this legislative effort and *ALL* those who support it:
(The Justice Department's summary of the legislation says: "It is a general tenet of the criminal law that those who attempt to commit a crime but do not complete it are as morally culpable as those who succeed in doing so.") You cannot and SHALL not legislate morality. Thought police should be shot on the basic premise that they cannot stop themselves from breaking the laws the are supposed to uphold. Witness so many big pulpit preachers that can't stay away from young men, drugs, prostitutes etc. If you look at all the crimes committed by elected leaders it will make you wonder how the US government can even operate. Thought crimes cannot be punished. Morality cannot be legislated.
If this is to pass, what immoral act would next be prosecuted? Being gay? Being obese? Being lazy?
This is clearly an admission by those who support it that they are UNABLE to enforce current laws, and even that they are trying to enforce laws that are thought to be bad laws by enough people that they can't possibly get 100% compliance.
As soon as congress passes the magical and majestic Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007.
1. Criminalize "attempting" to infringe copyright. 2. Create a new crime of life imprisonment for using pirated software. Step number two would criminalize approximately 50% of the current Windows users. This move would seriously hamper MS's future revenues and cannot be allowed.
3. Permit more wiretaps for piracy investigations. 4. Increase penalties for violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anti-circumvention regulations. I'm assuming that you have heard, Viacom is going to have the DMCA repealed during their lawsuit with YouTube?
5. Add penalties for "intended" copyright crimes. and my favorite, 6. Require Homeland Security to alert the Recording Industry Association of America.
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9719339-7.html I'm reasonably certain that if the DHS were to use their position/power to spy on the **AA all of these law suits would simply vanish. I'm thinking that one DHS director finding out how much less of a cut he got than senator so-and-so would put paid to that game.
You mean 'free' as in he didn't get any of the 'free' lunch? Or is that 'free' as in 'free' to ask "Hilf who?" Or perhaps 'free' as... well, you know, information about encryption cracks?
Examples: Not likely to be fixed completely - In some ways, Windows is a security hole Could be fixed if escalates - password strength and use Should be fixed - Lack of any authorization requirements etc.
If you remember the Pinto car-b-ques, there is a money factor to think about. Since most standard computing systems are not life-critical, some bugs can be left for later. Some bugs you might know about but they are not in your code such as those shipped with the networking stack of the RTOS that you use for an embedded product. An insecure FTP client on an embedded machine that has no access to other machines or sensitive material is not terribly bad.
On the other hand, if the machine can be compromised and allow the attacker access to other machines... that needs to be fixed.
The author is worried that the Boston SWAT team is going to break down his doors in the middle of the night and call the bomb squad to confiscate his electronics and have them detonated in a safe manner.
First there is the doubt about iTMS being a video distributor and now an artist is finding out that the Internet will actually let you interact with your fans. Wonder why the **AA never thought of that? Who knows, this 'intarweb thingy' might just catch on yet.
In other news, politicians are finding out that the Internet will allow their fans _AND_ foes to interact with them... whether they participate or not.
The Internet is changing the world, faster than we may realize. It's good to see that at least artists are figuring it out. I can only hope that the **AA start to catch on soon.
I don't know if they will be last, but I can say that this can only be good news. Open standards for documents. The mere fact that MS is fighting this with a 'standard' of their own should be indication enough to anyone that MS means to keep them locked into MS products.
Sure, they (MS) think the MS OpenXML thingy is better, that's their job to think that way. The simple truth is that an open standard would comoditize MS products.
I'm going to bet that the Internet community in general will simple work its way around to ODF without MS and MS formats will slowly die off. Enough people and governments are asking for it, it will eventually happen. Many businesses really don't care as long as all their users can use the new and the old documents without training.
10% or more cars in the US are fully electric? What kind of mileage will they be rated at? The MPG rating works when all vehicles use only gasoline engines. Now that we have hybrids we'll have to start using something else, not just adjusted MPG.
It might be miles per charge, where charge could be batteries charged to full, or a full tank of gasoline/diesel.
