this is why it annoys me when people talk about how private corporations have the legal right to do whatever they want, and if you don't like it you can just go with another company. as if that should protect them from criticism by the public.
the fact of the matter is, corporate culture affects all of our lives. and in many cases (the ones that matter at least, not like what brand of shoes you buy) there aren't any viable alternatives, or there aren't any significant differences between the available choices. so it may be well within an ISP or a telecom company's legal right to do certain things like block BitTorrent traffic or employ packet shaping software, but that doesn't mean the public should just live with it and not do anything about the negative effect corporate policies have on our lives.
and these days it's not all that uncommon for popular corporate policies to turn into industry-backed bills, which are subsequently passed into legislation. the DMCA is one such case. the Net Neutrality debate is another. and if consumers get used to being told by corporations that certain things are acceptable/unacceptable, they come to accept these policies as 'common sense'. so when it does get passed into legislation they see nothing wrong with it.
this is particularly dangerous when most media & IT corporations have pro-business, anti-consumer views. for instance, if you visit the IGN or Gamespot message boards and discuss anything to do with homebrew development or custom firmware, you are immediately reprimanded for it and your post is censored. if you look at their TOS agreement, it does in fact delineate this policy. however, the wording of the agreement is extremely deceptive in that it tries to justify this form of censorship by lumping homebrew development & software/hardware modding with piracy and categorizes them as "illegal activities."
now, modifying your gaming device and running custom firmware or homebrew applications on it may void your warranty. but it is certainly not illegal in most countries. at least not yet. but if the public gets used to the attitude expressed by sites like Gamespot, IGN, and Sony's Playstation Network, then it won't be hard to convince legislators to pass a law that does outlaw these practices--especially when consumers are already used to having to hide their participation in homebrew activities as if it's some kind of taboo or illicit practice.
yes, and ignoring the development stage of a piece of software lets you make unqualified criticisms of pre-production releases.
Gmail was kept in beta for an exceptionally long period of time, but it was also fully-functional and pretty much stable for the majority of its beta period (which is why its extended beta status was considered unnecessary). but Google Chrome has been out for how long? 24 hours?
the point of beta testing is to get feedback from users who aren't part of the development team. if you have complaints or suggestions about the software, then you should make them to Google so they may improve on it in the release candidates. having beta software that's imperfect is not a reason to immediately dismiss a company's development abilities.
and, no, i don't believe in the concept of 'race'. i was just curious about 'Uzi', which i assumed was a Jewish name, + 'Nissan', which i thought must be Japanese.
as i've already stated. google image search only works if site-owners agree to share their images.
this has nothing to do with gmail. gmail's usefulness to the general public has nothing to do with user contribution. google's gmail service doesn't cease to be useful just because you (or everyone) uses IMAP. their publishing user emails wouldn't make the service more useful either. that's a completely random and nonsensical analogy.
and i would advise you to research the concept of 'fair use', which i think is relevant to this discussion, rather than pursuing orthogonal comparisons.
if you want to extrapolate my argument to written works then consider the Google Web Search service. in order for the search results to be useful, google has to display excerpts from listed web pages in the returned search results. most people consider this to fall within fair use. the service helps users find information more easily on the web, and also increases the amount of traffic to listed websites.
this search service only works, however, if: a.) webmasters allow google to grab select portions of the site's written content and display it along with the search results. b.) the site doesn't serve different versions of a page to google and other visitors.
if these terms aren't fair to you, then you shouldn't have your site indexed by google. and some people don't--or at least don't have some parts of their site indexed.
now, if you only want the benefit of search engine traffic but don't want people to see any part of your site's content without having paid for it first, then you are a douche. and you should be delisted. because if every site had such policies, then google's web search would cease to work.
also, let's not confuse legal rights with net etiquette. it is perfectly within your legal rights to be a douche. but that doesn't mean people can't call you out on your douche-like behavior.
that's an interesting question. in today's technological environment, it's almost impossible to develop a technology product from the ground up. you almost inevitably have to borrow from or license the work of other people to some degree.
in such a situation, if you wanted to develop an open source PVR or something, it's good to have viable open source solutions to build your product on. but many hardware vendors don't seem to offer much support for open source development.
