The first is games like World Of Warcraft. In this case, its simple, income tax is applied anytime someone earns real world income from the game (e.g. selling items on ebay). Anything else is unmanageable.
The second situation is games like Second Life where there is a direct way to convert money into real world money. In this case the logical solution is to treat things like L$ in the same way as they treat Euros or Pesos of CA$. If you earn money in a foriegn currency, you pay income tax on it just the same (assuming it was earnt in a way that falls under US income tax). Therefore the same should apply for L$.
The other option (taxing L$ only when it is converted into real world $ wont work because everyone will just keep everything in L$ and only convert into real world $ when they need to, thus minimizing their tax).
As for payment, can you pay your tax in CA$ or Euros or Pesos? If not and there is a law mandating payment in $US, there is no issue. Even if there is no legal requirement to pay in $US, there is still no issue since there are only certain ways to pay your income tax (cash, cheque, whatever) and so you cant directly pay in L$ (because the governemt doesnt accept L$).
Around here there are many movie theaters that are part of major shopping centers. A number of them are built right on top of shops and other things. It would be impossible to jam cellphones in the movie theaters without jamming them in a number of the shops and stuff too.
I think NVIDIA didnt like microsoft that much after microsoft forced them to throw away all those perfectly good chipsets just because some hackers had read out the internal ROM contained therein (and made NVIDIA take the hit for what was probobly a microsoft problem assuming microsoft wrote the code in the hidden ROM)
Unless the US government does what the Australian government did when they replaced the old paper notes with new fancy (and good looking IMO) plastic banknotes and withdraws the old notes from circulation (replacing them all with new notes). Unless they do that, what will happen is that the people who are having trouble distinguishing between notes will continue to have trouble since they will continue to get the old (and hard to recognize) notes from ATMs, banks, shops and wherever else.
The other advantage of replacing all the notes is that you could make them much harder to counterfit and stop the bad guys from copying them.
Of course, it can never happen considering how many foriegn countries use the US dollar either as some kind of state sanctioned currency or (such as is/was the case in russia IIRC) as currency that isnt state sanctioned but is accepted by shops and stuff (in some cases even more so than the state currency) because the local currency isnt accepted by the rest of the world. And because of how many USD banknotes are in circulation worldwide.
Basicly, the RIAA are pissed off at allofmp3.com and the russian system for 2 reasons: 1.The royalties that would be collected (under russian compulsoty licencing) from a sale at allofmp3.com (either to a russian or to someone else) are signficantly lower than the proffit they make from a sale of the music at iTunes or on a CD or wherever. So they want allofmp3.com shut down so that people who were buying from it are forced to go to other places that make the RIAA more money (or download illegal copies which is something the RIAA can sue them for) and 2.allofmp3.com does not implement any DRM. This means that the recordings purchased from allofmp3.com can be copied easily (further depriving the RIAA of revenue). But more to the point, having no DRM on allofmp3.com blows away the RIAA arguments that protecting it with DRM is the only way to sell digital music online.
This solution would be OS and browser independant and would not be subject to any issues such as SMS's not getting through to a cellphone.
Basicly, each customer is given a device that looks a bit like a small calculator, make it "solar" powered (in reality those panels will work just fine powered by any sufficiantly bright light source) so it never looses juce. It would have a 0-9 keypad and other buttons. Each device would contain a unique number that is also securely stored on the banks computers.
When you want to log in, the bank generates a random number and displays it along with a form field for username/user ID/whatever, a form field for password and one for a hash. The user types in the random number into their calculator thing which is then hashed with the number stored inside it and the result displayed. The hash algorithim has to be chosen such that there is no one number that when hashed with any unknown stored number can produce either the stored number or something that you can get back the stored number from. (this prevents the hacker from feeding a chosen "random" number to the user and getting the stored number that way).
Once you do that, the displayed hash along with username and password are typed into the form. The hash is compared with the same calculation done by the banks computer and if the username, password and hash match up, you are logged in. When you want to do a transfer to someone not on your "approved payees" list or add someone to the "approved payees" list, you have to enter the account number and/or dollar amount and/or another random number into the calculator thing which spits out another hash that has to be typed in. This prevents the phisher/trojan/whatever from changing the details of the transaction ($ amount or destination account).
