Don't ya just love the web? Here's the link to instantly write a letter to Dow.
And here's what I just sent them:
As the new CEO and President of Dow Chemical Company, I am stunned at your actions against the survivors of the Bhopal, India industrial tragedy. Dow has been a respected name in corporate America for so many years. But this incomprehensible treatment of the poor and sick, when you should be doing everything in your power to make things right, to offer aid and rebuilding, health care and clean up, changes my vision of Dow and its executives and my family and I have lost all respect.
Once again the almighty dollar rules a corporation rather than the fundamental care of the people who once supported it. It matters not that this incident occurred under Union Carbide, you knew this when you bought them.
You know quite well that if this had happened in the U.S., this would have been fixed by now. To attack a poor and innocent people, those that have lost many family and still struggle to survive, shows your true bully side. To think that you would do this because they dared to perform a peaceful protest is nothing more than shocking to me. Dow was always such a respected name.
When you add to that your treatment of the parody site Dow-chemical and the whole YesMen fiasco, to use such an ill-gotten law as the DMCA to silence the web and force the take down of not only a web site, but also an entire ISP is unfathomable. It shows that your new stance is to merely silence those who would dare stand up to you, and this is nothing more than a cartelish, mob mentality than can no longer have respect.
I implore you to correct this. To drop your charges against the poor and suffering of India, and to drop your charges against a parody web site, which under the US copyright law, it is perfectly legal to parody just about anything.
I have begun my march to inform those in my family and my place of work of your actions. Others are doing the same. Will you sue me too just to silence me?
I grew up with the name of Dow and have always believed it be an important and respected company. Unless these serious issues are corrected, I can no longer ignore the truth, nor can I think of Dow with any high regard.
Take note that I am writing this to you via the convience of the web. Yes, the Internet is a wonderful and rich thing which allows us to recieve such information and respond accordingly, even on New Year's Day. The DMCA does nothing but silence this information. But I include my own salutation, because I do not agree with the one built into this online form.
Working for options is really nothing 'new', and was born in the mid 90's dot.com stampede. There were many 'paper' millionaires. Some worked for free, others for near minimum wage. It was a huge risk, because most companies failed, even in the very beginning. And of course, most others failed a few years later. But the trend of working for chance seemed to start back then, and even though it's marketing and other non-tech types jobs, it shows this start-up method may have migrated across business lines.
My earliest are all around 3-4, and all for things that frightened me. My family was stationed in Germany back then - I was the family interpreter up to the age of six when we moved back to the states. I lost the language around 12 and can only count to ten now. Anyway, I remember being a tom-boy and climbing on clothes lines - I fell off and landed on a spike. We lived off base, so no hospital near by. I have a pretty decent sized scar on my butt to remind me. But I can pretty vividly remember trying to get myself off it, and trying to get home afraid I was going to get in trouble. Still in Germany, we went to a haunted house thing on the base, and you were supposed to close your eyes and reach in to some unknown scary goop, I was told it could be worms and freaked. It was only spaghetti. My parents never did that to me again. To this day, I can still remember a bad dream. We must have gone to Disney Land before moving to Germany, and I had a nightmare one night that all the 'It's a Small World' characters (which I loved then and still do) were dancing around my feet and poking at me. The cat had gotten under the covers and was playing with my toes, but it turned into a nightmare - I can still remember my mother running in the room to wake me up and pull the cat out. I know the age is right because we lived in two different houses while there so I can pin-point the location.
When I think about what I can remember, it breaks my heart when children are abused, because I can understand how it affects them forever. And I count my blessings that my earliest memories, though caused by fear, were for nothing more than kids stuff.
No, we don't know how many were received - it's only 50 that were ACCEPTED. On the last round 270+ were received, and I believe most of those will show up again during the Reply deadline which is in Feb. With all the buzz on here, EFF, ChillingEffects, etc., I doubt very much the number is anywhere near 50, and probably closer to the hundreds somewhere. I think anyone who took the effort to send in and didn't get accepted should forward their comments to their local Congress and insist they be heard.
If you read my comment above, you'll see I had the same problem and agree. The whole 5 requirements (name, idenify class, number each class, summary of each class, provide facts)were buried too deep and very difficult to decipher. I suggest you also forward your comments to your local Congress person, and insist your voice be heard. to eliminate comments because they weren't numbered, or didn't end with "In summary..." is crazy. I also think the timing is a bit off. Having the deadline the weekend before Christmas, when people are busy doing other things seems a little intentional to me.
Build a redundant button into the wall, and put a sign above it that says: "Do Not Push!". Then see how many people you can get to push it, and show it at X-Mas parties.
Does anyone remember 'the really big button that doesn't do anything' web page? That was hilarious.
