Someone had to have been paying for the domain and ip address. I'm no expert on Canadian law regarding this sort of thing, but companies releasing information about customers has been a big issue in the US lately. Regardless of what the law says, I don't think that the organizations responsible for those should be forced to out the identity of the person responsivle. We should be allowed to say things and take actions in an anonymous fashion, legal things mind you, in order to protect ourselves from undeserved retribution from government autorities. If the things that were on this site were slander, that's one thing. But if these are real facts concerning, of all things especially, politicians unethical behavior, they need to stick around, and as free people shouldn't have to fess everything the government. In that sense, I salute the Anonymous Coward.
God bless the good ol' land of the free. This is getting way past rediculous. It seems almost that soon murdering all witnesses that saw you commit some petty crime, like gambliing, will net you less jail time than getting busted for the small thing. I mean, 5 years for sitting at a computer and clicking a mouse. Sadly, it isn't sounding so unusual, but damn, that seems VERY fucking cruel.
Consumers have high hopes for Conroe? More bullshit.
Everything I have personally read on every tech/hardware/overclocking/etc site about Conroe has been about the chips slaughtering AMD's top FX chips. The core line has got a LOT of people excited. Intel's finally given up on Netburst, Intel is finally fighting back against AMD, Intel is ready to reclaim the desktop, etc. People who, you know, actually read all that stuff are consumers too you know. Tech is one of the most popular and active subjects on the net. And people talking tech have high hopes for Intel's new line. Calling that bullshit is, well, frankly it's bullshit.
Other than pick with your comment, I agree that these analysts are crap.
I'm not a fan of this merger idea, but considering the general popularity AMD hardware does have amongst the Linux community, I have to wonder if AMD might just be able to remedy that problem. It is definatly why my last 2 cards have been nVidia.
I don't want ANY of these companies to merge. I want more houses out there designing chips, pushing the limits, and enabling us to have more and more powerful rigs at a cheaper price. I don't want less competition in the sector one bit. We already only have really 2 choices for CPUs, and two different choices for GPUs. I wish there were a lot more to choose from. What I don't want is to be locked into a specific video card chipset based on whether I have an Intel or AMD CPU.
First off, opening DRM so different music players can interoperate with these DRMed files has NOTHING to do with piracy. Having said that, I thought piracy, at least in this digital age, meant the illegal copying, trading, selling, "stealing," etc of digital information (bits). The concept of "State Sponsored" piracy just seems to be a huge oxymoron. If the state were actually saying that these are legal activities, wouldn't it cease to really be piracy? The fact that corporations are accusing governments of this kind of stuff makes my head spin. I thought the government was suppose to define what was illegal, and not corporations. Oh wait...
Ok, DIVX is by FAR the WORST tech product ever created. I can't imagine how this isn't on the list. And AOL #1!?! We all know AOL sucks, but come on, at least it helped the internet and the web reach a critical mass in the US. Zip drives? What about SuperDisk? Disney Lion King CD-Rom? I guess, but it's not like they came up with WinG, you can blame Microsoft for that. Didn't warcraft 2 use WinG? That's not a "bad tech product", so why is this Lion King software any different..
Anyway, we could nitpick this list to death, but man oh man, that fact that DIVX players aren't on this list is a crime.
Yeah, I'm hoping eventually they might just up it to a 650 if it screws up again. But hell, It's WAY better than the 300 I used to have before getting the 600. That thing was a beast.
Can't blackberries access a pop acount? Or this this just not good enough? Or you can't you set up e-mail forwarding directly to the users blackberry account if you need "push" mail? Or doesn't this work? I just don't really understand where this estimated software cost is coming from? Do blackberries use weird custom protocols?
