I'm sure they make pills for people who think like me.
Indeed they do, they're called "analgesics" and they're for helping with the headaches that result from watching too many commercials. I hate going to the movies for the same reason: forty minutes of advertising followed by a mediocre Hollywood product. The theaters around me have been including local advertising too: often nothing but a goddamn slideshow of local car dealers and other businesses. That really torques me off: I have to pay eighteen bucks (yes, I have a girlfriend) to be subject to a bunch of billboards? Screw that.
The problem with any digital camera placed in a remotely-accessible device not owned by the consumer is that remote monitoring might not be in the initial version, but could be put there by a surreptitious firmware upgrade. It could even be enabled selectively if law enforcement decides they want to watch someone. That would probably happen without the customer's knowledge too. Besides, Comcast's record on cooperation with law enforcement has not been good (from the citizen's perspective) and this is a device I can simply do without.
Of course, let's also not forget that this is a device that will be placed on what is effectively a public network, and odds are sooner or later someone will crack it. Last thing I want are movies of me and my significant other having a good time pasted all over the Internet. No thanks, and I don't trust anyone's disclaimer that "this device is perfectly secure." No such thing.
Actually, Sony's U.S. operation is incorporated here... Sony USA. But, sure, a U.S. patent is only valid in the United States. Nobody says that you can't sell device that's only patented in the United States somewhere else: you just can't make or sell it here. What it means is that if she gets an injunction, the U.S. is not a market for said device until they either license the technology or work around it to the satisfaction of the courts. That will happen, one way or the other, because the United States is a substantial market for consumer products based upon the blue LED. Frankly, I don't know enough about the development history of that technology to know if this professor's patent is legitimate or not. If there's prior art I'm sure it will come out in court.
Sometimes the system does work though. For example, a data acquisition system I developed for the steel mill industry some fifteen years ago was patented. We found out that a British company was violating the patent, and had their product stopped on the docks until such time as they could work around it or license. They didn't even argue about it: just shipped their stuff back and eventually delivered a non-infringing version, which was fine by us. This really wasn't a case of willful infringement either, they just happened to have done something similar enough to our patented design that the judge agreed with us. The British outfit was totally reasonable about it and didn't try to fight it.
No kidding. I used to have them for Internet, TV and phone, but they just kept jacking the prices up. So I dumped the TV and phone service and kept the Internet and got AT&T VoIP for my phone. Haven't had cable TV since and haven't missed it (not for what those assholes charge.) Bloodsuckers.
Why? If she has a valid patent for a legitimate invention that these companies are using in violation of applicable U.S. law, why shouldn't they pay royalties like everyone else? I don't know the facts of the case, and certainly wouldn't depend upon Slashdot for any, but if she did get there first with her invention then they should pay. That's why we have patents. If you look at this reasonably, most of the complaints you hear about patents (not counting software and business-method, which are defective-by-design) are about the issuing of nonsensical, obvious, or overbroad patents. IF this is a legitimate U.S. patent specifically covering a device critical to their product manufacture, they should have two choices: pay up, or work around it.
It's not the inability of the technology; the technology exists.
Okay, make that "inability to uniquely identify an individual via an IP address." Any court that upholds such a ridiculous standard is no better than any judge that allows tne RIAA discovery based upon MediaSentry's dubious "evidence". In either case, a persons' life is trashed over a very flimsy rationale. The fact that this kind of behavior is becoming commonplace indicates the courts are either so ignorant of modern communications technology that they buy off on it, or that they really believe that the Constitution is dead. I'm hoping it's the former: ignorance can be cured in court, whereas the court of a judge's private opinion is much harder to access.
On the other hand, law enforcement under the current Administration hasn't been any too careful about Constitutionality. The thing is, regardless of whether these activities are in fact legal, once you've been subjected to a raid you've already suffered a punitive action, and will suffer further humiliation and expense defending yourself in court. And depending upon how that works out, you might find yourself in prison anyway, as some of that "acceptable collateral damage" the Feds talk about.
There have been a number of Federal judges nailed on child pornography charges over the years: I sincerely hope that one of their number gets bitten by this nonsense. I especially hope that he's actually not guilty... maybe the rest will understand how abusive this is, given the inability of the technology to uniquely identify anyone.
He shouldn't have to explain. The notion that clicking on a link can land you in jail for several years is absolutely chilling.
You know, it really seems like there are some people that want the Internet, as we know it today, to just go away. Making us afraid to use it is a good way to start, I suppose.
