Here is a nice page from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Ice Ages, that briefly touches upon the cyclicity of Ice Ages. I think they are a little like the business cycles, just a little bit longer.
From the website:
In 1867, James Croll, a self-taught astronomer, compiled information from a variety of sources -- including Isaac Newton's Theory of Radiant Energy. His work led to the development of a sound astronomical theory supporting the idea of cyclic ice ages. Croll's goal was to geologically predict when ice ages would occur and to explain the mechanism that caused them.
If the artists and designers want a heads-up, in case we do end up back in an ice age rather abruptly , here (ice age art) is a good site to brush up on.
If it becomes increasingly hard to block "objectionable" messages, (which by the way the Cubans have effectively done - Cuban Government Toughens Internet Restrictions) would it come to a stage the Authoritarian Governments try to drown the messages.
The Govt could itself start sending out so much propoganda messages that they will drown the "rebel" messages, and most people will be unable to develop personalized filters to get to the "rebel" information. (A conspi-racist may think that the real purpose of the CAN-SPAM legilation was to pre-emptively acquire these capabilities.)
After all, if this is supposed to be the attention economy, all the govt has to do to prevent mischief is to keep your attention - almost like in Clockwork Orange. Does it really matter if the attention is directed to something worthwhile, or towards just delusion and deception - I mean from the Governments point-of-view.
EZ-Ds, vacuum-sealed movies that, once opened, play for 48 hours before a chemical reaction on the surface of the discs renders them unplayable.
I think this has to do with the fact that the product is physical. I can see that it would be repulsive to support such a wasteful technology where the products is deliberately crippled, and turns to dust. Especially a physical product that you can touch or feel.
If it was more of an abstraction that lapsed I don't think it would "seem" so wasteful. For example, people are willing to pay for a pay-per-view movie/show, and people are also willing to pay $4-6 for a 6-12 hr block of playboy channel that does lapse after that time period. But because nothing just turns to dust in your hand, it does not feel so bad. Adult fare seems more succesful with this concept.
Buena Vista Home Entertainment, a division of Disney, has been test marketing the product since September. More than 30 movies are now available in the disposable format, including Chicago, Freaky Friday and The Waterboy. The discs sell for about $7.
Unluckily for Disney, they don't do that kind of adult stuff, and in addition, rather than a privilege to watch just lapsing, you have a physical dud in your hand that reminds you - what a darn waste... and worse it reminds you of the crippled CD's that "scum-of-the-earth" RIAA and its associates are trying to peddle. And that defintely deserves a "NO, thank you very much."
These are some of the applications I remember offhand, and I am sure there has to be stuff like this that was there before this patent was filed.
As it is, it is pretty stupid to give a patent for something that is quite functional - but is it innovative ? And worse, should you be able to prevent others from using it without paying extortion money ?
It is a well conducted experiment by academic standards, but I believe its conclusions cannot be extrapolated to real life just yet.
The subjects were paid a nominal fee ($25) for their attendance plus auction earnings.
The first problem here is of anchoring with the $25 figure. An example is generally given in literature that first you ask a person when did Genghis Khan live. Say someone says 1275 AD. Next if you ask them how many movie theatres are there in Russia - you will find their answer strongly affected by the number 1275. This is called "anchoring." Anchoring may have reflected why people asked between $4 and $19. They were looking at a 20% to 80 percent increase in that session's earnings and so looks "big" to the $25 anchor.
The experiment was fully explained to the subjects and a consent form was signed. Subjects were free to leave or not participate.
This is even more problematic. Once you have committed to coming would you just walk out of the whole situation ? Has the time that you spent thinking about this before you came played a role in whether you stay or leave?
In all auctions prices were limited to a range of $0 - $100 as well as "infinity" to indicate that $100 would not be enough for the individual to reveal information to others.
The problem here is of "framing." You have made it clear that till $ 100 is the maximum "reasonable" price for private info, other wise you get nothing. This framing of the issue is problematic because it definitely had an influence on what people thought was a fair price for the info. Some people chose "infinity" but that is less than 3 %. If this is extrapolated then there is only 3 % of the popluation that wants to avoid Big Brother and Animal Farm - and that is scary.
Recent debates on privacy issues ranging from financial information [23] to genetic and medical data[24,25] to surveillance[26] require a careful consideration of how individuals choose to reveal their private information
.
