All things being equal, if there is a demand, someone will meet the supply. That is simple economics. There is no mystery about it and high demand and low supply usually mean higher prices.
Unfortunately people tend to misunderstand the meaning of this. It's not unusual to hear somebody utter: "Well, but there is CLEARLY a demand for this product, surely it might be profitable...". Well, yes, but demands of T3's for $1/month or a new Audi for $10 are also high. It doesn't make these products profitable as well.
It's okay with me if people don't want to accept the ruling (or even hear about it, although that's just plain ignorance). But please don't call me a troll, simply because you disagree with the round-up of the story.
As I mentioned I also hoped the ruling would be in favour of Newsbooster. I don't support the Danish Newspaper Publisher's Association. But nevertheless, this is a fact mentioned by the Danish Newspaper Publisher's Association - that they aren't concerned about Google or a few deep links. And you might agree or disagree on their statement (I know I do), but it's still relevant to mention.
But what's wrong with this? How is this substantially different from me telling a friend, "There's a great article on page C5 of the Journal."? Why would they put the material on the Web if they didn't want people to link to it?
To answer your question in a strict way (not considering whether it's fair or not): Legally the systematic index might be in violation with Danish law of intellectual property right - and gaining on it might be in violation with Danish law of marketing.
As mentioned, this is not a stand on whether it's fair or not.
Computerworld actually would like to intervene with Newsbooster, but wasn't allowed.
Furthermore, since the case is under private prosecution, Computerworld would have to run their own case against/. - and the case would be an entirely different. The arguments against Newsbooster wouldn't be relevant (if Computerworld would make a fuzz about it - but as mentioned, Computerworld supports Newsbooster in this case)
And let me emphasize: We don't have a final ruling yet.
I was present at the court (yup, I'm a Dane) - and let me clarify the matter:
First of all, this is only the first part of the case, whether Newsbooster should be temporarily prohibited until the case is settled. Todays case wasn't settled by a judge, only a "bailiff" (according to my Danish/English translator:)
Second, the Danish Newspaper Publisher's Association weren't concerned about search engines like Google or just a few deep links. Newsbooster did a systematic index and furthermore sold services for update-information whenever your predefined search words matched any news article.
Third, the case is very specific and isn't as much about technical details as it is of legal matter. It was concluded that Newsbooster was in violation of Danish law of marketing ("good ethics", mainly concerning not gaining/harvesting of other companies products and services) and Danish law of intellectual property, since the articles at the Danish newspapers' sites were to be considered as a database, an index. Databases are also covered by the law of intellectual property (as a simple example: A name and an address wouldn't itself be protected by the law, but an index like a phone book would as a whole) - and since Newsbooster copied what would be considered as a database, the ruling was against Newsbooster.
Danish Newspaper Publisher's Association is obligated to present the case in court in less than two weeks. There wouldn't be created a precedent until that case is ruled.
..
And some personal comments: My hope was that Newsbooster wouldn't be prohibited, but the following meeting at FDIH (Foreningen for Dansk Internet Handel / The Danish eBusiness Association) mostly concerned techniques like robots.txt, usage of Referer and stuff like that.
I believe it's important to notice that the violation might have nothing to do with links, search engines and other tools, and as such the problem shouldn't be solved with technology.
Now, that sounds like quite a lot, and sure, it's probably a fair bit above average. Except, I doubt more than a couple of those GB's ever made it outside my provider's network, because most if it is from usenet.
You might probably be more of an expense to the provider than the guy that just downloads the same amount of data from outside the ISP's network.
A "full" newsfeed clogs some hundred GB's each day. If the provider would like to have a newsfeed for the last month it could require about 10TB of storage (of course, not every newsgroup would have posts stored for that long, though). And currently the newsflow is accelerating faster than the development on storage.
Furthermore, news is a service that only a small percentage of the ISP's customers make use of. It is surely not a simple solution to run a useful newsserver; you would surely need people to maintain it.
It doesn't hurt a random asian ISP that they are blocked, meaning that there wouldn't be much change.
Let's rather block the #1 origin of spam: US.
Oh, wait a minute... that would be pretty painful, right? It would actually have influence? ISP's would risk getting a clue when americans couldn't e-mail other Americans?
No, nevermind. Let's keep out of sanctions that actually hurt. Let's block someone, we don't care about. Let's stay out of sacrifices. No need to let American ISP-spamhauses suffer. After all, they are the good guys, right?
More nostalgia: Killer List of Videogames is definately worth a visit. Over 3.500 videogames has been indexed. Nice screenshots, trivia and even cheats for some videogames.
