This, exactly. I started reading/. in the late 90's as well. It used to carry stories that I really liked to read. Some of the commentary was good (trolls & juveniles excepted). I used to check regularly. To be honest, I stopped trying to submit articles when they were rejected, but were posted when someone else suggested the same article. Some of the commentary was atrocious. I stopped reading for a few years, but later started reading again.
The last year or so, the spirit seems to have gone out of the site. It no longer is "News for nerds, stuff that matters". I get more relevant & interesting tech stories from other outlets. I had started reading them a lot more often than this site. The maturity of comments here seems to have improved, overall, but sadly the content has gone downhill. Seems I'll not be checking here much, if at all anymore. Slashdot is no longer relevant to its audience.
" I was careful with my PC when I browsed using IE."
Well, there's your problem. There is no way to be careful enough if you're running IE. It's too full of security holes. I suggest an alternate browser, such as Firefox.
I guess the online world does look like "a pleasant, well-policed suburb" when you're behind your nice safe firewall and censorsh^H^H^H^H^H content filtering software. If they did their research from the Times corporate offices (if they bothered to do any real research for this article, from the content I have my doubts), they obviously haven't seen what is really available via some well crafted keywords on Google. And nevermind Usenet, IM, etc that have already been mentioned.
The thought of the internet being "policed" at all is a great laugh, I'm glad the paper is still good for something when you can't rely on its fact checking. His rosy Leave it to Beaver view of the internet is charming, if highly inaccurate.
Apparently the person who wrote the article has no e-mail address, since he hasn't seen any get rick quick enlarge your p0le s0ftwarez cheap spam lately. He hasn't been flooded with IM spam or harassment so he must not have an IM account or has figured out how to use the privacy settings. He must not have figured out how to take out the privacy settings to see exactly how (not) well policed IM is, or doesn't care about investigative journalism. I guess he hasn't been in an AOHell chatroom in the last 5 years and gotten the obligatory A/S/L question a million times either. He hasn't gotten infected with any virii, Active Xpolits, browser hijackers, and his box hasn't been turned into a z0mbie hosting child p0rn and spam servers. He hasn't had a pissed off script kiddie sign him up for every free spam list in existance and DDOS his box into a smoking puddle. One wonders what internet he's logging into if it looks so orderly and lawful.
What I have learned from this article - It's true: people who live in the suburbs are sheltered from the real world. They make armchair admonishments about the "bad neighborhoods" and get all Nobless Obligee about how "something should be done". Because they aren't in touch with the real world, their recommendations for improvement, if they offer any at all, are lacking in substance.
The truly frightening thing that I saw was this:
As more and more people get broadband, they are moving away from AOL and they still want to have chat.
More people moving away from the AOL corral and into the general internet, wanting everything to be as b0rke^H^H^H^H^H easy as AOL??? Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!
I guess artists only deserve their money in situations in which a convenient scapegoat gets punished, not illegal P2P downloaders ripping artists off.
Oh, you mean like when people who are trading a few hundred songs but still buying CD's are punished, while the real "pirates" who make thousands of copies of copyrighted works and actually publish them to sell for money seem to be untouched? I understand.
What I don't get is your reasoning. The RIAA is at fault because by contract they were required to pay royalties. Again I quote "Spitzer's culprits? A Who's Who of the nation's top recording companies - members of the RIAA - who failed to maintain contact with artists and stopped making required royalty payments."
If you have a problem with people associating the RIAA with all those record companies, you should remember that while prosecuting pre-teens and grannies, the RIAA has constantly reminded us that they are the representative of all those record companies and artists. You can't have it both ways. Either they are the representative of all those record companies and OK to prosecute people for alleged violations of the law, and it's OK to say they are to blame for this lack of payment to artists *or* they are not really responsible, you're right, we should lay off the, *and* they have no right to sue anyone. Which is it?
You say the recording artists are at fault for the record company not paying them their royalties due. I'm sure then you'd be perfectly OK blaming yourself if your employer suddenly stopped giving you paychecks.
I see absolutely no problems here. If you're worried about your privacy, remove/disable the rfid tags onec you've purchased the products.
I'm so glad you found the answers to two questions that I've seen go unanswered for so long in this debate.
1 - Just remove the tag - this has been made difficult in the past due to the fact that it is the size of a spec of dust. So, obviously you have better eyesight than me if you can find the "electronic" spec of dust on your shirt, in lipstick a la Gilette
at Wal-Mart), or condom wrapper. Or, you've come up with a device that can see and remove these? Great! Where do I get one?
2 - Just disable the silly thing - Of course, you genius, you came up with a way to do that ahead of everyone else. Have you published your method anywhere? There are many concerned citizens that would be grateful for this information.
Seriously - get the facts before spouting off such too-easy-sounding-to-be-true advice. Oh wait, this is Slashdot...
