First off, I'll say that I hate the popups and crap as much as anyone else. That said...
MS leveraged their OS market share to push IE. They forbade manufacturers from changing the desktop. They penalized manufacturers who did not put Windows on the PCs they sold.
AOL is striking deals where they would pay the manufacturers bounties for AOL subscribers that sign up as a result of popups that the manufacturer would install on the Windows desktop, courtesy of MS's loosened restrictions on this. AOL is not forcing anyone do this. They're not penalizing people who don't. And they're not leveraging anything to get this, except maybe existing relationships with the manufacturers. So other than cluttering the desktop and annoying people with popups, what's wrong with this?
I say more power to them. Let AOL and MS duke it out on the Windows desktop. Windows will become so unusable due to the constant popups, hundreds of extraneous icons, and lack of program compatibility that noone will want to use it. Maybe then people will finally look at the alternatives.
If you didn't manage to get the limited edition in the tin, or you ordered it from somewhere like Amazon that is now ignoring your order, there's still a chance. It looks like Tower has them in stock still for the list price of $31.99.
An AI would learn and develop, and pass the Turing test, among other things. This is NOT an AI. This is an expert system.
Get your terms correct, lest you become as bad as the mainstream media in twisting words and phrases for your own demented ends.
-Todd ---
Re:Make a decision, folks
on
ORBS Forks
·
· Score: 2
Yes, I agree with this. However there is a difference when it's free speech at someone's expense. You can shout at the top of your lungs as much as you want, but as soon as you try and make me pay to listen to you, your rights to "free speech" with regards to me end.
And yes, I've heard all the arguments about how the cost of receiving an email is miniscule. However there is still a cost, and that's all that matters. It may only cost a cent for me to receive an email, but if I get 20 spams a day, that's 20 cents a day, $5 a month, $60 a year. These things add up, and the point is not that I have to shell this obscene amount of money out, it's that I shouldn't have to pay for someone else's advertising. You hear griping about junk mail (postal), but you don't see the pure hatred that you see for spam. Why? Because they're paying to send it out. The costs are in the right place.
So while I agree that you can't have it both ways, you also have to concede that there is a difference here. If spammers were paying to send out their ads, it would be a different story. However it can't just be a matter of them paying their provider to send out the ads, they have to *remove* the cost of receiving it from us.
While tonight is the 2000th dish episode, which as they keep saying, is because it's the 2000th dish that Kaga has tasted since he has tasted them all, this is not quite true.
There was one episode where Kaga was "boycotting" the Iron Chefs because they had been losing. That week Hatori filled in for the Chairman. So Kaga hasn't tasted them all.
I think I'll pass on a high-speed flywheel in my car. That thing gets even the slightest bit off balance, and it'll tear through your car and anything around.
Flywheels are great for datacenter power backup systems, where they can be buried underground and mounted in reasonably shock-proof setups. But I think mounting them in a mobile setup would just be asking for trouble.
The fact that they got the patent isn't bad. Heck, they may very well deserve it because someone came up with the PVR concept (which does differ from plain VCRs as long as it takes into account manipulating live TV). Whether or not it was Tivo, well, we'll leave that to any prior art claims.
The real question is what is Tivo going to do with this new patent? Their press release really didn't say anything about whether they planned to start suing ReplayTV, MS UltimateTV, etc. If they're just going to add it to their portfolio and use it for negotiating power when doing deals (a lot of times big companies will do this without actually forcing everyone to license the patent), then more power to them. But if they're going to start attacking the other players, it could really harm the PVR market.
While I agree with the idea that someone should be made responsible for this, exactly who should shoulder what part of the blame?
On the one hand, we have the testing agency. They had problems with their software, lax quality control, and a PHB who withheld information from the schools. They scored the tests incorrectly (with regards to rankings and previous years), and as a result a lot of people got fired and a lot of kids spent a summer in school needlessly.
