The only idea I can come up with to not so much prevent vandalism, but prevent people rom accessing vanlized information is to use a rating system per user.
When a user posts information on a wiki, everyone that visits it and is logged in, can rate the article. The more points you give the article the more points that person gets and in turn the more valuable his endorsements of other articles are.
That way, like in/., you can choose the view articles and editions of editors of above a certain level.
If most users of a systems do the wrong thing, I could see how you could blame bad design.
The problem is that with viruses and the like, it is almost always been the minority of users that make the mistakes. So, just because Mrs. Johnson doesn't know that the program that says grandkids_pics is really Trojan the working environment is at fault?? Of course not.
A designer (programmer, developer, whatever) can only realistically aim to design a system that the majority of people will understand and use successfully. There will always be stupid and ignorant people.
About your second paragraph:
If a program asks you a million times to confirm something, that's bad design by the devloper, if you stop reading the confirmations, that's a bad decision by the user.
One important distinction you're missing in your argument is that not only is the apartment building open to anyone near it, but it actually intrudes into your space. It's like the door and the doorman appear in your living room. He gives you permission to enter and you do.
I like to simply put them on hold indefinitely when they call the office. Another thing that we have a lot of fun doing is passing the telemarketer from person to person around the office. One person answers the phone and when he notices it's a telemarketer, he'll say something like "You need to speak with Bob. One second." Puts him on hold, then transfers the call to another person. That person asnwers and says "You need to speak with Stephanie." And we keep passing him along for a while.
Here I was thinking that my clients' computers were a cost of doing business and that given their one-time cost, most businesses who have large contracts shouldn't even wince at the idea of having to buy new equipment when in the long run, it shouldn't matter to their bottom lines.
I was wrong, though... but maybe that's just me because my analogy is like apples to your oranges.
You've never worked closely with any business, then. I've run a computer business for years and let me tell you that no matter how much better you tell companies they'll be, in the long run, if they buy new hardware, they'll almost always opt to simply fix what they have or upgrade little by little.
I have worked with many newspapers still running DOS for their accounting computers, orthodontists offices running Windows 3.1 for their patient information databases, etc.
One question. If the root servers and the assignment of TLDs and numbers were controlled by Europe, would you like it to stay that way? Or would you, maybe, perhaps, want the US to have some part in it?
I don't care who controls it, but I believe in the old adage 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.'
I agree that not everything needs to be profitable to be benefitial when it comes to municipally-owned services. My internet service provider is a municipally-owned cable company who also runs a local municipally-owned electric company. The service is excellent (6mbps download speed,) rarely any downtime, excellent customer service, and best of all, it is much cheaper than any other cable or electric company, in the area.
I pay my electricity, my cable TV, and my cable internet in one bill and it costs me about $50 less a month than it would if I went with Comcast or SBC or any other combination of privately-owned companies.
The city I live in is very unique in that there are only about 28,000 people serviced by several mid to large-sized internet companies. There's about 2 major cable companies, 3 DSL, 6 wireless, countless dialup ones. And they all survive despite the fact that there's a much cheaper solution available to almost anyone in the city.
I hope to see more and more municipally-owned internet access throughout the nation as it created a boom in computer sales and internet-saavy people in this area.
I agree with you. The owner of the router is at fault.
Even though the poor guy only wanted to share his internet access with his family. His precious daughters and lovely wife. They're just a good ole all-american family wanting to share a healthy internet experience together while they wait for the apple pie to cool down on the window sill where Mr. Rogers, their neighbor, greets them every morning while dad drinks his coffee and read his newspaper and mom is hard at work cooking up some pancakes, eggs, and bacon.
I completely agree.
I think it's ridiculous how much people obsess and worry about their precious privacy. Take cookies for example. God forbid Amazon webserver know that you like tentacle hentai or whatnot.
Those evil privacy usurpers can actually *gasp* read their email or reply to slashdot comments without paying for internet access.
I know that it's your prerogative if you don't want an ad to know you just clicked on the grannys in leather link, but come on... It's also your prerogative to wear a cowboy hat to work everyday, but ti doesn't mean it's not stupid... unless you're a cowboy, of course.
I think you confused contractual obligations and theft of services. It is NOT illegal for me to run an open Wi-Fi AP or run an ethernet cable to my neighbor to share internet access.
That is not theft of services.
HOWEVER, it may be in violation of my contract. In which case, my ISP could sue me for breach of contract, if it so pleases.
What can you reasonably sue for, though?
