I notice that the original./ paragraph refers to this as "DRM-enabled." We have no chance to win the argument if the press and public accept this phrase. We need better terminology. "DRM lockout"? "Industry Access Control"? "Manufacturer Data Censor"? Something that makes our point.
Having read the comments so far, I'm not seeing a lot of enthusiasm. But as a professor, I can see two valuable uses for sentence browsing (tho I'm not clear as to whether this is really a search engine or a targeted marketing device).
1. identify plagiarized materials in students' term papers. I do pretty well just googling the topic, but I'm sure I'd catch more students cheating if I could type in suspicious sentences.
2. I'm on a medieval listserv, and people often write in with queries like, 'can you find where St. Augustine said this?' Especially if the add-on can be restricted to a list of sites to search, this would really be a boon for scholars doing close textual work.
The most troubling thing about this is that PRC is using US companies to write and implement the software and hard technologies that permit all this censorship. It seems to me that if our government is willing to prevent easy export of offensive military weapons, it should have similar strictures for the export of defensive weapons designed to promote closed minds in populations that want open minds.
I really don't want to install 10.0 right now, since I'm happy with my 9.1 and 9.2 systems. But I've been trying various live cds (Knoppix for linux, and 3 or 4 FreeBSD or NetBSDs) on a PIII 650 that I need to switch over to a better OS than Win98. I'd sure like to try 10.0, but see no notice of a live version like they have for 9.2. Anyone know of any plans to release a bootable-doesn't-touch-the-hard-drive cd?
I have some real sympathy for being able to "shop" online to get info about courses and teachers. But I'm a college prof myself, and have sat on a number of personnel committees, and have read a *lot* of student comments over the years. Many of those comments - perhaps most - are intelligent, or plausible, or reasonable expressions of feelings. Sometimes more than one of these. But sometimes they are simply irresponsible - 'get another career,' 'you shouldn't be allowed to teach anyone, anywere,'and sadly, a lot of 'you #@$$!, get #%&*$#.' Insults, psychiatric diagnoses, speculations about home life - these are rare, but not rare enough. It's bad enough that these go into personnel files and get read by peers and supervisors (yes, they really are, and they really matter). But at least these people understand what sorts of things, good and bad, students will say anonymously. Unmoderated posting of these things on the internet is a bad idea, personally damaging, and maybe harmful to careers.
The ABA itself is one of the great barrier-to-entry monopolies. If you went back 100 years, you'd find that lots of people could practice law without going to law school - they would clerk, or, in some cases, would be admitted to the bar because they were or had been a state legislator. The ABA has a substantial financial interest in limiting the number of people who are eligible to be paid for their kind of work, and have insisted on laws that make it illegal for nonlawyers to do certain kinds of law-related work. Frankly, I see this whole thing as analogous to having Senators writing the legislation controlling what's a bribe and what's a contribution. I think it's silly to pay much attention to the ABA on an issue like this.
I was sorta interested until I noticed that none of the candidates have stars for seller ratings, like ebay provides. Without those ratings, I'd just feel like I was buying a pig in a poke.
I don't have much need for a 64 bit laptop, but I welcome this because it will naturally drive down the prices of what I might actually buy. Way to go, eMachines.
Let me offer an analogy to antibiotics. If you only take part of the prescription, you kill, say, 99% of the bacteria, but that last 1% is superbacteria, often antibiotic resistant. That's what this technique will do to spammers. In the short run, some will get more sophisticated, and trick other people's computers into sending out the 25 million spams. Others may be run out of business. But in the long run, this will force smart spammers to cull their lists, in the same way that marketing has become more target-oriented and less broadband during our lifetimes. Spammers will need to collect detailed information on where we surf and how we spend our money, and may do this illegitimately, ala Gator, BonzaiBuddy, or KaZaa. They will reduce their lists to manageable levels, maybe half a million or so per product. But we will still get spam, and we will get it from superspammers - technology resistant ones. We need a more complete solution - the whole prescription, if you will. Half measures might be good PR, but they're just as dangerous as half a prescription.
A crock. This reminds me of the only DUI case in US history whose records are sealed, as far as I know - Ted Kennedy's Chappaquiddick disaster. What could possibly be the point of sealing code that is already open & public - that is SCO's point, right? They're just prolonging the FUD as long as they can. When you're rich & have good lawyers, there's no pretense that the legal system works - instead, it's worked.
>a computer has to be given programming for every idiom there is.
>>Rubbish - Ever heard of Machine Learning?
No, I agree that idioms are not the problem. Those can be learned, in just the same way that we all learn what 'sup means, or when we all figured out that "bad" meant good in some contexts.
One problem is what goes under the title of indirect speech acts. These are utterances whose meaning does not track to the words and their syntactic connections. For instance, "can you pass the salt?" is a request, not a question, but computer-type algorithms choke on this stuff. Another problem is apparent but meaningful violation of Grice's maxims - for example, A says 'can you give me a ride?' and B replies 'my car is in the shop.' A formal algorithm will choke on that, too, but we all understand it.
