Actually it seems that the case is entirely about him using their trademark in the name of his script (which is why it has been renamed now). The EFF would just shrug and tell him that a) they're within their rights to defent their trademark and b) they actually don't even have much of a choice about it.
Well, remember, they're not tracking a feature, "Is a pedophile," they would be tracking a feature "is an adult" and a feature "is in a child's chat typing suggestive messages".
As opposed to children typing suggestive messages? I mean, if you can tell that the messages are suggestive that should tell you something already...
I think the idea would be for the client to collect the data and offer it to the server upon request.
So yeah, my chat client now builds a typographic profile of me. Sounds great. (In fact it sounds like something all open source IM clients will mysteriously fail to implement correctly.)
Chatrooms and instant messengers are two different things. Yes, IMs could possibly monitor this, although it would be easily circumvented by using a multi-messenger which doesn't implement this or which reports bogus typing data. Those would be around simply because open source geeks like their privacy.
Chatrooms... Not so much. They're usually IRC with or without a frontend. While the frontend could monitor the typing habits, you can easily circumvent that by connecting directly. IRC is line-based so without a special client you won't get any data. Of course you can try to kick people off based on client etc. but you can bet that such measures will be cirumvented.
There's non-IRC chat, of course, but I'm not certain how popular and/or easy to get into it is.
However, that's all irrelevant anyway. This technology unlikely to be widely implemented in the first place. Imagine you were starting a website for kids and hadn't read this article. Would you think "hey, I need to investigate technical means to determine whether one of the kids in the chatroom is actually an adult"? Chances are you wouldn't. I'd wager that most operators of webites for children are less technically inclined than the average Slashdotter so they're even less likely to think of it. For every site with a chat that implements this and puts effective barriers in place to keep people from getting around it there's ten that don't even have an operator in half the channels.
Or it's just a case of an entrenched meme. Tap water has a very good reputation over here and memes like "tap water is one of the most strictly regulated foodstuffs in Germany" are known to virtually everyone. It's very hard to compete with something like that. In other words: Tap water has an ongoing, free and very strong grassroots campaign that still bottled water would have to match in order to make significant inroads.
Carbonated water has a quality tap water can't match: It's carbonated. Still, that's not enough on its own; people often don't want carbonated tap water, they want carbonated mineral water - although there are some table waters (read: tweaked tap water) on the market, Bonaqa being a brand with a good image.
Of course no matter how good our tap water is, we still love our mineral water. According to the European Federation of Bottled Water, the Germans are second only to the Italians in bottled water consumption. (Unfortunately the EFBW doesn't seem to offer per-country statistics.) Combining that with our strong tap water I'd assume that we just drink more water than most people. I don't know what everyone else drinks, though. Juice? Milk? No idea.
The data actually matches up with my habits: Usually I drink the sparkling stuff (to be precise, a "natural mineral water with added carbonic acid" - yes, that's a standardized water type*) but when I run out or or it's just more convenient I'll happily use the tap. The mineral water is better enough for me to prefer it but the margin isn't particularly wide and switching to tap only wouldn't be particularly painful. All I'd lose would be the fizzy bubbles and the slightly different taste.
* "Natural mineral water" is actually the only foodstuff in Germany that needs to be federally licensed. Water is Serious Business over here.
Germany is an interesting contrast: Over here tap water has such an excellent reputation that most bottled water is carbonated. People don't see as much of a case to buy still water when they can get perfectly good still water out of their tap for less (even though the bottled stuff is mineral water and the tap water isn't, the difference in taste usually isn't that big).
The problem, however, is that protecting the corn stockpile against sugar has the unfortunate side effect of having corn used over sugar where sugar is apparently preferable (note the comments about fructose and insulin). Having corn around to subsist on in case of a total trade breakdown is good policy. Causing nationwide health problems by using the corn stockpile to create an inferior sugar substitute isn't.
The things to be considered are the costs of possible starvation in case of an emergency vs. an obese society vs. having a corn stockpile and nothing to do with it. Whichever minimizes the total cost to society has an argument for it.
As someone that grew up in New Zealand and now lives in Europe, I still find this quite bizarre in the US. Sugar tastes better, is generally cheaper, and is (it seems) overall not as bad for you as HFCS. Is it just the corn industry in the US that causes this phenomenon, or is there something else to it?
IIRC the States have some fairly heavy tariffs on sugar as a protectionist measure to prop up the corn industry. Sugar is actually expensive in the States - at least enough so to make it uneconomical to use it over HFCS for industrial production.
Exactly. You know what makes the difference between a good game and an excellent one? You can pick up the latter one more than fifteen years after it was created, sink two weeks into it having great fun and even hook people who were born after it was released on it. Try that with the game du jour.
Apparently you somehow managed to start the game in Yantar and never moved anywhere else. Except for zombies (braindead), ghosts (all dead) and pseudogiants (too big to care) every human or animal you hit reacts to the injury in some way. This is especially noticeable with the humans which make up 80% of the game's enemies; they very visibly flinch when hit.
