I checked out the "Explaining OpenID" web site referenced in the article, and it didn't make a whole lot of sense.
I'm actually a huge supporter of OpenID, but I have to say I think you're mainly right.
For whatever reason, OpenID (indeed even single sign-on) is fundamentally not a trivial thing to grasp. The idea of one system, one account is so deeply engrained in people's minds, it's going to be very hard to shift that. A bit like public key encryption as well, I would say.
If I found out Richard Stallman's openID usr/pass I could create an account on slashdot and post shit
Sigh. You can string out infinite "what if's" as long a the first "if" is big enough. What IF you found out his online BANKING login? What if he left his front door open and you snuck in and hid in his toilet and then jumped out when he came in and covered him in shaving foam? Eh? Eh? He'd be such a dork! W00t!
Personally, my nomination would be still having to edit fstab as root to permanently mount a network share. Mapping a network drive is dead simple in Windows. It should be just as easy on Ubuntu.
A related complaint - and one that still continues to mystify and annoy me - is that root is required to access external devices of various kinds. For example, I have to sudo chmod 777/dev/raw1394 every time I want to capture video from my camcorder (hal or whatever sets it *back* on reboot - huh??). That's been the case for as long as I've been using Ubuntu (the past four years) and is currently the case with Hardy. Things seem to have become slightly better over time though - you can now plug in USB sticks and they usually get mounted as the current user. Very odd though that such issues are still around though when the rest of the distro is so mature.
Oh I see, you're on about the name vs image thing (sorry I didn't notice). Yawn. Yes - yes. It's probably just a typo. Keep your pants on.
Of much more interest is my point about the effect of having a mark hitherto protected by copyright now having to fend for itself in a world where many will start to regard the image of Popeye as something they have a right to use as they wish.
Consider this: I produce a range of toys featuring Robin Hood, a swash-buckling hero who robs from the rich and gives to the poor. Now I want to produce another range featuring Popeye, a lovable pipe-smoking sailor who eats spinach. King Features will try to sue me. Which side should we be on?
Does anyone other than kdawson think that the name "Popeye" is copyrighted?
Huh?
Or that the copyright on the image running out means that the trademark is affected?
From TFA:
"The Popeye trademark, a separate entity to Segar's authorial copyright, is owned by King Features, a subsidiary of the Hearst Corporation â" the US entertainment giant â" which is expected to protect its brand aggressively. "
When the copyright runs out, the trade mark is most certainly affected. This is because the two things are separate, and one is now in a lawyer-free zone. Things might get interesting.
I've had nothing but frustrating trying to find an LED bulb that my partner won't moan about being all cold, dim, too bright, or all three. Me, I don't give a sh*t as long as I can see my toes.
The sooner these "new discoveries" filter down, the better if you ask me.
We, the technically inclined... the engineers who conceptualized, and then actualized this network... we hold the cards. We build and install the equipment, we write the software, and we understand what's at stake. We need to organize, and we need to do it now.
I think you're right. I think that's how it's going to have to work. At least, when you compare the power we have over the technology of the net to the power we have over politicians, it would seem a no-brainer.
However, there is (at least) a question of tactics here: do we move to uphold the current technical underpinnings of net neutrality and open access, or the *spirit* of it? Upholding the spirit means preserving via new technical measures - for example Tor, I2P, mesh wireless, as and when the status quo falls to the contol of governments.
I'm not sure which I would put more emphasis on. Preserving the status quo as it is may be too late, while continuing to design the net out of reach of censorship and control may be more hopeful.
... will it be before the average politician has the slightest clue about how the internet actually works, and is savvy enough to simply laugh off hopelessly stupid ideas like the one presented in this story?
I don't mean "technically", I just mean at least as good as the average 10 year old.
Do we really have to wait until the current crop is dead?
Burnham is 37, which is pretty young for a politician at his level, so we're not talking about some completely clueless old guard. My suspicion is that he knows perfectly well the problems involved in achieving the kind of censorship he proposes. Instead, he's doing it for the spin, which is now a familar Labour tactic.
It goes like this:
1. Suggest patently stupid measure, swathed in some unassailable populism (issue compulsory ID cards, invade Iraq, censor Internet, etc.)
2. Wait to see what kind of reaction this produces (usually extreme) and then fine-tune the "message" for later. Meanwhile, carefully note reaction of opposition parties.