Unlike some other proposals (USB smart cards, mobile phones), it is 100% OS and browser independant and requires no drivers.
Does anyone know what things (protocols, file formats, whatever) the doucments that Microsoft have given the EU and/or that the EU has been asking for actually cover?
Its all well and good to say "its ok to block this very limited set of sites" (child porn, hate speech etc). But what happens when the copyright cartels (MPAA/RIAA/etc) say to the ISPs (and government) "if you can block child porn, you should be able to block other illegal content such as illegally copied music and movies" and then use their lobbying power to force such blocks?
I dont know if you have already done this but if you go to somewhere like www.howardforums.com, you should be able to find a way to unlock the features of your V3M no problems (and as far as I am aware, verizon cant tell that you unlocked it unless you have to take it back to them for repairs)
Basicly, there are 3 kinds of phones that you can buy from a carrier: 1.Phones that you are buying at full price. These should not be unlock (if the phone carrier is making a proffit on the sale of the phone, there should be no reason to force you to use their network too) 2.Phones that come with a contract. In this case you are getting a discount on the phone with the proviso that you stay with their network for a period of time (or pay an exit fee to leave early). These should not be locked since if you break the contract you have to pay the exit fee so they make their money either way) and 3.Phones that are subidised but dont come with a contract (such as prepaid phones etc). These are the only circumstances where locking a phone to the network is justifiable since forcing you to use your phone with the carrier is the only way for the carrier to make back money on a phone they sold to you at a loss.
There are 2 kinds of cellphone locking, there is the locks that prevent you using any other network and there are the locks that disable features such as the abillity to load MP3 files directly from a PC for use as ringtones or the abillity to read camera pictures back from the phone without going through per-pay services (Verizon mobile is notorious for this kind of locking crap). It would appear as though this copyright office ruling only covers the first kind (network locks) and not the second kind (feature locks).
Basicly, there are 2 things that I think ISPs should be forbidden from doing 1.They should be forbidden from discriminating on network packets based on source or destination address and 2.They should be forbidden from limiting the physical bandwidth available to a given network protocol (blocking it e.g. port25 or virus ports is different and is perfectly ok, what I am talking about is the practice of port shaping so that e.g. BitTorrent is cut down so its effectivly operating on a slower link)
Part of it is to make it harder for kids to disassemble it (being that it doesnt use screws that can be opened with stuff kids are likely to find around the house). Remember that the Wii (and also the Wall-Wart mentioned in the parent post) are quite likely to be in environments where kids are around. Also, it may be the case that in order to get the various certifications (that CE mark or whatever it is) you need to make it so it cant be easily diassembled (I have no idea)
Are there any countries that have all of the following: 1.High standards of living 2.No overbearing religious stuff (e.g. muslim Shia rules having the power of law or e.g. cows being sacred in india) 3.A democratically elected government where I can vote for the people who run the country 4.Good prospects for getting a job in IT and 5.No stupid DMCA like copyright laws
This service is no different to a computer shop offering a service where you give them your computer and your copy of windows (or whatever other commercial software) and the computer shop (for a fee) installs and sets up the software for you so you dont have to.
But does it run NetBSD? If not, hopefully someone can port it. If BSD can run on a toaster, surely it can run on the "most powerfull games machine ever created" (or so says sony PR)
Email? (in which case why dont more ISPs run good email virus scanners? Is there a free (as in beer) email virus scanner out there for those email server admins who cant afford to buy one? (or are there reasons other than cost as to why email server admins and ISPs and stuff arent routinely scanning email as a matter of couse?)
Exploits in the OS? (why arent ISPs blocking ports like MS-RPC and MS file sharing (things that shouldnt be going out over the internet anyway) for example)?
Is there something the SEC can do? (perhaps finding the people who buy the stock, pay the spammers to send the spams, sit back and watch whilst their stock becomes a lot more valuable and then proceed to sell it all. (IANAL or a stockbroker but I dont think you can buy/own stock without at least some way to tell who you are).
