Yes, I do expect them to call up everyone they sold his email address to and say "stop using it" If they are going to sell email addresses of their customers, they need to provide a way to do that, or they are being irresponsible.
Personally, I don't see why they can't use the same distribution method for opt-outs as they use for opt-ins. Naturally I'm assuming that all partners are reputable and would respect the opt-out list...
And that can enforced somewhat - say a user opts out, Audiogalaxy forwards the opt-out to their partners, then subsequently gets a complaint from the user. Audiogalaxy would know which partner didn't comply and could apply sanctions accordingly. Simply withholding future lists would be easy enough, or only providing partial lists.
There is absolutely no reason why the opt-out list can't trickle through the system in the exact same way as the opt-in list - assuming the partners play fair...
Think positively! Look at it as a research project the someone very kindly started for you 400+ years ago... Never mind the crap that fell down 380 years ago, study what's still standing and go with something similar...
That was said by the new Low King of the Dwarfs, towards the end of "The Fifth Elephant". He was talking to Commander Sam Vimes and Lady Sybil Vimes after Sam had pretty much thwarted a plot to... Nope, I won't spoil it...:) Go read the book.
And in case nobody else says it, it's not original Pratchett - I remember reading something very much like it many years ago.
The houses that have lasted a hundred years are the good ones. There were many more bad ones, virtually all of which have disappeared.
...all of which is good information. The original question was, how to build a house that will last for centuries, to which the answer is: "pay for quality work".
Never mind that the cheap Victorian houses have all disappeared - the same is going to happen to cheap American houses, and cheap German houses, and so on...
On a related note, the first suspension bridge in the world, in Bristol, UK, is also one of the most stable. Why? Because, like most things that Brunel built, it is overengineered by several orders of magnitude.
Slightly off the topic of houses, but on-topic as far as lasting a long time - I remember hearing about another of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's bridges. I don't know offhand where it is (was), but apparently it was becoming unsound, so the Royal Corps of Engineers was called in to bring it down. They applied the calculated volume of explosives and hit the switch. The bridge went up and dropped back near enough in the exact same place, strong enough for the Engineers to drive their truck over...
I figure I should see at least three comments about how if it was the US Army blowing up the bridge, that bridge would right now be passing Pluto and heading for deep space...
Next, they will be saying that filesharing funds terrorism too...
Is there someone on "our side" testifying at the hearings that could point out that if filesharing==terrorism, then Microsoft is the biggest terrorist-supporting organization in the world? I mean, they've made it so danged easy to share stuff with that right-click->Sharing thing in Windows Explorer...
(OK, -5 flamebait/troll - who gives a stuff about Karma anymore?)
I was just quoting the original article, on the assumption that they knew what the hell they were talking about. Not an unreasonable assumption, because if they're wrong, it's libellous and actionable...
If they truly are distributing the money to the people for whom they are supposedly collecting it, then more power to them. I also truly hope that you get whatever slice you are due.
I'm sorry, I misspoke. I should have said any research... Research beyond "Hey guys, the toilets are backing up on all the senior execs yachts! Justify us a levy to buy new yachts!" Or golf-carts, limos, airplanes, mistresses, holiday homes, etc...
It always seems to be: "We made $X billion last year and still haven't met that figure this year. The difference must be due to piracy! We need to soak the punters to make up the difference!"
Please god, just once, let some Senator or Congressman (or the German equivalent, in this particular case) stand up and ask the lobbyists to prove their assertion that pirates are stealing them blind. It would be so peachy to hear something like this in response:
"Well, we took a show of hands in the RIAA HQ cafeteria and 3 of the 5 guys surveyed said they had a couple of MP3s. Extrapolating that to a population of around 300million stealing 3 albums per month at $15 each, that's $97Bn dollars!"
According to figures offered by the admittedly biased group, 55 percent of the 486 million blank CDs sold in Germany last year -- about 267 million -- were used for illicit purposes. For every "legal" music CD sold, there are 1.7 "illegal" ones.