3. Back-track quickly depending on reaction.
4. Wait for opportune moments to later score points against opposition by pointing out that they opposed your best efforts to be "tough on [insert issue]"
5. Rinse, repeat.
I realise that this is a woefully cynical interpetation of events on my part, but it's just been borne out by too much impirical eveidence in the past. British politics isn't much more than little boys playing games now. There are no real politicians left in government.
While like everybody else here I'm absolutely opposed to anybody censoring my internet connection, I wonder if the politicians have ever thought that this could maybe be a public service that people could opt in to?
Anyone wanting to get a better understanding of this needs to read around a bit more.
"... inequality can arise in systems where users are free to make choices among a large set of options, even in the absence of central control or manipulation. Inequality is not a priori evidence of manipulation, in other words; it can also be a side effect of large systems governed by popular choice.... the debate on media concentration can now be sharpened to a single question: if inequality is a fact of life, even in diverse and free systems, what should our reaction be? "
Sigh. As the various outraged typographers here attest, this is a self-promotional stunt and has nothing to do with innovation or even typography. The clue is the first line of TFA:
"Dutch marketing and communications company Spranq has come up with a novel and free way of slashing printer ink costs by developing a font with holes in it."
I work for a marcomms agency as well. This is how such agencies get clients: you pull stunts like this to make yourselves look like gurus in some way, so when you go in for pitches you have lots of press clippings (clients don't read them, they just look at where they were published) so you have some kind of differentiation over your rivals. I worked for a place where we made a big fanfare about recruiting an "artist in residence" (and got lots of press) - others in our space have launched "labs" or various kinds, etc. etc.
There's no substance in any of it. It's all just a marketing con-job and sad to say Slashdot has fallen for it (not that a marcomms agency's clients would be interested in a/. story anyway).
How about reputation? Akismet is pretty good, so how about extending that a little bit?
If blogs or other sites want to cut down on automated submissions, they demand OpenID accounts. Then, hook those logins into an RBL like Akismet. If the account submits spam on one site, the account is marked as as spammer and all other sites get the opportunity to block it. Most would probably work on a threshold and points system a bit like SpamAssassin incorporating self-training Bayesian filters or heuristics: normal humans don't submit more than about 20 blog comments a day, etc.
How to make sure spammers don't simply sign up for lots of OpenID accounts to send spam? Make getting an OpenID account hard for them: use one of the many other systems suggested in this thread, like offline confirmation, etc. Legitimate users are not going to mind having to wait for an SMS message with a confirmation ID, or a postcard though the post, etc. Sites like Facebook becoming OpenID providers would help with this too: existing users would have existing reputations they could use on other sites when posting or signing up for services.
Sure - another step in the arms race, but it wouldn't do any harm for netizens to take on some reputation (for which read "responsibility") for their actions.
It actually disappoints me because Bruce was very willing and wanted to help the community. But the community let him down...
Of course, there is the possibility that his work just wasn't very good. That's something that often gets overlooked in the whole "giving it away for nothing is stupid" argument. Having a conventional contract with a publisher simply shifts the risk off to them, but basically, if you ain't got it - well, you won't get it.
Fraudulent transactions, money laundering, spam, scams, phishing, DoS attacks, social engineering, extortion, harassment... and all other clearly-defined felonies as defined by most jurisdictions on the net occur LESS than the activity of a tiny bunch of mentally ill old men trading sick pictures?
From TFA: "In a statement outlining the strategy the EU claimed "half of all internet crime involves the production, distribution and sale of child pornography"
What? Half of all internet crime??
Hmmm. Bullshit detector's gone off the scale on this one. I think this is the work of industry lobbyists playing the child porn card to sell snakeoil to clueless, greedy politicians.
Honestly, there is very little I do or say that I care if it's kept private.
...
The point of all this is, some people worry too much about their privacy.
Since you take an extreme position on this, let's take some extreme examples to show that the issue is far wider than the fact that you think you have nothing to hide.
Should you walk directly to your car from the door of the supermarket, or stop to look at that attractive woman loading her groceries first? If you stop, will that action be recorded and used against you by your wife in 10 years time? Do you smack down that moron accusing you of butting into the queue when you were there before him, in case you're being videoed from an angle where he looks like he's in the right? What do you say to your boss when he asks you whether you did your 7 hours that time you were working from home? Does he know that you spent 30 mins reading the paper after lunch?
If you made literally everything in your life available to the scrutiny of persons unknown, you would have to live your life as if in one eternal press conference: every word and every action would have to be pre-meditated and vetted inside your head (the only private place you had). Look up the word "panopticon" and you'll see where I'm going with this.
