Granted, a Zeppelin wouldn't allow you to reach the same airspeeds as a Jet plane, but they could get you to higher altitudes. Higher altitudes mean less air resistance, and less air resistance means more efficient use of fuel.
That's a good thought, but I'm afraid my thoughts on it are shaping up to be critical.
Zepellins can't attain the high altitudes if they have any considerable weight on them. It's a bit like trying to raise a sunken ship by tying it to balloons - even though the balloons want to float, they weight offsets their buoyancy.
Then I'm thinking big blimp, small weights - they should be cheap to run. But there's another possible problem... I think the lack of airspeed would actually be crippling because without any speed it would have no stability, no orientation control, and it'd be liable to fly right into the Zep. If it fired up while attached to the bottom, it would probably just rotate the Zep instead of speeding it forward.
Maybe there's a good way to work it - get the D&C guys on the problem I guess. It is an intriguing idea.
So we all are familiar with astronaut questions like how they pee, heck it's been televised... but what about, erm, other needs?
A guy is in space for 6 months... his testicles are still working, right? They have to have some solution, or they'd just have a bunch of nocturnal emissions on their space blankets.
Yes this is a silly question, but I'm not trying to make a joke, I am genuinely curious.
Aside from this, who says the shuttle concept is what we really need?
Me, for one. So did my astronautical design professor. Our design project was to design a system to launch into space for no more than $5,000 / lb (current cost ~$10,000 / lb).
We were working on systems for satellite payloads, not people, but 5 out of the 6 teams wrote viable proposals that met the (realistic) criteria of the RFP, largely by cutting a ton of energy expenditure by starting by flying in the same direction the Earth orbits to an altitude where the air is considerably thinner, and firing the big rockets from there.
The reason we need a new concept is because we keep sending things straight up from the ground, which has massive energy costs without any lift. It works much better to launch from a higher altitude - you still have to overcome gravity, but when you make the send-off to space you don't have to pack as much fuel (read: expensive) because you're already at a speed contributing to orbit. Cutting fuel cuts cost so much not because you don't have to pay for the fuel as much as you don't have to pay to launch the extra fuel with more fuel, which you need more fuel for, etc, and by the time you're ready to launch you've got a relatively small transport vehicle strapped onto an obese big fuel container.
Remember everyone who talked about putting a staging area for deep space missions (e.g. Mars) on the moon? Same idea here.
It's not easy to make work in the real world, plenty of people working on it for a while have already been listed. But it will be done, and it will make our brute force concept look like trying to move a refrigerator without a dolly.
Currently for hobbyists, the system of choice would be one that runs some kind of Linux I think (although the machines are quite expensive).
I stand corrected on a couple points, but many of us are running the Palms because we've got budgets, and let's face it, hot machines are expensive. Palms are cheap enough almost anyone can scare one up, yet they can develop some custom apps if need be.
OTOH, while you are right that dev is not a mountain to climb on other platforms, affording them can be for many of us.
Perhaps a physical standard is in order - almost like an ATX standard - for hand-helds. That way we can build our own with what we need, put on what we need, and more of us can write what we can't find.
The standardization of the "IBM PC" revolutionized the PC market, perhaps we could see hand-helds in a similar way. Sure, handhelds got smaller, but then the hot ones got bigger again with the new features. A snap/screwed bay for a camera could be there, for instance, if you want one. But if you don't want one, you just don't buy one to put in. Custom PDA's, get a couple hot features you want but don't put your kids' college money in for all the gizmos that you'll only use once to see if they work.
It's true, along with congress, the senate, etc...
Not about everything. They know tons about politics and law, but the country's past the point where these types can make wise decisions about this kind of case.
As a Libertarian (US), I almost shudder to think of adding the government, but maybe it would be worth it to have an agency tied into the court system for technology cases - almost the way the family court system does so. The problem is that there's an implication that the government would have authority over the internet itself. The truth is that they have do have power in cases like this.
This is probably far too late to expect anyone to read it, but here's my $0.02.