On a side note, I'm getting my replacement treo600 tomorrow! It succumbed to the known "no service" battery fault a while ago, not to mention a broken top panel by the sd card, with missing buttons, broken volume buttons and a loose antenna. Good thing I have the replacement option paid for. But this had me thinking just how "rugged" are blackberries physically? As far as I know, they have quite similar features as the treo. The cell phone is probably the part I use the LEAST on the thing:) But it has really been through quite the torture test as you might have guessed. Any blackberry owners out there really abuse the thing?
Most people here like to trash MySpace, because, as we all know, Slashdotters are just, like, way totally cooler.....
But seriously, a lot of people fail to realize just how powerful a large social networks like MySpace can be. I do web mining research for a professor at my university, and wow, MySpace just contains a HUGE wealth of data to play with..
Anyway, I came across this article a while ago, and I thought it was really interesting. It basically talks about how society has clamped down on public and social space for youth, and how online space is really all youth have now..
Nothing like a group of a few poweful men enforcing their whim on us, ensuring that they can continue to stay in control over the masses. Passing laws, rules, regulations, and restricitons that pretty much none of us want, without consulting us, and barely even informing us.
Can't you just smell that freedom?
Can we please quit voting for the establishment now? Please? With a cherry? For the children?
OK, maybe not, but stay with me on this for a second. Lets face it. The music industry today pretty much sucks. Most music fans I know are highly frustrated with the state of it. Most of the big acts are either old rockers, established in a time before the industry had it's focus in creating purely big money making acts, or these new big money making acts (Britteny, et al.) which are generally talentless and are essentially created by industry itself. This new style of act are generally big money making summer hit artists, that fade away after 3 years or so. They're not really producing any more Rolling Stones, or Bob Dylans. They're not producing artists with any sort of longevity. Sure there are bands that have really "made it" making creative music that has crossed over to the money making mainstream, like say Radiohead, but for the most part, these groups are few and far between. The big record making labels are shooting themselves in the foot by not establishing and supporting artists though long term careers. Why? It's all about the back catalog. Think about artists from the 60's and 70's. Music that was written 30-40 YEARS ago is still popular today, and still helping to define our culture. Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, etc. People will still be buying those records for another hundred years (especially with more mickey mouse copyright protection). Maybe it is just hard to tell, as I don't yet have the advantage of retrospective, but where are those big artists TODAY that people will be listening to in a hundred years? Most of the big artists promoted today, if I even had to hear them in the next hundred years, it would be too soon...
So, what does this have to do with tiered pricing? Well, let me tell you. Generally, the record industry likes to promote acts that it more or less owns. (This is one of the reasons rap is so heavily promoted, even though rock is more popular music. There is generally less investment on behalf of the label and a much higher take in their coffers when you buy a rap album). Anyway, because they generally don't promote quality, just what will make them the most money, most of what you see and hear on the radio, on MTV, are not the best quality music. But when you go to the record store, the CDs are around the same price for all new releases, whether it is from that obscure punk band, or the newest Celene Dion. In fact, the obscure release is often MORE expensive, because it won't sell as much volume. Maybe it's the difference between 14 and 18 bucks. Passing that psychological $15 barrier right there shy's some people away from trying something new. (What is it about having to break a bill that makes you feel like you're paying a bit more than you'd like?)
So, now look what the established music industry in all of their foolishness, want's to do. Instead of charging you a little less, and encouraging you to buy their RIAA stamped and approved crud, than what you might pay for an indie or obscure release at your local record store, they actually want to charge you MORE. MORE, for generally WORSE music. And not a 4 dollar difference on two cd's, two collections of songs, no. We're talking 2 dollars PER SONG. Now, I don't know about you, but there is a lot of music out there that I DO like and enjoy that isn't this nonsense that the RIAA tries to feed us. A lot of it can be found on iTunes. So, if I have a choice between 1 song, and 3 songs, what am I going to do? Of course, buy the 3 songs! I don't think Apple really cares how I spend my money there as long as I spend the 3 dollars. But the RIAA have this mentality that people owe them something. I wouldn't be surprised if they sued you for choosing the 3 songs instead of the one, claiming you owe them for the difference or some nonsense.