Now, you may tell me not to exaggerate, that things will never get that bad. The point is though - when will you draw the line? When you have some privacy to protect? If so, how much?
Or do you think that wresting control of your life back from those who have it is going to be easier than giving it to them in the first place? After all, I suppose if you have nothing to hide...
"My company is a software vendor/developer. We maintain a popular software product and keep ourselves afloat by extending the value of the core project. Over time we've seen our business model eroding as offshore companies produce cheaper versions of the utilities that are our bread and butter. Something that was worth $5K last year is suddenly worth $1K because the Indian version is just as good as the US one and they pay their developers peanuts. This same cycle is obviously having an impact on other software vendors. Is cheap competition ultimately a race to zero? In ten years will there be any cost associated with commodity (non-custom) software? If not, will there still be a 'software industry' as it exists today in the West, or will software simply be outsourced entirely to sweatshops in Asia? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? As a professional developer, do I need to fear this or feed it?"
But this is trademark, and you have no more right to call your product "Godzilla" than you have to sell stories about a wizard named "Harry Potter".
Yes, but the existence of a trade mark does not prevent you from using it for non-commercial purposes. The OP was implying that Godzilla should by now be in the public domain. In the public domain, it is absolutely right and proper that if I want to make an animation of some Godzilla-like dolls duking it out on YouTube, and call it "Godzilla" I should be allowed to do so as long as I do not profit from it.
Trade mark law is clear: there are three exceptions under which trademarks can be used: fair use in comparative advertising, in noncommercial use, and in news reporting or commentary.
Slashdot Mirror
Shrinking support? I wonder why...
Hmmmm...
I checked out the "Explaining OpenID" web site referenced in the article, and it didn't make a whole lot of sense.
I'm actually a huge supporter of OpenID, but I have to say I think you're mainly right.
For whatever reason, OpenID (indeed even single sign-on) is fundamentally not a trivial thing to grasp. The idea of one system, one account is so deeply engrained in people's minds, it's going to be very hard to shift that. A bit like public key encryption as well, I would say.
If I found out Richard Stallman's openID usr/pass I could create an account on slashdot and post shit
Sigh. You can string out infinite "what if's" as long a the first "if" is big enough. What IF you found out his online BANKING login? What if he left his front door open and you snuck in and hid in his toilet and then jumped out when he came in and covered him in shaving foam? Eh? Eh? He'd be such a dork! W00t!
You're attacking OpenID on a facile premise.
One of the great lessons you need to learn from life is that your chances of ever having an original thought are vanishingly close to zero.
The chances of you being able to *act* on your thoughts - or the thoughts of others - are up to you.
I've always just run "sudo su" - enter password, hit return, and I'm at a root prompt.
Personally, my nomination would be still having to edit fstab as root to permanently mount a network share. Mapping a network drive is dead simple in Windows. It should be just as easy on Ubuntu.
A related complaint - and one that still continues to mystify and annoy me - is that root is required to access external devices of various kinds. For example, I have to sudo chmod 777 /dev/raw1394 every time I want to capture video from my camcorder (hal or whatever sets it *back* on reboot - huh??). That's been the case for as long as I've been using Ubuntu (the past four years) and is currently the case with Hardy. Things seem to have become slightly better over time though - you can now plug in USB sticks and they usually get mounted as the current user. Very odd though that such issues are still around though when the rest of the distro is so mature.
Oh I see, you're on about the name vs image thing (sorry I didn't notice). Yawn. Yes - yes. It's probably just a typo. Keep your pants on.
Of much more interest is my point about the effect of having a mark hitherto protected by copyright now having to fend for itself in a world where many will start to regard the image of Popeye as something they have a right to use as they wish.
Consider this: I produce a range of toys featuring Robin Hood, a swash-buckling hero who robs from the rich and gives to the poor. Now I want to produce another range featuring Popeye, a lovable pipe-smoking sailor who eats spinach. King Features will try to sue me. Which side should we be on?
Does anyone other than kdawson think that the name "Popeye" is copyrighted?
Huh?
Or that the copyright on the image running out means that the trademark is affected?
From TFA:
"The Popeye trademark, a separate entity to Segar's authorial copyright, is owned by King Features, a subsidiary of the Hearst Corporation â" the US entertainment giant â" which is expected to protect its brand aggressively. "
When the copyright runs out, the trade mark is most certainly affected. This is because the two things are separate, and one is now in a lawyer-free zone. Things might get interesting.
would microsoft send me a take down notice to remove windows 7 files uploaded onto our hosting servers by one of our customers last week?