On the other hand, we have the NYC school board. They made the decision to make the standardized test the end-all, be-all, despite the testing company's recommendations to the contrary. Even if the tests were scored and ranked properly, you have the opportunity for kids who test badly to end up in summer school.
I think that it was "right" for Crew to lose his job, but not for the reasons that were given. Whether there were more people in the school system that needed to share the culpability will probably never be known. However I think that the testing company got off far too easily. And unfortunately, if any of the faculty in NYC that were fired because of the test results tried to sue them, they'd likely weasel out of it by saying "We didn't tell them to use this as a yardstick!"
OK, maybe this is covered in other material, but it wasn't in the article. What happens if the cable breaks? I realize that once the liquid nitrogen gets out of the pipe, it will evaporate pretty quickly. But it's still a hazard, over and above the electrical current.
You know, every time someone trots out that tired phrase, they instantly lose credibility.
I'm not going to go into the reasons why his "claim" wasn't a claim at all, and even if it was, the people who *did* invent the Internet backed him. It's not worth the old arguments.
Keep a lid on it this long? Worlds.com has been around since about 1994 or so when they came out with their first 3d chat room stuff (which is basically what this patent is for). I remember using it back then, and it was a very cool idea. Not enough to hold my interest for very long, but a cool idea all the same. Fact of the matter is, they filed in 1996, which is actually after they debuted. The patent is just only getting awarded now. They were around long before EQ was. So while it is a patent on something that is *now* fairly commonplace, it wasn't at the time. It may actually stand, even agaist vigorous claims of prior art.
Yes, there are a lot of stupid patents out there, and more are granted every day. But this one may actually be legit. Worlds.com implemented a great idea, and then when they saw it was kinda neat, applied for a patent on it. Now, whether or not sci-fi books that described a similar system qualify as prior art is another question. I'm not really sure that they would.
Yes, it's exactly like those games. However, I'm not so sure it's an invalid patent. I remember using worlds.com when it first showed up, and I remember that at that point in time, there was nothing like it. So it's quite possible that they came up with the idea first, and so why shouldn't they patent it? Just because something's widely used doesn't mean it can't be patented. At the time they filed (1996), this wasn't widely used at all.
All that this type of enviroment being widely used means is that worlds.com had a great idea and sparked a lot of people to develop similar systems.
Actually, I seem to recall that Inktomi Traffic Server has this functionality. However, I'm not sure if they implemented it prior to 1999 or not.
Their design was more geared towards hashing something like redball.gif and allowing a single instance in the cache to be referenced for multiple sites, thereby saving space in the cache.
Yeah, I agree that it's funny. But I think that the underlying truth is that AOL could do this, and they'd be well within their rights. Sure, it would be a stupid decision. But that doesn't mean they couldn't do it.
Fact of the matter is, if they did it, AOL customers would have to decide if it was important enough to them to cause them to cancel their account or not. Same as the decision that AIM users have to make now... is it important enough to you that AOL isn't working towards an open system, and that they don't interoperate with other IM systems? If it is, then stop using AIM, and try to convince your friends to use something else as well.
Sounds like AOL started using the DUL on their incoming mail servers. I really can't say I blame them. I use the DUL on my servers, basically because a good bit of spam these days is done via Direct-to-MX (ie. spammer dials up and uses a proggie to send mail directly from their computer to their victim's mail server). Blocking dialups is a quick way to deal with this problem that doesn't block too much legitimate mail.
There's always a tradeoff when you use a list like this for blocking spam. Obviously AOL decided that the spam that would be blocked outweighed the legit mail that would be blocked. And I'm fairly certain that it was a very small percent of legit mail, because I know firsthand the process that this type of decision would have had to go through before being implemented. However, I really don't think it makes them a bad Internet citizen. It's a business decision, plain and simple.
Me: instant messaging is not a public accommodation
You: No, but it should be:) Enter Jabber.
I really don't think it should be. As you as you get to something like that, you end up having government regulation and problems like we see with the Bells and even the power providers.
