I get that, but I don't see how that translates. I have run IP over Packet-Over-Sonet links before. Sonet is a layer 2 protocol. IP is layer 3. I was poking fun at the summary, which said "converting to an all-IP core". That in and of itself makes no sense. It implies, to me at least, that they were running on a DIFFERENT layer 3 protocol before. What you do at Layer 2 (Ethernet, Token Ring, Sonet, etc.) is another matter entirely.
I keep hearing about how physical media (CD, DVD, Blu-Ray) are dead technologies and that the future will be downloads. As long as problems like this keep presenting themselves, I don't see how that will happen. Without any meaningful "first sale" rights or license to redownload, why on earth would a person want to lock themselves into the mercy of a fallible hard drive, which WILL eventually fail (much sooner than a well-cared-for removable media like a DVD), taking your entire collection of movies, music, games, etc. with it.
Until this problem is solved, I don't see how downloads are going to be the future. The content industry sure doesn't seem to keen on solving it either, so my guess is that physical media is going to stay alive and well for the foreseeable future.
I think what has got the online community up in arms about this is that any laws that might be enacted to prosecute crimes similar to this one in the future would likely have many unintended consequences. That seems to be the EFF's position here.
My question is this - what laws are on the books, if any, to prosecute a person "in the real world" (i.e. not online) that did this sort of thing. Is it legal to taunt someone so severely and engage in a "psychological warfare" style campaign against a person to goad them into suicide? If you use lies and deception to convince a person to kill themselves, which is what happened here, is there a law against that? If there is, it would seem to me that law would apply and that no new laws are needed.
Something I really don't understand here is why ANY reasonable person would not opt-out of any of these systems? (Granted, only the first one is actually coded into law) And how do you enforce them for companies based outside the USA? And for that matter, what's to stop companies from outsourcing their tracking offshore to skirt the laws?
What happened to "Ask The Designers of D&D Fourth Edition" that was posted back in January? Are we ever going to see a follow-up to this? Did they not like all the questions? Guess I shouldn't hold my breath...
As much as I like Adblock Plus and Noscript, I tend not to recommend that people install Noscript or disable cookies. Adblock Plus and automatic filter downloads are nice. But it's a lot to ask someone to manually whitelist a bunch of Noscript stuff with every new website they visit. My current Firefox installation is going on 1 year now, and you'd think I would have a good whitelist built up. But it never fails that just about every day I there is a good chance I will visit 3 or 4 websites that won't render correctly if I don't manually tell Noscript to allow between 3 and 5 more to the whitelist.
For me, that's just fine. But Grandma ain't gonna go for that. Oh, and for that matter you run into the same problem disabling cookies on a lot of sites. Go ahead and blame lazy web developers or whatever, but cookies and javascript are unfortunately a way of life when getting online if you want a good browsing experience.
...Only serve to prove your point, IMO. I just read through quite a few people that disagreed with your post, but the essence of what you were saying is intact. Regardless of whether it's the 60s,70s,80s,90s, it's clear that people often have a bias towards past music. It is nigh-impossible to say what bands of today will be revered in the future as trendsetters for music that's not yet written. But it is undeniable that history will eventually decide.
And by the same token, people forget that although there is good music in ever decade, there was an awful lot of crap that came out back in the 60s or whenever too. Confirmation bias and all that. I thought of several counter-examples to the bands others in this thread listed that were contemporaries to several of the "crap" music that was offered as an example.
Why worry about what decade has the best music? Just listen to what you like and don't worry about other people. Good music will always be around. And everyone has a different definition of what's good.
Right at the moment, people that work in IT aren't exactly a majority of the populous. As a percentage of the whole workforce, I'd be willing to bet that people keeping these systems running and designing new ones are a small fraction of the population. People that now, and have always been interested in the 'nuts and bolts' side of technology are always going to be around in the same relative quantities as they were before.
From TFA:
"If class action is certified, it's more likely that the record companies would settle," said Ronnie London, an attorney versed in class-action law with the firm of Davis Wright Tremaine, which specializes in communications law. Just once I'd like to see a plaintiff in one of these cases refuse to settle (witness: Sony rootkit fiasco). I'd like to see some actual, real sanctions be placed, because a settlement is likely to be a bunch of crap like a couple of free downloads or something equally worthless.
