This already exists in one form: Patents (actually patent law) already have the severe problem of forcing the patent holder to fight anything that might be related to his patent because not doing so can be proof of abandoning it. This can lead to losing your patent when challenged. Granted, this is not the same thing, but it works with the same kind of reasoning "if someone is going to patent something then they'll probably take it seriously because of the penalties they are putting themselves at risk to"
Now you want patent holders to "use it" which usually means they need some kind of market presence? Err, what if they cant find investors in time? What if the idea is 15 years ahead of its time? How long till this silly proposed idea leads to a losing one's patent and a deep-pocketed company just lifting the idea and selling just enough units to keep the patent from going bad? Lets not give corporate america more power with patents.
The problem with patents is that there's way too much rubber stamping going on, especially for software patents. If there is a solution here, it probably lies with dismissing all software patents and getting rid of the "defend it or lose it" laws which only hurts patent holders and do a good job of keeping legal departments busy. If not that, then a much stricter definition on what can be patented. Some high-profile perjury convictions for ignoring prior art would be nice too.
Correct its the full-version of the google toolbar that is spyware. I just visited the google toolbar page and clicked 'download' and was not given an option to get the page-rank free, thus spyware free toolbar. Not to mention their non-expiring tracking cookie.
Looks like google, again, can do some evil. Reminds me of MS in the bad old days. Because they werent IBM anything they did was golden. Now look where we are.
Err, Scalia is in favor of ALL those freedom of speech restrictions.
>virtual child pornography
Yeah, great. Got a dating sim on your computer or some Evagelion porn? Guess what? That would be a felony as those images would be considered "virtual child pronography." Does that virtual girl look virtually 18?
> tobacco advertising
Inconsequential? One of the most addictive substances known is being sold over the counter and in every gas station with ads that used to (until regulation and other people got together) deny the dangers of smoking and that it was addictive. Hell, they used to hire doctors to say good things about tobacco in the 50s.
>sexually explicit cable programming
More on Scalia's hangup with people being able to view porn or anything with a nipple or not Jesus-centric. This guy would love for the FCC to step in and sanitize all media and I seriously doubt he'll say "Oh and we'll give the internet an exception."
Yes, this is a bad ruling, but Scalia as a defender of speech is fairly ridiculous. Watch him rule yes on using tax monies to buy ten commandments and other Xtian monuments in the next couple of days for more laughs.
I breathe polluted air, so according to your logic I can't complain about the polluters.
Granted, I have no choice, literally, and the monopolization of hardware and software are related. Not the best example, but one that serves up the point.
You're also saying "You guys complain about the government, but are citizens!" Again, it should be obvious that this isnt really hypocrisy and that users/stakeholders have more of a interest in getting their complaints heard than non-users.
I think the core of the "evil" argument is the lack of regulation. Very few privacy protecting laws. The failure to do anything about the MS monopoly. The google cache which stores copyrighted data. The never expiring google tracking cookie. The spyware madness. The spam epidemic. The lack of disclosure of security violations in computer systems, especially for banks and other finanical institutions. Shady marketing practices. Poor product quality and return policies. EULAs. Shrink-wrap "licenses."
Of course "evil" is a loaded religious word, but there certainly is an argument to be said about the status quo and the lack of proper regulation to protect the consumer.
>On the one hand ranting about evil cooperations and on the other hand trying to feed from their hands....
Moving to the forest or somesuch and giving up on technology is both defeatist and counter-productive. We need these tools just to get by.
>and it applies whether you've chosen the side of America 2.0 or Allah 0.9
Some of us have chosen secularism and liberal democracy. We must be crazy not to participate in the "USA is #1" vs "Allah will punish" you nonsense the right wing has framed as a easy and pathetic frame to explain various extra-legal adventuring overseas.
It make their day more exiciting. The Weekly World News is never going out of business. Batboy will forever be on the loose. Jesus is coming back real soon now! Bigfoot was just seen, again, but the photo is grainy. A chupacabras ate a baby. Again!