Open and accessible, yes. Public accommodation? No... it just carries too many negative aspects. But that's just my opinion.
Absolutely. Go ahead and use it if they leave it open to everyone. That's really not my point. My main point in all of this is that everyone (not claiming it was neccesasarily you) should stop bitching every time AOL changes the protocol or the checksum and blocks everyone.
Yes, by the fact that the server is semi-public you probably do have some rights to access it. But if they go and change the access mechanism, all of a sudden everyone starts shouting "Oh, this isn't fair!" You know what? Deal with it. You can either figure out the new mechanism quietly and "fix" your client, or switch to TOC. But I'll repeat it again (not for your benefit, but everyone else's): instant messaging is not a public accommodation.
Now, I do give you credit for coming out and trying to answer some of the questions. However, I think you could reword it and be a little clearer as to what you believe your rights to use the system are. You've cleared things up a little in this thread already. Unfortunately, I doubt it will have a serious impact on the community. We're still gonna get everyone shouting that AOL isn't playing fair they shouldn't be allowed to change their access mechanisms on OSCAR.
On the topic of reverse engineering, I really don't want to get into it either. However, I will say that you may get into trouble if you go the route of a "checksum server". I'm definitely no expert, but it seems that cleanroom solutions to something like this tend to be accepted, while doing a checksum server that bases itself around the AIM binary may bring up some problems between AOL and you guys based on the DMCA. Regardless of whether the legal challenge is valid or not, or even if the DMCA is good or bad, I would guess that you probably don't have the resources to fight AOL in court, and even if you did you might not want to. It's just something else to consider.
I did read in context. It still sounds like you're justifying using OSCAR by the fact that they gave away TOC. You'd like to sit here and say "Oh, we're doing them a *favor* by using the less resource-laden protocol. They should be thanking us!". You know what? Let AOL worry about their own resource issues. They've got a lot of people paid to worry about it on a daily basis, and they do a pretty good job of managing it.
And if I'm wrong, then exactly how do you justify using OSCAR when you yourself agree that you have no right to use the OSCAR servers? And remember, resources aren't an argument. You said that yourself.
Sorry, I misspoke. When I said "it does not give you any sort of right to use the servers" I meant that it doesn't give you any right to use the servers outside of the TOC protocol. Based on my previous statements, this could be assumed, but it's worth clarifying what I said.
His opening argument, about how AOL giving away TOC negates any argument about third-party clients having no right to use the system, is invalid. It's like arguing that because the bank allows you access to the money in the vault via a teller, you have the right to go in the vault and muck around as you like. Hey, it's less resource intensive, because they don't need this proxy (teller) to service your requests, right?
The fact of the matter is that the general public starts off with absolutely ZERO rights to use AOL's servers. AOL then allows specific forms of access. If they only want to allow certain people certain types of access (via TOC versus OSCAR), it's well within their rights. As much as you would like to think it is, instant messaging is NOT a public accommodation.
I didn't see anything that really did everything I wanted (web interface, manage websites, nameserver records, FTP accounts, shell accounts, email accounts, aliases, mailing lists, and databases), so I rolled my own for BrightNIC. Wrote a web interface using PHP on the frontend and Perl scripts on the backend, with a MySQL database in the middle of it all holding all the configuration information. And it's my hope that I've abstracted it from the actual systems far enough that you don't really need to know too much to manage things.
Unfortunately, it's so customized and woven into my hosting system, I don't know that I could ever pull it out into a package that other people could install and use. But it works for me.
Slashdot Mirror
First off, I'll say that I hate the popups and crap as much as anyone else. That said...
MS leveraged their OS market share to push IE. They forbade manufacturers from changing the desktop. They penalized manufacturers who did not put Windows on the PCs they sold.
