>... From TFA: > > Lydia Parnes, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, says it's possible to track people online without being underhanded. The FTC is in favor of online advertising, she explains, "and sometimes tracking makes advertising work better for consumers." > >
In other news, cats are in favor of open birdcages.
If step 7 is "..." before "Profit", then I humbly submit that the answer for "..." is to "lobby HomeSec".
D. Reed Freeman, the "Chief Privacy Officer" of Claria Networks (formerly Gator), the creators of the pervasive spyware package GAIN, has been appointed to the Department of Homeland Security's "Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee"
In United Soviet States of America, privacy watchdog watches YOU!
> And also strangely, those that don't want to trust the government with health care, are more than willing to trust the government to carry out capital punishment.
I've been wondering about cassette adaptors and how they work. (Because sometimes you can't just rip out your folks' tape deck and install a CD or MP3 player when you're driving 'em around on your Christmas vacation. Well, you can, but they'll get annoyed.)
Anyone know how the Griffin SmartDeck works? It appears to be a cassette deck adaptor that can respond to (changes in tension?) cassette deck commands, and relay them to an iPod.
The iPod shuffle (and the even cheaper thumbdrive form-factor MP3 players with drag-and-drop) is proof that you don't need much internal space to make an MP3 player.
Once upon a time, the Mobiblu folks (yeah, the same guys who did the 1-inch-cube MP3 player) built a player into the form of a cassette adaptor.
I'd like to wedge the Griffin SmartDeck's ability to use the tape player's controls into the form factor of the MobiBLU DAH-220 form factor, perhaps with the buttons carved into the shell of the "tape". No staticy FM-adaptor stuff. No dangly wires.
Something like this (or the sequel, here), but without the problems that caused this guy to give up and end up with a more dangly solution?
As far as I can tell, some tape decks respond well to this sort of treatment, and some require that the tape adaptor have the full-size gears/etc. to maintain proper tension.
The ideal product would fit in the tape's form factor, and use the tape's built-in buttons. No need to teach the old dogs any new tricks - it'd just work like a 900-minute cassette tape capable of infinitely-fast fast-forward/rewind, that would never break. (Every 5-10 hours, you'd eject the "tape", carry it inside with you, and recharge it (and fiddle with the music on it) by means of USB.)
Anyone ever tried this, and if so, how far did you get?
> would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other. Provoking widespread homosexual behaviour among troops would cause a "distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow to morale
> First off, Linux or any other major OS wouldn't be able to name every programmer to ever work on it.
My point wasn't to bash Microsoft. My point was that you don't use a "major OS" for something that should require nothing more than a 32-bit counter, some flip-flops, and some relays. A PIC or BASIC Stamp microcontroller is probably overkill for this application.
Many eyes make all bugs shallow - the simpler you make the hardware, the more eyes can look at it. Make the hardware simple enough that a single human being (say, any EE/CS undergrad student) can understand everything that's going on under the hood. Divulge the specifications to the world. End of problem.
If Microsoft is responsible for 99% of the code on a voting machine, (i.e. the OS and underlying libraries - basically everything Diebold didn't write), you really can't guarantee that an attacker won't compromise the system by targeting his attack against the 99% of the code that can't be examined.
Under such a circumstance, if I were on a standards board for voting equipment, (and assuming further that I was more interested in the integrity of the voting process than the kickbacks my bosses would be able to get for ensuring that certain vendors won the process), I'd take Diebold's "threat" as a "promise".
Diebold makes great bank machines - because banks aren't trying to provide authentication and anonymization at the same time. That's a fundamentally different problem than voting, where you have to provide an accurate and anonymous count. If Diebold hasn't figured that out in the 5 years since 2000, they never will. Please, Diebold, just go. This is not a market that needs your services, and you've already spent more trying to capture it than you'll ever be able to milk it for.
Targetedtraffic.com, who appear to be working with folks at the reputable-sounding domain names americanflags.com, revenue.net, golfcourses.com, ireit.com, erealestate.com, and it looks like they all hail from Delray Beach, Floriduh.
Congratulations, guys! I don't know whether you're spammers or not, but it takes talent to sound like a filthier bunch of domain-hijacking cockgobblers than the entire marketing department of Verisign. I mean, seriously -- I read those domains and was surprised when I didn't see any of you on the ROKSO list of the top 100 spammers. I actually looked. About the only way you could have looked like a bigger bunch of dirtballs would have been to have been based in Boca Raton, FL, or Slidell, LA.
I hate to say this guys, but even though you're not on the ROKSO list - after seeing who you're working with, I kinda hope Verisign/ICANN wins.
> " Pictures by Hive Mind" > >
A very interesting little experiment where multiple viewers get to
select whether to set a single pixel to black or white, to help build a
picture.
We are the Slashdotters.
