But to me, this new service will be largely deluged with people looking to trade bootleg videos, pr0n, etc, as again almost all the other similar services are.
Well of course porn will be a part of it as that industry is typically the first to adopt new technology as part of their operations. Of course people will absue the system as you said but hopefully some industries will embrace it as well which could lift the validity of it.
This could be a very good thing but I really have to say that if people do cloud the waters with copyrighted material the networks, RIAA, MPAA, etc, will do everything in their power to discredit it and bring it down.
Nielsen//NetRatings reported that escalating interest in the FireFox browser garnered a 237% spike in unique visitors to the Web site from nine months ago when the site first met Nielsen//NetRatings' minimum reporting levels in June 2004. More than 2.6 mln people visited the FireFox site during March 2005 to download the browser and obtain more information.
237% up?
How about my stats (remember slashdot referrers account for more than 50% of my traffic):
Out of the 11464 hits in June of 2004 20% were Mozilla
Out of the 35485 hits in March of 2005 21% were Mozilla
Looks like 1% up to me. YMMV. See? Just as worthless...
Let's do a random sampling of 250k users via phone (to verify validity) and see what they were using in 2004 and what they are using now in 2005. I have a good feeling that most won't have switched because they just don't know. But this blurb didn't tell me shit. All it did was quote something that I don't even know whether it is true or not and gets posted to/.
See how my little blurb is just as worthless as the one that was linked to in the Slashdot blurb? Let's see what we can do about making sure that content linked to at least seems valid and isn't some worthless blog.
Torvalds launched a blast against OpenOffice.org, and defended Microsoft's right to keep its binary Office formats proprietary. "I'm happy with somebody writing a free replacement for Microsoft Office. But I'm not fine with them writing a free replacement just by reverse engineering the proprietary formats," said the Linux founder. "Microsoft has its own reasons for keeping them proprietary, and I can't argue with that."
Actually he didn't - we just made that quote up.
Well, thanks for another misleading headline Slashdot! While I applaud your recent efforts to fix crappy editorial comments and duplicate removal you still are showing that you refuse to even read the articles that users submit. Now on to the rest of the article...
You know Linux is a clone of Unix because Linus couldn't run Unix on his 386 machine. He wasn't pleased that he couldn't do something and he worked around it. Why can't someone be displeased with other proprietary systems and create workarounds for them?
I'm preaching to the choir here but reverse engineering is a Good Thing for all communities. There is absolutely no reason that we should not support working around what others have obfusticated to make money for themselves.
Linux wouldn't have nearly the same capacity in the Windows world we live in if it wasn't for Samba. Yeah, there is NFS for Windows and various other file sharing protocols that could have been used but Samba makes it easy for anyone to fit their Unix clone right into their pre-existing Windows network without much trouble.
The free client was costing Bitmover $500,000 a year, explains McVoy. "At that point we started looking at what it would be like to discontinue the free BK.
So? It's obvious that the pay-for client offered nothing worth what you were asking if the free client can do the job. Either price properly or make the pay-for product much better. I'm not talking about crippleware or nagware. I'm talking about creating a much more superior product that entices people to buy rather than hobble along with what the free version offers.
Plenty of companies out there have been doing it just fine by basing their business model on Linux. Why can't McVoy find the same happy existence?
"What Larry is not fine with, is somebody writing a free replacement by just reverse-engineering what he did. Larry has a very clear moral standpoint: 'You can compete with me, but you can't do so by riding on my coat-tails. Solve the problems on your own, and compete honestly. Don't compete by looking at my solution.'
They are competing honestly. They are doing it in a clean lab. They aren't trying to steal your code and use it themselves but they are trying to take a great idea and make it better. Welcome to the real world. Crying doesn't do anything but piss people off. Do something to your own software that will make it stay one+ steps ahead of the reverse engineered competition.
I only have 768k upstream right now, and there will be hell to pay if they want to remove accounts for actually using the allotted amount.
