I work at a company where IM is used substantially. Most of my coworkers seem to be online in that fashion much of the time, as am I. But it's a bit of a risky proposition, when one can put a "alert when online" bit on someone, and then pounce on them via IM the moment they become active.
One time I was telecommuting, but having networking problems, and I didn't go active via IM until noon (even though I'd been working all along). My second-level manager sent me an IM moments after I went active. The rest is left as an exercise for the reader.
So let's say employees knew they might be monitored. Then you can assume that the study says how IM will be used in a workplace environment subject to monitoring, which is still useful data. It says employers need not fear such abuse under those conditions.
this thread is going a bit offtopic, but since I posted the thread, I'll take the liberty:).
Vinge's two novels in this space (Deepness in the Sky, Fire in the Deep) are absolutely outstanding, and yes, they envision that level of interconnected sensors. But for that matter, so do many SF novels and shows. The key here, as other posters have commented, is tackling the difficult challenges of scale, unreliable components, environments (imagine what a heavy windstorm does to motes scattered on the ground), etc.
I'm in violent agreement about needing ways to filter bad content, but not about filtering info on our own. Usenet not only has its share of nuts, its signal/noise ratio is awful. So isn't Slashdot a way of addressing that shortcoming, by having top-level stories moderated by trusted users, and comments trusted by experienced ones, allowing people to filter not just by reading stuff but by automatically avoiding stuff?
Lest anyone think this is offtopic, let me point out that Slashdot has in some sense redefined usenet, and it seems that similar approaches to redefining other internet applications --- making them accessible but not completely open --- would be a big improvement. Spam through referrer logs is an example of an open system getting abused.
The Ninja project at UC Berkeley a few years ago had an interesting wrinkle on this. They had a music sharing system in which the music stored on disk could only be served to one person at a time, and then only if it was in the server's CD jukebox or a CDROM drive on a workstation. (This is how I recall it, but the link to the USITS paper talks about downloading a song only if the user has uploaded it, a different policy.) So it was a way to share actual CDs, but using compressed audio to make it feasible (many CDs playing at once even though the jukebox could only play one).
I don't know if the music industry would accept this as fair use, but it would certainly seem reasonable, much like a library lending out a copy but only for the duration of a given play. Perhaps it's a model for a new "legal P2P music sharing network": register CDs, ensure they can be played but not copied (perhaps with trusted client software), and prevent simultaneous play.
I'd sign up for that, and throw in my collection of maybe 1000 CDs.
I'm glad you said this, because it proves I'm not the only one out there who has never used a P2P music sharing network. If someone thinks the record companies rip off consumers, they don't have to pay "inflated prices," but this doesn't justify theft. I'm really surprised to see that this article seems to do just that.
My grandfather was a compulsive gambler, but despite that my parents had no problem with my playing cards. It was my going to casinos that worried them.
But as other postings noted, the mac address isn't "automatically" sent to correspondents. AOL'd have to have code in the AOL client that sends the mac address explicitly.
So to me, mac address seems like a perfectly reasonable way to identify a machine, but not so self-explanatory that it's inherently funny...
Mapping the internet isn't new, though it seems this is noteworthy for its completeness and its speed.
One of the earlier works appeared in Slashdot, for instance here in 1999. But neither that column nor this hits for me on a search for military despite the military implications.
Specifically, there was a paper about this work in the 2000 USENIX Annual Conference. It mentioned detecting a loss of network connectivity during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia during the period of their study, something the military could use to monitor the efficiency of their campaign.
This looks like cool work. I followed the link to their site and the credits. Seems they credit "Peter North" and the graphviz team at AT&T Labs. I don't find Peter and graphviz via Google, but there sure is a "Steve North" there who did graphviz. I hope these folks are monitoring this and will update their page if it's wrong.
I wouldn't call it a fact, more like a matter of fair consensus. There are actually people who prefer AltaVista to Google even today. (And I know both of them:) --- just kidding.
Perhaps this depends on your definition of "proper research". You have to disclose the truth, and the best way to do whatever you're inventing. But you aren't legally obliged to find out if it's the best way, AFAIK.
Several years ago when I started filing patents, I thought a full prior art search was an abligation of the filer. But my impression in more recent years that the filer is obliged to disclose relevant prior art but not to find all possible prior art that he or she didn't already know about. This is left to the poor PTO examiners we just read about, and explains why so much prior art is missed.
