterprise. As you say about the Health Department, GSEs don't have a great track record of providing great service, because they have little motivation to do so.
Lastly, the end-point "provider" companies in your scheme would struggle to find some way to differentiate their product from others. Price can only go so far, so then you'll get into network segmentation, walled gardens, "premium content", etc.... Net Neutrality effectively done for.
So, with your scheme you get the worst of both worlds -- you get a huge centralized (and probably government run) monopoly AND no net neutrality to boot.
It'll languish for a few years
More like hours. Right after they were bought, the software was EOL'ed. The "Pro" version was pulled immediately and users were given a week to download the Free version.
Whatever Google plans to do with it, they don't want it available in its current form. This leads me to believe they want to kill it on Windows to use on ChromeOS.
No.. you aren't imagining things. It WAS on Slashdot for about 10 minutes on Monday, specifically talking about the fact that immediately after Google bought them, the software was no longer available for sale and you could only download the free version until... well.. today.
Then it suddenly disappeared, only to reappear just before the BumpTop download cutoff.
There are several ways to make online banking completely secure.
Sorry, but you just lost all credibility right here. Anyone who claims that anything can be "completely secure" is either a) trying to sell something or b) clueless. You can say something is "more secure" or that something provides better security, but nothing, ever, will be "completely secure".
How this trick works is I have someone - camera at the ready pointing at your laptop, filming... and then I email you a NSFW image. When your email client previews the image, ZOMG you are looking at porn. Guilty!
After seeing the video, I have to admit I was wondering why there was a camera zoomed in SOOOoooo close onto a senator's laptop computer.
I mean, it's not like this was a senator caught playing solitaire in a wider shot. Also, there was supposedly something more interesting going on, like a speech about an abortion bill. Why would a cameraman think to himself, "I know! Let's ignore the speech and zoom in on $randomSenator's laptop screen! That's interesting!" unless he knew something interesting was about to happen....
This guy is not paying attention, yet will be voting on bills that will affect our entire country.
Speaking of people not paying attention.....I realize that you might not have read the article, but you could have at least read the TITLE, which said he's a state senator -- meaning that he votes don't affect the entire country -- just Florida.
Out of interest, what are the great tech buyouts that have worked int he last 15 years? What are the top 5 synergy-tastic deals and where are they now?
I can think of quite a few actually.
Of the top of my head, Google's purchase of YouTube ended up working out very well. I honestly think that without Google's support, YouTube would have died by now (or at least be a few orders of magnitude smaller entity).
Another one I can think of is IBM's purchase of OTI, which led to VisualAge then to Eclipse, which is now used as the platform for just about every IBM software product, from Lotus Notes to WebSphere.
I'm not IT.
TAG! Now you are.
No one said that satire is illegal. What was said is that using someone else's copyrighted material without permission as part of the satire is not protected by fair use. Big, BIG difference.
- Using clips of a movie to make fun of that movie = parody = fair use
- Using clips of a movie to make fun of something else entirely = satire = not fair use
You can agree or disagree with the above, but that's where the courts currently stand on the issue.
(As an aside, Twain, et al, didn't use other people's copyrighted works in their satires)
I still use Emacs proudly. I find big bloaty IDEs like Eclipse get in the way
Really, the only thing you are saying here is that you like YOUR big, bloaty thing over someone else's big, bloaty thing. There's really nothing insightful about that at all.
You have a set of tools you are comfortable with, and others have theirs. Each have their merits and each have their drawbacks. What is new is not necessarily an improvement and what is old is not necessarily the best. To discard either out of hand on their "whiz-bangedness" or "tried-and-truedness" rather than on its merits is the mark of a fool.
The kind of thing that's never been tested in court
Except it has been tested in court. Many times.
Step-Saver Data Systems, Inc. v. Wyse Technology - EULA Invalid
Vault Corp. v. Quaid Software Ltd. - EULA Invalid
ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg - EULA valid
Microsoft v. Harmony Computers - EULA valid
Novell v. Network Trade Center - EULA valid
I have no meetings at all. We're currently in a huge crunch right now
For some reason, I just can't help but feel that these two things might actually be related.
Sure, you'll get a few phone calls - that's what call display is for. And with the new Do Not Call list, such calls net the caller an $11,000 fine. Haven't gotten one since I put my number on the list, so even if they harvest the phone number, they can't use it.
So wait, guys trying to get illegitimate access to my machines and/or steal my identity and calling through "unavailable" VoIP lines from Russia and Nigeria are going to respect the US's Do Not Call list? Get real.
Also, even though my contact information is unavailable TO YOU, it is not unavailable. If there is an issue, my registrar does have my full and complete information (and they are required by ICANN to confirm it is correct periodically, which they do). Perhaps not all registrars follow the ICANN rules, but that's ICANN's problem, not mine. Getting rid of private domains won't solve that problem at all. If a registrar is sloppy enough to not keep the full information on file, I'm pretty sure they are sloppy enough to put fake information in WHOIS too, so what's the point? It solves nothing and harms only the legitimate domain owners.
For the record, I didn't complain. I solved the problem by removing my WHOIS information from a public database. There's no reason for it to be out there. If there's a legitimate issue with my domain, my registrar is required by ICANN to contact me on their behalf. If there is not a legitimate issue with my domain, people don't need to know my information at all.
Getting rid of "private" domains won't do a damn thing except INCREASE the amount of spam that domain holders get. Spammers don't hide behind private domains, they hide behind huge botnets!
I used to not hide my whois information. In fact, I was proud to display my contact information in my whois entry when owning my own domain was a novel thing. Then the spam started on the contact accounts. Annoying, but I could handle it. Soon after, I started getting phone calls from people who barely spoke English claiming to be from my "hosting company" or from NetSol and they need access to my host right away or there was a "billing problem" and they need my credit card information to resolve it.
I set my domain information private right after that and never looked back.
No thank you. I use private domains to HIDE from spammers and scammers.
You people are the scum of the earth, and enemies of freedom.
Oh the irony! So, let me get this straight: if we don't buy things the way _you_ want us to, _we_ are enemies of freedom?
Does anyone know of a place this is not the case where intelligent adults can converse about topics without people too lazy to read swamping any useful comments?
You must be new here. Welcome to the Internet! Enjoy your stay.