personally, i'm sort of interested in building a PVR box using VIA's EPIA nano-ITX motherboard with the C7 processor. i'm wondering if others have had any success with the EPIA line in either PVR or media center applications.
other people's action don't define you as a douche. your own actions/choices do.
there are instances when hotlinking is inappropriate. but if everyone were so needlessly selfish and petty, then such useful services as Google Image Search (and the internet to a large degree) would be completely useless.
there are certain images that you may not want people using at all. that is fine. don't give people public access to those images. and if you don't agree to the trade-offs of being indexed by services such as Google Image Search, then you should keep your site out of the index. Google Image Search is meant to provide a public service while simultaneously giving webmasters the benefit of increased exposure. if you don't want to share your images, then why have your site listed amongst the search results?
if you only want to benefit from a particular service/resource but are unwilling to make any contributions to it, then yes, i would say that classifies you as a douche.
or how about this. if you don't want your images indexed by Google, add 2 short lines in robots.txt: User-agent: Googlebot-Image Disallow:/images/
i imagine most webmasters don't mind if someone links to one of their hosted images in a forum post or saves it to their hard drive for personal use. it's only a problem when: a.) the hotlink is made from a site like/. which generates huge volumes of traffic. b.) the image is being used for commercial purposes. c.) the webmaster is a douche.
if you're a douche, please don't pollute the google image search results with links to your site. google image search provides a useful service to people looking for images online, and also to webmasters who gain traffic from the search results. if this isn't a fair trade to you, then it's very easy to tell google not to index your site (or just particular sections of your site).
now, some people have very limited bandwidth, so they may want to share their images, but don't want hotlinks. this is very understandable. and most of these webmasters know to prevent outside referrals to images by configuring their web server with the right access rules.
but if everyone acted like a bunch of tightwads, then Google Image Search would be completely useless. frankly, i'd rather people hotlink images directly from my server for forum posts than to to use a throwaway image host like PhotoBucket and thus contribute to the sea of dead images that you see on internet message boards.
life is all about learning from experience. everyone makes mistakes at some point in their life. you just hope that as you get older, you start making them less often. so i wouldn't blame the victim for being scammed.
however, i do get frustrated with people who continue to give business to spam sites or fall for classic e-mail scams. if people would just wise up then we wouldn't have such a big problem with junk/spam e-mails anymore. i think that's one particular case of a small group of stupid people ruining things for everyone else.
negotiating intersections is a completely different problem. all it takes to negotiate an intersection is to know the rules of traffic priority/right of way (or abide by other traffic control devices like traffic signals).
when there's a pre-established protocol for prioritizing traffic, there's little need for complex decision-making on the part of the individual. that's the way our road systems are designed so as to minimize accidents. it may take a new driver a little while to learn these rules, but they would be very easy for a robot/computer to pick up.
the problem arises when you have to negotiate traffic independently without a pre-established protocol. pedestrians don't follow traffic laws or pre-agreed-upon rules of priority. so you have to detect more subtle signals from each individual to predict their behavior.
it's more like negotiating a lane-change. even though you still have to obey traffic laws, there's no strict protocol that dictates whether someone has to allow you to change lanes or not. so even after you put on your signal you have to watch nearby vehicles carefully to make sure your speed is in sync and that you won't have a collision.
so you basically pay $50 for a single amusement park ride? i'd almost rather spend the money to go to a real museum (not just information displays that are meant to hold your interest while you wait in a line).
it's called PR. business dealings are usually ugly and may involve despicable actions/decisions. if they came out with the whole truth, they'd probably look like a bunch of money-grubbing business people--which they are. so as not to tarnish the public perception of the franchise with the harsh realities of business/corporate politics, they make public statements with sanitized versions of what actually happened to allow all parties to maintain an air of respectability.
otherwise they'd sound like a bunch of greedy ferengis...
what's with you people and dry ice? there's been like 3-4 comments referring to that same drink already, and i'm not even a quarter of the way down the comments page.
i mean, i've played with dry ice too when i was a kid. it's fun and all, but if throwing some alcohol & dry ice into a decorative bowl makes for a memorable vacation experience for you, well... maybe you need to get out more.