AOL is striking deals where they would pay the manufacturers bounties for AOL subscribers that sign up as a result of popups that the manufacturer would install on the Windows desktop, courtesy of MS's loosened restrictions on this. AOL is not forcing anyone do this. They're not penalizing people who don't. And they're not leveraging anything to get this, except maybe existing relationships with the manufacturers. So other than cluttering the desktop and annoying people with popups, what's wrong with this?
I say more power to them. Let AOL and MS duke it out on the Windows desktop. Windows will become so unusable due to the constant popups, hundreds of extraneous icons, and lack of program compatibility that noone will want to use it. Maybe then people will finally look at the alternatives.
-Todd
---
Tower has the tins still (at least according to their site). Not an employee, just ordered mine from there.
-Todd
---
Tower isn't. And no, I don't work for Tower.
-Todd
---
If you didn't manage to get the limited edition in the tin, or you ordered it from somewhere like Amazon that is now ignoring your order, there's still a chance. It looks like Tower has them in stock still for the list price of $31.99.
-Todd
---
An AI would learn and develop, and pass the Turing test, among other things. This is NOT an AI. This is an expert system.
Get your terms correct, lest you become as bad as the mainstream media in twisting words and phrases for your own demented ends.
-Todd
---
Yes, I agree with this. However there is a difference when it's free speech at someone's expense. You can shout at the top of your lungs as much as you want, but as soon as you try and make me pay to listen to you, your rights to "free speech" with regards to me end.
And yes, I've heard all the arguments about how the cost of receiving an email is miniscule. However there is still a cost, and that's all that matters. It may only cost a cent for me to receive an email, but if I get 20 spams a day, that's 20 cents a day, $5 a month, $60 a year. These things add up, and the point is not that I have to shell this obscene amount of money out, it's that I shouldn't have to pay for someone else's advertising. You hear griping about junk mail (postal), but you don't see the pure hatred that you see for spam. Why? Because they're paying to send it out. The costs are in the right place.
So while I agree that you can't have it both ways, you also have to concede that there is a difference here. If spammers were paying to send out their ads, it would be a different story. However it can't just be a matter of them paying their provider to send out the ads, they have to *remove* the cost of receiving it from us.
-Todd
---
While tonight is the 2000th dish episode, which as they keep saying, is because it's the 2000th dish that Kaga has tasted since he has tasted them all, this is not quite true.
There was one episode where Kaga was "boycotting" the Iron Chefs because they had been losing. That week Hatori filled in for the Chairman. So Kaga hasn't tasted them all.
-Todd
---
I think I'll pass on a high-speed flywheel in my car. That thing gets even the slightest bit off balance, and it'll tear through your car and anything around.
Flywheels are great for datacenter power backup systems, where they can be buried underground and mounted in reasonably shock-proof setups. But I think mounting them in a mobile setup would just be asking for trouble.
-Todd
---
The fact that they got the patent isn't bad. Heck, they may very well deserve it because someone came up with the PVR concept (which does differ from plain VCRs as long as it takes into account manipulating live TV). Whether or not it was Tivo, well, we'll leave that to any prior art claims.
The real question is what is Tivo going to do with this new patent? Their press release really didn't say anything about whether they planned to start suing ReplayTV, MS UltimateTV, etc. If they're just going to add it to their portfolio and use it for negotiating power when doing deals (a lot of times big companies will do this without actually forcing everyone to license the patent), then more power to them. But if they're going to start attacking the other players, it could really harm the PVR market.
-Todd
---
While I agree with the idea that someone should be made responsible for this, exactly who should shoulder what part of the blame?
On the one hand, we have the testing agency. They had problems with their software, lax quality control, and a PHB who withheld information from the schools. They scored the tests incorrectly (with regards to rankings and previous years), and as a result a lot of people got fired and a lot of kids spent a summer in school needlessly.
On the other hand, we have the NYC school board. They made the decision to make the standardized test the end-all, be-all, despite the testing company's recommendations to the contrary. Even if the tests were scored and ranked properly, you have the opportunity for kids who test badly to end up in summer school.