In fact, I once got mail from someone at a Large Software Company who said that if others on a mailing list were going to discuss intellectual property (pending patent applications), he didn't even want to see it, so that he could honestly say he was unaware of it.
"Subsequent inspections showed there was no collision whatsoever," a mission control spokesman told Reuters by telephone from outside Moscow.
As if they can tell this from an inspection? Didn't analysis of the Columbia space shuttle debris on takeoff show there was no risk, only to have it disintegrate on reentry?
Having commented on 2 math-related articles in 3 postings yesterday, I feel obliged to observe that this is the third Google article in the past day.
As if Google needed more publicity?
Hey, CmdrTaco and friends: time to implement a topic rationing system among the top-level articles, to spread them out? Or is this merely an indication that you have so many posts about Google, or so little about everything else, that it merits this much attention?
One thing has worried me about search engines for some time: the possibility that I come up with the greatest thing since sliced bread, pose queries to Google to see if it's been done, and get beaten to the punch by 20 people in Google Labs who see the query and think "nice idea!"
I posed this to someone from Google at a conference, and he said they have policies against such things, recognizing their position if such a thing got out. But seriously, how could it get out? Heck, I could pose a query and find it blasted on a screen at the next World Wide Web conference during a Google hiring extravaganza.
If Google, or any search engine, mines the data they get from the millions of queries they see, they can potentially find some needles in haystacks. (Example: filter all the queries to see just what people at Microsoft are asking them.)
I'm not sure we know what they do today, but the original PageRank was published some time ago, and there's been lots of follow-on work. Go to citeseer when it comes back up, and query pagerank.
It's not that AltaVista and the others were "crappy"... it's that Google came up with a different ranking algorithm that did a better job at putting the most valuable pages at the top of the list, and people noticed.
I know many of the people involved in starting AltaVista, as well as Inktomi's search engine. These guys aren't stupid! But their emphasis was on the brute force of using scalable systems to index huge numbers of pages in the first place, and they didn't "hit" on the better ranking algorithm.
You and I made similar comments in parallel. To answer why is Best Buy waving around the DMCA, a copyright law?.... because it can! From what I can tell, the DCMA gives them perceived clout -- and from that standpoint, I'm wishing FatWallet the best in defeating that.
But trade secret or not, it seems Best Buy's right to keep its circular under the kimono until a time of their choosing.
I'm not a lawyer, and I don't play one on TV, but my own reaction to this is that the DCMA is a smokescreen because it seems to give merchants such heavy firepower by screaming copyright infringement.
Would they have any better standing arguing that releasing the circulars' info in advance is breaching a trade secret? Just a random thought. I suspect a lawyer can explain why no such coverage exists.
Bottom line: I certainly don't support the DCMA, but (unlike most posters here and on FatWallet) I do have some sympathy for their rights to protect the information!
Two of the last three headlines I see on slashdot are about math (this one and Robin Milner). Timothy, the rest of us submit stories too!
Just kidding... these are perfectly reasonable stories. But I'm still a bit surprised. But then, slashdot readers don't disappoint. They immediately honed in on Turing's sexuality and the student's physical attributes. Math, what math?
God invented SCO to give people a company to hate more than Microsoft
People's views on Microsoft are colored by a lot more than its financial/legal activities. SCO is being chided for what it hasn't done, while MS is criticized for... well, lots of things, but especially the insecurity of some of its products. A whole other ballgame.
Slashdot Mirror
One time I was telecommuting, but having networking problems, and I didn't go active via IM until noon (even though I'd been working all along). My second-level manager sent me an IM moments after I went active. The rest is left as an exercise for the reader.
So let's say employees knew they might be monitored. Then you can assume that the study says how IM will be used in a workplace environment subject to monitoring, which is still useful data. It says employers need not fear such abuse under those conditions.
Vinge's two novels in this space (Deepness in the Sky, Fire in the Deep) are absolutely outstanding, and yes, they envision that level of interconnected sensors. But for that matter, so do many SF novels and shows. The key here, as other posters have commented, is tackling the difficult challenges of scale, unreliable components, environments (imagine what a heavy windstorm does to motes scattered on the ground), etc.
Lest anyone think this is offtopic, let me point out that Slashdot has in some sense redefined usenet, and it seems that similar approaches to redefining other internet applications --- making them accessible but not completely open --- would be a big improvement. Spam through referrer logs is an example of an open system getting abused.
I don't know if the music industry would accept this as fair use, but it would certainly seem reasonable, much like a library lending out a copy but only for the duration of a given play. Perhaps it's a model for a new "legal P2P music sharing network": register CDs, ensure they can be played but not copied (perhaps with trusted client software), and prevent simultaneous play.