Sure... but here's the rub: the Internet and traditional communications (fax and telephone) are becoming indistinguishable from a network perspective. Lose one, you lose the others and no amount of paper-and-pencil is going to save you. No backup plan will matter, because at a minimum you will need the telephone. I suppose you could always go back to snail-mail: but what makes you think the Post Office will be immune to a loss of telecommunications? How do you think the mail is delivered? By stork? Carrier pigeon? It's sent by truck, rail and aircraft, all of which use automated data exchange to schedule, track, and route.
The unfortunate truth is that nobody is really prepared for a loss of connectivity, nor can we be at this point: we just assume that it will always be there (because it's always been there, so far as institutional memory is concerned.) And there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that attitude: a reliable communications system is a part of any modern, technologically-advanced society. Those that can't maintain basics such as food, water, housing and, yes, communications will bigger problems anyway.
I say this because I've worked with a number of major corporations doing remote document-retrieval systems for manufacturing and production operations. Everything is run over fiber, and when it works it works extremely well: production gets the prints it needs, ISO compliance is maintained by having a central document store with no local duplication, etc. Very cool stuff, actually. BUT... and here's a big but. When their Internet connection goes down (and these are big boys with multiple providers and SLAs and everything else, but you know what? Shit happens) the engineering department comes to a standstill as they spend all their time pulling the requisite prints and faxing them. They have multiple plants in various parts of the U.S. and other countries, so if they don't get the drawings to their destinations, production stops, millions of dollars are lost. Other manufacturers further down the supply chain are screwed too, because they don't get the parts they need. There's absolutely no way to run such an operation without at least the phone and fax, and that only temporarily.
This is not a joke, this is serious stuff, and my point is that we are dependent upon our communication systems, just as we are dependent upon every other service our technology provides. It's just not economic to go back to doing things the old way: things have been streamlined, made more efficient, costs have been cut. We can't go back with out a major economic upheaval, and if you believe otherwise you're fooling yourself.
Let us also not forget the crown jewel of any modern manufacturing economy: the invention of JIT. Just-In-Time. JIT is utterly dependent upon fully-automated and timely communications between suppliers and customers: any significant disruption and production stops. In the bad old days, manufacturers would keep substantial quantities of inventory, often sufficient to last for weeks. They had to do that, because communications were comparatively slow and inefficient, orders were often sent by mail. Now, vendors may not even have a single shift's worth of raw materials in stock. We need a fast, efficient communications system, and if we don't have it we're not going to be making or delivering much of anything.
I wish your belief was correct, but the reality is that we're way beyond that now. WAY beyond.
That all sounds fine in a twisted laissez faire sort of way, but I can tell you this: I pay those bloodsuckers at Comcastoff about $86/month for their 8 mbit/sec tier, and at the moment I'm getting about 512 kbits/sec. Sometimes an uncontrolled (which is not the same as a "free") market doesn't work. Besides, you're argument is somewhat flawed: "fast, good or cheap" is ordinarily applied to a manufacturing scenario. It isn't such a useful metric in the current situation.
Here we have equipment costs plummeting and a surfeit of capacity, all combined with artificial scarcity to maintain high prices. We could and should have all three, fast, good and cheap. May I point out that many other countries do, so it's not impossible. Let us also not forget that the United States Federal Government gave these sociopaths billions of dollars of taxpayer money to do just that. Yet here we are, with the same flaky old slow Internet.
Wishful thinking. The reality is that backup plans (that is, full-scale backup plans that can handle a complete loss of connectivity... keep in mind that most telephone and fax communications go over the same packet-switched network as Internet data) are perceived, after a certain number of years, as a needless expense. So they lapse, especially in modern times where short-term thinking is the rule. The GP is correct: if we suffer a sustained loss of communications in this country we're screwed. Period.
Um, the Internet is surely important, but I wouldn't suggest it is more critical to survival than roads or food
I would, because the organizations which provide us with food and other necessities are dependent upon the Internet. I doubt the average interstate trucking company would have any idea how to operate without the Internet and GPS. The entire supply chain is utterly dependent upon modern communications, from production to delivery. The tech just makes everything so damned efficient that we've largely forgotten how to get along without it. I think we're starting to see how dangerous that can be, given the caliber of the folks running said communications.
In any event, the way to handle the likes of AT&T/SBC, Comcast and the rest is very simple: it's called standards. That worked very well for the phone system for a hundred years: AT&T (the old AT&T) built out the most reliable communications system on the planet, but that's because they were a heavily-regulated monopoly which had enforced quality-of-service standards. Comcast and the rest can provide almost no service at all for what we pay them and they get away with it.
Unfortunately, the government itself is so corrupt that it's unlikely Congress would ever be able to implement any kind of ISP regulation that has teeth to it, much less enforce it. Hell, they fucking gave away some hundreds of billions of dollars to these assholes, and never bothered to ask for an accounting of where the hell it went.
