The problem isn't the *obvious* issue. I mean, it wasn't obvious to me in 1995, or most other people I'd wager.
I don't know how you feel about this issue, but I believe simply adding "over the Internet" to an existing method/technology/practice does not automatically make it non-obvious. In fact, these types of patent applications should be rejected outright.
The technology and practice of encoding the voice audio between analog devices has existed since very long time ago. Simply because this is now happening over the Internet does not make this method non-obvious. The G.711 standard that's widely in use today with VoIP services/applications and in general telephony has existed since 1972. If you want to look up history of pulse-code modulation and its application for audio transmission also while you are at it, please feel free.
Again, adding the Internet as a variable into an existing equation does not, or maybe should not make things patentable.
That's why when I viewed my flash settings few months back it was set to allow both microphone and webcam control to plugins. I had to expressly turn both off. Yes, they may have fixed this in the later versions of flash, but how many are still running the old version where everything is allowed by default?
A note to self: make sure the Google toolbar is uninstalled on every family computer ASAP.
This can be accomplished using flash or java applets also. As installed on everyone's computer by default flash plugin has access to your webcam and microphone. This has been so and widely known for a while and I am quite frankly surprised nobody has taken advantage of intruding into their visitors' lives until now. After all, why not? "They" have intruded into people's lives just about every other way.
The side you fall on is really a viewpoint issue, and not a technical one.
Sounds like you are assuming everything that's requesting a DNS search is a web browser. Have you checked your myspace page today?
Even if you read the blog post referenced:
The system is specifically configured to handle only NXDOMAIN HTTP traffic as it is being returned to the user's browser and to not impact email and other non-web-browsing traffic.
WTF is an "NXDOMAIN HTTP traffic"? There is no such thing!! IP address gets resolved before any connection to that address is open! Do people who make these decisions have any clue whatsoever what they are doing? Judging by the above comments I don't think so. At least you'd think at the ISP level you wouldn't have a collection of clueless morons making approving technical decisions without raising a red flag in cases like these.
Also, how about this bit from the blog post:... system only processes errors classified as NXDOMAIN (non-existent domain) when they are in route back to a user's browser, which means the user experience we are changing is a browser error stating the web site cannot be found or the auto-search functionality of Internet Explorer, neither of which are especially helpful to the user.
How in the hell does Earthlink figure that my browser's search functionality or error message is not helpful to me? Could it be that's exactly what I intended to get?
Finally, an apology for being clueless and admitting the system does not work for general purpose use of the Internet (which is what they claim to be - an Internet service provider):
Update:(8/31) I incorrectly stated that the system only handles HTTP traffic. I spoke to our engineering team and they explained that the *goal* is to affect only web traffic, and that's achieved through Barefruit's web redirectors. As we work on rolling the service out, we're continuously monitoring and tuning the configurations to minimize its impact on non-web traffic.
In other words - we don't care about screwing any non-browser traffic because it does not make us any money from this system.
Way to go ISP in screwing your customers over! Keep doing good a job of allowing clueless PHBs and non-technical "technical" staff make and approve these decisions.
When I used ReiserFS, rebuilding the tree allowed me to get to my data every time (bad IBM deathstar drive). When something similar happened on ext3, fsck kept segfaulting. So, the arbitrary description of "good" fsck was no help in this case and 3 other unrelated cases when I used ext2 and ext3. In my experience ReiserFS has been a lot more stable filesystem, even in the case of hardware problems.
Re:If you mount it as ext2...
on
EXT4 Is Coming
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, ext3 is great. I've recovered from _very bad_ situations involving hardware that might not have been possible with any other FS.
Funny, I have same experience with ReiserFS. I had a powerful desktop system that used a "Deathstar" as a main hard drive using all ReiserFS partitions. Before I knew anything about those drives I would have my PC lock up every few days, usually with the HD light on. I would need to do a hard reboot which would invoke reiserfsck on boot and on occasion I'd have to manually run rebuild tree to repair my partitions. This went on for several months until I replaced the HD with a different brand that got rid of that problem altogether. I never lost a single file during this time.
