> For one thing, their technical description contains lots of errors. For example, read their answer to the FAQ question "What is a fingerprint?".
While certainly not technically accurate, I think it is a good approximation of what a hashing algorithm does. Remember, most customers do not know anything about computer science.
> Second, they do not provide you with cryptographic proof of registration. I don't see what the point of such a service is if they don't provide you with that. Even there "registration certificates" don't seem to actually certify anything since they don't contain their own signature.
StampYourDocuments.com used SHA-512. If by crypotgraphic proof, you mean something like signing your document with their private key, then you would have to share your document with them, which would defeat one of the main advantages of StampYourDocuments.com. They certify that a certain piece of data existed at a certain date and time, that's it (and that's all they promise to do). By the way,/s/ Signature is the proper way to sign something electronically.
> This would be great proof if there was some way to access those signatures if needed. They don't say that there is.
First, you could ask StampYourDocuments to turn over the information they supplied to the Copyright Office, or you could have StampYourDocuments testify. If, for some reason, you can get SYD to turn it over, subpoena it from the Copyright Office. Remember, if you really NEED the info directly from the Copyright Office, you are already in a lawsuit.
> For example, there certification letter contains a timestamp in Pacific time.
Based on the date and time of the stamp, you could convert any time to UTC. They are based in Los Angeles, so they observe daylight savings. They have to pick one time zone to store in their database, so Pacific Time is as good as any (I would think UTC would confuse many people).
> Since most of the actual verification exists only on their servers and you pay a yearly fee, it would appear that if you terminate your service, you lose all your timestamps. They don't say otherwise, and that *really* concerns me.
First, see the subpoena from the Copyright Office above. This pretty much moots your argument. Second, they have a lifetime membership option. From what I understand, when your membership expires, you only lose the ability to generate new certificates (and to view your stamps in one convenient place). You could always print out your stamps from the document log (plus, all the stamps are saved on your computer).
He didn't say he wanted to exclude anybody from using his IP. Given his goals, I think he is being pretty reasonable (or as reasonable as any Ask Slashdot Question). Hence, something like StampYourDocuments.com would be helpful to him.
...Or, you could use StampYourDocuments.com. I've used their software, and it is really easy. Plus, they offer PDF Registration certificates so you can include it with your distributable.
While I certainly do not disagree that predatory pricing is illegal (as per the Clayton Act and Robinson-Patman Act), I don't believe that predatory pricing is anti-competitive and actually harmful. Since you use the Canonical "Standard Oil" example, I would strongly recommend reading: "Predatory Price Cutting: The Standard Oil (N. J.) Case" by John S. McGee, Journal of Law and Economics, Vol. 1. (Oct., 1958), pp. 137-169. This paper debunks some of the myths regarding Standard Oil and predatory pricing in general. If you don't have access to JSTOR, and you would actually like to read it, I will upload it upon request.
Yeah, just like Acura, Infinity, Lexus, Cadillac, and Lincoln have already gone out of business. Has it occured to you that you are not every company's target market?
Wrong dipshit. You've never had a merchant account. The merchant take the loss always. It's easier to file criminal charges then to win in a card holder dispute (true story). The banks act as intermediaries, that's it. Either the card member or merchant is taking the loss, unless you sue the issuer for negligence (which I've done).
He asked for a work around, not the perfect solution. You can't do a join on a NULL. I understand what you are saying, but I don't think it would work becuase you have to join all rows in order to find out the ones that don't have matches in MySQL. Also, I do understand 'having' only clips out the results after having constructed an intermediate result set.
...substantiate your claim. The government is the source of monopoly. If a company is in an industry with economies of scale, then one company is more competitive (i.e. sells cheaper to the consumer) than a bunch of small companies could. Think about it, if a small company could enter (absent gov't restrictions which is the argument I'm making), the large firm would have to sell at a price cheaper than the small firms could offer at to restrict entry. I could go on for hours, but in summary: absent government assistance, there has NEVER been a documented event of a monopoly harming the consumer. They just plain CAN'T. Without a gun (the government) pointed to your head, you (the consumer) will do what's in your best interest to do. Even advertising isn't an unfair barrier to entry. You can always spend the money. The barrier is convincing the consumers of the quality (or whatever) of your product, which is a fair barrier by any standard. There has been hundreds of papers written on this subject (Stigler, McNulty, Hayek, Clark, Harberger, Armentano, Demsetz, McGee). Please think a few seconds longer before posting a fallacious theory. Also, there is no "clear" definition of competition. In case you question my credentials, I happen to be an Economics Grad Student.