I can pick up medical data, and point out to the fact that there are many healthy people who enroll themselves in clinical trials for $500-1500. In exchange they are monitored for days and weeks, blood samples drawn upteen times - why ? Because at that time that $1000 is a lot of money in their life. Some friends of mine went thru this procedure and I don't think their decision to give "all medical data" was based on any of the hypotheses of the current study. (As an aside, based on those clinical trial stories I later developed the concept for a comic strip Test Pharm - Cultivating a treatment for everyone)
This distance from a perceived ideal is far more important than privacy attitudes, how well one knows the group, or actual deviance from an objective mean.
The problem is that real life is not uni-dimensional. Cause and Effect is not singular. There can be single cause - multiple effects, multiple causes - single effect, multiple causes - multiple effects.
I can't just say that disclosure of salary is connected to a group average. There are a host of other issues related to the salary information. The salary information has multiple repercussions. In some of these "repercussions" I am average, in others deviant. In some groups I am average in others I am deviant.
This deviance concept is generally used in the Police State defense. "It shouldn't bother you because you got nothing to hide - right ?" I think it is misplaced as it does not consider the various shades of deviances in multiple dimensions - and exaggerates a singular cause rather than a bundle of causes. For example, if tomorrow carrying an almanac becomes a crime by some interpretation of the Patriot Act, then I would be against random roadblocks to "fish" out
If you have a lot of icons then you could take the approach of classifying them in some hierarchy, and it would be nice if the path string provides more information about what is down 3 or 4 levels.
The icons are essentially of 3 kinds - files, folders, and shortcuts(url's or local paths).
Folders contain files and shortcuts.
Shortcuts point to folders or files.
Special files (e.g. Zip file) can contain folders and shortcuts, in addition to other files.
So, here is the basic concept.
Create Zip files and store the folder hierarchy (context) and the files (icons) in it.
Instead of Unzipping the Zip File everytime you need to peep into it, do the following:
If you have Winzip 9 it will shows a tooltip with the files contained in it. If you have a program like Ziptip it can inflate the readme file in the zip file.
Use a Windows Explorer replacement like PowerDesk. It just treats the Zip files like normal folders and shows the content. With QuickView Plus you can get a viewer pane that lets you view files in many formats without opening the application.
Use a program like ZipMagic that runs in the background. Turned On all the zip files are treated like folders, turned Off all the zip files are treated like files.
Unzip the zip file if you want the icons on the desktop or in an Explorer window to see them as arrangable icons.
Use the Add Toolbars feature to have folder contents easily accessible as a toolbar, in addition to the Quicklaunch (where you can have a huge number of icons too) and Desktop. Or you can use programs like TrayMenu.
Use a program like JS Pager that lets you create upto 6 Desktops , i.e. you can change the icons by a right click on the program control panel. The use a program like Iconlock to save the icons positions in these 6 desktops and more.
Use programs like Microangelo to change the image associated with your icon. It makes it really easy to classify them this way.
Stephen Gibbs
BBC News, Washington
January 24, 2004
The U.S.B. Government is tightening its control over internet access.
A new law coming into force on Saturday makes it impossible for many Americans to dial up the internet from their home telephone lines.
The move has been criticised by the human rights group Amnesty International.
United States of Bush (U.S.B.) says that, given its limited resources and massive deficit, it needs to ensure that the internet is primarily used to prevent terrosist and hostile activity.
Corporate access only
The move clamps down on the thousands of Americal who legally access the internet from their homes.
From now on, it will not be possible to dial up the main government server from most domestic phone lines.
Only lines which are paid for by Corporations who can install pre-emptive software on the servers will have direct access. These are usually restricted to Corporate Officials and Government Officials.
Amnesty International says this is an attempt to shield American from alternative views from the rest of the world.
All news media in U.S.B. is rigorously corporate-controlled and supportive of President Bush's Administration.
'For the common good'
But the U.S.B. government has reacted angrily to suggestions that the change amounts to censorship.
It says it is doing nothing more than preventing insecure internet connections being hijacked by people borrowing, or selling each other chatter and NBCW including WMD information.
The internet should be for the common good, it says, pointing out that it will still be available in goverment monitored areas and workplaces.
Dissident groups have expressed doubt that the authorities here can control the internet as much as they might wish.
It is true that whenever a new law comes into effect here, Americans, esp. the U.S.A - who are famed for their inventiveness - tend to find a way around it.
In a spectacular career spanning nearly six decades, Edgerton and his "magic lamps" stopped bullets mid-flight and revealed the secrets of ocean depths. By photographing the usual in an unusual way, Edgerton brought to the world what James R. Killian, Jr., coined "sudden wonder."
