That was my first thought. I use ad blocking software and other privacy assurance items. I haven't seen a doubleclick ad in a loooong time.
MS is obviously having second thoughts about not making a better offer. I understand that there are people out there that will be susceptible to ads on the Internet. I don't know if you can ever get some people to surf safely. Google has so far demonstrated a huge amount of honor (honour) with regard to privacy of users. I'm absolutely happy that doubleclick didn't sell out to MS.
If your choices are nothing but differing levels of evil, I say Google is acceptable.
This also correlates to other things, can you say global warming? I was trying to find evidence of a 62 million year cycle of other things too, as well as information on gravitational alignments within the solar system having effects on the Earth. There doesn't seem to be much easily available on either. Has anyone found any reliable information with regard to this?
I do not buy anything made in China. Its not easy to find out what parts of a laptop of computer are made in China, so my plan isn't foolproof, but it's what I know that I can do to stop support for the Chinese government.
Now, if they have evidence, IMs, emails, browser logs, and enough to convince even/. crowds that there is evidence, that is all good and well.
What if you are using an app that downloads from newsgroups automatically. You are a pr0n fan, but someone puts pictures in the newsgroup that are both undesirable and illegal that then are downloaded to your system. Unless you spot them and remove them, there they are to be found if inspected.
Does anyone here know if there is a defense for this predicament? I'm not in it, but conceivably be some day.
You got it, I'm firing up some old hardware now to beat the files off all my old hard drives, just in case. Not as easy as it sounds, but for me, if it won't work anymore, its hammer time (literally), then off to the dump.
Although they covered the.kids issue, I was surprised to see.xxx not discussed, despite it never making it to law. Maybe I just read to fast. I think the comment about the 'hat trick' by Utah should earn them a 'badlawnobuscuit' award or something....
That is simple to answer. I do not log every attempted login to my AP, nor do I trust the ISP (any ISP) to not fsck up and name me as the person attached to an IP address. From what I can tell, the evidence that brings the RIAA letter is capricious in nature, and completely not guaranteed to be accurate. There is no chain of custody for much of what they base their evidence of illegal copyright infringement on. If my AP gets hacked I will still be named. If my PC is hacked and a virus is downloading files and passing them off to some place in South America, I still get blamed.
It could be as simple as when I bought my own cable modem, returned the rented one, and that modem remains identified as mine even after being rented to another customer. Because of the lack of chain of custody information, and serious doubts as to the veracity of any custody chain, I would have to prove that it wasn't me or go to court and have my personal life violated at the whims of a business entity with no legal powers. This is, in short, an abuse of the court system, my rights, and the constitution. At least that is my opinion.
This whole 'war on downloaders' amounts to the same as saying the bank was robbed by a man in a blue Ford F150, so it must be this guy that was seen at the bank and ownes a blue Ford F150. Without real personally identifying information this is no better than a witch hunt, and in many ways much worse. What if a neighbor sends an anonymous letter to the RIAA stating that I've been selling CDs from downloaded MP3s to people? Of course it's not true, but I'm forced to go through the same life-interrupting process. The **AA simply needs to be slapped down VERY hard.
Actually, I'm with you on this one. Calling attention to something good is not a bad thing. It's only bad when they are using it as a ruse to fool the public. Somehow I don't think that Dell is doing that. It seems to me, and perhaps I'm fooled, that Dell is trying with great vigor to be relevant. There is nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that at all. Google says 'Do no evil' and it is accepted. Dell says 'ok, lets try Linux, lets do some be green stuff' and somehow that is bad?
Sincerity is hard to define, but it is always backed up with action. Judge Dell by how they back up what they claim with their actions. There is a possibility that some companies will actually do good. Some will do this for good PR, some will do this because they believe it is the right thing to do.
Lets not try them before there is evidence that they need to be on trial. So far, Dell seems to be wanting to do what the public wants them to do.. at least right now.
Just thinking about what you said, I'm going to keep dozens of hard drives in a box, and *IF* the **aa should ever wonder about what I've been doing, I'm going to hand them boxes of hard drives. None of them with anything useful on them. That is beautiful. Make it very expensive for them to even look and see what is available to look at. Fsck, I've got old full height 4GB SCSI drives for them to fumble with...:) I bet I've got some old 300MB drives to deal with too.
I have a similar question, possibly related. I have no less than 12 systems at home. On the very remote chance that I should even be accused by the RIAA, how would they know what system to look at, or which drive (I have quite a few) to look at for evidence. Who pays for that? Do they come in and simply confiscate everything? I might have hacked the DVR and moved my music there. I might be an upgrade junky and have upgraded every system that I own on a regular basis, including wiping the drives clean of any previous data. How do they figure they can tell the difference between my habits and someone trying to hide data?
