I kind of like your credit card analogy, though I'd change it from having "someone" publish it on a web site to having an established journalist publish it in a newspaper. I mean, it's obvious that the first is wrong, but in the latter case, if the information was somehow considered news-worthy, it's a little more complicated.
And just who decides who is an "established journalist", and what is "considered news-worthy"? The courts? If so, what objective criteria should they use?
The distinction between publishing information on dead trees vs. dead electrons is getting more and more muddy these days. Should professionalism be the yardstick? If so, why should somebody being paid money for his opinions give him more civil rights?
In 10 years, it's not going to matter, as On-Demand channels will start carying every movie under the sun.
And then the MPAA will be crying foul that no one will buy movies anymore and ty to pass laws requiring a tax per month on everyone to make up for the revenue they've lost to another technology shift.
You forget that the MPAA licenses movies to be played on cable. If people start getting their movies via On-Demand, the MPAA should be overjoyed, because they get their demanded cut for each viewing.
The media distributors are constantly making the point that you don't own the music or movies or software you buy, you are just licensing them. This is why the cost is so much higher than the media cost. So, by this logic, one should be allowed to return damaged media for replacements for the cost of the media plus reasonable handling fees, without having to re-buy the license.
Of course, on the other hand, all the commercials use the word own, like "Own Shrek II today!", so it seems like they can't even make up their own minds. From the perspective of copying, they say you are licensing it, so you can't make copies. From the perspective of media replacement, they say you own it, so you have to pay full price to get another one. They want to have their cake and eat it too.
So you're saying I can purchase a DVD, then put it online to have the content stolen, and that's fine?
No. If somebody steals your DVD, there is still one legitimate copy floating around. (The fact that it's in the wrong hands is of no concern to the MPAA). But if somebody downloads the content, there are now more copies than were originally authorized. A copy has been made without the right to do so. Hence copyright infringement.
Perhaps a paralell is in order. Lets take the case of the shoplifter. If he takes a copy of a DVD from Wal Mart he is punished for it if caught. Should Wal Mart ALSO be punished for failing to secure and protect copywritten materials?
No, because WalMart bought the DVD from the distributor - and this includes an implicit license to the information on that one copy. What they do with that copy (watch it, sell it, give it away, allow it to be stolen, make an wall hanging, etc.) is totally at their discretion.
Why did you have to bring another hell-spawn into this already overpopulated world? Maybe the fact that you couldn't have a kid was a sign from god that you are not fit to raise children.
Since you invoke "hell" and "god", I suggest you check out a Bible and see what it says about the virtues of raising children.
(Do you also advocate abolition of medicine? Are influenza or appendicitis signs from God that someone is not fit to live? Because they used to be fatal.)
Parents who jump through hoops to concieve using IV, and parents who wade through all the red tape to adopt, usually ensure that their children will be loved, something much less likely from parents that shun birth control, breed like roaches, and have so many kids they haven't the time to nurture them or the resources to feed them. If you're worried about global overpopulation, these are likely to have a much greater impact. If my neighbour has too many children, does that mean that because of that, I'm not allowed to have any?
These tips seem to directly contradict their stated spam policy.
As sleazy as I think this is, it does not technically violate their anti-SPAM policy which forbids sending unsolicited e-mails, and posting off-topic messages to newsgroups.
The page in question just suggests that you add the links to existing messages, not that you create new ones just to promote the links. They specifically tell you not to post messages to random message boards, and that mass e-mails are considered SPAM.
Of course, I would never buy a game that promotes "how to trick your friends", but that's just me.
An invevitable conclusion to this interpretation of the First Amendment ("The right to force everyone else to listen to your free speech shall not be infringed") is:
Support the First Amendment: Read every piece of spam.
If I want to set the rules for my speaking engagement, it is my God-given right to do so. I can refuse to speak. The audience can refuse to attend. The host can refuse to allow me to speak or the audience to attend, since he owns or manages the building.
When Kerry holds a rally, who pays for his travel arrangements, and security ? The Kerry campaign.
When Bush holds a rally, who pays for his travel arrangements (Air Force One), and security (Secret Service)? The American taxpayer.
If Bush is speaking as President, his meetings should be open to all Americans, regardless of political affiliation. But if he is speaking as a Republican, his party should bear the expenses as well.
