This strikes me as an expensive (but possibly effective) way to ensure that silverlight-based adverts get shoved in our faces.
I pray every day to the highest Gods of the Internet that the most holy and blessed developers of Flashblock will also bestow unto us a Silverlight block, as soon as its impure code oozes onto the interwebs. (much as I actually do appreciate Flash getting much sorely needed competition).
It assumes that copyright law around the world will not eventually be in line with U.S. copyright law as per the wishes of the *AA
No, the article is correct - it's your understanding of international law and macroeconomics that is flawed.
Firstly, the US's version of copyright is more the exception than the rule.
Secondly, The *IAA is an American organisation but not all its members are in fact American Corporations. Fair use in Germany (where Sony BMG is based) is much more genuinely fair than in the US, BMG has never managed to change that.
Thirdly, if you want to examine legal parallels for international Internet law then you should look at the development of international Maritime Law. After millennia of shipping technology being available, and the finest legal minds in history having examined the problems, there is no international standard Maritime Legal system.
Yes, there is broad agreements and treaties between many countries, but there are just as many disagreements and disputes. There are rogue nations, and there is still real piracy.
The *IAA needs to understand that while the preposterous US copyright laws protect them in that country, they have already lost the War pretty much most other places. And those of you who are American here, need to wake up and realise that your laws are designed to protect you and your interests, not just your country's business interests. You need to take your country back from the Corporations. Your Founding Fathers were wise people with a pretty good understanding of human nature. 14 years is enough copyright for anyone.
The DMCA, is a law that steals from most American citizens, and penalizes no-one outside your borders. The DMCA hinders your economy, because without it your *IAA industries would need to adapt to survive - and they do have the means and technology to successfully adapt and survive in a manner that allows you value and fair choice.
Cyber war, famine and death - lets say in something like Second life - is considerably preferable to actually killing people in real life. (ask an Iraqi which he'd prefer)
If this is the future of warfare, then that's progress. Though, real peace and cyber peace would be the Utopian dream.
Ok, so I understand the concept behind this change. At least, in part I do. It's a reflection on web 2.0 hype - blogs and video being more popular.
However, somehow I think Google may be missing the point. I'm certain I can't be the only person who is finding less and less relevance with every search request I type. How does this change improve that state? If anything, as far as I can see, it's adding even more noise to drown out the signal.
Especially where blogs are concerned, my (wholly unscientific and subjective) impression is that at least 60% of all blogs are just SEO link farms (ironically, the majority of which are hosted by Blogger).
Web 2.0ish, but all style, gloss and less substance. So yes, very Web 2.0ish
Be careful what you wish for. While the average computer isn't that agile, it needs only one seriously hard kick to win. Human strength is limited to a certain range, the computer's isn't necessarily.
A really sneaky computer will get you under the desk, when you're not expecting it.
I, for one, do not want computers programmed to do that. Chess? Fine. Go? Sure. Poker? Why not. Martial arts? Not so much.
April the European court of human rights decided that it was against EU law for Russia to deny Scientology religeon status
There's something not right about this statement. I'm struggling to find any true facts to support or deny it - the wikipedia page is, predictably, worthless garbage.
My issues are that.
1. Russia is not a member of the European Union. EU laws do not apply to that country in any way.
2. Russia is a Member of the Council of Europe so European Human Rights Laws do apply - this has nothing whatsoever to do with the EU. The Council of Europe and the European Union are not in any way the same, nor are they connected.
3. The European Court of Human Rights is an organ of the Council of Europe, it is not connected to the European Union.
But, searching the Council of Europe website, as well as other official pages, brings up no reference to this case. So, I'm puzzled.
I love Google, but in truth we do very much need someone to do that.
1. Search, regardless of Google, or politics, or anything else, does NOT meet most peoples' needs. There's far too much gaming, far too much blackhattery, and image search is a complete lottery (although Ask seems to do a much better job of this than the others).
2. It's been around ten years since there was any significant breakthrough in search technology. While it IS hard, that's still kind of lame. I suspect part of the reason for lack of development is that search, you know, kinda mostly works, and Google, kinda mostly, does an ok job. If it totally sucked, I bet we'd have new tech by now.
