Here's another example: We have several toll roads where I live. I sold my car a few years back; in Texas, the tags go with the car. So of course,the lowlife I sold my vehicle to decide to rack up several hundred dollars in fines for running the toll gates. The toll authority issued me a civil fine of several hundred dollars based on photographs of the rear license plate of the vehicle! Had I not been able to prove that the vehicle was in fact sold (I had a bill of sale), I would have been held liable for the fines.
The trick here is that they're changing the burden of proof standard by going for a civil fine... the photo just is proof that it's more-likely-than-not that you were driving your car through the tolls without paying, but not proof beyond a reasonable doubt. They can't get criminal charge to stick, but they can get a civil liabity out of that unless you present an affirmative defense that shows it wasn't you.
However, when you refuse to pay a civil fine issued to you, that's one that they can easily prove beyond a reasonable doubt, and a challenge at that point is impossible.
So, really, what this ammounts to is a system under which it's cheaper to just send in the civil fine money than to protest it, which ends up resulting in some people deciding to pay up rather than protest, and artificially lowering the number of challenges.
So, all the trafiic avoids the congested roads to go to the hidden and little used 15 lane super highways, right?
When I had a long-drive job, there were nights I could leave the office at 5:30 and get home at 6:30, and other nights leaving at 5:30 would lead to me getting home at 8:00...
If I could have checked from the office and known that I would have gotten in a traffic mess, I just might have decided it'd be a good chance to clean out my low-priority e-mail for an hour. I'd be one less car in the jam, and then be able to sail through that spot after the jam has cleared.
So yes, getting traffic data well distributed will cause some of the cars that would have been in the backup to disappear even if their is no other route, they'll just delay their trip.
They key would be to put this in delivery trucks. Afterall, those are always there, and always trying to move as fast as they can. That'd get pretty close readings to what the typical driver can expect the road to be capable of right now...
Traffic information is realtively useless on the backed up roadway. You're already there, can't really change your route, and knowing that there's a blockade ahead of you is something you likely could have already figured out yourself.
It's a case of good information gone stale... it's too late to save you at this point. Traffic infomation needs to be distributed well before people get to the scene of the problem, so that they have a chance to select that "alternate route" that sends them on a longer path with less congestion. Once they have passed that point, it's too late.
Therefore, traffic infomation needs to be distributed very rapidly and distantly from the scene of the problem in order to have any influence on the situation.
Here in Massachusetts, there was a big deal about contract snow plow operators being ordered to carry GPS-reporting cell phones to let the state authorites know where the plow assets are at any given time, and also for proof that they really are plowing the roads they say they are, and not taking unauthorized breaks.
The plow operators countered that it's not uncommon for a plow to get held up for an hour or two because they are blocked by police, accidents, or other obstructions, and they should be paid for that time.
The state countered by saying it's trivial for them to tell the differnce. If your spend an hour at Dunkin' Donuts, you will not be paid. If you spend an hour trapped on a highway that you belong on, you will be paid.
There is no point for every driver on the highway to have this system in their car. Afterall, the car next to you is not likely to report anything different than what you're reporting at any given time.
However, think of this usage. A local radio and TV station operation offers to pay to have this system installed in 2000 volunteer's cars, and those people are paid $250 or so a year to participate. Suddenly, this station will have a a very informative realtime traffic system, because as odds are one of their spotters will be delayed by any rainstorm or lane closure. What's more, the spotters don't have to do anything active to report that they've been stopped or slowed, since the system phones in their reports for them.
There's no need for everybody's privacy to be violated, because this doesn't need a census, just a sample. If a few people are willing to give up some privacy, the whole public can benefit from the data collected in the form of better traffic advisories.
Today, while I was browsing Slashdot, Windows XP for no particular reason brought up its BSOD and demanded a reboot.
While that was happening, I realized it had been about two and a half years since XP came out. It seems like MS operating systems aways start to wear out after 2-3 years, just in time for the new release to claim it fixes all of those bugs...
Somehow, this seems like a sequel nobody wants to see...
Remember what happened when XP missed its deadline... Microsoft ended up shipping WindowsMe which in most circles stands for "Mistake Edition".