I think that it was "right" for Crew to lose his job, but not for the reasons that were given. Whether there were more people in the school system that needed to share the culpability will probably never be known. However I think that the testing company got off far too easily. And unfortunately, if any of the faculty in NYC that were fired because of the test results tried to sue them, they'd likely weasel out of it by saying "We didn't tell them to use this as a yardstick!"
-Todd
---
OK, maybe this is covered in other material, but it wasn't in the article. What happens if the cable breaks? I realize that once the liquid nitrogen gets out of the pipe, it will evaporate pretty quickly. But it's still a hazard, over and above the electrical current.
-Todd
---
Mr. "I Invented The Internet" Gore
You know, every time someone trots out that tired phrase, they instantly lose credibility.
I'm not going to go into the reasons why his "claim" wasn't a claim at all, and even if it was, the people who *did* invent the Internet backed him. It's not worth the old arguments.
-Todd
---
Keep a lid on it this long? Worlds.com has been around since about 1994 or so when they came out with their first 3d chat room stuff (which is basically what this patent is for). I remember using it back then, and it was a very cool idea. Not enough to hold my interest for very long, but a cool idea all the same. Fact of the matter is, they filed in 1996, which is actually after they debuted. The patent is just only getting awarded now. They were around long before EQ was. So while it is a patent on something that is *now* fairly commonplace, it wasn't at the time. It may actually stand, even agaist vigorous claims of prior art.
Yes, there are a lot of stupid patents out there, and more are granted every day. But this one may actually be legit. Worlds.com implemented a great idea, and then when they saw it was kinda neat, applied for a patent on it. Now, whether or not sci-fi books that described a similar system qualify as prior art is another question. I'm not really sure that they would.
-Todd
---
Yes, it's exactly like those games. However, I'm not so sure it's an invalid patent. I remember using worlds.com when it first showed up, and I remember that at that point in time, there was nothing like it. So it's quite possible that they came up with the idea first, and so why shouldn't they patent it? Just because something's widely used doesn't mean it can't be patented. At the time they filed (1996), this wasn't widely used at all.
All that this type of enviroment being widely used means is that worlds.com had a great idea and sparked a lot of people to develop similar systems.
-Todd
---
Actually, I seem to recall that Inktomi Traffic Server has this functionality. However, I'm not sure if they implemented it prior to 1999 or not.
Their design was more geared towards hashing something like redball.gif and allowing a single instance in the cache to be referenced for multiple sites, thereby saving space in the cache.
-Todd
---
Yeah, I agree that it's funny. But I think that the underlying truth is that AOL could do this, and they'd be well within their rights. Sure, it would be a stupid decision. But that doesn't mean they couldn't do it.
Fact of the matter is, if they did it, AOL customers would have to decide if it was important enough to them to cause them to cancel their account or not. Same as the decision that AIM users have to make now... is it important enough to you that AOL isn't working towards an open system, and that they don't interoperate with other IM systems? If it is, then stop using AIM, and try to convince your friends to use something else as well.
-Todd
---
Sounds like AOL started using the DUL on their incoming mail servers. I really can't say I blame them. I use the DUL on my servers, basically because a good bit of spam these days is done via Direct-to-MX (ie. spammer dials up and uses a proggie to send mail directly from their computer to their victim's mail server). Blocking dialups is a quick way to deal with this problem that doesn't block too much legitimate mail.
There's always a tradeoff when you use a list like this for blocking spam. Obviously AOL decided that the spam that would be blocked outweighed the legit mail that would be blocked. And I'm fairly certain that it was a very small percent of legit mail, because I know firsthand the process that this type of decision would have had to go through before being implemented. However, I really don't think it makes them a bad Internet citizen. It's a business decision, plain and simple.
-Todd
---
Me: instant messaging is not a public accommodation
:) Enter Jabber.
You: No, but it should be
I really don't think it should be. As you as you get to something like that, you end up having government regulation and problems like we see with the Bells and even the power providers.