Anyway, if it's Linux, call it Anchorage, then put some cool arctic style posters up with penquins along the shoreline. We had a room call Bedrock once. The main server was called Wilma, other nicknames Barney, Fred and a little mac mail server was called Pebbles. I'm into simple names now, like 'The Hub'. Sort of like 'the pub' because everyone comes in to hang out, but there's no booze.
I'm no conspiracy theory fanatic, but I think that it's _intended to_.
Has anyone noticed that there only 50 comments there? That out of all that were submitted, those were the only ones ACCEPTED? (who know what the real count is.)
Well, I try not to be too, but I couldn't help get the feeling that this whole comment thing was made to be way more complicated that necessary. First off, the format requirment: in order to figure out what exactly these requirments were, you had to read through most of the 19 page Notice of Inquiry to figure it out. And if you weren't good at reading between the lines, forget it. One simple step - numbering your classes, appeared as just one little blip in the middle of a very legal jargon paragraph. Later, the requirment that a name be on the attachment.
I submitted, and noticed the little warning "Most of the comments submitted thus far do not comply....Comments that do not comply with ALL of the requirements will not be considered." When you click the submit button, up pops a reminder (which I think should have been right out front in the beginning) which reminded of the 5 requirements (name, idenify class, number each class, summary of each class, provide facts). Anyway, mine got rejected. In defense of the LOC, I will say that they did call me at home to let me know of the rejection and that I could re-submit to a different email. Basically, my summary was off, in that I did not start out the ending with "In summary,". I told the guy that I thought their requirments were too steep, and that anyone who took the time to submit should be heard regardless. I mean, how stupid to go through all that effort and not have your voice be heard because you didn't number a paragraph or use the word summary? Again, there are only 50 comments there and that bothers me. Last round 270something were submitted, mostly in essay form which I am sure drove them crazy. But whatever, it is their job to figure out what ails the public, not the publics job to become mini-lawyers just to be able to participate.
Canada might be interested too:
"help build invaluable databases that will facilitate the management of copyrights, improve copyright compliance, increase royalties to Canadian content creators, and promote the use of Canadian content throughout the world."
But really, I love Google. As a service and so far as a company. They must spend a lot of their re-investment into the company on new developments. Their eye is truly on the future, where other companies spend most of their time maintaining poor products because they didn't put enough thought into it in the first place. I just hope they are on the moral and ethical side of things and don't let their ingenuity be sold-out to the highest bidder.
This doesn't frighten me at all. In the title: "Development of Online Copyright Management and Licensing Systems" the key word I read is 'Development'. And that is what has been missing with DRM from the beginning. I have always believed that a better answer to this problem is plain old-fashioned R&D -research and development. Yet the **AA have been very reluctant to do that. They prefer to do things the only way they have ever known, through aggressive lobbying and through the courts. That cannot be the answer, and I wish they would realize that already.
Their suggestions of DDos attacks and such, show how infantile their experience level is here. I can almost picture them at a meeting - "What can we do?", some 2-bit programmer yells out "we have this system where you can slow their bandwidth down so much that they won't be able to get music anymore". "Wow! Ok, that sounds good lets do it!".
Real R&D takes a ton of money and possibly years before coming to the table with something useable. Along the way there are many flops and failures, and tiny successes of which to grow on. **AA doesn't seem to understand this process. They just want to churn out the next pop artist and keep their baseline solid.
When I first heard of DRM, I thought finally, they are going to fight fire with fire. They will develop some slick way of tracking their material. Similar to how we fight viri with antivirus software. If software and lack of public understanding is the problem, then software and education of the public has got to be the answer. But I have yet to see one educational commercial on this, all I see is Rip/Burn from the computer side. And their software proposals are both laughable and frightening at best.
Of course the suggestion of DRM quickly got out of hand, turned into a major invasion of piracy and sleazy proposals to undermine the legitimate customer. Who expected the **AA to pull the same sleaze tactics on the customer that they pull on the artists they supposedly represent? I know so much more about them now, all negative, that I was completely clueless about before. Here in the US we have that millionaire that donated 1mill to a law school to try and fix the problem. That is R&D money. That the Canadian govt is doing this I think is a good thing. It is both a national and international problem. When a problem affects so many people, then the governments should fund the research. The **AA has pretty well proven that they would rather keep their lawyers employed. They only thing I see funky about this is they keep using the word "database" as if a database is the answer. I am not sure if a database is the answer. I think that is the key here. Nobody knows the answer. That is why the problem hasn't been fixed yet. There are things in our future that we haven't even imagined yet.
Yes, but is there a way for a company to tap into their own extra processing power? Is there a Intranet style version of the application/delivery they will use?
This weeks TV Guide has 4 different covers for this Star Trek movie - it's one of those plastic sheets where the picture changes as you move it around. (what do you call those anyway?)