Basicly, the machines owned by the various governments would encrypt the data with a key belonging to that government (e.g. the UK has a machine) and then the machines at the airports (if the airports are fancy enough to be able to read the machine readable part of the passport) use a matching public key. As only the government would have the private part of the key, only the government can encrypt data that the processing machines can read (and for those who say the keys will be stolen, look at things like the RSA signing key for XBOX 1 binaries, that hasnt been stolen, brute forced or otherwise obtained yet.
On todays systems with todays power saving mointors and video cards, there is NO excuse for not having minotor power saving mode enabled at some level.
Or as "right" as it is possible to get. The only thing that I consider wrong (from the perspective of the 99% of the population who doesnt care about DRM) with the iTunes music store is the fact that the greedy record company executives forced apple to ditch the one price fits all model (in australia for example).
Can someone give me some examples of microsoft propriatory data formats, network protocols or APIs that: A.Would be covered under what the EU is asking MS to release and B.Would actually be benificial to competitors of Microsoft (including open source)
Apple would never do a CDMA iPhone. Pretty much all of the major carriers still using CDMA (such as Verizon Mobile and Sprint Nextel) generally lock their phones down (because they can and because they are evil greedy bastards).
As one of the likely central features of any iPhone is audio playback (both ITMS DRM music and other music) and given that the big CDMA carriers are notorious for preventing the loading of any music (especially for use as ringtones) that isnt purchased from an approved download site (i.e. one that makes them money), I dont see a CDMA iPhone making sense for apple (since the carriers wouldnt support it and since with CDMA the carriers get pretty much full control over what phones are used)
If Apple DO make an iPhone, hopefully they allow you to use any music you upload to it (including iTunes store music) as a ringtone.
If Apple built an iPhone, would they develop the phone chipsets themselves? Or would they licence from a 3rd party that already knows how to build these things? If so, who would sell to them? Are there any mobile phone manufacturers that licene their chipsets to 3rd parties?
Slashdot Mirror
The first is games like World Of Warcraft. In this case, its simple, income tax is applied anytime someone earns real world income from the game (e.g. selling items on ebay). Anything else is unmanageable.
The second situation is games like Second Life where there is a direct way to convert money into real world money. In this case the logical solution is to treat things like L$ in the same way as they treat Euros or Pesos of CA$. If you earn money in a foriegn currency, you pay income tax on it just the same (assuming it was earnt in a way that falls under US income tax). Therefore the same should apply for L$.
The other option (taxing L$ only when it is converted into real world $ wont work because everyone will just keep everything in L$ and only convert into real world $ when they need to, thus minimizing their tax).
As for payment, can you pay your tax in CA$ or Euros or Pesos? If not and there is a law mandating payment in $US, there is no issue. Even if there is no legal requirement to pay in $US, there is still no issue since there are only certain ways to pay your income tax (cash, cheque, whatever) and so you cant directly pay in L$ (because the governemt doesnt accept L$).
Problem solved.
Around here there are many movie theaters that are part of major shopping centers. A number of them are built right on top of shops and other things. It would be impossible to jam cellphones in the movie theaters without jamming them in a number of the shops and stuff too.
I think NVIDIA didnt like microsoft that much after microsoft forced them to throw away all those perfectly good chipsets just because some hackers had read out the internal ROM contained therein (and made NVIDIA take the hit for what was probobly a microsoft problem assuming microsoft wrote the code in the hidden ROM)
Unless the US government does what the Australian government did when they replaced the old paper notes with new fancy (and good looking IMO) plastic banknotes and withdraws the old notes from circulation (replacing them all with new notes). Unless they do that, what will happen is that the people who are having trouble distinguishing between notes will continue to have trouble since they will continue to get the old (and hard to recognize) notes from ATMs, banks, shops and wherever else.
The other advantage of replacing all the notes is that you could make them much harder to counterfit and stop the bad guys from copying them.
Of course, it can never happen considering how many foriegn countries use the US dollar either as some kind of state sanctioned currency or (such as is/was the case in russia IIRC) as currency that isnt state sanctioned but is accepted by shops and stuff (in some cases even more so than the state currency) because the local currency isnt accepted by the rest of the world. And because of how many USD banknotes are in circulation worldwide.
