I think some folks have to RTFA a second time around. All they are doing is riding through a neighborhood and finding unprotected routers and then passing out fliers informing people that their routers could be comprimised and how to fix it. That's protecting the public interest AFAIK.
I have a summer property in a guarded community - I get calls from the police all the time telling me that a window was left open or that my shed didn't appear to have a lock. So someone could argue that "hey, so long as someone comes in nicely, takes a nap and leaves without disruption - it's ok" but we know that it's not.
Theft is theft and protecting against it is what cops do.
I have a teen aged punk ass that locks himself in his room with his gaming machine flanked by two laptop's playing Lineage all day -the damn lawn is getting tall and I could sure use a dose of this in my household.
Just goes to show you - if ever anticipate having a disgruntled worker - license all of your software.
Kind of funny that we bought 100 licenses of our corp. font and actually kept a spreadsheet for a long time. It got harder to manage as people left the company and so the font license had to be credited (we have thousands of folks working for us so 100 just covered marketing).
A browser within a media player - I thought Winamp did that (and it was annoying to me) years ago. Musicmatch does it and WMP does it to - so what's new about any of this?
I guess if you were a maker of Kiosks, this would be interesting but for the average user - any of the free existing software is just fine.
Who would be liable for illegal downloads? You might be getting a $65 router for free but at the same time - you might end up with a huge hassle for usage.
Good idea. I think it should be done with some kind of momentum formula... you set an end time for the auction but allow for an automatic momentum extension - once bidding slows down to a certain level - the bid is finally closed. I think this would eliminate sniping completely.
I don't know about the "everyday joe" thing - sounds more like someone scamming a buck. If he thinks it's worth $2.00 then set the starting bid at $2.00. Artificially pumping up the price and forcing someones proxy bid to go up isn't just borderline wrong, it's completely wrong.
Everytime this thread pops up, I go to netscape.com and I guess I'm just missing it - I don't see anything that reminds me of digg. It still looks like Netscape to me. Way too much coverage for what it's worth. There has to be more interesting news than this (since it's been covered twice tod on slashdot).
Regardless of which side of the fence your on - you can't just make up rules as you go along - either it's illegal or it's not. You can't put a label like "try before you buy" on it and think that it's ok. That's like running a red light at 3 in the morning when no one is on the street - it's still not legal. I'm not making a judgement about it but it just gets tiresome to hear everyone rationalizing the activity. The fact is that most people copying music or DVD's aren't making "backups" and most people who pirate software or music don't go out and buy it if they like it. If you want to try before you buy, go to a Tower or Virgin records and listen to your hearts content.
It's not fraudulent - they didn't sell anyone anything - it's a demo. They will sink or swim based on their ability to deliver.
Personally I want the whole blue ray/HDDVD thing to just be over with - it's hurting everyone to have these guys battle it out and even with the actual product being out, I still won't decide with my personal funds - let everyone else figure out who will win.
Look at the pictures - in one - the background is brick, in the dvd+r pictures it's wood.
Also - who cares? Either they had two laptops side by side showing the visual benefits of blue ray or they didn't. Let the person making the comparison decide. Everyone knows it's a data medium and the data happens to be higher in resolution and bitrate. If it's a 10 minute demo it doesn't need the same capacity.
Retail stores stream HDTV from a hard drive - no one seems to mind since they understand that it's a demo.
It's kind of like in a real world fight - sure, you would love to bring a baseball bat into the fight but you don't because you don't want the other guy to bring one in either.
Seems to me like it would make more sense not to have the technology at all.
I have to admit though - the other day when I read that Isreal had launched a satellite - seemingly in response to the actions of Iran it all seemed too easy to do - made me wonder what regulates who gets to send one up in the first place.
The point was that they were talking stability back then (and even had a similar ad campaign) and I don't recall them being so stable. I'm sure that current Macs don't crash at all and you don't have to rebuild the desktop and all that Jazz.
I don't get where the impression that macs are rock stable even comes from. I'll admit the last time I owned a mac was OS8/9 and back then, crashes/sad macs weren't so unusual and every week or so you had to rebuild the desktop to fix strange behavior.
Not internet - but tech related. Any blurry photograph is amazingly clear with the "Enhance" command - and I thought that the "Smart Unsharp" in CS2 was great.
Yes, but this scam emails a user - tells them they have a problem and to call the phone number listed in the email to resolve it. That gives it more credibility. A user might think that banks are now providing the phone number to combat phishing - as a precaution. If it were a 1-800 number, it would be even more credible.
I don't know if I would classify it as stupidity. It doesn't seem like it would be unusual for a credit card company to ask you to enter your pin to prove that you have rights to access account information.
I don't know about you guys - but given the choice of being "bumped" by a wheelchair or being walked on by one of these - I think I would rather get bumped.
I don't really know but any STB is probably easier for the mainstream than a homebrew PVR - if there aren't Tivo or Replay like STB's in your area then this would obviously be the next best thing. I just know that I've set these up for people and the support they request after the fact is just a nightmare.
As much as I love homebrew PVR's (I use several along with my Tivo) I can't help but think that for most people - the better value would be to just buy a Tivo and a lifetime subscription (and if they no longer offer that, then three years of service). If you want to copy MPEG files over, use Tivo to Go or get a ReplayTV.
PC's are sloppy compared to these options.