"Many people are ignorant or simply don't care until they see a direct effect on their own life. "
How true. But in the recent fiasco at Fatwallet.com vs Walmart,et al, I think the public finally got a little taste. At least a google news search shows that the story hit many newspapers, not just tech ones. Yes Fatwallet had to get lawyers involved, but I think the many emails sent to the various companies had a strong hand in it too. I know emailed every company involved to let them know I disagreed with their use of the DMCA and I would not be shopping there this holiday season. It seems that finally (hopefully) when the 'little guy' is getting pushed around by this, they are not so little anymore.
If that's true then mangement doesn't understand the business very well. I can't think of any tech people I know that don't do things on the side, whether for $$ or not, on behalf of their company or not. Even if it's just for family. Does a doctor just walk by an injured person on the street? Does a teacher sit silent when someone nearby asks a question they know the answer too? When you are skilled in an area, it's just human nature to present that side of yourself in your day-to-day life. A good manager would understand that and incorporate it into their business model. (And I also wonder if said management that goes so far as to fire tech ppl for helping has never asked for personal/home computing help from some of their hired tech people?)
"It sure is good to know that our children will be safe from being accidentally redirected to dangerous, kid-unfriendly sites like www.cnn.com when they're hanging around nickelodeon.kids.us. Way to go, GWB.
Actually, i'm just being cynical, i guess that is a pretty good idea"
I don't think it's cynical, because I'm thinking the same thing. Having the kids.us is good, but not allowing to link outside of itself will be its downfall. There are thousands of well established sites for kids - Nickelodeon as you mentioned, Yahooligans, Disney, Connectedlearning, tons of homework sites, keeping kids safe sites, even the new york times has a section on education where kids can go for homework help. Do the bozo's who thought up that requirement honestly believe the entire web infrastructure will re-build itself around this? Do they expect everyone to duplicate what they already have and mirror it in a secure area? The $$ and manpower to do everything twice -- it's just not realisic and I can't see this happening.
"Recently, two Finnish churches refused to pay royalties to the country's copyright society for the performance of Christmas hymns. The congregations won their case in a district court, but the society has appealed.
They sued churches. This blows my mind. "
That's what got me too. Especially since choirs are not paid singers! What I want to know is if this finnish copyright assoc, is somehow connected with our RIAA. Afterall, music recorded in the US is everywhere, so it seems that the Fin office must in turn pass some of the fees to the US agencies. Because if our RIAA is somehow trying to set precedence in other countries just to test their craft...just well, conspiracy theory I guess.
Oh dear. I hate responding to my own post, but I guess this needs further explanation.
"What evidence do you offer in support of this claim? I've tried, as an experiment, using the 'unsubscribe' link or address in a couple of spams. The result was predictable;" The evidence is in the post - I have done it successfully and still do it when I think it will work, and it usually does. I clearly state that it is difficult to decipher - maybe my skills at picking those worth risking an unsubscribe and those not worth the effort are better.
"'Legit' companies won't send you marketing E-mail without you asking for it to begin with." Of course they will. Ok, so maybe 'legit' is not the right word. I should have said 'names you know or are familiar with, like Sears". Most major companies have been buying customer lists for years. This is just standard practice for them. Just because they are big, doesn't mean the spammers can't fool them too. But they are also the ones who will state that they take your privacy very seriously and if you feel you received the mail in error, you can ask not to receive any more. I used Hickory Farms because that is one that showed up for me out of nowhere - I opted out, got a reply that I was removed, and I never heard from them again. Again, if it was hot teen whatever, I wouldn't have bothered - that would get filtered instead. If everyone just blindly filters mail the spammer/company is never going to learn how annoyed you are by it. Just like catalog mail, you have to let them know to be removed or the snail-junk mail will just keep coming. Now, come on, the holidays are approaching. Are you saying you've never gotten a Hickory Farms catalog via snail mail? If so, why would you think they would treat email any differently?
For the Anon Coward post: "If you're following any advice from the Enquirer, at least don't mention your source." Ok, a little reading comprehension please. I clearly said that I was surprised to see a method similar to mine. That means I was doing this long before I ever caught the Enq article - I never said I followed it. But yes, I am impressed because that rag gets to millions of readers and it's about time some of this bothersome tech stuff gets to be more mainstreamed. I would be thrilled to catch something about the DMCA in there.
There are hundreds of SW packages that stick with very cognitive and basic things, like shapes and numbers, animals, etc. At the affordable level is to just start with something you would get for Pre-K to 1st grade area, then work your way up depending on the skill. There are MS mice that have a ball as big as a softball for hands that don't move well - these work well for old folks too. There are giant keyboards. Things I don't like are touch screens (If you can't point a mouse, you won't be able to touch the right spot anyway) and voice recognition because real VR has a long way to go still, and most of these users can't speak well enough for it. I have seen many mentally handicapped truly brighten up and find new ways to communicate when put in front of a computer- and yes they will almost always need one-on-one help for a while before they are able to go it alone. There are packages like Pix Writer that let them click an image and the word will pop-up, or the other way around. Board Maker and Writing with Symbols are others but these start to cost a little more than your average kid CD. They are out there - just gotta keep looking.