Your talk of facts and implementation has no sway with these people, especially if they have an anti-Apple grudge to begin with.
People would rather talk about big evil conspiracies than just admit to boring old talk about badly written randomizing code or a poor random number generator.
This conspiracy would be funny if it didnt again expose the shocking lack of skepticism and critical thinking skills of so-called educated people.
Even more depressing, the last Weekly World News sports the title "Osama is dead." Again, wish fulfillment and conspiracies. Its just pathetic.
Correct. Everytime I hear the ignorant claim of "the liberal media" I politely ask the person who said this to tell my how Judith Miller got all those NYTimes (you know the big gay liberal paper) front page pieces about Iraq's WMD from anonymous sources. If they plead ignorance I then ask them to show me ANYWHERE in say, Harpers or The Nation, where those liberal stories intersect at all with what's presented on CNN et al. If they again plead ignorance then I ask them to debunk the propaganda model of media as described, with many examples, in Manufacturing Consent.
The "liberal media" is a nice meme that helps right-wing politicians get their way and keeps their supportoers from experiencing too much cognitive dissonance. its also completely and utterly false. Bias for all commercial media outlets can be traced to the ownership of that media outlet, profitability, nationalism, and fads.
>The reason why Fox News is KILLING the others is because of the obvious difference in reporting.
So, when ownership bias is so f'n obvious its suddenly, "the new journalism for the populace" eh? Maybe CNN/NBC/ABC/CBS et al could just be more biased towards their parent companies and owners like other "new journalism" outlets like the Moonie owned Washington Times, which never fail to tow the Moonie/right-wing line.
The lesson here is if you pander down low enough to the lowest common denominator you'll get better ratings. FOX knows this, Murdoch has a message to sell, and Stephanie the Weathergirl's sweater is tighter than ever. New journalism indeed!
>Bloggers think they're going to be the revolution of the press
I dont know any blogger who believes that, but the obligatory "anti-everything" crowd seems to project that belief on whatever they aren't into.
First off, you're reading a blog. Yes, slashdot is a blog. Second, every blogger I know does it for a small select group of people who actually visit their site and get something out of it. Yes, there are egomaniacs in every medium, but I cant tell who is worse, the "anti-everything" crowd or them.
Luckily, the extemeists tend to find each other and happily leave the rest of us alone, save for the occasional BS generalizations like the one you just posted. Maybe if you wrote a qualifier like "certain political blogs I've read" or somesuch, but projecting what you've written on most bloggers is just silly. Save it for the comment sections of little green footballs or some other political partisan hack-job. Everyday bloggers are not on some mission and its disingenious to claim they are because of a handful of nuts out there.
Okay, lets ignore the GIANT divide between PC and TV which Apple has tried to bridge before with its TV Mac or whatever that thing was.
Apple would not only get the name but the familiar and excellent Tivo interface/software. This includes the familiar and excellent Tivo remote. Sure, upside down it looks like a, ahem, little black dildo, but other than that its probably the best remote design out there. They also get Tivo's customer base and a chance to build upon a well-known brand.
Lastly, they also get all that sweet, sweet tv datamining. The data tivo collects makes the Neilson system look like 1950's technology. Apple could better resell or use this information than tivo currently does. Sounds weird? Not any weirder than Apple being the largest online digital music seller and mp3 player producer.
There's a lot to tivo Apple can build on. If apple wants to bridge the TV/PC gap then this looks like a smart move.
>The story your missing is that the Korean subsidies wern't free money to 'rich' telecoms.
This is very common with American thinkers. Here in the US, so much corporate welfare is given out through various lobbying efforts, not generally through well thought out planning. I dont at all believe most of my peers understand how powerful a stratgic "pump primer" subsidy can be to fire up business to provide some really stellar results, like what we are seeing in Korea.
Then again, the American outlook is justified as the cronyism goes very deep here and the assumption that the fair market implementation in the US will take care of itself. Of course this ignores monopoly issues, IP law abuse, etc. In the end, the US does well enough so that people aren't complaning too loudly about broadband pricing or lack of availibility, but seeing a touch of socialism and central planning produce some really excellent results just brings out the worst in the WSJ/right-wing crowd.