Because this is supposed to be black ops. Not even Microsoft knows they're doing it.
Still - this is all just hot air. There is no way we will ever know whether MS leaked 7 on purpose or not.
I've had nothing but frustrating trying to find an LED bulb that my partner won't moan about being all cold, dim, too bright, or all three. Me, I don't give a sh*t as long as I can see my toes.
The sooner these "new discoveries" filter down, the better if you ask me.
We, the technically inclined... the engineers who conceptualized, and then actualized this network... we hold the cards. We build and install the equipment, we write the software, and we understand what's at stake. We need to organize, and we need to do it now.
I think you're right. I think that's how it's going to have to work. At least, when you compare the power we have over the technology of the net to the power we have over politicians, it would seem a no-brainer.
However, there is (at least) a question of tactics here: do we move to uphold the current technical underpinnings of net neutrality and open access, or the *spirit* of it? Upholding the spirit means preserving via new technical measures - for example Tor, I2P, mesh wireless, as and when the status quo falls to the contol of governments.
I'm not sure which I would put more emphasis on. Preserving the status quo as it is may be too late, while continuing to design the net out of reach of censorship and control may be more hopeful.
... will it be before the average politician has the slightest clue about how the internet actually works, and is savvy enough to simply laugh off hopelessly stupid ideas like the one presented in this story?
I don't mean "technically", I just mean at least as good as the average 10 year old.
Do we really have to wait until the current crop is dead?
Burnham is 37, which is pretty young for a politician at his level, so we're not talking about some completely clueless old guard. My suspicion is that he knows perfectly well the problems involved in achieving the kind of censorship he proposes. Instead, he's doing it for the spin, which is now a familar Labour tactic.
It goes like this:
1. Suggest patently stupid measure, swathed in some unassailable populism (issue compulsory ID cards, invade Iraq, censor Internet, etc.)
2. Wait to see what kind of reaction this produces (usually extreme) and then fine-tune the "message" for later. Meanwhile, carefully note reaction of opposition parties.
3. Back-track quickly depending on reaction.
4. Wait for opportune moments to later score points against opposition by pointing out that they opposed your best efforts to be "tough on [insert issue]"
5. Rinse, repeat.
I realise that this is a woefully cynical interpetation of events on my part, but it's just been borne out by too much impirical eveidence in the past. British politics isn't much more than little boys playing games now. There are no real politicians left in government.
While like everybody else here I'm absolutely opposed to anybody censoring my internet connection, I wonder if the politicians have ever thought that this could maybe be a public service that people could opt in to?
Your wish is my command.
Staying silent may harm your defence, as noted in the caution you are given, but it can never be used as a presumption of evidence of guilt.
And the difference between that and having no right of silence is... ?
Anyone wanting to get a better understanding of this needs to read around a bit more.
"... inequality can arise in systems where users are free to make choices among a large set of options, even in the absence of central control or manipulation. Inequality is not a priori evidence of manipulation, in other words; it can also be a side effect of large systems governed by popular choice. ... the debate on media concentration can now be sharpened to a single question: if inequality is a fact of life, even in diverse and free systems, what should our reaction be? "
Am I missing something, or does the article interpret the idea of the long tail incorrectly?
Like a lot of "big, simple ideas" it's rather open to interpretation.
Don't even get me started on Blu-Ray. I'm supposed to buy my movie collection again just to get innundated with the same crap?
I take it you have not discovered the alternative.
Sigh. As the various outraged typographers here attest, this is a self-promotional stunt and has nothing to do with innovation or even typography. The clue is the first line of TFA:
"Dutch marketing and communications company Spranq has come up with a novel and free way of slashing printer ink costs by developing a font with holes in it."
I work for a marcomms agency as well. This is how such agencies get clients: you pull stunts like this to make yourselves look like gurus in some way, so when you go in for pitches you have lots of press clippings (clients don't read them, they just look at where they were published) so you have some kind of differentiation over your rivals. I worked for a place where we made a big fanfare about recruiting an "artist in residence" (and got lots of press) - others in our space have launched "labs" or various kinds, etc. etc.
There's no substance in any of it. It's all just a marketing con-job and sad to say Slashdot has fallen for it (not that a marcomms agency's clients would be interested in a /. story anyway).
Exactly. If I worked for Microsoft I'd be friggin' depressed. Do they have no originality or desire to be innovative AT ALL?
How about reputation? Akismet is pretty good, so how about extending that a little bit?