The results of the experiment suggest there may be a scientific basis to the anecdotes of sleep stimulating creative thinking throughout human history, such as:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was inspired to write the epic poem Kubla Khan while asleep.
An Internet voting system developed by the Pentagon for U.S. citizens overseas is so vulnerable to attacks that it should be scrapped, four computer security experts said in a report released Wednesday.
Forgive me for asking but why is the Pentagon involved in the conduct of Elections? Isn't there some more neutral organization ? It is like asking the Republican-leaning ("I am committed to delivering...") Diebold to be in charge of conducting elections. If it was the State Department (Colin Powell) it would make sense but the Pentagon (Donald Rumsfeld) ? There is no democracy in the Defense Services and None at the Pentagon - what makes them so confident that they know what democracy needs.
Defense Department spokesman Glenn Flood said the Pentagon was confident the system is secure. "We knew from the start that security would be the utmost concern," Flood said. "We've had things put in place that counteract the things they talked about."
Again forgive me for bringing it up, but they seem to be brushing off concerns like the did before attacking Iraq. (We have it all under control, and it will cost less than 1.5 billion dollars...)
"We knew from the start that security would be the utmost concern..."
Yes, but they said the same before attacking Iraq. Knowing something does not mean that they have planned for it. It is like a doctor who knows the name of the disease but that does not mean he/she knows how to cure it. And the Pentagon has not addressed the legitimate concerns.
But the Pentagon is standing by the system, which could get its first test Feb. 3 in South Carolina's primary election.
Since a large of percentage of music downloading is done by teenagers, the RIAA hoped the notifications, which were to be sent to the account holders, might tip off parents as to their children's possible copyright infringements.
How nice of RIAA to always involve a 3rd party in the dispute.
They don't want to fight a losing battle with the teenagers so they try to scare the pants off their parents.
They didn't want to fight a losing battle with the ISP's so they got the courts involved.
They didn't want to fight a losing battle with the technology companies so they got the lawmakers (via DMCA) involved.
RIAA should understand the relationship is between the artists and the audience. They themselves are the 3rd party. So, RIAA GET OUT. OUT.
The Linux Community has already offered to rip out the infringing code and replace it once it is identified. Red Hat has understood that the community is going to live to its word and has formalized this into an offer of "Intellectual Property Warrant." This formal offer on behalf of the community may be more acceptable to the business folks rather than the diffuse commitments of the Linux Community. I think that's all there is to it.
Of the three, the first one, which is displayed widely, on K5, Slashdot, Groklaw, LiveJournal
I recently received spam at the address displayed on/. It is an absolute rarity and I was surprised till I realized that/. users are a distinct demographic with certain common traits.
For a business targeting the/. demographic it is probably worthwhile to get all the email addresses (easy to detect where they are on a page and about 750,000 maximum) and then run them thru iterative cleaning. In the first few iterations itself they should be able to get many usable addresses, and then with a person cutting and pasting they should be able to clean more.
My point is that on less trafficked sites, or sites that don't attract a distinct demographic, email obfuscation definitely helps. But for sites like/., k5, etc. I can see it worthwhile for someone to deobfuscate the addresses even if it takes time and money because the cleaned up/. emails are worth a lot of money. Paradoxically,/.'s are the least likely to respond to spamming that comes that way...
I think the major points that are considered in resolving Domain Name disputes are
was it chosen in bad faith - i.e sully a tangible "goodwill" (even an artists name is valubale property)
was it chosen to be sold later at a high price to the original trademark/copyright owner
was it chosen to divert legitimate trafic to illegitimate sites using typos etc.
In each case you will see that the desire it to see whether bad intentions and commercial gains were involved.
My analogy with the Nissan case was to illustrate that Nissan Computer Company had a much stronger case than Mike Rowe but still lost. So, the enthusiasm must be tempered in taking on MS.
The Domain Name Handbook has a very good listing of many Domain Name Disputes Domain Name Handbook: DOMAIN DISPUTES I - R and you shall see that there are other cases than Nissan.com that might be conceptually more similar to the Mike Rowe case, but they all also mainly deal with the points I enumerated earlier.
An IP Attorney/Lawyer/Agent could probably shed more light on a better prior case to compare Mike Rowe dispute with.
And so he should. It would seem Microsoft has no choice but to back down as, legally, it doesn't have a hope in hell of winning and there are plenty of lawyers out there who would love to get a win against Microsoft under their belt.