well, i see your point there. i get pretty annoyed when people use "coke" to refer to all sodas as well. but perhaps that's just because "coke" hasn't really been adopted as a proprietary eponym for soda/soft-drink by the general population.
i think the important thing is that people recognize when they're using a genericized trademark. and i think that's the case with Tylenol/aspirin. of course, if you're in the pharmaceutical professional it may not be appropriate to use Tylenol to refer to APAP for the reason you described.
but things tend to be a little more complicated in terms of generics vs. brand names when it comes to drugs. most people know that Kleenex is a brand of tissue, but the average person probably wouldn't know the generic name of Benadryl or Dramamine--or even know what an antihistamine or anticholinergic is.
personally, i think if there's any particular industry that needs to reduce the usage of genericized trademarks, it's the drug industry. it's idiotic to pay 10x the cost to buy brand name drugs when by FDA standards there should be no difference at all between brand name and generics. it's even worse when the pharmaceutical companies can take a drug like Prozac/fluoxetine, a commonly used anti-depressant whose patent expired long ago, and re-patent it for "Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder" (also known as PMS) and legally prevent generic substitutions despite there being tons of cheap generic formulations of fluoxetine available.
true. the shuttle has been useful in launching satellites, like the hubble space telescope, and also the repairs for the hubble telescope. but other countries can now launch satellites far cheaper than the shuttle program costs. and, frankly, the shuttle program isn't being used to do much exploratory research like the space program was initially meant for.
it just doesn't make sense for the public to pay for expensive shuttle launches that really only offer direct benefits to private industries. that's not the purpose of federal science funding. it's not like we're launching satellites for public communication networks. and aside from the hubble telescope, the shuttle program hasn't contributed much to scientific research/space exploration. everything is done by probes now, so there's no need for the shuttle program. not even the commercial sector wants to pay the exorbitant fees it costs to catch a ride on the shuttle.
if say we started building a moon base or something, and the shuttle was being employed for that purpose, then its continued service could be justified. but that's not the direction that space research is headed in.
usually it's academic researchers who conduct the discovery-oriented basic research which lays the foundation for more practical R&D carried out by the private sector later on. no pharmaceutical corporation is going to waste money on pure research or lobbying for pure research which has no practical/commercial application.
also, democrats don't represent the left. they're just left of the republicans. and being environmentally conscious, or in favor of industry regulation & corporate responsibility is not the same as being against all industrial activity. your specious attempts to downplay and justify the republicans' opposition to stem-cell research and injection of religion into politics/government is rather pathetic.
while i see the logic behind such policies for regular accounts, i don't think it's justification for absolving the bank of all liability in case where criminals target the inherent vulnerabilities of banking protocols.
when the bank mismanages funds or are subjected to fraud, it's not the bank who actually loses money. it's the customers whose money is being entrusted to the bank. so what incentive does the bank have to fix security flaws and protect their clients' assets if they're not held responsible for unauthorized/fraudulent transfers?
i agree that the customer has the personal responsibility of protecting their own assets. and you're absolutely right that one should hire professional help if one cannot manage their finances on their own. however, this particular individual probably wasn't using a normal personal checking account. most business owners have some sort of special merchant account with their bank that has a higher fees. this is because higher level accounts have special needs--including protection against fraud.
you're not just depending on the bank for the physical security of your money. you depend on the bank for all financial transactions, so it makes sense that if you were going to pay anyone to audit your financial records for fraud, that you would pay the bank rather than hiring a 3rd party.
the bank are in the best position to stop unauthorized transfers. they're being paid for the safekeeping of people's money. they're also federally insured by our tax dollars. so i don't think it's fair to blame this entire incident on the victim. his actions weren't irresponsible or particularly negligent. this simply highlights a potential problem in the system that's currently in place.