Now, I'm sure Google has a contractual obligation to do his best to prevent fraud. However, The claims of incompetence, negligence, or breach of contract are coming from a company designed to prevent fraud. I don't think this case will fly simply because of the conflict of interest.
Think about it this other way: I design a lid for bottles and cans that supposedly prevents germs and the like from contaminating whatever's in the container. Then, I start a class-action suit against Coca Cola, Pepsi Cola, Heinz, etc because I do not believe that they are doing enough to protect their products against germs.
If Click Fraud wins, I'll be doing the above class action suit in order to protect Americans from deadly, terrorist/drug-using/devil-worshipping/rock-listen ing/pro-gay-marriages viruses.
This reminds me of the media evil masterminds wanting bitching about the 30-seconds-skip buttons in tivos and other such devices. Will those 30-second-skip buttons make free TV collapse?
I write code for web applications and I do a little graphic design so my livelihood depends on my ideas and intellectual 'property', but tell me something: How complex must an idea be 'copryrightable?'
You said that combination of nine colored blocks is silly, so tell me how many colored blocks do I need to use for my color arrangement to be copyrightable? Twenty? A hundred? A million? A trillion?
I have been to museums where they have a stick leaning up against a paper cup and they call that a piece of art and I guarantee you that it is copyrighted.
And just look at Amazon's complex patent on 'one click' technology.
So, I ask one more time. At one point do objects lose their individual value and become new copyrightable ideas or objects? So, if the combination of numbers that make up a song is copyrightable, why can't I copyright 999, for example?
Slashdot Mirror
The only idea I can come up with to not so much prevent vandalism, but prevent people rom accessing vanlized information is to use a rating system per user.
/., you can choose the view articles and editions of editors of above a certain level.
When a user posts information on a wiki, everyone that visits it and is logged in, can rate the article. The more points you give the article the more points that person gets and in turn the more valuable his endorsements of other articles are.
That way, like in
Can I have your gold?
If most users of a systems do the wrong thing, I could see how you could blame bad design. The problem is that with viruses and the like, it is almost always been the minority of users that make the mistakes. So, just because Mrs. Johnson doesn't know that the program that says grandkids_pics is really Trojan the working environment is at fault?? Of course not. A designer (programmer, developer, whatever) can only realistically aim to design a system that the majority of people will understand and use successfully. There will always be stupid and ignorant people. About your second paragraph: If a program asks you a million times to confirm something, that's bad design by the devloper, if you stop reading the confirmations, that's a bad decision by the user.
One important distinction you're missing in your argument is that not only is the apartment building open to anyone near it, but it actually intrudes into your space. It's like the door and the doorman appear in your living room. He gives you permission to enter and you do.
There's a big difference,however. Unlike your wireless network, your door cannot force itself into my apartment/car/air space.
I like to simply put them on hold indefinitely when they call the office.
Another thing that we have a lot of fun doing is passing the telemarketer from person to person around the office. One person answers the phone and when he notices it's a telemarketer, he'll say something like "You need to speak with Bob. One second." Puts him on hold, then transfers the call to another person. That person asnwers and says "You need to speak with Stephanie." And we keep passing him along for a while.
The answer to your first question is for any program where keys are used for anything other than just writing.
The answer to your second question is "mu".
Imagine all the cool neat things marketers and spyware companies will be able to do with it:
- They'll be able to make scrolling messages.
- Change keys to map them with icons of advertisers
- Entire pictures of naked women with buttons flashing to take you to all kinds of "free" websites
- Don't like the look of your regular, boring keys? Download Comet Keys! Now, with even more spyware!
Another golden age for advertisers. Thank heavens.I'm sorry. What an idtiot I am.
Here I was thinking that my clients' computers were a cost of doing business and that given their one-time cost, most businesses who have large contracts shouldn't even wince at the idea of having to buy new equipment when in the long run, it shouldn't matter to their bottom lines.
I was wrong, though... but maybe that's just me because my analogy is like apples to your oranges.
read up on the meaning of irony
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/ironically.html
I agree with you that it is copyright infringment, now. That's why I can't wait for the copyright and patent laws to become extinct.
And companies like Amazon.com are only speeding things up. The more ludicrous patents, the sooner people will revolt and ignore patents altogether.
Think it won't happen? Get back with me in 15 years and we'll see in what state the intellectual 'property' laws are in.
You've never worked closely with any business, then. I've run a computer business for years and let me tell you that no matter how much better you tell companies they'll be, in the long run, if they buy new hardware, they'll almost always opt to simply fix what they have or upgrade little by little.
I have worked with many newspapers still running DOS for their accounting computers, orthodontists offices running Windows 3.1 for their patient information databases, etc.