I agree that it's crazy that.0001% actually purchase something, then they think it's a success and spam even more.
But what I really can't stand is when tech people run around and say "never, ever respond to spam, or try to opt out. You will only get more once they realize your email address is good." This is just BS. It can be confusing to explain the best way to remove spam - learning to decipher legitmate companies (Buy.com, Hickory Farms, Citi Bank) from the viagra ads, but you have to try. The legit ones will truly remove you when asked - so that's done. The ones with broken links and return addresses that go nowhere get filtered - (they can't verify squat because you couldn't reply anyway). And for some of the porn that have either web links or reply requests, just try them. It's a pain to keep track of those you reply to then check to see if they come back, but if they do, that's when you type "remove me from your list and any other list connected to you or I will forward this message to my state's attorney general". I've done this a couple of times, and it's like a big swoosh sound as the spam gets sucked off of my computer. Those few viagra and hot teen things that come to me I just delete. These are mostly from fake.aol or.msn accounts anyway (and if you have time, those get sent to abuse@aol, etc. -not that they'll do anything, but it's good to annoy them) Overall, after a few weeks of fighting back, my spam has been reduced greatly.
Ironically, out of all of the articles and how-to's I have read, very few explain how to try to opt out. The National Enquirer, of all rags, actually had a very good article on spam and included opt out instructions that pretty much follow my method - when to do it, when to not bother. They have also had good articles on keeping kids safe online, identity theft, alerts on kids modeling sites that border on child pron - who would have guessed to find decent tech stuff there?
Privacy statement? It doesn't mention anything about how they will protect your privacy and data collected. Indeed, they sell access to this info for 50K a year. Just think, 1.5mill of people's credit card and bank statements, surfing habits for the whole family and instant messages. Packaged in a very misleading sentence "does not examine" then later "except to perform necessary functions" - so basically this statement nullifies itself. My God, they actually verify your bank statement to make sure you really earn what you told them?
"Although we generally monitor your Internet behavior as part of this service, e-Trends does not examine, use nor keep any instant messages or examine or use the contents of any of your e-mail messages, except to perform specific functions necessary to provide you the e-Trends service (such as scanning your e-mails to effectively search for viruses), and as a quality assurance check against and method for verifying information on the surfing and buying behavior of e-Trends members."
Somehow these marketers have pulled off the biggest scam of all, to finally get people to agree to simply hand over their lives, SSN numbers and all! I hope someone gets caught in an identity theft crisis and discovers it was because this company sold their private and financial lives to a third party. Really, some hood could simply round up 50K and have the info delivered to them. As usual I'm sure 99% of the 1.5 mill have never read this statement and they are probably the same type of user who will click on an email attachment every time - and thus believe it is very nice of this company to provide "security" for them. They even fooled the reporter!
I'm glad there's something for me on the list. Adventure games Syberia and The Longest Journey ring a bell so maybe I'll try them out this year. I started with Wolfenstien and Doom, went through Quake etc, but then games just got too violent for me. I remember a Game mag edition where every ad was for a violent game, bragging about 'exit wounds' and 'blood and gore'. All I could think was what a waste of good graphic programming talent.
Although I never cared for MYST (that flat screen, jump forward thing gave me a headache) I'll take the clones. I really liked Riven. The gaming was a bit weak, but some of the puzzles were pretty good, and the scenery was amazing for it's time. And what ever happend to 7th Guest? That's more my kind of game, although I could do without the raunchy videos which really spoil it as a family game. I just got Harry Potter for my niece, and after setting it up for her, I wanted one for myself. More my style. You get the levels, the graphics, the secrets and the puzzles. Harry can climb and jump and swim, etc, but he sort of runs around with magic wand and makes the monsters disappear. Def more my style.
IANAL, but it's my understanding that just because there is a patent, it doesn't mean you can't improve on the invention. Quote from http://usgovinfo.about.com/blpatents.htm:
Utility Patents - The most common type of patent, utility patents are issued to inventors of new devices and processes or improvements to existing devices or processes. Most utility patents are issued for inventions that improve existing devices. Inventors of the proverbial "better mousetrap," seek utility patents.
The existing patent you mention says "inappropriate web page material"
It may be possible the wording can be changed to be more specific - "unsolicited electronic mail messages" and "advertisements". I've bounced around the patent site a bit, and it seems there are a lot of patents that are given with prior art in existence, they just have to find it and say 'reference this patent' or something. If someone can get a patent for swinging on a swing, it's worth a shot if you've got the $$.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't ya just love the web? Here's the link to instantly write a letter to Dow.
And here's what I just sent them:
As the new CEO and President of Dow Chemical Company, I am stunned at your actions against the survivors of the Bhopal, India industrial tragedy. Dow has been a respected name in corporate America for so many years. But this incomprehensible treatment of the poor and sick, when you should be doing everything in your power to make things right, to offer aid and rebuilding, health care and clean up, changes my vision of Dow and its executives and my family and I have lost all respect.