Usually you could use http://dk./ (with a dot in the end to indicate an absolute hostname) for the situations where "dk" isn't enough.
And yeah, it's pretty sweet. Unfortunately dk. is also present in rfc-ignorant:
http://www.rfc-ignorant.org/tools/detail.cgi?dom ai n=dk&submitted=996620699&table=whois
... due to some lame excuse about sensitive data that WHOIS-lookups aren't permitted, although their website gives the opportunity (and a bit of "LWP::Simple"-magic would do the trick), AND they still have an unused role for these situations.
Re:Why not .doc or .lnx? or even .apple, .orange?
on
.biz Open For Biz
·
· Score: 1
.mars wouldn't be any problem, although current rules require a represent from the origin.
Marvin the Martian, maybe?
Re:All domains resolve!
on
.biz Open For Biz
·
· Score: 5, Informative
... and furthermore, the webserver gives a "200 OK" as a response for a non-existing domain and no expire-date in the HTTP-header. Although no "Last-Modified"-header is supplied and the page might not be at all that cacheable, it is just plain wrong giving such a "correct" answer for a page that shouldn't exist in the first place.
It seems that the "security", NeuLevel provides, doesn't concern themselves.
Well, it was possible to do something similar in 3.22 with a little hack. Like:
SELECT id, name, ((id*0)+rand()) AS random FROM table ORDER BY random;
Each row will have its own random value in the on-the-fly-generated field "random". And as usual, you are able to perform an ORDER on each field in the result.
This may not entirely be in the same cathegory, but just to show some usage of *.domain.tld:
Inspired by a "useless trick of the year"-page, which gave the possibiliy of making matemathical calculations only using the hostname, I got inspired for about a year ago to make my own utilities.
My domain is trc.dk (a danish roleplaying club; nevermind that:-) - and I've made the following possibilities, using a *.trc.dk-record, and some PHP to react on the HTTP_HOST-env-variable:
http://something.a.trc.dk/ Perform a search for "something" in AltaVista
http://something.b.trc.dk/ Perform a search for "something" in AltaVista (text-only)
http://something.g.trc.dk/ Perform a search for "something" in Google
http://something.l.trc.dk/ Perform a search for "something" in Google, using the "I Feel Lucky-feature"
http://something.i.trc.dk/ Perform a search for a movie named "something" in IMDb (Internet Movie Database)
http://something.j.trc.dk/ Perform a search for "something" in Jubii (danish search-engine)
http://someone.k.trc.dk/ Perform a lookup for the name "someone" in a edition of the danish "White Pages"
http://slashdot.org.s.trc.dk/ Perform a check of what webserver, "slashdot.org" is running.
http://slashdot.org.q.trc.dk/ Perform a HTTP-query for "slashdot.org"
These "tools" have been a great aid, and saved a lot of time. There really isn't any reason first going to the Altavista/Google/IMDb-frontpage, just to submit some data. Then rather go to the result-page.
At first I pretty much liked the idea... but it simply has the problem of wasting our time at all. When you forward a mail to e.g. 40 people, it seems just like a small thing to do.
If all of these people use an average of 1-2 minutes to be notified of new mail, stop what they're up to, check the mail, wonder a bit about it, delete it, and then continue to go on, we've just wasted about one hour of worktime.
Multiply this, and think about how much time that has been wasted in total!
I just recieved a "Let's cheat Echelon!"-mail from somebody I don't know. The address, he had mailed to, was my old e-mail when I worked as a supporter for about 1½ years ago! I've probably mailed him once at that time, but my guess is that he don't know who I am either - he has just mailed to every e-mail-address, he've ever got in his mailreader!
In total, I guess that I've recieved the mail somewhere between 9 or 10 times (mail from family, friends, colleagues, customers, a few times in different newsgroups).
Seriously, my best guess is that this effort is doing much more harm on us "ordinary workers", than it would ever do on Echelon. Don't harm us anymore... please?
I know the common computernerd-difference between cracker and hacker.
But somehow, I am sorry to admit that I prefer the term "hacker" as a network intruder (in the public media) and a computer-guru (in the nerd-media).
By using the term "Cracker" as a "network intruder" (silly name, okay!), I feel that we give some disrespect to the guys in the C64-culture, that cracked a lot of games, and maybe has about nothing in common with what-we-usually-call-"cracker-not-hacker".
Just my 0.02$ worth of why not to call a current cracker for a cracker. Don't forget the C64-crackers!
Slashdot Mirror
All things being equal, if there is a demand, someone will meet the supply. That is simple economics. There is no mystery about it and high demand and low supply usually mean higher prices.