Yes, sure, many commercial applications are buggy and have slow release times but at least they aren't 100% alpha quality with huge disclaimers that they aren't responsible for what happens to your computer when you run them.
I guess you haven't read many EULAs lately. Most of them specifically disclaim responsibility in case of data loss or hardware damage, and limit their liability to the cost of the product itself.
I've got to call you and others on this poor logic: Anecdotal evidence proves nothing. Your logic:
1. The 9/11 actors traveled under valid id.
2. Requiring id would not have stopped the 9/11 actors.
3. Requiring id does not reduce the risk of airline attack
I didn't say that. I DID say that such measures would not have helped in that particular case.
There are so many cases where a disaster strikes, and the knee-jerk reaction is to enact rules to make sure that 'this can never happen again', except in many cases (like this one), it wouldn't have mattered anyway.
Maybe I'm naive, but I think it's at least slightly possible that people in the government are trying to make it harder for thousands of people to be blown up. Knowing who is present on board internally guided flying bombs might be helpful in that struggle.
All the hijackers on 9/11 HAD legitimate goverment-issued ID, and were required to show it before boarding their planes. A fat lot of good the ID requirement did then.
Re:Obligatory non-ugly URL for this article
on
Point, Click, Root.
·
· Score: 1
crap, where are my mod points!
You have to log in to see/use them.;-)
After I had been on Slashdot for a while, I started getting mod points ever few weeks. But for the past several months, I've been getting asked to medamoderate about 2-3 times daily, but have never received any mod points since then. What's up with that?
Using this criterion alone will give you 90+% success rate.
90% is no where near good enough. It only takes one scammer getting your details for you to lose your money.
Not necessarily. I got 90% myself (with one false negative: the Earthlink one). I happen to be one of their customers, making me doubly vulnerable. Nevertheless, I would not have 'fallen for it' because I never trust such links in e-mails; I always manually load the site and navigate to my personal information that way. Even if a scammer tells me my account is at risk, and I give him some credibility, a quick check to my legitimate account will show that it isn't so.
I'm wondering how much overtime the Quicktime team will be putting in to make a codec for all of the RM protected media files. Then QT could save them to disk, allow encoding, transcoding, etc. Apple then sells the encoder for a lower cost than Real, or just gives it away
Streambox tried this, and Real threw the DMCA at them, obtaining an injunction to stop shipping their products that did this. They eventually caved in and made their products Real-friendly and DRM-compliant.
Seems pretty clearly not a legitimate link, and therefore fraud, to me.
This is actually an IE 'feature', but I consider it a bug. HTTP dos not allow space characters in
URLs. However, IE allows spaces in URLS, and it silently replaces them with %20. The (sole and dubious) nice effect of this is that people can create files like "read me.htm" and just stick them in URLs and have them work. Unfortunately, such pages will only work with IE but not other browsers. Another bad side-effect is that malformed URLS like the one above (that had many spaces before the @ sign) are treated as legitimate instead of immediately failing.
Once again, Microsoft adds incompatible creeping features, and opens security holes in the process.
If I'd simply dismissed those two emails out of hand I would have locked myself out of accounts I find most useful. Encoraging people to base decisions on *hunches* when it's staightforward to check the facts and make an informed decision is completely irresponsible.
The key here is to establish a chain of trust. If I call the number on the back of my credit card, or walk into a bank branch, I am assured of a trusted connection to my bank. If I receive an e-mail from them (or a phone call out of the blue), it may or may not be legitimate.
It's very easy to deal with these things by only using trusted connections. If I get an e-mail from my bank saying there's a problem, I won't follow a link, I'll just phone them. In this way, I'm not burdened with determining the legitimacy of the e-mail. If I get an e-mail from eBay, I'll just go to www.ebay.com and log in. If I get an e-mail from paypal, I'll toss it; I know it's fraudulent (since I don't use paypal).
Wrong. Because you couldn't verify the email headers/links all 10 should be considered fraud. Trust nothing you can't verify - a little simple paranoia goes a long way.
Fraud is enrichment through falsehood. Emails that say "We are X. Go to our main website to verify your information" cannot be fraud per se, because even if they are fake, they can't make any money off you going to the legitimate site X. However, "We are X. Go <here> to verify your information" can very well be fraudulent (and even if it isn't, it's a stupid way to do business). Look at all the messages and see which of the two patterns applies. Using this criterion alone will give you 90+% success rate.