My point though, is that this plan of charging more for their crap, which is popular because their big money made it popular, is going to backfire. It is only going to encourage people to spend their money elsewhere, to explore new artists and new musical avenues. I think iTunes has done a good job of promoting some of the more obscure artists out there. If this can turn people away from the cookie cutter, mindless crap promoted by the industry, and back towards quality artists and quality music, it should be embraced.
It's too bad we can't use this in the desert environment our troops are currently deployed in. I mean, how are we gonna fight off all those sandworms this will attract?
I agree, but certainly they will claim it falls fully under interstate commerce, especially considering much of this data is collected from people from various states across the internet. I'd actually think this would be one of the lesser stretches of the interstate commerce clause.
This is my main concern:
"If passed it would require all companies to inform customers of security breaches that affect their personal data. The bill requires consumers to be told if their privacy has been violated because of a breach. Under the proposals, if a breach does occur, a company must notify any customers concerned and the FTC, which can then demand an audit."
To me this is just a back door for the government to get their grubby little hands on data they couldn't otherwise legally obtain. "Security breach into personal data at Google? Quick, let's demand an audit and get all the information they wouldn't hand over when we asked." To me, automatically allowing the government to have access is just as bad as the original security breach in the first place. Hell, now the government will probably covertly breach the security of private databases (all it takes is a presidential order, we are at war, after all. I'm sure the only justification required would be that information on foreign nations was contained within) and then after evidence of a breach is exposed, the government could just demand a full on data audit.
..where you're a politician. It would totally mirror real life, where the game higly encourages you to make a complete prick out of yourself in order to get a few social conservative votes. Bonus level to see how many fragile child minds you save through wiping your ass with the constitution... Maybe a hack the voting machine mini-game. Grand Theft Election?
I'm not buying either "next generation" format for their DRM crippled HD video content. I'll be supporting whichever format has the first cheap burner with reasonable priced blank discs. If DRM is a big hurdle in te way of that, kiss my support goodbye.
"OVC President and CEO Alan Dechert says it would take a large investment of time and money to provide an alternative to traditional e-voting systems vendors, but he says an effort known as Open Voting Solutions (OVS) is looking to do just that.'"
How much capital does an originization really need to code up a secure counting machine? I just don't get where all these costs are coming from. The thing is just supposed to simply count. How hard is it? A couple of geeks should be able to do it in an afternoon in their free time, especially when they don't have to waste their time implementing all those backdoors.
This quip about government funded libraries was NOT meant to be taken as a serious proposition as most people seem to be taking it. The parent I original responded to implied that a government funded city wide wireless network was unfair to the competition because a government with guns forced you to pay for it even if you don't use it. I don't agree and used the example of taking away funding for public libraries to illustrate my point that such reasoning is, well, unreasonable. So lets all read a little more before jumping to conclusions, mmmmkay?
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe he's from Hashyyyk?
I'm a Computer!!
Or is this nVidia offering still limited in this way? I don't care how fast it is when games still aren't looking their best.
Someone had to have been paying for the domain and ip address. I'm no expert on Canadian law regarding this sort of thing, but companies releasing information about customers has been a big issue in the US lately. Regardless of what the law says, I don't think that the organizations responsible for those should be forced to out the identity of the person responsivle. We should be allowed to say things and take actions in an anonymous fashion, legal things mind you, in order to protect ourselves from undeserved retribution from government autorities. If the things that were on this site were slander, that's one thing. But if these are real facts concerning, of all things especially, politicians unethical behavior, they need to stick around, and as free people shouldn't have to fess everything the government. In that sense, I salute the Anonymous Coward.
God bless the good ol' land of the free. This is getting way past rediculous. It seems almost that soon murdering all witnesses that saw you commit some petty crime, like gambliing, will net you less jail time than getting busted for the small thing. I mean, 5 years for sitting at a computer and clicking a mouse. Sadly, it isn't sounding so unusual, but damn, that seems VERY fucking cruel.