I'm really sorry about your uncle, but that was just plain dumb unless he thought there was an extremely low probablity of dying, or he was really depressed and didn't care about dying.
I might have done the same thing. The reason being I would have felt horrible knowing that I could have saved someone's life, and I didn't. It makes me feel good to help people out sometimes. And to be honest with you, I might have also done it to be a hero, and to avoid the social cost (i.e. people hating me, which does have a cost irrespective of your ego) of being labelled a coward. I might have even done it if I knew there was a high probability of dying, given that I believe that you can feel so bad that death is a better alternative. I don't discount that we humans are tied to our fellow humans, and do care, but we only do such things because it makes us feel good. I personally feel really good when I help someone out: especially when the cost to benefit ratio is quite high (i.e. it cost me very little, and helped the person out). I contend that if it made you feel bad to help someone out, you wouldn't. If you study anthropology, you will learn (or have learned) that human are adapted to do favors for each other for later reciprocal favors, especially when the cost is much less than the conspecific benefit. Even more so, related family members can make an evolutionary "smart" sacrifice if cost (to fitness) = coefficient of relatedness * benefit to other animals fitness. Coefficient of relatedness is 1/2 for childern, 1/4 for grandchildren and so on. Not to mention, there is strong evidence to support that some human are much less risk averse than others, which carries a much higher variation in offspring.
Religion should cover set space. I.e. everyone is some religion, with the exception being people who have no beliefs about god whatsoever (either positive or negative). It is the same as sex: you are either male or female
I know you've covered this, but specifically: we don't believe in god. That's pretty darn specific. Far more precise than the varying ideas of god worshipers may have in the same church. The rules are we are supposed to abide by are self interest. Again, read carefully: "often involving rituals, a code of ethics, and a philosophy of life."
Atheism is a system of beliefs about a diety. Specifically, that there is no god. Not believing in god != having no beliefs in regard to god. A*theism (no belief in god) != A*religious (no specific system of belief about a diety. And yes, I know I made up the term). It's really semantics here, so I think at best we can get into a circular argument.
Check out this definition: "Any specific system of belief about deity, often involving rituals, a code of ethics, and a philosophy of life." Thus we would include Agnosticism, Atheism, conservative Christianity, Humanism, Islam, Judaism, liberal Christianity, Native American Spirituality, Wicca and other Neopagan traditions as religions.
Just because our belief is based on *gasp* logic, doesn't exclude it from being a belief.
If you are a good computer scientist or good nurse there are still jobs in those fields. The best of the best always have jobs if the job is valued by society. Running to the "in" thing will always get you in trouble if you don't excel, just as when everyone jumped into the stock marked during the dot com bubble. UCLA is about $6,000/year. I think you'd have a tough time making a case that that is big money. You'll spend $500/month on a newish Honda Civic when factoring in depreciation, gas, insurance, etc. In regard to Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, etc, that's just bad luck. You can avoid intrinsic risk by diversifying. The bottom of the pack will always be culled: life is a struggle. I don't like it anymore than you do, but we have the capability and desire to replicate at a rate much higher than our replacement rate.
It's called evolution. There are more and more people on this earth, and you have to out-compete them if you don't want to starve. Shortly, most blue collar labor will be replaced by machines programmed by white collar workers. Soon after, there will be uber programmers who will eliminate all but the best of the programmers. Land is too scarce to allow you enough of it to eak out an existence. EVOLVE OR DIE. Get an education or something that not everyone can do, or your lineage will go the way of the dodo.
Slashdot Mirror
> For one thing, their technical description contains lots of errors. For example, read their answer to the FAQ question "What is a fingerprint?".
/s/ Signature is the proper way to sign something electronically.
While certainly not technically accurate, I think it is a good approximation of what a hashing algorithm does. Remember, most customers do not know anything about computer science.
> Second, they do not provide you with cryptographic proof of registration. I don't see what the point of such a service is if they don't provide you with that. Even there "registration certificates" don't seem to actually certify anything since they don't contain their own signature.
