They gave an example in the article of an email you want but aren't expecting: anouncement newsletters that you've signed up for.
I'm on the OpenBSD-security-announce list for example: Where OpenBSD announces when they've found a security bug. I never expect an email from them, but if they send one I want it.
The problem, as they see it, is that if I didn't get an email sent by that list I'd never know. I don't know when or if it was sent. But I still want the email.
This is one of the most common uses of email. It is something spam tries to hide as. A good spam-fighting solution must be able to handle it. Sender-pays doesn't, espcially for small/free projects.
If I'm doing a direct comparison test, sure I can spot differences. No problem. That is: if I'm specifically looking for it I can see a quality difference.
If I'm sitting down to watch a movie I'll never notice the difference. That's my point. Most of the time I don't even notice if I'm playing off my iPod onto the same TV. (Though there is just enough difference to actually be noticable then.)
I don't think quality is the big selling point of DVD's, and I don't think 'quality' will sell the next generation. If that's all they've got going for them, both of these new formats are toast.
Just want to say on the 'better quality' argument: in general I can't tell the difference between VHS and DVD quality. (Unless the VHS is very old, of course.) The advantages of DVD are smaller size and random access. (No rewinding, the ablity to jump anywhere in the movie, and no rewinding. Did I mention no rewinding?)
I'm sure there are people who believe they can tell the difference. Most of them probably have their super-high quality flatscreens hooked up incorrectly so that they are are actually getting worse quality on it. But they still believe they can tell the difference. (I'm sure some actually can tell the difference.)
I'm hoping they don't decide to upgrade immediately. I see very little benifit to consumers in this new switch. If it bombs entirely I'll be perfectly happy.
Trademarks do share one thing with copyrights: the fact that you do not have to register them, if you don't want to. Registering just conveys certain benifits. However, if you can get enough people to recognize your trademark (as belonging to you) you have a trademark. In theory therefore you wouldn't have to be able to find it on the US Trademark site.
That said, any decently monied company would register their trademarks as a matter of course. It's the easier and more secure system of getting the trademark, and the benifits (including being able to sue) are substantial. I wouldn't recognize 'Superhero' as a trademark of either of the two companies; and I'm about average for someone in this field. If it's not registered, they don't have the mindshare necissary.
Call bunk, and take it to court. They'll get laughed out as fast as SCO...
Sorry, that's moderate loads. Extreme loads are when you've already got it on a high-end mainframe or two, and still need more preformance.
There is a point where it is more cost-effective to switch to a high end commercial database from Postgres instead of throwing more hardware at the problem. Very few companies will ever reach it, but it does exist.
You're buying databases from MS? Why? For low-end My-SQL is decent and at least as good as anything MS has put out, and Postgres can handle just about anything Oracle or DB2 can. Ok, for extreme loads Oracle and DB2 outpreform Postgres, but MS doesn't even have anything in that market.
What are you using a MS database for? (Well, Access is decent as a teaching tool for basic concepts...)
I'd rather not see them try. They might actually succed, despite the fact that it is legal right now. They'd just have to get someone to either believe the law says something else, or change the law.
I've seen plenty of pro-Microsoft and pro-Diebold posts get modded up. All you have to do is have a clear point, and show it. You didn't manage that. You said the fraud happens, and it doesn't make a difference if we can trace it or not.
It does make a difference. With a punch card, or a paper ballot, or even a mechanical voting both anyone can trace when fraud has occured. And in those cases we implement some security, track where the fraud came from (if we can) and redo the election.
With the current generation of electronic voting machines, we can't do that. I don't care who makes a good machine, but Diebold hasn't made one. And they've defended that design as if they think it is a good machine. Geeks don't like people who pretend a bad design is a good design. We'll tear into them. If they routinely defend bad design by saying it is good design and overlooking what we think are obvious flaws we'll notice, and start to expect that. Until they change, a group that decides who they like on the technical ability of a company won't like them. They are lying about their technical quality; at least in our eyes.
This group respects and admires good thought processes. Neither you nor Diebold are showing them at the moment.
There is a bigger potential for covering up fraud with an electronic machine. If a paper ballot is tampered with (or gets rained on, or something else happens to it) it is noticable. The paper will show some sign. With an electronic ballot, you can tamper with the ballots and leave no sign.
It's not that we need the ballots to be impossible to tamper with. It is that we need to know when they have been tampered with.
Take a look at Fictionwise. They have a very good selection, much of which (though not all) is avalible in multiple DRM-free formats. They also let you redownload files if you lose them for any reason. (Though if you bought a 'secure' file you can't change DRM schemes on a file. Other files you can switch formats with impunity.)