3. Evil or no, competition is healthy. Google needs serious challengers to evolve. It's good for them, good for us all.
4. Few people know how to legitimately promote a website on Google. If you are de-ranked, most people don't know why, or how to solve that problem. Your site is vulnerable to your competitors deliberately Blackhat SEO-ing your site to de-rank it. There's nothing you can do about it. Your business can be destroyed. No-one to appeal to, and no way of finding why, or what happened. That's too much power.
I'm inclined at this point to say that the situation was healthier, if more time consuming, in the days before Google. I always searched in Yahoo, Infoseek, Altavista and MSN. Between these four I would find what I was looking for by page 3 or 4 of the results, and sometimes curiously serendipitous results would take me off somewhere more interesting.
I find that most searches I perform in Google these days have to be qualified with -ebay, -amazon, -wikipedia, -about, etc. to find relevant results. I'm still faced with about five SEO link farm sites per page for most searches.
For example, try searching for a celebrity's name. You'll get an (usually very useful) Imdb entry, a wikipedia entry (that's usually copied and pasted from Imdb), and then dozens and dozens of SEO link farms or celebrities picture page scams (there's so many of these that they are hard to filter). If you are very lucky you might find the celebrity's own website by page 4 or 5. You might also begin to see interesting fan pages by that time too. You'll be 10 or 20 pages in before you start seeing things like legitimate newspaper or TV reports about that person.
No folks, if you are are currently working on new search tech, please I beg you, work faster!
Very true. It strikes me as a curious irony that anyone with a conscience would continue to use MySpace after the News Corp purchase anyway. You have young bands trying to express themselves free from the record industry parasites, and yet News Corp is indirectly linked to the RIAA through it's MPAA connections.
Makes no sense. The News Corp purchase should really have been the instant death of MySpace cool.
Telecommuting has the potential to reduce pat/maternity leave, reduce the amount of time kids are left in the hands of babysitters away from their parents, and keeps parents at home during the day. This would represent significant beneficial social change. I'm surprised it's not mandatory.
Couldn't possibly agree with you more. Note that there are also considerable environmental benefits too. The morning and evening rush hours are the dumbest things on the Planet. The technology now exists working at home can be productive for many jobs, we need to start changing thinking and make it happen.
It's not just work, why not also study? Why on Earth, with the technology available, does anyone need to go to a building and sit with 100 other students in a cold lecture hall for an hour or too. There's no reason why that can be video streamed and questions handled by chat or email. Then you can fit in the lecture when you brain is most receptive, and take breaks when you wish, or replay parts you didn't get. In fact for many subjects, the lectures need only be recorded once for use over many years. Transcripts of previous Q and A's can also be available online.
Sure, labs and tutorials need face to face, but that can be one day per week.
The thing about goatse is though, is that it's NOT porn.
It's probably more akin to horror. It's eye violence, eye rape. It actually is offensive to most people, it's design and utilization is to shock and offend.
Not so with porn. While that does offend right wing religious fascists and left wing womens groups (what a nightmare combination), it does not offend many other people - most people, in fact.
The object of porn is enjoyment. Thus it should really be embraced and encouraged as long as (some) controls are in place to ensure it gets to its appropriate audience. Arresting people for pasting links is not appropriate control.
And since this thread can be safely considered NSFW, and is going to be a NSFW link free-for-all, then here's my preferred site.
My thinking is that this must be overall positive in Northern climes.
The winter deaths toll will also include death due to heart attacks and strokes from cold related vasoconstriction as well as increased numbers of accidents due to ice/snow/ice rain, etc.
Heat related deaths there may be a problem, but one that air conditioning would solve, most houses in Germany don't have that, but of course could (and should, it's pretty stifling in July and August in Berlin as it is).
Tropical diseases might eventually be a problem, but many of the deadly tropical diseases are preventable or treatable with Western facilities. This being one the the great tragedies of human selfishness - most Africans don't need to die the way they do.