I'd sign up for that, and throw in my collection of maybe 1000 CDs.
I'm glad you said this, because it proves I'm not the only one out there who has never used a P2P music sharing network. If someone thinks the record companies rip off consumers, they don't have to pay "inflated prices," but this doesn't justify theft. I'm really surprised to see that this article seems to do just that.
My grandfather was a compulsive gambler, but despite that my parents had no problem with my playing cards. It was my going to casinos that worried them.
So to me, mac address seems like a perfectly reasonable way to identify a machine, but not so self-explanatory that it's inherently funny...
They're making a new Mad Max movie, right? Perhaps this report is why the apocalypse seems so much closer... all our cars will die of viruses?
Now, if they'd said it was a Big Mac address, at least I might laugh.
One of the earlier works appeared in Slashdot, for instance here in 1999. But neither that column nor this hits for me on a search for military despite the military implications.
Specifically, there was a paper about this work in the 2000 USENIX Annual Conference. It mentioned detecting a loss of network connectivity during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia during the period of their study, something the military could use to monitor the efficiency of their campaign.
This looks like cool work. I followed the link to their site and the credits. Seems they credit "Peter North" and the graphviz team at AT&T Labs. I don't find Peter and graphviz via Google, but there sure is a "Steve North" there who did graphviz. I hope these folks are monitoring this and will update their page if it's wrong.
I wouldn't call it a fact, more like a matter of fair consensus. There are actually people who prefer AltaVista to Google even today. (And I know both of them :) --- just kidding.
Perhaps this depends on your definition of "proper research". You have to disclose the truth, and the best way to do whatever you're inventing. But you aren't legally obliged to find out if it's the best way, AFAIK.
Several years ago when I started filing patents, I thought a full prior art search was an abligation of the filer. But my impression in more recent years that the filer is obliged to disclose relevant prior art but not to find all possible prior art that he or she didn't already know about. This is left to the poor PTO examiners we just read about, and explains why so much prior art is missed.
In fact, I once got mail from someone at a Large Software Company who said that if others on a mailing list were going to discuss intellectual property (pending patent applications), he didn't even want to see it, so that he could honestly say he was unaware of it.
As if they can tell this from an inspection? Didn't analysis of the Columbia space shuttle debris on takeoff show there was no risk, only to have it disintegrate on reentry?
As if Google needed more publicity?
Hey, CmdrTaco and friends: time to implement a topic rationing system among the top-level articles, to spread them out? Or is this merely an indication that you have so many posts about Google, or so little about everything else, that it merits this much attention?
I posed this to someone from Google at a conference, and he said they have policies against such things, recognizing their position if such a thing got out. But seriously, how could it get out? Heck, I could pose a query and find it blasted on a screen at the next World Wide Web conference during a Google hiring extravaganza.
If Google, or any search engine, mines the data they get from the millions of queries they see, they can potentially find some needles in haystacks. (Example: filter all the queries to see just what people at Microsoft are asking them.)
I'm not sure we know what they do today, but the original PageRank was published some time ago, and there's been lots of follow-on work. Go to citeseer when it comes back up, and query pagerank.
I know many of the people involved in starting AltaVista, as well as Inktomi's search engine. These guys aren't stupid! But their emphasis was on the brute force of using scalable systems to index huge numbers of pages in the first place, and they didn't "hit" on the better ranking algorithm.
But trade secret or not, it seems Best Buy's right to keep its circular under the kimono until a time of their choosing.
Throw out the internet and start over.
PS. Does this mean we have to curse Tim B-L in the same breath as Microsoft?
Would they have any better standing arguing that releasing the circulars' info in advance is breaching a trade secret? Just a random thought. I suspect a lawyer can explain why no such coverage exists.
Bottom line: I certainly don't support the DCMA, but (unlike most posters here and on FatWallet) I do have some sympathy for their rights to protect the information!
Just kidding ... these are perfectly reasonable stories. But I'm still a bit surprised. But then, slashdot readers don't disappoint. They immediately honed in on Turing's sexuality and the student's physical attributes. Math, what math?
People's views on Microsoft are colored by a lot more than its financial/legal activities. SCO is being chided for what it hasn't done, while MS is criticized for ... well, lots of things, but especially the insecurity of some of its products. A whole other ballgame.
I second the kudos. Please keep us posted on any reply you get.