The point of the mileage rating was to allow the consumer to determine how cars compare in an apples to apples kind of way. The net effect was simply to allow the consumer to know how much it will cost to drive to work and back. The net effect of hybrids is to increase effective mileage. If you can (in your normal traffic driving) get 315 miles per tank full in a Honda (non-hybrid) and 375 miles per tank full/battery charge you have managed to increase the effective mileage per charge. If the overall cost of that charge up is cheaper, and you still gain 60 miles per charge up, the effective cost of operating the vehicle has been substantially decreased based on an assumption that all else is equal.
The 0 mpg while stopped/idling at a light is in actuality a negative miles per charge effect regardless of how little fuel is used at idle. The hybrid vehicles see this time as a net positive miles per charge.
In this instance and many others, perspective matters. Miles per charge, not miles per gallon.
Why do people insist that the world be black or white; beta or VHS; HD-DVD or BlueRay?
What the author should have said is that iTunes perhaps has yet to find the video market content that targets it's user base. Just because content providers are finding that they get more benefit by not having a middle man for distribution does not mean there is no room in the market place for what iTMS has to offer... or any other content distributor, can you say YouTube or others like it?
While CBS, NBC, BBC et al can find profit in distributing their own content, it is aggregaters that will create 'channels' that users will be willing to subscribe to. Just like broadcasting companies of years gone by, it will be aggregation channels that people end up watching.
Already there are too many web sites with video content and too much content for the average user to keep up with. In the end, due mostly to operator overload, users will end up just watching their 'favorite' channels of video content on the Internet. Just like there are different Internet radio stations because of taste and ease of use, video channels will emerge as the 'new tv' networks. People are often just like sheep wanting someone else to tell them what to watch. This societal effect will make its mark on Internet video content too.
The good news in this story? Content creators are seeing that they don't need a distribution company for the Internet. Perhaps musicians will see this too and wriggle out of their contracts to start putting more music content out there without the RIAA tax.
stevedcc writes "The BBC is running a story about web 2.0 and usability, including comments from Jakob Nielsen stating "Hype about Web 2.0 is making web firms neglect the basics of good design". What does Web 2.0 have to do with people neglecting the basics of good design? As far as I can tell they have always done that.
From the article: "He warned that the rush to make webpages more dynamic often meant users were badly served. Sites peppered with personalization tools were in danger of resembling the 'glossy but useless' sites at the height of the dotcom boom." Hmmmm "glossy but useless" ? Is the author talking about all these 'news' sites that are dripping with advertisements interspersed with only a small to modest amount of content? The web sites of today are looking more and more like magazines of yesterday; >60% advertisements and 30% content, where the difference is filled with trying to find the table of contents or the 2nd and 3rd parts of the story buried deeply in the magazine with incorrect page number links to them.
or whatever people want to call them have failed to catch-on in any meaningful way, mostly for the same reasons that the paperless office hasn't caught on yet. People where I work have more or less given up giving me anything on paper because I don't like it. The last two things I printed were tax form and a joke photo for my cube wall, and that counts months without/between printing anything at all.
Electronic books exist, making them in color won't make them more appreciated by consumers. I don't think this product will be used how you imagine that it will.
I can see it as a foldable/rollable screen for PDAs that would be simply AWSOME! Portable devices could use tech like this, and it will probably revolutionize fixed screens. Something this small might make that kitchen PC on the fridge door a real possibility, or a cookbook etc.
I further predict that any advances this tech makes will be with PDA users as they are more likely to want to do computer things when not sitting at their computer.
Thinking about this in relation to the previous story, what will happen if MS or some other company has tons of patents on the technology that helps you? What happens when patents restrict innovations in that area? What happens if your prosthetic arm BSOD's and causes you to veer into oncoming traffic but the EULA you signed to wear it means you can't sue MS?
That's exaggerating what role MS might play, but the question is valid.
that most of these 'patents' that MS owns are general in scope and probably would make all other OS's infringing on their patents anyway, not just free software. I believe it's time to work on making process/software patents unacceptable, especially when they are so broad that no other company could work in the same space. Patents on things like "integrating email client functionality into office apps" is just too broad, and as such can only serve to hamper innovation and business in general.
