The proposed feature would be more useful if one could specify a list IP ranges (via subnet masking) from which login requests are permitted while silently blocking all of the rest. For example, all IPs not white listed in this manner should present the login screen, but fail silently with the "incorrect username or password" message, even if the correct username and password are used, so that attackers would receive no useful distinguishing information about the failed attempt. This feature would raise the bar for attackers substantially by requiring not just any US proxy, but one which happens to be located within a white listed subnet.
The problem with this study is that it ignores several key advantages enjoyed by patent trolls over their targets:
The patent trolls are experts in the field of patent litigation and being attorneys themselves have perfected their craft over the lifetime of their firm. In other words, they are very efficient litigators, able to pursue large and complex cases over years or even decades for bottom dollar while wearing down companies whose primary competency is something other than litigation; technology in this case. When a company meets the patent trolls in court they are, with notable exceptions (IBM comes to mind), competing with the attorneys on their home playing field. Advantage: attorneys.
The patent trolls do not produce technology products of their own and thus are not generally subject to counter-claims or cross licensing inducements. Advantage: attorneys.
The patent cases which DO eventually go to trial may only get there after many years of other companies paying settlements. Indeed, the protracted litigation can be used as a stick to accelerate more settlement payments while the case drags on and the costs for the defendants spiral ever higher (remember that the patent troll are usually more cost efficient than the defendants per unit of litigation time, that is their business as attorneys after all). Even if the patent trolls ultimately loose they have still made lots of money during the litigation process; winning the case is almost icing on the cake by way of comparison. Advantage: attorneys.
Finally, the study examined too few cases. How can we be sure that they didn't selected a weaker sample of patents than what is generally litigated? Could it be that many more patents never go to trial because they are strong enough to make defending infringement unfavorable for the defendants?
If a male wrote this drivel, he'd at the minimum. be fired
It's still early, she may yet be fired for causing a PR headache; she is only a vice president after all. If you work for a major corporation and you aren't officially authorized to speak with the press, do yourself a favor and don't. This is especially true when the subject matter is either embarrassing or irrelevant to the company's business or both. When in doubt, always remember: silentium est aureum.
Anonymous VPN services will start to become a lot more popular when Joe Sixpack sees his friend Jim Riverhead get hounded by bill collectors daily for a multimillion judgement for downloading an album.
We may also see an increase in the use of cash cards (ala Green Dot) to purchase mobile WiFi access with a false name and address. Another side effect of this will be to accelerate the decline of free anonymous WiFi access at places like coffee shops, airports, bookstores and libraries; nobody will want to take on the liability.
it means all the other carriers will have to drop their prices as well to prevent their customers from leaving in droves.
Not quite. In the United States there are two primary reasons why mobile service is costly. First, people would rather get their phone for $100 or less (down to $0 for the entry models) even if it means paying thousands for the phone, many times more it's present value, over the life of the contract. Second, the largest carrier in the United States, with the best network, is Verizon and especially for basic mobile service (4G and smartphones are still niches compared to the mobile masses still using cheap flip phones). The policies of Verizon, including limited and locked down phone selection (Verizon uses CDMA, not GSM like most of the rest of the world) combined with unbeatable network coverage (locked in due to ownership of large blocks of the most useful mobile frequencies), combine to make competing at the low end of the market (again, not talking about iPhone here) a losing proposition. T-Mobile might be great in Europe, but here in the United States they are a third tier carrier behind the second tier of AT&T or Sprint/Nextel which are in turn behind Verizon. Actually, it's too bad that a nicer company like T-Mobile, which uses GSM and unlocks phones when customers ask, doesn't have a larger share in the US Market, but the position of Verizon's network appears to be almost unassailable now.
Unfortunately, the remaining smallpox samples were not destroyed along with the naturally occurring disease. The Soviets had extensive weaponization programs involving smallpox precisely because they anticipated low immunities among target populations. The elimination of this disease in the wild has made it a very attractive weapon for unscrupulous governments and terrorists. If we are going to eliminate diseases like this in the future then we should continue vaccinating against them, even if they no longer occur naturally, so as to diminish their attractiveness as candidates for biological weaponization.