I think if he does get enough support, he probably should fight back. But it brings another case of the Nissan.com domain to me in which the domain name can't be used commercially.
As of June 12th 2000 there are (2223) domain names registered on the Internet containing the word nissan in them. To the best of our knowledge, most of those domains are not owned by Nissan Motor Co. Click here to view a partial list of them.
Also here is another list with nissan as the first word of the domain name there are (860 ) of them Click here to view. If you wish to see which entity owns any particular listing, just click on the WHOIS link next to it.
In the www.MikeRoweSoft.com case the interpretion is weaker as the similarity is "phonetic" which is really quite fuzzy, compared to the actual presence of the word "nissan" in the domain name. Despite this the original owner of the Nissan.com domain could not prevail.
If you go to the website Nissan.com you see the following Notice: In compliance with a ruling issued by the United States District Court in Los Angeles on November 14, 2002, in the lawsuit of Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. v. Nissan Computer Corporation, this web site has been converted to non-commercial use.
Japanese automaker Nissan Motors Co., Ltd. and Nissan North America, Inc. filed suit against Nissan Computer Corp., a North Carolina-based corporation since 1991 with a registered trademark for its name.
Uzi Nissan, an Israeli-American born in Jerusalem, registered NISSAN.COM in 1994 to expand his computer business and NISSAN.NET two years later to expand his ISP business.
In August 1999, he posted a logo similar to that of Nissan Motor Corp, and began promoting automobile-related products and services.
The automaker filed suit for trademark dilution on December 10, 1999. The court granted a preliminary injunction and held that Mr. Nissan is trading on the automaker's goodwill and diverting potential Nissan car customers to other websites.
He was ordered to post a prominent disclaimer of any connection to Nissan Motor Corp and refrain from displaying any auto-related information.
So, I guess, I could see something like this happen. Mike Rowe may be ordered to post a prominent disclaimer of any connection to Microsoft Corp and refrain from displaying any computer-related information. IANAL.
It just illustrates the lengths the spammers will go to, including taking on Habeas' proven legal capabilities, to distribute their spam.
It is interesting that they tout their proven legal capabilities rather than "proven" technology. Will it be enough to stop the Attack of Haiku-Resistant Killer Spam. RIAA and SCO are trail blazers in using the legal system to stop....
Our patent-pending Sender Warranted Email(TM) service vets messages for legitimacy, guaranteeing that they're not spam.
Guaranteeing? Sounds like a pretty tall claim now. Not to say what should happen to the pending-patent - a review of the claims perhaps ?
Adding the IP addresses to the HIL (aka Habeas Blacklist) should not impact the legitimate mailing activities of the owners of the compromised PCs.
It would be nice if it works well, but I am curious as to how they are going to distinguish from a single IP address whether the email was sent from the compromised PC when it was "alert" or when it was in a "zombie" state.
Your reporting here of spam you've received with the Habeas Warrant Mark will help us track down and prosecute the responsible parties.
Habeas - Welcome to the Party. In addition to the call for rounding up a posse, if you need some help from the Feds, write in to the FTC at uce@ftc.gov. Despite having the Federal powers to kick a**, I am not really sure how successful they have been.
What Can I Do With the Spam in my In-Box? Report it to the Federal Trade Commission. Send a copy of unwanted or deceptive messages to uce@ftc.gov. The FTC uses the unsolicited emails stored in this database to pursue law enforcement actions against people who send deceptive spam email.
An article in the following day's St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press said: "Northwest Airlines will not share customer information, as JetBlue Airways has, Northwest chief executive Richard Anderson said Tuesday in brief remarks after addressing the St. Paul Rotary."
Northwest officials responding to the JetBlue incident. "We do not provide that type of information to anyone," Northwest spokesman Kurt Ebenhoch was quoted as saying in the New York Times on Sept. 23.
They lied.
Their sorry excuse ?
"Northwest Airlines had a duty and an obligation to cooperate with the federal government for national security reasons," the airline said.
Sadly, the Saudi Net filter doesn't stop spam. "If you could stop spam," I told Al-Hejery, "You could make a million dollars a day as a consultant for the U.S. government, and I'd even kick in some extra out of my own pocket."
"If I could do that," he replied, "I would be a hero here, too."
It does sound twisted, but because it is in context of a country where free speech is quite restricted - the thought did pop in my head.
