I would agree. But how does one opt-into the Neilson program? I wonder how Neilson recruits folks into their program.
You can't opt-in.. it would mess up their (pseudo-)randomized sampling. I know some people that used to be a Nielson family.. they had a 14" black and white TV that with its rabbit-ears antenna fully extended got 3 stations. Pretty much all they did was watch moves from their VCR. That's what random gets you - folks that never would have volunteered because they don't even consider themselves TV watchers.
Heck, *I'd* like my viewing habits aggrigated with everyone else, too, but that probably won't happen unless they can track what EVERYONE watches (with opt-out).. but then again, I'd also like someone who does those stupid national approval polls to ask ME what I think of George Bush... I suppose that's the american way.. think your opinion on everything ought to be heard and listened to by everyone else.
Do they pick folks who watch a varying amount of TV per day
No, their sample is random. If they tried to develop different categories to recrute people from, they wouldn't end up with a representative assortment of different households. But because it is random, their sample includes people from all categories (more or less).
How many families are there all together?
about 5000 families, or 13,000 people.
Oh, and you can't sign up.. the whole point is that it is random, and signing up would suddenly make it not random.
Yeah, but how could you tell the phone was stolen if it's data was reset and it's IMEI changed?
If someone is going to break the law by stealing a phone, do you really think that making it illegal to change the IMEI will work as a deterrent to people actually changing it??
Note that while the system looks dang cool, it's not actually finished yet (2 weeks to completion according to the site) and he's looking for feedback. Perhaps the/. mod crew can weigh in.
There's not a lot in the way of terrain that can't be negotiated by a tracked vehicle. Yes, there are some steep slopes that are tough to climb, but frequently those are covered with trees. Hard to drive a tank through trees.
Hmm.. would they be useful in ground combat in a forested area? In the same way that an armored unit is vulnerable without foot soldiers (and vis versa), the two together are formidable.. but in a forested setting it seems like we have to rely on solely foot soldiers on the ground since tracked or wheeled vehicles wouldn't be able to manuever between (or through) the trees. Would it be helpful in those situations to have a an armored legged vehicle with some mounted heavy weapons?
Also, it seems like the legs could be at least partially protected by some sort of skirt around them. It might look like a big ballerina or something, though...
I know you're really not trying to go to the moon or underwater or spend a million bucks or anything, but there's a military spec called "Environmental Engineering Considerations and Laboratory Tests" (they block deep linking; search for Document ID "MIL-STD-810"). It's a guide for creating ruggedized equipment, but doesn't really impose any specific design requirments. (It's 539 pages LONG.)
Also, google produces many results for "rugged(ized) computers" if you want to buy something particularly hardcore straight out of the box.
I'm generally reasonably available by e-mail to talk about this stuff. (karl@cavebear.com)
I think claims like this should be signed with a PGP signature or some other way to verify the authenticity of the claim.
For all I know, it could be a bogus email address to a SPAM address harvester or a valid link to the real email address of someone NOT soliciting mail. Yeah, I know, I'm paranoid.
[does the/. rendering of a post mess up a pgp-signed block of text??]
Right, it's creepy how they haven't divulged how they will carry out the DoS, and have been increadibly tight-lipped about it.. the language used doesn't actually require a traditional packet-flooding DoS which would disrupt the other users of an ISP, but essentially allows for malicious hacking... That's based on my read of the law and may be flat out wrong.
I suppose once they do it once or twice, the attack will be figured out, and counter-attack or defensive tools will be developed. That's the problem with poorly crafted legislation... it seems like such a good, innocent idea now, but once it's done it is SO hard to undo and doesn't even get done what they really want it to do in the first place.
Therefore, you'd put pressure on the creators of all email client software to check for a special cryptographic signature/watermark in every message, so that only "authorized" messages could be received and read? [and so on]
That's not at ALL what I said.