Yet again another instance of someone pulling numbers out of their ass. Or has anyone here actually seen the research that supports these numbers?
What if other groups used the same logic? Nasa, for example - lobbying for levies to make up for funds lost due to those European Space Agency pirates launching stuff into to orbit cheaper and faster.
I think you missed the point - The Canadian Private Copying Collective is already hoarding tens of millions of dollars, apparently collected in some manner for the reimbursement of copyright holders who have lost money to pirates. The "inexplicably hoards" part is a direct accusation that they are deliberately not forking over the cash.
And now they're proposing yet more legislation to levy further "taxes for the poor starving musicians and movie stars". Given that they've so far failed to distribute previous levies, why would anyone have confidence that further levies would be distributed, but would rather go towards someone's retirement fund (or whatever)??
On the other hand, companies (all the ones I've worked for, anyway) have a tendency to pick one vendor for PC hardware and stick with that choice, sometimes in the face of cheaper, less well known vendors. So, you only have to thrash your way through the kernel config once to get something that will work on the majority of targets.
If, as someone else pointed out, the Reimann Hypothesis can be proved, there are implications to cryptography that various security agencies are going to be pissed about.
Do the various security agencies own copyright on certain encryption techniques? Who the hell knows? Whether they have or not, I'm sure the DMCA could be twisted to apply to this, to ensure some slight legality to suppressing the information. The whole point of a SLAPP is to stop someone doing something, never mind if the SLAPPer is in the right or not.
Then a much larger group of mathematicians will review the article. If, after all this time, the article hasn't been disproved, then it can be accepted as valid.
And thirty seconds later, the NSA, the FBI, the CIA and probably Homeland Security all SLAPP him with DMCA-violation lawsuits...
Slightly offtopic: what proof is there that Saddam actually has all his industrial apparatus within his own borders?
If he's going for the pocket-sized biological or biochemical weapons, or (god forbid) suitcase nukes, why wouldn't he spread stuff out a bit? Especially in light of the way the weapons inspection teams were poking around after the last asskicking he took...
It was said back then that the same factories that produce common household goods could as easily produce the starter kits for biological and/or biochemical weapons. That was the reason given for smart-bombing a powdered-milk (or something similar) factory.
As was proved by the small packages that caused the anthrax scares, you don't need high technology to deliver such weapons, just a guy with a baggie of powder driving across the border... If you think that's an impossible scenario, consider how many pounds of heroin and cocaine make it into the US every year. Any one or more of those shipments could be cut with anthrax (or whatever)...
Let Microsoft go ahead and patent something that looks like Java - if they then try to shut down Sun's Java, there's more than enough prior art to show that Sun had it first.
Not only that, think of the history of Microsoft and Sun fighting over Java, including the recent court case. If they get the patent and then try to use it to close down Java, the DoJ will have a field day.
The license to burn copies will either be included in the cost of the ticket (even if you don't want a burned copy), or it'll be in the price of the burned copy. The RIAA won't lose out.
I'm not a particularly low-level employee where I work, but I'm definitely not empowered to sign away any rights the company may have. I seriously doubt that even my boss or her boss could do that.
Like I said, east, west, whatever, just place it uprange, so it would fall onto Saddam (or whoever)
Would the space elevator reach geosynch orbit? 22,000 miles out, I think... That's a substantial fraction of the Earth's circumference, so it would probably hit several oceans.
Not so much a no-fly zone, as deterrent-by-placement. Suppose the space elevator were placed somewhere like North Africa, such that Iraq would be ground-zero for deorbiting fragments in the event of it being bombed.
Do you think Saddam would have a word with his boys and ask them to please not bomb it? (Yes, I'm assuming it would fall eastward. No, I have no clue if that's accurate. East, west, whatever - just park it uprange of the terrorist supporting regimes)
The advantage of having a huge prize is that allows EVERYONE no matter how crackpot the idea to try a lot of different things.