Are my computing habits putting me at risk if they should ask about my online activities? Should I be afraid? Should I be hiding stuff now?
I don't download music or movies, but how do I prove that without having to go through such huge measures as going to court? The existence of MP3 files on my hard drive does not mean I've been downloading. If I buy a used system that has music files on it, am I guilty?
My belief is that they don't have a right to look at it at all without hard evidence that I've been downloading illegally. The police are the only ones given the ability to search with probable cause only. Discovery for court purposes is one thing, do they search each defendant's home top to bottom to find any hidden hard drives? Do they 'interview' neighbors and friends to see if there is a missing hard drive they are just 'holding'?
To me, this whole hard drive evidence thing is illegal in itself. What if a virus infected my machine as was being used to pass illegally downloaded files? What happens if the defendant's lawyer declares all data on the disk to be private, other than the OS files?
I am not a gamer. I don't particularly yet care about HD TV. What is the big deal? *IF* I used Windows, I would not be upgrading from XP yet as there is no real incentive. What is the incentive to care which of these formats win? Either one will slide into the player, I'll open my beer and sit back and watch the movie.
When it comes to back up, I don't use DVD. I use disk to disk to disk, or disk to disk to tape. Sure, the distribution disk for FC8 might fit on one disk, but uh, so?
For anyone but those interested in the bleeding edge or new technology, what is the big deal?
I'm going to start a list of incidents where governments try to censor the Internet, or some portion of it, whether that is for political reasons, or out of pure ignorance of the facts of how the Internet actually works.
I think I'll include a special section for 9/11 inspired idiocy.
Before long, the only place to get uncensored wireless access will be from some 'terrorists' open AP..... sigh
Well, if you were relying on single source beacons, that might be true. But think of all the commercial beacons that are available, from TV and radio stations, to emergency radio towers, ham radio repeaters, VOR beacons... there are hundreds of radio beacons around you, no matter where you live in the civilized world. All of these, when incorporated into a positioning scheme, become more or less redundant sources of triangulation that would have to be disabled in some form or another to stop this from working. It would take a lot of effort to disable such a system as they do not rely on the same infrastructure or control systems.
Pilots have used VOR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VHF_omnidirectional_r ange for a long time. Knowing the lat/lon position of other radio beacons and being able to detect them is (IIRC) something that was experimented with for robotic vehicles.
Using geo-data and good state of the art receivers, it would be possible to locate your position reasonably accurately if you have many landmark transmitting beacons. The trouble is making those receivers small enough to be useful. Of course, this might not work too well in the middle of a desert but would function well enough for many problems.
There are other things that are worse. Straight from Dr Dobbs Journal I bring you this headline: "C++ STL Hash Containers and Performance" and if that is not good enough, the subtitle is: "Hash containers are powerful tools to add to your performance toolbox"
Even though I think blogosphere is a suck-ass buzzword which should be named after its past incarnation, "speaker's corner" I have to admit that there are worse word usage in the tech world.
Perhaps we might exchange blogosphere for "Internet whispers" in recognition of what the game "Chinese whispers" gave the world.
Fast on the heels of blogosphere is OpEd. Why don't we just call them Opinionated Editor's rants? Because people would simply shorten that to a soundbite of opedra?
People need catchy soundbites because it makes them feel informed when they use them, and not using them takes too many words.... Now we have a map woot! That helps. NOT
For a government that promotes the no child left behind education strategy, this is just one of the better examples of where that same government does not believe that people can learn. While they purport to support education they try everything to take away rights to protect the citizenry from lack of education rather than give the people the education they need.
phishing and identity crimes are all about tricking people who don't know better (for the most part).
Its time the government did something helpful instead of something protective.... at least in this regard
I believe that the _REAL_ reason that cellular phones are banned on airplanes is so that the airlines can keep passengers as close to tame cattle as possible. To control that many people standing in lines and such pretty much requires that everyone is acting like calm cattle being herded into this direction or that.
If everyone was busy on their cellular phones during the flight, they would be the normal harassed not-paying-attention-to-anyone-else kind of people they normally are. The time dilation normally experienced when people are on airline-schedule timing would run abruptly into people's normal busy schedules and that just wouldn't work. The ban is really about crowd control.
I thought the basic demographic of heavy MySpace users were the same group that never talk about the news unless its sponsored by a cosmetics company or MTV?
Pitt the Younger also tried a chimney tax, but found that windows were easier to count. People paid the tax based on the number of windows in their home. Result: a lot of boarded-up windows.
Slashdot Mirror
That was my first thought. I use ad blocking software and other privacy assurance items. I haven't seen a doubleclick ad in a loooong time.
MS is obviously having second thoughts about not making a better offer. I understand that there are people out there that will be susceptible to ads on the Internet. I don't know if you can ever get some people to surf safely. Google has so far demonstrated a huge amount of honor (honour) with regard to privacy of users. I'm absolutely happy that doubleclick didn't sell out to MS.