Either we get the same absurd privileges as they do, or they don't get any special privileges. I vote for the second. Stealing copyrighted material is a violation of ISP's AUP's as much or more than sending SPAM is.. so the RIAA or whomever should decide whether or not they want to take the alleged copyright violator to court or not... if they DON'T, they provide evidence to the ISP who decides if they have enough evidence to shut down the account or internet connection. ISPs aren't and shouldn't be law enforcement agencies, but they should be responsible for enforce their AUPs when a violation is reported.
Sure, then you rail on about how the alleged copyright violator is innocent until proven guilty... but that's in a court of law. Outside of a court, evidence and due diligence is enough to act on an AUP.
Uhh... if your box was hacked a few times.. it wouldn't take a genius to hide a cron that watches for new drive mounts and dumps the contents someplace off-site or otherwise retrievable. If someone hacked your computer and went looking for your gpg key, they'd quickly discover your little floppy disk trick. Never trust a computer that's been hacked.. unless you've got a good, well configured IDS. Assuming you've taken such necessary precautions or reinstalled your system, then your floppy trick is a pretty nifty idea.
Face it, this is the lazy way out. And so I ask you, who commited the crime? The freeway or the person speeding over the limit on it? By your response, we'll be DoSing every major roadway in the nation.
Huh? Why would we do that? I'm not suggesting that they shut down an entire ISP's internet connection... I'm saying that when I get SPAM, I try to track down who sent it and through what mail server(s).. then I forward the SPAM to the ISP of those mail servers and request that they terminate the service of the UCBE originator: I send the evidence along with the request for termination. Then its the ISP's responsibility to check their logs to determine if there is indeed a violation of their AUP and terminate the account or internet connection. Surely illegally trading copyrighted information is a violation of every (respectable) ISP's AUP. It might be a little messier for an ISP to verify the complainer's claim.. but the copyright holder has got to have some sort of evidence before they use this proposed legislation, too.
That solution doesn't require any more legislated powers to do, nor is it any more costly for the copyright holder to execute, I wouldn't imagine.
some pro lifers also kill the doctors they disagree with. how noble.
Traditionally civil disobedience, at least in the US, has been defined by non-violence. Or at least not directing the violence at people. An example of abortion civil disobedience would be to carry a protest sign within 50 feet of an entrance to an abortion clinic until you got arrested, because you thought the law banning such protests was a violation of your free-speach rights... although I believe this particular law has already been upheld...
But civil disobedience CERTAINLY doesn't cover shooting a doctor in the back with a high caliber rifle after he gets out of his car to go into his house... or things like that. That's murder... unless, I suppose, you think the 2nd amendment not only gives you the right to bear arms, but also the right to kill whomever you want, and you turn yourself in to the authorities immediately after killing and try to fight it through the courts... maybe then it could be considered civil disobedience.
Civil disobedience traditionally is a purposeful violation of a law that is either unconsitutional or immoral. It is used to create public support and apply pressure for the change of the law. It usually requires getting arrested for the courts to rule a law unconstitutional, so civil disobedience is usually public and results in arrest.
It is questionable whether this DoS qualifies as civil disobedience. The DoSers aren't violating the law they want changed.. the usual tact for civil disobedience. It certainly is public, which is important. We could debate it back and forth, I suppose...
considering the alternative...
on
RIAA Smacked by DoS
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I was about to defend the act.. because really, what are they supposed to do to prevent a distributed network of thousands of users from illegally trading copyrighted files?? They can't really take them all to court...
I like that the bill requires them to NOTIFY the Attorney General before they do anything... I don't like that they don't have to wait for approval.
So I started to think... "How would I feel if I was faced with 1000's of people scattered covertly across the country violating my rights?" Then I realized that I do... SPAMers. Sure, if I had the time, money, and expertise, I could take them each to court. But the reality is that even if I get SPAM, the best I can do is report the SPAMer to their ISP and hope they're not SPAM-friendly and will shut the account/network connection down.