The key? Legislation that allowed Cooperatives to form *and helped them with the startup capital*. Wait, didn't this Already Happen a few years ago? Oh, you mean the telecom companies stole the money? Oops. If only there were someone in power that gave enough of a crap to hold their feet to the fire.
I'd like to see a model like this. Ever since I installed a satellite radio receiver in my car, my musical horizons have broadened significantly. A lot of the artists I hear on some of the more obscure channels aren't indexed on iTunes or even available on illegal services like Limewire. This mostly applies to older music that is out of print, or never made it to CD.
It would be nice if there was a service like this that had just about anything ever recorded digitized and made available for download. Let the market sort out what's popular and what isn't, but give us access to EVERYTHING.
In this day and age, there is no reason why virtually every album ever recorded isn't available to buy a digital copy of.
I remember when CDs were first released and everybody lamented about how cold they sounded in comparison to records and cassette tape Um, I don't know what planet the writer of this article lived on when CDs were first released in the early 80s, but the first time I ever heard one I was absolutely stunned at the audio quality being miles ahead of anything I had ever heard before. Everyone I knew at the time had the same opinion. I never heard one person "lament about how cold they sounded".
That sounds great, I am sure it would be no problem whatsoever to tell your friends "My website is at dub-dub-dub dot mywebsite dot com, colon eighty eighty. And if you don't type the 'eighty eighty' you won't get there. Don't forget to type colon eighty eighty, grandma".
And what the other guy said about proxies is valid too. It's very common for outbound corporate firewalls to block non-port-80 traffic for web browsing.
the iPhone automatically switches from EDGE to known Wi-Fi networks when it finds them, and pops up a list of new Wi-Fi networks it encounters as you move So what they are saying is that if you live in a state where you can get arrested by using publicly available wi-fi that the owner didn't bother to secure, the iPhone will inadvertently commit a crime on your behalf. And since ignorance is no defense, nice move, boys.
conjunction with Windows XP or Vista drivers that hijack traffic at network layers 2-3, below the TCP/IP stack Sometimes Marketing 101 overrides Networking 101. The TCP/IP stack operates at layers 3 and 4. IP is a Layer 3 protocol. The phrase "hijack network traffic [...] below the TCP/IP stack" to me means that it is operating at the Datalink layer. Sorry if I am being pedantic here, as a network engineer reading stuff like that sets off alarms.
Realism does not necessarily equate to "fun". They found a fun formula and it works. It is impressive to see someone ace a song on Expert setting, but not in the same way as watching someone play a real guitar well. Both are impressive, but in different ways and for different reasons.
Most users are only slightly aware of the fact that their computer is even running an operating system. They are aware of the fact that there are Macs, and there are PCs (notwithstanding the current television ads). The thing is, people don't CARE about Linux because their computer (usually) does what they want it to do with the software it came with plus whatever they need to buy at the store to extend that functionality. Browse the web, store photos, manage money, play games, whatever. You can't go to Best Buy and find the Linux software section. Yes, I am aware of the absurdity of that statement but that is what the Linux community is competing against. People don't treat it as a serious competitor because they aren't exposed to it. And when you start talking about which distribution to use, you really start to lose people.
I've always used Linux as a server OS because that's what my background is. I am comfortable with a CLI and setting up BIND or Postfix or whatever to get my box working and handling day to day admin. I run Windows on my main PC because much of the software or functionality I care to use is not necessarily available on Linux. However, I agree wholeheartedly with the parent that ignorance is definitely the issue.
My wife and I share a 1.5Mbps DSL connection with 256k up. I've never had to wish it were faster. I understand that the "A" in ADSL stands for Asynchronous, as in the download speed is greater than the upload speed. This has never sat right with me, but I understood the limitation was a compromise. The other option at the time (the young days of DSL, a few years back) was 768k SDSL (768k both up and down) and I don't know anyone that ever signed up for that. If I remember right, it was quite a bit more expensive than normal ADSL. Now, however, DSL technology is pretty mature and now you have telcos and cable companies running fiber to the home in some locations (i.e Verizon FIOS). As the carriers have built up their infrastructure, you now have high speed full-duplex links available at points very close to, if not at the demark. So I'm not buying into the concept of crappy upload speeds anymore.
