Steganography is the way to go: if the police don't know that there's something there, they can't ask you for the password.
Since there's no way of knowing whether someone truly knows/remembers a password, the UK law is really just a variant of thoughtcrime. Appropriate for the land of Orwell.
Isn't it a lot easier to get child pornography than to get cocaine? If I recall correctly, it doesn't have to be an actual photo to be child pornography: drawings count, and perhaps doctored photos? Never mind the aforementioned 4chan source.
We might not be able to keep our information off of the internet, but how about poisoning the well? Put up pictures of yourself on flickr, facebook, etc labelled as being somebody else. Buy unusual things, subscribe to contradictory news feeds. Open a fake facebook account and post status reports of you doing things you'd never do. Everyone knows that you can't trust what you read on the Internet; governments and corporations should be taught the same lesson?
A single-player game does not need to be challenging to be fun. It doesn't actually have to be hard to complete.
As a non-gamer, I'm curious to know some examples of this. I've largely stayed away from gaming after deciding at an early age that I wasn't very good at video games (e.g. Gorf and Omega Race on Vic-20!), but I'm intrigued by what I've heard about modern games (in terms of storytelling and whatnot), and I'd like to experience it provided that I can actually make it through the game with minimal frustration.
People will still be judged on character, but what constitutes "good character" has *certainly* changed since the 60's: divorce, premarital sex, and homosexuality (to name a few) would have been presented as evidence of bad character in the past, but few companies would dare do so today (personal feelings are more varied, of course).
And this conversation is about past indiscretions, not present ones. Think about how drug use is viewed in American culture today: many politicians have admitted to having tried marijuana or other drugs in the past, which doesn't seem to ruin their careers anymore, because we've reached a point in history where a large proportion of the electorate is guilty of the same thing. *Current* drug use would be a different story, of course.
I think a similar thing will happen in the future with regard to online indiscretions. At some point in the future, we are going to have a presidential campaign where one or both candidates' teenage exploits (party photos, youthful blog posts, tweets, what have you) are going to be available for the general public to peruse, and there will be a transitional period where the older part of the electorate will see these as signs of a bad character. But eventually, the electorate will reach a point where the vast majority of the electorate are in the same boat, and while such evidence will be seen as embarrassing, it won't be seen as evidence of bad character, because that would require the voters to tar themselves with the same brush.
I'm actually reminded of the PADDs used in Star Trek: we often see characters with several PADDs piled on their desk, each containing a different document. Make them cheap enough and they could become the new portable media, like a DVD with a built-in screen.
You can "rely" on a GPS without slavishly depending on it for every turn: it really is important not to put complete faith in the GPS, and to look at its entire planned route to make sure it doesn't throw any surprises at you, but as long as you treat it like an uncle who knows the area really well but is a little bit senile, you'll be fine: you can always tell it to "Detour" or find a new route.
I've had a GPS take me on long stretches of dirt road when a simple U-turn would have sufficed, and just this past week it sent us on a river ferry, to our great surprise. (Fortunately it was running!) No cliffs yet, but it's tried to send me down paths in the forest (even named them), and kept trying to talk us into it as we found an alternate route, to our great amusement.
5.A ban on automated take down notice sending, i.e. it has to be sent by a human instead of computers (like the way some media companies are now doing to YouTube with automatic notices for content they own)
I don't think #5 is necessary if #1 and #4 are in place: a notice sent by computer is no less annoying than a notice sent by a human, and anyone who uses an automated service is running the risk of false positives, which will trigger penalties via #1. In fact, #5 may skew more towards benefitting the larger companies, who can afford to hire people specifically to handle takedown notices.
I haven't talked to any string theorists in a long time, so maybe I'm underestimating their dogmatism, but I haven't heard of any string theorists trying to get high schools to teach string theory, and I doubt string theorists spend all their time trying to disprove quantum mechanics and general relativity under the assumption that proving current theories wrong will show that they are right.
String theory might not be science yet, but equating it with Intelligent Design is disingenuous, given that ID's explanation of the origin of species is "and then a miracle happened!"
I may be missing your point, but online games don't fit the standard "zero marginal cost" argument anyway, because bandwidth is a finite (albeit renewable) resource: these pirates really are directly costing the company money without compensation, and they are in effect hacking onto the game server without permission, which would be/should be a crime even if copyright were abolished.
(It's not my intention to dismiss the example (as others have); it's a good one.)
One can imagine scenarios where calling a DNC number might result in a sale: people might put their elderly relatives' numbers on the list, for example, or someone might put their own number on the list because they have a hard time saying "no". Which makes the practice reprehensible, but not illogical.