Once again the almighty dollar rules a corporation rather than the fundamental care of the people who once supported it. It matters not that this incident occurred under Union Carbide, you knew this when you bought them.
You know quite well that if this had happened in the U.S., this would have been fixed by now. To attack a poor and innocent people, those that have lost many family and still struggle to survive, shows your true bully side. To think that you would do this because they dared to perform a peaceful protest is nothing more than shocking to me. Dow was always such a respected name.
When you add to that your treatment of the parody site Dow-chemical and the whole YesMen fiasco, to use such an ill-gotten law as the DMCA to silence the web and force the take down of not only a web site, but also an entire ISP is unfathomable. It shows that your new stance is to merely silence those who would dare stand up to you, and this is nothing more than a cartelish, mob mentality than can no longer have respect.
I implore you to correct this. To drop your charges against the poor and suffering of India, and to drop your charges against a parody web site, which under the US copyright law, it is perfectly legal to parody just about anything.
I have begun my march to inform those in my family and my place of work of your actions. Others are doing the same. Will you sue me too just to silence me?
I grew up with the name of Dow and have always believed it be an important and respected company. Unless these serious issues are corrected, I can no longer ignore the truth, nor can I think of Dow with any high regard.
Take note that I am writing this to you via the convience of the web. Yes, the Internet is a wonderful and rich thing which allows us to recieve such information and respond accordingly, even on New Year's Day. The DMCA does nothing but silence this information. But I include my own salutation, because I do not agree with the one built into this online form.
With utmost sincerity,
A very aware U.S. citizen-
(name here)
Working for options is really nothing 'new', and was born in the mid 90's dot.com stampede. There were many 'paper' millionaires. Some worked for free, others for near minimum wage. It was a huge risk, because most companies failed, even in the very beginning. And of course, most others failed a few years later. But the trend of working for chance seemed to start back then, and even though it's marketing and other non-tech types jobs, it shows this start-up method may have migrated across business lines.
My earliest are all around 3-4, and all for things that frightened me. My family was stationed in Germany back then - I was the family interpreter up to the age of six when we moved back to the states. I lost the language around 12 and can only count to ten now. Anyway, I remember being a tom-boy and climbing on clothes lines - I fell off and landed on a spike. We lived off base, so no hospital near by. I have a pretty decent sized scar on my butt to remind me. But I can pretty vividly remember trying to get myself off it, and trying to get home afraid I was going to get in trouble. Still in Germany, we went to a haunted house thing on the base, and you were supposed to close your eyes and reach in to some unknown scary goop, I was told it could be worms and freaked. It was only spaghetti. My parents never did that to me again. To this day, I can still remember a bad dream. We must have gone to Disney Land before moving to Germany, and I had a nightmare one night that all the 'It's a Small World' characters (which I loved then and still do) were dancing around my feet and poking at me. The cat had gotten under the covers and was playing with my toes, but it turned into a nightmare - I can still remember my mother running in the room to wake me up and pull the cat out. I know the age is right because we lived in two different houses while there so I can pin-point the location.
When I think about what I can remember, it breaks my heart when children are abused, because I can understand how it affects them forever. And I count my blessings that my earliest memories, though caused by fear, were for nothing more than kids stuff.
"The Government only received 50 replies..."
No, we don't know how many were received - it's only 50 that were ACCEPTED. On the last round 270+ were received, and I believe most of those will show up again during the Reply deadline which is in Feb. With all the buzz on here, EFF, ChillingEffects, etc., I doubt very much the number is anywhere near 50, and probably closer to the hundreds somewhere. I think anyone who took the effort to send in and didn't get accepted should forward their comments to their local Congress and insist they be heard.
If you read my comment above, you'll see I had the same problem and agree. The whole 5 requirements (name, idenify class, number each class, summary of each class, provide facts)were buried too deep and very difficult to decipher. I suggest you also forward your comments to your local Congress person, and insist your voice be heard. to eliminate comments because they weren't numbered, or didn't end with "In summary..." is crazy. I also think the timing is a bit off. Having the deadline the weekend before Christmas, when people are busy doing other things seems a little intentional to me.
Build a redundant button into the wall, and put a sign above it that says: "Do Not Push!". Then see how many people you can get to push it, and show it at X-Mas parties.
Does anyone remember 'the really big button that doesn't do anything' web page? That was hilarious.
Anyway, if it's Linux, call it Anchorage, then put some cool arctic style posters up with penquins along the shoreline. We had a room call Bedrock once. The main server was called Wilma, other nicknames Barney, Fred and a little mac mail server was called Pebbles. I'm into simple names now, like 'The Hub'. Sort of like 'the pub' because everyone comes in to hang out, but there's no booze.