Purchase more bandwidth and increase your hosting budget.
We will add your experimental and pixelogical distinctiveness to our own.
Your images will adapt to resemble that of the Goaste Guy.
Resistance is futile.
> Will there come a day where the study of hypnosis, or other forms of cognitive suggestion, is abused by firms for marketing? Perhaps some allready are. What kind of privacy law would restrict this?
<jedi>
There will not come a day when marketers abuse this. No marketers are abusing this. No privacy law is required. </jedi>
Zonk: We've posted this before, right?
Taco: Umm, actuatlly, not yet.
Roland: I've got $15 that says you will!
Taco: We don't usually dupe book reviews, only NYT articles on cellphones.
Zonk: Yeah, even Netcraft confirms it.
Ackbar: It's a DUPE!
All: Hey, what's he doing here? It's not Fark, it's Slashdot! (Cliches for nerds. As if that matters.)
"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on
any individual wire was guesswork. It was conceivable that they watched
everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire
whenever they wanted to. You had to live--did live, from habit that
became instinct--in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard,
and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."
Where I come from (non-management, grunt-level techie), appearing in any of these analysts' journals *costs* an author more credibility than it gains him or her. For example, if $RAG says that $CORP has the best customer support, I immediately assume that $CORP has such horrid customer support that they had to pay someone to make up some research that proves otherwise.
To be sarcastic, I'd ask "who the heck actually takes these studies seriously?", but obviously *somebody* does. Who are these people, and why do these people take these inudstry analyst firms/journals/reports seriously? Are they right or wrong to do so? This isn't an attack (or endorsement:) of your research -- I'm talking about the credibility gap in industry research, and my observation that it's an industry-wide problem.
The meta-credibility question is this: Given the amount of shoddy pay-for-play research out there, does being published in an analyst journal tend to cost (a researcher, his consulting company, his financial backers) more credibility than it can gains him/her/them? If not, why not -- and more importantly, if so, is there any way to reverse the trend?
Addendum: Make sure someone fucking buries the next NetSuite and fucking kills the next Zach Nelson before the lunch with Ballmer. Buy stronger chairs, too.
> Is there any situation where you can see yourself
open to the possibility of using an Ad-Supported operating system?
"No."
Now that that's out of the way, I wonder how well "Windows Defender" (the Microsoft "anti"-spyware offering) would work on an ad-supported version of Windows. I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that Microsoft purchased Gator^H^H^H^H^HClaria.
I wonder about these things, and I change my original opinion.
"Fuck, no. Not if you managed to throw a chair through Brin's head. Not if you manage suffocate Torvalds by stuffing his head up a penguin's ass. Not if you travelled back in time and shot the parents of Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing, and Steve Wozniak before any of them were born."
> > Peter Francis-Macrae, of St Neots, Cambs, was found guilty of threatening to kill and blackmail.
> >
Yes, he was a spammer but that's not what he was sentenced for.
Yes, but it sounds like he thre@tened to ki1l and b1ackmai1 so many people that the threats themselves qualified as spam:-)
> Misunderstandings are to be had through poor punctuation, and there's got to be hundreds of examples in everyday writing where a meaning can be twisted by moving some commas and periods.
This reminds me of my favorite argument for the use of the serial comma:
"Dedication: This book is dedicated to my parents, God and Ayn Rand."
There's a type of home game where you can spell things out in "leet" speak, or you get cards with strange letter and number cominations and you have to decipher the meaning. Anyone remember what it's called? That's what I think of when I see someone writing "R U Their".
Actually, it's worse than that.
It's not merely substitution of "u" for "you". It's an entire dialect. If you read through it "aloud" (i.e. subvocalizing every word, in the order in which it's written), it's parsable as spoken English, but not as written English.
The frightening part is that it's an indication that we're indeed raising a generation of illiterates. People who make it through school in this state can (probably) read English, they can (definitely) speak English, but without punctuation or capitalization, they're incapable of writing it.
(random googling ensues... revealing the following representative sample that appears to discuss the physics/animation of a computer basketball game)
wat r u stupid or something wat do u want to be doing standing up straight and running with da ball u idiot dast real animation he is going low and attacking the basket dumb a** watch basketball and u will c him do da same exact thing
Stick a few commas and periods and capitals in there and it's essentially a machine-generated transcript of the following spoken English:
"What are you, stupid or something? What do you want to be doing? Standing up straight and running with the ball? You idiot! That's real animation: he's going low and attacking the basket. Dumbass, watch basketball and you'll see him do the same exact thing."
The punctuation and capitalization cues aren't strictly necessary to make sense of it, but their presence enables a brain to quickly scan over the passage without having to read it as though it were dialogue on a script.
Net effect: People who write English can have their ideas read and digested more rapidly than people who write in txtspeak.