It's up to the ISP to enforce this. The thing I didn't understand is what benefit do ISPs get for actually signing this agreement?
They are going to look bad for handing over customer's information w/o question and they might even lose customers (if there are other options available).
Is the RIAA/MPAA going to pay them money to do this?
As long as municipal broadband doesn't block other entities from providing broadband service to a community and foster competition, municipal broadband could be a very good thing. But, I'm still concerned about potential abuse of the network by the local governments.
I'm not concerned about it right now but I will begin to be curious once enough people switch over. With any municipality there is some financial ins and a lot of political ins.
Will Hennepin County/Minneapolis make the right QoS choice when picking the company that will supply the backend support for the wireless network (i.e. Visi) or will they choose some third rate company that no one has ever heard of but has political ties due to family?
Will they start enforcing site and port blocking when enough people start complaining that the network is too slow for what they are paying?
Right now I am not afraid of them poking their noses in to what the users are doing but that *will* become a problem in the future.
All these good things but yet we have to worry so much:(
the godawful connection speed (GPRS sucks. Thanks cell phone companies!) I'll just find an open wireless access point and use Google from my laptop.
GPRS isn't *that* slow. Google is quite responsive (one of the faster sites out there while on GPRS) and I actually find myself using my hiptop more than my laptop. Something that fits in my pocket is a lot easier to do a quick Google search on than locating an access point, booting up/waking up the laptop, doing the search, and then shutting down/putting to sleep the laptop.
... that you have a good text message plan, because personally I don't see the benefit on searching via my cell phone just to be charged $.10 for information. Especially since the text message has to be 160 characters or shorter. I'll get 100 replies and only 3 of them may be relevant costing me more than it would be to just drive to a public terminal.
I don't know about all cell phone plans but most of the ones I have been under have free *in bound* SMS. So it's really irrelevant how many relevant replies you get from Google as long as you are only sending a single search string out.
Public terminals that I have seen run a couple dollars for an hour (if you don't have your own machine to do wireless with) and sometimes require a purchase at the store you are in.
All in all, this is a silly prospect. Shouldn't they be working on more interesting things?
Why bother? People go and watch it or rent it anyway because there is no competition. The MPAA supports bullshit movies with lame scripts and too much money spent because it's good for their PR campaign against the same people that watch their movies.
Who the hell would believe them if they claimed they were losing money on a movie that made $400 million dollars on a $1 million budget?
It always amazes me when they bitch and moan about the way things should be when commercial software manufacturers make up only a small fraction of the software development world.
That small fraction of the business world controls 90% of the money. That's why it doesn't surprise me.
The article spoke of whether or not people knew specific words such as "spyware", "trojans", or "phishing". They would likely come across these words in mainstream articles either online or in print media.
Now, I read plenty of crap online that isn't meant for my main knowledgebase but I use daily. Should I just shrug my shoulders at it when I come across something that was important enough to put in the news?
What normal person reads articles about computer security? Do you read articles about new studies concerning the use of various grains in dry cat foods? Why not? I do all the time.
There are plenty of tech related articles appearing in everyday media distributions.
"If internet users can't understand the language used to describe these risks, they are going to find it hard to protect themselves from being ripped off."
So I am reading a book and I come across a word I don't know. What do I do? I take note of it (if I can determine what the sentence is trying to convey without knowing the word) and I go and look it up later.
So, you're on the net and you're reading an article about computer security. You come across a word you don't know. What do you do? Google for it (define: foo) or dictionary.com or whatever.
Come on. If people aren't willing to expend even the most minimal amount of effort to learn their world around them I have no sympathy for them when they get 0wn3d by the v1r11!!!!!!!!!@!
Yeah because I really want to travel to a country that openly disallows the discussions of one of their most embarassing political follies ever from the country that disallows its citizens to be as free as they once were.
Perhaps you want me to cross the Pond and end up in a country where they have more video cameras than people? Perhaps you want me to go to China?