Slashdot Mirror
gmail is a software service. when was the last time yahoo mail made an iterative release?
this is why it annoys me when people talk about how private corporations have the legal right to do whatever they want, and if you don't like it you can just go with another company. as if that should protect them from criticism by the public.
the fact of the matter is, corporate culture affects all of our lives. and in many cases (the ones that matter at least, not like what brand of shoes you buy) there aren't any viable alternatives, or there aren't any significant differences between the available choices. so it may be well within an ISP or a telecom company's legal right to do certain things like block BitTorrent traffic or employ packet shaping software, but that doesn't mean the public should just live with it and not do anything about the negative effect corporate policies have on our lives.
and these days it's not all that uncommon for popular corporate policies to turn into industry-backed bills, which are subsequently passed into legislation. the DMCA is one such case. the Net Neutrality debate is another. and if consumers get used to being told by corporations that certain things are acceptable/unacceptable, they come to accept these policies as 'common sense'. so when it does get passed into legislation they see nothing wrong with it.
this is particularly dangerous when most media & IT corporations have pro-business, anti-consumer views. for instance, if you visit the IGN or Gamespot message boards and discuss anything to do with homebrew development or custom firmware, you are immediately reprimanded for it and your post is censored. if you look at their TOS agreement, it does in fact delineate this policy. however, the wording of the agreement is extremely deceptive in that it tries to justify this form of censorship by lumping homebrew development & software/hardware modding with piracy and categorizes them as "illegal activities."
now, modifying your gaming device and running custom firmware or homebrew applications on it may void your warranty. but it is certainly not illegal in most countries. at least not yet. but if the public gets used to the attitude expressed by sites like Gamespot, IGN, and Sony's Playstation Network, then it won't be hard to convince legislators to pass a law that does outlaw these practices--especially when consumers are already used to having to hide their participation in homebrew activities as if it's some kind of taboo or illicit practice.
when has Google ever used a product's beta status to deflect criticisms for a bug? was Gmail exceptionally buggy during its extended beta period?
Chrome has been in beta for less than 24 hours. so what exactly are they being called out on?
yes, and ignoring the development stage of a piece of software lets you make unqualified criticisms of pre-production releases.
Gmail was kept in beta for an exceptionally long period of time, but it was also fully-functional and pretty much stable for the majority of its beta period (which is why its extended beta status was considered unnecessary). but Google Chrome has been out for how long? 24 hours?
the point of beta testing is to get feedback from users who aren't part of the development team. if you have complaints or suggestions about the software, then you should make them to Google so they may improve on it in the release candidates. having beta software that's imperfect is not a reason to immediately dismiss a company's development abilities.
actually, i think Southwest uses shareware.
the aircraft takes off just fine. but instead of the landing gears deploying you just get a scrolling message asking you to register the software.
ah, i guess i was mistaken.
and, no, i don't believe in the concept of 'race'. i was just curious about 'Uzi', which i assumed was a Jewish name, + 'Nissan', which i thought must be Japanese.
as i've already stated. google image search only works if site-owners agree to share their images.
this has nothing to do with gmail. gmail's usefulness to the general public has nothing to do with user contribution. google's gmail service doesn't cease to be useful just because you (or everyone) uses IMAP. their publishing user emails wouldn't make the service more useful either. that's a completely random and nonsensical analogy.
and i would advise you to research the concept of 'fair use', which i think is relevant to this discussion, rather than pursuing orthogonal comparisons.
if you want to extrapolate my argument to written works then consider the Google Web Search service. in order for the search results to be useful, google has to display excerpts from listed web pages in the returned search results. most people consider this to fall within fair use. the service helps users find information more easily on the web, and also increases the amount of traffic to listed websites.
this search service only works, however, if:
a.) webmasters allow google to grab select portions of the site's written content and display it along with the search results.
b.) the site doesn't serve different versions of a page to google and other visitors.
if these terms aren't fair to you, then you shouldn't have your site indexed by google. and some people don't--or at least don't have some parts of their site indexed.
now, if you only want the benefit of search engine traffic but don't want people to see any part of your site's content without having paid for it first, then you are a douche. and you should be delisted. because if every site had such policies, then google's web search would cease to work.
also, let's not confuse legal rights with net etiquette. it is perfectly within your legal rights to be a douche. but that doesn't mean people can't call you out on your douche-like behavior.
that's an interesting question. in today's technological environment, it's almost impossible to develop a technology product from the ground up. you almost inevitably have to borrow from or license the work of other people to some degree.
in such a situation, if you wanted to develop an open source PVR or something, it's good to have viable open source solutions to build your product on. but many hardware vendors don't seem to offer much support for open source development.
personally, i'm sort of interested in building a PVR box using VIA's EPIA nano-ITX motherboard with the C7 processor. i'm wondering if others have had any success with the EPIA line in either PVR or media center applications.