So either they should allow us to DoS or hack SPAMers' computers, or they should require the RIAA or whomever to get ISPs to shut down illegal file sharing internet connections.. just like the rest of us.
don't believe that's what MTTF refers to. That's more likely what will happen if the drive is left on continuously with no motion and little or no disk activity. Actually USING the disk will alter that number significantly. Powering down the drive on a frequent basis will lower that number even more. Those numbers are basically meaningless for hard drives.
I quite agree; that's why I quoted the POH rating of only 20K hours. It's rather comical that the main benchmark quoted is so meaningless... And the funny thing about hard drives is that unless you get a high-end hard drive designed for 24/7 operation, the manufacturers often rate the drives for 333 hours/month (11 hours/day * 30 or so days/month). IBM took some serious heat for that in one of their drives. So the MTTF requires perfect conditions and continuous use, but continuous use exceeds the POH rating.. Bah!
As well, I noted in the article that if a non-profit wins the bid, VeriSign has agreed to give them a $5 million endowment. Given the amount of politics going on within ICANN, can we be sure that VeriSign isn't campaigning for a commercial winner to save them some cash?
Well... according to internetnews, VeriSign is partnering with the Union of International Associations, based in Brussels, Belgium. Under that arrangement VeriSign would provide the back-end services for up to three years, after which UIA will open bidding for that job, hoping to contract out the service to a non-profit.
And $5M seems like a lot, until you consider the $6/.org/year cited in the original article for the amount Verisign currently receives for each of the 2.3M.org domains. That's $13.8M/year. If Verisign's share is reduced to $2.20/.org/year, they break even on their $5M seed... and that's just in the first year!
Contacting the Senate is a little harder since they don't have as nice a web-feedback engine (each senator has a different system), but it is still pretty dang simple.
"...my current 20 gig iPod will be sufficient enough for me to listen to music until it mechanically fails (which could be in 40 years)"
Taking this WAY off topic... According to a previous article on/., the iPod uses a Toshiba 1.8" hard drive.. which according to Toshiba would be the 20GB MK2003GAH (HDD1364)... which is rated at 300,000 MTTF Hours.
so let me see... that would be about 34 years of 24/7 operation.. If you use it for 8 hours a day (a lot in my opinion).. that would be about 102 years. That seems a little absurd.. but that's what absurd benchmarks get you.
Note more importantly that the "Product Life" of the hard drive is rated at 5 years or 20,000 power ON hours. I'd guess that's a "which ever comes first" rating.
I think what they're saying is that the use of someone else's watermark on your stuff is illegal. It would be like writing a paper and stamping it with the raised seal of the IRS to demonstrate that it is ligitamite. It would be inappropriate to forge the IRS's seal, as it would a digital watermark, because it would be a fraudulent statement of certification by someone who isn't actually certifying it. You should stamp it with your OWN raised seal if you want to verify its authenticity for anyone looking at it.
I think it should be illegal to forge a digital watermark.. but only if digital watermark writers are available to anyone and everyone for a reasonable price (which obviously would make this legislative move a moot point in the anti-piracy game as anyone could write a digital watermark to their pirated Britney Spears MP3s) or players should not require a digital watermark to access the data.
This chain letter is being sent around so that everyone can say thank you to their system administrator. Simply add your name to the bottom of the list and send it to everyone you know... when your name is the 100th name on the list, forward the message to your system administrator!
Although the DMCA provides a limited exception for accessing lists of blocked Web sites, Beeson said that it is meaningless because another provision blocks users from writing the software tools necessary to access the lists.
"The copyright law says you can look under the hood under certain circumstances but you can't build a tool needed to open the hood," Beeson said. "This irrational rule is chilling important scientific research in violation of the First Amendment."
Assuming that's really true, it is a pretty stupid and contradictory law that should be changed, in my oh-so-humble opinion.