Unfortunately people tend to misunderstand the meaning of this. It's not unusual to hear somebody utter: "Well, but there is CLEARLY a demand for this product, surely it might be profitable...". Well, yes, but demands of T3's for $1/month or a new Audi for $10 are also high. It doesn't make these products profitable as well.
Err, please don't kill the messenger.
It's okay with me if people don't want to accept the ruling (or even hear about it, although that's just plain ignorance). But please don't call me a troll, simply because you disagree with the round-up of the story.
As I mentioned I also hoped the ruling would be in favour of Newsbooster. I don't support the Danish Newspaper Publisher's Association. But nevertheless, this is a fact mentioned by the Danish Newspaper Publisher's Association - that they aren't concerned about Google or a few deep links. And you might agree or disagree on their statement (I know I do), but it's still relevant to mention.
But what's wrong with this? How is this substantially different from me telling a friend, "There's a great article on page C5 of the Journal."? Why would they put the material on the Web if they didn't want people to link to it?
To answer your question in a strict way (not considering whether it's fair or not): Legally the systematic index might be in violation with Danish law of intellectual property right - and gaining on it might be in violation with Danish law of marketing.
As mentioned, this is not a stand on whether it's fair or not.
Computerworld actually would like to intervene with Newsbooster, but wasn't allowed.
/. - and the case would be an entirely different. The arguments against Newsbooster wouldn't be relevant (if Computerworld would make a fuzz about it - but as mentioned, Computerworld supports Newsbooster in this case)
Furthermore, since the case is under private prosecution, Computerworld would have to run their own case against
And let me emphasize: We don't have a final ruling yet.
I was present at the court (yup, I'm a Dane) - and let me clarify the matter:
First of all, this is only the first part of the case, whether Newsbooster should be temporarily prohibited until the case is settled. Todays case wasn't settled by a judge, only a "bailiff" (according to my Danish/English translator :)
Second, the Danish Newspaper Publisher's Association weren't concerned about search engines like Google or just a few deep links. Newsbooster did a systematic index and furthermore sold services for update-information whenever your predefined search words matched any news article.
Third, the case is very specific and isn't as much about technical details as it is of legal matter. It was concluded that Newsbooster was in violation of Danish law of marketing ("good ethics", mainly concerning not gaining/harvesting of other companies products and services) and Danish law of intellectual property, since the articles at the Danish newspapers' sites were to be considered as a database, an index. Databases are also covered by the law of intellectual property (as a simple example: A name and an address wouldn't itself be protected by the law, but an index like a phone book would as a whole) - and since Newsbooster copied what would be considered as a database, the ruling was against Newsbooster.
Danish Newspaper Publisher's Association is obligated to present the case in court in less than two weeks. There wouldn't be created a precedent until that case is ruled.
And some personal comments: My hope was that Newsbooster wouldn't be prohibited, but the following meeting at FDIH (Foreningen for Dansk Internet Handel / The Danish eBusiness Association) mostly concerned techniques like robots.txt, usage of Referer and stuff like that.
I believe it's important to notice that the violation might have nothing to do with links, search engines and other tools, and as such the problem shouldn't be solved with technology.
Now, that sounds like quite a lot, and sure, it's probably a fair bit above average. Except, I doubt more than a couple of those GB's ever made it outside my provider's network, because most if it is from usenet.
You might probably be more of an expense to the provider than the guy that just downloads the same amount of data from outside the ISP's network.
A "full" newsfeed clogs some hundred GB's each day. If the provider would like to have a newsfeed for the last month it could require about 10TB of storage (of course, not every newsgroup would have posts stored for that long, though). And currently the newsflow is accelerating faster than the development on storage.
Furthermore, news is a service that only a small percentage of the ISP's customers make use of. It is surely not a simple solution to run a useful newsserver; you would surely need people to maintain it.
Actually Charles Dickens was paid per page.
"Oliver Twist" might have looked somewhat different.
It doesn't hurt a random asian ISP that they are blocked, meaning that there wouldn't be much change.
Let's rather block the #1 origin of spam: US.
Oh, wait a minute... that would be pretty painful, right? It would actually have influence? ISP's would risk getting a clue when americans couldn't e-mail other Americans?
No, nevermind. Let's keep out of sanctions that actually hurt. Let's block someone, we don't care about. Let's stay out of sacrifices. No need to let American ISP-spamhauses suffer. After all, they are the good guys, right?