Not only are they single use, but they were always low profit to begin with so the GP is still right. The reason that we have such chronic shortages of flu vaccines each year in the United States, for example, is that very few pharmaceutical companies want to to go to the trouble and expense of making them in exchange for such modest rewards. They believe (correctly) that their production, research and development capital can be more profitably spent elsewhere. Large legal judgments, such as this one, will only provide further disincentive and discouragement to vaccine work. The irony of this whole affair is that these parents are going to make many other children worse off in years to come as vaccines become harder to get and more expensive. Indeed, this is yet another example of Internet enabled and organized crackpots doing their part to roll back the hard-won progress of science in American society.
Sadly, you've been modded informative, which means many Slashdot readers are ignorant of the basic Enlightenment philosophy underlying American law
I'm afraid they're ignorant of more than just that and if Slashdot readers cannot understand and articulate the principles of basic Enlightenment philosophy, how much less the average American citizen? The founders' great error was to stake the future of this nation upon the existence of educated, reasonable and well informed citizens. Indeed, if they could see now the level to which the public discourse has descended, they would no doubt be ashamed of us for squandering the inheritance that they bequeathed.
They're simply not designed to outlive their replacement models.
Also, have you seen what sort of condition the textbooks are in after a few years in the average California public middle school? The books are absolutely thrashed because the kids have no respect for them. Contrast this with private schools where parents often have to pay for the textbooks out of pocket along with the tuition; the books are often covered with protective paper and treated with respect so that they may be resold or traded in excellent condition at the end of the year towards next year's books. I predict that schools that waste money on these iPads will invariably find most of them lost, stolen, or broken by the end of the year. The last thing that students here in California need is an iPad at the taxpayers' expense and especially not now while the state budget is drowning in red ink.
I use and recommend Adblock Plus, Better Privacy, CustomizeGoogle, Flashblock, NoScript and RequestPolicy. This combination allows for extraordinarily fine grained control over what sort of information is tracked from session to session. Now, if you log into a site using an account controlled by that site then they are going to track some clicks regardless of what addons are used, but if you are logging in with a named account then you probably already knew that.
If you had grown up behind the iron curtain or lived under a truly repressive regime at some point in your life, you might feel differently. In any case, the civilization we presently enjoy is only a few steps removed from the barbarism of our past; you would do well to remember that before painting a target on your back.
excuse me, but Chavez is now well into the transition from popular support (now in the declining phase) to crushing opposition. Notice how he has methodically shut down all media companies which criticize him or fail to tow his party line by revoking their licenses, expropriating their property, etc. Chavez has repeatedly threatened his political enemies and those who oppose him with violent repression (i.e. using the army and the police as his own party goon squad). Chavez is well on his way to becoming the archetypical tyrant, acquiring the trappings of a tyrant piece by piece. Just wait one decade more (or less), with Chavez still in power, the transformation will be complete. Even the left both here in the United States and in Europe, which initially supported some aspects of his government, have now distanced themselves (remember "Por que no te calles?"). He is ruining Venezuela and every thinking person who remains outside of his power should be able to see that.
The money from the housing crisis isn't gone. On the contrary, even more money has been made available.
That is absolutely positively wrong. The fiat monetary systems currently in use in all modern economies combined with fractional reserve banking mean that most of the money supply at any one time exists not as actual paper bills or coins or even demand deposits at banks, but rather as debt instruments which do not have guaranteed value until the point of liquidation. If borrowers can no longer service their debts and extinguish them in bankruptcy, then the money or credit that was created by those debts is likewise extinguished. Most of the money that was created by new debt during the housing bubble was not banked as demand deposits at banking institutions (it couldn't be because the banking insurance schemes only insure depositors up to a fixed maximum amount), but rather loaned out again and again with the previous debts booked as capital reserves to back new loans. That is why the Federal Reserve and other central banks were trying desperately to keep all of these loans from going bad at once, because that would result in a very rapid contraction of the total monetary supply and associated nastiness (i.e. bank runs, liquidations, depression, etc). If you are interested in a more detailed, albeit simplified, explanation of how this works then might I suggest Money as Debt?
I'm sure that under the right circumstances Joseph Stalin would have been a charming guest at a dinner party, but that didn't make him a nice guy or excuse his crimes.