I've always felt that the real promise of the Internet was that people could serve up content out of their own homes. Whether that means running my own webserver, or starting my own Internet TV station should be up to me. And you have the telcos and cable companies basically saying "um, yeah sorry but we are going to continue to give you crappy upload speeds even though new tech is available that doesn't have the same limitations, thanks". I actually had some door-to-door salespeople stop by my house the other day from AT&T saying that they had this "Amazing New Product (tm)" that involved them laying down a new fiber infrastructure in my neighborhood and that I could get these huge benefits if I signed up. I asked what the speeds were and the guy told me, with a straight face, 1.5 megabits. I told him I wasn't interested and shut the door in his face.
Don't get me wrong, I understand why this is. The carriers are in bed with media companies that don't want the competition. Meanwhile, the US falls farther and farther behind in broadband tech. It's a sad situation if you ask me - and one I don't see going away anytime soon as long as there is no meaningful competition for last-mile service. Wireless is getting close, though, but has its own share of problems.
"Pulling out of China, shutting down Google.cn, is just not the right thing to do at this point," he said. "But that's exactly what this proposal would do."
Am I just naive in thinking that this proposal would have no effect on their Chinese operations? Let's say the Chinese government says "hey Google, play ball" and they say "no". What can the Chinese government do exactly? I'd just like to see a company, any company that has some pull, say "what are you going to do about it?" to the Chinese. Only when people doing business grow a backbone will things change and others follow suit. But this could just be wishful thinking. I just think it would be cool if someone actually stood up to them.
I love these discussions. Apparently it's just not cool to like some bands (if only we could all agree on which ones weren't cool), and god forbid you actually enjoy playing a video game instead of a real guitar. Also, don't fret guys - they are just publishing a "teaser" list and I'd say everyone should save the REAL bitching until the final list is out.
The PS3 is starting to heal now that some first party titles (i.e. Motorstorm) are coming into existence and a lot of stuff is just around the corner. At launch, there weren't many games for the PS3. Now there are quite a few, which is helping sales tremendously. I of all people thought it was going to fall flat on its face but can definitely see the appeal now.
How you can call the 360 a system for "hardcore gamers only" is beyond me. Xbox Live Arcade alone disproves that argument in my mind. There is a huge library of games for the 360 at this point appealing to both hardcore and casual alike.
Hats off to the Wii for being a great system despite early predictions of its failure (remember when the name "Wii" was announced and we all had a good laugh? Who's laughing now?) Bottom line is that any of the 3 next gen systems is a good buy at this point so it's going to come down to personal preference. Fanboys suck.
That game always reminds me of the scene in Space Quest IV where you look through the "Bargain Bin" at Radio Schock and a bunch of spoof titles were sitting in there. "It Came for Dessert" was my fave...
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I get that, but I don't see how that translates. I have run IP over Packet-Over-Sonet links before. Sonet is a layer 2 protocol. IP is layer 3. I was poking fun at the summary, which said "converting to an all-IP core". That in and of itself makes no sense. It implies, to me at least, that they were running on a DIFFERENT layer 3 protocol before. What you do at Layer 2 (Ethernet, Token Ring, Sonet, etc.) is another matter entirely.
Upgrading to an "all-IP" core? What had they been running on? Appletalk? IPX? Banyan Vines? DECnet?
I keep hearing about how physical media (CD, DVD, Blu-Ray) are dead technologies and that the future will be downloads. As long as problems like this keep presenting themselves, I don't see how that will happen. Without any meaningful "first sale" rights or license to redownload, why on earth would a person want to lock themselves into the mercy of a fallible hard drive, which WILL eventually fail (much sooner than a well-cared-for removable media like a DVD), taking your entire collection of movies, music, games, etc. with it.