One question. If the root servers and the assignment of TLDs and numbers were controlled by Europe, would you like it to stay that way? Or would you, maybe, perhaps, want the US to have some part in it?
I don't care who controls it, but I believe in the old adage 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.'
It's not ironic... it's coincidental.
I agree that not everything needs to be profitable to be benefitial when it comes to municipally-owned services. My internet service provider is a municipally-owned cable company who also runs a local municipally-owned electric company. The service is excellent (6mbps download speed,) rarely any downtime, excellent customer service, and best of all, it is much cheaper than any other cable or electric company, in the area.
I pay my electricity, my cable TV, and my cable internet in one bill and it costs me about $50 less a month than it would if I went with Comcast or SBC or any other combination of privately-owned companies.
The city I live in is very unique in that there are only about 28,000 people serviced by several mid to large-sized internet companies. There's about 2 major cable companies, 3 DSL, 6 wireless, countless dialup ones. And they all survive despite the fact that there's a much cheaper solution available to almost anyone in the city.
I hope to see more and more municipally-owned internet access throughout the nation as it created a boom in computer sales and internet-saavy people in this area.
It's hard to tell on the internet, but I certainly hope you're being sarcastic.
I agree with you. The owner of the router is at fault.
...wait, what were we talking about again?
Even though the poor guy only wanted to share his internet access with his family. His precious daughters and lovely wife. They're just a good ole all-american family wanting to share a healthy internet experience together while they wait for the apple pie to cool down on the window sill where Mr. Rogers, their neighbor, greets them every morning while dad drinks his coffee and read his newspaper and mom is hard at work cooking up some pancakes, eggs, and bacon.
Yea. You're right. It's just like what you described with a few minor differences:
1) the cable from the splitter is all the way in your house
2) your computer automatically looks for a cable to connect to
3) the computer asks for permission and the splitter actually grants permission to connect
but other than that, your analogy is dead on.
Wait... so, I guess the fact that the transmission is wireless is not moot, after all.
I completely agree.
I think it's ridiculous how much people obsess and worry about their precious privacy. Take cookies for example. God forbid Amazon webserver know that you like tentacle hentai or whatnot.
Those evil privacy usurpers can actually *gasp* read their email or reply to slashdot comments without paying for internet access.
I know that it's your prerogative if you don't want an ad to know you just clicked on the grannys in leather link, but come on... It's also your prerogative to wear a cowboy hat to work everyday, but ti doesn't mean it's not stupid... unless you're a cowboy, of course.
I think you confused contractual obligations and theft of services. It is NOT illegal for me to run an open Wi-Fi AP or run an ethernet cable to my neighbor to share internet access.
That is not theft of services.
HOWEVER, it may be in violation of my contract. In which case, my ISP could sue me for breach of contract, if it so pleases.
What can you reasonably sue for, though?n ing/pro-gay-marriages viruses.
Now, I'm sure Google has a contractual obligation to do his best to prevent fraud. However, The claims of incompetence, negligence, or breach of contract are coming from a company designed to prevent fraud. I don't think this case will fly simply because of the conflict of interest.
Think about it this other way: I design a lid for bottles and cans that supposedly prevents germs and the like from contaminating whatever's in the container. Then, I start a class-action suit against Coca Cola, Pepsi Cola, Heinz, etc because I do not believe that they are doing enough to protect their products against germs.
If Click Fraud wins, I'll be doing the above class action suit in order to protect Americans from deadly, terrorist/drug-using/devil-worshipping/rock-liste
This reminds me of the media evil masterminds wanting bitching about the 30-seconds-skip buttons in tivos and other such devices. Will those 30-second-skip buttons make free TV collapse?
I write code for web applications and I do a little graphic design so my livelihood depends on my ideas and intellectual 'property', but tell me something: How complex must an idea be 'copryrightable?'
You said that combination of nine colored blocks is silly, so tell me how many colored blocks do I need to use for my color arrangement to be copyrightable? Twenty? A hundred? A million? A trillion?
I have been to museums where they have a stick leaning up against a paper cup and they call that a piece of art and I guarantee you that it is copyrighted.
And just look at Amazon's complex patent on 'one click' technology.
So, I ask one more time. At one point do objects lose their individual value and become new copyrightable ideas or objects? So, if the combination of numbers that make up a song is copyrightable, why can't I copyright 999, for example?
Isn't that his opinion, though? I mean... I like colas, in general. Does that sound stupid, too?
Excellent post. I agree 100% and I cheer you forward! P.S. Superman wins because he can kick Flash's ass.