When MS can claim to have 235 patents that are violated by F/OSS we need to look closely at why they have that many that can be infringed upon by people so easily... perhaps they are not unobvious at all or too broadly stated to be of use other than to be an offensive tool to use against competitors.
Uhmmm yeah, mmmmkay. Go ahead with the -1 moron thing. The numbers of troops that will be 'able' to be actively engaged in using the Internet at any one time is not some huge number. It is a finite number that is further limited by the number of service people that are in a location that can support Internet activities. Stuck in a armored vehicle 35 miles from the green zone is probably not a place that they will support Internet activities. There are many other places as well and not everyone that might be able is awake to do so. So, in reality, the amount of bandwidth required is not unbelievably huge and it goes a long way toward increasing morale in such situations, which is the real reason for allowing Internet activities. Note that I support the fact that such activities should be monitored to prevent loss of critical data. (troop movements etc.)
So why the censorship? The DoD cites security reasons, but the Commander of Global Network Operations (DoD's Joint Task Force)"has noted a significant increase in the use of DoD network resources tied up by individuals visiting certain recreational Internet sites." The PDF released by the DoD reminds troops that this "benefits not only you, your fellow Servicemembers, and Civilian employees, but preserves our vital networks for conducting official DoD business in peace and war." Sounds like quite a sticky situation." Why the hell doesn't the world's largest military have the bandwidth to support our troops watching YouTube? We have missiles that cost millions each but we can't afford some Internet bandwidth? WTF?
that you expect that people will be honest. They won't. period.
No matter what the laws are, people will attempt to circumvent them, litigate for whatever they can get. This is how it works. The woman that won against McD's won because the court sided with her. The rest of us know that hot coffee is hot coffee. The real problem is that the law will allow such unless specifically forbidden to do so. This not only allows for absurd law suits, it allows for freedom of speech and the other liberties that we in the US enjoy. The judge should have ignored her and thrown it out, but that is another story.
Let me just correct you... to some degree. I agree with all the benefits of working from home, and I do work on infrastructure. Some days you just can't avoid needing face time with the on/off button or CD tray, but other days (maybe 2-3 per week) you can happily set at home and do stuff that you would do in your cube. The trick is scheduling your work so that it can work out that way. I spend a lot of time making sure that I can do most things remotely. Most days that remoteness means doing it from my cube rather than in front of the machine. This also means that many days I can work from home as effectively, if not more so, as if I'm in my cube. Redirecting the work phone to my home phone is useful also. When you manage to do >50% of your work from your cube, you can do all of that from home.
If you work on infrastructure, you know that meetings are generally a waste, and conf. calls can be done from home. What you are left with is balancing the amount of work you do at your desk and what can't be done at your desk. If you work to ensure that >50% can be done at your desk, you have validation for working from home 2-3 days per week.
Because antibiotics used willy nilly will eventually harm the humans the portend to protect. We humans need other symbiotic organisms to survive. Killing off the 'environment' to a sterile state will lead to dead humans eventually.
I voted for Moya in the poll. Moya took care of such things quite well where as other shows/ships never addressed this problem, or others regarding biological problems. In quite simple terms, the dust of dead skin cells and the mites that go everywhere with us would eventually cause problems. Moisture from the air (our breath for example) can be collected and used by micro organisms and would eventually cause problems somewhere on a long space voyage. A toilet is not sufficient to handle human waste as we drop dead cells and living organisms everywhere we go.
This isn't fully baked yet. You need a Senate version, a conference, a final bill... wait for it... and a Presidential signature. Ooops. You forgot one step before the Presidential signature: Impeach Pres and V.Pres... wait, then send for signing
McAfee SiteAdvisor already does this for Google search results pages. This is nothing new. Its a FF extension and works well, though lately it has pointed out that proxy servers are trying to steal my identity when I try to use them.
