Taking away caps lock would remove an important early warning system for stupid posts. Right now, if I see a post that's in all caps, I can immediately know that the content is stupid without even reading a word of it, and just skip over it and use my time for something worth reading.
Similar issues affect GPS signals coming from the satellite. Variations in the propagation speed of the signal to the receiver due to varying atmospheric conditions in several layers of the atmosphere introduce measurement errors. That's one reason that the more satellites you can see, the better. WAAS also sends approximate correction values for the current conditions as measured by nearby stationary reference receivers.
Regarding it being up to the Chinese to decide, it's not quite that simple. The Chinese have to abide by the patent laws in Western Europe, the US, and Japan if they want their products to be legally importable.
I don't understand how the last manufacturer of this type of tape in the world could go out of business due to financial problems. If this type of tape really is still somewhat widely used as many people have noted, why didn't they just raise their price to whatever level they needed in order to be profitable?
The problem with this theory is that this does not really help the problem with commercial software. For example, if Sun or anyone else were to have developed Java in a country that disregards IP restrictions, that's fine. The result still couldn't be sold or distributed in the US in violation of a US patent, no matter where it was written or what the laws are there.
I can't believe that nobody else has pointed out something mentioned at the end of the article: They are going to be using regular cargo aircraft that are temporarily reconfigured for the 0G flights, and have been awarded a patent for this idea.
As computer literacy becomes almost a necessity in order to get a decent job, I would hope that low-income families invest in their children's future by having a computer at home. It's a lot better way to spend limited money than cable television.
I only know of one artist personally that gets ASCAP/BMI royalties. His opinion was that this stuff was indeed important to him. He wasn't a star by any means, playing mostly local gigs and had a small number of albums out on a minor label. He wasn't getting rich by being a musician, and considered these quarterly royalty checks an important part of his work as a musician.
"I'm kinda curious - I'm guessing that Dell is destroying these to take them off the market."
Or, perhaps that's the only way they can get their hands on 1" 4GB drives for an upcoming product:-)
Regarding the 90% rtention rate, that was within a 3-month period of having been issued the password. I'd say that at least for me, there's a far less than 90% chance that I'll remember a new password 3 months later if I don't use it regularly. So, this part of the new scheme doesn't seem so bad.
Also, regarding the 1-in-100,000 chance of a false positive, consider that most bankcards are protected with a 4-digit numeric password, yielding only 10,000 combinations and they are considered secure for their inteded application.
So, I guess my point is not every authentication scheme needs to meet the test of a Unix-like "one-way hash where you assume an intruder has access to the encrypted password." A scheme similar to what they've developed could very well be plenty acceptable in certain situations.
Who'd you sell it to? A lot of this sort of stuff ends up in third-world countries where some mainstream companies are much less likely to care where stuff comes from.
I think that the theory that the fact that bystanders hear only half the conversation is a great conclusion from the data, as others have already said.
The study had as one of its goals trying to figure out how mobile phone manufacturers could make their products less annoying and intrusive. Here's an idea: instead of using mobile phones as a traditional handset, make them all speakerphones. As long as the volume is at a normal level, this should be less annoying to bystanders as they'll be able to hear both sides of the conversation.
(yes, this is a joke)
It's amazing how much vehemence against spammers is shown in the posts above. "Let's castrate them" "I hope they get raped for years on end."
Yet, whenever there's an attempt to do anything to stem the tide of illegal file sharing or other content theft, the same federal government is portrayed as a bunch of out-of-control jackbooted monsters.
The contrast is amazing to me.
I've had my copy pre-ordered at Amazon since Jan 31, 2003. Amazingly, almost a year later, my order is still sitting out there in my account and will presumably ship when it gets released. I get an email every few months when the ship date in Amazon's system officially slips, telling me to expect a delay.
I wonder what the longest pending order at Amazon currently is, and what the longest one was before a product actually shipped as opposed to having the order cancelled?
$300 is not just for domain registration, but also for various hosting services. I know I can get similar for less elsewhere - it's a matter of the effort required to convert.
I wrote an email today to NetSol/VeriSign to voice my displeasure. As I have 5 or so domains up for renewal in October, along with various web and email hosting features that go along with them that are currently with NetSol. I told them that I would be moving everything to another registrar should they not have rescinded their change by my renewal date.
I know that my $300 a year may not be the end of the world to them, but I thought it important that they know that some people will make buying decisions based on this. And the types of people that handle DNS registration issues are just the types of people to be ticked off by this.
They sent me a form letter response, that addressed both this new unregistered DNS feature as well as the "register in advance for about-to-expire domains" feature that I didn't mention at all in my email. Their response to that issue was also defensive, so I take it that they're getting an earful on that one as well.
I don't think this study is any more biased than one than a thread on/. concluding that open source is the way to go. There's more than one party with an axe to grind, and there's probably more than one right answer.
One reason I can see for ISP's not offering port filtering by default for virus/worm protection is the liabiility issue. Can you not see the situation of someone relying on this functionality, being hit by something that comes down the pipe, then wanting to hold the ISP responsible because of their negligence in not making the filtering "good enough?"
Slashdot Mirror
Any guesses as to what kind of copy protection they'll use? :-)
Honor among thieves?