Sadly, this thread reads of just all the things "wrong" with the Korean implementation instead of giving them the kudos they've earned for such a huge and risky project.
I think this is the larger issue and the wedge between the US and all other post-industrialized nations, especially Europe and Canada. These countries are actually doing very well with complex programs like universal healthcare and better consumer protections; two things the US elites and populace seem to want nothing to do with and in an act of cognitive dissonance, they last out and just point out whats wrong with these socialized or "primed" programs.
Yes, there are downsides to subsidization, but there are also real upsides and we're seeing it in Koreas amazing broadband revolution and in the social programs of western democracies, except the US. Of course, the US ideology gives a lot more leeway to enterprenaurs and makes for a more nimble market, but that comes at a cost, mainly quality of life issues and companies which get too big and a government unwilling or unable to take on harmful monopolies like slashdot's favorite computer company, Microsoft.
Oh, its failed for me a bunch of times. I prefer the Hosts file method of blocking ads, in fact my hosts file is mentioned in the article so I guess I'm a bit biased. There's nothing more satisfactory than getting a pop-up yet seeing the ad inside it killed because its IP lookup was set to 127.0.0.1 by the hosts file.
Think of the custom hosts option as a second line of defense. Toss in FF's adblock extension as a third-line, but I don't use adblock because its caused me some grief on some sites when using a complex definition file.
Exactly. I'm sick of all these deceptive advertising practices:
Mail that looks like a check, but is really something else. Really fools some of my immigrant relatives.
Credit card applications with little fake credit cards in them. Err, why?
The mentioned "restocking fee" and other hidden fees stores like to push on people. Oh right, its in the middle of some posted legalese thingy somewhere, thus its the customers fault.
The various "we will beat the competitors price" nonsense that gets you kicked out of stores if you start going back and forth, not to mention writing down prices or asking the manager to sign a given quote.
The extended warranty/insurance scam. Seems harmless until these kids who work in retail are taught to say stuff like "Apple has a serious defect with these batteries, you should buy our warranty." or "The manufacturer won't cover that." I've heard both. Both were lies.
Its time retail and mass-mailers/marketers got a kick in the pants.
Blockbuster has been in the shady practices game for a long time. Especially with their "its due tuesday!" at the stroke of midnight that is.
Or google's never expiring tracking cookie. It aint there just for your "prefs."
Spyware and datamining need to be controlled, or at least made in a way which gives the user an obvious choice. Same with tivo. I didnt appreciate being put into their datamining program by default. These companies needs to change, and if legislation is the only way to do so, then go for it.
Just use your home windows machine. Install cygwin with ssh and squid. When at Panera or wherever just tunnel to the squid proxy. There are lots of easy to follow tutorials on the web on how to get cygwin up and running.
Now you can visit your bank and do whatever you need to do with some hefty encryption and the only port you need to open to the world is 22.
Youre mostly correct. But I doubt the mozilla project will ever give up. We didnt see Apache give up when the new IIS was released.
I see two advantages FF will have over the assumed kick-ass IE:
1. Extensions. Users may not want to go back to IE if they are in love with some extension that is Moz only. If people really want to help FF then they need to dream up some clever extensions to keep people hooked.
2. Momentum. Current and future FF users might not want to go and try Redmond's latest. They have all their bookmarks, etc on the browser they just switched to. On top of it, users without XP SP2 cannot get the new IE, but can run FF just fine. The win2k base is still a good size.
Not to mention general apathy. Long after I quit using outlook express at home, I never bothered to read up or even try the new versions. FF, Opera, and Safari converts may be much harder to convert back after a seriously negative user experience.