I have no difficulty believing that Castro pulled the trigger, up close and personal, on more than one occasion and tried not to get blood on his shoes. Say what you want about Bush, but Castro is by far the worst for depriving millions of people of their liberty for more than half a century and for mentoring aspiring tyrants, notably Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, in other Latin American countries.
Castro is not an idiot or an ideologue. He is the classic opportunist - and an intelligent one, at that.
Perhaps, but that does not excuse the immorality and injustice of his regime. Indeed, it is the height of hubris to hear one such as Castro, who knew exactly what he was really doing during all of those years of communist dictatorship, lecture the United States, as he likes to do from time to time, on morality and issues of social justice. It will be interesting to see whether or not the Cuban people maintain their facade of reverence for his person and policies in subsequent generations. Perhaps some will, but I think that most will not or at least their views will be tempered by their unfiltered knowledge of the regime's crimes against liberty and justice.
The Air Force and Navy bases were explicitly acknowledged in their signed disclosures
You're kidding right? Just imagine, if you will, the dumbest American couple that you can find being presented with a stack of loose leaf paper 3 feet high (you laugh, but shit like this actually happened during the bubble) constituting their mortgage/home purchase agreement. They are told to sign here and initial there, all the while being rushed through the process and told "you don't need to read that", "almost done!", or "only 10 more initials". By the time the befuddled couple has left the real estate office with the keys in their hands they don't know what the fuck they just signed. These are the same people who are now underwater on their mortgages and begging you, their fellow taxpayer (who didn't go out like a dumbass and overpay for a house), to bail them out. I say that we foreclose, kick them out, and resell the house for whatever the market will bear. It is time and past time to stop rewarding stupidity in this country and start making some tough examples, "predatory" loans be damned (notice how everyone who fucked up wants to blame anyone but themselves for their crappy loan).
We are talking about North Korea here, the ridiculous is quite routine for them. Indeed, if they even knew enough to know how foolish they appear to the outside world, that would be something, but they don't.
Slashdot Mirror
and then a waterfall of exquisite, transcendental, and searing heat/pain/dear-fucking-god-thats-hot of solder across both my testicles.
Sort of like very hot grits?
The proposed feature would be more useful if one could specify a list IP ranges (via subnet masking) from which login requests are permitted while silently blocking all of the rest. For example, all IPs not white listed in this manner should present the login screen, but fail silently with the "incorrect username or password" message, even if the correct username and password are used, so that attackers would receive no useful distinguishing information about the failed attempt. This feature would raise the bar for attackers substantially by requiring not just any US proxy, but one which happens to be located within a white listed subnet.
The problem with this study is that it ignores several key advantages enjoyed by patent trolls over their targets:
Finally, the study examined too few cases. How can we be sure that they didn't selected a weaker sample of patents than what is generally litigated? Could it be that many more patents never go to trial because they are strong enough to make defending infringement unfavorable for the defendants?
If a male wrote this drivel, he'd at the minimum. be fired
It's still early, she may yet be fired for causing a PR headache; she is only a vice president after all. If you work for a major corporation and you aren't officially authorized to speak with the press, do yourself a favor and don't. This is especially true when the subject matter is either embarrassing or irrelevant to the company's business or both. When in doubt, always remember: silentium est aureum.
Anonymous VPN services will start to become a lot more popular when Joe Sixpack sees his friend Jim Riverhead get hounded by bill collectors daily for a multimillion judgement for downloading an album.
We may also see an increase in the use of cash cards (ala Green Dot) to purchase mobile WiFi access with a false name and address. Another side effect of this will be to accelerate the decline of free anonymous WiFi access at places like coffee shops, airports, bookstores and libraries; nobody will want to take on the liability.
it means all the other carriers will have to drop their prices as well to prevent their customers from leaving in droves.
