I'm actually a little surpised to see Slashdotters so eager for the goverment to jump into this. Do we REALLY think the Government can do this better/more efficiently than private business?[...]Isn't what we really want just more competition?
I do not see how allowing local community governments to offer interent access prohibits business from offering the same or acts to stiffle competition. If the private business can do so better/more efficiently, they will get customers. On the other hand, a law forbidding local goverments from offering internet access sure sounds like stiffling competition to me.
Should we pass a law forbidding local goverments from building public parking, because it cuts into the profits of people who own parking garages?
Not necessarily. I have seen proposals for one way manned Mars missions. Send supplies ahead of time via the cost-efficient route, and then the people the quick way. Once they get there, they stay.
I am certain that there would be a sufficient number of qualified volunteers to pull it off.
Nope, PC game rentals are outlawed. The reason you can rent console games but not PC games is outlined in Subsection B:
(B) This subsection does not apply to
(i) a computer program which is embodied in a machine or product and which cannot be copied during the ordinary operation or use of the machine or product; or
(ii) a computer program embodied in or used in conjunction with a limited purpose computer that is designed for playing video games and may be designed for other purposes.
Because your Playstation/Xbox/etc is a "Limited purpose" computer, rather than a "general purpose" machine, you can have game rentals.
Ever wonder why they aren't here in the US? Ever wonder why you can rent movies, console video games, heck even music videos, but not music?
Because the industry got it coded into law, forbidding "rental, lease or lending". Japan has no such law, which is why CD rental stores are common there. Note the same law is also why you can rent console video games, but not PC video games.
Libraries were fortunate enough to have been given and excemption, which is why you can borrow music CDs from your local public library.
Not anymore. The "No Electronic Theft Act" (aka NET Act) of 1997 makes it a felony to reproduce or distribute copies of copyrighted works, even if there is no profit.
How many "classic rock" albums are there? (for an example)
Assuming:
1) The average shmoe doesn't mind 128kb mp3 compression levels.
2) At such levels, the average classic rock album is about 50MB.
3) 500GB/50MB = 10,000 albums on a single drive.
4) The RIAA succeeds in making on-line trading difficult/risky/costly.
Stick one of these in a USB/FireWire portable enclosure.
Sure, you don't get new releases or updates this way, but you have over a year's worth of non-repeat music. Want a different genre? Buy a second drive.
And that's now. What is the RIAA going to do when storage prices reach a buck a TB?
Many cars these days are made with lots of plastic. Plus, stuff in the passenger compartment (for instance, in the back seat) can easily send signal through the window, unless somehow the windows were lined with RF blocking material.
And even if packages in cars were made 100% unreadable, there is still the mugging angle.
Or, assuming the tags are in the packaging, not the product, drive around the area on trash pick up day after Christmas. Check everyone's trash bags from a safe distance without opening them.
Combined with GPS, it would make for a highly effective form of burglary casing wardriving.
When I was out Christmas shopping with my brother, he made sure his Canon EOS 1D was out of view before we locked his truck.
Walking across the parking lot, it occurred to me that people who are Christmas shopping quite often have gifts they bought locked in their cars. So all a thief needs to speed his holiday "shopping" is a RFID reader with a directional range extender antenna. Sit it in back seat, perhaps with an accomplice/operator, and cruise up and down the crowded parking lot, pretending to look for a parking space, while actually scanning all the cars. The guy in the back can read off what each car has, and when you find one with lots of pricey gifts, they can stop and break in, or mark it down for later robbery.
For that matter, if the thieves were of more the mugger variety, one guy could sit in a parked car near a mall entrance, and scan the people walking out, and contact the mugger via cell phone telling him who to target.
And I am sure that is just scratching the surface.
it is the western missionaries that brought sexual repression to the east. when the victorian missionaries showed up with their straitlaced attitudes, that was the end of the good times as far as most people were concerned.
Actually, with India, I believe it was Muslim missionaries and invaders, around the 12th century AD (If I remember my history right).
Why the heck are you running "strings"? Use jhead instead, if you want to pull out Exif info. You can even pull out and save the small jpg thumbnails your camera uses on its LCD.
AND searches (multiple tag searches). For instance, if I am looking for pictures of cats and dogs together, I would like to be able to find all photos tagged both "cat" and "dog". Right now, it appears Flickr only supports single keyword browsing.
OR searches. "dog AND (cat OR kitten)"
Date range searches, based on when the file was uploaded, and/or ability to sort on date.
Ability to limit searches to various photo size ranges.
No need for flash. Flash makes this site slow, at least in comparison to pure html based galleries I have seen.
And, it lead to laws requiring compulsary ("mechanical") licensing -- the same laws that today allow anyone to cover a song after the creator has published it, at a fixed (by law) royalty rate.
Hey everybody, gather 'round, it's the privacy song!