The disadvantage of having every crackpot trying out his own favorite launch vehicle is that sooner or later, someone is going to drop his launch vehicle on a school or a neighborhood...
There has to be some kind of space agency to regulate and review the crackpots, so that the inherently dangerous ideas are at least moderated. The space agency would also need to manage launch facilities for the better ideas, so that in case of failure there's a large body of water to drop the fireball into...
What I'd expect to see would be Congress reducing NASA's budget by an amount equivalent to the expected income from taxpayers. The bill would have to include something to stop Congress from doing that.
As you're the one self-confessed rocket scientist posting here, can I just ask what your thoughts are on the possibility of the shuttle dragging its main tank into orbit instead of dropping it and letting it burn up?
I first saw this in "Descent of Anansi" by Niven & Barnes, and it kind of makes sense, but I don't know enough physics to know if it would really work. The idea is that the main tank is a pressure-vessel that could maybe be converted to living quarters or other uses. It might also carry some amount (several tons?) of hydrogen and oxygen that could be used in life-support, fuel cells, thrusters, or whatever.
Would that work, or are there very good reasons not to risk it? Even if the tank was bent out of shape during the flight, could it be usefully mined for materials?
If their friends are online, they can join in to their "music session" and listen to whatever tune is playing at their house. (The Recording Industry of America, a music industry trade group that got their knickers in a knot over file swapping software such as Napster, is going to love that feature.)
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Personally, I don't see why they can't use the same distribution method for opt-outs as they use for opt-ins. Naturally I'm assuming that all partners are reputable and would respect the opt-out list...
And that can enforced somewhat - say a user opts out, Audiogalaxy forwards the opt-out to their partners, then subsequently gets a complaint from the user. Audiogalaxy would know which partner didn't comply and could apply sanctions accordingly. Simply withholding future lists would be easy enough, or only providing partial lists.
There is absolutely no reason why the opt-out list can't trickle through the system in the exact same way as the opt-in list - assuming the partners play fair...
Think positively! Look at it as a research project the someone very kindly started for you 400+ years ago... Never mind the crap that fell down 380 years ago, study what's still standing and go with something similar...
And in case nobody else says it, it's not original Pratchett - I remember reading something very much like it many years ago.
...all of which is good information. The original question was, how to build a house that will last for centuries, to which the answer is: "pay for quality work".
Never mind that the cheap Victorian houses have all disappeared - the same is going to happen to cheap American houses, and cheap German houses, and so on...
Slightly off the topic of houses, but on-topic as far as lasting a long time - I remember hearing about another of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's bridges. I don't know offhand where it is (was), but apparently it was becoming unsound, so the Royal Corps of Engineers was called in to bring it down. They applied the calculated volume of explosives and hit the switch. The bridge went up and dropped back near enough in the exact same place, strong enough for the Engineers to drive their truck over...
I figure I should see at least three comments about how if it was the US Army blowing up the bridge, that bridge would right now be passing Pluto and heading for deep space...
Is there someone on "our side" testifying at the hearings that could point out that if filesharing==terrorism, then Microsoft is the biggest terrorist-supporting organization in the world? I mean, they've made it so danged easy to share stuff with that right-click->Sharing thing in Windows Explorer... (OK, -5 flamebait/troll - who gives a stuff about Karma anymore?)
If they truly are distributing the money to the people for whom they are supposedly collecting it, then more power to them. I also truly hope that you get whatever slice you are due.
It always seems to be: "We made $X billion last year and still haven't met that figure this year. The difference must be due to piracy! We need to soak the punters to make up the difference!"
Please god, just once, let some Senator or Congressman (or the German equivalent, in this particular case) stand up and ask the lobbyists to prove their assertion that pirates are stealing them blind. It would be so peachy to hear something like this in response:
"Well, we took a show of hands in the RIAA HQ cafeteria and 3 of the 5 guys surveyed said they had a couple of MP3s. Extrapolating that to a population of around 300million stealing 3 albums per month at $15 each, that's $97Bn dollars!"