I have gamed on/off most of my life, and wasn't really gaming much when I met my wife (although 6 months previous, I was on EverCrack). Last year for Xmas I wanted to get back into some video gaming systems on console... I did my regular homework to get up to speed on pros/cons of the platforms but took some other things into consideration.
I ended up getting a Nintendo Gamecube for a few reasons. My wife likes Mario Kart, so I got Double Dash and it's an instant gratification that's great for multi-player. The controllers are relatively small - my wife's hands are smaller, and it'll be good for when our son is old enough to play. Also, there's almost no connectivity - mainly considered a big con on the system but the upshot to me is that while I can play games I love (e.g. Metroid Prime) it's always where I left it when I shut it off and I don't miss anything.
There are also more games that aren't about gore - if you feel women don't tend to gravitate towards those games you can consider that a pro, but also there are plenty of games to balance out violent games when my son is playing it. Realistically he will see/play games that are bloody, whether at friend's house or on my GC, but at least this way there's some balance.
I also love the abundance of single-room (multiplayer maybe, but not online) strategy games so he can play games that involve persistence and concentration and actually develop that little noggin rather than just feeding it frags all the time. I can't wait to tell it's possible to beat Splinter Cell with 1 actual kill in the whole game.
"Comcast considers subscribers' personally identifiable information to be confidential. We will only disclose personally identifiable information to third parties under an obligation of confidentiality and for a limited purpose consistent with this Policy."
It looks like I'm covered - at least if they gave the RIAA my info they couldn't sue me "confidentially." Also I noticed they won't disclose what their users do, but I guess the RIAA snoops that on their own anyway.
This is all Comcast info BTW, which probably applies to a fair number of us.
The issue of "read my lips, no new patches" (for December) here is obvious. But now we have two problems. It normally takes a month for a fraction of end users to update even after a patch is issued. Even if this patch is issued immediately when MS said it can be, do you really think that people are going to wake up bright and aware after New Year's Eve and patch their machines?
The people who patch immediately are basically immune to this anyway - we're not idiots. We know there is no time that PayPal would send us an email even directing us to their site to ask for a password. It's the people that need auto-update every damn day that will fall prey to this.
Sure, most of us patch/encourage updates of those around us, but even that might take some time. There will still easily be weeks of January where "Verify your PayPal account for free Valentine's chocolates sent to your significant other" emails will be rampant.
I like the idea of more predictability to patches, but I don't think it's feasible for reasons like this. The only way to predict when a patch will be needed is to set a schedule for their issue, and then immediately after that all the security problems will be exploited that have been found. i.e. in January serious problems found in December will come out and we'll have hell from then in January. Come the patch for January, all the problems found in January will crawl out, and we'll have hell again.
This will continue, ad extremum nauseum.
Enough ranting, I'll propose a solution. Windows is shipped with an auto-update immediately feature for home users who wouldn't dream of making a configuration change. Then there is a monthly patch that rolls everything together, and Update can be set to use that instead for appropriate machines that are administrated appropriately with users aware of issues. Or perhaps security issues are patched immediately and the latest WMP functionality gets put in the same patch with all the driver updates, etc. that can seriously wait a couple of weeks instead of everyone having to reboot their machines an extra half dozen times a month. There - that's two ideas off the top of my head that I would take over our current state of affairs in a heartbeat.
Well, "destroying its energy" would be a rather major accomplishment, if I remember my highschool lessons regarding conservation of energy...
Yes, but that's not how it would read. Destroying light is no major accomplishment at all, even if it means it is normally converted into heat. If light were not destroyed in this sense all the time, you would only need to flash on the lights in your room and shut the door, because the same light would continue to illuminate the room.
It's really the same concept as destroying lighter fluid by burning it, except light has a curious tendancy to burn itself out.
I was in this precise position 6 months ago, except with HP. They had enough CSR's to pick up the phone when I called and keep me happy while I spoke with them, but kept sending defective units and the wrong parts (why the hell would they ship a UK power cord to the US?? Especially when I explicitly told the CSR I did not need a power cord at all????) and it took a month to fix a very simple issue. That month spanned when the original warranty ran out.