I don't have no privacy, neither do you.
The government is watching us and WalMart's watching too.
Your doctor keeps your urine, for to clone your DNA.
Those albums that you bought last night, well now they know you're gay.
Interpol's got a file on you, so does the FBI.
McDonald's scans your face and there's a chip in your french fry.
You're scan recorded, sold, and sorted to a database in the sky.
So whatever you do when they're talking to you -
For god's sakes lie.
Lie, Lie, Lie, Lie
Lie about your income, your age, gender, and race.
Spell your name incorrectly, so it's harder to trace.
We can beat them back with bullshit. We can rub it in their face.
We can stick a big old monkey wrench right up their database.
Lie, Lie, Lie, Lie
Lie, Lie, Lie, Lie
You see now, WalMart thinks I'm a 75 year old pensioner.
And Sony thinks I'm a single mother of ten.
The airline company thinks I make 700 grand a year.
And VISA thinks I'm an Innuit woman named Ben.
Lie, Lie, Lie, Lie
Lie, Lie, Lie, Lie
You can lie to the man, you can lie right through your tooth.
They can take away our privacy but they can't have the truth.
Lie about your favorite drink,
your viewing habits and the color of your sink.
Make up a phone number, make up a postal code.
If we all lie together then the computer might explode.
So come on everybody, let's beat those privacy invading bastards! Let's beat
them with disinformation and organized chaos. Let's crash that computer,
let's skew those statistics. Because let's face it, there's only one magical
person who knows all our secrets.
And if Santa ever does sell his database, we're all screwed.
While primary source blogs are rare, they do exist. For instance,
lots of people read Salam Pax's blog for a firsthand account of the Iraq invasion, from someone living there.
Or for another example, Kevin Sites may be reporting for NBC, but also has his own unaffiliated blog.
Using US Postal Service as our default mail system has got to go...
USPS is wide open to the kind of attack that is being discussed here. Since there's no authentication of the sender, anybody can send out messages with the "From:" address of the desigated victim, and can smear their reputation into being anything from a spammer to a pornographer.
The only surprise to me is that it took the bad guys this long to make the connection into this being something to make extortion threats over. It's not like this was a well-hidden problem with USPS, sender spoofing has been done by spammers and phishers for years.
We need to retire this standard and find a better way to move mail with the ability to authenticate that the claimed sender is the real sender. It'd solve this problem and a whole bunch of other ones at the same time.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you have a specific HDTV tube recommendation?
two flavors, more or less: SCO Unix and BSD Unix. I think you mean "AT&T Unix (System III,V, etc)" and "BSD".
I do not see how allowing local community governments to offer interent access prohibits business from offering the same or acts to stiffle competition. If the private business can do so better/more efficiently, they will get customers. On the other hand, a law forbidding local goverments from offering internet access sure sounds like stiffling competition to me.
Should we pass a law forbidding local goverments from building public parking, because it cuts into the profits of people who own parking garages?
Not necessarily. I have seen proposals for one way manned Mars missions. Send supplies ahead of time via the cost-efficient route, and then the people the quick way. Once they get there, they stay.
I am certain that there would be a sufficient number of qualified volunteers to pull it off.
Because your Playstation/Xbox/etc is a "Limited purpose" computer, rather than a "general purpose" machine, you can have game rentals.
Ever wonder why they aren't here in the US? Ever wonder why you can rent movies, console video games, heck even music videos, but not music?
Because the industry got it coded into law, forbidding "rental, lease or lending". Japan has no such law, which is why CD rental stores are common there. Note the same law is also why you can rent console video games, but not PC video games.
Libraries were fortunate enough to have been given and excemption, which is why you can borrow music CDs from your local public library.
Worked rather well.
Not anymore. The "No Electronic Theft Act" (aka NET Act) of 1997 makes it a felony to reproduce or distribute copies of copyrighted works, even if there is no profit.
Assuming:
1) The average shmoe doesn't mind 128kb mp3 compression levels.
2) At such levels, the average classic rock album is about 50MB.
3) 500GB/50MB = 10,000 albums on a single drive.
4) The RIAA succeeds in making on-line trading difficult/risky/costly.
Stick one of these in a USB/FireWire portable enclosure.
Goodbye, Internet P2P. Hello, sneakernet.
Sure, you don't get new releases or updates this way, but you have over a year's worth of non-repeat music. Want a different genre? Buy a second drive.
And that's now. What is the RIAA going to do when storage prices reach a buck a TB?
And even if packages in cars were made 100% unreadable, there is still the mugging angle.
Or, assuming the tags are in the packaging, not the product, drive around the area on trash pick up day after Christmas. Check everyone's trash bags from a safe distance without opening them. Combined with GPS, it would make for a highly effective form of burglary casing wardriving.