On the other hand, I've given a chance to ext3 3 times now. Each time I ended up with a partition that could not be repaired by fsck; or the last time I gave it a try and the FS worked fine for few months until the first time it didn't unmount cleanly - fsck would simply segfault at a particular spot. Yeah, maybe a hardware problem but I couldn't easily get to my data again.
At least in my experience, not only is ReiserFS faster than ext* filesystems for most operations, it is also a lot more stable and reliable in protecting my data - even with bad hardware. I have no reason whatsoever to try ext* filesystem or recommend it to anyone.
DB2 is an RPM install if you cared to look. It can also be started/restarted/stopped and completely administered using command line. Try again next time.
Especially if you can remotely control the wolf - as in Microsoft has full control of what Windows Vista comes preinstalled with. They could also easily dictate what obscure backdoors are open in the system that only their anti-spyware is aware of - others may end up staying behind at all times. The phrase "conflict of interest" comes to mind.
Vender interoperability. Redhat Enterprise Linux 3 and Enterprise Linux 4. Some commercial applications will not work properly on 4 but will on 3 because of the compiler/libraries they had used to build the code.
What? Likewise, many closed source proprietary software vendors will support their packages on Windows 2000 but not on Windows 2003. So, guess what - many businesses are running a mixture of Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 servers for this reason alone. When the next version of the Windows server OS comes out, many vendors will hold out their support for it until months and sometimes years later. Your argument makes no sense; and it suffers from the same fault as many other posts with the "ahh, I know what's wrong with open source - it's XYZ" while the case of that XYZ is the same, if not worse, with the proprietary OSes.
I agree. Nintendo has always had the best controller in the industry. Even now, IMO, the GameCube controller is one level above those of PS or XBox. The new controller actually makes sense. These types of "controllers" have been available at game arcades that are specific to a particular game - i.e. swinging, slashing, or otherwise moving it around to simulate specific actions tracked by the sensors. However, it seems like it will be the first for general gaming use. I could easily see players jumping around and swinging their swords, and throwing objects in Zelda, fighting against each other in many other games. At the very least, it may get people off the couches and involve some physical activity when playing most games - it's a step in the right direction.
Is there a more suitable IDE that works with most popular OSS (and not so OSS) languages including XML, SQL, CSS, PHP, Perl, Java, and C/C++?
Yes. KDevelop. If you wanted more functionality out of each of the components like Java IDE, or PHP IDE, then you'd have to go with something like JBuilder and Zend Studio. But these separate IDEs don't give you the same effect and a single environment what you can get with Eclipse, Emacs and KDevelop.
As far as the virtual environment, I usually need at least 8-12 virtual desktops for different tasks (yes, I multi-task all the time), even if you have multiple monitors. I prefer fvwm2 as my window manager - lightweight, stable, and extremely configurable.
Konqueror asks permission for every single file an applet modifies. Although a good idea, in practice this is so annoying I had to turn it off. Actually, I think that is a very good idea. There are a lot of programs that store usernames, passwords, and other sensitive data unencrypted in set locations. I need to know if the applet I just granted some rights to is touching the files it shouldn't be, such as anything in ~/.kde, konqueror temporary/cache files, etc.. There is no reason why most applets should have to modify multiple files. If you want to perform complex file I/O on users' systems, ask them to download and run your app locally instead. That way you are in clear with permissions and the user is hopefully more clear on what they are doing.
Yes, it does - it's exploiting their stupidity, not only the program's vulnerabilities.
Maybe technically it is an "exploit" but not in a sense of software security. If you want to argue your point further you may well arrive at the conclusion that Nigerian scam e-mails are also Firefox exploits. After all, it is Firefox that users use to view their Yahoo! or Hotmail e-mails and it is Firefox that displays the scam to those users who then very childishly believe what those e-mails say and follow the given instructions. It's similar in a sense that it's not exploiting program's vulnerabilities but it is exploiting some people's stupidity through the program.
The advent of taskbar thises and thats and Firefox plugins means you can never really be sure what the user is seeing.
Dear Bill, the idea behind the World Wide Web has always been to span between browser software, operating systems and hardware - whether it's a cell phone, PDA, laptop, desktop, touchscreen kiosk, TV, or a large overhead projector screen you are looking at. It has never been intended that all web surfers have the "unified experience" that is deemed by a single, or however many entities to be adequate for all.