However, this is what you need to check on - with HP anyway, my warranty expired from purchase of first unit, but any replacement under warranteed had an additional 30 day warranty. So when they sent me a bad unit that arrived just after the original 6 months or whatever was up, they still had to take care of the issue. It's a minor loophole, really, but could possibly allow you to get what you paid for.
Give 'em a call and run it by someone, "hypothetically" at first.
I the point Linus made was two-fold. First, it is fundamentally flawed to say that the protection a copyright extends to must include a motivation for profit. Secondly, even saying that there must be a motive for profit does not rule out the motive of the GPL.
Excellent debate, if I'd say. He articulately said, "Your argument is wrong, but even if your argument had a point, that point is wrong too." Really an effective way to take FUD out of the equation.
It's more than proof of concept. They did this in 80 minutes. Sure, you and I can't do it in 80 minutes, but even if it took us weeks we'd have a shot at cracking something that hadn't yet changed. Maybe not the first time, but eventually someone would get a start on it shortly after it been changed and considered "safe" long enough to be cracked.
Besides, never underestimate the power of distributed computing by MS worms.
You totally missed the point. If your beef is with the patent process, don't take it out on MS. If you have a beef with MS, fine, be mad at them. That doesn't mean you should be mad at them every time they make a dime.
I applaud them for this. They are trying to make something doing something legal and right. Sure a lot of us feel like they're pulling a rug out from under a lot of feet, but I argue they're well within ethical boundaries.
If someone gives you a dollar every day for a year and then stops, do you have a right to be angry at them? Absolutely not. They did you a favor. MS has a legitimate patent on something that is legitimately theirs. Mfrs have gotten free use of it for some time now, but that doesn't mean it's wrong for it to stop.
It's not like there aren't alternatives. You stick a memory card in your camera and it automatically initializes - problem solved. You have to wait a measly 30 seconds to use it. I'm not shedding any tears for you.
Bottom line is, they have a responsibility to make a buck and they're doing so responsibly. They're within the law to sue people left and right for said pre-formatted media without notice, but they're not doing that. They've issued a notice that they will begin charging. People can pay the charge or use an alternative. This is not only legal, but it's perfectly fair.
We all know the practice of creating an email account, leaving it hidden online somewhere or posting it and telling people not to use it in an effort to get email we are sure is not legitimate. If this works, let's take it a step farther.
Mastercard, wait, even better AmEx issues a card with the same idea. The card is used once in response to a single spam. The card is then cut up but not cancelled. Hand the card numbers and the billing address over on a platter.
When the card is used again, set your phasers to sue. The beneficiary of the card's usage can either be charged with fraud, etc. or roll on their superior. Pass the buck up the ladder until you can jail a spammer not on the basis of spam but of felony(ies).
Of course, this assumes that you can find a "member magnifier" offer that isn't even looking to send you Sucrosa. Still, it might be worth a shot as a low-cost investment with a good potential for a high yield.
The same idea could be used for eBay and PayPal scams. It's not as if none of us have gotten those "Please enter your password in this email and click submit button" spams. I wonder if this is already done. I'm a smart guy, but I'm still just another geek on/.. It seems some well-compensated theft prevention exec would have started doing this a long time ago if it would work. Though honestly, I don't see any problems with it myself.
Seriously though, venture capitalism is something that should definitely be looked into. If you're really worried about losing your IP from trying to get investors, there's always the patent route. Fortunately for legitimate patents, they're easily approved. Unfortunately for people who need the patent to raise money, they're incredibly expensive.
If one good thing has come out of all the fury that never seems to end between the filesharing and the lawsuits, it's that some truth is coming to light. The MPAA/RIAA are making themselves out to be a monopoly, and as lawsuits can potentially force out numbers on public record there may be a bigger recourse.
I say go ahead and piss them off, but don't settle. We'll pick a poster-boy, fund a strategic big picture defense, and then file an anti-trust-like suit against them. If they can, for instance, be shown to collect far more in "not gauranteed" royalties than they lose in artists they fund but don't make as much money as they put into them, that's a little piece of moral ground.