If your choices are nothing but differing levels of evil, I say Google is acceptable.
So can we get the 'yes' and 'hahaha' tags already
This also correlates to other things, can you say global warming? I was trying to find evidence of a 62 million year cycle of other things too, as well as information on gravitational alignments within the solar system having effects on the Earth. There doesn't seem to be much easily available on either. Has anyone found any reliable information with regard to this?
I do not buy anything made in China. Its not easy to find out what parts of a laptop of computer are made in China, so my plan isn't foolproof, but it's what I know that I can do to stop support for the Chinese government.
What else can people do? Ideas?
I hope that the 'right' people are reading what you said ;)
Now, if they have evidence, IMs, emails, browser logs, and enough to convince even /. crowds that there is evidence, that is all good and well.
What if you are using an app that downloads from newsgroups automatically. You are a pr0n fan, but someone puts pictures in the newsgroup that are both undesirable and illegal that then are downloaded to your system. Unless you spot them and remove them, there they are to be found if inspected.
Does anyone here know if there is a defense for this predicament? I'm not in it, but conceivably be some day.
You got it, I'm firing up some old hardware now to beat the files off all my old hard drives, just in case. Not as easy as it sounds, but for me, if it won't work anymore, its hammer time (literally), then off to the dump.
Although they covered the .kids issue, I was surprised to see .xxx not discussed, despite it never making it to law. Maybe I just read to fast. I think the comment about the 'hat trick' by Utah should earn them a 'badlawnobuscuit' award or something....
That is simple to answer. I do not log every attempted login to my AP, nor do I trust the ISP (any ISP) to not fsck up and name me as the person attached to an IP address. From what I can tell, the evidence that brings the RIAA letter is capricious in nature, and completely not guaranteed to be accurate. There is no chain of custody for much of what they base their evidence of illegal copyright infringement on. If my AP gets hacked I will still be named. If my PC is hacked and a virus is downloading files and passing them off to some place in South America, I still get blamed.
It could be as simple as when I bought my own cable modem, returned the rented one, and that modem remains identified as mine even after being rented to another customer. Because of the lack of chain of custody information, and serious doubts as to the veracity of any custody chain, I would have to prove that it wasn't me or go to court and have my personal life violated at the whims of a business entity with no legal powers. This is, in short, an abuse of the court system, my rights, and the constitution. At least that is my opinion.
This whole 'war on downloaders' amounts to the same as saying the bank was robbed by a man in a blue Ford F150, so it must be this guy that was seen at the bank and ownes a blue Ford F150. Without real personally identifying information this is no better than a witch hunt, and in many ways much worse. What if a neighbor sends an anonymous letter to the RIAA stating that I've been selling CDs from downloaded MP3s to people? Of course it's not true, but I'm forced to go through the same life-interrupting process. The **AA simply needs to be slapped down VERY hard.
Actually, I'm with you on this one. Calling attention to something good is not a bad thing. It's only bad when they are using it as a ruse to fool the public. Somehow I don't think that Dell is doing that. It seems to me, and perhaps I'm fooled, that Dell is trying with great vigor to be relevant. There is nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that at all. Google says 'Do no evil' and it is accepted. Dell says 'ok, lets try Linux, lets do some be green stuff' and somehow that is bad?
.. at least right now.
Sincerity is hard to define, but it is always backed up with action. Judge Dell by how they back up what they claim with their actions. There is a possibility that some companies will actually do good. Some will do this for good PR, some will do this because they believe it is the right thing to do.
Lets not try them before there is evidence that they need to be on trial. So far, Dell seems to be wanting to do what the public wants them to do
Just thinking about what you said, I'm going to keep dozens of hard drives in a box, and *IF* the **aa should ever wonder about what I've been doing, I'm going to hand them boxes of hard drives. None of them with anything useful on them. That is beautiful. Make it very expensive for them to even look and see what is available to look at. Fsck, I've got old full height 4GB SCSI drives for them to fumble with ... :) I bet I've got some old 300MB drives to deal with too.
I have a similar question, possibly related. I have no less than 12 systems at home. On the very remote chance that I should even be accused by the RIAA, how would they know what system to look at, or which drive (I have quite a few) to look at for evidence. Who pays for that? Do they come in and simply confiscate everything? I might have hacked the DVR and moved my music there. I might be an upgrade junky and have upgraded every system that I own on a regular basis, including wiping the drives clean of any previous data. How do they figure they can tell the difference between my habits and someone trying to hide data?
Are my computing habits putting me at risk if they should ask about my online activities? Should I be afraid? Should I be hiding stuff now?
I don't download music or movies, but how do I prove that without having to go through such huge measures as going to court? The existence of MP3 files on my hard drive does not mean I've been downloading. If I buy a used system that has music files on it, am I guilty?