StampYourDocuments.com used SHA-512. If by crypotgraphic proof, you mean something like signing your document with their private key, then you would have to share your document with them, which would defeat one of the main advantages of StampYourDocuments.com. They certify that a certain piece of data existed at a certain date and time, that's it (and that's all they promise to do). By the way,
> This would be great proof if there was some way to access those signatures if needed. They don't say that there is.
First, you could ask StampYourDocuments to turn over the information they supplied to the Copyright Office, or you could have StampYourDocuments testify. If, for some reason, you can get SYD to turn it over, subpoena it from the Copyright Office. Remember, if you really NEED the info directly from the Copyright Office, you are already in a lawsuit.
> For example, there certification letter contains a timestamp in Pacific time.
Based on the date and time of the stamp, you could convert any time to UTC. They are based in Los Angeles, so they observe daylight savings. They have to pick one time zone to store in their database, so Pacific Time is as good as any (I would think UTC would confuse many people).
> Since most of the actual verification exists only on their servers and you pay a yearly fee, it would appear that if you terminate your service, you lose all your timestamps. They don't say otherwise, and that *really* concerns me.
First, see the subpoena from the Copyright Office above. This pretty much moots your argument. Second, they have a lifetime membership option. From what I understand, when your membership expires, you only lose the ability to generate new certificates (and to view your stamps in one convenient place). You could always print out your stamps from the document log (plus, all the stamps are saved on your computer).
He didn't say he wanted to exclude anybody from using his IP. Given his goals, I think he is being pretty reasonable (or as reasonable as any Ask Slashdot Question). Hence, something like StampYourDocuments.com would be helpful to him.
What you just said is making my head hurt. I think you are missing the point.
...Or, you could use StampYourDocuments.com. I've used their software, and it is really easy. Plus, they offer PDF Registration certificates so you can include it with your distributable.
I've uploaded it here: http://s1.poweredbymike.com/papers/StandardOilCase .pdf
While I certainly do not disagree that predatory pricing is illegal (as per the Clayton Act and Robinson-Patman Act), I don't believe that predatory pricing is anti-competitive and actually harmful. Since you use the Canonical "Standard Oil" example, I would strongly recommend reading: "Predatory Price Cutting: The Standard Oil (N. J.) Case" by John S. McGee, Journal of Law and Economics, Vol. 1. (Oct., 1958), pp. 137-169. This paper debunks some of the myths regarding Standard Oil and predatory pricing in general. If you don't have access to JSTOR, and you would actually like to read it, I will upload it upon request.
Signed, An Economist
Yeah, just like Acura, Infinity, Lexus, Cadillac, and Lincoln have already gone out of business. Has it occured to you that you are not every company's target market?
I tried that IIRC, and it didn't work in MySQL. I believe the where occurs before the join, hence that can't be done. I could be wrong though.
Wrong dipshit. You've never had a merchant account. The merchant take the loss always. It's easier to file criminal charges then to win in a card holder dispute (true story). The banks act as intermediaries, that's it. Either the card member or merchant is taking the loss, unless you sue the issuer for negligence (which I've done).
He asked for a work around, not the perfect solution. You can't do a join on a NULL. I understand what you are saying, but I don't think it would work becuase you have to join all rows in order to find out the ones that don't have matches in MySQL. Also, I do understand 'having' only clips out the results after having constructed an intermediate result set.
You can do a join, and add a "having isnull(wheee.blib)".
That theory has long since been disproven:
m l
e =UTF-8&rls=HPID,HPID:2005-21,HPID:en&q=Ontogeny+re capitulated+Phylogeny
http://www.angelfire.com/mi/dinosaurs/ontogeny.ht
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&i
...substantiate your claim. The government is the source of monopoly. If a company is in an industry with economies of scale, then one company is more competitive (i.e. sells cheaper to the consumer) than a bunch of small companies could. Think about it, if a small company could enter (absent gov't restrictions which is the argument I'm making), the large firm would have to sell at a price cheaper than the small firms could offer at to restrict entry. I could go on for hours, but in summary: absent government assistance, there has NEVER been a documented event of a monopoly harming the consumer. They just plain CAN'T. Without a gun (the government) pointed to your head, you (the consumer) will do what's in your best interest to do. Even advertising isn't an unfair barrier to entry. You can always spend the money. The barrier is convincing the consumers of the quality (or whatever) of your product, which is a fair barrier by any standard. There has been hundreds of papers written on this subject (Stigler, McNulty, Hayek, Clark, Harberger, Armentano, Demsetz, McGee). Please think a few seconds longer before posting a fallacious theory. Also, there is no "clear" definition of competition. In case you question my credentials, I happen to be an Economics Grad Student.