Could it happen that some day spamming techniques or "spammers" will be hired by people who want to exercise their free speech ? You could spam with censored information when every other means of getting your voice heard is suppressed ?
Full Disclosure - I don't know spam. I have never sent spam. I don't like spam.
"Some consumers, initially seeking Playboy's sites, may initially believe that unlabeled banner advertisements are links to Playboy's sites...Once they follow the instructions to 'click here,' and they access the site, they may well realize that they are not at a Playboy-sponsored site."
When I do searches, sometimes I use some word as a "seed." The intention is not to see sites with that keyword precisely, but to see under what category of Google they fall under, or to see what are the other related sites to my keyword. This then allows me to do a more thorough search of the various possibilities.
Now the list that I see Computers/Internet/E-mail/Free/
is what I was looking for. I can now select "free email" providers that might provide more space than Yahoo, or better pop3 or imap facilities, or more features like throw-away emails.
My point is that even though I started off with "Yahoo" in my search, I was not looking for Yahoo per se.
So, when I type in "playboy" or "playmate" or "Playboy" or "Playmate" in the search box, I think it is presumptuous of Playboy.com and the Hefners to think I was looking for their site.
And this is why I think they have made a very weak assertion. Look at the wording of their assertion - It is littered with initially ...
"Some consumers,initially seeking Playboy's sites, may initially believe that....
because the attorney's understand how weak their assertion really is.
I think Playboy.com should be nailed on why they think everyone typing in playboy or playmate is looking for their site. And then, they must be made to prove that they are loosing revenue that might have come to them. Otherwise they are no different from RIAA which makes the assumption that every song that is freely downloaded would have been purchased by the downloader, and hence RIAA adds up the dollar values of the downloaded songs to come up with their "piracy related losses." BS. If I couldn't have downloaded the song for free, I wouldn't have even looked for it - let alone pay for the damn thing. To me, the situation for "playboy" and "playmate" searches is very similar.
"Customers are better off today than they were a year ago, and they will be even better off in the future," said Kevin Kean, a group manager at Microsoft's Security Response Center.
What a well worded articulation - almost Greenspan-ish like in a sense that it looks like he is saying something, but you can never hold him upto for "whatever he is saying." And I think this quote summarises the whole article well.
It is 80:20 rule or in Microsoft's case 40:60 rule. In the first year you move 40 % of the distance towards the the Security Goal-Post. So, "Customers are better off today than they were a year ago, . In the next year you move another 40 % towards the goal. So, "Customers are better off two years from today than they will be a year from today. . An so on and on...
Now if the security Goal Post moves and you find yourself heading in the wrong direction, as it always does in Real life, you can frame your message as follows. You are now 60 % away from the old place. So, "Customers are better off today than they were a year ago, . In the next year you move another 60 % away from the old place. So, "Customers are better off two years from today than they will be a year from today. . An so on and on...
So,
"Customers are better off today than they were a year ago,
and
they will be even better off in the future,"
And how can you be wrong when you say it the way it is said. What a well worded articulation.
e-Week Speical Report on Enterprise IM
on
Enterprise IM?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Here is a Special Report from eWeek on Enterprise IM and it has some good reviews and articles including
This is, again, a pilot study, so our next step is to take it into a much larger series of patients, either this drug or a better drug we have in development. What we have on the drawing boards is a better version of this drug which is more effective and will probably go into trials hopefully before the end of this year.
This is just a pilot study with a small number of patients.
First it has to be scaled up to involve a lot more people.
Secondly there has to be long term monitoring of the side-effects of the medication on a much larger population - you need to have samples of young and old, sick with A or B, taking medication x or y, with previous condition of m or n, etc.
Thirdly, you have to find companies with big pockets that can finance the research, massive clinical trials, manufacture the drug, and then help put it on the doctor's prescription pad.
Fourthly, in the US the FDA is probably going to take 10 years or more to approve this. And in the intervening 10 years FDA may decide not to approve it after all, so the risk in trying to commercialize a drug is enormous.
Fifthly, there are many products that show potential early on, but then in the Phase 2 or 3 they find something not-good about it. And then down the toilet it goes.
Sixthly, the early investors may find the news a something that they can speculate based on (even that is too early for this drug) but for the rest it is a long long slog, and a small probability, that this drug will finally enter the market.
So, it is not that big a news to be making headlines worldwide.
Slashdot Mirror
Here is a nice page from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Ice Ages, that briefly touches upon the cyclicity of Ice Ages. I think they are a little like the business cycles, just a little bit longer.