I suspect that there are lot of little pieces of moral ground, and combined with a little legal footing on their business practices, they might be able to be busted up like Ma Bell. The alternative is to let them run amok and pull strings like oil companies do. Before we know it (if it isn't happening already), their political agendas are being lobbied for on our dime, half of which should've gone in the artists' pockets who may not even agree with their agency's agenda.
Sound far fetched? Fine, call me a dreamer... it's still something to think about.
Another huge bonus of doing this at the browser level is the last thing we need is another standard to be ripped apart by IE vs. The World.
The only benefit of having them be part of the site is that the site can have features activated by mouse gestures. Maybe I'm being short sighted, but WTF would those be? The handy features like going to the top of the page while reading a FAQ can be implemented in a browser.
I've had similar thoughts - but it appears they're doing the right thing by taking the machines offline for inspection. That way if there is a backdoor they can eradicate any further security holes before they are exploited.
I wish the message was a little more detailed, however. I run a Debian server. If the project machines are compromised, I would like either some assurance that my machine can't be compromised the same way or a fix for it.
I'm sure people running servers with truly sensitive information (that doesn't happen to be on my server) would find this even more nice.
I welcome anyone to reply to this with any further announcements, assuming this won't be a multiple headline story.
As one of the few Linux developers here, I fear a nightmare is coming. I would really welcome any ideas that anyone has about how we combat this or put our minds at ease.
Well we know that a lot of these get around even secured networks because of the users. However, in most of these networks there is a competent admin who runs a firewall, but can't run ad-aware on every machine constantly (and if that were feasible, damage might already be done in one user session).
So here's my idea, which maybe is already done but if it is I'd like to hear more about it. Have the firewall maintain grey-listed domains/IP's, essentially running a quick spyware check on outgoing traffic. I don't think this would be a huge CPU load, as most traffic is incoming, not outgoing, in most offices. But I know I would like the routing machine in my office to send me a quick note if it suspects that IP 192.168.xxx.xxx has some spyware on it so I can check it out.
Seems like a simple enough idea... it wouldn't even have to be done real-time as by the time an admin got the note, real-time action could not be taken. But a router could use some spare CPU cycles to check its log's latest outgoing packets for at least some known activity.
Perhaps there is even a pattern of activity spyware reports through that a Bayesian-like filter would be able to catch and alert us of suspicious activity.
When we go home from work, we all know that despite how we have users that simply open email and click attachments like nuts no matter what we say. At the same time, these people have skills that our offices need. Perhaps this would be a good added layer of protection to prevent spyware form staying around long enough to cause damage.
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If only the last-mile solution was as dead-nuts reliable as the power grid, then it would never fail... uhmm...
Okay, so maybe we should investigate solutions for last-mile internet serving as backup electricity, and the power grid serving as last-mile for redundancy?
And doesn't the SCO case verbal arguments begin on december 6? Once that happens, how long will it take for SCO's ball of yarn to fall apart?
A US lawyer is not so different from a US politician in some ways. First, if they want, they can speak for as long as they like without saying any substantial. Second, if they want, they can "prove" something that is completely off-base with arguments that are completely off-base, etc ad nauseum.
On Dec 6th, expect to hear what you've alrady heard, except instead of something concises such as "Linux has our source code, dernit!" there will be hours of speech about what source code is, how it is intellectual property, how when it needs to be protected as any other invention, and how in this grevious instance yada yada.
That doesn't mean the house of cards won't fall, it just means it won't fall on December 6th, or necessarily even in December. SCO will send skilled professionals to drag this out as long as possible.
This is an interesting idea, though at its heart seems to be nothing more than a distributed consulting company.
Suppose right now today my company wants a custom feature or a bug fixed in some OS software. We can pull out our checkbook and hire X to do Y for $Z. If it's OS work, that's just part of our contract. AFAIK, this happens already.
So what is the innovation here? To create a "market" that is basically a consulting company for OS work? Doesn't seem to be...after all, the article specifically says this is not limited to GPL (and that didn't seem to be followed up with "or other open-source license"). It says open code, but does that mean the results must be open or simply the basis must be open and the end results can only link to open libraries if they are closed?