Not quite. In the United States there are two primary reasons why mobile service is costly. First, people would rather get their phone for $100 or less (down to $0 for the entry models) even if it means paying thousands for the phone, many times more it's present value, over the life of the contract. Second, the largest carrier in the United States, with the best network, is Verizon and especially for basic mobile service (4G and smartphones are still niches compared to the mobile masses still using cheap flip phones). The policies of Verizon, including limited and locked down phone selection (Verizon uses CDMA, not GSM like most of the rest of the world) combined with unbeatable network coverage (locked in due to ownership of large blocks of the most useful mobile frequencies), combine to make competing at the low end of the market (again, not talking about iPhone here) a losing proposition. T-Mobile might be great in Europe, but here in the United States they are a third tier carrier behind the second tier of AT&T or Sprint/Nextel which are in turn behind Verizon. Actually, it's too bad that a nicer company like T-Mobile, which uses GSM and unlocks phones when customers ask, doesn't have a larger share in the US Market, but the position of Verizon's network appears to be almost unassailable now.
Unfortunately, the remaining smallpox samples were not destroyed along with the naturally occurring disease. The Soviets had extensive weaponization programs involving smallpox precisely because they anticipated low immunities among target populations. The elimination of this disease in the wild has made it a very attractive weapon for unscrupulous governments and terrorists. If we are going to eliminate diseases like this in the future then we should continue vaccinating against them, even if they no longer occur naturally, so as to diminish their attractiveness as candidates for biological weaponization.
Not only are they single use, but they were always low profit to begin with so the GP is still right. The reason that we have such chronic shortages of flu vaccines each year in the United States, for example, is that very few pharmaceutical companies want to to go to the trouble and expense of making them in exchange for such modest rewards. They believe (correctly) that their production, research and development capital can be more profitably spent elsewhere. Large legal judgments, such as this one, will only provide further disincentive and discouragement to vaccine work. The irony of this whole affair is that these parents are going to make many other children worse off in years to come as vaccines become harder to get and more expensive. Indeed, this is yet another example of Internet enabled and organized crackpots doing their part to roll back the hard-won progress of science in American society.
Sadly, you've been modded informative, which means many Slashdot readers are ignorant of the basic Enlightenment philosophy underlying American law
I'm afraid they're ignorant of more than just that and if Slashdot readers cannot understand and articulate the principles of basic Enlightenment philosophy, how much less the average American citizen? The founders' great error was to stake the future of this nation upon the existence of educated, reasonable and well informed citizens. Indeed, if they could see now the level to which the public discourse has descended, they would no doubt be ashamed of us for squandering the inheritance that they bequeathed.
We stand behind our freedoms... until someone says they'll hurt us, then we cave.
Which is why we are now in the process of losing them.
I'm embarassed to admit that I'd forgotten how often I'm logged into gmail in another tab while using google search...
The precise source of said embarrassment is left up to the imagination of the reader...
They're simply not designed to outlive their replacement models.
Also, have you seen what sort of condition the textbooks are in after a few years in the average California public middle school? The books are absolutely thrashed because the kids have no respect for them. Contrast this with private schools where parents often have to pay for the textbooks out of pocket along with the tuition; the books are often covered with protective paper and treated with respect so that they may be resold or traded in excellent condition at the end of the year towards next year's books. I predict that schools that waste money on these iPads will invariably find most of them lost, stolen, or broken by the end of the year. The last thing that students here in California need is an iPad at the taxpayers' expense and especially not now while the state budget is drowning in red ink.
I use and recommend Adblock Plus, Better Privacy, CustomizeGoogle, Flashblock, NoScript and RequestPolicy. This combination allows for extraordinarily fine grained control over what sort of information is tracked from session to session. Now, if you log into a site using an account controlled by that site then they are going to track some clicks regardless of what addons are used, but if you are logging in with a named account then you probably already knew that.
If you had grown up behind the iron curtain or lived under a truly repressive regime at some point in your life, you might feel differently. In any case, the civilization we presently enjoy is only a few steps removed from the barbarism of our past; you would do well to remember that before painting a target on your back.
excuse me, but Chavez is now well into the transition from popular support (now in the declining phase) to crushing opposition. Notice how he has methodically shut down all media companies which criticize him or fail to tow his party line by revoking their licenses, expropriating their property, etc. Chavez has repeatedly threatened his political enemies and those who oppose him with violent repression (i.e. using the army and the police as his own party goon squad). Chavez is well on his way to becoming the archetypical tyrant, acquiring the trappings of a tyrant piece by piece. Just wait one decade more (or less), with Chavez still in power, the transformation will be complete. Even the left both here in the United States and in Europe, which initially supported some aspects of his government, have now distanced themselves (remember "Por que no te calles?"). He is ruining Venezuela and every thinking person who remains outside of his power should be able to see that.