I'm no conspiracy theory fanatic, but I think that it's _intended to_.
Has anyone noticed that there only 50 comments there? That out of all that were submitted, those were the only ones ACCEPTED? (who know what the real count is.)
Well, I try not to be too, but I couldn't help get the feeling that this whole comment thing was made to be way more complicated that necessary. First off, the format requirment: in order to figure out what exactly these requirments were, you had to read through most of the 19 page Notice of Inquiry to figure it out. And if you weren't good at reading between the lines, forget it. One simple step - numbering your classes, appeared as just one little blip in the middle of a very legal jargon paragraph. Later, the requirment that a name be on the attachment.
I submitted, and noticed the little warning "Most of the comments submitted thus far do not comply....Comments that do not comply with ALL of the requirements will not be considered." When you click the submit button, up pops a reminder (which I think should have been right out front in the beginning) which reminded of the 5 requirements (name, idenify class, number each class, summary of each class, provide facts). Anyway, mine got rejected. In defense of the LOC, I will say that they did call me at home to let me know of the rejection and that I could re-submit to a different email. Basically, my summary was off, in that I did not start out the ending with "In summary,". I told the guy that I thought their requirments were too steep, and that anyone who took the time to submit should be heard regardless. I mean, how stupid to go through all that effort and not have your voice be heard because you didn't number a paragraph or use the word summary? Again, there are only 50 comments there and that bothers me. Last round 270something were submitted, mostly in essay form which I am sure drove them crazy. But whatever, it is their job to figure out what ails the public, not the publics job to become mini-lawyers just to be able to participate.
Let's hope Poindexter and his Total Information Awareness proposal doesn't get hold of this.
Canada might be interested too: "help build invaluable databases that will facilitate the management of copyrights, improve copyright compliance, increase royalties to Canadian content creators, and promote the use of Canadian content throughout the world."
But really, I love Google. As a service and so far as a company. They must spend a lot of their re-investment into the company on new developments. Their eye is truly on the future, where other companies spend most of their time maintaining poor products because they didn't put enough thought into it in the first place. I just hope they are on the moral and ethical side of things and don't let their ingenuity be sold-out to the highest bidder.
Wow, one typo really changes things. invasion of piracy
That's invasion of privacy of course.
This doesn't frighten me at all. In the title: "Development of Online Copyright Management and Licensing Systems" the key word I read is 'Development'. And that is what has been missing with DRM from the beginning. I have always believed that a better answer to this problem is plain old-fashioned R&D -research and development. Yet the **AA have been very reluctant to do that. They prefer to do things the only way they have ever known, through aggressive lobbying and through the courts. That cannot be the answer, and I wish they would realize that already.
Their suggestions of DDos attacks and such, show how infantile their experience level is here. I can almost picture them at a meeting - "What can we do?", some 2-bit programmer yells out "we have this system where you can slow their bandwidth down so much that they won't be able to get music anymore". "Wow! Ok, that sounds good lets do it!".
Real R&D takes a ton of money and possibly years before coming to the table with something useable. Along the way there are many flops and failures, and tiny successes of which to grow on. **AA doesn't seem to understand this process. They just want to churn out the next pop artist and keep their baseline solid.
When I first heard of DRM, I thought finally, they are going to fight fire with fire. They will develop some slick way of tracking their material. Similar to how we fight viri with antivirus software. If software and lack of public understanding is the problem, then software and education of the public has got to be the answer. But I have yet to see one educational commercial on this, all I see is Rip/Burn from the computer side. And their software proposals are both laughable and frightening at best.
Of course the suggestion of DRM quickly got out of hand, turned into a major invasion of piracy and sleazy proposals to undermine the legitimate customer. Who expected the **AA to pull the same sleaze tactics on the customer that they pull on the artists they supposedly represent? I know so much more about them now, all negative, that I was completely clueless about before. Here in the US we have that millionaire that donated 1mill to a law school to try and fix the problem. That is R&D money. That the Canadian govt is doing this I think is a good thing. It is both a national and international problem. When a problem affects so many people, then the governments should fund the research. The **AA has pretty well proven that they would rather keep their lawyers employed. They only thing I see funky about this is they keep using the word "database" as if a database is the answer. I am not sure if a database is the answer. I think that is the key here. Nobody knows the answer. That is why the problem hasn't been fixed yet. There are things in our future that we haven't even imagined yet.
Yes, but is there a way for a company to tap into their own extra processing power? Is there a Intranet style version of the application/delivery they will use?
This weeks TV Guide has 4 different covers for this Star Trek movie - it's one of those plastic sheets where the picture changes as you move it around. (what do you call those anyway?)