Or is it to create a consulting company that uses contractors? I don't believe that's it either... contract consulting work is already routinely outsourced and sub-contracted.
Or is it to organize a commercial venture based on the work of OS? This might be the real heart of the issue. There is where I get mixed:
Surely funded development of OS software advances them, but this could turn sour quickly (think Red Hat!). Now, with varied customers with individual requests I'd like to think that the market could not take on a direction with its own agenda, but I would like to hear some arguments for and against this. The model indicates this is for-profit. Thus, requests from the highest bidders would probably get preference. Supppose MS throws a few billion at time-consuming features that add little value to the product. Why wouldn't this market eat that up? But think about the cost of this. While developers add features such as scrollbars changing color through a gradient to indicate how far down you've scrolled, they are not working on fundamental issues that need to be addressed before they blow up in our faces. Suppose SCO hires a company to request a feature which would infringe on SCO's IP such that there is a genuine IP infringement that they don't appear to have set up directly.
I, for one, would rather have talented developers working on things like IPv6 implementation, that commercial investors probably won't want to fund, or at least wouldn't be able to compete with people who use the market as a tool against OS.
I think any time something this scale is set up, it should be very carefully critiqued. Unfortunately, there's nothing stopping anyone from doing it if it turns out to be a set-up for OS disasters.
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That's a good thought, but I'm afraid my thoughts on it are shaping up to be critical.
Zepellins can't attain the high altitudes if they have any considerable weight on them. It's a bit like trying to raise a sunken ship by tying it to balloons - even though the balloons want to float, they weight offsets their buoyancy.
Then I'm thinking big blimp, small weights - they should be cheap to run. But there's another possible problem... I think the lack of airspeed would actually be crippling because without any speed it would have no stability, no orientation control, and it'd be liable to fly right into the Zep. If it fired up while attached to the bottom, it would probably just rotate the Zep instead of speeding it forward.
Maybe there's a good way to work it - get the D&C guys on the problem I guess. It is an intriguing idea.
A guy is in space for 6 months... his testicles are still working, right? They have to have some solution, or they'd just have a bunch of nocturnal emissions on their space blankets.
Yes this is a silly question, but I'm not trying to make a joke, I am genuinely curious.
Me, for one. So did my astronautical design professor. Our design project was to design a system to launch into space for no more than $5,000 / lb (current cost ~$10,000 / lb).
We were working on systems for satellite payloads, not people, but 5 out of the 6 teams wrote viable proposals that met the (realistic) criteria of the RFP, largely by cutting a ton of energy expenditure by starting by flying in the same direction the Earth orbits to an altitude where the air is considerably thinner, and firing the big rockets from there.
The reason we need a new concept is because we keep sending things straight up from the ground, which has massive energy costs without any lift. It works much better to launch from a higher altitude - you still have to overcome gravity, but when you make the send-off to space you don't have to pack as much fuel (read: expensive) because you're already at a speed contributing to orbit. Cutting fuel cuts cost so much not because you don't have to pay for the fuel as much as you don't have to pay to launch the extra fuel with more fuel, which you need more fuel for, etc, and by the time you're ready to launch you've got a relatively small transport vehicle strapped onto an obese big fuel container.
Remember everyone who talked about putting a staging area for deep space missions (e.g. Mars) on the moon? Same idea here.
It's not easy to make work in the real world, plenty of people working on it for a while have already been listed. But it will be done, and it will make our brute force concept look like trying to move a refrigerator without a dolly.
If they would make that and NASA used it, they would be plenty rich with all the fame to go with it.
Without that, their inventions are like thought experiments... they'd be better off conducting the Schrodinger's Cat experiment with two ants.
I stand corrected on a couple points, but many of us are running the Palms because we've got budgets, and let's face it, hot machines are expensive. Palms are cheap enough almost anyone can scare one up, yet they can develop some custom apps if need be.
OTOH, while you are right that dev is not a mountain to climb on other platforms, affording them can be for many of us.