How can IT keep users from installing software? Have you heard of restricting administrative access? This gets back to the fact that IT needs to know about securing workstations, has the tools and plans to implement that security effectively, is given the time to implement the plan, and actually implements good security. then there would be less problems directly related to bad security.
Saying that IT cannot protect machines from their users is saying IT doesn't have a clue about security. Fortunately this is not the case in all shops.
Tha main reason this suggestion is likely to fail is that it relies on ISP's all doing something. One of the current main contributors to the spam problem is that so many servers around the world are open relays and either don't know or don't care enough to fix the problem. And the ISP that hosts their connection to the Net may not care that they are abusing someone else's server since the ISP's resources aren't being abused directly.
Currently, M. Spammer_Slime has hir spam proggy get their mail ready to send, logs into some open proxy server like proxy.whodunnit.ip.jp in japan, and uses that server to send their million spam messages. They don't care that they are not "supposed" to use proxy.whodunnit.ip.jp, that they are not authorized to use this server, they obviously don't care about stealing other peoples' bandwidth & resources. (See how concerned they are for your penis and/or breasts? How considerate).
Add to this the lack of concern that others have mentioned on the part of some ISP's. I have personal experience with Yahoo, Cox, and AT&T. All of them have shown extreme reluctance to make basic, minor checking into an account that was / is being used in a denial-by-proxy attack, where one of their L-users abused open proxies and caused hundreds of spam messages to be sent to targeted e-mail addresses. They either said there was no violation of their TOS, or that a subpeona was needed or both. Do you really think that these uncaring companies are going to voluntarily participate in a plan like this?
So even if your ISP and mine both subscribed to your plan, the clueless admin of proxy.whodunnit.ip.jp would not know or care enough to participate. If they were hosted by one of the above companies, their ISP would not care that they are stealing the resources of that proxy server or that you are being spammed. And M. Spammer_Slime would continue to spam us both unhindered. Any technical solution needs to be built-in, preferably in the mail system. Any system that relies alone on being implemented by server admins will fail.
Possibility 1 is already in place. I have a domain hosted by YourDomainHost.com. They, and many other hosting providers, provide POP / SMTP access as well as web hosting services. So me@mydomain.com is sent through the SMTP server mydomain.com and not through my ISP. Additionally, I can send mail from anyname@mydomain.com even if anyname is not a valid account (and I do this on Yahoo lists so that certain malicious people don't get my real receiving address to send spam to).
I currently don't subscribe to cable at my home, because of the lack of quality programming for the price and all the commercials. However, I would pay for TV service that was lacking commercials and had better quality than the current drek that passes for "cable TV". I also remember when the option first arrived where we could pay for service without commerials (in the days when you had a little black decoder box on your TV for each premium channel). It seemed pretty simple, they provide the tech & content, you pay them for it. I realize that I pay the cable company for the cable tech, not for the content that is delivered, but (on a side note) I've seen some cable channels come in with *really bad reception*. Apparently some cable companies aren't really concerned with making sure their tech does the job of ensuring you get the channels they contractually promised in a way you can view without going blind.
I see a parallel here to the P2P music swapping debate. If a TV broadcaster / network produces something that people want to pay for, they will. If they produce quality shows in a way that the customer finds convenient (unlike the Nickelodeon example) that offers benefits which outweigh TV show swapping, people will fork over the money for it. I'd be one of them.
I guess this is a more-or-less standard part of any (exclusive) contract: if one partner fails, the other gets the freedom to make new deals with new partners.
This is not the crux of the issue. It's not about M$ being able to negotiate with other handset makers if the deal with Sendo didn't come through. It's that they gained rights to Sendo's intellectual property and the right to use that with other handset makers if the deal went bad.
Under the SDMA, in the event of a Sendo bankruptcy, Microsoft would obtain an irrevocable, royalty free license to use Sendo's Z100 intellectual property
With M$ being convicted of monopoly abuse, this is the equivalent of naming the Don of an organized crime syndicate as the beneficiary of a life insurance policy, and hoping that the Mob won't off you.
IANAL nor am I a biz negotiaions guru. However, I'm sure there could have been something Sendo could have negotiated into the contract that would have given M$ financial incentive to help keep them afloat? It seems obvious that even then, knowing what was known about M$, trusting them in a business deal to be fair or non-fatal to a business partner is asking to be taken advantage of. And I'm not sure why the lawyers at Sendo allowed them to make such a self-defeating deal in the first place. But that doesn't negate the potential validity of Sendo's case.