We know the real reason they're putting this out. It's not for the innovation value, but that sales of the XP Update have started to tail off, and this will convince some people who already have XP to buy the upgrade...
Furthermore, it creates great excuses to force people to use WMP... letting WMP playlists be seen by the XBox, allowing downloaded secure WMA files to be played (while iTunes AACs are out of luck), etc.
Let's say this another way. When you break backwards compatiblity on a console, you have to change the name and start over.
Some XBox games no doubt assume the HD is present because that's what the design specs allowed them to do at the time, and therefore use it in a way that'd crash the game if the HD wasn't there. Unless games were severely limited in how much HD swap space they could have, then the flash solution is going to end up being about as big as the HD... or they're going to have to admit that the XBox2 can't play XBox games. Once backward compatiblity breaks, console designers usually smash it with other changes, and the whole game library has to start over.
So, unless we see flash memory that's going to act a lot like an HD, XBox2 is going to look nothing like the XBox.
One of the reasons why the XBox supposedly has a hard drive installed is so that Microsoft could use it's failed Ultimate TV product to make an XBox that in addition to play games could also have DVR capabilites simply by dropping in a few extra chips and a bigger HD. I guess that plan has fallen into the black hole at this point.
Well, there's no need to call you a pirate, but the fact that this hack exists means that the HD has now become a pirating liability. Add that to the list of reasons why MS wants the HD outta there.
The common bond is that all of the members in this group sell products that deal specifically with computer security and not much else.
In other words, if MS were to put out a perfectly secure operating system, these companies would lose a good chuck of their revenues...
Translating those bullet points from business blabber to geek speak...
Coordinating with the Homeland Security Department to improve information sharing between business and government on cyber threats Promising that their security products have appropirate government backdoors.
Improving corporate governance of information security Making sure companies are required to purchase more of their products.
Improving federal procurement practices and guidelines Making sure the government purchases more of their products.
Identifying gaps in cybersecurity research and development Encuraging government research to do R&D for them.
Collaborating with U.S. and international standards development organizations to support emerging technology standards and specifications for cybersecurity Making sure that add-on products are always standard equipment, rather than fixing OS flaws.
Supporting campaigns to improve awareness of cybersecurity Encuraging the government to help with their marketing.
Supporting cybersecurity academic and workforce development programs Ensuring an even further oversupply of tech workers is created so their labor costs stay low.
Pursuing Senate ratification of the Council of Europe's Convention on Cyber-Crime. Talk the Senate into approving this thing here that mandates international cooperation in anti-hacking investigations.
Let's see. Yesterday on Slashdot we had Microsoft adding anti-viral features into the next generation of Windows and today the anti-malware industry comes up with a lobbist group. Somehow, I think this has more to do of the security of their businesses from Microsoft's strengths than the security of any computers from Microsoft's weaknesses.
I fear that the Google IPO, if the ever get around to it, will mean the end of Google as we know it.
Right now, the owners of Google seem content with the profit that their company is making, and are not efforting to squeeze every possible penny out of their site. The Google homepage has to be the most seen single page on the Internet, yet they have refrained from putting a banner ad on it.
A public company doesn't have that luxury. It has a fiduciary responsibility to make as much money as posible for the sake of its minority shareholders. They'll feel pressure to put ads where there were no ads before, and to curtail research projects that aren't going anywhere profitable in the near future.
In short, could the IPO kill Google-as-we-know-it?
The beauty of the present Google interface is that it contains absolutely nothing unneeded, and the search box is the main focus of the page.
All four of the artists that came up with proposals for Google redisigns totally missed that concept. One wants Google to provide needless information nobody asked for, one wants to remind people of conspiracy theories on every visit, one's trying to bring color onto a page that you don't usually spend time admiring, and one's suggesting brand extentions that'd end up cheapening the original Google brand.
Google's power is in its function. Needless art on the homepage just distracts from that... There's a reason why artists are only allowed to work with the Google Doodle on rare occasions and they're not welcome to mess with the rest of the home page.
That wasn't quite the version that became law, however. It's a close cousin but the Senate version of the bill was thrown out and the House version was the one that came back from the conference comittee and was appoved by voice vote.
And in fact, the "real" picture happened before Jane Fonda went to Hanoi... if John Kerry has the ability to make decisions based on events in the future, then he definitely should be elected!