I see it has being used when Passports are mandated to include RFID tags. By then, if the lawmakers get their way, cars will have them imbedded in tires to track their movements (of course it's all for the best interests of the USA's citizens and not to fill the coffers of local governments).
The US will then be able to track the movements of its citizens around the Interstates and across the border. It will then know when you left, when you came back, and where you went after.
It will all be a part of your little running history.
Keep RFID tags out of cars, passports, items in stores, etc.
Why are many cities so interested in providing free/cheap WiFi access? Telephones and cable TV have been around much longer and you don't see cities rushing to provide free land-line phones or cable TV.
Because it takes a lot more time, money, and manpower to dig holes, run cable, and string wires for line based services (CATV and telephone) than it does for wireless based services such as Internet.
Luckily that moderation system (known for it's self-reinforcing groupthink) prevented your obvious troll from going to the top of the list.
Just because some people here like Apple and what they do does not mean that they will no longer support Jon now that he broke iTMS DRM. He has done a ton of great things (DeCSS, opening WMV9 codec and hacking it into VLC, standing up for fair-use, not making himself out to be some sort of money grubbing hero, etc).
It is just a pity that the studios/player manufacturers are not going to listen to the public on this matter.
They aren't going to listen to the minority. The MPAA and RIAA have the power of nearly limitless funding for FUD campaigns against fair-use. Sadly, it's already working.
People accept that DRM will be on digital TV content. "Oh, I don't see why I should be able to timeshift my shows outside of a predetermined timeslot!" "Oh, copying DVDs is wrong!" "Oh, listening to my music on more than three different computers and devices is unncessary!" "I don't need to burn music more than 5 times!"
This is where the road is leading. People will continue to be told that fair-use doesn't exist and they will continue to accept it because there really is no other way (in their eyes).
So the public is going to listen to them on this matter.
When your DVD player tells you "This operation is not allowed" when you try to skip commercials, it becomes pretty clear that DRM really stands for Digital Restrictions Management.
Exactly! When I buy a DVD (not rent) I expect to have complete control over how I view that content. My DVD player has no right to restrict me from fastfowarding through any part of that media.
Any DVD I purchase that does not allow me to fastfoward any part is immediately ripped, stripped, and burned. That's my right. Thank you Jon!
Looks like, at least in parts, the imagery is from an older dataset than what's on the Keyhole service. I live in a large neighborhood that's been under construction for 3 years across the various sections, and there are more houses in the Keyhole dataset than on the Google Maps satellite images.
We were already talking about this this morning on our local geocaching assocation forum. Two of us (St. Paul and Apple Valley, MN) show that the images are at least 4 years old or newer.
My house was built in 2001 and it shows it there. Google doesn't know my address and gives something nearby but I still can see the house:)
Likewise, an anonymously registered and maintained TLD is useful for only a few things. Most of them wrong. I.e. you can knowingly publish libelous material as long as nobody knows it was put out by you.
If you run any sort of mail server that accepts email from webmaster@, hostmaster@, root@, and various others including common usernames you will see an endless amount of spam coming through.
There's no reason to have address information available to the public other than when requested to the company handling the domain via written request.
Imagine what it would be like if we access everything... It would change everything in such big ways, to put it mildly. Science, the arts, research, historical knowledge would be capable of permiating our world in a way they are restrained from doing now.
Imagine if the UN, individual governments, individual governments controlled by Big Business, and Big Business themselves get to control the global communication network the way they want.
We won't have instant access to anything except what they want us to. Free speech doesn't exist as it's bad for business. Free ideas cannot be distributed as it's bad for business.
Imagine that and remember to vote in the next election and take an active role in pressuring your local representatives to do "The Right Thing".
He gave up his right to me not "making this my business" when he posted his sad story on a public Internet forum and asked people to distribute the link and label it a "press release".
Slashdot Mirror
But to me, this new service will be largely deluged with people looking to trade bootleg videos, pr0n, etc, as again almost all the other similar services are.