The money from the housing crisis isn't gone. On the contrary, even more money has been made available.
That is absolutely positively wrong. The fiat monetary systems currently in use in all modern economies combined with fractional reserve banking mean that most of the money supply at any one time exists not as actual paper bills or coins or even demand deposits at banks, but rather as debt instruments which do not have guaranteed value until the point of liquidation. If borrowers can no longer service their debts and extinguish them in bankruptcy, then the money or credit that was created by those debts is likewise extinguished. Most of the money that was created by new debt during the housing bubble was not banked as demand deposits at banking institutions (it couldn't be because the banking insurance schemes only insure depositors up to a fixed maximum amount), but rather loaned out again and again with the previous debts booked as capital reserves to back new loans. That is why the Federal Reserve and other central banks were trying desperately to keep all of these loans from going bad at once, because that would result in a very rapid contraction of the total monetary supply and associated nastiness (i.e. bank runs, liquidations, depression, etc). If you are interested in a more detailed, albeit simplified, explanation of how this works then might I suggest Money as Debt?
I'm sure that under the right circumstances Joseph Stalin would have been a charming guest at a dinner party, but that didn't make him a nice guy or excuse his crimes.
I have no difficulty believing that Castro pulled the trigger, up close and personal, on more than one occasion and tried not to get blood on his shoes. Say what you want about Bush, but Castro is by far the worst for depriving millions of people of their liberty for more than half a century and for mentoring aspiring tyrants, notably Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, in other Latin American countries.
Castro is not an idiot or an ideologue. He is the classic opportunist - and an intelligent one, at that.
Perhaps, but that does not excuse the immorality and injustice of his regime. Indeed, it is the height of hubris to hear one such as Castro, who knew exactly what he was really doing during all of those years of communist dictatorship, lecture the United States, as he likes to do from time to time, on morality and issues of social justice. It will be interesting to see whether or not the Cuban people maintain their facade of reverence for his person and policies in subsequent generations. Perhaps some will, but I think that most will not or at least their views will be tempered by their unfiltered knowledge of the regime's crimes against liberty and justice.
ya know, massive operations centers are just soooo glass house IS anyway, totally 80's thinkin
On the other hand, re-creating the 80's War Games style control room on the company dime would have a certain degree of old-school nerd cachet.
You may not be able to remove it with WD40 but you can sure cover it up with a WD40 sticker
Microsoft has already done that...
The Air Force and Navy bases were explicitly acknowledged in their signed disclosures
You're kidding right? Just imagine, if you will, the dumbest American couple that you can find being presented with a stack of loose leaf paper 3 feet high (you laugh, but shit like this actually happened during the bubble) constituting their mortgage/home purchase agreement. They are told to sign here and initial there, all the while being rushed through the process and told "you don't need to read that", "almost done!", or "only 10 more initials". By the time the befuddled couple has left the real estate office with the keys in their hands they don't know what the fuck they just signed. These are the same people who are now underwater on their mortgages and begging you, their fellow taxpayer (who didn't go out like a dumbass and overpay for a house), to bail them out. I say that we foreclose, kick them out, and resell the house for whatever the market will bear. It is time and past time to stop rewarding stupidity in this country and start making some tough examples, "predatory" loans be damned (notice how everyone who fucked up wants to blame anyone but themselves for their crappy loan).
Reminds me of Monsters Inc...
Mike: Can I borrow your odorant?
Sulley: Yeah, I got, uh, Smelly Garbage or Old Dumpster.
Mike: You got, uh, Low Tide?
Sulley: No.
Mike: How about Wet Dog?
Sulley: Yep. Stink it up.
Iran is no banana republic.
Perhaps not, but compared to the United States they are a third rate power. We could easily crush them if it suited us.
...is a ridiculous concept
We are talking about North Korea here, the ridiculous is quite routine for them. Indeed, if they even knew enough to know how foolish they appear to the outside world, that would be something, but they don't.