You are making mine and many others' points but maybe are unaware of it. First of all, if you are talking about a civil violation or a civil case, you don't have a right to enter someone else's property to go fishing and find out whether your friend still has $50 you lent him or not. You may be allowed by the property owner to enter, but you don't have an automatic right.
Second, if you are talking about criminal offenses which are not between 2 private parties, but maybe police and a suspected violator, even then the police don't have a right to go in or through anyone's (church or ISP's) private property as they please - they need a warrant from a judge to do that. Again, an ISP may disclose the information voluntarily without a warrant, but they are not required to. Now, you have to realize there is a huge difference between handing out warrants to the local police, and empowering multi-national corporations with the same policing powers. The former is reasonable, the latter is wrong on several different levels.
Actually, there is an element of censorship there. You know that just because company XYZ says that someone is trading "illegal" material does not automatically make it so. You'll remember MPAA's automated messages accusing some universities and other mirrors of copyright violations because the GPL software package name they hosted somewhat resembled some of their movie titles - those were DMCA takedown notices. Any government-mandated removal of content which constitutes expression and speech is indirectly censoring those expressions.
If you continue with this line of thinking - most copyright violations are civil matters. I am guessing the way ISPs would remove content from their customers' hardware is by shutting of their service. How would you like your friend to notify your bank that he believes you owe him $50 and your bank was obligated to freeze all your accounts?
Even in criminal cases this is impossible. Even if someone accuses you of stealing $1000 from them, they cannot go to your bank and have your accounts closed without going to the courts first.
And don't believe what your parent post says about "equal protection" for little guys because that's bullshit. Most large ISPs have different contacts for corporate lawyers and for regular Joes. i.e. if Adobe believes someone is distributing Photoshop from AOL you can be sure they are not writing to abuse@aol.net level one support technician. Some ISPs (I don't remember which ones) openly post their corporate contact e-mail addresses in their whois records but warn that those are for corporate DMCA/copyright use only and any private messages will be disregarded. I wonder why.
Maybe where we do need censorship is for some "industry groups" like BSA and cartels like MPAA and RIAA to be unable to bribe lawmakers into passing unfair, unconstitutional, and mostly bad laws against the people.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know how you feel about this issue, but I believe simply adding "over the Internet" to an existing method/technology/practice does not automatically make it non-obvious. In fact, these types of patent applications should be rejected outright.
The technology and practice of encoding the voice audio between analog devices has existed since very long time ago. Simply because this is now happening over the Internet does not make this method non-obvious. The G.711 standard that's widely in use today with VoIP services/applications and in general telephony has existed since 1972. If you want to look up history of pulse-code modulation and its application for audio transmission also while you are at it, please feel free.
Again, adding the Internet as a variable into an existing equation does not, or maybe should not make things patentable.
That's why when I viewed my flash settings few months back it was set to allow both microphone and webcam control to plugins. I had to expressly turn both off. Yes, they may have fixed this in the later versions of flash, but how many are still running the old version where everything is allowed by default?
Easy:
rsTerrorists = db.query("select * from ip_voice_sample_log where match = 'al-jazeera'");
DOHS = new GovernmentAgentcyServer("DOHS");
ISPCollection = new ISPCollection("ALL");
foreach ( rsTerrorists as terrorist )
{
DOHS.getTerroristData ( ISPCollection.lookup(terrorist.ipaddress, terrorist.timestamp ) );
}
Under USA PATRIOT Act, nobody would even know.
This can be accomplished using flash or java applets also. As installed on everyone's computer by default flash plugin has access to your webcam and microphone. This has been so and widely known for a while and I am quite frankly surprised nobody has taken advantage of intruding into their visitors' lives until now. After all, why not? "They" have intruded into people's lives just about every other way.
Sounds like you are assuming everything that's requesting a DNS search is a web browser. Have you checked your myspace page today?
Even if you read the blog post referenced:
The system is specifically configured to handle only NXDOMAIN HTTP traffic as it is being returned to the user's browser and to not impact email and other non-web-browsing traffic.