While using part of the site name concatenated to your base password is good, there are other simple ways to make it stronger. I keep a list of online sites that I have passwords for. By using a 'known only to me' algorithm, I can use a list of those sites. This serves two purposes; 1) I don't have to remember what all the sites are that I have accounts on, and 2) The base password might be the same, but could change according to how I personally categorize the site content/type as well as by what number the site is listed on my written list. Nothing on the written list will tell you anything other than which sites I have an account on, but it serves to remind me what the passwords and login names are. I do have to remember some things, but not very many compared to the number of accounts. An example is:
1 google 18 2 yahoo 21 3 delicious 8
Not decipherable as important parts are missing from the list and is only in my head, such as what to do with each of the numbers and what the base password(s) might be. It's still enough to jog my memory when required. In this example, the 1 or the 8 in the third column might indicate the base password while the first column might indicate what algorithm would be used in generating the additional password parts. The ones that you use the most are easiest remembered. The list is for those that you don't always use or have trouble remembering
calls into question the DMCA takedown notice process.
If Google takes content down without questioning the process or the content, they stay safe from being to blame for censorship, but it leaves the door open for people like Viacom et al to blindly request content be taken down. If some proof of copyright ownership could be shown at the time the take down is requested, might it not prevent some of the more ridiculous take downs?
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If this is to pass, what immoral act would next be prosecuted? Being gay? Being obese? Being lazy?
This is clearly an admission by those who support it that they are UNABLE to enforce current laws, and even that they are trying to enforce laws that are thought to be bad laws by enough people that they can't possibly get 100% compliance.
1. Criminalize "attempting" to infringe copyright.
2. Create a new crime of life imprisonment for using pirated software. Step number two would criminalize approximately 50% of the current Windows users. This move would seriously hamper MS's future revenues and cannot be allowed. 3. Permit more wiretaps for piracy investigations.
4. Increase penalties for violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anti-circumvention regulations. I'm assuming that you have heard, Viacom is going to have the DMCA repealed during their lawsuit with YouTube? 5. Add penalties for "intended" copyright crimes.
and my favorite,
6. Require Homeland Security to alert the Recording Industry Association of America.
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9719339-7.html I'm reasonably certain that if the DHS were to use their position/power to spy on the **AA all of these law suits would simply vanish. I'm thinking that one DHS director finding out how much less of a cut he got than senator so-and-so would put paid to that game.
You mean 'free' as in he didn't get any of the 'free' lunch? ... well, you know, information about encryption cracks?
Or is that 'free' as in 'free' to ask "Hilf who?"
Or perhaps 'free' as
Examples:
Not likely to be fixed completely - In some ways, Windows is a security hole
Could be fixed if escalates - password strength and use
Should be fixed - Lack of any authorization requirements etc.
If you remember the Pinto car-b-ques, there is a money factor to think about. Since most standard computing systems are not life-critical, some bugs can be left for later. Some bugs you might know about but they are not in your code such as those shipped with the networking stack of the RTOS that you use for an embedded product. An insecure FTP client on an embedded machine that has no access to other machines or sensitive material is not terribly bad.
On the other hand, if the machine can be compromised and allow the attacker access to other machines... that needs to be fixed.
The author is worried that the Boston SWAT team is going to break down his doors in the middle of the night and call the bomb squad to confiscate his electronics and have them detonated in a safe manner.
First there is the doubt about iTMS being a video distributor and now an artist is finding out that the Internet will actually let you interact with your fans. Wonder why the **AA never thought of that? Who knows, this 'intarweb thingy' might just catch on yet.
In other news, politicians are finding out that the Internet will allow their fans _AND_ foes to interact with them... whether they participate or not.
The Internet is changing the world, faster than we may realize. It's good to see that at least artists are figuring it out. I can only hope that the **AA start to catch on soon.
I don't know if they will be last, but I can say that this can only be good news. Open standards for documents. The mere fact that MS is fighting this with a 'standard' of their own should be indication enough to anyone that MS means to keep them locked into MS products.
Sure, they (MS) think the MS OpenXML thingy is better, that's their job to think that way. The simple truth is that an open standard would comoditize MS products.
I'm going to bet that the Internet community in general will simple work its way around to ODF without MS and MS formats will slowly die off. Enough people and governments are asking for it, it will eventually happen. Many businesses really don't care as long as all their users can use the new and the old documents without training.