I'm really sorry about your uncle, but that was just plain dumb unless he thought there was an extremely low probablity of dying, or he was really depressed and didn't care about dying.
I might have done the same thing. The reason being I would have felt horrible knowing that I could have saved someone's life, and I didn't. It makes me feel good to help people out sometimes. And to be honest with you, I might have also done it to be a hero, and to avoid the social cost (i.e. people hating me, which does have a cost irrespective of your ego) of being labelled a coward. I might have even done it if I knew there was a high probability of dying, given that I believe that you can feel so bad that death is a better alternative. I don't discount that we humans are tied to our fellow humans, and do care, but we only do such things because it makes us feel good. I personally feel really good when I help someone out: especially when the cost to benefit ratio is quite high (i.e. it cost me very little, and helped the person out). I contend that if it made you feel bad to help someone out, you wouldn't. If you study anthropology, you will learn (or have learned) that human are adapted to do favors for each other for later reciprocal favors, especially when the cost is much less than the conspecific benefit. Even more so, related family members can make an evolutionary "smart" sacrifice if cost (to fitness) = coefficient of relatedness * benefit to other animals fitness. Coefficient of relatedness is 1/2 for childern, 1/4 for grandchildren and so on. Not to mention, there is strong evidence to support that some human are much less risk averse than others, which carries a much higher variation in offspring.
So what you are saying is that it makes you feel better to help people? Please explain how anything is something other than self-interest.
Religion should cover set space. I.e. everyone is some religion, with the exception being people who have no beliefs about god whatsoever (either positive or negative). It is the same as sex: you are either male or female
I know you've covered this, but specifically: we don't believe in god. That's pretty darn specific. Far more precise than the varying ideas of god worshipers may have in the same church. The rules are we are supposed to abide by are self interest. Again, read carefully: "often involving rituals, a code of ethics, and a philosophy of life."
Atheism is a system of beliefs about a diety. Specifically, that there is no god. Not believing in god != having no beliefs in regard to god. A*theism (no belief in god) != A*religious (no specific system of belief about a diety. And yes, I know I made up the term). It's really semantics here, so I think at best we can get into a circular argument.
Check out this definition:
"Any specific system of belief about deity, often involving rituals, a code of ethics, and a philosophy of life." Thus we would include Agnosticism, Atheism, conservative Christianity, Humanism, Islam, Judaism, liberal Christianity, Native American Spirituality, Wicca and other Neopagan traditions as religions.
Just because our belief is based on *gasp* logic, doesn't exclude it from being a belief.
In Soviet Russia, the joke explains you.
If you are a good computer scientist or good nurse there are still jobs in those fields. The best of the best always have jobs if the job is valued by society. Running to the "in" thing will always get you in trouble if you don't excel, just as when everyone jumped into the stock marked during the dot com bubble. UCLA is about $6,000/year. I think you'd have a tough time making a case that that is big money. You'll spend $500/month on a newish Honda Civic when factoring in depreciation, gas, insurance, etc. In regard to Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, etc, that's just bad luck. You can avoid intrinsic risk by diversifying. The bottom of the pack will always be culled: life is a struggle. I don't like it anymore than you do, but we have the capability and desire to replicate at a rate much higher than our replacement rate.
It's called evolution. There are more and more people on this earth, and you have to out-compete them if you don't want to starve. Shortly, most blue collar labor will be replaced by machines programmed by white collar workers. Soon after, there will be uber programmers who will eliminate all but the best of the programmers. Land is too scarce to allow you enough of it to eak out an existence. EVOLVE OR DIE. Get an education or something that not everyone can do, or your lineage will go the way of the dodo.
I would say 'conversate' seems to be the most popular non-word. Maybe it doesn't count because it's just an incorrect conjugation.
Like I read the article.