Or... while some people who put their number on the list because they are violently anti-telemarketer (*waves*), others do it because it's quick and easy and why not? The latter are just as likely to buy from a telemarketer as anyone else. Now if there were a special RRDNC list (really really do not call) that cost $10 to join, then you can bet that only the die-hard telemarketer-haters would be on that list, and it would be stupid to call them.
Creative Commons, for one, is NOT anti-copyright. Look at the "no commercial use" clause in particular: people who use that CC license are relying on copyright law to keep large corporations from using their work without royalties.
CC's best strategy is not to take down copyright or even to take down ASCAP and their like, but to displace them. Persuade enough artists to take out copyright licenses that allow for non-commercial copying, and persuade enough people to prefer artists who do, and the draconian copyright organizations will become much less powerful and less relevant than they are today. Their ranting about copyright in general, however, will only make ASCAP a sympathetic character.
You are suggesting that the academic journals are editing articles, to make them more presentable. This isn't what happens. When I submit an article to a journal, they send it to a few people in my field to read and critique, I get their notes back, and I make the corrections myself. I write everything in LaTeX using the journal's template, so my proofs are almost camera-ready; the journal usually insists on placing the figures themselves (which is rather annoying). Whether or not the paper presents its results well depends entirely on myself and my colleagues, all academics. I've never gotten the sort of notes from the journal that one might expect from a professional editor with regards to clarity, and having read many papers in my life, neither does anyone else.
I can't speak for all journals, of course, but I think you're painting a false picture. Or am I missing your point?
You're right, of course, at least in some cases. Though I imagine asking a waiter "Oh yes, bring me a little more of that steak" is not going to work in many restaurants (except in all-you-can-eat places of course).
Given the fact that the article is all about OTHER tablet PCs, why are all the top-modded comments here about the iPad? Maybe this is why it's doing so well-- even its detractors can't seem to talk about anything else!
And even that's enough: how am I supposed to know exactly how much food will satiate me, before I eat it? I can often guess how much I need to feel full, but fairly often I end up grossly overestimating how much food I need.
If this is the case, who are these people and can they be trusted with the data any more than Facebook?
I'd say that, as long as there is competition and portability, youwill be able to trust them more: you will be able to choose the hosting provider you like regardless of what your friends and family are using, and you will be able to take all of your data and move to a different host if your first host threatens to cross the evil threshold. Furthermore, maybe they can operate at a smaller, more local scale than Facebook; heck, perhaps whole families or groups of friends could operate off of one household server.
The rumor goes that Jimmy Carter signed a treaty with the Native American tribe which had originally put the curse on the Presidency, therefore cancelling the curse.
Or what is more likely is that the curse was transferred from the President to the American people, whence we got Reagan and Dubya.
Why does she use the phrase "hypertext storytelling"? Hypertext is something that refers to HTML & HTTP. Is she trying to coin a new phrase?
Hypertext refers to text where certain words are linked to other texts which can be accessed immediately. HTML is one way of implementing hypertext, and I'm not sure that HTTP's association with hypertext is anything more than a historical accident, being the way that HTML documents have been traditionally passed around. Footnotes are the written equivalent of hypertext, containing either small snippets of additional text which can be read at once, or references which can be followed later.
So "hypertext storytelling" would be when you start telling a story, but whenever a new character or idea is introduced, you break from the main story and start giving the backstory of that character or idea, like a story with a lot of footnotes. Truly hypertextual storytelling would let the viewer/listener decide whether to follow the link to the person's backstory or not, but that's impossible in a standard television show or movie.
In fact, Wikipedia does have an article on "Hypertext fiction", so this isn't a new concept.
I think the MobileMe bits integrated into OSX might fall into this category: in the Go menu of a Finder is an item 'iDisk" which can't be used unless you buy a MobileMe subscription, but which can't be removed. This iDisk also shows up in the default sidebar, although that at least is removable.
Just using the word "experience" in this way is a red flag. "Hello! I am a friendly corporation pretending to be your friend! Boy, I am sure enjoying this fun experience!"
It's a waste of time and resources to try to boot 20 million people out of the country. It's much better to convince them to leave on their own accord, by cracking down on employers who hire undocumented workers: no jobs, less incentive to sneak into the country. (And those who do stay, will stay because they have family here, or because they just like the USA-- good candidates for legalization.)
This reminds me of Bob Newhart's sketch "Rocket Scientist", which came out in 1960:
Werner von Werner: That's a rocket. It's named after my landlord, Irving Rocket. I was about three months behind on my rent, you know, and he comes knocking on my door, and he says, "Look Werner, you know, you gotta knock it off with the firecrackers in the middle of the night, y'know, cause the neighbors are complaining. And don't hand me the Marie Curie bit, you know what I mean? What her landlord wanted to do with her rent, that's his business, but I want my rent, see? " I said, "Look, I'm working on an invention. If it works out, I'll name it after you." He said, "You're going to call it an Irving?"