Basicly, the RIAA are pissed off at allofmp3.com and the russian system for 2 reasons:
1.The royalties that would be collected (under russian compulsoty licencing) from a sale at allofmp3.com (either to a russian or to someone else) are signficantly lower than the proffit they make from a sale of the music at iTunes or on a CD or wherever. So they want allofmp3.com shut down so that people who were buying from it are forced to go to other places that make the RIAA more money (or download illegal copies which is something the RIAA can sue them for)
and 2.allofmp3.com does not implement any DRM. This means that the recordings purchased from allofmp3.com can be copied easily (further depriving the RIAA of revenue). But more to the point, having no DRM on allofmp3.com blows away the RIAA arguments that protecting it with DRM is the only way to sell digital music online.
This solution would be OS and browser independant and would not be subject to any issues such as SMS's not getting through to a cellphone.
/trojan/whatever from changing the details of the transaction ($ amount or destination account).
Basicly, each customer is given a device that looks a bit like a small calculator, make it "solar" powered (in reality those panels will work just fine powered by any sufficiantly bright light source) so it never looses juce.
It would have a 0-9 keypad and other buttons. Each device would contain a unique number that is also securely stored on the banks computers.
When you want to log in, the bank generates a random number and displays it along with a form field for username/user ID/whatever, a form field for password and one for a hash. The user types in the random number into their calculator thing which is then hashed with the number stored inside it and the result displayed. The hash algorithim has to be chosen such that there is no one number that when hashed with any unknown stored number can produce either the stored number or something that you can get back the stored number from. (this prevents the hacker from feeding a chosen "random" number to the user and getting the stored number that way).
Once you do that, the displayed hash along with username and password are typed into the form. The hash is compared with the same calculation done by the banks computer and if the username, password and hash match up, you are logged in.
When you want to do a transfer to someone not on your "approved payees" list or add someone to the "approved payees" list, you have to enter the account number and/or dollar amount and/or another random number into the calculator thing which spits out another hash that has to be typed in. This prevents the phisher
Unlike some other proposals (USB smart cards, mobile phones), it is 100% OS and browser independant and requires no drivers.
Does anyone know what things (protocols, file formats, whatever) the doucments that Microsoft have given the EU and/or that the EU has been asking for actually cover?
Its all well and good to say "its ok to block this very limited set of sites" (child porn, hate speech etc). But what happens when the copyright cartels (MPAA/RIAA/etc) say to the ISPs (and government) "if you can block child porn, you should be able to block other illegal content such as illegally copied music and movies" and then use their lobbying power to force such blocks?
I dont know if you have already done this but if you go to somewhere like www.howardforums.com, you should be able to find a way to unlock the features of your V3M no problems (and as far as I am aware, verizon cant tell that you unlocked it unless you have to take it back to them for repairs)
Basicly, there are 3 kinds of phones that you can buy from a carrier:
1.Phones that you are buying at full price. These should not be unlock (if the phone carrier is making a proffit on the sale of the phone, there should be no reason to force you to use their network too)
2.Phones that come with a contract. In this case you are getting a discount on the phone with the proviso that you stay with their network for a period of time (or pay an exit fee to leave early). These should not be locked since if you break the contract you have to pay the exit fee so they make their money either way)
and 3.Phones that are subidised but dont come with a contract (such as prepaid phones etc). These are the only circumstances where locking a phone to the network is justifiable since forcing you to use your phone with the carrier is the only way for the carrier to make back money on a phone they sold to you at a loss.
There are 2 kinds of cellphone locking, there is the locks that prevent you using any other network and there are the locks that disable features such as the abillity to load MP3 files directly from a PC for use as ringtones or the abillity to read camera pictures back from the phone without going through per-pay services (Verizon mobile is notorious for this kind of locking crap). It would appear as though this copyright office ruling only covers the first kind (network locks) and not the second kind (feature locks).