WTF is an "NXDOMAIN HTTP traffic"? There is no such thing!! IP address gets resolved before any connection to that address is open! Do people who make these decisions have any clue whatsoever what they are doing? Judging by the above comments I don't think so. At least you'd think at the ISP level you wouldn't have a collection of clueless morons making approving technical decisions without raising a red flag in cases like these.
Also, how about this bit from the blog post:
How in the hell does Earthlink figure that my browser's search functionality or error message is not helpful to me? Could it be that's exactly what I intended to get?
Finally, an apology for being clueless and admitting the system does not work for general purpose use of the Internet (which is what they claim to be - an Internet service provider):
Update:(8/31) I incorrectly stated that the system only handles HTTP traffic. I spoke to our engineering team and they explained that the *goal* is to affect only web traffic, and that's achieved through Barefruit's web redirectors. As we work on rolling the service out, we're continuously monitoring and tuning the configurations to minimize its impact on non-web traffic.
In other words - we don't care about screwing any non-browser traffic because it does not make us any money from this system.
Way to go ISP in screwing your customers over! Keep doing good a job of allowing clueless PHBs and non-technical "technical" staff make and approve these decisions.
When I used ReiserFS, rebuilding the tree allowed me to get to my data every time (bad IBM deathstar drive). When something similar happened on ext3, fsck kept segfaulting. So, the arbitrary description of "good" fsck was no help in this case and 3 other unrelated cases when I used ext2 and ext3. In my experience ReiserFS has been a lot more stable filesystem, even in the case of hardware problems.
Funny, I have same experience with ReiserFS. I had a powerful desktop system that used a "Deathstar" as a main hard drive using all ReiserFS partitions. Before I knew anything about those drives I would have my PC lock up every few days, usually with the HD light on. I would need to do a hard reboot which would invoke reiserfsck on boot and on occasion I'd have to manually run rebuild tree to repair my partitions. This went on for several months until I replaced the HD with a different brand that got rid of that problem altogether. I never lost a single file during this time.
On the other hand, I've given a chance to ext3 3 times now. Each time I ended up with a partition that could not be repaired by fsck; or the last time I gave it a try and the FS worked fine for few months until the first time it didn't unmount cleanly - fsck would simply segfault at a particular spot. Yeah, maybe a hardware problem but I couldn't easily get to my data again.
At least in my experience, not only is ReiserFS faster than ext* filesystems for most operations, it is also a lot more stable and reliable in protecting my data - even with bad hardware. I have no reason whatsoever to try ext* filesystem or recommend it to anyone.
OK, let's try one more time. How about price fixing? Now, that's better.
Oh you'll respect it alright when the anti-terrorism unit shows up at your door, destroys your equipment and nails your ass in prison for 20 years.
DB2 is an RPM install if you cared to look. It can also be started/restarted/stopped and completely administered using command line. Try again next time.
Especially if you can remotely control the wolf - as in Microsoft has full control of what Windows Vista comes preinstalled with. They could also easily dictate what obscure backdoors are open in the system that only their anti-spyware is aware of - others may end up staying behind at all times. The phrase "conflict of interest" comes to mind.
Posted from Motorola E680i
No, it's actually 20 more years until we get a new engine with the full CMYK support.
What? Likewise, many closed source proprietary software vendors will support their packages on Windows 2000 but not on Windows 2003. So, guess what - many businesses are running a mixture of Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 servers for this reason alone. When the next version of the Windows server OS comes out, many vendors will hold out their support for it until months and sometimes years later. Your argument makes no sense; and it suffers from the same fault as many other posts with the "ahh, I know what's wrong with open source - it's XYZ" while the case of that XYZ is the same, if not worse, with the proprietary OSes.
I don't understand - can't you hold a DVD remote in your left hand? The controller is actually perfect for either hand.
I agree. Nintendo has always had the best controller in the industry. Even now, IMO, the GameCube controller is one level above those of PS or XBox. The new controller actually makes sense. These types of "controllers" have been available at game arcades that are specific to a particular game - i.e. swinging, slashing, or otherwise moving it around to simulate specific actions tracked by the sensors. However, it seems like it will be the first for general gaming use. I could easily see players jumping around and swinging their swords, and throwing objects in Zelda, fighting against each other in many other games. At the very least, it may get people off the couches and involve some physical activity when playing most games - it's a step in the right direction.