Oh yeah, nothing more relevant than a 50 year old fiction philosophy by a refugee from communism. Her knowledge of the railroad industy and the dangers of monopolistic robber barrons that Teddy Roosevelt busted up is less than her knowledge about science (miracle metal? Engines that get power from static in the air? Give us a break!)
First of all, she was writing about things happening in the future, so some aspects of science fiction were involved. Any attempt to predict future scientific or technological developments are hit and miss.
Admittedly, though her engine ideas may not be realized now, they are not out of the question. We currently use several fuel-free energy sources, such as hydroelectric power, solar power, and geothermal energy. Also, Tesla experimented with beaming electrical energy wirelessly.
Her ideas about 'miracle metal' seem fairly accurate. Ever hear of stainless steel?
I've only read it once, but I don't see how it undermines the Betamax decision. I don't see how it would outlaw P2P, etc.
If a technology has no substantial noninfringing use, it would be at risk, but it is already at risk under the current law.
If a technology does have a substantial noninfringing use, then it seems to me that all the makers/sellers of that technology have to do is only promote the noninfringing use, refuse to provide tech support to people having trouble with infringing uses, and stuff like that.
Under Betamax, if a technology has both infringing and non-infringing uses, the legitimate uses win out, and the technology is allowed. Induce turns this on its head: if a technology has both infringing and non-infringing uses, the infringing use wins out, and the teechnology is illegal.
This is like the difference between English justice (innocent until proven guilty) and Napoleonic justice (guilty until proven innocent).
Slashdot Mirror
I kind of like your credit card analogy, though I'd change it from having "someone" publish it on a web site to having an established journalist publish it in a newspaper. I mean, it's obvious that the first is wrong, but in the latter case, if the information was somehow considered news-worthy, it's a little more complicated.
And just who decides who is an "established journalist", and what is "considered news-worthy"? The courts? If so, what objective criteria should they use?
The distinction between publishing information on dead trees vs. dead electrons is getting more and more muddy these days. Should professionalism be the yardstick? If so, why should somebody being paid money for his opinions give him more civil rights?
In 10 years, it's not going to matter, as On-Demand channels will start carying every movie under the sun.
And then the MPAA will be crying foul that no one will buy movies anymore and ty to pass laws requiring a tax per month on everyone to make up for the revenue they've lost to another technology shift.
You forget that the MPAA licenses movies to be played on cable. If people start getting their movies via On-Demand, the MPAA should be overjoyed, because they get their demanded cut for each viewing.
The media distributors are constantly making the point that you don't own the music or movies or software you buy, you are just licensing them. This is why the cost is so much higher than the media cost. So, by this logic, one should be allowed to return damaged media for replacements for the cost of the media plus reasonable handling fees, without having to re-buy the license.
Of course, on the other hand, all the commercials use the word own, like "Own Shrek II today!", so it seems like they can't even make up their own minds. From the perspective of copying, they say you are licensing it, so you can't make copies. From the perspective of media replacement, they say you own it, so you have to pay full price to get another one. They want to have their cake and eat it too.
Now, if we could only engineer a virus that causes good spelling, punctuation, and grammar...
Eye ham sure that day wood make a vax seen four it write a way. Ewe don't want sum thing like that infecting the hole population now, do ewe?
So you're saying I can purchase a DVD, then put it online to have the content stolen, and that's fine?
No. If somebody steals your DVD, there is still one legitimate copy floating around. (The fact that it's in the wrong hands is of no concern to the MPAA). But if somebody downloads the content, there are now more copies than were originally authorized. A copy has been made without the right to do so. Hence copyright infringement.
Perhaps a paralell is in order. Lets take the case of the shoplifter. If he takes a copy of a DVD from Wal Mart he is punished for it if caught. Should Wal Mart ALSO be punished for failing to secure and protect copywritten materials?
No, because WalMart bought the DVD from the distributor - and this includes an implicit license to the information on that one copy. What they do with that copy (watch it, sell it, give it away, allow it to be stolen, make an wall hanging, etc.) is totally at their discretion.
Why did you have to bring another hell-spawn into this already overpopulated world? Maybe the fact that you couldn't have a kid was a sign from god that you are not fit to raise children.
Since you invoke "hell" and "god", I suggest you check out a Bible and see what it says about the virtues of raising children.