I make a point never to buy anything that's got DRM from them, but I still am able to get loads of books and stories from them.
At the moment they've got the Nebula award nominees for free...
I do most of my reading on my Clie at this point, with books from Fictionwise and Baen. (And some from the Gutenburg project.)
Also: A hotel room has more floor space than the average office (that I've been in). This means they can arrange the rooms so that they all have a window without shrinking the building to hugely.
Oh, and I've been in hotel rooms without a window.
Yes, this sounds completely legal. That's not the point. He wants to have the manufacturer still like him as well.
My advice: Get a lawyer now. Someone who's informed on this topic of law. Tell the lawyer what you have got, and what you want from the company. Have the lawyer call the company and get some form of assurance that you haven't killed the company. In writing. Make it clear to the lawyer that you don't want to issue threats, you just want to cover your ass.
Play by companies rules, which include lawyers and contracts.
They introduced a tool that lets you search your desktop from remote machines. They state at download that the tool copies data to their servers.
You are not required to use it. You do anyway.
Why is this overstepped? If you didn't want it to do this, you didn't have to use the tool.
This is not Google's problem. It is the companies who have bad computer security's problem. Google is not trying to hide what it is doing. If they can't avoid this, how are they supposed to avoid when someone is trying to hide what they are doing?
1. I can't use a thumb-board. Sorry. 2. It's not a convient phone. Not that I use the phone much, but be a good phone. 3. It's still clunkier than a stand alone PDA for PDA functions. 4. I'd have to switch cell phone companies. I don't see why that should be relevent to my PDA choice. (I have no idea on battery life, but I've been known to drain a Palm's battery in less than a day because of constant use.)
The point is my PDA is my PDA, not my phone. I don't use it as a phone accesory. I use it seperately, in seperate situations, for seperate reasons. The only commonality between a cell phone and a PDA for me is that they are both pieces of electronics I often carry. Of the two, I carry my PDA more often. Why should they be one device? They have nothing in common.
To everyone who is saying 'Get a Bluetooth headset': I fail to see how this is cheaper or easier to carry. It is just as many pieces, and the headset's I've seen are almost as big as my (cheap: no Bluetooth or camera or anything much) phone. My phone has a belt clip, my PDA fits nicely in my pocket.
Where do I carry a headset? In my pocket? Works, but I'd forget to use it. (And probably lose it, since I'd never use it.) On my ear? Great, walk around all the time with something strapped to my ear for my one phone call a month.
My PDA is smaller than my phone, overall. Still it is comfortable and easy to use for long periods of time. (Anyone else around here use a PDA for hours on end? I do, regularly.)
This works. It is about ideal. If they both had Bluetooth it'd be fun to use one addressbook on both, but it's not really worth the money.
The point is I don't really want or need a phone most of the time. I have one because it is cheap enough to carry for my occasional use. A PDA though, I need. And the easier to carry and use, the better. The extra space for the phone is wasted: it means the device no longer fits well in my pocket, and it means it will have compromises on both the cell phone and PDA portions of the use.
At the very least, the built-in recargable battery has a limited life. I've had one PDA die that way so far. Another fell in a lake with me. Another had a hinge wear out. (Sony flip Clie: the hinge wore out and the screen stopped working.)
And of course there is the whole thing about being able to sync to my computer, which means software updates as my OS updates.
PDA's wear out, and need replacement, even if you don't need/want new features.
Mostly it's that I use a PDA in plenty of places and ways that a smartphone would just be extra bulk, cost, and clumbsiness. I have a cell phone; which I use maybe twice a month. I use my PDA several dozen times a day. I read on it, I keep my contacts, my calender, my passwords, I write on it, I play games...
A smartphone concentrates to much on the phone. Which to me is really irrelevent.
Fine, get out of the market. Just please, someone stay in. I'd be lost without my PDA, and I don't want a 'smartphone'. I want something I can reference while holding the phone...
I usually figure Sony's second or third best in any category. (With a couple exceptions.) Regardless of what catagory it is.
Which is a winning strategy: I don't have to research, since I know Sony will be among the best in any category. If I really want the best, I can figure out which specialist it is, but otherwise I can pick Sony.
Slashdot Mirror
They gave an example in the article of an email you want but aren't expecting: anouncement newsletters that you've signed up for.
I'm on the OpenBSD-security-announce list for example: Where OpenBSD announces when they've found a security bug. I never expect an email from them, but if they send one I want it.
The problem, as they see it, is that if I didn't get an email sent by that list I'd never know. I don't know when or if it was sent. But I still want the email.