Yes. KDevelop. If you wanted more functionality out of each of the components like Java IDE, or PHP IDE, then you'd have to go with something like JBuilder and Zend Studio. But these separate IDEs don't give you the same effect and a single environment what you can get with Eclipse, Emacs and KDevelop.
As far as the virtual environment, I usually need at least 8-12 virtual desktops for different tasks (yes, I multi-task all the time), even if you have multiple monitors. I prefer fvwm2 as my window manager - lightweight, stable, and extremely configurable.
Konqueror asks permission for every single file an applet modifies. Although a good idea, in practice this is so annoying I had to turn it off.
Actually, I think that is a very good idea. There are a lot of programs that store usernames, passwords, and other sensitive data unencrypted in set locations. I need to know if the applet I just granted some rights to is touching the files it shouldn't be, such as anything in ~/.kde, konqueror temporary/cache files, etc.. There is no reason why most applets should have to modify multiple files. If you want to perform complex file I/O on users' systems, ask them to download and run your app locally instead. That way you are in clear with permissions and the user is hopefully more clear on what they are doing.
Maybe technically it is an "exploit" but not in a sense of software security. If you want to argue your point further you may well arrive at the conclusion that Nigerian scam e-mails are also Firefox exploits. After all, it is Firefox that users use to view their Yahoo! or Hotmail e-mails and it is Firefox that displays the scam to those users who then very childishly believe what those e-mails say and follow the given instructions. It's similar in a sense that it's not exploiting program's vulnerabilities but it is exploiting some people's stupidity through the program.
Dear Bill, the idea behind the World Wide Web has always been to span between browser software, operating systems and hardware - whether it's a cell phone, PDA, laptop, desktop, touchscreen kiosk, TV, or a large overhead projector screen you are looking at. It has never been intended that all web surfers have the "unified experience" that is deemed by a single, or however many entities to be adequate for all.
You are making mine and many others' points but maybe are unaware of it. First of all, if you are talking about a civil violation or a civil case, you don't have a right to enter someone else's property to go fishing and find out whether your friend still has $50 you lent him or not. You may be allowed by the property owner to enter, but you don't have an automatic right.
Second, if you are talking about criminal offenses which are not between 2 private parties, but maybe police and a suspected violator, even then the police don't have a right to go in or through anyone's (church or ISP's) private property as they please - they need a warrant from a judge to do that. Again, an ISP may disclose the information voluntarily without a warrant, but they are not required to. Now, you have to realize there is a huge difference between handing out warrants to the local police, and empowering multi-national corporations with the same policing powers. The former is reasonable, the latter is wrong on several different levels.
Actually, there is an element of censorship there. You know that just because company XYZ says that someone is trading "illegal" material does not automatically make it so. You'll remember MPAA's automated messages accusing some universities and other mirrors of copyright violations because the GPL software package name they hosted somewhat resembled some of their movie titles - those were DMCA takedown notices. Any government-mandated removal of content which constitutes expression and speech is indirectly censoring those expressions.
If you continue with this line of thinking - most copyright violations are civil matters. I am guessing the way ISPs would remove content from their customers' hardware is by shutting of their service. How would you like your friend to notify your bank that he believes you owe him $50 and your bank was obligated to freeze all your accounts?
Even in criminal cases this is impossible. Even if someone accuses you of stealing $1000 from them, they cannot go to your bank and have your accounts closed without going to the courts first.
And don't believe what your parent post says about "equal protection" for little guys because that's bullshit. Most large ISPs have different contacts for corporate lawyers and for regular Joes. i.e. if Adobe believes someone is distributing Photoshop from AOL you can be sure they are not writing to abuse@aol.net level one support technician. Some ISPs (I don't remember which ones) openly post their corporate contact e-mail addresses in their whois records but warn that those are for corporate DMCA/copyright use only and any private messages will be disregarded. I wonder why.
Maybe where we do need censorship is for some "industry groups" like BSA and cartels like MPAA and RIAA to be unable to bribe lawmakers into passing unfair, unconstitutional, and mostly bad laws against the people.