I wonder if it is a common to name inventions after landlords in lieu of rent?
Slashdot Mirror
Steganography is the way to go: if the police don't know that there's something there, they can't ask you for the password.
Since there's no way of knowing whether someone truly knows/remembers a password, the UK law is really just a variant of thoughtcrime. Appropriate for the land of Orwell.
Isn't it a lot easier to get child pornography than to get cocaine? If I recall correctly, it doesn't have to be an actual photo to be child pornography: drawings count, and perhaps doctored photos? Never mind the aforementioned 4chan source.
We might not be able to keep our information off of the internet, but how about poisoning the well? Put up pictures of yourself on flickr, facebook, etc labelled as being somebody else. Buy unusual things, subscribe to contradictory news feeds. Open a fake facebook account and post status reports of you doing things you'd never do. Everyone knows that you can't trust what you read on the Internet; governments and corporations should be taught the same lesson?
I wonder who hired this company...
I'm guessing Slashdot.
A single-player game does not need to be challenging to be fun. It doesn't actually have to be hard to complete.
As a non-gamer, I'm curious to know some examples of this. I've largely stayed away from gaming after deciding at an early age that I wasn't very good at video games (e.g. Gorf and Omega Race on Vic-20!), but I'm intrigued by what I've heard about modern games (in terms of storytelling and whatnot), and I'd like to experience it provided that I can actually make it through the game with minimal frustration.
People will still be judged on character, but what constitutes "good character" has *certainly* changed since the 60's: divorce, premarital sex, and homosexuality (to name a few) would have been presented as evidence of bad character in the past, but few companies would dare do so today (personal feelings are more varied, of course).
And this conversation is about past indiscretions, not present ones. Think about how drug use is viewed in American culture today: many politicians have admitted to having tried marijuana or other drugs in the past, which doesn't seem to ruin their careers anymore, because we've reached a point in history where a large proportion of the electorate is guilty of the same thing. *Current* drug use would be a different story, of course.
I think a similar thing will happen in the future with regard to online indiscretions. At some point in the future, we are going to have a presidential campaign where one or both candidates' teenage exploits (party photos, youthful blog posts, tweets, what have you) are going to be available for the general public to peruse, and there will be a transitional period where the older part of the electorate will see these as signs of a bad character. But eventually, the electorate will reach a point where the vast majority of the electorate are in the same boat, and while such evidence will be seen as embarrassing, it won't be seen as evidence of bad character, because that would require the voters to tar themselves with the same brush.
I'm actually reminded of the PADDs used in Star Trek: we often see characters with several PADDs piled on their desk, each containing a different document. Make them cheap enough and they could become the new portable media, like a DVD with a built-in screen.
You can "rely" on a GPS without slavishly depending on it for every turn: it really is important not to put complete faith in the GPS, and to look at its entire planned route to make sure it doesn't throw any surprises at you, but as long as you treat it like an uncle who knows the area really well but is a little bit senile, you'll be fine: you can always tell it to "Detour" or find a new route.
I've had a GPS take me on long stretches of dirt road when a simple U-turn would have sufficed, and just this past week it sent us on a river ferry, to our great surprise. (Fortunately it was running!) No cliffs yet, but it's tried to send me down paths in the forest (even named them), and kept trying to talk us into it as we found an alternate route, to our great amusement.
5.A ban on automated take down notice sending, i.e. it has to be sent by a human instead of computers (like the way some media companies are now doing to YouTube with automatic notices for content they own)
I don't think #5 is necessary if #1 and #4 are in place: a notice sent by computer is no less annoying than a notice sent by a human, and anyone who uses an automated service is running the risk of false positives, which will trigger penalties via #1. In fact, #5 may skew more towards benefitting the larger companies, who can afford to hire people specifically to handle takedown notices.
Or am I missing something?
I haven't talked to any string theorists in a long time, so maybe I'm underestimating their dogmatism, but I haven't heard of any string theorists trying to get high schools to teach string theory, and I doubt string theorists spend all their time trying to disprove quantum mechanics and general relativity under the assumption that proving current theories wrong will show that they are right.
String theory might not be science yet, but equating it with Intelligent Design is disingenuous, given that ID's explanation of the origin of species is "and then a miracle happened!"
I may be missing your point, but online games don't fit the standard "zero marginal cost" argument anyway, because bandwidth is a finite (albeit renewable) resource: these pirates really are directly costing the company money without compensation, and they are in effect hacking onto the game server without permission, which would be/should be a crime even if copyright were abolished.
(It's not my intention to dismiss the example (as others have); it's a good one.)