Taking away caps lock would remove an important early warning system for stupid posts. Right now, if I see a post that's in all caps, I can immediately know that the content is stupid without even reading a word of it, and just skip over it and use my time for something worth reading.
Similar issues affect GPS signals coming from the satellite. Variations in the propagation speed of the signal to the receiver due to varying atmospheric conditions in several layers of the atmosphere introduce measurement errors. That's one reason that the more satellites you can see, the better. WAAS also sends approximate correction values for the current conditions as measured by nearby stationary reference receivers.
Regarding it being up to the Chinese to decide, it's not quite that simple. The Chinese have to abide by the patent laws in Western Europe, the US, and Japan if they want their products to be legally importable.
I don't understand how the last manufacturer of this type of tape in the world could go out of business due to financial problems. If this type of tape really is still somewhat widely used as many people have noted, why didn't they just raise their price to whatever level they needed in order to be profitable?
The problem with this theory is that this does not really help the problem with commercial software. For example, if Sun or anyone else were to have developed Java in a country that disregards IP restrictions, that's fine. The result still couldn't be sold or distributed in the US in violation of a US patent, no matter where it was written or what the laws are there.
I can't believe that nobody else has pointed out something mentioned at the end of the article: They are going to be using regular cargo aircraft that are temporarily reconfigured for the 0G flights, and have been awarded a patent for this idea.
As computer literacy becomes almost a necessity in order to get a decent job, I would hope that low-income families invest in their children's future by having a computer at home. It's a lot better way to spend limited money than cable television.
I only know of one artist personally that gets ASCAP/BMI royalties. His opinion was that this stuff was indeed important to him. He wasn't a star by any means, playing mostly local gigs and had a small number of albums out on a minor label. He wasn't getting rich by being a musician, and considered these quarterly royalty checks an important part of his work as a musician.
"I'm kinda curious - I'm guessing that Dell is destroying these to take them off the market." Or, perhaps that's the only way they can get their hands on 1" 4GB drives for an upcoming product :-)
Regarding the 90% rtention rate, that was within a 3-month period of having been issued the password. I'd say that at least for me, there's a far less than 90% chance that I'll remember a new password 3 months later if I don't use it regularly. So, this part of the new scheme doesn't seem so bad. Also, regarding the 1-in-100,000 chance of a false positive, consider that most bankcards are protected with a 4-digit numeric password, yielding only 10,000 combinations and they are considered secure for their inteded application. So, I guess my point is not every authentication scheme needs to meet the test of a Unix-like "one-way hash where you assume an intruder has access to the encrypted password." A scheme similar to what they've developed could very well be plenty acceptable in certain situations.
Who'd you sell it to? A lot of this sort of stuff ends up in third-world countries where some mainstream companies are much less likely to care where stuff comes from.
I think that the theory that the fact that bystanders hear only half the conversation is a great conclusion from the data, as others have already said. The study had as one of its goals trying to figure out how mobile phone manufacturers could make their products less annoying and intrusive. Here's an idea: instead of using mobile phones as a traditional handset, make them all speakerphones. As long as the volume is at a normal level, this should be less annoying to bystanders as they'll be able to hear both sides of the conversation. (yes, this is a joke)
RTFA
Does anybody have Kim Jong Il's SMS address? I have a message I'd like to send him...
It's amazing how much vehemence against spammers is shown in the posts above. "Let's castrate them" "I hope they get raped for years on end." Yet, whenever there's an attempt to do anything to stem the tide of illegal file sharing or other content theft, the same federal government is portrayed as a bunch of out-of-control jackbooted monsters. The contrast is amazing to me.
I've had my copy pre-ordered at Amazon since Jan 31, 2003. Amazingly, almost a year later, my order is still sitting out there in my account and will presumably ship when it gets released. I get an email every few months when the ship date in Amazon's system officially slips, telling me to expect a delay.
I wonder what the longest pending order at Amazon currently is, and what the longest one was before a product actually shipped as opposed to having the order cancelled?
Setting the clock back a day will "fix" the problem until a more permanent solution is posted.
They have been illegal in California for at least 20 years.
$300 is not just for domain registration, but also for various hosting services. I know I can get similar for less elsewhere - it's a matter of the effort required to convert.
I wrote an email today to NetSol/VeriSign to voice my displeasure. As I have 5 or so domains up for renewal in October, along with various web and email hosting features that go along with them that are currently with NetSol. I told them that I would be moving everything to another registrar should they not have rescinded their change by my renewal date.
I know that my $300 a year may not be the end of the world to them, but I thought it important that they know that some people will make buying decisions based on this. And the types of people that handle DNS registration issues are just the types of people to be ticked off by this.
They sent me a form letter response, that addressed both this new unregistered DNS feature as well as the "register in advance for about-to-expire domains" feature that I didn't mention at all in my email. Their response to that issue was also defensive, so I take it that they're getting an earful on that one as well.
You beat me to it! I was thinking precisely the same thing.
I don't think this study is any more biased than one than a thread on /. concluding that open source is the way to go. There's more than one party with an axe to grind, and there's probably more than one right answer.
One reason I can see for ISP's not offering port filtering by default for virus/worm protection is the liabiility issue. Can you not see the situation of someone relying on this functionality, being hit by something that comes down the pipe, then wanting to hold the ISP responsible because of their negligence in not making the filtering "good enough?"