MS is making a smart move, but I think the 98% browser dominance and "We make the standards here now" monopolism are pretty much dead. I expect the new IE to get closer to standards, fix PNGs, fix CSS, and catch up with everyone else. MS cannot just release IE 6.0 with tabs. They need to get on the ball with getting their engire to act like a modern rendering engine. That will be good for everyone. Of course, ActiveX is never going away and that will be a liability for MS.
I'll take your selective inclusion and raise you "Random number generators are most likely susceptible to interference."
Yes, commercial/academic grade RNG are nice devices, but what happens when the world's communication infrastructures cry out in "Something has happened?" How does this affect even so-called shielded devices. How can this affect non-shielded computer components that aren't designed to be shielded from this. How does this affect AC levels coming from the socket in the wall.
Regardless, skepdic has a nice write-up about PEAR here: http://skepdic.com/pear.html
What gets me is that how so much of the fringe is trying very hard to make humans the center of the universe again. Once we were creatures made by gods, but Darwin proved otherwise. Once the Earth was the center of the universe, but Copernicus proved otherwise. Now, we have the New Age/Religious backlash to these discoveries coming from all over the place as man demands to be petulant child who is the most important thing in the universe, to the point of "psychicly" predicting major media events.
Also, I take issue with the fact that there are events that are marginalized or dont get press in the US, but affect a good part of the world. Where are all the spikes for underreported stories or stories that don't get to westerners?
From the global consciousness FAQ at princeton:
During deeply engaging meetings, concerts, rituals, etc., the data tend to show slightly greater order, and we are able to predict this deviation with small but significant success.
Oh, how handy! So if you get a spike you can ask "Where there any major concerts this weekend?" There are always major concerts or some cultural ritual that weekend, or that day, or that hour, depending on how well you want to fish out the event.
I remember reading about PEAR years ago, and thought it was interesting, but man, they've been doing this for years and the best they can show are their data which barely goes above chance and a hypothesis that borders on something Aquanis would have written about? These guys have had all the time in the world to predict a great many things, but dont seem to be able to do anything but cherry-pick events to fit their data, not to mention I'm very concerned about how commercial grade RNGs plugged into unshielded computers handle themselves when cell phones, comm sats, TVs, etc start going off.
I once asked Roger Nelson to be part of this research because he was asking for "eggs." He didnt need another machine in Chicago but told me he might in the future. Nothing came out of it. Eggs are just a computer with a RNG attached and PEAR's software running. The rest of my machine is pretty unshielded and if an event happens where lots more electromagnetic radiation surrounds it, it may very well affect it. Maybe not the RNG itself, but the cable to the PC or the interface or something in the PC could go off-kilter thus producing that 1% over chance they brag about. So, if this is how they run things, using volunteers with any old computer, well, its something to consider. Note: they do send you an external RNG, they dont use the one in your computer. I believe they use the parallel interface.
Put these "eggs" 2 miles underground, do some double-blind samples with major events listed by date and time THEN pull your data and see if matches up. A third party should make the "event" list and princeton should do the stats work. Something tells me if you pulled this trick off, that little 1% or so might just disappear in a puff of good experiment design. Commodity computers above ground aren't exactly the most objective devices in the world.
Screw the bible, get yourself a book on famous quotes and you'll 0wn the net. I would imagine keyphrases would be pretty susceptible to the "mental keyspace" of how well humans can choose and remember phrases. Someone can easily have a nonsensical password like "@($*oos" but no one is going to have 40 characters like that. You'll see a lot of "to be or not to be" and if rejected perhaps "to be or not to be2."
Of course a good implementation would check the quotes database first and reject any such passphrase, but that assumes a good implementation and we're talking MS here.
Now you have an established and respected source (at least to those who are in charge) pretty much putting every IT department in the world in the position of, "Code only for IE and you ass is on the line." When the higher ups find out they are losing 7-10% of their customers because of that active-x plug-in or non-standard html/javascript the CIO and the gang can't plea ignorance anymore. This is good for standards.
Slashdot Mirror
HCI.