(Do you also advocate abolition of medicine? Are influenza or appendicitis signs from God that someone is not fit to live? Because they used to be fatal.)
Parents who jump through hoops to concieve using IV, and parents who wade through all the red tape to adopt, usually ensure that their children will be loved, something much less likely from parents that shun birth control, breed like roaches, and have so many kids they haven't the time to nurture them or the resources to feed them. If you're worried about global overpopulation, these are likely to have a much greater impact. If my neighbour has too many children, does that mean that because of that, I'm not allowed to have any?
My explanation was poor, and I meant to say "effect isn't a verb in this context".
:)
OK. However, when flaming someone's spelling or grammar, it is important to be precise, lest you leave yourself open to the same.
In any case, it's silly to argue about such things
How would that effect people?
It wouldn't. "People" isn't a verb. It would affect them pretty severely, however.
"effect", however, is a verb, and in the context given, the only one possible.
"I feel, that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to *shut* *up*." -- Tom Lehrer
The fact that you knew what he meant, despite his typo, meant that he did communicate effectively, even if inaccurately.
These tips seem to directly contradict their stated spam policy.
As sleazy as I think this is, it does not technically violate their anti-SPAM policy which forbids sending unsolicited e-mails, and posting off-topic messages to newsgroups.
The page in question just suggests that you add the links to existing messages, not that you create new ones just to promote the links. They specifically tell you not to post messages to random message boards, and that mass e-mails are considered SPAM.
Of course, I would never buy a game that promotes "how to trick your friends", but that's just me.
Support the First Amendment: Read at -1.
An invevitable conclusion to this interpretation of the First Amendment ("The right to force everyone else to listen to your free speech shall not be infringed") is:
Support the First Amendment: Read every piece of spam.
If I want to set the rules for my speaking engagement, it is my God-given right to do so. I can refuse to speak. The audience can refuse to attend. The host can refuse to allow me to speak or the audience to attend, since he owns or manages the building.
When Kerry holds a rally, who pays for his travel arrangements, and security ? The Kerry campaign.
When Bush holds a rally, who pays for his travel arrangements (Air Force One), and security (Secret Service)? The American taxpayer.
If Bush is speaking as President, his meetings should be open to all Americans, regardless of political affiliation. But if he is speaking as a Republican, his party should bear the expenses as well.
Yes, sure, many commercial applications are buggy and have slow release times but at least they aren't 100% alpha quality with huge disclaimers that they aren't responsible for what happens to your computer when you run them.
I guess you haven't read many EULAs lately. Most of them specifically disclaim responsibility in case of data loss or hardware damage, and limit their liability to the cost of the product itself.
I've got to call you and others on this poor logic: Anecdotal evidence proves nothing. Your logic:
1. The 9/11 actors traveled under valid id.
2. Requiring id would not have stopped the 9/11 actors.
3. Requiring id does not reduce the risk of airline attack
I didn't say that. I DID say that such measures would not have helped in that particular case.
There are so many cases where a disaster strikes, and the knee-jerk reaction is to enact rules to make sure that 'this can never happen again', except in many cases (like this one), it wouldn't have mattered anyway.
Maybe I'm naive, but I think it's at least slightly possible that people in the government are trying to make it harder for thousands of people to be blown up. Knowing who is present on board internally guided flying bombs might be helpful in that struggle.
All the hijackers on 9/11 HAD legitimate goverment-issued ID, and were required to show it before boarding their planes. A fat lot of good the ID requirement did then.
crap, where are my mod points!
;-)
You have to log in to see/use them.
After I had been on Slashdot for a while, I started getting mod points ever few weeks. But for the past several months, I've been getting asked to medamoderate about 2-3 times daily, but have never received any mod points since then. What's up with that?
Would using Jerry's name to criticize him fall under fair use/free speech?
Saying "Jerry Falwell is an idiot" is free speech. Saying "I am Jerry Falwell and I'm an idiot" is deceptive, and hence a trademark infringement.
Using this criterion alone will give you 90+% success rate.
90% is no where near good enough. It only takes one scammer getting your details for you to lose your money.
Not necessarily. I got 90% myself (with one false negative: the Earthlink one). I happen to be one of their customers, making me doubly vulnerable. Nevertheless, I would not have 'fallen for it' because I never trust such links in e-mails; I always manually load the site and navigate to my personal information that way. Even if a scammer tells me my account is at risk, and I give him some credibility, a quick check to my legitimate account will show that it isn't so.