Actually, I just realized you never actually played the game at all. Doesn't change the fact that SoC is definitely one of the best shooters of the last years.
I wanted to complain that once again kdawson talks about exactly one aspect of the actual story while ignoring those parts that would make the story less boring/pluggish but a look at Schneier's blog reveals that his post essentially says nothing but "hey, remember those hollow coins I talked about a year ago? I just found some more links for that".
And Schneier's year-old post consists entirely of the word "cheap". So yeah, kdawson actually did do a truly exhaustive report on the source data.
I just moved to Germany and had to solve the same problem... You have only one choice, O2. All the others require a long-term contract (usually 2 years) to obtain.
Or you buy a prepaid SIM card which doesn't have a contract attached. Sold by all providers and virtually all value brands.
Also note that the value brands are most likely cheaper than the regular ones because they were created to compete in the low-price segment. For instance, E-Plus offers regular plans but they also have the brands Simyo (for those who want very simple pricing structures) and Base (which was apparently recently retooled to a build-your-own-flatrate model).
I wonder how many people who work at a farm talked about sexing chicks at length in public (like in a bar) just to creep out the people around them?
"Man, yesterday I spent all day sexing chicks. After ten hours of sexing I was pretty beat."
"Yeah, I know. And sometimes you stuff 'em into the box and some manage to get out and you have to go after them..."
"Worst thing is, it turned out half of them were male. What do we do with three hundred male chicks?"
"Well, you could sell them to that cat food factory."
Interestingly, sex and X/Y chromosome presence aren't neccessarily connected, either. There are some conditions (IIRC always genetic defects) that might cause you to have the wrong hormonal makeup and thus express the sex your chromosomes don't indicate. IIRC in that case the sexual organs are always nonfunctional but I might be wrong.
The problem is that the meaning of the solution is not part of the story. I've looked at the linked posts and a few posts following the second one and I can tell that it's exciting for xkcd fans - but kdawson failed to point out what the problem is, how it was solved and what the solution means. In essence, he reported on exactly the most boring parts of the story while omitting all the interesting ones.
I am ready to say that this story was presented in the worst possible way.
The story links to two specific posts. There is no indication that more relevant content is found in further posts. Do you really expect me to do a news site's work and research their story for them? This is extremely lazy editing however you look at it.
Slashdot Mirror
Things look bleak for teatime until you crash through the living room wall in a stolen Jaguar to deliver the crumpets. Top score!
Actually it seems that the case is entirely about him using their trademark in the name of his script (which is why it has been renamed now). The EFF would just shrug and tell him that a) they're within their rights to defent their trademark and b) they actually don't even have much of a choice about it.
As opposed to children typing suggestive messages? I mean, if you can tell that the messages are suggestive that should tell you something already...
I think the idea would be for the client to collect the data and offer it to the server upon request.
So yeah, my chat client now builds a typographic profile of me. Sounds great. (In fact it sounds like something all open source IM clients will mysteriously fail to implement correctly.)
Chatrooms and instant messengers are two different things. Yes, IMs could possibly monitor this, although it would be easily circumvented by using a multi-messenger which doesn't implement this or which reports bogus typing data. Those would be around simply because open source geeks like their privacy.
Chatrooms... Not so much. They're usually IRC with or without a frontend. While the frontend could monitor the typing habits, you can easily circumvent that by connecting directly. IRC is line-based so without a special client you won't get any data. Of course you can try to kick people off based on client etc. but you can bet that such measures will be cirumvented.
There's non-IRC chat, of course, but I'm not certain how popular and/or easy to get into it is.
However, that's all irrelevant anyway. This technology unlikely to be widely implemented in the first place. Imagine you were starting a website for kids and hadn't read this article. Would you think "hey, I need to investigate technical means to determine whether one of the kids in the chatroom is actually an adult"? Chances are you wouldn't. I'd wager that most operators of webites for children are less technically inclined than the average Slashdotter so they're even less likely to think of it. For every site with a chat that implements this and puts effective barriers in place to keep people from getting around it there's ten that don't even have an operator in half the channels.
Or it's just a case of an entrenched meme. Tap water has a very good reputation over here and memes like "tap water is one of the most strictly regulated foodstuffs in Germany" are known to virtually everyone. It's very hard to compete with something like that. In other words: Tap water has an ongoing, free and very strong grassroots campaign that still bottled water would have to match in order to make significant inroads.
Carbonated water has a quality tap water can't match: It's carbonated. Still, that's not enough on its own; people often don't want carbonated tap water, they want carbonated mineral water - although there are some table waters (read: tweaked tap water) on the market, Bonaqa being a brand with a good image.
Of course no matter how good our tap water is, we still love our mineral water. According to the European Federation of Bottled Water, the Germans are second only to the Italians in bottled water consumption. (Unfortunately the EFBW doesn't seem to offer per-country statistics.) Combining that with our strong tap water I'd assume that we just drink more water than most people. I don't know what everyone else drinks, though. Juice? Milk? No idea.