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I think some folks have to RTFA a second time around. All they are doing is riding through a neighborhood and finding unprotected routers and then passing out fliers informing people that their routers could be comprimised and how to fix it. That's protecting the public interest AFAIK. I have a summer property in a guarded community - I get calls from the police all the time telling me that a window was left open or that my shed didn't appear to have a lock. So someone could argue that "hey, so long as someone comes in nicely, takes a nap and leaves without disruption - it's ok" but we know that it's not. Theft is theft and protecting against it is what cops do.
I have a teen aged punk ass that locks himself in his room with his gaming machine flanked by two laptop's playing Lineage all day -the damn lawn is getting tall and I could sure use a dose of this in my household.
I doubt that any service handling your credit card transactions would get a lot of bites if you called it "beta"
Just goes to show you - if ever anticipate having a disgruntled worker - license all of your software. Kind of funny that we bought 100 licenses of our corp. font and actually kept a spreadsheet for a long time. It got harder to manage as people left the company and so the font license had to be credited (we have thousands of folks working for us so 100 just covered marketing).
A browser within a media player - I thought Winamp did that (and it was annoying to me) years ago. Musicmatch does it and WMP does it to - so what's new about any of this? I guess if you were a maker of Kiosks, this would be interesting but for the average user - any of the free existing software is just fine.
Who would be liable for illegal downloads? You might be getting a $65 router for free but at the same time - you might end up with a huge hassle for usage.
Good idea. I think it should be done with some kind of momentum formula... you set an end time for the auction but allow for an automatic momentum extension - once bidding slows down to a certain level - the bid is finally closed. I think this would eliminate sniping completely.
I don't know about the "everyday joe" thing - sounds more like someone scamming a buck. If he thinks it's worth $2.00 then set the starting bid at $2.00. Artificially pumping up the price and forcing someones proxy bid to go up isn't just borderline wrong, it's completely wrong.
Well - it's more of a like "People who you might think matter but really don't" list.
Ah yes - makes sense now. -Mike
Everytime this thread pops up, I go to netscape.com and I guess I'm just missing it - I don't see anything that reminds me of digg. It still looks like Netscape to me. Way too much coverage for what it's worth. There has to be more interesting news than this (since it's been covered twice tod on slashdot).
Regardless of which side of the fence your on - you can't just make up rules as you go along - either it's illegal or it's not. You can't put a label like "try before you buy" on it and think that it's ok. That's like running a red light at 3 in the morning when no one is on the street - it's still not legal. I'm not making a judgement about it but it just gets tiresome to hear everyone rationalizing the activity. The fact is that most people copying music or DVD's aren't making "backups" and most people who pirate software or music don't go out and buy it if they like it. If you want to try before you buy, go to a Tower or Virgin records and listen to your hearts content.
Lame lame lame.
It's not fraudulent - they didn't sell anyone anything - it's a demo. They will sink or swim based on their ability to deliver. Personally I want the whole blue ray/HDDVD thing to just be over with - it's hurting everyone to have these guys battle it out and even with the actual product being out, I still won't decide with my personal funds - let everyone else figure out who will win.
Look at the pictures - in one - the background is brick, in the dvd+r pictures it's wood. Also - who cares? Either they had two laptops side by side showing the visual benefits of blue ray or they didn't. Let the person making the comparison decide. Everyone knows it's a data medium and the data happens to be higher in resolution and bitrate. If it's a 10 minute demo it doesn't need the same capacity. Retail stores stream HDTV from a hard drive - no one seems to mind since they understand that it's a demo.
Oblivion was the tip of the iceberg - next on their list are tools and viewers of the fruits of those tools.
It's kind of like in a real world fight - sure, you would love to bring a baseball bat into the fight but you don't because you don't want the other guy to bring one in either. Seems to me like it would make more sense not to have the technology at all. I have to admit though - the other day when I read that Isreal had launched a satellite - seemingly in response to the actions of Iran it all seemed too easy to do - made me wonder what regulates who gets to send one up in the first place.
The point was that they were talking stability back then (and even had a similar ad campaign) and I don't recall them being so stable. I'm sure that current Macs don't crash at all and you don't have to rebuild the desktop and all that Jazz.
I don't get where the impression that macs are rock stable even comes from. I'll admit the last time I owned a mac was OS8/9 and back then, crashes/sad macs weren't so unusual and every week or so you had to rebuild the desktop to fix strange behavior.
Not internet - but tech related. Any blurry photograph is amazingly clear with the "Enhance" command - and I thought that the "Smart Unsharp" in CS2 was great.
Yes, but this scam emails a user - tells them they have a problem and to call the phone number listed in the email to resolve it. That gives it more credibility. A user might think that banks are now providing the phone number to combat phishing - as a precaution. If it were a 1-800 number, it would be even more credible.
I don't know if I would classify it as stupidity. It doesn't seem like it would be unusual for a credit card company to ask you to enter your pin to prove that you have rights to access account information.
I don't know about you guys - but given the choice of being "bumped" by a wheelchair or being walked on by one of these - I think I would rather get bumped.
I don't really know but any STB is probably easier for the mainstream than a homebrew PVR - if there aren't Tivo or Replay like STB's in your area then this would obviously be the next best thing. I just know that I've set these up for people and the support they request after the fact is just a nightmare.
As much as I love homebrew PVR's (I use several along with my Tivo) I can't help but think that for most people - the better value would be to just buy a Tivo and a lifetime subscription (and if they no longer offer that, then three years of service). If you want to copy MPEG files over, use Tivo to Go or get a ReplayTV. PC's are sloppy compared to these options.