Perhaps a physical standard is in order - almost like an ATX standard - for hand-helds. That way we can build our own with what we need, put on what we need, and more of us can write what we can't find.
The standardization of the "IBM PC" revolutionized the PC market, perhaps we could see hand-helds in a similar way. Sure, handhelds got smaller, but then the hot ones got bigger again with the new features. A snap/screwed bay for a camera could be there, for instance, if you want one. But if you don't want one, you just don't buy one to put in. Custom PDA's, get a couple hot features you want but don't put your kids' college money in for all the gizmos that you'll only use once to see if they work.
Not about everything. They know tons about politics and law, but the country's past the point where these types can make wise decisions about this kind of case.
As a Libertarian (US), I almost shudder to think of adding the government, but maybe it would be worth it to have an agency tied into the court system for technology cases - almost the way the family court system does so. The problem is that there's an implication that the government would have authority over the internet itself. The truth is that they have do have power in cases like this.
PalmOS has been another stable hand-held system that amateurs can actually write software for as well.
Though, I must sheepishly admit I had problems with a free PalmOS compiler I downloaded a year or two ago.
I have gamed on/off most of my life, and wasn't really gaming much when I met my wife (although 6 months previous, I was on EverCrack). Last year for Xmas I wanted to get back into some video gaming systems on console... I did my regular homework to get up to speed on pros/cons of the platforms but took some other things into consideration.
I ended up getting a Nintendo Gamecube for a few reasons. My wife likes Mario Kart, so I got Double Dash and it's an instant gratification that's great for multi-player. The controllers are relatively small - my wife's hands are smaller, and it'll be good for when our son is old enough to play. Also, there's almost no connectivity - mainly considered a big con on the system but the upshot to me is that while I can play games I love (e.g. Metroid Prime) it's always where I left it when I shut it off and I don't miss anything.
There are also more games that aren't about gore - if you feel women don't tend to gravitate towards those games you can consider that a pro, but also there are plenty of games to balance out violent games when my son is playing it. Realistically he will see/play games that are bloody, whether at friend's house or on my GC, but at least this way there's some balance.
I also love the abundance of single-room (multiplayer maybe, but not online) strategy games so he can play games that involve persistence and concentration and actually develop that little noggin rather than just feeding it frags all the time. I can't wait to tell it's possible to beat Splinter Cell with 1 actual kill in the whole game.
It looks like I'm covered - at least if they gave the RIAA my info they couldn't sue me "confidentially." Also I noticed they won't disclose what their users do, but I guess the RIAA snoops that on their own anyway.
This is all Comcast info BTW, which probably applies to a fair number of us.
The people who patch immediately are basically immune to this anyway - we're not idiots. We know there is no time that PayPal would send us an email even directing us to their site to ask for a password. It's the people that need auto-update every damn day that will fall prey to this.
Sure, most of us patch/encourage updates of those around us, but even that might take some time. There will still easily be weeks of January where "Verify your PayPal account for free Valentine's chocolates sent to your significant other" emails will be rampant.
I like the idea of more predictability to patches, but I don't think it's feasible for reasons like this. The only way to predict when a patch will be needed is to set a schedule for their issue, and then immediately after that all the security problems will be exploited that have been found. i.e. in January serious problems found in December will come out and we'll have hell from then in January. Come the patch for January, all the problems found in January will crawl out, and we'll have hell again.
This will continue, ad extremum nauseum.
Enough ranting, I'll propose a solution. Windows is shipped with an auto-update immediately feature for home users who wouldn't dream of making a configuration change. Then there is a monthly patch that rolls everything together, and Update can be set to use that instead for appropriate machines that are administrated appropriately with users aware of issues. Or perhaps security issues are patched immediately and the latest WMP functionality gets put in the same patch with all the driver updates, etc. that can seriously wait a couple of weeks instead of everyone having to reboot their machines an extra half dozen times a month. There - that's two ideas off the top of my head that I would take over our current state of affairs in a heartbeat.
Yes, but that's not how it would read. Destroying light is no major accomplishment at all, even if it means it is normally converted into heat. If light were not destroyed in this sense all the time, you would only need to flash on the lights in your room and shut the door, because the same light would continue to illuminate the room.