One can imagine scenarios where calling a DNC number might result in a sale: people might put their elderly relatives' numbers on the list, for example, or someone might put their own number on the list because they have a hard time saying "no". Which makes the practice reprehensible, but not illogical.
Or... while some people who put their number on the list because they are violently anti-telemarketer (*waves*), others do it because it's quick and easy and why not? The latter are just as likely to buy from a telemarketer as anyone else. Now if there were a special RRDNC list (really really do not call) that cost $10 to join, then you can bet that only the die-hard telemarketer-haters would be on that list, and it would be stupid to call them.
Creative Commons, for one, is NOT anti-copyright. Look at the "no commercial use" clause in particular: people who use that CC license are relying on copyright law to keep large corporations from using their work without royalties.
CC's best strategy is not to take down copyright or even to take down ASCAP and their like, but to displace them. Persuade enough artists to take out copyright licenses that allow for non-commercial copying, and persuade enough people to prefer artists who do, and the draconian copyright organizations will become much less powerful and less relevant than they are today. Their ranting about copyright in general, however, will only make ASCAP a sympathetic character.
TeX to ship with iPhone.
You mean every TeX download will come with a free iPhone? Cool! :)
You are suggesting that the academic journals are editing articles, to make them more presentable. This isn't what happens. When I submit an article to a journal, they send it to a few people in my field to read and critique, I get their notes back, and I make the corrections myself. I write everything in LaTeX using the journal's template, so my proofs are almost camera-ready; the journal usually insists on placing the figures themselves (which is rather annoying). Whether or not the paper presents its results well depends entirely on myself and my colleagues, all academics. I've never gotten the sort of notes from the journal that one might expect from a professional editor with regards to clarity, and having read many papers in my life, neither does anyone else.
I can't speak for all journals, of course, but I think you're painting a false picture. Or am I missing your point?
You're right, of course, at least in some cases. Though I imagine asking a waiter "Oh yes, bring me a little more of that steak" is not going to work in many restaurants (except in all-you-can-eat places of course).
Given the fact that the article is all about OTHER tablet PCs, why are all the top-modded comments here about the iPad? Maybe this is why it's doing so well-- even its detractors can't seem to talk about anything else!
And even that's enough: how am I supposed to know exactly how much food will satiate me, before I eat it? I can often guess how much I need to feel full, but fairly often I end up grossly overestimating how much food I need.
If this is the case, who are these people and can they be trusted with the data any more than Facebook?
I'd say that, as long as there is competition and portability, youwill be able to trust them more: you will be able to choose the hosting provider you like regardless of what your friends and family are using, and you will be able to take all of your data and move to a different host if your first host threatens to cross the evil threshold. Furthermore, maybe they can operate at a smaller, more local scale than Facebook; heck, perhaps whole families or groups of friends could operate off of one household server.
The rumor goes that Jimmy Carter signed a treaty with the Native American tribe which had originally put the curse on the Presidency, therefore cancelling the curse.
Or what is more likely is that the curse was transferred from the President to the American people, whence we got Reagan and Dubya.
Why does she use the phrase "hypertext storytelling"? Hypertext is something that refers to HTML & HTTP. Is she trying to coin a new phrase?
Hypertext refers to text where certain words are linked to other texts which can be accessed immediately. HTML is one way of implementing hypertext, and I'm not sure that HTTP's association with hypertext is anything more than a historical accident, being the way that HTML documents have been traditionally passed around. Footnotes are the written equivalent of hypertext, containing either small snippets of additional text which can be read at once, or references which can be followed later.
So "hypertext storytelling" would be when you start telling a story, but whenever a new character or idea is introduced, you break from the main story and start giving the backstory of that character or idea, like a story with a lot of footnotes. Truly hypertextual storytelling would let the viewer/listener decide whether to follow the link to the person's backstory or not, but that's impossible in a standard television show or movie.
In fact, Wikipedia does have an article on "Hypertext fiction", so this isn't a new concept.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_fiction
I think the MobileMe bits integrated into OSX might fall into this category: in the Go menu of a Finder is an item 'iDisk" which can't be used unless you buy a MobileMe subscription, but which can't be removed. This iDisk also shows up in the default sidebar, although that at least is removable.
Just using the word "experience" in this way is a red flag. "Hello! I am a friendly corporation pretending to be your friend! Boy, I am sure enjoying this fun experience!"
It's a waste of time and resources to try to boot 20 million people out of the country. It's much better to convince them to leave on their own accord, by cracking down on employers who hire undocumented workers: no jobs, less incentive to sneak into the country. (And those who do stay, will stay because they have family here, or because they just like the USA-- good candidates for legalization.)
This reminds me of Bob Newhart's sketch "Rocket Scientist", which came out in 1960:
I wonder if it is a common to name inventions after landlords in lieu of rent?