This is one of the most common uses of email. It is something spam tries to hide as. A good spam-fighting solution must be able to handle it. Sender-pays doesn't, espcially for small/free projects.
If I'm doing a direct comparison test, sure I can spot differences. No problem. That is: if I'm specifically looking for it I can see a quality difference.
If I'm sitting down to watch a movie I'll never notice the difference. That's my point. Most of the time I don't even notice if I'm playing off my iPod onto the same TV. (Though there is just enough difference to actually be noticable then.)
I don't think quality is the big selling point of DVD's, and I don't think 'quality' will sell the next generation. If that's all they've got going for them, both of these new formats are toast.
Even if they are a lot better on this one metric.
Just want to say on the 'better quality' argument: in general I can't tell the difference between VHS and DVD quality. (Unless the VHS is very old, of course.) The advantages of DVD are smaller size and random access. (No rewinding, the ablity to jump anywhere in the movie, and no rewinding. Did I mention no rewinding?)
I'm sure there are people who believe they can tell the difference. Most of them probably have their super-high quality flatscreens hooked up incorrectly so that they are are actually getting worse quality on it. But they still believe they can tell the difference. (I'm sure some actually can tell the difference.)
I'm hoping they don't decide to upgrade immediately. I see very little benifit to consumers in this new switch. If it bombs entirely I'll be perfectly happy.
Trademarks do share one thing with copyrights: the fact that you do not have to register them, if you don't want to. Registering just conveys certain benifits. However, if you can get enough people to recognize your trademark (as belonging to you) you have a trademark. In theory therefore you wouldn't have to be able to find it on the US Trademark site.
That said, any decently monied company would register their trademarks as a matter of course. It's the easier and more secure system of getting the trademark, and the benifits (including being able to sue) are substantial. I wouldn't recognize 'Superhero' as a trademark of either of the two companies; and I'm about average for someone in this field. If it's not registered, they don't have the mindshare necissary.
Call bunk, and take it to court. They'll get laughed out as fast as SCO...
Sorry, that's moderate loads. Extreme loads are when you've already got it on a high-end mainframe or two, and still need more preformance.
There is a point where it is more cost-effective to switch to a high end commercial database from Postgres instead of throwing more hardware at the problem. Very few companies will ever reach it, but it does exist.
You're buying databases from MS? Why? For low-end My-SQL is decent and at least as good as anything MS has put out, and Postgres can handle just about anything Oracle or DB2 can. Ok, for extreme loads Oracle and DB2 outpreform Postgres, but MS doesn't even have anything in that market.
What are you using a MS database for? (Well, Access is decent as a teaching tool for basic concepts...)
I'd rather not see them try. They might actually succed, despite the fact that it is legal right now. They'd just have to get someone to either believe the law says something else, or change the law.
But you at least know votes were lost.
Well, yes. Of course. Those people always exist. But there are less of them in this group than I would expect in a group this size.
I've seen plenty of pro-Microsoft and pro-Diebold posts get modded up. All you have to do is have a clear point, and show it. You didn't manage that. You said the fraud happens, and it doesn't make a difference if we can trace it or not.
It does make a difference. With a punch card, or a paper ballot, or even a mechanical voting both anyone can trace when fraud has occured. And in those cases we implement some security, track where the fraud came from (if we can) and redo the election.
With the current generation of electronic voting machines, we can't do that. I don't care who makes a good machine, but Diebold hasn't made one. And they've defended that design as if they think it is a good machine. Geeks don't like people who pretend a bad design is a good design. We'll tear into them. If they routinely defend bad design by saying it is good design and overlooking what we think are obvious flaws we'll notice, and start to expect that. Until they change, a group that decides who they like on the technical ability of a company won't like them. They are lying about their technical quality; at least in our eyes.
This group respects and admires good thought processes. Neither you nor Diebold are showing them at the moment.
There is a bigger potential for covering up fraud with an electronic machine. If a paper ballot is tampered with (or gets rained on, or something else happens to it) it is noticable. The paper will show some sign. With an electronic ballot, you can tamper with the ballots and leave no sign.
It's not that we need the ballots to be impossible to tamper with. It is that we need to know when they have been tampered with.
Every book that they list as 'Multiformat' is DRM free. Any book they list as 'Secure' has DRM. Simple.
The multiformat books are avalible in the DRM formats, but the DRM isn't used.
Take a look at Fictionwise. They have a very good selection, much of which (though not all) is avalible in multiple DRM-free formats. They also let you redownload files if you lose them for any reason. (Though if you bought a 'secure' file you can't change DRM schemes on a file. Other files you can switch formats with impunity.)