Well of course porn will be a part of it as that industry is typically the first to adopt new technology as part of their operations. Of course people will absue the system as you said but hopefully some industries will embrace it as well which could lift the validity of it.
This could be a very good thing but I really have to say that if people do cloud the waters with copyrighted material the networks, RIAA, MPAA, etc, will do everything in their power to discredit it and bring it down.
This is a gutsy move by Google.
Nielsen//NetRatings reported that escalating interest in the FireFox browser garnered a 237% spike in unique visitors to the Web site from nine months ago when the site first met Nielsen//NetRatings' minimum reporting levels in June 2004. More than 2.6 mln people visited the FireFox site during March 2005 to download the browser and obtain more information.
/.
237% up?
How about my stats (remember slashdot referrers account for more than 50% of my traffic):
Out of the 11464 hits in June of 2004 20% were Mozilla
Out of the 35485 hits in March of 2005 21% were Mozilla
Looks like 1% up to me. YMMV. See? Just as worthless...
Let's do a random sampling of 250k users via phone (to verify validity) and see what they were using in 2004 and what they are using now in 2005. I have a good feeling that most won't have switched because they just don't know. But this blurb didn't tell me shit. All it did was quote something that I don't even know whether it is true or not and gets posted to
See how my little blurb is just as worthless as the one that was linked to in the Slashdot blurb? Let's see what we can do about making sure that content linked to at least seems valid and isn't some worthless blog.
Only if they're not true.
Torvalds launched a blast against OpenOffice.org, and defended Microsoft's right to keep its binary Office formats proprietary. "I'm happy with somebody writing a free replacement for Microsoft Office. But I'm not fine with them writing a free replacement just by reverse engineering the proprietary formats," said the Linux founder. "Microsoft has its own reasons for keeping them proprietary, and I can't argue with that."
Actually he didn't - we just made that quote up.
Well, thanks for another misleading headline Slashdot! While I applaud your recent efforts to fix crappy editorial comments and duplicate removal you still are showing that you refuse to even read the articles that users submit. Now on to the rest of the article...
You know Linux is a clone of Unix because Linus couldn't run Unix on his 386 machine. He wasn't pleased that he couldn't do something and he worked around it. Why can't someone be displeased with other proprietary systems and create workarounds for them?
I'm preaching to the choir here but reverse engineering is a Good Thing for all communities. There is absolutely no reason that we should not support working around what others have obfusticated to make money for themselves.
Linux wouldn't have nearly the same capacity in the Windows world we live in if it wasn't for Samba. Yeah, there is NFS for Windows and various other file sharing protocols that could have been used but Samba makes it easy for anyone to fit their Unix clone right into their pre-existing Windows network without much trouble.
The free client was costing Bitmover $500,000 a year, explains McVoy. "At that point we started looking at what it would be like to discontinue the free BK.
So? It's obvious that the pay-for client offered nothing worth what you were asking if the free client can do the job. Either price properly or make the pay-for product much better. I'm not talking about crippleware or nagware. I'm talking about creating a much more superior product that entices people to buy rather than hobble along with what the free version offers.
Plenty of companies out there have been doing it just fine by basing their business model on Linux. Why can't McVoy find the same happy existence?
"What Larry is not fine with, is somebody writing a free replacement by just reverse-engineering what he did. Larry has a very clear moral standpoint: 'You can compete with me, but you can't do so by riding on my coat-tails. Solve the problems on your own, and compete honestly. Don't compete by looking at my solution.'
They are competing honestly. They are doing it in a clean lab. They aren't trying to steal your code and use it themselves but they are trying to take a great idea and make it better. Welcome to the real world. Crying doesn't do anything but piss people off. Do something to your own software that will make it stay one+ steps ahead of the reverse engineered competition.
I only have 768k upstream right now, and there will be hell to pay if they want to remove accounts for actually using the allotted amount.
It's up to the ISP to enforce this. The thing I didn't understand is what benefit do ISPs get for actually signing this agreement?