This already exists in one form: Patents (actually patent law) already have the severe problem of forcing the patent holder to fight anything that might be related to his patent because not doing so can be proof of abandoning it. This can lead to losing your patent when challenged. Granted, this is not the same thing, but it works with the same kind of reasoning "if someone is going to patent something then they'll probably take it seriously because of the penalties they are putting themselves at risk to"
Now you want patent holders to "use it" which usually means they need some kind of market presence? Err, what if they cant find investors in time? What if the idea is 15 years ahead of its time? How long till this silly proposed idea leads to a losing one's patent and a deep-pocketed company just lifting the idea and selling just enough units to keep the patent from going bad? Lets not give corporate america more power with patents.
The problem with patents is that there's way too much rubber stamping going on, especially for software patents. If there is a solution here, it probably lies with dismissing all software patents and getting rid of the "defend it or lose it" laws which only hurts patent holders and do a good job of keeping legal departments busy. If not that, then a much stricter definition on what can be patented. Some high-profile perjury convictions for ignoring prior art would be nice too.
Correct its the full-version of the google toolbar that is spyware. I just visited the google toolbar page and clicked 'download' and was not given an option to get the page-rank free, thus spyware free toolbar. Not to mention their non-expiring tracking cookie.
Looks like google, again, can do some evil. Reminds me of MS in the bad old days. Because they werent IBM anything they did was golden. Now look where we are.
Err, Scalia is in favor of ALL those freedom of speech restrictions.
>virtual child pornography
Yeah, great. Got a dating sim on your computer or some Evagelion porn? Guess what? That would be a felony as those images would be considered "virtual child pronography." Does that virtual girl look virtually 18?
> tobacco advertising
Inconsequential? One of the most addictive substances known is being sold over the counter and in every gas station with ads that used to (until regulation and other people got together) deny the dangers of smoking and that it was addictive. Hell, they used to hire doctors to say good things about tobacco in the 50s.
>sexually explicit cable programming
More on Scalia's hangup with people being able to view porn or anything with a nipple or not Jesus-centric. This guy would love for the FCC to step in and sanitize all media and I seriously doubt he'll say "Oh and we'll give the internet an exception."
Yes, this is a bad ruling, but Scalia as a defender of speech is fairly ridiculous. Watch him rule yes on using tax monies to buy ten commandments and other Xtian monuments in the next couple of days for more laughs.
I breathe polluted air, so according to your logic I can't complain about the polluters.
Granted, I have no choice, literally, and the monopolization of hardware and software are related. Not the best example, but one that serves up the point.
You're also saying "You guys complain about the government, but are citizens!" Again, it should be obvious that this isnt really hypocrisy and that users/stakeholders have more of a interest in getting their complaints heard than non-users.
I think the core of the "evil" argument is the lack of regulation. Very few privacy protecting laws. The failure to do anything about the MS monopoly. The google cache which stores copyrighted data. The never expiring google tracking cookie. The spyware madness. The spam epidemic. The lack of disclosure of security violations in computer systems, especially for banks and other finanical institutions. Shady marketing practices. Poor product quality and return policies. EULAs. Shrink-wrap "licenses."
Of course "evil" is a loaded religious word, but there certainly is an argument to be said about the status quo and the lack of proper regulation to protect the consumer.
>On the one hand ranting about evil cooperations and on the other hand trying to feed from their hands....
Moving to the forest or somesuch and giving up on technology is both defeatist and counter-productive. We need these tools just to get by.
>and it applies whether you've chosen the side of America 2.0 or Allah 0.9
Some of us have chosen secularism and liberal democracy. We must be crazy not to participate in the "USA is #1" vs "Allah will punish" you nonsense the right wing has framed as a easy and pathetic frame to explain various extra-legal adventuring overseas.
It make their day more exiciting. The Weekly World News is never going out of business. Batboy will forever be on the loose. Jesus is coming back real soon now! Bigfoot was just seen, again, but the photo is grainy. A chupacabras ate a baby. Again!
Your talk of facts and implementation has no sway with these people, especially if they have an anti-Apple grudge to begin with.