Everything I have personally read on every tech/hardware/overclocking/etc site about Conroe has been about the chips slaughtering AMD's top FX chips. The core line has got a LOT of people excited. Intel's finally given up on Netburst, Intel is finally fighting back against AMD, Intel is ready to reclaim the desktop, etc. People who, you know, actually read all that stuff are consumers too you know. Tech is one of the most popular and active subjects on the net. And people talking tech have high hopes for Intel's new line. Calling that bullshit is, well, frankly it's bullshit.
Other than pick with your comment, I agree that these analysts are crap.
I'm not a fan of this merger idea, but considering the general popularity AMD hardware does have amongst the Linux community, I have to wonder if AMD might just be able to remedy that problem. It is definatly why my last 2 cards have been nVidia.
I don't want ANY of these companies to merge. I want more houses out there designing chips, pushing the limits, and enabling us to have more and more powerful rigs at a cheaper price. I don't want less competition in the sector one bit. We already only have really 2 choices for CPUs, and two different choices for GPUs. I wish there were a lot more to choose from. What I don't want is to be locked into a specific video card chipset based on whether I have an Intel or AMD CPU.
First off, opening DRM so different music players can interoperate with these DRMed files has NOTHING to do with piracy. Having said that, I thought piracy, at least in this digital age, meant the illegal copying, trading, selling, "stealing," etc of digital information (bits). The concept of "State Sponsored" piracy just seems to be a huge oxymoron. If the state were actually saying that these are legal activities, wouldn't it cease to really be piracy? The fact that corporations are accusing governments of this kind of stuff makes my head spin. I thought the government was suppose to define what was illegal, and not corporations. Oh wait...
Anyway, we could nitpick this list to death, but man oh man, that fact that DIVX players aren't on this list is a crime.
Sweet! Octopi gamers have long been neglected by the industry.
To me this makes perfect sense, as they only have to really be sure the suit will work at the location that the landing will be filmed at.
Yeah, I'm hoping eventually they might just up it to a 650 if it screws up again. But hell, It's WAY better than the 300 I used to have before getting the 600. That thing was a beast.
Can't blackberries access a pop acount? Or this this just not good enough? Or you can't you set up e-mail forwarding directly to the users blackberry account if you need "push" mail? Or doesn't this work? I just don't really understand where this estimated software cost is coming from? Do blackberries use weird custom protocols? On a side note, I'm getting my replacement treo600 tomorrow! It succumbed to the known "no service" battery fault a while ago, not to mention a broken top panel by the sd card, with missing buttons, broken volume buttons and a loose antenna. Good thing I have the replacement option paid for. But this had me thinking just how "rugged" are blackberries physically? As far as I know, they have quite similar features as the treo. The cell phone is probably the part I use the LEAST on the thing :) But it has really been through quite the torture test as you might have guessed. Any blackberry owners out there really abuse the thing?
But seriously, a lot of people fail to realize just how powerful a large social networks like MySpace can be. I do web mining research for a professor at my university, and wow, MySpace just contains a HUGE wealth of data to play with..
Anyway, I came across this article a while ago, and I thought it was really interesting. It basically talks about how society has clamped down on public and social space for youth, and how online space is really all youth have now..
"Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace"
Danah Boyd
American Association for the Advancement of Science
February 19, 2006
Can't you just smell that freedom?
Can we please quit voting for the establishment now? Please? With a cherry? For the children?
So, what does this have to do with tiered pricing? Well, let me tell you. Generally, the record industry likes to promote acts that it more or less owns. (This is one of the reasons rap is so heavily promoted, even though rock is more popular music. There is generally less investment on behalf of the label and a much higher take in their coffers when you buy a rap album). Anyway, because they generally don't promote quality, just what will make them the most money, most of what you see and hear on the radio, on MTV, are not the best quality music. But when you go to the record store, the CDs are around the same price for all new releases, whether it is from that obscure punk band, or the newest Celene Dion. In fact, the obscure release is often MORE expensive, because it won't sell as much volume. Maybe it's the difference between 14 and 18 bucks. Passing that psychological $15 barrier right there shy's some people away from trying something new. (What is it about having to break a bill that makes you feel like you're paying a bit more than you'd like?)