They are going to look bad for handing over customer's information w/o question and they might even lose customers (if there are other options available).
Is the RIAA/MPAA going to pay them money to do this?
As long as municipal broadband doesn't block other entities from providing broadband service to a community and foster competition, municipal broadband could be a very good thing. But, I'm still concerned about potential abuse of the network by the local governments.
:(
I'm not concerned about it right now but I will begin to be curious once enough people switch over. With any municipality there is some financial ins and a lot of political ins.
Will Hennepin County/Minneapolis make the right QoS choice when picking the company that will supply the backend support for the wireless network (i.e. Visi) or will they choose some third rate company that no one has ever heard of but has political ties due to family?
Will they start enforcing site and port blocking when enough people start complaining that the network is too slow for what they are paying?
Right now I am not afraid of them poking their noses in to what the users are doing but that *will* become a problem in the future.
All these good things but yet we have to worry so much
the godawful connection speed (GPRS sucks. Thanks cell phone companies!) I'll just find an open wireless access point and use Google from my laptop.
GPRS isn't *that* slow. Google is quite responsive (one of the faster sites out there while on GPRS) and I actually find myself using my hiptop more than my laptop. Something that fits in my pocket is a lot easier to do a quick Google search on than locating an access point, booting up/waking up the laptop, doing the search, and then shutting down/putting to sleep the laptop.
YMMV.
... that you have a good text message plan, because personally I don't see the benefit on searching via my cell phone just to be charged $.10 for information. Especially since the text message has to be 160 characters or shorter. I'll get 100 replies and only 3 of them may be relevant costing me more than it would be to just drive to a public terminal.
I don't know about all cell phone plans but most of the ones I have been under have free *in bound* SMS. So it's really irrelevant how many relevant replies you get from Google as long as you are only sending a single search string out.
Public terminals that I have seen run a couple dollars for an hour (if you don't have your own machine to do wireless with) and sometimes require a purchase at the store you are in.
YMMV.
All in all, this is a silly prospect. Shouldn't they be working on more interesting things?
Why bother? People go and watch it or rent it anyway because there is no competition. The MPAA supports bullshit movies with lame scripts and too much money spent because it's good for their PR campaign against the same people that watch their movies.
Who the hell would believe them if they claimed they were losing money on a movie that made $400 million dollars on a $1 million budget?
Eh, I'll wait past the three Transformers (Live Action) movies and go straight to T vs. V: Transformers vs. Voltron.
It always amazes me when they bitch and moan about the way things should be when commercial software manufacturers make up only a small fraction of the software development world.
That small fraction of the business world controls 90% of the money. That's why it doesn't surprise me.
The article spoke of whether or not people knew specific words such as "spyware", "trojans", or "phishing". They would likely come across these words in mainstream articles either online or in print media.
Now, I read plenty of crap online that isn't meant for my main knowledgebase but I use daily. Should I just shrug my shoulders at it when I come across something that was important enough to put in the news?
What normal person reads articles about computer security? Do you read articles about new studies concerning the use of various grains in dry cat foods? Why not? I do all the time.
There are plenty of tech related articles appearing in everyday media distributions.
"If internet users can't understand the language used to describe these risks, they are going to find it hard to protect themselves from being ripped off."
So I am reading a book and I come across a word I don't know. What do I do? I take note of it (if I can determine what the sentence is trying to convey without knowing the word) and I go and look it up later.
So, you're on the net and you're reading an article about computer security. You come across a word you don't know. What do you do? Google for it (define: foo) or dictionary.com or whatever.
Come on. If people aren't willing to expend even the most minimal amount of effort to learn their world around them I have no sympathy for them when they get 0wn3d by the v1r11!!!!!!!!!@!
Yeah because I really want to travel to a country that openly disallows the discussions of one of their most embarassing political follies ever from the country that disallows its citizens to be as free as they once were.
Perhaps you want me to cross the Pond and end up in a country where they have more video cameras than people? Perhaps you want me to go to China?