Doing business with M$ is shaky at best, given their known behavior. From a business perspective, Sendo signing a contract that was in M$'s interests and not their own was foolish enough. Signing a contract that incented M$ to help them fail was insane. However, it seems that even with a sweet deal for them, M$ was breaching the contract. "Code complete" was promised to Sendo to be delivered by June of 2001, it was never delivered. (At this point, they still haven't been able to deliver a stable embedded OS for handsets). Also:
Microsoft refuses to pay Sendo some capital that was scheduled under the earlier agreement, Sendo alleges, and by spring the relationship has deteriorated to the level of legal threats.
And, M$ appears to have lied:
However on the surface, all appeared to be cordial, and at a board meeting in May last year Brown pledged that Microsoft was "not working with anyone else as an 'initial go to market partner'". This we now know to be false.
So, there is some (allegedly) wrongdoing on M$'s part that goes beyond the contract, however foolish that was.
Read the text of the article. The NYT refers to the 1993 ruling, which is being reviewed for this case:
"In rejecting the company's application to register Windows in 1993, the agency found that the word was "a generic designation for the applicant's goods" and that "no amount of evidence of de facto secondary meaning" could justify trademark status."
So, the fact that people hear "Windows" when you're talking about an OS and think "Microsoft Windows" may be irrelevant to their trademark.
If I tell someone to "close those windows", they will not shutdown their OS, they will click the "X" buttons on the windows I referred to.
You obviously haven't worked tech support very long.;)
Slashdot Mirror
This, exactly. I started reading /. in the late 90's as well. It used to carry stories that I really liked to read. Some of the commentary was good (trolls & juveniles excepted). I used to check regularly. To be honest, I stopped trying to submit articles when they were rejected, but were posted when someone else suggested the same article. Some of the commentary was atrocious. I stopped reading for a few years, but later started reading again.
The last year or so, the spirit seems to have gone out of the site. It no longer is "News for nerds, stuff that matters". I get more relevant & interesting tech stories from other outlets. I had started reading them a lot more often than this site. The maturity of comments here seems to have improved, overall, but sadly the content has gone downhill. Seems I'll not be checking here much, if at all anymore. Slashdot is no longer relevant to its audience.
" I was careful with my PC when I browsed using IE." Well, there's your problem. There is no way to be careful enough if you're running IE. It's too full of security holes. I suggest an alternate browser, such as Firefox.
The thought of the internet being "policed" at all is a great laugh, I'm glad the paper is still good for something when you can't rely on its fact checking. His rosy Leave it to Beaver view of the internet is charming, if highly inaccurate.
Apparently the person who wrote the article has no e-mail address, since he hasn't seen any get rick quick enlarge your p0le s0ftwarez cheap spam lately. He hasn't been flooded with IM spam or harassment so he must not have an IM account or has figured out how to use the privacy settings. He must not have figured out how to take out the privacy settings to see exactly how (not) well policed IM is, or doesn't care about investigative journalism. I guess he hasn't been in an AOHell chatroom in the last 5 years and gotten the obligatory A/S/L question a million times either. He hasn't gotten infected with any virii, Active Xpolits, browser hijackers, and his box hasn't been turned into a z0mbie hosting child p0rn and spam servers. He hasn't had a pissed off script kiddie sign him up for every free spam list in existance and DDOS his box into a smoking puddle. One wonders what internet he's logging into if it looks so orderly and lawful.
What I have learned from this article - It's true: people who live in the suburbs are sheltered from the real world. They make armchair admonishments about the "bad neighborhoods" and get all Nobless Obligee about how "something should be done". Because they aren't in touch with the real world, their recommendations for improvement, if they offer any at all, are lacking in substance.
The truly frightening thing that I saw was this:
More people moving away from the AOL corral and into the general internet, wanting everything to be as b0rke^H^H^H^H^H easy as AOL??? Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!
Oh, you mean like when people who are trading a few hundred songs but still buying CD's are punished, while the real "pirates" who make thousands of copies of copyrighted works and actually publish them to sell for money seem to be untouched? I understand.
What I don't get is your reasoning. The RIAA is at fault because by contract they were required to pay royalties. Again I quote "Spitzer's culprits? A Who's Who of the nation's top recording companies - members of the RIAA - who failed to maintain contact with artists and stopped making required royalty payments." If you have a problem with people associating the RIAA with all those record companies, you should remember that while prosecuting pre-teens and grannies, the RIAA has constantly reminded us that they are the representative of all those record companies and artists. You can't have it both ways. Either they are the representative of all those record companies and OK to prosecute people for alleged violations of the law, and it's OK to say they are to blame for this lack of payment to artists *or* they are not really responsible, you're right, we should lay off the, *and* they have no right to sue anyone. Which is it? You say the recording artists are at fault for the record company not paying them their royalties due. I'm sure then you'd be perfectly OK blaming yourself if your employer suddenly stopped giving you paychecks.
I see absolutely no problems here. If you're worried about your privacy, remove/disable the rfid tags onec you've purchased the products.