It's really the same concept as destroying lighter fluid by burning it, except light has a curious tendancy to burn itself out.
However, this is what you need to check on - with HP anyway, my warranty expired from purchase of first unit, but any replacement under warranteed had an additional 30 day warranty. So when they sent me a bad unit that arrived just after the original 6 months or whatever was up, they still had to take care of the issue. It's a minor loophole, really, but could possibly allow you to get what you paid for.
Give 'em a call and run it by someone, "hypothetically" at first.
Excellent debate, if I'd say. He articulately said, "Your argument is wrong, but even if your argument had a point, that point is wrong too." Really an effective way to take FUD out of the equation.
Besides, never underestimate the power of distributed computing by MS worms.
I applaud them for this. They are trying to make something doing something legal and right. Sure a lot of us feel like they're pulling a rug out from under a lot of feet, but I argue they're well within ethical boundaries.
If someone gives you a dollar every day for a year and then stops, do you have a right to be angry at them? Absolutely not. They did you a favor. MS has a legitimate patent on something that is legitimately theirs. Mfrs have gotten free use of it for some time now, but that doesn't mean it's wrong for it to stop.
It's not like there aren't alternatives. You stick a memory card in your camera and it automatically initializes - problem solved. You have to wait a measly 30 seconds to use it. I'm not shedding any tears for you.
Bottom line is, they have a responsibility to make a buck and they're doing so responsibly. They're within the law to sue people left and right for said pre-formatted media without notice, but they're not doing that. They've issued a notice that they will begin charging. People can pay the charge or use an alternative. This is not only legal, but it's perfectly fair.
Mastercard, wait, even better AmEx issues a card with the same idea. The card is used once in response to a single spam. The card is then cut up but not cancelled. Hand the card numbers and the billing address over on a platter.
When the card is used again, set your phasers to sue. The beneficiary of the card's usage can either be charged with fraud, etc. or roll on their superior. Pass the buck up the ladder until you can jail a spammer not on the basis of spam but of felony(ies).
Of course, this assumes that you can find a "member magnifier" offer that isn't even looking to send you Sucrosa. Still, it might be worth a shot as a low-cost investment with a good potential for a high yield.
The same idea could be used for eBay and PayPal scams. It's not as if none of us have gotten those "Please enter your password in this email and click submit button" spams. I wonder if this is already done. I'm a smart guy, but I'm still just another geek on /.. It seems some well-compensated theft prevention exec would have started doing this a long time ago if it would work. Though honestly, I don't see any problems with it myself.
A tax on the aspiring
Job
A tax on the living
Lotto
A tax on people who are bad at math.
Seriously though, venture capitalism is something that should definitely be looked into. If you're really worried about losing your IP from trying to get investors, there's always the patent route. Fortunately for legitimate patents, they're easily approved. Unfortunately for people who need the patent to raise money, they're incredibly expensive.
I say go ahead and piss them off, but don't settle. We'll pick a poster-boy, fund a strategic big picture defense, and then file an anti-trust-like suit against them. If they can, for instance, be shown to collect far more in "not gauranteed" royalties than they lose in artists they fund but don't make as much money as they put into them, that's a little piece of moral ground.
I suspect that there are lot of little pieces of moral ground, and combined with a little legal footing on their business practices, they might be able to be busted up like Ma Bell. The alternative is to let them run amok and pull strings like oil companies do. Before we know it (if it isn't happening already), their political agendas are being lobbied for on our dime, half of which should've gone in the artists' pockets who may not even agree with their agency's agenda.
Sound far fetched? Fine, call me a dreamer... it's still something to think about.
The only benefit of having them be part of the site is that the site can have features activated by mouse gestures. Maybe I'm being short sighted, but WTF would those be? The handy features like going to the top of the page while reading a FAQ can be implemented in a browser.
I wish the message was a little more detailed, however. I run a Debian server. If the project machines are compromised, I would like either some assurance that my machine can't be compromised the same way or a fix for it.