For me personally, I feel exactly the same way you do. Most people on Slashdot who represent the more knowledgeable segment of the Vista-using population probably do too. But it's a fine balance... either you leave the machine missing some functionality but still working, or you run a greater risk of blue-screening the thing. It's a tough call, really. Either way, the user ends up fucked but the former at least leaves him running. Given that Windows is the OS of choice for clueless people, that's probably the better way. Maybe it should just ask up front if you're dimwitted or computer-literate. If the latter, then have it do what you're saying.
The GP was correct though... the public paid for the installation of that wiring, and eminent domain was used to seize private property for a lot of it. Given the way the private sector has been mishandling infrastructure that is becoming more and more important to our economic survival in this country, turning it into a public utility is not the worst idea I've heard. It's either that, or tell the likes of Comcast and AT&T that their Internet divisions are now common carriers whether they want them to be or not, and apply some serious quality-of-service standards (much like the AT&T telephone system of old.) The private sector is not doing the job and something is going to have to give. Hell, the Telcos sucked up some 200 billion dollars of taxpayer funds, intended to build the next-generation Internet. Just took the money and ran. So that "next gen" Internet didn't happen.
It's not entirely unreasonable that the public take back some infrastructure as repayment of that debt.
I hate to say it, but I tend to take Microsoft's side on this one. If you do that, the vast majority of people won't care and will just click OK no matter what. Just like when their firewall says, "this is a potentially unsafe Web site". They click OK anyway because they just don't care.
Dozens? Seriously? So that represents, what, about.0005% of users installing SP1?
Well, if for the sake of argument we assume that by "dozens" you mean, say, 6 dozen (72 users) that would make the entire base of users installing SP1 to be, what, 144,000?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure they make pills for people who think like me.
Indeed they do, they're called "analgesics" and they're for helping with the headaches that result from watching too many commercials. I hate going to the movies for the same reason: forty minutes of advertising followed by a mediocre Hollywood product. The theaters around me have been including local advertising too: often nothing but a goddamn slideshow of local car dealers and other businesses. That really torques me off: I have to pay eighteen bucks (yes, I have a girlfriend) to be subject to a bunch of billboards? Screw that.
The problem with any digital camera placed in a remotely-accessible device not owned by the consumer is that remote monitoring might not be in the initial version, but could be put there by a surreptitious firmware upgrade. It could even be enabled selectively if law enforcement decides they want to watch someone. That would probably happen without the customer's knowledge too. Besides, Comcast's record on cooperation with law enforcement has not been good (from the citizen's perspective) and this is a device I can simply do without.
Of course, let's also not forget that this is a device that will be placed on what is effectively a public network, and odds are sooner or later someone will crack it. Last thing I want are movies of me and my significant other having a good time pasted all over the Internet. No thanks, and I don't trust anyone's disclaimer that "this device is perfectly secure." No such thing.
but I will say that I am not much of a fan of modifying the boot loader, but perhaps I am just being overly skittish.
Well, the summary says that it does not modify the existing bootloader. Not that I've RTFA yet or anything.
For a portable device, the real question is how many car batteries it will take to keep it live.
Actually, Sony's U.S. operation is incorporated here ... Sony USA. But, sure, a U.S. patent is only valid in the United States. Nobody says that you can't sell device that's only patented in the United States somewhere else: you just can't make or sell it here. What it means is that if she gets an injunction, the U.S. is not a market for said device until they either license the technology or work around it to the satisfaction of the courts. That will happen, one way or the other, because the United States is a substantial market for consumer products based upon the blue LED. Frankly, I don't know enough about the development history of that technology to know if this professor's patent is legitimate or not. If there's prior art I'm sure it will come out in court.
Sometimes the system does work though. For example, a data acquisition system I developed for the steel mill industry some fifteen years ago was patented. We found out that a British company was violating the patent, and had their product stopped on the docks until such time as they could work around it or license. They didn't even argue about it: just shipped their stuff back and eventually delivered a non-infringing version, which was fine by us. This really wasn't a case of willful infringement either, they just happened to have done something similar enough to our patented design that the judge agreed with us. The British outfit was totally reasonable about it and didn't try to fight it.
No kidding. I used to have them for Internet, TV and phone, but they just kept jacking the prices up. So I dumped the TV and phone service and kept the Internet and got AT&T VoIP for my phone. Haven't had cable TV since and haven't missed it (not for what those assholes charge.) Bloodsuckers.
No, they can't make that illegal because they've already told to lay in plenty of duct tape in case of a chemical attack.