So tell me again why I need a passport?
I see it has being used when Passports are mandated to include RFID tags. By then, if the lawmakers get their way, cars will have them imbedded in tires to track their movements (of course it's all for the best interests of the USA's citizens and not to fill the coffers of local governments).
The US will then be able to track the movements of its citizens around the Interstates and across the border. It will then know when you left, when you came back, and where you went after.
It will all be a part of your little running history.
Keep RFID tags out of cars, passports, items in stores, etc.
Why are many cities so interested in providing free/cheap WiFi access? Telephones and cable TV have been around much longer and you don't see cities rushing to provide free land-line phones or cable TV.
Because it takes a lot more time, money, and manpower to dig holes, run cable, and string wires for line based services (CATV and telephone) than it does for wireless based services such as Internet.
Luckily that moderation system (known for it's self-reinforcing groupthink) prevented your obvious troll from going to the top of the list.
Just because some people here like Apple and what they do does not mean that they will no longer support Jon now that he broke iTMS DRM. He has done a ton of great things (DeCSS, opening WMV9 codec and hacking it into VLC, standing up for fair-use, not making himself out to be some sort of money grubbing hero, etc).
It is just a pity that the studios/player manufacturers are not going to listen to the public on this matter.
They aren't going to listen to the minority. The MPAA and RIAA have the power of nearly limitless funding for FUD campaigns against fair-use. Sadly, it's already working.
People accept that DRM will be on digital TV content. "Oh, I don't see why I should be able to timeshift my shows outside of a predetermined timeslot!" "Oh, copying DVDs is wrong!" "Oh, listening to my music on more than three different computers and devices is unncessary!" "I don't need to burn music more than 5 times!"
This is where the road is leading. People will continue to be told that fair-use doesn't exist and they will continue to accept it because there really is no other way (in their eyes).
So the public is going to listen to them on this matter.
When your DVD player tells you "This operation is not allowed" when you try to skip commercials, it becomes pretty clear that DRM really stands for Digital Restrictions Management.
Exactly! When I buy a DVD (not rent) I expect to have complete control over how I view that content. My DVD player has no right to restrict me from fastfowarding through any part of that media.
Any DVD I purchase that does not allow me to fastfoward any part is immediately ripped, stripped, and burned. That's my right. Thank you Jon!
Looks like, at least in parts, the imagery is from an older dataset than what's on the Keyhole service. I live in a large neighborhood that's been under construction for 3 years across the various sections, and there are more houses in the Keyhole dataset than on the Google Maps satellite images.
:)
We were already talking about this this morning on our local geocaching assocation forum. Two of us (St. Paul and Apple Valley, MN) show that the images are at least 4 years old or newer.
My house was built in 2001 and it shows it there. Google doesn't know my address and gives something nearby but I still can see the house
I'd love to root her box while taking her snapshots.
Likewise, an anonymously registered and maintained TLD is useful for only a few things. Most of them wrong. I.e. you can knowingly publish libelous material as long as nobody knows it was put out by you.
If you run any sort of mail server that accepts email from webmaster@, hostmaster@, root@, and various others including common usernames you will see an endless amount of spam coming through.
There's no reason to have address information available to the public other than when requested to the company handling the domain via written request.
Imagine what it would be like if we access everything... It would change everything in such big ways, to put it mildly. Science, the arts, research, historical knowledge would be capable of permiating our world in a way they are restrained from doing now.
Imagine if the UN, individual governments, individual governments controlled by Big Business, and Big Business themselves get to control the global communication network the way they want.
We won't have instant access to anything except what they want us to. Free speech doesn't exist as it's bad for business. Free ideas cannot be distributed as it's bad for business.
Imagine that and remember to vote in the next election and take an active role in pressuring your local representatives to do "The Right Thing".
My two cents: STFU and mind your own business.
He gave up his right to me not "making this my business" when he posted his sad story on a public Internet forum and asked people to distribute the link and label it a "press release".