Correct. However, since the fact that he voted for it is a matter of public record, there is no need for conclusions to be drawn.
Can you even prove he was in the room at the time it was brought up?
He didn't cast a vote for it, because nobody did, and it passed in a way that meant nobody had to. The most you can say is that he didn't object to it...
Mr. Kerry was in the Senate when DMCA passed unanymously, thus he voted for it.
Sorry your premise doesn't lead to that conclusion... A bill can pass unanimously by a score of 97 to 0 in the Senate. It's still unanimous because nobody voted "no", but that doesn't lead to the conclusion that all of the senators in office were present or that everybody that was present agreed, the losing 3-person side may have just chose to abstain.
What happened in the Senate is that the Senate voted by "Unanimous Consent", which is to say not one senator spoke up to object to the bill being passed and/or request that an on-the-record vote be taken. This is often done for sure-to-be-disliked legislation because nobody has to vote "yes" either.
Now, the thing is, to call for debate and a recorded vote on an issue that you're opposed to, but you're sure the other side has the votes it takes to pass is a waste of the Senate's time, and sure to make you some enemies who might start to do their best to muck up an unrelated issue that you're in favor of. Therefore, there's a downside to objecting, the only real thing you have to gain is to get your objection onto the record.
Kerry, being a Senator, is going to be confronted with a lot of questions about the activities of the Senate and when he took action and didn't take action on them throughout the campaign. Candidates who run for a higher office after ahving any legislative position always have these questions... that's why it's more common for a former govenor to run for the office, they have far fewer on-the-record actions they have to justify, and total control of their own agenda rather than having to fight other legislators for control of a schedule.
This level of watermarking needs to be done every time an image is downloaded. The whole point is that they want to embed the IP address the image was sent to along with the timestamp so that there's enough to take a subpeona to the ISP to find out under what ISP account it was downloaded.
That might not get us down to what person did it, but it very certainly would narrow the number of suspects into a very tight group...
Slashdot Mirror
Here's another example: We have several toll roads where I live. I sold my car a few years back; in Texas, the tags go with the car. So of course,the lowlife I sold my vehicle to decide to rack up several hundred dollars in fines for running the toll gates. The toll authority issued me a civil fine of several hundred dollars based on photographs of the rear license plate of the vehicle! Had I not been able to prove that the vehicle was in fact sold (I had a bill of sale), I would have been held liable for the fines.
The trick here is that they're changing the burden of proof standard by going for a civil fine... the photo just is proof that it's more-likely-than-not that you were driving your car through the tolls without paying, but not proof beyond a reasonable doubt. They can't get criminal charge to stick, but they can get a civil liabity out of that unless you present an affirmative defense that shows it wasn't you.
However, when you refuse to pay a civil fine issued to you, that's one that they can easily prove beyond a reasonable doubt, and a challenge at that point is impossible.
So, really, what this ammounts to is a system under which it's cheaper to just send in the civil fine money than to protest it, which ends up resulting in some people deciding to pay up rather than protest, and artificially lowering the number of challenges.
So, all the trafiic avoids the congested roads to go to the hidden and little used 15 lane super highways, right?
When I had a long-drive job, there were nights I could leave the office at 5:30 and get home at 6:30, and other nights leaving at 5:30 would lead to me getting home at 8:00...
If I could have checked from the office and known that I would have gotten in a traffic mess, I just might have decided it'd be a good chance to clean out my low-priority e-mail for an hour. I'd be one less car in the jam, and then be able to sail through that spot after the jam has cleared.
So yes, getting traffic data well distributed will cause some of the cars that would have been in the backup to disappear even if their is no other route, they'll just delay their trip.
They key would be to put this in delivery trucks. Afterall, those are always there, and always trying to move as fast as they can. That'd get pretty close readings to what the typical driver can expect the road to be capable of right now...
Traffic information is realtively useless on the backed up roadway. You're already there, can't really change your route, and knowing that there's a blockade ahead of you is something you likely could have already figured out yourself.
It's a case of good information gone stale... it's too late to save you at this point. Traffic infomation needs to be distributed well before people get to the scene of the problem, so that they have a chance to select that "alternate route" that sends them on a longer path with less congestion. Once they have passed that point, it's too late.