"Many people are ignorant or simply don't care until they see a direct effect on their own life. "
How true. But in the recent fiasco at Fatwallet.com vs Walmart,et al, I think the public finally got a little taste. At least a google news search shows that the story hit many newspapers, not just tech ones. Yes Fatwallet had to get lawyers involved, but I think the many emails sent to the various companies had a strong hand in it too. I know emailed every company involved to let them know I disagreed with their use of the DMCA and I would not be shopping there this holiday season. It seems that finally (hopefully) when the 'little guy' is getting pushed around by this, they are not so little anymore.
If that's true then mangement doesn't understand the business very well. I can't think of any tech people I know that don't do things on the side, whether for $$ or not, on behalf of their company or not. Even if it's just for family. Does a doctor just walk by an injured person on the street? Does a teacher sit silent when someone nearby asks a question they know the answer too? When you are skilled in an area, it's just human nature to present that side of yourself in your day-to-day life. A good manager would understand that and incorporate it into their business model. (And I also wonder if said management that goes so far as to fire tech ppl for helping has never asked for personal/home computing help from some of their hired tech people?)
"It sure is good to know that our children will be safe from being accidentally redirected to dangerous, kid-unfriendly sites like www.cnn.com when they're hanging around nickelodeon.kids.us. Way to go, GWB.
Actually, i'm just being cynical, i guess that is a pretty good idea"
I don't think it's cynical, because I'm thinking the same thing. Having the kids.us is good, but not allowing to link outside of itself will be its downfall. There are thousands of well established sites for kids - Nickelodeon as you mentioned, Yahooligans, Disney, Connectedlearning, tons of homework sites, keeping kids safe sites, even the new york times has a section on education where kids can go for homework help. Do the bozo's who thought up that requirement honestly believe the entire web infrastructure will re-build itself around this? Do they expect everyone to duplicate what they already have and mirror it in a secure area? The $$ and manpower to do everything twice -- it's just not realisic and I can't see this happening.
Don't forget the Google News - just search for FatWallet or DMCA- there's a lot out there now and it's (finally) not just coming from tech mags.
"Recently, two Finnish churches refused to pay royalties to the country's copyright society for the performance of Christmas hymns. The congregations won their case in a district court, but the society has appealed.
They sued churches. This blows my mind. "
That's what got me too. Especially since choirs are not paid singers! What I want to know is if this finnish copyright assoc, is somehow connected with our RIAA. Afterall, music recorded in the US is everywhere, so it seems that the Fin office must in turn pass some of the fees to the US agencies. Because if our RIAA is somehow trying to set precedence in other countries just to test their craft...just well, conspiracy theory I guess.
Oh dear. I hate responding to my own post, but I guess this needs further explanation. "What evidence do you offer in support of this claim? I've tried, as an experiment, using the 'unsubscribe' link or address in a couple of spams. The result was predictable;" The evidence is in the post - I have done it successfully and still do it when I think it will work, and it usually does. I clearly state that it is difficult to decipher - maybe my skills at picking those worth risking an unsubscribe and those not worth the effort are better.
"'Legit' companies won't send you marketing E-mail without you asking for it to begin with." Of course they will. Ok, so maybe 'legit' is not the right word. I should have said 'names you know or are familiar with, like Sears". Most major companies have been buying customer lists for years. This is just standard practice for them. Just because they are big, doesn't mean the spammers can't fool them too. But they are also the ones who will state that they take your privacy very seriously and if you feel you received the mail in error, you can ask not to receive any more. I used Hickory Farms because that is one that showed up for me out of nowhere - I opted out, got a reply that I was removed, and I never heard from them again. Again, if it was hot teen whatever, I wouldn't have bothered - that would get filtered instead. If everyone just blindly filters mail the spammer/company is never going to learn how annoyed you are by it. Just like catalog mail, you have to let them know to be removed or the snail-junk mail will just keep coming. Now, come on, the holidays are approaching. Are you saying you've never gotten a Hickory Farms catalog via snail mail? If so, why would you think they would treat email any differently?
For the Anon Coward post: "If you're following any advice from the Enquirer, at least don't mention your source." Ok, a little reading comprehension please. I clearly said that I was surprised to see a method similar to mine. That means I was doing this long before I ever caught the Enq article - I never said I followed it. But yes, I am impressed because that rag gets to millions of readers and it's about time some of this bothersome tech stuff gets to be more mainstreamed. I would be thrilled to catch something about the DMCA in there.
There are hundreds of SW packages that stick with very cognitive and basic things, like shapes and numbers, animals, etc. At the affordable level is to just start with something you would get for Pre-K to 1st grade area, then work your way up depending on the skill. There are MS mice that have a ball as big as a softball for hands that don't move well - these work well for old folks too. There are giant keyboards. Things I don't like are touch screens (If you can't point a mouse, you won't be able to touch the right spot anyway) and voice recognition because real VR has a long way to go still, and most of these users can't speak well enough for it. I have seen many mentally handicapped truly brighten up and find new ways to communicate when put in front of a computer- and yes they will almost always need one-on-one help for a while before they are able to go it alone. There are packages like Pix Writer that let them click an image and the word will pop-up, or the other way around. Board Maker and Writing with Symbols are others but these start to cost a little more than your average kid CD. They are out there - just gotta keep looking.