The data actually matches up with my habits: Usually I drink the sparkling stuff (to be precise, a "natural mineral water with added carbonic acid" - yes, that's a standardized water type*) but when I run out or or it's just more convenient I'll happily use the tap. The mineral water is better enough for me to prefer it but the margin isn't particularly wide and switching to tap only wouldn't be particularly painful. All I'd lose would be the fizzy bubbles and the slightly different taste.
* "Natural mineral water" is actually the only foodstuff in Germany that needs to be federally licensed. Water is Serious Business over here.
Germany is an interesting contrast: Over here tap water has such an excellent reputation that most bottled water is carbonated. People don't see as much of a case to buy still water when they can get perfectly good still water out of their tap for less (even though the bottled stuff is mineral water and the tap water isn't, the difference in taste usually isn't that big).
The problem, however, is that protecting the corn stockpile against sugar has the unfortunate side effect of having corn used over sugar where sugar is apparently preferable (note the comments about fructose and insulin). Having corn around to subsist on in case of a total trade breakdown is good policy. Causing nationwide health problems by using the corn stockpile to create an inferior sugar substitute isn't.
The things to be considered are the costs of possible starvation in case of an emergency vs. an obese society vs. having a corn stockpile and nothing to do with it. Whichever minimizes the total cost to society has an argument for it.
IIRC the States have some fairly heavy tariffs on sugar as a protectionist measure to prop up the corn industry. Sugar is actually expensive in the States - at least enough so to make it uneconomical to use it over HFCS for industrial production.
That fetish might be less popular than you think it is.
Exactly. You know what makes the difference between a good game and an excellent one? You can pick up the latter one more than fifteen years after it was created, sink two weeks into it having great fun and even hook people who were born after it was released on it. Try that with the game du jour.
Apparently you somehow managed to start the game in Yantar and never moved anywhere else. Except for zombies (braindead), ghosts (all dead) and pseudogiants (too big to care) every human or animal you hit reacts to the injury in some way. This is especially noticeable with the humans which make up 80% of the game's enemies; they very visibly flinch when hit.
Actually, I just realized you never actually played the game at all. Doesn't change the fact that SoC is definitely one of the best shooters of the last years.
Through the RSS feed, Idle stories are indistinguishable from regular ones. The RSS buffet contains beans carefully disguised as other foodstuffs.
Perhaps Madison just wanted to make sure Americans could possess as many bear extremities as they want.
It's a single contact pad. That new socket LGA-1 is surely amazing.
I wanted to complain that once again kdawson talks about exactly one aspect of the actual story while ignoring those parts that would make the story less boring/pluggish but a look at Schneier's blog reveals that his post essentially says nothing but "hey, remember those hollow coins I talked about a year ago? I just found some more links for that".
And Schneier's year-old post consists entirely of the word "cheap". So yeah, kdawson actually did do a truly exhaustive report on the source data.
Which would indicate that you don't use a credit card either - after all, with a CC you also have the onus to declare a transaction fraudulent.
Or you buy a prepaid SIM card which doesn't have a contract attached. Sold by all providers and virtually all value brands.
Also note that the value brands are most likely cheaper than the regular ones because they were created to compete in the low-price segment. For instance, E-Plus offers regular plans but they also have the brands Simyo (for those who want very simple pricing structures) and Base (which was apparently recently retooled to a build-your-own-flatrate model).
I wonder how many people who work at a farm talked about sexing chicks at length in public (like in a bar) just to creep out the people around them?
"Man, yesterday I spent all day sexing chicks. After ten hours of sexing I was pretty beat."
"Yeah, I know. And sometimes you stuff 'em into the box and some manage to get out and you have to go after them..."
"Worst thing is, it turned out half of them were male. What do we do with three hundred male chicks?"
"Well, you could sell them to that cat food factory."
Interestingly, sex and X/Y chromosome presence aren't neccessarily connected, either. There are some conditions (IIRC always genetic defects) that might cause you to have the wrong hormonal makeup and thus express the sex your chromosomes don't indicate. IIRC in that case the sexual organs are always nonfunctional but I might be wrong.
But it's not solid sodium chloride and it's not administered orally so it's okay.
Well, you don't need salt to abort a fetus. It's perfectly consistent.
The problem is that the meaning of the solution is not part of the story. I've looked at the linked posts and a few posts following the second one and I can tell that it's exciting for xkcd fans - but kdawson failed to point out what the problem is, how it was solved and what the solution means. In essence, he reported on exactly the most boring parts of the story while omitting all the interesting ones.
I am ready to say that this story was presented in the worst possible way.
The story links to two specific posts. There is no indication that more relevant content is found in further posts. Do you really expect me to do a news site's work and research their story for them? This is extremely lazy editing however you look at it.