This is one privacy issue that a little electrical tape can cure easily.
Why? If she has a valid patent for a legitimate invention that these companies are using in violation of applicable U.S. law, why shouldn't they pay royalties like everyone else? I don't know the facts of the case, and certainly wouldn't depend upon Slashdot for any, but if she did get there first with her invention then they should pay. That's why we have patents. If you look at this reasonably, most of the complaints you hear about patents (not counting software and business-method, which are defective-by-design) are about the issuing of nonsensical, obvious, or overbroad patents. IF this is a legitimate U.S. patent specifically covering a device critical to their product manufacture, they should have two choices: pay up, or work around it.
How many paths must a man walk down before you can call him a man?
Well, unfortunately for all us Free Worlders out there, that path is apparently a Red one.
It's not the inability of the technology; the technology exists.
Okay, make that "inability to uniquely identify an individual via an IP address." Any court that upholds such a ridiculous standard is no better than any judge that allows tne RIAA discovery based upon MediaSentry's dubious "evidence". In either case, a persons' life is trashed over a very flimsy rationale. The fact that this kind of behavior is becoming commonplace indicates the courts are either so ignorant of modern communications technology that they buy off on it, or that they really believe that the Constitution is dead. I'm hoping it's the former: ignorance can be cured in court, whereas the court of a judge's private opinion is much harder to access.
On the other hand, law enforcement under the current Administration hasn't been any too careful about Constitutionality. The thing is, regardless of whether these activities are in fact legal, once you've been subjected to a raid you've already suffered a punitive action, and will suffer further humiliation and expense defending yourself in court. And depending upon how that works out, you might find yourself in prison anyway, as some of that "acceptable collateral damage" the Feds talk about.
... maybe the rest will understand how abusive this is, given the inability of the technology to uniquely identify anyone.
There have been a number of Federal judges nailed on child pornography charges over the years: I sincerely hope that one of their number gets bitten by this nonsense. I especially hope that he's actually not guilty
He shouldn't have to explain. The notion that clicking on a link can land you in jail for several years is absolutely chilling.
You know, it really seems like there are some people that want the Internet, as we know it today, to just go away. Making us afraid to use it is a good way to start, I suppose.
Sure ... but here's the rub: the Internet and traditional communications (fax and telephone) are becoming indistinguishable from a network perspective. Lose one, you lose the others and no amount of paper-and-pencil is going to save you. No backup plan will matter, because at a minimum you will need the telephone. I suppose you could always go back to snail-mail: but what makes you think the Post Office will be immune to a loss of telecommunications? How do you think the mail is delivered? By stork? Carrier pigeon? It's sent by truck, rail and aircraft, all of which use automated data exchange to schedule, track, and route.
... and here's a big but. When their Internet connection goes down (and these are big boys with multiple providers and SLAs and everything else, but you know what? Shit happens) the engineering department comes to a standstill as they spend all their time pulling the requisite prints and faxing them. They have multiple plants in various parts of the U.S. and other countries, so if they don't get the drawings to their destinations, production stops, millions of dollars are lost. Other manufacturers further down the supply chain are screwed too, because they don't get the parts they need. There's absolutely no way to run such an operation without at least the phone and fax, and that only temporarily.
The unfortunate truth is that nobody is really prepared for a loss of connectivity, nor can we be at this point: we just assume that it will always be there (because it's always been there, so far as institutional memory is concerned.) And there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that attitude: a reliable communications system is a part of any modern, technologically-advanced society. Those that can't maintain basics such as food, water, housing and, yes, communications will bigger problems anyway.
I say this because I've worked with a number of major corporations doing remote document-retrieval systems for manufacturing and production operations. Everything is run over fiber, and when it works it works extremely well: production gets the prints it needs, ISO compliance is maintained by having a central document store with no local duplication, etc. Very cool stuff, actually. BUT
This is not a joke, this is serious stuff, and my point is that we are dependent upon our communication systems, just as we are dependent upon every other service our technology provides. It's just not economic to go back to doing things the old way: things have been streamlined, made more efficient, costs have been cut. We can't go back with out a major economic upheaval, and if you believe otherwise you're fooling yourself.
Let us also not forget the crown jewel of any modern manufacturing economy: the invention of JIT. Just-In-Time. JIT is utterly dependent upon fully-automated and timely communications between suppliers and customers: any significant disruption and production stops. In the bad old days, manufacturers would keep substantial quantities of inventory, often sufficient to last for weeks. They had to do that, because communications were comparatively slow and inefficient, orders were often sent by mail. Now, vendors may not even have a single shift's worth of raw materials in stock. We need a fast, efficient communications system, and if we don't have it we're not going to be making or delivering much of anything.