From the website:
If the artists and designers want a heads-up, in case we do end up back in an ice age rather abruptly , here (ice age art) is a good site to brush up on.
If it becomes increasingly hard to block "objectionable" messages, (which by the way the Cubans have effectively done - Cuban Government Toughens Internet Restrictions) would it come to a stage the Authoritarian Governments try to drown the messages.
The Govt could itself start sending out so much propoganda messages that they will drown the "rebel" messages, and most people will be unable to develop personalized filters to get to the "rebel" information. (A conspi-racist may think that the real purpose of the CAN-SPAM legilation was to pre-emptively acquire these capabilities.)
After all, if this is supposed to be the attention economy, all the govt has to do to prevent mischief is to keep your attention - almost like in Clockwork Orange. Does it really matter if the attention is directed to something worthwhile, or towards just delusion and deception - I mean from the Governments point-of-view.
I think this has to do with the fact that the product is physical. I can see that it would be repulsive to support such a wasteful technology where the products is deliberately crippled, and turns to dust. Especially a physical product that you can touch or feel.
If it was more of an abstraction that lapsed I don't think it would "seem" so wasteful. For example, people are willing to pay for a pay-per-view movie/show, and people are also willing to pay $4-6 for a 6-12 hr block of playboy channel that does lapse after that time period. But because nothing just turns to dust in your hand, it does not feel so bad. Adult fare seems more succesful with this concept.
Unluckily for Disney, they don't do that kind of adult stuff, and in addition, rather than a privilege to watch just lapsing, you have a physical dud in your hand that reminds you - what a darn waste ... and worse it reminds you of the crippled CD's that "scum-of-the-earth" RIAA and its associates are trying to peddle. And that defintely deserves a "NO, thank you very much."
As long as I can remember I got addresses from Hypermart like:
- testpharm.hypermart.net (I got it in 1998-1999)
- dthomas9.hypermart.net
and the email address was accordinglyname@testpharm.hypermart.net
Also as far as I can remember Yahoo had addresses that I could use to go directly to the relevant page rather than going via the home page - like
- finance.yahoo.com
- my.yahoo.com
- news.yahoo.com
- etc
AndThese are some of the applications I remember offhand, and I am sure there has to be stuff like this that was there before this patent was filed.
As it is, it is pretty stupid to give a patent for something that is quite functional - but is it innovative ? And worse, should you be able to prevent others from using it without paying extortion money ?
It is a well conducted experiment by academic standards, but I believe its conclusions cannot be extrapolated to real life just yet.
The first problem here is of anchoring with the $25 figure. An example is generally given in literature that first you ask a person when did Genghis Khan live. Say someone says 1275 AD. Next if you ask them how many movie theatres are there in Russia - you will find their answer strongly affected by the number 1275. This is called "anchoring." Anchoring may have reflected why people asked between $4 and $19. They were looking at a 20% to 80 percent increase in that session's earnings and so looks "big" to the $25 anchor.
This is even more problematic. Once you have committed to coming would you just walk out of the whole situation ? Has the time that you spent thinking about this before you came played a role in whether you stay or leave?
The problem here is of "framing." You have made it clear that till $ 100 is the maximum "reasonable" price for private info, other wise you get nothing. This framing of the issue is problematic because it definitely had an influence on what people thought was a fair price for the info. Some people chose "infinity" but that is less than 3 %. If this is extrapolated then there is only 3 % of the popluation that wants to avoid Big Brother and Animal Farm - and that is scary.
.
I can pick up medical data, and point out to the fact that there are many healthy people who enroll themselves in clinical trials for $500-1500. In exchange they are monitored for days and weeks, blood samples drawn upteen times - why ? Because at that time that $1000 is a lot of money in their life. Some friends of mine went thru this procedure and I don't think their decision to give "all medical data" was based on any of the hypotheses of the current study. (As an aside, based on those clinical trial stories I later developed the concept for a comic strip Test Pharm - Cultivating a treatment for everyone)
The problem is that real life is not uni-dimensional. Cause and Effect is not singular. There can be single cause - multiple effects, multiple causes - single effect, multiple causes - multiple effects.
I can't just say that disclosure of salary is connected to a group average. There are a host of other issues related to the salary information. The salary information has multiple repercussions. In some of these "repercussions" I am average, in others deviant. In some groups I am average in others I am deviant.