Yet again another instance of someone pulling numbers out of their ass. Or has anyone here actually seen the research that supports these numbers?
What if other groups used the same logic? Nasa, for example - lobbying for levies to make up for funds lost due to those European Space Agency pirates launching stuff into to orbit cheaper and faster.
And now they're proposing yet more legislation to levy further "taxes for the poor starving musicians and movie stars". Given that they've so far failed to distribute previous levies, why would anyone have confidence that further levies would be distributed, but would rather go towards someone's retirement fund (or whatever)??
You may be assuming too much - this is a government project, right?
On the other hand, companies (all the ones I've worked for, anyway) have a tendency to pick one vendor for PC hardware and stick with that choice, sometimes in the face of cheaper, less well known vendors. So, you only have to thrash your way through the kernel config once to get something that will work on the majority of targets.
Do the various security agencies own copyright on certain encryption techniques? Who the hell knows? Whether they have or not, I'm sure the DMCA could be twisted to apply to this, to ensure some slight legality to suppressing the information. The whole point of a SLAPP is to stop someone doing something, never mind if the SLAPPer is in the right or not.
And thirty seconds later, the NSA, the FBI, the CIA and probably Homeland Security all SLAPP him with DMCA-violation lawsuits...
If he's going for the pocket-sized biological or biochemical weapons, or (god forbid) suitcase nukes, why wouldn't he spread stuff out a bit? Especially in light of the way the weapons inspection teams were poking around after the last asskicking he took...
It was said back then that the same factories that produce common household goods could as easily produce the starter kits for biological and/or biochemical weapons. That was the reason given for smart-bombing a powdered-milk (or something similar) factory.
As was proved by the small packages that caused the anthrax scares, you don't need high technology to deliver such weapons, just a guy with a baggie of powder driving across the border... If you think that's an impossible scenario, consider how many pounds of heroin and cocaine make it into the US every year. Any one or more of those shipments could be cut with anthrax (or whatever)...
Does this mean Microsoft and Aol/Intel are not going to send me all that money for the emails I've been forwarding for them??
Not only that, think of the history of Microsoft and Sun fighting over Java, including the recent court case. If they get the patent and then try to use it to close down Java, the DoJ will have a field day.
The license to burn copies will either be included in the cost of the ticket (even if you don't want a burned copy), or it'll be in the price of the burned copy. The RIAA won't lose out.
I'm not a particularly low-level employee where I work, but I'm definitely not empowered to sign away any rights the company may have. I seriously doubt that even my boss or her boss could do that.
Would the space elevator reach geosynch orbit? 22,000 miles out, I think... That's a substantial fraction of the Earth's circumference, so it would probably hit several oceans.
Do you think Saddam would have a word with his boys and ask them to please not bomb it? (Yes, I'm assuming it would fall eastward. No, I have no clue if that's accurate. East, west, whatever - just park it uprange of the terrorist supporting regimes)
The disadvantage of having every crackpot trying out his own favorite launch vehicle is that sooner or later, someone is going to drop his launch vehicle on a school or a neighborhood...
There has to be some kind of space agency to regulate and review the crackpots, so that the inherently dangerous ideas are at least moderated. The space agency would also need to manage launch facilities for the better ideas, so that in case of failure there's a large body of water to drop the fireball into...
It shouldn't necessarily be NASA, though.
What I'd expect to see would be Congress reducing NASA's budget by an amount equivalent to the expected income from taxpayers. The bill would have to include something to stop Congress from doing that.
I first saw this in "Descent of Anansi" by Niven & Barnes, and it kind of makes sense, but I don't know enough physics to know if it would really work. The idea is that the main tank is a pressure-vessel that could maybe be converted to living quarters or other uses. It might also carry some amount (several tons?) of hydrogen and oxygen that could be used in life-support, fuel cells, thrusters, or whatever.
Would that work, or are there very good reasons not to risk it? Even if the tank was bent out of shape during the flight, could it be usefully mined for materials?
I swear, I laughed out loud!