The authors are working with journalistic text, which is relatively simple. But as we learned with OCR, 95% accuracy is still a disaster. I doubt that the project will ultimately suceed, though I wish them well.
Earlier./ items have shown that the law firm hopes to make a fortune, and has either stock or options in SCO. It seems to me that this ought to make the law firm vulnerable to countersuits, for abuse of the legal system. SCO is threatening lots of other people with bankruptcy. I think that their officers, directors, and tame attorneys ought to be put at the same risk.
No, it doesn't make sense for a country to try to control the internet, but the Third World long ago got the UN to agree that national presses should *not* be free. Their argument was that the Third World press is so important in directing agricultural reform, improving health practices, and reinforcing cultural values that it must be under the control of the government. Little stuff like chilling dissent seemed unimportant to many of the diplomats. Statistically speaking, First Amendment-like law is very rare. We should be grateful. And we should not surprised if the UN decides that the internet should also be under government control.
No, it just shows how far 1984 is receding. I teach a course in propaganda, and one of the things we discuss is the vulerability of totalitarianism to new technologies. The xerox machine was a major threat to the USSR. Wireless internet access - especially allied with address spoofing or anonymous cafes - is a massive threat to the PRC. This news shows that they know that. The Slashdot community probably has a pretty good idea of whether or not PRC is going to succeed, long term. Not much consolation to the guy who was arrested along with his family (but, actually, it might be.)
I have the same concerns as others, but can't help pointing out that something like this might have been pretty handy in 1346, when the bubonic plague began to spread to Europe from Asia. Fleas, rats - remember your world history course?
Finally, there is the table [uscourts.gov] which shows arrests and convictions. Slightly over half of the arrests related to wiretaps result in convictions. Does anyone know how that compares to investigations without wiretaps? It suggests that more than half of the wiretaps were in response to some broken law. Hopefully they were good laws, rather than DMCA-style disasters.
95% of all arrests result in convictions. 90% are guilty pleas. Those cases that come to trial are about half and half. It looks like the people being wiretapped are pretty savvy about the court system.
I don't believe them for a minute. I think they're just trying to get on the inside, to shape the eventual regulations. Having done that, they'll be the ones doing it. I bet that's what they're using their legal and lobby muscle for right now.
Slashdot Mirror
I notice that the original ./ paragraph refers to this as "DRM-enabled." We have no chance to win the argument if the press and public accept this phrase. We need better terminology. "DRM lockout"? "Industry Access Control"? "Manufacturer Data Censor"? Something that makes our point.
Having read the comments so far, I'm not seeing a lot of enthusiasm. But as a professor, I can see two valuable uses for sentence browsing (tho I'm not clear as to whether this is really a search engine or a targeted marketing device).
1. identify plagiarized materials in students' term papers. I do pretty well just googling the topic, but I'm sure I'd catch more students cheating if I could type in suspicious sentences.
2. I'm on a medieval listserv, and people often write in with queries like, 'can you find where St. Augustine said this?' Especially if the add-on can be restricted to a list of sites to search, this would really be a boon for scholars doing close textual work.
The most troubling thing about this is that PRC is using US companies to write and implement the software and hard technologies that permit all this censorship. It seems to me that if our government is willing to prevent easy export of offensive military weapons, it should have similar strictures for the export of defensive weapons designed to promote closed minds in populations that want open minds.
I really don't want to install 10.0 right now, since I'm happy with my 9.1 and 9.2 systems. But I've been trying various live cds (Knoppix for linux, and 3 or 4 FreeBSD or NetBSDs) on a PIII 650 that I need to switch over to a better OS than Win98. I'd sure like to try 10.0, but see no notice of a live version like they have for 9.2. Anyone know of any plans to release a bootable-doesn't-touch-the-hard-drive cd?
I have some real sympathy for being able to "shop" online to get info about courses and teachers. But I'm a college prof myself, and have sat on a number of personnel committees, and have read a *lot* of student comments over the years. Many of those comments - perhaps most - are intelligent, or plausible, or reasonable expressions of feelings. Sometimes more than one of these. But sometimes they are simply irresponsible - 'get another career,' 'you shouldn't be allowed to teach anyone, anywere,'and sadly, a lot of 'you #@$$!, get #%&*$#.' Insults, psychiatric diagnoses, speculations about home life - these are rare, but not rare enough. It's bad enough that these go into personnel files and get read by peers and supervisors (yes, they really are, and they really matter). But at least these people understand what sorts of things, good and bad, students will say anonymously. Unmoderated posting of these things on the internet is a bad idea, personally damaging, and maybe harmful to careers.
The ABA itself is one of the great barrier-to-entry monopolies. If you went back 100 years, you'd find that lots of people could practice law without going to law school - they would clerk, or, in some cases, would be admitted to the bar because they were or had been a state legislator. The ABA has a substantial financial interest in limiting the number of people who are eligible to be paid for their kind of work, and have insisted on laws that make it illegal for nonlawyers to do certain kinds of law-related work. Frankly, I see this whole thing as analogous to having Senators writing the legislation controlling what's a bribe and what's a contribution. I think it's silly to pay much attention to the ABA on an issue like this.