People would rather talk about big evil conspiracies than just admit to boring old talk about badly written randomizing code or a poor random number generator.
This conspiracy would be funny if it didnt again expose the shocking lack of skepticism and critical thinking skills of so-called educated people.
Even more depressing, the last Weekly World News sports the title "Osama is dead." Again, wish fulfillment and conspiracies. Its just pathetic.
All the more reason to buy a commercial and supported unix, like oh lets say OS X.
>Go to http://www.foxnews.com/ and, outside of the opinion section, find me a story that is viciously partisan, or inaccurate.
Start here. You can thank me later.
Correct. Everytime I hear the ignorant claim of "the liberal media" I politely ask the person who said this to tell my how Judith Miller got all those NYTimes (you know the big gay liberal paper) front page pieces about Iraq's WMD from anonymous sources. If they plead ignorance I then ask them to show me ANYWHERE in say, Harpers or The Nation, where those liberal stories intersect at all with what's presented on CNN et al. If they again plead ignorance then I ask them to debunk the propaganda model of media as described, with many examples, in Manufacturing Consent.
The "liberal media" is a nice meme that helps right-wing politicians get their way and keeps their supportoers from experiencing too much cognitive dissonance. its also completely and utterly false. Bias for all commercial media outlets can be traced to the ownership of that media outlet, profitability, nationalism, and fads.
>The reason why Fox News is KILLING the others is because of the obvious difference in reporting.
So, when ownership bias is so f'n obvious its suddenly, "the new journalism for the populace" eh? Maybe CNN/NBC/ABC/CBS et al could just be more biased towards their parent companies and owners like other "new journalism" outlets like the Moonie owned Washington Times, which never fail to tow the Moonie/right-wing line.
The lesson here is if you pander down low enough to the lowest common denominator you'll get better ratings. FOX knows this, Murdoch has a message to sell, and Stephanie the Weathergirl's sweater is tighter than ever. New journalism indeed!
>Bloggers think they're going to be the revolution of the press
I dont know any blogger who believes that, but the obligatory "anti-everything" crowd seems to project that belief on whatever they aren't into.
First off, you're reading a blog. Yes, slashdot is a blog. Second, every blogger I know does it for a small select group of people who actually visit their site and get something out of it. Yes, there are egomaniacs in every medium, but I cant tell who is worse, the "anti-everything" crowd or them.
Luckily, the extemeists tend to find each other and happily leave the rest of us alone, save for the occasional BS generalizations like the one you just posted. Maybe if you wrote a qualifier like "certain political blogs I've read" or somesuch, but projecting what you've written on most bloggers is just silly. Save it for the comment sections of little green footballs or some other political partisan hack-job. Everyday bloggers are not on some mission and its disingenious to claim they are because of a handful of nuts out there.
Okay, lets ignore the GIANT divide between PC and TV which Apple has tried to bridge before with its TV Mac or whatever that thing was.
Apple would not only get the name but the familiar and excellent Tivo interface/software. This includes the familiar and excellent Tivo remote. Sure, upside down it looks like a, ahem, little black dildo, but other than that its probably the best remote design out there. They also get Tivo's customer base and a chance to build upon a well-known brand.
Lastly, they also get all that sweet, sweet tv datamining. The data tivo collects makes the Neilson system look like 1950's technology. Apple could better resell or use this information than tivo currently does. Sounds weird? Not any weirder than Apple being the largest online digital music seller and mp3 player producer.
There's a lot to tivo Apple can build on. If apple wants to bridge the TV/PC gap then this looks like a smart move.
>Sorry, but I did keep it up as long as I could.
Insert viagra joke here!
nerdfilter is down due to reaching my max bandwidth. Sorry, but I did keep it up as long as I could.
>The story your missing is that the Korean subsidies wern't free money to 'rich' telecoms.
This is very common with American thinkers. Here in the US, so much corporate welfare is given out through various lobbying efforts, not generally through well thought out planning. I dont at all believe most of my peers understand how powerful a stratgic "pump primer" subsidy can be to fire up business to provide some really stellar results, like what we are seeing in Korea.