But if we're moving to a postliterate society, that might not be such a hindrance for the illiterates. If you can read English quickly (because most of the written English you'll encounter still contains punctuation/capitalization), but are never required to write English (because omnipresent voice/video messaging has replaced email as a means of communication), maybe it doesn't matter that you're half-illiterate.
sid060> did you know that the abbreviations you and your "homeys"
use are codes from the mainframe days?
Rayn3> what do u mean?
sid060> Well... I don't know if I should tell...
Rayn3> u have 2. give an example.
sid060> Okay. "how r u" is code for "I am absolutely bereft of gorm."
Rayn3> r u seri^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
Slashdot Mirror
>
> Lydia Parnes, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, says it's possible to track people online without being underhanded. The FTC is in favor of online advertising, she explains, "and sometimes tracking makes advertising work better for consumers."
>
> In other news, cats are in favor of open birdcages.
If step 7 is "..." before "Profit", then I humbly submit that the answer for "..." is to "lobby HomeSec".
Gator CPO at the Department of Homeland Security
In United Soviet States of America, privacy watchdog watches YOU!
In the past century, governments have racke dup 180,000,000 deaths.
Trusting a government with health care is strange. Trusting the government with killing is simply a matter of recognizing a core competency.
Anyone know how the Griffin SmartDeck works? It appears to be a cassette deck adaptor that can respond to (changes in tension?) cassette deck commands, and relay them to an iPod.
The iPod shuffle (and the even cheaper thumbdrive form-factor MP3 players with drag-and-drop) is proof that you don't need much internal space to make an MP3 player.
Once upon a time, the Mobiblu folks (yeah, the same guys who did the 1-inch-cube MP3 player) built a player into the form of a cassette adaptor.
I'd like to wedge the Griffin SmartDeck's ability to use the tape player's controls into the form factor of the MobiBLU DAH-220 form factor, perhaps with the buttons carved into the shell of the "tape". No staticy FM-adaptor stuff. No dangly wires.
Something like this (or the sequel, here), but without the problems that caused this guy to give up and end up with a more dangly solution?
As far as I can tell, some tape decks respond well to this sort of treatment, and some require that the tape adaptor have the full-size gears/etc. to maintain proper tension.
The ideal product would fit in the tape's form factor, and use the tape's built-in buttons. No need to teach the old dogs any new tricks - it'd just work like a 900-minute cassette tape capable of infinitely-fast fast-forward/rewind, that would never break. (Every 5-10 hours, you'd eject the "tape", carry it inside with you, and recharge it (and fiddle with the music on it) by means of USB.)
Anyone ever tried this, and if so, how far did you get?
(Someone had to say it.)
A distasteful but completely non-lethal blow.
Time to post a picture of that damned owl again.
My point wasn't to bash Microsoft. My point was that you don't use a "major OS" for something that should require nothing more than a 32-bit counter, some flip-flops, and some relays. A PIC or BASIC Stamp microcontroller is probably overkill for this application.
Many eyes make all bugs shallow - the simpler you make the hardware, the more eyes can look at it. Make the hardware simple enough that a single human being (say, any EE/CS undergrad student) can understand everything that's going on under the hood. Divulge the specifications to the world. End of problem.
If Microsoft is responsible for 99% of the code on a voting machine, (i.e. the OS and underlying libraries - basically everything Diebold didn't write), you really can't guarantee that an attacker won't compromise the system by targeting his attack against the 99% of the code that can't be examined.
Under such a circumstance, if I were on a standards board for voting equipment, (and assuming further that I was more interested in the integrity of the voting process than the kickbacks my bosses would be able to get for ensuring that certain vendors won the process), I'd take Diebold's "threat" as a "promise".
Diebold makes great bank machines - because banks aren't trying to provide authentication and anonymization at the same time. That's a fundamentally different problem than voting, where you have to provide an accurate and anonymous count. If Diebold hasn't figured that out in the 5 years since 2000, they never will. Please, Diebold, just go. This is not a market that needs your services, and you've already spent more trying to capture it than you'll ever be able to milk it for.
http://wadnd.com/
Appears to be part of...
Targetedtraffic.com, who appear to be working with folks at the reputable-sounding domain names americanflags.com, revenue.net, golfcourses.com, ireit.com, erealestate.com, and it looks like they all hail from Delray Beach, Floriduh.
Congratulations, guys! I don't know whether you're spammers or not, but it takes talent to sound like a filthier bunch of domain-hijacking cockgobblers than the entire marketing department of Verisign. I mean, seriously -- I read those domains and was surprised when I didn't see any of you on the ROKSO list of the top 100 spammers. I actually looked. About the only way you could have looked like a bigger bunch of dirtballs would have been to have been based in Boca Raton, FL, or Slidell, LA.
I hate to say this guys, but even though you're not on the ROKSO list - after seeing who you're working with, I kinda hope Verisign/ICANN wins.