This deviance concept is generally used in the Police State defense. "It shouldn't bother you because you got nothing to hide - right ?" I think it is misplaced as it does not consider the various shades of deviances in multiple dimensions - and exaggerates a singular cause rather than a bundle of causes. For example, if tomorrow carrying an almanac becomes a crime by some interpretation of the Patriot Act, then I would be against random roadblocks to "fish" out
If you have a lot of icons then you could take the approach of classifying them in some hierarchy, and it would be nice if the path string provides more information about what is down 3 or 4 levels.
The icons are essentially of 3 kinds - files, folders, and shortcuts(url's or local paths).
So, here is the basic concept.
BBC NEWS | Americas | USB law tightens internet access
Stephen Gibbs
BBC News, Washington
January 24, 2004
The U.S.B. Government is tightening its control over internet access.
A new law coming into force on Saturday makes it impossible for many Americans to dial up the internet from their home telephone lines.
The move has been criticised by the human rights group Amnesty International.
United States of Bush (U.S.B.) says that, given its limited resources and massive deficit, it needs to ensure that the internet is primarily used to prevent terrosist and hostile activity.
Corporate access only
The move clamps down on the thousands of Americal who legally access the internet from their homes.
From now on, it will not be possible to dial up the main government server from most domestic phone lines.
Only lines which are paid for by Corporations who can install pre-emptive software on the servers will have direct access. These are usually restricted to Corporate Officials and Government Officials.
Amnesty International says this is an attempt to shield American from alternative views from the rest of the world.
All news media in U.S.B. is rigorously corporate-controlled and supportive of President Bush's Administration.
'For the common good'
But the U.S.B. government has reacted angrily to suggestions that the change amounts to censorship.
It says it is doing nothing more than preventing insecure internet connections being hijacked by people borrowing, or selling each other chatter and NBCW including WMD information.
The internet should be for the common good, it says, pointing out that it will still be available in goverment monitored areas and workplaces.
Dissident groups have expressed doubt that the authorities here can control the internet as much as they might wish.
It is true that whenever a new law comes into effect here, Americans, esp. the U.S.A - who are famed for their inventiveness - tend to find a way around it.
How nice of RIAA to always involve a 3rd party in the dispute.
RIAA should understand the relationship is between the artists and the audience. They themselves are the 3rd party. So, RIAA GET OUT. OUT.
Looks like Attorney Bites Lawyer to me. What irony !
The Linux Community has already offered to rip out the infringing code and replace it once it is identified. Red Hat has understood that the community is going to live to its word and has formalized this into an offer of "Intellectual Property Warrant." This formal offer on behalf of the community may be more acceptable to the business folks rather than the diffuse commitments of the Linux Community. I think that's all there is to it.
I recently received spam at the address displayed on /. It is an absolute rarity and I was surprised till I realized that /. users are a distinct demographic with certain common traits.
For a business targeting the /. demographic it is probably worthwhile to get all the email addresses (easy to detect where they are on a page and about 750,000 maximum) and then run them thru iterative cleaning. In the first few iterations itself they should be able to get many usable addresses, and then with a person cutting and pasting they should be able to clean more.
My point is that on less trafficked sites, or sites that don't attract a distinct demographic, email obfuscation definitely helps. But for sites like /., k5, etc. I can see it worthwhile for someone to deobfuscate the addresses even if it takes time and money because the cleaned up /. emails are worth a lot of money. Paradoxically, /.'s are the least likely to respond to spamming that comes that way ...
I think the major points that are considered in resolving Domain Name disputes are
In each case you will see that the desire it to see whether bad intentions and commercial gains were involved.
My analogy with the Nissan case was to illustrate that Nissan Computer Company had a much stronger case than Mike Rowe but still lost. So, the enthusiasm must be tempered in taking on MS.
The Domain Name Handbook has a very good listing of many Domain Name Disputes Domain Name Handbook: DOMAIN DISPUTES I - R and you shall see that there are other cases than Nissan.com that might be conceptually more similar to the Mike Rowe case, but they all also mainly deal with the points I enumerated earlier.
An IP Attorney/Lawyer/Agent could probably shed more light on a better prior case to compare Mike Rowe dispute with.
I think if he does get enough support, he probably should fight back. But it brings another case of the Nissan.com domain to me in which the domain name can't be used commercially.
What I thought was very interesting about the case was mentioned in the FAQ to the Nissan.com case. It said
In the www.MikeRoweSoft.com case the interpretion is weaker as the similarity is "phonetic" which is really quite fuzzy, compared to the actual presence of the word "nissan" in the domain name. Despite this the original owner of the Nissan.com domain could not prevail.