I agree that it's crazy that .0001% actually purchase something, then they think it's a success and spam even more.
.aol or .msn accounts anyway (and if you have time, those get sent to abuse@aol, etc. -not that they'll do anything, but it's good to annoy them) Overall, after a few weeks of fighting back, my spam has been reduced greatly.
But what I really can't stand is when tech people run around and say "never, ever respond to spam, or try to opt out. You will only get more once they realize your email address is good." This is just BS. It can be confusing to explain the best way to remove spam - learning to decipher legitmate companies (Buy.com, Hickory Farms, Citi Bank) from the viagra ads, but you have to try. The legit ones will truly remove you when asked - so that's done. The ones with broken links and return addresses that go nowhere get filtered - (they can't verify squat because you couldn't reply anyway). And for some of the porn that have either web links or reply requests, just try them. It's a pain to keep track of those you reply to then check to see if they come back, but if they do, that's when you type "remove me from your list and any other list connected to you or I will forward this message to my state's attorney general". I've done this a couple of times, and it's like a big swoosh sound as the spam gets sucked off of my computer. Those few viagra and hot teen things that come to me I just delete. These are mostly from fake
Ironically, out of all of the articles and how-to's I have read, very few explain how to try to opt out. The National Enquirer, of all rags, actually had a very good article on spam and included opt out instructions that pretty much follow my method - when to do it, when to not bother. They have also had good articles on keeping kids safe online, identity theft, alerts on kids modeling sites that border on child pron - who would have guessed to find decent tech stuff there?
Privacy statement? It doesn't mention anything about how they will protect your privacy and data collected. Indeed, they sell access to this info for 50K a year. Just think, 1.5mill of people's credit card and bank statements, surfing habits for the whole family and instant messages. Packaged in a very misleading sentence "does not examine" then later "except to perform necessary functions" - so basically this statement nullifies itself. My God, they actually verify your bank statement to make sure you really earn what you told them?
"Although we generally monitor your Internet behavior as part of this service, e-Trends does not examine, use nor keep any instant messages or examine or use the contents of any of your e-mail messages, except to perform specific functions necessary to provide you the e-Trends service (such as scanning your e-mails to effectively search for viruses), and as a quality assurance check against and method for verifying information on the surfing and buying behavior of e-Trends members."
Somehow these marketers have pulled off the biggest scam of all, to finally get people to agree to simply hand over their lives, SSN numbers and all! I hope someone gets caught in an identity theft crisis and discovers it was because this company sold their private and financial lives to a third party. Really, some hood could simply round up 50K and have the info delivered to them. As usual I'm sure 99% of the 1.5 mill have never read this statement and they are probably the same type of user who will click on an email attachment every time - and thus believe it is very nice of this company to provide "security" for them. They even fooled the reporter!
"This is a phone that has shipped before it's finished."
That review really was just as bad as everyone expected. I was waiting for the guy to say it blue screened on him.
I'm glad there's something for me on the list. Adventure games Syberia and The Longest Journey ring a bell so maybe I'll try them out this year. I started with Wolfenstien and Doom, went through Quake etc, but then games just got too violent for me. I remember a Game mag edition where every ad was for a violent game, bragging about 'exit wounds' and 'blood and gore'. All I could think was what a waste of good graphic programming talent.
Although I never cared for MYST (that flat screen, jump forward thing gave me a headache) I'll take the clones. I really liked Riven. The gaming was a bit weak, but some of the puzzles were pretty good, and the scenery was amazing for it's time. And what ever happend to 7th Guest? That's more my kind of game, although I could do without the raunchy videos which really spoil it as a family game. I just got Harry Potter for my niece, and after setting it up for her, I wanted one for myself. More my style. You get the levels, the graphics, the secrets and the puzzles. Harry can climb and jump and swim, etc, but he sort of runs around with magic wand and makes the monsters disappear. Def more my style.
IANAL, but it's my understanding that just because there is a patent, it doesn't mean you can't improve on the invention. Quote from http://usgovinfo.about.com/blpatents.htm:
Utility Patents - The most common type of patent, utility patents are issued to inventors of new devices and processes or improvements to existing devices or processes. Most utility patents are issued for inventions that improve existing devices. Inventors of the proverbial "better mousetrap," seek utility patents.
The existing patent you mention says "inappropriate web page material"
It may be possible the wording can be changed to be more specific - "unsolicited electronic mail messages" and "advertisements". I've bounced around the patent site a bit, and it seems there are a lot of patents that are given with prior art in existence, they just have to find it and say 'reference this patent' or something. If someone can get a patent for swinging on a swing, it's worth a shot if you've got the $$.
So when is someone going to sue PanIp back?