When I was out Christmas shopping with my brother, he made sure his Canon EOS 1D was out of view before we locked his truck.
Walking across the parking lot, it occurred to me that people who are Christmas shopping quite often have gifts they bought locked in their cars. So all a thief needs to speed his holiday "shopping" is a RFID reader with a directional range extender antenna. Sit it in back seat, perhaps with an accomplice/operator, and cruise up and down the crowded parking lot, pretending to look for a parking space, while actually scanning all the cars. The guy in the back can read off what each car has, and when you find one with lots of pricey gifts, they can stop and break in, or mark it down for later robbery.
For that matter, if the thieves were of more the mugger variety, one guy could sit in a parked car near a mall entrance, and scan the people walking out, and contact the mugger via cell phone telling him who to target.
And I am sure that is just scratching the surface.
Actually, with India, I believe it was Muslim missionaries and invaders, around the 12th century AD (If I remember my history right).
Depending on the number of simultaneous users it could support, I can see something along these lines selling to hotels for in room movies on demand.
Why the heck are you running "strings"? Use jhead instead, if you want to pull out Exif info. You can even pull out and save the small jpg thumbnails your camera uses on its LCD.
AND searches (multiple tag searches). For instance, if I am looking for pictures of cats and dogs together, I would like to be able to find all photos tagged both "cat" and "dog". Right now, it appears Flickr only supports single keyword browsing.
OR searches. "dog AND (cat OR kitten)"
Date range searches, based on when the file was uploaded, and/or ability to sort on date.
Ability to limit searches to various photo size ranges.
No need for flash. Flash makes this site slow, at least in comparison to pure html based galleries I have seen.
That's only 13hrs/day, 6 days a week, for 1 year (with two weeks' vacation, of course). Well within the capabilities of your average 15 year old male.
Sounds exactly like what the US was doing to the UK during the Industrial Revolution.
And, it lead to laws requiring compulsary ("mechanical") licensing -- the same laws that today allow anyone to cover a song after the creator has published it, at a fixed (by law) royalty rate.
Hey everybody, gather 'round, it's the privacy song!
I don't have no privacy, neither do you.
The government is watching us and WalMart's watching too.
Your doctor keeps your urine, for to clone your DNA.
Those albums that you bought last night, well now they know you're gay.
Interpol's got a file on you, so does the FBI.
McDonald's scans your face and there's a chip in your french fry.
You're scan recorded, sold, and sorted to a database in the sky.
So whatever you do when they're talking to you -
For god's sakes lie.
Lie, Lie, Lie, Lie
Lie about your income, your age, gender, and race.
Spell your name incorrectly, so it's harder to trace.
We can beat them back with bullshit. We can rub it in their face.
We can stick a big old monkey wrench right up their database.
Lie, Lie, Lie, Lie
Lie, Lie, Lie, Lie
You see now, WalMart thinks I'm a 75 year old pensioner.
And Sony thinks I'm a single mother of ten.
The airline company thinks I make 700 grand a year.
And VISA thinks I'm an Innuit woman named Ben.
Lie, Lie, Lie, Lie
Lie, Lie, Lie, Lie
You can lie to the man, you can lie right through your tooth.
They can take away our privacy but they can't have the truth.
Lie about your favorite drink,
your viewing habits and the color of your sink.
Make up a phone number, make up a postal code.
If we all lie together then the computer might explode.
So come on everybody, let's beat those privacy invading bastards! Let's beat them with disinformation and organized chaos. Let's crash that computer, let's skew those statistics. Because let's face it, there's only one magical person who knows all our secrets.
And if Santa ever does sell his database, we're all screwed.
For those looking for more on Spencer Wells' work:
Map of Homo Sapien's spreading
The info about the Nat Geo. documentary
The book at amazon.com.
You forget: John Ashcroft was a member of the Senate from 1994-2000. How likely might the Senate be to confirm one of it's own?
Nope, only requirement for being on the supreme court is for the President of the US to nominate you, and be confirmed by the Senate.
IIRC, if you look back at history you will find several ex-state governers were made Supreme Court Justices.
Or for another example, Kevin Sites may be reporting for NBC, but also has his own unaffiliated blog.
Also, check out a population weighted map, as opposed to just land area. Land area doesn't vote, people do.
Using US Postal Service as our default mail system has got to go...
USPS is wide open to the kind of attack that is being discussed here. Since there's no authentication of the sender, anybody can send out messages with the "From:" address of the desigated victim, and can smear their reputation into being anything from a spammer to a pornographer.
The only surprise to me is that it took the bad guys this long to make the connection into this being something to make extortion threats over. It's not like this was a well-hidden problem with USPS, sender spoofing has been done by spammers and phishers for years.
We need to retire this standard and find a better way to move mail with the ability to authenticate that the claimed sender is the real sender. It'd solve this problem and a whole bunch of other ones at the same time.