If blogs or other sites want to cut down on automated submissions, they demand OpenID accounts. Then, hook those logins into an RBL like Akismet. If the account submits spam on one site, the account is marked as as spammer and all other sites get the opportunity to block it. Most would probably work on a threshold and points system a bit like SpamAssassin incorporating self-training Bayesian filters or heuristics: normal humans don't submit more than about 20 blog comments a day, etc.
How to make sure spammers don't simply sign up for lots of OpenID accounts to send spam? Make getting an OpenID account hard for them: use one of the many other systems suggested in this thread, like offline confirmation, etc. Legitimate users are not going to mind having to wait for an SMS message with a confirmation ID, or a postcard though the post, etc. Sites like Facebook becoming OpenID providers would help with this too: existing users would have existing reputations they could use on other sites when posting or signing up for services.
Sure - another step in the arms race, but it wouldn't do any harm for netizens to take on some reputation (for which read "responsibility") for their actions.
It actually disappoints me because Bruce was very willing and wanted to help the community. But the community let him down...
Of course, there is the possibility that his work just wasn't very good. That's something that often gets overlooked in the whole "giving it away for nothing is stupid" argument. Having a conventional contract with a publisher simply shifts the risk off to them, but basically, if you ain't got it - well, you won't get it.
Just sayin'
Cmaaaaan!
Fraudulent transactions, money laundering, spam, scams, phishing, DoS attacks, social engineering, extortion, harassment... and all other clearly-defined felonies as defined by most jurisdictions on the net occur LESS than the activity of a tiny bunch of mentally ill old men trading sick pictures?
Sir: STEP AWAY FROM THE BONG!
From TFA: "In a statement outlining the strategy the EU claimed "half of all internet crime involves the production, distribution and sale of child pornography"
What? Half of all internet crime??
Hmmm. Bullshit detector's gone off the scale on this one. I think this is the work of industry lobbyists playing the child porn card to sell snakeoil to clueless, greedy politicians.
Honestly, there is very little I do or say that I care if it's kept private.
The point of all this is, some people worry too much about their privacy.
Since you take an extreme position on this, let's take some extreme examples to show that the issue is far wider than the fact that you think you have nothing to hide.
Should you walk directly to your car from the door of the supermarket, or stop to look at that attractive woman loading her groceries first? If you stop, will that action be recorded and used against you by your wife in 10 years time? Do you smack down that moron accusing you of butting into the queue when you were there before him, in case you're being videoed from an angle where he looks like he's in the right? What do you say to your boss when he asks you whether you did your 7 hours that time you were working from home? Does he know that you spent 30 mins reading the paper after lunch?
If you made literally everything in your life available to the scrutiny of persons unknown, you would have to live your life as if in one eternal press conference: every word and every action would have to be pre-meditated and vetted inside your head (the only private place you had). Look up the word "panopticon" and you'll see where I'm going with this.
Now, you may tell me not to exaggerate, that things will never get that bad. The point is though - when will you draw the line? When you have some privacy to protect? If so, how much?
Or do you think that wresting control of your life back from those who have it is going to be easier than giving it to them in the first place? After all, I suppose if you have nothing to hide...
"My company is a software vendor/developer. We maintain a popular software product and keep ourselves afloat by extending the value of the core project. Over time we've seen our business model eroding as offshore companies produce cheaper versions of the utilities that are our bread and butter. Something that was worth $5K last year is suddenly worth $1K because the Indian version is just as good as the US one and they pay their developers peanuts. This same cycle is obviously having an impact on other software vendors. Is cheap competition ultimately a race to zero? In ten years will there be any cost associated with commodity (non-custom) software? If not, will there still be a 'software industry' as it exists today in the West, or will software simply be outsourced entirely to sweatshops in Asia? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? As a professional developer, do I need to fear this or feed it?"
But this is trademark, and you have no more right to call your product "Godzilla" than you have to sell stories about a wizard named "Harry Potter".
Yes, but the existence of a trade mark does not prevent you from using it for non-commercial purposes. The OP was implying that Godzilla should by now be in the public domain. In the public domain, it is absolutely right and proper that if I want to make an animation of some Godzilla-like dolls duking it out on YouTube, and call it "Godzilla" I should be allowed to do so as long as I do not profit from it.
Trade mark law is clear: there are three exceptions under which trademarks can be used: fair use in comparative advertising, in noncommercial use, and in news reporting or commentary.
You are confusing copyright with trademark.
Actually, I think you are too.