If you go to the website Nissan.com you see the following Notice: In compliance with a ruling issued by the United States District Court in Los Angeles on November 14, 2002, in the lawsuit of Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. v. Nissan Computer Corporation, this web site has been converted to non-commercial use.
The story from the Domain Name Handbook was
So, I guess, I could see something like this happen. Mike Rowe may be ordered to post a prominent disclaimer of any connection to Microsoft Corp and refrain from displaying any computer-related information. IANAL.
Hey, and I forgot - What happened to the CAN-SPAM ? How long before we have Attacks of the CAN-SPAM-Resistant Killer Spam.
Pure, and simple lying.
They lied.
Their sorry excuse ?
It sounds just like what Adobe was saying when they got busted for the Currency Detection Algorithms that they had added as (semi) spyware. And then of course we find out that many other Graphics Programs Vendors had done the same ...
Their sorry excuse ?
Really makes you wonder how many of these Corporations are already in-bed-with-the-feds ...
Is it already 1985 ?
What's negative about this ? I think this was the best part of last year.
In related news, P2P file sharing seems to have picked up again ...
It does sound twisted, but because it is in context of a country where free speech is quite restricted - the thought did pop in my head.
Could it happen that some day spamming techniques or "spammers" will be hired by people who want to exercise their free speech ? You could spam with censored information when every other means of getting your voice heard is suppressed ?
Full Disclosure - I don't know spam. I have never sent spam. I don't like spam.
"Some consumers" - What percentage of people doing search for "playboy" or "playmate" are really looking for www.playboy.com ?
When I do searches, sometimes I use some word as a "seed." The intention is not to see sites with that keyword precisely, but to see under what category of Google they fall under, or to see what are the other related sites to my keyword. This then allows me to do a more thorough search of the various possibilities.
For example, if I had to do research on inexpensive or free email I would do a search for "Yahoo email" because I know Yahoo provides free emails. The Google category that it falls under is Computers/Internet/E-mail/Free/Web-Based/Y/Yahoo/ Once I get the directory path, I can trim it to get Computers/Internet/E-mail/Free/
Now the list that I see Computers/Internet/E-mail/Free/ is what I was looking for. I can now select "free email" providers that might provide more space than Yahoo, or better pop3 or imap facilities, or more features like throw-away emails.
My point is that even though I started off with "Yahoo" in my search, I was not looking for Yahoo per se.
So, when I type in "playboy" or "playmate" or "Playboy" or "Playmate" in the search box, I think it is presumptuous of Playboy.com and the Hefners to think I was looking for their site.
And this is why I think they have made a very weak assertion. Look at the wording of their assertion - It is littered with initially ...
because the attorney's understand how weak their assertion really is.I think Playboy.com should be nailed on why they think everyone typing in playboy or playmate is looking for their site. And then, they must be made to prove that they are loosing revenue that might have come to them. Otherwise they are no different from RIAA which makes the assumption that every song that is freely downloaded would have been purchased by the downloader, and hence RIAA adds up the dollar values of the downloaded songs to come up with their "piracy related losses." BS. If I couldn't have downloaded the song for free, I wouldn't have even looked for it - let alone pay for the damn thing. To me, the situation for "playboy" and "playmate" searches is very similar.
What a well worded articulation - almost Greenspan-ish like in a sense that it looks like he is saying something, but you can never hold him upto for "whatever he is saying." And I think this quote summarises the whole article well.
It is 80:20 rule or in Microsoft's case 40:60 rule. In the first year you move 40 % of the distance towards the the Security Goal-Post. So, "Customers are better off today than they were a year ago, . In the next year you move another 40 % towards the goal. So, "Customers are better off two years from today than they will be a year from today. . An so on and on ...
Now if the security Goal Post moves and you find yourself heading in the wrong direction, as it always does in Real life, you can frame your message as follows. You are now 60 % away from the old place. So, "Customers are better off today than they were a year ago, . In the next year you move another 60 % away from the old place. So, "Customers are better off two years from today than they will be a year from today. . An so on and on ...
So,
And how can you be wrong when you say it the way it is said. What a well worded articulation.
Here is a Special Report from eWeek on Enterprise IM and it has some good reviews and articles including
Corporate IM Solutions
Instant Messaging in the Enterprise
Venus was more often targeted by space probes - because Women are from Venus and Men from Mars.