I wish your belief was correct, but the reality is that we're way beyond that now. WAY beyond.
That all sounds fine in a twisted laissez faire sort of way, but I can tell you this: I pay those bloodsuckers at Comcastoff about $86/month for their 8 mbit/sec tier, and at the moment I'm getting about 512 kbits/sec. Sometimes an uncontrolled (which is not the same as a "free") market doesn't work. Besides, you're argument is somewhat flawed: "fast, good or cheap" is ordinarily applied to a manufacturing scenario. It isn't such a useful metric in the current situation.
Here we have equipment costs plummeting and a surfeit of capacity, all combined with artificial scarcity to maintain high prices. We could and should have all three, fast, good and cheap. May I point out that many other countries do, so it's not impossible. Let us also not forget that the United States Federal Government gave these sociopaths billions of dollars of taxpayer money to do just that. Yet here we are, with the same flaky old slow Internet.
Wishful thinking. The reality is that backup plans (that is, full-scale backup plans that can handle a complete loss of connectivity ... keep in mind that most telephone and fax communications go over the same packet-switched network as Internet data) are perceived, after a certain number of years, as a needless expense. So they lapse, especially in modern times where short-term thinking is the rule. The GP is correct: if we suffer a sustained loss of communications in this country we're screwed. Period.
Could just shorten it to "sack-wag" because of all the dicks that will be present.
In many respects, a high level of productivity is correlated with a sublimated sex drive.
Me, I've never worried too much about productivity. Reproductivity, now, is a different matter.
Um, the Internet is surely important, but I wouldn't suggest it is more critical to survival than roads or food
I would, because the organizations which provide us with food and other necessities are dependent upon the Internet. I doubt the average interstate trucking company would have any idea how to operate without the Internet and GPS. The entire supply chain is utterly dependent upon modern communications, from production to delivery. The tech just makes everything so damned efficient that we've largely forgotten how to get along without it. I think we're starting to see how dangerous that can be, given the caliber of the folks running said communications.
In any event, the way to handle the likes of AT&T/SBC, Comcast and the rest is very simple: it's called standards. That worked very well for the phone system for a hundred years: AT&T (the old AT&T) built out the most reliable communications system on the planet, but that's because they were a heavily-regulated monopoly which had enforced quality-of-service standards. Comcast and the rest can provide almost no service at all for what we pay them and they get away with it.
Unfortunately, the government itself is so corrupt that it's unlikely Congress would ever be able to implement any kind of ISP regulation that has teeth to it, much less enforce it. Hell, they fucking gave away some hundreds of billions of dollars to these assholes, and never bothered to ask for an accounting of where the hell it went.
For me personally, I feel exactly the same way you do. Most people on Slashdot who represent the more knowledgeable segment of the Vista-using population probably do too. But it's a fine balance ... either you leave the machine missing some functionality but still working, or you run a greater risk of blue-screening the thing. It's a tough call, really. Either way, the user ends up fucked but the former at least leaves him running. Given that Windows is the OS of choice for clueless people, that's probably the better way. Maybe it should just ask up front if you're dimwitted or computer-literate. If the latter, then have it do what you're saying.
Yeah, well, sorry. Couple of beers and see what happens.
The GP was correct though ... the public paid for the installation of that wiring, and eminent domain was used to seize private property for a lot of it. Given the way the private sector has been mishandling infrastructure that is becoming more and more important to our economic survival in this country, turning it into a public utility is not the worst idea I've heard. It's either that, or tell the likes of Comcast and AT&T that their Internet divisions are now common carriers whether they want them to be or not, and apply some serious quality-of-service standards (much like the AT&T telephone system of old.) The private sector is not doing the job and something is going to have to give. Hell, the Telcos sucked up some 200 billion dollars of taxpayer funds, intended to build the next-generation Internet. Just took the money and ran. So that "next gen" Internet didn't happen.
It's not entirely unreasonable that the public take back some infrastructure as repayment of that debt.
(including the Comcast customer experience)
WTF?
I hate to say it, but I tend to take Microsoft's side on this one. If you do that, the vast majority of people won't care and will just click OK no matter what. Just like when their firewall says, "this is a potentially unsafe Web site". They click OK anyway because they just don't care.
Dozens? Seriously? So that represents, what, about .0005% of users installing SP1?
Well, if for the sake of argument we assume that by "dozens" you mean, say, 6 dozen (72 users) that would make the entire base of users installing SP1 to be, what, 144,000?
Sounds about right. But hey, who's counting.
Service Pack 1 is all it's cracked up to be, all right.