In Korea, your grandma is the only person who needs this patch?
Close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and missile offense. Missile defense is a whole 'nother ball game.
>
> Party on Bill!
> Party on Ted!
Join us now and share the software!
WYLD GNUZ!
Nothing for you to see here. Please remember wipe that crap off the lens from the last time you flew along.
>
> A very interesting little experiment where multiple viewers get to select whether to set a single pixel to black or white, to help build a picture.
We are the Slashdotters.
Purchase more bandwidth and increase your hosting budget.
We will add your experimental and pixelogical distinctiveness to our own.
Your images will adapt to resemble that of the Goaste Guy.
Resistance is futile.
<jedi>
There will not come a day when marketers abuse this.
No marketers are abusing this.
No privacy law is required.
</jedi>
Nothing for me to see here. I'll move along.
Zonk: We've posted this before, right?
Taco: Umm, actuatlly, not yet.
Roland: I've got $15 that says you will!
Taco: We don't usually dupe book reviews, only NYT articles on cellphones.
Zonk: Yeah, even Netcraft confirms it.
Ackbar: It's a DUPE!
All: Hey, what's he doing here? It's not Fark, it's Slashdot! (Cliches for nerds. As if that matters.)
Citizen kentrel anteposting approved fullwise suggestion contained thisposting doubleplus ridiculous verging crimethink
To be sarcastic, I'd ask "who the heck actually takes these studies seriously?", but obviously *somebody* does. Who are these people, and why do these people take these inudstry analyst firms/journals/reports seriously? Are they right or wrong to do so? This isn't an attack (or endorsement :) of your research -- I'm talking about the credibility gap in industry research, and my observation that it's an industry-wide problem.
The meta-credibility question is this: Given the amount of shoddy pay-for-play research out there, does being published in an analyst journal tend to cost (a researcher, his consulting company, his financial backers) more credibility than it can gains him/her/them? If not, why not -- and more importantly, if so, is there any way to reverse the trend?
Addendum: Make sure someone fucking buries the next NetSuite and fucking kills the next Zach Nelson before the lunch with Ballmer. Buy stronger chairs, too.
I swear! I swear to you, I was only asking him if his hovercraft was full of eels! Stop fondling my buttocks!
"No."
Now that that's out of the way, I wonder how well "Windows Defender" (the Microsoft "anti"-spyware offering) would work on an ad-supported version of Windows. I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that Microsoft purchased Gator^H^H^H^H^HClaria.
I wonder about these things, and I change my original opinion.
"Fuck, no. Not if you managed to throw a chair through Brin's head. Not if you manage suffocate Torvalds by stuffing his head up a penguin's ass. Not if you travelled back in time and shot the parents of Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing, and Steve Wozniak before any of them were born."
Newsgroups: alt.thisguy.moderate.up.up.up
Should that be...
Approved: For users on kremvax
Newsgroups: alt.thisguy.up.up.up.moderated
>
> Yes, he was a spammer but that's not what he was sentenced for.
Yes, but it sounds like he thre@tened to ki1l and b1ackmai1 so many people that the threats themselves qualified as spam :-)
This reminds me of my favorite argument for the use of the serial comma:
"Dedication: This book is dedicated to my parents, God and Ayn Rand."
Actually, it's worse than that.
It's not merely substitution of "u" for "you". It's an entire dialect. If you read through it "aloud" (i.e. subvocalizing every word, in the order in which it's written), it's parsable as spoken English, but not as written English.
The frightening part is that it's an indication that we're indeed raising a generation of illiterates. People who make it through school in this state can (probably) read English, they can (definitely) speak English, but without punctuation or capitalization, they're incapable of writing it.
(random googling ensues... revealing the following representative sample that appears to discuss the physics/animation of a computer basketball game)
Stick a few commas and periods and capitals in there and it's essentially a machine-generated transcript of the following spoken English:
The punctuation and capitalization cues aren't strictly necessary to make sense of it, but their presence enables a brain to quickly scan over the passage without having to read it as though it were dialogue on a script.
Net effect: People who write English can have their ideas read and digested more rapidly than people who write in txtspeak.
But if we're moving to a postliterate society, that might not be such a hindrance for the illiterates. If you can read English quickly (because most of the written English you'll encounter still contains punctuation/capitalization), but are never required to write English (because omnipresent voice/video messaging has replaced email as a means of communication), maybe it doesn't matter that you're half-illiterate.
joined channel #unixgurus
sid060> did you know that the abbreviations you and your "homeys" use are codes from the mainframe days?
Rayn3> what do u mean?
sid060> Well... I don't know if I should tell...
Rayn3> u have 2. give an example.
sid060> Okay. "how r u" is code for "I am absolutely bereft of gorm."
Rayn3> r u seri^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H