Basicly, there are 2 things that I think ISPs should be forbidden from doing
1.They should be forbidden from discriminating on network packets based on source or destination address
and 2.They should be forbidden from limiting the physical bandwidth available to a given network protocol (blocking it e.g. port25 or virus ports is different and is perfectly ok, what I am talking about is the practice of port shaping so that e.g. BitTorrent is cut down so its effectivly operating on a slower link)
Part of it is to make it harder for kids to disassemble it (being that it doesnt use screws that can be opened with stuff kids are likely to find around the house). Remember that the Wii (and also the Wall-Wart mentioned in the parent post) are quite likely to be in environments where kids are around.
Also, it may be the case that in order to get the various certifications (that CE mark or whatever it is) you need to make it so it cant be easily diassembled (I have no idea)
Are there any countries that have all of the following:
1.High standards of living
2.No overbearing religious stuff (e.g. muslim Shia rules having the power of law or e.g. cows being sacred in india)
3.A democratically elected government where I can vote for the people who run the country
4.Good prospects for getting a job in IT
and 5.No stupid DMCA like copyright laws
This service is no different to a computer shop offering a service where you give them your computer and your copy of windows (or whatever other commercial software) and the computer shop (for a fee) installs and sets up the software for you so you dont have to.
But does it run NetBSD?
If not, hopefully someone can port it.
If BSD can run on a toaster, surely it can run on the "most powerfull games machine ever created" (or so says sony PR)
Email? (in which case why dont more ISPs run good email virus scanners? Is there a free (as in beer) email virus scanner out there for those email server admins who cant afford to buy one? (or are there reasons other than cost as to why email server admins and ISPs and stuff arent routinely scanning email as a matter of couse?)
Exploits in the OS? (why arent ISPs blocking ports like MS-RPC and MS file sharing (things that shouldnt be going out over the internet anyway) for example)?
Is there something the SEC can do? (perhaps finding the people who buy the stock, pay the spammers to send the spams, sit back and watch whilst their stock becomes a lot more valuable and then proceed to sell it all. (IANAL or a stockbroker but I dont think you can buy/own stock without at least some way to tell who you are).
Basicly, the machines owned by the various governments would encrypt the data with a key belonging to that government (e.g. the UK has a machine) and then the machines at the airports (if the airports are fancy enough to be able to read the machine readable part of the passport) use a matching public key.
As only the government would have the private part of the key, only the government can encrypt data that the processing machines can read (and for those who say the keys will be stolen, look at things like the RSA signing key for XBOX 1 binaries, that hasnt been stolen, brute forced or otherwise obtained yet.
On todays systems with todays power saving mointors and video cards, there is NO excuse for not having minotor power saving mode enabled at some level.
Or as "right" as it is possible to get.
The only thing that I consider wrong (from the perspective of the 99% of the population who doesnt care about DRM) with the iTunes music store is the fact that the greedy record company executives forced apple to ditch the one price fits all model (in australia for example).
Can someone give me some examples of microsoft propriatory data formats, network protocols or APIs that:
A.Would be covered under what the EU is asking MS to release
and B.Would actually be benificial to competitors of Microsoft (including open source)
Is thise .jpg
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tiananmensquar
image accessable inside the great firewall?
asking the president of Saudi Arabia or the president of ExxonMobil if they think that the electric car is the way of the future.
Apple would never do a CDMA iPhone. Pretty much all of the major carriers still using CDMA (such as Verizon Mobile and Sprint Nextel) generally lock their phones down (because they can and because they are evil greedy bastards).
As one of the likely central features of any iPhone is audio playback (both ITMS DRM music and other music) and given that the big CDMA carriers are notorious for preventing the loading of any music (especially for use as ringtones) that isnt purchased from an approved download site (i.e. one that makes them money), I dont see a CDMA iPhone making sense for apple (since the carriers wouldnt support it and since with CDMA the carriers get pretty much full control over what phones are used)
If Apple DO make an iPhone, hopefully they allow you to use any music you upload to it (including iTunes store music) as a ringtone.
If Apple built an iPhone, would they develop the phone chipsets themselves? Or would they licence from a 3rd party that already knows how to build these things?
If so, who would sell to them? Are there any mobile phone manufacturers that licene their chipsets to 3rd parties?