Then again, the American outlook is justified as the cronyism goes very deep here and the assumption that the fair market implementation in the US will take care of itself. Of course this ignores monopoly issues, IP law abuse, etc. In the end, the US does well enough so that people aren't complaning too loudly about broadband pricing or lack of availibility, but seeing a touch of socialism and central planning produce some really excellent results just brings out the worst in the WSJ/right-wing crowd.
Sadly, this thread reads of just all the things "wrong" with the Korean implementation instead of giving them the kudos they've earned for such a huge and risky project.
I think this is the larger issue and the wedge between the US and all other post-industrialized nations, especially Europe and Canada. These countries are actually doing very well with complex programs like universal healthcare and better consumer protections; two things the US elites and populace seem to want nothing to do with and in an act of cognitive dissonance, they last out and just point out whats wrong with these socialized or "primed" programs.
Yes, there are downsides to subsidization, but there are also real upsides and we're seeing it in Koreas amazing broadband revolution and in the social programs of western democracies, except the US. Of course, the US ideology gives a lot more leeway to enterprenaurs and makes for a more nimble market, but that comes at a cost, mainly quality of life issues and companies which get too big and a government unwilling or unable to take on harmful monopolies like slashdot's favorite computer company, Microsoft.
Oh, its failed for me a bunch of times. I prefer the Hosts file method of blocking ads, in fact my hosts file is mentioned in the article so I guess I'm a bit biased. There's nothing more satisfactory than getting a pop-up yet seeing the ad inside it killed because its IP lookup was set to 127.0.0.1 by the hosts file.
Think of the custom hosts option as a second line of defense. Toss in FF's adblock extension as a third-line, but I don't use adblock because its caused me some grief on some sites when using a complex definition file.
Wow, a post about vested interests from a guy with an ad for a sig. Just don't ask him about car insurance!
Exactly. I'm sick of all these deceptive advertising practices:
Mail that looks like a check, but is really something else. Really fools some of my immigrant relatives.
Credit card applications with little fake credit cards in them. Err, why?
The mentioned "restocking fee" and other hidden fees stores like to push on people. Oh right, its in the middle of some posted legalese thingy somewhere, thus its the customers fault.
The various "we will beat the competitors price" nonsense that gets you kicked out of stores if you start going back and forth, not to mention writing down prices or asking the manager to sign a given quote.
The extended warranty/insurance scam. Seems harmless until these kids who work in retail are taught to say stuff like "Apple has a serious defect with these batteries, you should buy our warranty." or "The manufacturer won't cover that." I've heard both. Both were lies.
Its time retail and mass-mailers/marketers got a kick in the pants.
Blockbuster has been in the shady practices game for a long time. Especially with their "its due tuesday!" at the stroke of midnight that is.
Or google's never expiring tracking cookie. It aint there just for your "prefs."
Spyware and datamining need to be controlled, or at least made in a way which gives the user an obvious choice. Same with tivo. I didnt appreciate being put into their datamining program by default. These companies needs to change, and if legislation is the only way to do so, then go for it.
Just use your home windows machine. Install cygwin with ssh and squid. When at Panera or wherever just tunnel to the squid proxy. There are lots of easy to follow tutorials on the web on how to get cygwin up and running.
Now you can visit your bank and do whatever you need to do with some hefty encryption and the only port you need to open to the world is 22.
Youre mostly correct. But I doubt the mozilla project will ever give up. We didnt see Apache give up when the new IIS was released.
I see two advantages FF will have over the assumed kick-ass IE:
1. Extensions. Users may not want to go back to IE if they are in love with some extension that is Moz only. If people really want to help FF then they need to dream up some clever extensions to keep people hooked.
2. Momentum. Current and future FF users might not want to go and try Redmond's latest. They have all their bookmarks, etc on the browser they just switched to. On top of it, users without XP SP2 cannot get the new IE, but can run FF just fine. The win2k base is still a good size.