I was sorta interested until I noticed that none of the candidates have stars for seller ratings, like ebay provides. Without those ratings, I'd just feel like I was buying a pig in a poke.
I don't have much need for a 64 bit laptop, but I welcome this because it will naturally drive down the prices of what I might actually buy. Way to go, eMachines.
Don't get your hopes up. This won't work on PHBs because no one has yet solved the problem of 'how could they possibly reproduce?'
Let me offer an analogy to antibiotics. If you only take part of the prescription, you kill, say, 99% of the bacteria, but that last 1% is superbacteria, often antibiotic resistant. That's what this technique will do to spammers. In the short run, some will get more sophisticated, and trick other people's computers into sending out the 25 million spams. Others may be run out of business. But in the long run, this will force smart spammers to cull their lists, in the same way that marketing has become more target-oriented and less broadband during our lifetimes. Spammers will need to collect detailed information on where we surf and how we spend our money, and may do this illegitimately, ala Gator, BonzaiBuddy, or KaZaa. They will reduce their lists to manageable levels, maybe half a million or so per product. But we will still get spam, and we will get it from superspammers - technology resistant ones. We need a more complete solution - the whole prescription, if you will. Half measures might be good PR, but they're just as dangerous as half a prescription.
I bet Mayor Daley is rolling over in his grave, regretting all the opportunities he missed by being born too early.
A crock. This reminds me of the only DUI case in US history whose records are sealed, as far as I know - Ted Kennedy's Chappaquiddick disaster. What could possibly be the point of sealing code that is already open & public - that is SCO's point, right? They're just prolonging the FUD as long as they can. When you're rich & have good lawyers, there's no pretense that the legal system works - instead, it's worked.
Good heavens. What's next, DOS 4.0?
I'm not aware of the work you cite, but the url has expired. Can you send me another cite, or even a copy of the paper offline? TIA d-hample@wiu.edu
>a computer has to be given programming for every idiom there is.
>>Rubbish - Ever heard of Machine Learning?
No, I agree that idioms are not the problem. Those can be learned, in just the same way that we all learn what 'sup means, or when we all figured out that "bad" meant good in some contexts.
One problem is what goes under the title of indirect speech acts. These are utterances whose meaning does not track to the words and their syntactic connections. For instance, "can you pass the salt?" is a request, not a question, but computer-type algorithms choke on this stuff. Another problem is apparent but meaningful violation of Grice's maxims - for example, A says 'can you give me a ride?' and B replies 'my car is in the shop.' A formal algorithm will choke on that, too, but we all understand it.
The authors are working with journalistic text, which is relatively simple. But as we learned with OCR, 95% accuracy is still a disaster. I doubt that the project will ultimately suceed, though I wish them well.
Earlier ./ items have shown that the law firm hopes to make a fortune, and has either stock or options in SCO. It seems to me that this ought to make the law firm vulnerable to countersuits, for abuse of the legal system. SCO is threatening lots of other people with bankruptcy. I think that their officers, directors, and tame attorneys ought to be put at the same risk.
So, what do you suppose the odds are that Microsoft will write an mini-app to let us have a sidebar for mozilla, like osnews does?
No, it doesn't make sense for a country to try to control the internet, but the Third World long ago got the UN to agree that national presses should *not* be free. Their argument was that the Third World press is so important in directing agricultural reform, improving health practices, and reinforcing cultural values that it must be under the control of the government. Little stuff like chilling dissent seemed unimportant to many of the diplomats. Statistically speaking, First Amendment-like law is very rare. We should be grateful. And we should not surprised if the UN decides that the internet should also be under government control.
No, it just shows how far 1984 is receding. I teach a course in propaganda, and one of the things we discuss is the vulerability of totalitarianism to new technologies. The xerox machine was a major threat to the USSR. Wireless internet access - especially allied with address spoofing or anonymous cafes - is a massive threat to the PRC. This news shows that they know that. The Slashdot community probably has a pretty good idea of whether or not PRC is going to succeed, long term. Not much consolation to the guy who was arrested along with his family (but, actually, it might be.)
I have the same concerns as others, but can't help pointing out that something like this might have been pretty handy in 1346, when the bubonic plague began to spread to Europe from Asia. Fleas, rats - remember your world history course?
Finally, there is the table [uscourts.gov] which shows arrests and convictions. Slightly over half of the arrests related to wiretaps result in convictions. Does anyone know how that compares to investigations without wiretaps? It suggests that more than half of the wiretaps were in response to some broken law. Hopefully they were good laws, rather than DMCA-style disasters.
95% of all arrests result in convictions. 90% are guilty pleas. Those cases that come to trial are about half and half. It looks like the people being wiretapped are pretty savvy about the court system.
I don't believe them for a minute. I think they're just trying to get on the inside, to shape the eventual regulations. Having done that, they'll be the ones doing it. I bet that's what they're using their legal and lobby muscle for right now.