Huh, I just went to Dell's web site and did my own totally unscientific study: I customized a Dimension 8200 in the Home user section. The printers listed were:
Multi-Function
Lexmark X83 All in one Printer, Scanner, and Copier [$199]
Lexmark X63 All-in-one [$169] HP OfficeJet K80 All in one Printer, Scanner, and Copier. $50 rebate! [$300] HP PSC 750 All in one (Printer, Scanner and Copier) $50 Mail-in Rebate [$248] Epson 1000 ICS All-in-one color matched [$179]
Printer Bundle
Lexmark Z65 bundle [$259]
Lexmark Z55 bundle [$199]
Printers
Lexmark Z55 [$130]
Lexmark Z65 [$200] Canon S820 [$250] HP Deskjet 960 Color matched [$200] HP Deskjet 940C [$130] HP PhotoSmart 1115 [$200] Lexmark E320 Laser Printer [$268] Epson Stylus C60 [$70]
I think this is very bizarre... especially since it's really Dell that has the advantage since they possess the customer relationships (the most valuable asset). It seems that it would have been better for HP to hold off a bit and use the time to transition Dell's customers away from HP.
Except that according to the article, Dell's customer relationships so far only produce "about two days' worth of HP annual printer sales", or about 0.5%.
And how the heck does helping Dell transition it's customers away from HP's products help HP??
Slashdot Mirror
You can't opt-in.. it would mess up their (pseudo-)randomized sampling. I know some people that used to be a Nielson family.. they had a 14" black and white TV that with its rabbit-ears antenna fully extended got 3 stations. Pretty much all they did was watch moves from their VCR. That's what random gets you - folks that never would have volunteered because they don't even consider themselves TV watchers.
Heck, *I'd* like my viewing habits aggrigated with everyone else, too, but that probably won't happen unless they can track what EVERYONE watches (with opt-out).. but then again, I'd also like someone who does those stupid national approval polls to ask ME what I think of George Bush... I suppose that's the american way.. think your opinion on everything ought to be heard and listened to by everyone else.
Do they pick folks who watch a varying amount of TV per day
No, their sample is random. If they tried to develop different categories to recrute people from, they wouldn't end up with a representative assortment of different households. But because it is random, their sample includes people from all categories (more or less).
How many families are there all together?
about 5000 families, or 13,000 people.
Oh, and you can't sign up.. the whole point is that it is random, and signing up would suddenly make it not random.
see Nielson Media
If someone is going to break the law by stealing a phone, do you really think that making it illegal to change the IMEI will work as a deterrent to people actually changing it??
Note that while the system looks dang cool, it's not actually finished yet (2 weeks to completion according to the site) and he's looking for feedback. Perhaps the /. mod crew can weigh in.
Hmm.. would they be useful in ground combat in a forested area? In the same way that an armored unit is vulnerable without foot soldiers (and vis versa), the two together are formidable.. but in a forested setting it seems like we have to rely on solely foot soldiers on the ground since tracked or wheeled vehicles wouldn't be able to manuever between (or through) the trees. Would it be helpful in those situations to have a an armored legged vehicle with some mounted heavy weapons?
Also, it seems like the legs could be at least partially protected by some sort of skirt around them. It might look like a big ballerina or something, though...
Also, google produces many results for "rugged(ized) computers" if you want to buy something particularly hardcore straight out of the box.
Yeah, the coder was quoted as saying, "Here is the warez, nothing special, but it does the job."
Sure enough!
Or you can Email Carly.
I think claims like this should be signed with a PGP signature or some other way to verify the authenticity of the claim.
For all I know, it could be a bogus email address to a SPAM address harvester or a valid link to the real email address of someone NOT soliciting mail. Yeah, I know, I'm paranoid.
[does the /. rendering of a post mess up a pgp-signed block of text??]
Right, it's creepy how they haven't divulged how they will carry out the DoS, and have been increadibly tight-lipped about it.. the language used doesn't actually require a traditional packet-flooding DoS which would disrupt the other users of an ISP, but essentially allows for malicious hacking... That's based on my read of the law and may be flat out wrong.