10% or more cars in the US are fully electric? What kind of mileage will they be rated at? The MPG rating works when all vehicles use only gasoline engines. Now that we have hybrids we'll have to start using something else, not just adjusted MPG.
It might be miles per charge, where charge could be batteries charged to full, or a full tank of gasoline/diesel.
The point of the mileage rating was to allow the consumer to determine how cars compare in an apples to apples kind of way. The net effect was simply to allow the consumer to know how much it will cost to drive to work and back. The net effect of hybrids is to increase effective mileage. If you can (in your normal traffic driving) get 315 miles per tank full in a Honda (non-hybrid) and 375 miles per tank full/battery charge you have managed to increase the effective mileage per charge. If the overall cost of that charge up is cheaper, and you still gain 60 miles per charge up, the effective cost of operating the vehicle has been substantially decreased based on an assumption that all else is equal.
The 0 mpg while stopped/idling at a light is in actuality a negative miles per charge effect regardless of how little fuel is used at idle. The hybrid vehicles see this time as a net positive miles per charge.
In this instance and many others, perspective matters. Miles per charge, not miles per gallon.
Why do people insist that the world be black or white; beta or VHS; HD-DVD or BlueRay?
What the author should have said is that iTunes perhaps has yet to find the video market content that targets it's user base. Just because content providers are finding that they get more benefit by not having a middle man for distribution does not mean there is no room in the market place for what iTMS has to offer... or any other content distributor, can you say YouTube or others like it?
While CBS, NBC, BBC et al can find profit in distributing their own content, it is aggregaters that will create 'channels' that users will be willing to subscribe to. Just like broadcasting companies of years gone by, it will be aggregation channels that people end up watching.
Already there are too many web sites with video content and too much content for the average user to keep up with. In the end, due mostly to operator overload, users will end up just watching their 'favorite' channels of video content on the Internet. Just like there are different Internet radio stations because of taste and ease of use, video channels will emerge as the 'new tv' networks. People are often just like sheep wanting someone else to tell them what to watch. This societal effect will make its mark on Internet video content too.
The good news in this story? Content creators are seeing that they don't need a distribution company for the Internet. Perhaps musicians will see this too and wriggle out of their contracts to start putting more music content out there without the RIAA tax.
or whatever people want to call them have failed to catch-on in any meaningful way, mostly for the same reasons that the paperless office hasn't caught on yet. People where I work have more or less given up giving me anything on paper because I don't like it. The last two things I printed were tax form and a joke photo for my cube wall, and that counts months without/between printing anything at all.
Electronic books exist, making them in color won't make them more appreciated by consumers. I don't think this product will be used how you imagine that it will.
I can see it as a foldable/rollable screen for PDAs that would be simply AWSOME! Portable devices could use tech like this, and it will probably revolutionize fixed screens. Something this small might make that kitchen PC on the fridge door a real possibility, or a cookbook etc.
I further predict that any advances this tech makes will be with PDA users as they are more likely to want to do computer things when not sitting at their computer.
Thinking about this in relation to the previous story, what will happen if MS or some other company has tons of patents on the technology that helps you? What happens when patents restrict innovations in that area? What happens if your prosthetic arm BSOD's and causes you to veer into oncoming traffic but the EULA you signed to wear it means you can't sue MS?
That's exaggerating what role MS might play, but the question is valid.
that most of these 'patents' that MS owns are general in scope and probably would make all other OS's infringing on their patents anyway, not just free software. I believe it's time to work on making process/software patents unacceptable, especially when they are so broad that no other company could work in the same space. Patents on things like "integrating email client functionality into office apps" is just too broad, and as such can only serve to hamper innovation and business in general.
When MS can claim to have 235 patents that are violated by F/OSS we need to look closely at why they have that many that can be infringed upon by people so easily... perhaps they are not unobvious at all or too broadly stated to be of use other than to be an offensive tool to use against competitors.