So, now look what the established music industry in all of their foolishness, want's to do. Instead of charging you a little less, and encouraging you to buy their RIAA stamped and approved crud, than what you might pay for an indie or obscure release at your local record store, they actually want to charge you MORE. MORE, for generally WORSE music. And not a 4 dollar difference on two cd's, two collections of songs, no. We're talking 2 dollars PER SONG. Now, I don't know about you, but there is a lot of music out there that I DO like and enjoy that isn't this nonsense that the RIAA tries to feed us. A lot of it can be found on iTunes. So, if I have a choice between 1 song, and 3 songs, what am I going to do? Of course, buy the 3 songs! I don't think Apple really cares how I spend my money there as long as I spend the 3 dollars. But the RIAA have this mentality that people owe them something. I wouldn't be surprised if they sued you for choosing the 3 songs instead of the one, claiming you owe them for the difference or some nonsense.
My point though, is that this plan of charging more for their crap, which is popular because their big money made it popular, is going to backfire. It is only going to encourage people to spend their money elsewhere, to explore new artists and new musical avenues. I think iTunes has done a good job of promoting some of the more obscure artists out there. If this can turn people away from the cookie cutter, mindless crap promoted by the industry, and back towards quality artists and quality music, it should be embraced.
All hail Shai-Hulud!
This is my main concern:
"If passed it would require all companies to inform customers of security breaches that affect their personal data. The bill requires consumers to be told if their privacy has been violated because of a breach. Under the proposals, if a breach does occur, a company must notify any customers concerned and the FTC, which can then demand an audit."
To me this is just a back door for the government to get their grubby little hands on data they couldn't otherwise legally obtain. "Security breach into personal data at Google? Quick, let's demand an audit and get all the information they wouldn't hand over when we asked." To me, automatically allowing the government to have access is just as bad as the original security breach in the first place. Hell, now the government will probably covertly breach the security of private databases (all it takes is a presidential order, we are at war, after all. I'm sure the only justification required would be that information on foreign nations was contained within) and then after evidence of a breach is exposed, the government could just demand a full on data audit.
..where you're a politician. It would totally mirror real life, where the game higly encourages you to make a complete prick out of yourself in order to get a few social conservative votes. Bonus level to see how many fragile child minds you save through wiping your ass with the constitution... Maybe a hack the voting machine mini-game. Grand Theft Election?
I can't help but wonder if Vista won't be making any mysterious and unnecessary getCPUid() calls....
I'm not buying either "next generation" format for their DRM crippled HD video content. I'll be supporting whichever format has the first cheap burner with reasonable priced blank discs. If DRM is a big hurdle in te way of that, kiss my support goodbye.
"OVC President and CEO Alan Dechert says it would take a large investment of time and money to provide an alternative to traditional e-voting systems vendors, but he says an effort known as Open Voting Solutions (OVS) is looking to do just that.'"
How much capital does an originization really need to code up a secure counting machine? I just don't get where all these costs are coming from. The thing is just supposed to simply count. How hard is it? A couple of geeks should be able to do it in an afternoon in their free time, especially when they don't have to waste their time implementing all those backdoors.
I didn't really intend to get a laugh out of it originally.
This quip about government funded libraries was NOT meant to be taken as a serious proposition as most people seem to be taking it. The parent I original responded to implied that a government funded city wide wireless network was unfair to the competition because a government with guns forced you to pay for it even if you don't use it. I don't agree and used the example of taking away funding for public libraries to illustrate my point that such reasoning is, well, unreasonable. So lets all read a little more before jumping to conclusions, mmmmkay?