I suppose once they do it once or twice, the attack will be figured out, and counter-attack or defensive tools will be developed. That's the problem with poorly crafted legislation... it seems like such a good, innocent idea now, but once it's done it is SO hard to undo and doesn't even get done what they really want it to do in the first place.
That's not at ALL what I said.
Either we get the same absurd privileges as they do, or they don't get any special privileges. I vote for the second. Stealing copyrighted material is a violation of ISP's AUP's as much or more than sending SPAM is.. so the RIAA or whomever should decide whether or not they want to take the alleged copyright violator to court or not... if they DON'T, they provide evidence to the ISP who decides if they have enough evidence to shut down the account or internet connection. ISPs aren't and shouldn't be law enforcement agencies, but they should be responsible for enforce their AUPs when a violation is reported.
Sure, then you rail on about how the alleged copyright violator is innocent until proven guilty... but that's in a court of law. Outside of a court, evidence and due diligence is enough to act on an AUP.
My point? No need for more legislation.
Uhh... if your box was hacked a few times.. it wouldn't take a genius to hide a cron that watches for new drive mounts and dumps the contents someplace off-site or otherwise retrievable. If someone hacked your computer and went looking for your gpg key, they'd quickly discover your little floppy disk trick. Never trust a computer that's been hacked.. unless you've got a good, well configured IDS. Assuming you've taken such necessary precautions or reinstalled your system, then your floppy trick is a pretty nifty idea.
Huh? Why would we do that? I'm not suggesting that they shut down an entire ISP's internet connection... I'm saying that when I get SPAM, I try to track down who sent it and through what mail server(s).. then I forward the SPAM to the ISP of those mail servers and request that they terminate the service of the UCBE originator: I send the evidence along with the request for termination. Then its the ISP's responsibility to check their logs to determine if there is indeed a violation of their AUP and terminate the account or internet connection. Surely illegally trading copyrighted information is a violation of every (respectable) ISP's AUP. It might be a little messier for an ISP to verify the complainer's claim.. but the copyright holder has got to have some sort of evidence before they use this proposed legislation, too.
That solution doesn't require any more legislated powers to do, nor is it any more costly for the copyright holder to execute, I wouldn't imagine.
Traditionally civil disobedience, at least in the US, has been defined by non-violence. Or at least not directing the violence at people. An example of abortion civil disobedience would be to carry a protest sign within 50 feet of an entrance to an abortion clinic until you got arrested, because you thought the law banning such protests was a violation of your free-speach rights... although I believe this particular law has already been upheld...
But civil disobedience CERTAINLY doesn't cover shooting a doctor in the back with a high caliber rifle after he gets out of his car to go into his house... or things like that. That's murder... unless, I suppose, you think the 2nd amendment not only gives you the right to bear arms, but also the right to kill whomever you want, and you turn yourself in to the authorities immediately after killing and try to fight it through the courts... maybe then it could be considered civil disobedience.
It is questionable whether this DoS qualifies as civil disobedience. The DoSers aren't violating the law they want changed.. the usual tact for civil disobedience. It certainly is public, which is important. We could debate it back and forth, I suppose...
There are lots of great handbooks and resources for civil disobedience on the web.. An example is a handbook from some Animal Rights activists.
I like that the bill requires them to NOTIFY the Attorney General before they do anything... I don't like that they don't have to wait for approval.
So I started to think... "How would I feel if I was faced with 1000's of people scattered covertly across the country violating my rights?" Then I realized that I do... SPAMers. Sure, if I had the time, money, and expertise, I could take them each to court. But the reality is that even if I get SPAM, the best I can do is report the SPAMer to their ISP and hope they're not SPAM-friendly and will shut the account/network connection down.
So either they should allow us to DoS or hack SPAMers' computers, or they should require the RIAA or whomever to get ISPs to shut down illegal file sharing internet connections.. just like the rest of us.