Not to mention general apathy. Long after I quit using outlook express at home, I never bothered to read up or even try the new versions. FF, Opera, and Safari converts may be much harder to convert back after a seriously negative user experience.
MS is making a smart move, but I think the 98% browser dominance and "We make the standards here now" monopolism are pretty much dead. I expect the new IE to get closer to standards, fix PNGs, fix CSS, and catch up with everyone else. MS cannot just release IE 6.0 with tabs. They need to get on the ball with getting their engire to act like a modern rendering engine. That will be good for everyone. Of course, ActiveX is never going away and that will be a liability for MS.
Yes, commercial/academic grade RNG are nice devices, but what happens when the world's communication infrastructures cry out in "Something has happened?" How does this affect even so-called shielded devices. How can this affect non-shielded computer components that aren't designed to be shielded from this. How does this affect AC levels coming from the socket in the wall.
Regardless, skepdic has a nice write-up about PEAR here: http://skepdic.com/pear.html
What gets me is that how so much of the fringe is trying very hard to make humans the center of the universe again. Once we were creatures made by gods, but Darwin proved otherwise. Once the Earth was the center of the universe, but Copernicus proved otherwise. Now, we have the New Age/Religious backlash to these discoveries coming from all over the place as man demands to be petulant child who is the most important thing in the universe, to the point of "psychicly" predicting major media events.
Also, I take issue with the fact that there are events that are marginalized or dont get press in the US, but affect a good part of the world. Where are all the spikes for underreported stories or stories that don't get to westerners?
From the global consciousness FAQ at princeton:Oh, how handy! So if you get a spike you can ask "Where there any major concerts this weekend?" There are always major concerts or some cultural ritual that weekend, or that day, or that hour, depending on how well you want to fish out the event.
I remember reading about PEAR years ago, and thought it was interesting, but man, they've been doing this for years and the best they can show are their data which barely goes above chance and a hypothesis that borders on something Aquanis would have written about? These guys have had all the time in the world to predict a great many things, but dont seem to be able to do anything but cherry-pick events to fit their data, not to mention I'm very concerned about how commercial grade RNGs plugged into unshielded computers handle themselves when cell phones, comm sats, TVs, etc start going off.
I once asked Roger Nelson to be part of this research because he was asking for "eggs." He didnt need another machine in Chicago but told me he might in the future. Nothing came out of it. Eggs are just a computer with a RNG attached and PEAR's software running. The rest of my machine is pretty unshielded and if an event happens where lots more electromagnetic radiation surrounds it, it may very well affect it. Maybe not the RNG itself, but the cable to the PC or the interface or something in the PC could go off-kilter thus producing that 1% over chance they brag about. So, if this is how they run things, using volunteers with any old computer, well, its something to consider. Note: they do send you an external RNG, they dont use the one in your computer. I believe they use the parallel interface.
Put these "eggs" 2 miles underground, do some double-blind samples with major events listed by date and time THEN pull your data and see if matches up. A third party should make the "event" list and princeton should do the stats work. Something tells me if you pulled this trick off, that little 1% or so might just disappear in a puff of good experiment design. Commodity computers above ground aren't exactly the most objective devices in the world.
Screw the bible, get yourself a book on famous quotes and you'll 0wn the net. I would imagine keyphrases would be pretty susceptible to the "mental keyspace" of how well humans can choose and remember phrases. Someone can easily have a nonsensical password like "@($*oos" but no one is going to have 40 characters like that. You'll see a lot of "to be or not to be" and if rejected perhaps "to be or not to be2."
Of course a good implementation would check the quotes database first and reject any such passphrase, but that assumes a good implementation and we're talking MS here.
Pray tell, what is wrong with CYA?
Now you have an established and respected source (at least to those who are in charge) pretty much putting every IT department in the world in the position of, "Code only for IE and you ass is on the line." When the higher ups find out they are losing 7-10% of their customers because of that active-x plug-in or non-standard html/javascript the CIO and the gang can't plea ignorance anymore. This is good for standards.