Until this problem is solved, I don't see how downloads are going to be the future. The content industry sure doesn't seem to keen on solving it either, so my guess is that physical media is going to stay alive and well for the foreseeable future.
I think what has got the online community up in arms about this is that any laws that might be enacted to prosecute crimes similar to this one in the future would likely have many unintended consequences. That seems to be the EFF's position here.
My question is this - what laws are on the books, if any, to prosecute a person "in the real world" (i.e. not online) that did this sort of thing. Is it legal to taunt someone so severely and engage in a "psychological warfare" style campaign against a person to goad them into suicide? If you use lies and deception to convince a person to kill themselves, which is what happened here, is there a law against that? If there is, it would seem to me that law would apply and that no new laws are needed.
Citizen! Did you see Love Guru, the hit new Mike Meyers comedy?
No.
Traitor!
When does "Coupon the Movie" come out again?
Do Not Call, Do Not E-mail, and now Do Not Track?
Something I really don't understand here is why ANY reasonable person would not opt-out of any of these systems? (Granted, only the first one is actually coded into law) And how do you enforce them for companies based outside the USA? And for that matter, what's to stop companies from outsourcing their tracking offshore to skirt the laws?
Where is the"your post advocates a..." for this?
What happened to "Ask The Designers of D&D Fourth Edition" that was posted back in January? Are we ever going to see a follow-up to this? Did they not like all the questions? Guess I shouldn't hold my breath...
As much as I like Adblock Plus and Noscript, I tend not to recommend that people install Noscript or disable cookies. Adblock Plus and automatic filter downloads are nice. But it's a lot to ask someone to manually whitelist a bunch of Noscript stuff with every new website they visit. My current Firefox installation is going on 1 year now, and you'd think I would have a good whitelist built up. But it never fails that just about every day I there is a good chance I will visit 3 or 4 websites that won't render correctly if I don't manually tell Noscript to allow between 3 and 5 more to the whitelist.
For me, that's just fine. But Grandma ain't gonna go for that. Oh, and for that matter you run into the same problem disabling cookies on a lot of sites. Go ahead and blame lazy web developers or whatever, but cookies and javascript are unfortunately a way of life when getting online if you want a good browsing experience.
...Only serve to prove your point, IMO. I just read through quite a few people that disagreed with your post, but the essence of what you were saying is intact. Regardless of whether it's the 60s,70s,80s,90s, it's clear that people often have a bias towards past music. It is nigh-impossible to say what bands of today will be revered in the future as trendsetters for music that's not yet written. But it is undeniable that history will eventually decide.
And by the same token, people forget that although there is good music in ever decade, there was an awful lot of crap that came out back in the 60s or whenever too. Confirmation bias and all that. I thought of several counter-examples to the bands others in this thread listed that were contemporaries to several of the "crap" music that was offered as an example.
Why worry about what decade has the best music? Just listen to what you like and don't worry about other people. Good music will always be around. And everyone has a different definition of what's good.
Right at the moment, people that work in IT aren't exactly a majority of the populous. As a percentage of the whole workforce, I'd be willing to bet that people keeping these systems running and designing new ones are a small fraction of the population. People that now, and have always been interested in the 'nuts and bolts' side of technology are always going to be around in the same relative quantities as they were before.
I'd like to see a model like this. Ever since I installed a satellite radio receiver in my car, my musical horizons have broadened significantly. A lot of the artists I hear on some of the more obscure channels aren't indexed on iTunes or even available on illegal services like Limewire. This mostly applies to older music that is out of print, or never made it to CD.
It would be nice if there was a service like this that had just about anything ever recorded digitized and made available for download. Let the market sort out what's popular and what isn't, but give us access to EVERYTHING.
In this day and age, there is no reason why virtually every album ever recorded isn't available to buy a digital copy of.
That sounds great, I am sure it would be no problem whatsoever to tell your friends "My website is at dub-dub-dub dot mywebsite dot com, colon eighty eighty. And if you don't type the 'eighty eighty' you won't get there. Don't forget to type colon eighty eighty, grandma".