I'm so glad you found the answers to two questions that I've seen go unanswered for so long in this debate.
1 - Just remove the tag - this has been made difficult in the past due to the fact that it is the size of a spec of dust. So, obviously you have better eyesight than me if you can find the "electronic" spec of dust on your shirt, in lipstick a la Gilette at Wal-Mart), or condom wrapper. Or, you've come up with a device that can see and remove these? Great! Where do I get one?
2 - Just disable the silly thing - Of course, you genius, you came up with a way to do that ahead of everyone else. Have you published your method anywhere? There are many concerned citizens that would be grateful for this information.
Seriously - get the facts before spouting off such too-easy-sounding-to-be-true advice. Oh wait, this is Slashdot...
How can IT keep users from installing software? Have you heard of restricting administrative access? This gets back to the fact that IT needs to know about securing workstations, has the tools and plans to implement that security effectively, is given the time to implement the plan, and actually implements good security. then there would be less problems directly related to bad security.
Saying that IT cannot protect machines from their users is saying IT doesn't have a clue about security. Fortunately this is not the case in all shops.
Tha main reason this suggestion is likely to fail is that it relies on ISP's all doing something. One of the current main contributors to the spam problem is that so many servers around the world are open relays and either don't know or don't care enough to fix the problem. And the ISP that hosts their connection to the Net may not care that they are abusing someone else's server since the ISP's resources aren't being abused directly.
Currently, M. Spammer_Slime has hir spam proggy get their mail ready to send, logs into some open proxy server like proxy.whodunnit.ip.jp in japan, and uses that server to send their million spam messages. They don't care that they are not "supposed" to use proxy.whodunnit.ip.jp, that they are not authorized to use this server, they obviously don't care about stealing other peoples' bandwidth & resources. (See how concerned they are for your penis and/or breasts? How considerate).
Add to this the lack of concern that others have mentioned on the part of some ISP's. I have personal experience with Yahoo, Cox, and AT&T. All of them have shown extreme reluctance to make basic, minor checking into an account that was / is being used in a denial-by-proxy attack, where one of their L-users abused open proxies and caused hundreds of spam messages to be sent to targeted e-mail addresses. They either said there was no violation of their TOS, or that a subpeona was needed or both. Do you really think that these uncaring companies are going to voluntarily participate in a plan like this?
So even if your ISP and mine both subscribed to your plan, the clueless admin of proxy.whodunnit.ip.jp would not know or care enough to participate. If they were hosted by one of the above companies, their ISP would not care that they are stealing the resources of that proxy server or that you are being spammed. And M. Spammer_Slime would continue to spam us both unhindered. Any technical solution needs to be built-in, preferably in the mail system. Any system that relies alone on being implemented by server admins will fail.
Possibility 1 is already in place. I have a domain hosted by YourDomainHost.com. They, and many other hosting providers, provide POP / SMTP access as well as web hosting services. So me@mydomain.com is sent through the SMTP server mydomain.com and not through my ISP. Additionally, I can send mail from anyname@mydomain.com even if anyname is not a valid account (and I do this on Yahoo lists so that certain malicious people don't get my real receiving address to send spam to).
I currently don't subscribe to cable at my home, because of the lack of quality programming for the price and all the commercials. However, I would pay for TV service that was lacking commercials and had better quality than the current drek that passes for "cable TV". I also remember when the option first arrived where we could pay for service without commerials (in the days when you had a little black decoder box on your TV for each premium channel). It seemed pretty simple, they provide the tech & content, you pay them for it. I realize that I pay the cable company for the cable tech, not for the content that is delivered, but (on a side note) I've seen some cable channels come in with *really bad reception*. Apparently some cable companies aren't really concerned with making sure their tech does the job of ensuring you get the channels they contractually promised in a way you can view without going blind.
I see a parallel here to the P2P music swapping debate. If a TV broadcaster / network produces something that people want to pay for, they will. If they produce quality shows in a way that the customer finds convenient (unlike the Nickelodeon example) that offers benefits which outweigh TV show swapping, people will fork over the money for it. I'd be one of them.
WindowsRG
Experience the fun of killing Clippy in Word.
Windows is not a generic term now.
;)
Read the text of the article. The NYT refers to the 1993 ruling, which is being reviewed for this case: "In rejecting the company's application to register Windows in 1993, the agency found that the word was "a generic designation for the applicant's goods" and that "no amount of evidence of de facto secondary meaning" could justify trademark status."
So, the fact that people hear "Windows" when you're talking about an OS and think "Microsoft Windows" may be irrelevant to their trademark.
If I tell someone to "close those windows", they will not shutdown their OS, they will click the "X" buttons on the windows I referred to.
You obviously haven't worked tech support very long.