Uhmmm yeah, mmmmkay. Go ahead with the -1 moron thing. The numbers of troops that will be 'able' to be actively engaged in using the Internet at any one time is not some huge number. It is a finite number that is further limited by the number of service people that are in a location that can support Internet activities. Stuck in a armored vehicle 35 miles from the green zone is probably not a place that they will support Internet activities. There are many other places as well and not everyone that might be able is awake to do so. So, in reality, the amount of bandwidth required is not unbelievably huge and it goes a long way toward increasing morale in such situations, which is the real reason for allowing Internet activities. Note that I support the fact that such activities should be monitored to prevent loss of critical data. (troop movements etc.)
that you expect that people will be honest. They won't. period.
No matter what the laws are, people will attempt to circumvent them, litigate for whatever they can get. This is how it works. The woman that won against McD's won because the court sided with her. The rest of us know that hot coffee is hot coffee. The real problem is that the law will allow such unless specifically forbidden to do so. This not only allows for absurd law suits, it allows for freedom of speech and the other liberties that we in the US enjoy. The judge should have ignored her and thrown it out, but that is another story.
I love it when someone says that 'x' can't be done.... that is sure to bring on the people that show it can be done
Let me just correct you... to some degree. I agree with all the benefits of working from home, and I do work on infrastructure. Some days you just can't avoid needing face time with the on/off button or CD tray, but other days (maybe 2-3 per week) you can happily set at home and do stuff that you would do in your cube. The trick is scheduling your work so that it can work out that way. I spend a lot of time making sure that I can do most things remotely. Most days that remoteness means doing it from my cube rather than in front of the machine. This also means that many days I can work from home as effectively, if not more so, as if I'm in my cube. Redirecting the work phone to my home phone is useful also. When you manage to do >50% of your work from your cube, you can do all of that from home.
If you work on infrastructure, you know that meetings are generally a waste, and conf. calls can be done from home. What you are left with is balancing the amount of work you do at your desk and what can't be done at your desk. If you work to ensure that >50% can be done at your desk, you have validation for working from home 2-3 days per week.
How's that?
Because antibiotics used willy nilly will eventually harm the humans the portend to protect. We humans need other symbiotic organisms to survive. Killing off the 'environment' to a sterile state will lead to dead humans eventually.
I voted for Moya in the poll. Moya took care of such things quite well where as other shows/ships never addressed this problem, or others regarding biological problems. In quite simple terms, the dust of dead skin cells and the mites that go everywhere with us would eventually cause problems. Moisture from the air (our breath for example) can be collected and used by micro organisms and would eventually cause problems somewhere on a long space voyage. A toilet is not sufficient to handle human waste as we drop dead cells and living organisms everywhere we go.
Windows on a stick? Yes, sounds familiar.... oh, sorry, that was 'shit on a stick'
Seriously though, I wonder what nick names will be found for this product?
McAfee SiteAdvisor already does this for Google search results pages. This is nothing new. Its a FF extension and works well, though lately it has pointed out that proxy servers are trying to steal my identity when I try to use them.
While using part of the site name concatenated to your base password is good, there are other simple ways to make it stronger. I keep a list of online sites that I have passwords for. By using a 'known only to me' algorithm, I can use a list of those sites. This serves two purposes; 1) I don't have to remember what all the sites are that I have accounts on, and 2) The base password might be the same, but could change according to how I personally categorize the site content/type as well as by what number the site is listed on my written list. Nothing on the written list will tell you anything other than which sites I have an account on, but it serves to remind me what the passwords and login names are. I do have to remember some things, but not very many compared to the number of accounts. An example is:
1 google 18
2 yahoo 21
3 delicious 8
Not decipherable as important parts are missing from the list and is only in my head, such as what to do with each of the numbers and what the base password(s) might be. It's still enough to jog my memory when required. In this example, the 1 or the 8 in the third column might indicate the base password while the first column might indicate what algorithm would be used in generating the additional password parts. The ones that you use the most are easiest remembered. The list is for those that you don't always use or have trouble remembering
calls into question the DMCA takedown notice process.
If Google takes content down without questioning the process or the content, they stay safe from being to blame for censorship, but it leaves the door open for people like Viacom et al to blindly request content be taken down. If some proof of copyright ownership could be shown at the time the take down is requested, might it not prevent some of the more ridiculous take downs?