I make a point never to buy anything that's got DRM from them, but I still am able to get loads of books and stories from them.
At the moment they've got the Nebula award nominees for free...
I do most of my reading on my Clie at this point, with books from Fictionwise and Baen. (And some from the Gutenburg project.)
No, actually it was after that. When he was welcomed to hell with open arms, and placed in his cubicle.
Though I'm not sure exactly how he got the message out to us...
Also: A hotel room has more floor space than the average office (that I've been in). This means they can arrange the rooms so that they all have a window without shrinking the building to hugely.
Oh, and I've been in hotel rooms without a window.
That's what it sounds like to me.
Simple. If, by luck, they ever manage to catch someone they now have a law to charge them with.
Until then, it helps keep MP's elected.
Yes, this sounds completely legal. That's not the point. He wants to have the manufacturer still like him as well.
My advice: Get a lawyer now. Someone who's informed on this topic of law. Tell the lawyer what you have got, and what you want from the company. Have the lawyer call the company and get some form of assurance that you haven't killed the company. In writing. Make it clear to the lawyer that you don't want to issue threats, you just want to cover your ass.
Play by companies rules, which include lawyers and contracts.
They introduced a tool that lets you search your desktop from remote machines. They state at download that the tool copies data to their servers.
You are not required to use it. You do anyway.
Why is this overstepped? If you didn't want it to do this, you didn't have to use the tool.
This is not Google's problem. It is the companies who have bad computer security's problem. Google is not trying to hide what it is doing. If they can't avoid this, how are they supposed to avoid when someone is trying to hide what they are doing?
I've looked at them. Problems (for me):
1. I can't use a thumb-board. Sorry.
2. It's not a convient phone. Not that I use the phone much, but be a good phone.
3. It's still clunkier than a stand alone PDA for PDA functions.
4. I'd have to switch cell phone companies. I don't see why that should be relevent to my PDA choice.
(I have no idea on battery life, but I've been known to drain a Palm's battery in less than a day because of constant use.)
The point is my PDA is my PDA, not my phone. I don't use it as a phone accesory. I use it seperately, in seperate situations, for seperate reasons. The only commonality between a cell phone and a PDA for me is that they are both pieces of electronics I often carry. Of the two, I carry my PDA more often. Why should they be one device? They have nothing in common.
To everyone who is saying 'Get a Bluetooth headset': I fail to see how this is cheaper or easier to carry. It is just as many pieces, and the headset's I've seen are almost as big as my (cheap: no Bluetooth or camera or anything much) phone. My phone has a belt clip, my PDA fits nicely in my pocket.
Where do I carry a headset? In my pocket? Works, but I'd forget to use it. (And probably lose it, since I'd never use it.) On my ear? Great, walk around all the time with something strapped to my ear for my one phone call a month.
My PDA is smaller than my phone, overall. Still it is comfortable and easy to use for long periods of time. (Anyone else around here use a PDA for hours on end? I do, regularly.)
This works. It is about ideal. If they both had Bluetooth it'd be fun to use one addressbook on both, but it's not really worth the money.
The point is I don't really want or need a phone most of the time. I have one because it is cheap enough to carry for my occasional use. A PDA though, I need. And the easier to carry and use, the better. The extra space for the phone is wasted: it means the device no longer fits well in my pocket, and it means it will have compromises on both the cell phone and PDA portions of the use.
In short: Yes.
At the very least, the built-in recargable battery has a limited life. I've had one PDA die that way so far. Another fell in a lake with me. Another had a hinge wear out. (Sony flip Clie: the hinge wore out and the screen stopped working.)
And of course there is the whole thing about being able to sync to my computer, which means software updates as my OS updates.
PDA's wear out, and need replacement, even if you don't need/want new features.
Mostly it's that I use a PDA in plenty of places and ways that a smartphone would just be extra bulk, cost, and clumbsiness. I have a cell phone; which I use maybe twice a month. I use my PDA several dozen times a day. I read on it, I keep my contacts, my calender, my passwords, I write on it, I play games...
A smartphone concentrates to much on the phone. Which to me is really irrelevent.
Fine, get out of the market. Just please, someone stay in. I'd be lost without my PDA, and I don't want a 'smartphone'. I want something I can reference while holding the phone...
I usually figure Sony's second or third best in any category. (With a couple exceptions.) Regardless of what catagory it is.
Which is a winning strategy: I don't have to research, since I know Sony will be among the best in any category. If I really want the best, I can figure out which specialist it is, but otherwise I can pick Sony.