Therefore, traffic infomation needs to be distributed very rapidly and distantly from the scene of the problem in order to have any influence on the situation.
Here in Massachusetts, there was a big deal about contract snow plow operators being ordered to carry GPS-reporting cell phones to let the state authorites know where the plow assets are at any given time, and also for proof that they really are plowing the roads they say they are, and not taking unauthorized breaks.
The plow operators countered that it's not uncommon for a plow to get held up for an hour or two because they are blocked by police, accidents, or other obstructions, and they should be paid for that time.
The state countered by saying it's trivial for them to tell the differnce. If your spend an hour at Dunkin' Donuts, you will not be paid. If you spend an hour trapped on a highway that you belong on, you will be paid.
There is no point for every driver on the highway to have this system in their car. Afterall, the car next to you is not likely to report anything different than what you're reporting at any given time.
However, think of this usage. A local radio and TV station operation offers to pay to have this system installed in 2000 volunteer's cars, and those people are paid $250 or so a year to participate. Suddenly, this station will have a a very informative realtime traffic system, because as odds are one of their spotters will be delayed by any rainstorm or lane closure. What's more, the spotters don't have to do anything active to report that they've been stopped or slowed, since the system phones in their reports for them.
There's no need for everybody's privacy to be violated, because this doesn't need a census, just a sample. If a few people are willing to give up some privacy, the whole public can benefit from the data collected in the form of better traffic advisories.
Meanwhile the Longhorn and Whistler ski destinations are also going to sue over the use of their names as product codenames...
Today, while I was browsing Slashdot, Windows XP for no particular reason brought up its BSOD and demanded a reboot.
While that was happening, I realized it had been about two and a half years since XP came out. It seems like MS operating systems aways start to wear out after 2-3 years, just in time for the new release to claim it fixes all of those bugs...
Somehow, this seems like a sequel nobody wants to see...
Remember what happened when XP missed its deadline... Microsoft ended up shipping WindowsMe which in most circles stands for "Mistake Edition".
We know the real reason they're putting this out. It's not for the innovation value, but that sales of the XP Update have started to tail off, and this will convince some people who already have XP to buy the upgrade...
Furthermore, it creates great excuses to force people to use WMP... letting WMP playlists be seen by the XBox, allowing downloaded secure WMA files to be played (while iTunes AACs are out of luck), etc.
Let's say this another way. When you break backwards compatiblity on a console, you have to change the name and start over.
Some XBox games no doubt assume the HD is present because that's what the design specs allowed them to do at the time, and therefore use it in a way that'd crash the game if the HD wasn't there. Unless games were severely limited in how much HD swap space they could have, then the flash solution is going to end up being about as big as the HD... or they're going to have to admit that the XBox2 can't play XBox games. Once backward compatiblity breaks, console designers usually smash it with other changes, and the whole game library has to start over.
So, unless we see flash memory that's going to act a lot like an HD, XBox2 is going to look nothing like the XBox.
One of the reasons why the XBox supposedly has a hard drive installed is so that Microsoft could use it's failed Ultimate TV product to make an XBox that in addition to play games could also have DVR capabilites simply by dropping in a few extra chips and a bigger HD. I guess that plan has fallen into the black hole at this point.
Well, there's no need to call you a pirate, but the fact that this hack exists means that the HD has now become a pirating liability. Add that to the list of reasons why MS wants the HD outta there.
The common bond is that all of the members in this group sell products that deal specifically with computer security and not much else. In other words, if MS were to put out a perfectly secure operating system, these companies would lose a good chuck of their revenues...
The tech one is a little different though. Today's color is #2F8331.
Translating those bullet points from business blabber to geek speak...
Coordinating with the Homeland Security Department to improve information sharing between business and government on cyber threats
Promising that their security products have appropirate government backdoors.
Improving corporate governance of information security
Making sure companies are required to purchase more of their products.
Improving federal procurement practices and guidelines
Making sure the government purchases more of their products.
Identifying gaps in cybersecurity research and development
Encuraging government research to do R&D for them.
Collaborating with U.S. and international standards development organizations to support emerging technology standards and specifications for cybersecurity
Making sure that add-on products are always standard equipment, rather than fixing OS flaws.