And what the other guy said about proxies is valid too. It's very common for outbound corporate firewalls to block non-port-80 traffic for web browsing.
Realism does not necessarily equate to "fun". They found a fun formula and it works. It is impressive to see someone ace a song on Expert setting, but not in the same way as watching someone play a real guitar well. Both are impressive, but in different ways and for different reasons.
Most users are only slightly aware of the fact that their computer is even running an operating system. They are aware of the fact that there are Macs, and there are PCs (notwithstanding the current television ads). The thing is, people don't CARE about Linux because their computer (usually) does what they want it to do with the software it came with plus whatever they need to buy at the store to extend that functionality. Browse the web, store photos, manage money, play games, whatever. You can't go to Best Buy and find the Linux software section. Yes, I am aware of the absurdity of that statement but that is what the Linux community is competing against. People don't treat it as a serious competitor because they aren't exposed to it. And when you start talking about which distribution to use, you really start to lose people.
I've always used Linux as a server OS because that's what my background is. I am comfortable with a CLI and setting up BIND or Postfix or whatever to get my box working and handling day to day admin. I run Windows on my main PC because much of the software or functionality I care to use is not necessarily available on Linux. However, I agree wholeheartedly with the parent that ignorance is definitely the issue.
I've always felt that the real promise of the Internet was that people could serve up content out of their own homes. Whether that means running my own webserver, or starting my own Internet TV station should be up to me. And you have the telcos and cable companies basically saying "um, yeah sorry but we are going to continue to give you crappy upload speeds even though new tech is available that doesn't have the same limitations, thanks". I actually had some door-to-door salespeople stop by my house the other day from AT&T saying that they had this "Amazing New Product (tm)" that involved them laying down a new fiber infrastructure in my neighborhood and that I could get these huge benefits if I signed up. I asked what the speeds were and the guy told me, with a straight face, 1.5 megabits. I told him I wasn't interested and shut the door in his face.
Don't get me wrong, I understand why this is. The carriers are in bed with media companies that don't want the competition. Meanwhile, the US falls farther and farther behind in broadband tech. It's a sad situation if you ask me - and one I don't see going away anytime soon as long as there is no meaningful competition for last-mile service. Wireless is getting close, though, but has its own share of problems.
From TFA:
"Pulling out of China, shutting down Google.cn, is just not the right thing to do at this point," he said. "But that's exactly what this proposal would do."
Am I just naive in thinking that this proposal would have no effect on their Chinese operations? Let's say the Chinese government says "hey Google, play ball" and they say "no". What can the Chinese government do exactly? I'd just like to see a company, any company that has some pull, say "what are you going to do about it?" to the Chinese. Only when people doing business grow a backbone will things change and others follow suit. But this could just be wishful thinking. I just think it would be cool if someone actually stood up to them.
I love these discussions. Apparently it's just not cool to like some bands (if only we could all agree on which ones weren't cool), and god forbid you actually enjoy playing a video game instead of a real guitar. Also, don't fret guys - they are just publishing a "teaser" list and I'd say everyone should save the REAL bitching until the final list is out.
If people didn't commit crimes there wouldn't be a need for police.
The PS3 is starting to heal now that some first party titles (i.e. Motorstorm) are coming into existence and a lot of stuff is just around the corner. At launch, there weren't many games for the PS3. Now there are quite a few, which is helping sales tremendously. I of all people thought it was going to fall flat on its face but can definitely see the appeal now.
How you can call the 360 a system for "hardcore gamers only" is beyond me. Xbox Live Arcade alone disproves that argument in my mind. There is a huge library of games for the 360 at this point appealing to both hardcore and casual alike.
Hats off to the Wii for being a great system despite early predictions of its failure (remember when the name "Wii" was announced and we all had a good laugh? Who's laughing now?) Bottom line is that any of the 3 next gen systems is a good buy at this point so it's going to come down to personal preference. Fanboys suck.
That game always reminds me of the scene in Space Quest IV where you look through the "Bargain Bin" at Radio Schock and a bunch of spoof titles were sitting in there. "It Came for Dessert" was my fave...