My belief is that they don't have a right to look at it at all without hard evidence that I've been downloading illegally. The police are the only ones given the ability to search with probable cause only. Discovery for court purposes is one thing, do they search each defendant's home top to bottom to find any hidden hard drives? Do they 'interview' neighbors and friends to see if there is a missing hard drive they are just 'holding'?
To me, this whole hard drive evidence thing is illegal in itself. What if a virus infected my machine as was being used to pass illegally downloaded files? What happens if the defendant's lawyer declares all data on the disk to be private, other than the OS files?
I am not a gamer. I don't particularly yet care about HD TV. What is the big deal? *IF* I used Windows, I would not be upgrading from XP yet as there is no real incentive. What is the incentive to care which of these formats win? Either one will slide into the player, I'll open my beer and sit back and watch the movie.
When it comes to back up, I don't use DVD. I use disk to disk to disk, or disk to disk to tape. Sure, the distribution disk for FC8 might fit on one disk, but uh, so?
For anyone but those interested in the bleeding edge or new technology, what is the big deal?
I'm going to start a list of incidents where governments try to censor the Internet, or some portion of it, whether that is for political reasons, or out of pure ignorance of the facts of how the Internet actually works.
I think I'll include a special section for 9/11 inspired idiocy.
Before long, the only place to get uncensored wireless access will be from some 'terrorists' open AP..... sigh
Well, if you were relying on single source beacons, that might be true. But think of all the commercial beacons that are available, from TV and radio stations, to emergency radio towers, ham radio repeaters, VOR beacons... there are hundreds of radio beacons around you, no matter where you live in the civilized world. All of these, when incorporated into a positioning scheme, become more or less redundant sources of triangulation that would have to be disabled in some form or another to stop this from working. It would take a lot of effort to disable such a system as they do not rely on the same infrastructure or control systems.
Pilots have used VOR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VHF_omnidirectional_r ange for a long time. Knowing the lat/lon position of other radio beacons and being able to detect them is (IIRC) something that was experimented with for robotic vehicles.
Using geo-data and good state of the art receivers, it would be possible to locate your position reasonably accurately if you have many landmark transmitting beacons. The trouble is making those receivers small enough to be useful. Of course, this might not work too well in the middle of a desert but would function well enough for many problems.
There are other things that are worse. Straight from Dr Dobbs Journal I bring you this headline:
"C++ STL Hash Containers and Performance" and if that is not good enough, the subtitle is: "Hash containers are powerful tools to add to your performance toolbox"
Even though I think blogosphere is a suck-ass buzzword which should be named after its past incarnation, "speaker's corner" I have to admit that there are worse word usage in the tech world.
Perhaps we might exchange blogosphere for "Internet whispers" in recognition of what the game "Chinese whispers" gave the world.
Fast on the heels of blogosphere is OpEd. Why don't we just call them Opinionated Editor's rants? Because people would simply shorten that to a soundbite of opedra?
People need catchy soundbites because it makes them feel informed when they use them, and not using them takes too many words.... Now we have a map woot! That helps. NOT
For a government that promotes the no child left behind education strategy, this is just one of the better examples of where that same government does not believe that people can learn. While they purport to support education they try everything to take away rights to protect the citizenry from lack of education rather than give the people the education they need.
phishing and identity crimes are all about tricking people who don't know better (for the most part).
Its time the government did something helpful instead of something protective.... at least in this regard
Why?????
Because rules like Sarbanes-Oxley only apply to businesses, not government groups.
I thought that is where all this was supposed to start?
I believe that the _REAL_ reason that cellular phones are banned on airplanes is so that the airlines can keep passengers as close to tame cattle as possible. To control that many people standing in lines and such pretty much requires that everyone is acting like calm cattle being herded into this direction or that.
If everyone was busy on their cellular phones during the flight, they would be the normal harassed not-paying-attention-to-anyone-else kind of people they normally are. The time dilation normally experienced when people are on airline-schedule timing would run abruptly into people's normal busy schedules and that just wouldn't work. The ban is really about crowd control.
I think Dell is just trying to help MS get their sales numbers up to a par with what they are selling in China :0
I thought the basic demographic of heavy MySpace users were the same group that never talk about the news unless its sponsored by a cosmetics company or MTV?
I couldn't believe this, there really is (well, was) a window tax. According to http://www.neatorama.com/2007/04/19/what-wont-they -tax/ ... Now, can we get some boards on the monitor please?
----------
WINDOW TAX
Pitt the Younger also tried a chimney tax, but found that windows were easier to count. People paid the tax based on the number of windows in their home. Result: a lot of boarded-up windows.
Once its all open, guess who will be in the line to download the code and get programming? Yep, the pr0n industry!