I quite agree; that's why I quoted the POH rating of only 20K hours. It's rather comical that the main benchmark quoted is so meaningless... And the funny thing about hard drives is that unless you get a high-end hard drive designed for 24/7 operation, the manufacturers often rate the drives for 333 hours/month (11 hours/day * 30 or so days/month). IBM took some serious heat for that in one of their drives. So the MTTF requires perfect conditions and continuous use, but continuous use exceeds the POH rating.. Bah!
Well... according to internetnews, VeriSign is partnering with the Union of International Associations, based in Brussels, Belgium. Under that arrangement VeriSign would provide the back-end services for up to three years, after which UIA will open bidding for that job, hoping to contract out the service to a non-profit.
And $5M seems like a lot, until you consider the $6/.org/year cited in the original article for the amount Verisign currently receives for each of the 2.3M .org domains. That's $13.8M/year. If Verisign's share is reduced to $2.20/.org/year, they break even on their $5M seed... and that's just in the first year!
Contact your Representative
Contacting the Senate is a little harder since they don't have as nice a web-feedback engine (each senator has a different system), but it is still pretty dang simple.
Taking this WAY off topic... According to a previous article on /., the iPod uses a Toshiba 1.8" hard drive.. which according to Toshiba would be the 20GB MK2003GAH (HDD1364)... which is rated at 300,000 MTTF Hours.
so let me see... that would be about 34 years of 24/7 operation.. If you use it for 8 hours a day (a lot in my opinion).. that would be about 102 years. That seems a little absurd.. but that's what absurd benchmarks get you.
Note more importantly that the "Product Life" of the hard drive is rated at 5 years or 20,000 power ON hours. I'd guess that's a "which ever comes first" rating.
I think what they're saying is that the use of someone else's watermark on your stuff is illegal. It would be like writing a paper and stamping it with the raised seal of the IRS to demonstrate that it is ligitamite. It would be inappropriate to forge the IRS's seal, as it would a digital watermark, because it would be a fraudulent statement of certification by someone who isn't actually certifying it. You should stamp it with your OWN raised seal if you want to verify its authenticity for anyone looking at it.
I think it should be illegal to forge a digital watermark.. but only if digital watermark writers are available to anyone and everyone for a reasonable price (which obviously would make this legislative move a moot point in the anti-piracy game as anyone could write a digital watermark to their pirated Britney Spears MP3s) or players should not require a digital watermark to access the data.
This chain letter is being sent around so that everyone can say thank you to their system administrator. Simply add your name to the bottom of the list and send it to everyone you know... when your name is the 100th name on the list, forward the message to your system administrator!
-
Although the DMCA provides a limited exception for accessing lists of blocked Web sites, Beeson said that it is meaningless because another provision blocks users from writing the software tools necessary to access the lists.
Assuming that's really true, it is a pretty stupid and contradictory law that should be changed, in my oh-so-humble opinion."The copyright law says you can look under the hood under certain circumstances but you can't build a tool needed to open the hood," Beeson said. "This irrational rule is chilling important scientific research in violation of the First Amendment."
Multi-Function
- Lexmark X83 All in one Printer, Scanner, and Copier [$199]
Printer BundleLexmark X63 All-in-one [$169]
HP OfficeJet K80 All in one Printer, Scanner, and Copier. $50 rebate! [$300]
HP PSC 750 All in one (Printer, Scanner and Copier) $50 Mail-in Rebate [$248]
Epson 1000 ICS All-in-one color matched [$179]
- Lexmark Z65 bundle [$259]
PrintersLexmark Z55 bundle [$199]
Lexmark Z65 [$200]
Canon S820 [$250]
HP Deskjet 960 Color matched [$200]
HP Deskjet 940C [$130]
HP PhotoSmart 1115 [$200]
Lexmark E320 Laser Printer [$268]
Epson Stylus C60 [$70]
Except that according to the article, Dell's customer relationships so far only produce "about two days' worth of HP annual printer sales", or about 0.5%.
And how the heck does helping Dell transition it's customers away from HP's products help HP??