... and "the little backwards speaking monster" is Qbert
More nostalgia:
Killer List of Videogames is definately worth a visit. Over 3.500 videogames has been indexed. Nice screenshots, trivia and even cheats for some videogames.
Usually you could use http://dk./ (with a dot in the end to indicate an absolute hostname) for the situations where "dk" isn't enough.
m ai n=dk&submitted=996620699&table=whois
And yeah, it's pretty sweet. Unfortunately dk. is also present in rfc-ignorant:
http://www.rfc-ignorant.org/tools/detail.cgi?do
... due to some lame excuse about sensitive data that WHOIS-lookups aren't permitted, although their website gives the opportunity (and a bit of "LWP::Simple"-magic would do the trick), AND they still have an unused role for these situations.
.mars wouldn't be any problem, although current rules require a represent from the origin.
Marvin the Martian, maybe?
... and furthermore, the webserver gives a "200 OK" as a response for a non-existing domain and no expire-date in the HTTP-header. Although no "Last-Modified"-header is supplied and the page might not be at all that cacheable, it is just plain wrong giving such a "correct" answer for a page that shouldn't exist in the first place.
It seems that the "security", NeuLevel provides, doesn't concern themselves.
Well, it was possible to do something similar in 3.22 with a little hack. Like:
SELECT id, name, ((id*0)+rand()) AS random FROM table ORDER BY random;
Each row will have its own random value in the on-the-fly-generated field "random". And as usual, you are able to perform an ORDER on each field in the result.
This may not entirely be in the same cathegory, but just to show some usage of *.domain.tld:
:-) - and I've made the following possibilities, using a *.trc.dk-record, and some PHP to react on the HTTP_HOST-env-variable:
:-)
Inspired by a "useless trick of the year"-page, which gave the possibiliy of making matemathical calculations only using the hostname, I got inspired for about a year ago to make my own utilities.
My domain is trc.dk (a danish roleplaying club; nevermind that
http://something.a.trc.dk/
Perform a search for "something" in AltaVista
http://something.b.trc.dk/
Perform a search for "something" in AltaVista (text-only)
http://something.g.trc.dk/
Perform a search for "something" in Google
http://something.l.trc.dk/
Perform a search for "something" in Google, using the "I Feel Lucky-feature"
http://something.i.trc.dk/
Perform a search for a movie named "something" in IMDb (Internet Movie Database)
http://something.j.trc.dk/
Perform a search for "something" in Jubii (danish search-engine)
http://someone.k.trc.dk/
Perform a lookup for the name "someone" in a edition of the danish "White Pages"
http://slashdot.org.s.trc.dk/
Perform a check of what webserver, "slashdot.org" is running.
http://slashdot.org.q.trc.dk/
Perform a HTTP-query for "slashdot.org"
These "tools" have been a great aid, and saved a lot of time. There really isn't any reason first going to the Altavista/Google/IMDb-frontpage, just to submit some data. Then rather go to the result-page.
Oh yeah, I like bookmarklets too
Okay, who asked Santa last christmas for a free domain?
It's all a mistake. The article read "Open Source", but it was meant to be about "Open intercourse"!
At first I pretty much liked the idea... but it simply has the problem of wasting our time at all. When you forward a mail to e.g. 40 people, it seems just like a small thing to do.
If all of these people use an average of 1-2 minutes to be notified of new mail, stop what they're up to, check the mail, wonder a bit about it, delete it, and then continue to go on, we've just wasted about one hour of worktime.
Multiply this, and think about how much time that has been wasted in total!
I just recieved a "Let's cheat Echelon!"-mail from somebody I don't know. The address, he had mailed to, was my old e-mail when I worked as a supporter for about 1½ years ago! I've probably mailed him once at that time, but my guess is that he don't know who I am either - he has just mailed to every e-mail-address, he've ever got in his mailreader!
In total, I guess that I've recieved the mail somewhere between 9 or 10 times (mail from family, friends, colleagues, customers, a few times in different newsgroups).
Seriously, my best guess is that this effort is doing much more harm on us "ordinary workers", than it would ever do on Echelon. Don't harm us anymore... please?
I know the common computernerd-difference between cracker and hacker.
But somehow, I am sorry to admit that I prefer the term "hacker" as a network intruder (in the public media) and a computer-guru (in the nerd-media).
By using the term "Cracker" as a "network intruder" (silly name, okay!), I feel that we give some disrespect to the guys in the C64-culture, that cracked a lot of games, and maybe has about nothing in common with what-we-usually-call-"cracker-not-hacker".
Just my 0.02$ worth of why not to call a current cracker for a cracker. Don't forget the C64-crackers!