I'm wondering how much overtime the Quicktime team will be putting in to make a codec for all of the RM protected media files. Then QT could save them to disk, allow encoding, transcoding, etc. Apple then sells the encoder for a lower cost than Real, or just gives it away
Streambox tried this, and Real threw the DMCA at them, obtaining an injunction to stop shipping their products that did this. They eventually caved in and made their products Real-friendly and DRM-compliant.
For example, you might include dates on your web pages but is the format good for users? It can probably be better!
I've gone to many web pages looking for dates, without success. (I suspect that many slashdotters have had similar experiences.)
If you look carefully at that message, you'll see the link is not to www.earthlink.net, but rather it is to curvet.co.kr:
a ges/CVS/
http://www.earthlink.net@curvet.co.kr/curvetdb/im
Seems pretty clearly not a legitimate link, and therefore fraud, to me.
This is actually an IE 'feature', but I consider it a bug. HTTP dos not allow space characters in URLs. However, IE allows spaces in URLS, and it silently replaces them with %20. The (sole and dubious) nice effect of this is that people can create files like "read me.htm" and just stick them in URLs and have them work. Unfortunately, such pages will only work with IE but not other browsers. Another bad side-effect is that malformed URLS like the one above (that had many spaces before the @ sign) are treated as legitimate instead of immediately failing.
Once again, Microsoft adds incompatible creeping features, and opens security holes in the process.
If I'd simply dismissed those two emails out of hand I would have locked myself out of accounts I find most useful. Encoraging people to base decisions on *hunches* when it's staightforward to check the facts and make an informed decision is completely irresponsible.
The key here is to establish a chain of trust. If I call the number on the back of my credit card, or walk into a bank branch, I am assured of a trusted connection to my bank. If I receive an e-mail from them (or a phone call out of the blue), it may or may not be legitimate.
It's very easy to deal with these things by only using trusted connections. If I get an e-mail from my bank saying there's a problem, I won't follow a link, I'll just phone them. In this way, I'm not burdened with determining the legitimacy of the e-mail. If I get an e-mail from eBay, I'll just go to www.ebay.com and log in. If I get an e-mail from paypal, I'll toss it; I know it's fraudulent (since I don't use paypal).
Wrong. Because you couldn't verify the email headers/links all 10 should be considered fraud. Trust nothing you can't verify - a little simple paranoia goes a long way.
Fraud is enrichment through falsehood. Emails that say "We are X. Go to our main website to verify your information" cannot be fraud per se, because even if they are fake, they can't make any money off you going to the legitimate site X. However, "We are X. Go <here> to verify your information" can very well be fraudulent (and even if it isn't, it's a stupid way to do business). Look at all the messages and see which of the two patterns applies. Using this criterion alone will give you 90+% success rate.
Oh yeah, nothing more relevant than a 50 year old fiction philosophy by a refugee from communism. Her knowledge of the railroad industy and the dangers of monopolistic robber barrons that Teddy Roosevelt busted up is less than her knowledge about science (miracle metal? Engines that get power from static in the air? Give us a break!)
First of all, she was writing about things happening in the future, so some aspects of science fiction were involved. Any attempt to predict future scientific or technological developments are hit and miss.
Admittedly, though her engine ideas may not be realized now, they are not out of the question. We currently use several fuel-free energy sources, such as hydroelectric power, solar power, and geothermal energy. Also, Tesla experimented with beaming electrical energy wirelessly.
Her ideas about 'miracle metal' seem fairly accurate. Ever hear of stainless steel?
I've only read it once, but I don't see how it undermines the Betamax decision. I don't see how it would outlaw P2P, etc.
If a technology has no substantial noninfringing use, it would be at risk, but it is already at risk under the current law.
If a technology does have a substantial noninfringing use, then it seems to me that all the makers/sellers of that technology have to do is only promote the noninfringing use, refuse to provide tech support to people having trouble with infringing uses, and stuff like that.
Under Betamax, if a technology has both infringing and non-infringing uses, the legitimate uses win out, and the technology is allowed. Induce turns this on its head: if a technology has both infringing and non-infringing uses, the infringing use wins out, and the teechnology is illegal.
This is like the difference between English justice (innocent until proven guilty) and Napoleonic justice (guilty until proven innocent).