also, gunshot wounds make you look cool. tire marks don't have the same effect.
other people's action don't define you as a douche. your own actions/choices do.
there are instances when hotlinking is inappropriate. but if everyone were so needlessly selfish and petty, then such useful services as Google Image Search (and the internet to a large degree) would be completely useless.
there are certain images that you may not want people using at all. that is fine. don't give people public access to those images. and if you don't agree to the trade-offs of being indexed by services such as Google Image Search, then you should keep your site out of the index. Google Image Search is meant to provide a public service while simultaneously giving webmasters the benefit of increased exposure. if you don't want to share your images, then why have your site listed amongst the search results?
if you only want to benefit from a particular service/resource but are unwilling to make any contributions to it, then yes, i would say that classifies you as a douche.
hrmmm... a Japanese-Jew--now there's a mixed ethnicity you don't see everyday.
or how about this. if you don't want your images indexed by Google, add 2 short lines in robots.txt: /images/
User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow:
i imagine most webmasters don't mind if someone links to one of their hosted images in a forum post or saves it to their hard drive for personal use. it's only a problem when: /. which generates huge volumes of traffic.
a.) the hotlink is made from a site like
b.) the image is being used for commercial purposes.
c.) the webmaster is a douche.
if you're a douche, please don't pollute the google image search results with links to your site. google image search provides a useful service to people looking for images online, and also to webmasters who gain traffic from the search results. if this isn't a fair trade to you, then it's very easy to tell google not to index your site (or just particular sections of your site).
now, some people have very limited bandwidth, so they may want to share their images, but don't want hotlinks. this is very understandable. and most of these webmasters know to prevent outside referrals to images by configuring their web server with the right access rules.
but if everyone acted like a bunch of tightwads, then Google Image Search would be completely useless. frankly, i'd rather people hotlink images directly from my server for forum posts than to to use a throwaway image host like PhotoBucket and thus contribute to the sea of dead images that you see on internet message boards.
i had no idea that "funnest" wasn't a word.
actually, i'm still not quite sure. a search on reference.com yields:
No results found for funnest.
Did you mean funnest (in dictionary) or Fingest (in encyclopedia)?
Dictionary suggestions:
...
funnest
fun nest
fun-nest
funniest
i'll just go with funniest.
what do molds and mushrooms have to do with anything?
life is all about learning from experience. everyone makes mistakes at some point in their life. you just hope that as you get older, you start making them less often. so i wouldn't blame the victim for being scammed.
however, i do get frustrated with people who continue to give business to spam sites or fall for classic e-mail scams. if people would just wise up then we wouldn't have such a big problem with junk/spam e-mails anymore. i think that's one particular case of a small group of stupid people ruining things for everyone else.
negotiating intersections is a completely different problem. all it takes to negotiate an intersection is to know the rules of traffic priority/right of way (or abide by other traffic control devices like traffic signals).
when there's a pre-established protocol for prioritizing traffic, there's little need for complex decision-making on the part of the individual. that's the way our road systems are designed so as to minimize accidents. it may take a new driver a little while to learn these rules, but they would be very easy for a robot/computer to pick up.
the problem arises when you have to negotiate traffic independently without a pre-established protocol. pedestrians don't follow traffic laws or pre-agreed-upon rules of priority. so you have to detect more subtle signals from each individual to predict their behavior.
it's more like negotiating a lane-change. even though you still have to obey traffic laws, there's no strict protocol that dictates whether someone has to allow you to change lanes or not. so even after you put on your signal you have to watch nearby vehicles carefully to make sure your speed is in sync and that you won't have a collision.
so you basically pay $50 for a single amusement park ride? i'd almost rather spend the money to go to a real museum (not just information displays that are meant to hold your interest while you wait in a line).
it's called PR. business dealings are usually ugly and may involve despicable actions/decisions. if they came out with the whole truth, they'd probably look like a bunch of money-grubbing business people--which they are. so as not to tarnish the public perception of the franchise with the harsh realities of business/corporate politics, they make public statements with sanitized versions of what actually happened to allow all parties to maintain an air of respectability.
otherwise they'd sound like a bunch of greedy ferengis...