I'm sure people running servers with truly sensitive information (that doesn't happen to be on my server) would find this even more nice.
I welcome anyone to reply to this with any further announcements, assuming this won't be a multiple headline story.
Well we know that a lot of these get around even secured networks because of the users. However, in most of these networks there is a competent admin who runs a firewall, but can't run ad-aware on every machine constantly (and if that were feasible, damage might already be done in one user session).
So here's my idea, which maybe is already done but if it is I'd like to hear more about it. Have the firewall maintain grey-listed domains/IP's, essentially running a quick spyware check on outgoing traffic. I don't think this would be a huge CPU load, as most traffic is incoming, not outgoing, in most offices. But I know I would like the routing machine in my office to send me a quick note if it suspects that IP 192.168.xxx.xxx has some spyware on it so I can check it out.
Seems like a simple enough idea... it wouldn't even have to be done real-time as by the time an admin got the note, real-time action could not be taken. But a router could use some spare CPU cycles to check its log's latest outgoing packets for at least some known activity.
Perhaps there is even a pattern of activity spyware reports through that a Bayesian-like filter would be able to catch and alert us of suspicious activity.
When we go home from work, we all know that despite how we have users that simply open email and click attachments like nuts no matter what we say. At the same time, these people have skills that our offices need. Perhaps this would be a good added layer of protection to prevent spyware form staying around long enough to cause damage.
If only the last-mile solution was as dead-nuts reliable as the power grid, then it would never fail... uhmm...
Okay, so maybe we should investigate solutions for last-mile internet serving as backup electricity, and the power grid serving as last-mile for redundancy?
A US lawyer is not so different from a US politician in some ways. First, if they want, they can speak for as long as they like without saying any substantial. Second, if they want, they can "prove" something that is completely off-base with arguments that are completely off-base, etc ad nauseum.
On Dec 6th, expect to hear what you've alrady heard, except instead of something concises such as "Linux has our source code, dernit!" there will be hours of speech about what source code is, how it is intellectual property, how when it needs to be protected as any other invention, and how in this grevious instance yada yada.
That doesn't mean the house of cards won't fall, it just means it won't fall on December 6th, or necessarily even in December. SCO will send skilled professionals to drag this out as long as possible.
The may sue, even win, but they'll never make *me* pay for MS software!
Suppose right now today my company wants a custom feature or a bug fixed in some OS software. We can pull out our checkbook and hire X to do Y for $Z. If it's OS work, that's just part of our contract. AFAIK, this happens already.
So what is the innovation here? To create a "market" that is basically a consulting company for OS work? Doesn't seem to be...after all, the article specifically says this is not limited to GPL (and that didn't seem to be followed up with "or other open-source license"). It says open code, but does that mean the results must be open or simply the basis must be open and the end results can only link to open libraries if they are closed?
Or is it to create a consulting company that uses contractors? I don't believe that's it either... contract consulting work is already routinely outsourced and sub-contracted.
Or is it to organize a commercial venture based on the work of OS? This might be the real heart of the issue. There is where I get mixed:
Surely funded development of OS software advances them, but this could turn sour quickly (think Red Hat!). Now, with varied customers with individual requests I'd like to think that the market could not take on a direction with its own agenda, but I would like to hear some arguments for and against this. The model indicates this is for-profit. Thus, requests from the highest bidders would probably get preference. Supppose MS throws a few billion at time-consuming features that add little value to the product. Why wouldn't this market eat that up? But think about the cost of this. While developers add features such as scrollbars changing color through a gradient to indicate how far down you've scrolled, they are not working on fundamental issues that need to be addressed before they blow up in our faces. Suppose SCO hires a company to request a feature which would infringe on SCO's IP such that there is a genuine IP infringement that they don't appear to have set up directly.
I, for one, would rather have talented developers working on things like IPv6 implementation, that commercial investors probably won't want to fund, or at least wouldn't be able to compete with people who use the market as a tool against OS.
I think any time something this scale is set up, it should be very carefully critiqued. Unfortunately, there's nothing stopping anyone from doing it if it turns out to be a set-up for OS disasters.