Open and accessible, yes. Public accommodation? No... it just carries too many negative aspects. But that's just my opinion.
-Todd
---
Yeah... this conversation has been removed to the other thread. Saw that post after I posted this. You do, of course, have a valid point there.
-Todd
---
Absolutely. Go ahead and use it if they leave it open to everyone. That's really not my point. My main point in all of this is that everyone (not claiming it was neccesasarily you) should stop bitching every time AOL changes the protocol or the checksum and blocks everyone.
Yes, by the fact that the server is semi-public you probably do have some rights to access it. But if they go and change the access mechanism, all of a sudden everyone starts shouting "Oh, this isn't fair!" You know what? Deal with it. You can either figure out the new mechanism quietly and "fix" your client, or switch to TOC. But I'll repeat it again (not for your benefit, but everyone else's): instant messaging is not a public accommodation.
Now, I do give you credit for coming out and trying to answer some of the questions. However, I think you could reword it and be a little clearer as to what you believe your rights to use the system are. You've cleared things up a little in this thread already. Unfortunately, I doubt it will have a serious impact on the community. We're still gonna get everyone shouting that AOL isn't playing fair they shouldn't be allowed to change their access mechanisms on OSCAR.
On the topic of reverse engineering, I really don't want to get into it either. However, I will say that you may get into trouble if you go the route of a "checksum server". I'm definitely no expert, but it seems that cleanroom solutions to something like this tend to be accepted, while doing a checksum server that bases itself around the AIM binary may bring up some problems between AOL and you guys based on the DMCA. Regardless of whether the legal challenge is valid or not, or even if the DMCA is good or bad, I would guess that you probably don't have the resources to fight AOL in court, and even if you did you might not want to. It's just something else to consider.
-Todd
---
I did read in context. It still sounds like you're justifying using OSCAR by the fact that they gave away TOC. You'd like to sit here and say "Oh, we're doing them a *favor* by using the less resource-laden protocol. They should be thanking us!". You know what? Let AOL worry about their own resource issues. They've got a lot of people paid to worry about it on a daily basis, and they do a pretty good job of managing it.
And if I'm wrong, then exactly how do you justify using OSCAR when you yourself agree that you have no right to use the OSCAR servers? And remember, resources aren't an argument. You said that yourself.
-Todd
---
Sorry, I misspoke. When I said "it does not give you any sort of right to use the servers" I meant that it doesn't give you any right to use the servers outside of the TOC protocol. Based on my previous statements, this could be assumed, but it's worth clarifying what I said.
-Todd
---
Perhaps you should reread what you wrote again. I quote: AOL giving us TOC negates any argument about us not having any right to use their servers.
It doesn't. It renders any arguments on the subject based on resources moot, but it does not give you any sort of right to use the servers.
-Todd
---
His opening argument, about how AOL giving away TOC negates any argument about third-party clients having no right to use the system, is invalid. It's like arguing that because the bank allows you access to the money in the vault via a teller, you have the right to go in the vault and muck around as you like. Hey, it's less resource intensive, because they don't need this proxy (teller) to service your requests, right?
The fact of the matter is that the general public starts off with absolutely ZERO rights to use AOL's servers. AOL then allows specific forms of access. If they only want to allow certain people certain types of access (via TOC versus OSCAR), it's well within their rights. As much as you would like to think it is, instant messaging is NOT a public accommodation.
-Todd
---
I didn't see anything that really did everything I wanted (web interface, manage websites, nameserver records, FTP accounts, shell accounts, email accounts, aliases, mailing lists, and databases), so I rolled my own for BrightNIC. Wrote a web interface using PHP on the frontend and Perl scripts on the backend, with a MySQL database in the middle of it all holding all the configuration information. And it's my hope that I've abstracted it from the actual systems far enough that you don't really need to know too much to manage things.
Unfortunately, it's so customized and woven into my hosting system, I don't know that I could ever pull it out into a package that other people could install and use. But it works for me.
-Todd
---