Supporting campaigns to improve awareness of cybersecurity
Encuraging the government to help with their marketing.
Supporting cybersecurity academic and workforce development programs
Ensuring an even further oversupply of tech workers is created so their labor costs stay low.
Pursuing Senate ratification of the Council of Europe's Convention on Cyber-Crime.
Talk the Senate into approving this thing here that mandates international cooperation in anti-hacking investigations.
Let's see. Yesterday on Slashdot we had Microsoft adding anti-viral features into the next generation of Windows and today the anti-malware industry comes up with a lobbist group. Somehow, I think this has more to do of the security of their businesses from Microsoft's strengths than the security of any computers from Microsoft's weaknesses.
I fear that the Google IPO, if the ever get around to it, will mean the end of Google as we know it.
Right now, the owners of Google seem content with the profit that their company is making, and are not efforting to squeeze every possible penny out of their site. The Google homepage has to be the most seen single page on the Internet, yet they have refrained from putting a banner ad on it.
A public company doesn't have that luxury. It has a fiduciary responsibility to make as much money as posible for the sake of its minority shareholders. They'll feel pressure to put ads where there were no ads before, and to curtail research projects that aren't going anywhere profitable in the near future.
In short, could the IPO kill Google-as-we-know-it?
The "french military victories" googlebomb page that looks like it's from Google now has something that totally ruins the illusion... a huge popup ad.
The beauty of the present Google interface is that it contains absolutely nothing unneeded, and the search box is the main focus of the page.
All four of the artists that came up with proposals for Google redisigns totally missed that concept. One wants Google to provide needless information nobody asked for, one wants to remind people of conspiracy theories on every visit, one's trying to bring color onto a page that you don't usually spend time admiring, and one's suggesting brand extentions that'd end up cheapening the original Google brand.
Google's power is in its function. Needless art on the homepage just distracts from that... There's a reason why artists are only allowed to work with the Google Doodle on rare occasions and they're not welcome to mess with the rest of the home page.
That wasn't quite the version that became law, however. It's a close cousin but the Senate version of the bill was thrown out and the House version was the one that came back from the conference comittee and was appoved by voice vote.
And in fact, the "real" picture happened before Jane Fonda went to Hanoi... if John Kerry has the ability to make decisions based on events in the future, then he definitely should be elected!
Correct. However, since the fact that he voted for it is a matter of public record, there is no need for conclusions to be drawn.
Can you even prove he was in the room at the time it was brought up?
He didn't cast a vote for it, because nobody did, and it passed in a way that meant nobody had to. The most you can say is that he didn't object to it...
Mr. Kerry was in the Senate when DMCA passed unanymously, thus he voted for it.
Sorry your premise doesn't lead to that conclusion... A bill can pass unanimously by a score of 97 to 0 in the Senate. It's still unanimous because nobody voted "no", but that doesn't lead to the conclusion that all of the senators in office were present or that everybody that was present agreed, the losing 3-person side may have just chose to abstain.
What happened in the Senate is that the Senate voted by "Unanimous Consent", which is to say not one senator spoke up to object to the bill being passed and/or request that an on-the-record vote be taken. This is often done for sure-to-be-disliked legislation because nobody has to vote "yes" either.
Now, the thing is, to call for debate and a recorded vote on an issue that you're opposed to, but you're sure the other side has the votes it takes to pass is a waste of the Senate's time, and sure to make you some enemies who might start to do their best to muck up an unrelated issue that you're in favor of. Therefore, there's a downside to objecting, the only real thing you have to gain is to get your objection onto the record.
Kerry, being a Senator, is going to be confronted with a lot of questions about the activities of the Senate and when he took action and didn't take action on them throughout the campaign. Candidates who run for a higher office after ahving any legislative position always have these questions... that's why it's more common for a former govenor to run for the office, they have far fewer on-the-record actions they have to justify, and total control of their own agenda rather than having to fight other legislators for control of a schedule.
This level of watermarking needs to be done every time an image is downloaded. The whole point is that they want to embed the IP address the image was sent to along with the timestamp so that there's enough to take a subpeona to the ISP to find out under what ISP account it was downloaded.
That might not get us down to what person did it, but it very certainly would narrow the number of suspects into a very tight group...