what's with you people and dry ice? there's been like 3-4 comments referring to that same drink already, and i'm not even a quarter of the way down the comments page.
i mean, i've played with dry ice too when i was a kid. it's fun and all, but if throwing some alcohol & dry ice into a decorative bowl makes for a memorable vacation experience for you, well... maybe you need to get out more.
well, i see your point there. i get pretty annoyed when people use "coke" to refer to all sodas as well. but perhaps that's just because "coke" hasn't really been adopted as a proprietary eponym for soda/soft-drink by the general population.
i think the important thing is that people recognize when they're using a genericized trademark. and i think that's the case with Tylenol/aspirin. of course, if you're in the pharmaceutical professional it may not be appropriate to use Tylenol to refer to APAP for the reason you described.
but things tend to be a little more complicated in terms of generics vs. brand names when it comes to drugs. most people know that Kleenex is a brand of tissue, but the average person probably wouldn't know the generic name of Benadryl or Dramamine--or even know what an antihistamine or anticholinergic is.
personally, i think if there's any particular industry that needs to reduce the usage of genericized trademarks, it's the drug industry. it's idiotic to pay 10x the cost to buy brand name drugs when by FDA standards there should be no difference at all between brand name and generics. it's even worse when the pharmaceutical companies can take a drug like Prozac/fluoxetine, a commonly used anti-depressant whose patent expired long ago, and re-patent it for "Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder" (also known as PMS) and legally prevent generic substitutions despite there being tons of cheap generic formulations of fluoxetine available.
good thing all my household appliances run on prayers.
true. the shuttle has been useful in launching satellites, like the hubble space telescope, and also the repairs for the hubble telescope. but other countries can now launch satellites far cheaper than the shuttle program costs. and, frankly, the shuttle program isn't being used to do much exploratory research like the space program was initially meant for.
it just doesn't make sense for the public to pay for expensive shuttle launches that really only offer direct benefits to private industries. that's not the purpose of federal science funding. it's not like we're launching satellites for public communication networks. and aside from the hubble telescope, the shuttle program hasn't contributed much to scientific research/space exploration. everything is done by probes now, so there's no need for the shuttle program. not even the commercial sector wants to pay the exorbitant fees it costs to catch a ride on the shuttle.
if say we started building a moon base or something, and the shuttle was being employed for that purpose, then its continued service could be justified. but that's not the direction that space research is headed in.
not redundant. he fixed the broken hyper-link. the earlier post should be modded down; not this one.
usually it's academic researchers who conduct the discovery-oriented basic research which lays the foundation for more practical R&D carried out by the private sector later on. no pharmaceutical corporation is going to waste money on pure research or lobbying for pure research which has no practical/commercial application.
also, democrats don't represent the left. they're just left of the republicans. and being environmentally conscious, or in favor of industry regulation & corporate responsibility is not the same as being against all industrial activity. your specious attempts to downplay and justify the republicans' opposition to stem-cell research and injection of religion into politics/government is rather pathetic.
while i see the logic behind such policies for regular accounts, i don't think it's justification for absolving the bank of all liability in case where criminals target the inherent vulnerabilities of banking protocols.
when the bank mismanages funds or are subjected to fraud, it's not the bank who actually loses money. it's the customers whose money is being entrusted to the bank. so what incentive does the bank have to fix security flaws and protect their clients' assets if they're not held responsible for unauthorized/fraudulent transfers?
i agree that the customer has the personal responsibility of protecting their own assets. and you're absolutely right that one should hire professional help if one cannot manage their finances on their own. however, this particular individual probably wasn't using a normal personal checking account. most business owners have some sort of special merchant account with their bank that has a higher fees. this is because higher level accounts have special needs--including protection against fraud.
you're not just depending on the bank for the physical security of your money. you depend on the bank for all financial transactions, so it makes sense that if you were going to pay anyone to audit your financial records for fraud, that you would pay the bank rather than hiring a 3rd party.
the bank are in the best position to stop unauthorized transfers. they're being paid for the safekeeping of people's money. they're also federally insured by our tax dollars. so i don't think it's fair to blame this entire incident on the victim. his actions weren't irresponsible or particularly negligent. this simply highlights a potential problem in the system that's currently in place.