But what happens when Africa, or South America or Asia gets hotter? I don't think this article is really considering things from their point of view.
And as a matter of fact, not all the Stasi files are in Germany. The CIA swiped a significant number of them when The Wall fell. They returned some of them, but still retain quite a few.
So yes, I agree, evil / trust is a merely question of perspective.
But since the main reason files were shredded was to hide the identities and crimes committed by state employees and ordinary people who spied against their neighbours and caused them to be tortured and killed, this has the potential for explosive consequences.
Yes, it does indeed. Note that nearly one person in every four in East Berlin was Stasi, or an informant of some sort. However, very few have ever been identified. There will, for certain, be currently prominent or influential people listed in those documents who spied for the Stasi.
Piecing these together is going to make a lot of people very nervous - as indeed it should.
1. It's bureaucratic and expensive.
2. It's open to abuse of power
3. It's only one thing to forge / steal - makes faking your ID and ID theft much simpler
4. It leads to all sorts of data mining privacy issues - one ring to rule them all - get the ID card, get everything else.
5. It's easy to stay outside the system - unless there are regular checkpoints and official stop and searches.
I used to live in Germany and I've seen every single one of these be a problem at some point. Biggest issues are 1. the expense - this is serious money for something that is very ineffective, and 2. the abuse of power - ask anyone who looks Turkish in Germany how often they are stopped and asked for ID. It's pretty much daily in some areas.
That said, there is a huge number of people living illegally in Germany that have no ID, and have been doing so for many years. It is an inconvenience to the law abiding, and no hassle to a criminal, possibly even an advantage.
In Britain there seems to be no option for registering disgust at our national ID scheme - seems we're getting one and that is that. For all the horrific breaches of privacy and freedom that the Patriot Act etc have brought you over there - at least you do have the right to protest. PLEASE PLEASE DO!!!
If you can regain your freedom, then there's some hope for us over here in Airstrip One - maybe they'll even take down a couple of million cameras - you, know like 25% of them... (sounds like that's a sarcastic exaggeration doesn't it. But it's not, sadly)
Slashdot Mirror
Flashblock developers - friends of the Internet.
Firstly, the US's version of copyright is more the exception than the rule.
Secondly, The *IAA is an American organisation but not all its members are in fact American Corporations. Fair use in Germany (where Sony BMG is based) is much more genuinely fair than in the US, BMG has never managed to change that.
Thirdly, if you want to examine legal parallels for international Internet law then you should look at the development of international Maritime Law. After millennia of shipping technology being available, and the finest legal minds in history having examined the problems, there is no international standard Maritime Legal system.
Yes, there is broad agreements and treaties between many countries, but there are just as many disagreements and disputes. There are rogue nations, and there is still real piracy.
The *IAA needs to understand that while the preposterous US copyright laws protect them in that country, they have already lost the War pretty much most other places. And those of you who are American here, need to wake up and realise that your laws are designed to protect you and your interests, not just your country's business interests. You need to take your country back from the Corporations. Your Founding Fathers were wise people with a pretty good understanding of human nature. 14 years is enough copyright for anyone.
The DMCA, is a law that steals from most American citizens, and penalizes no-one outside your borders. The DMCA hinders your economy, because without it your *IAA industries would need to adapt to survive - and they do have the means and technology to successfully adapt and survive in a manner that allows you value and fair choice.
Probably the most insightful comment EVER, and I can't mod it up!
Cyber war, famine and death - lets say in something like Second life - is considerably preferable to actually killing people in real life. (ask an Iraqi which he'd prefer)
If this is the future of warfare, then that's progress. Though, real peace and cyber peace would be the Utopian dream.
Ok, so I understand the concept behind this change. At least, in part I do. It's a reflection on web 2.0 hype - blogs and video being more popular.
However, somehow I think Google may be missing the point. I'm certain I can't be the only person who is finding less and less relevance with every search request I type. How does this change improve that state? If anything, as far as I can see, it's adding even more noise to drown out the signal.
Especially where blogs are concerned, my (wholly unscientific and subjective) impression is that at least 60% of all blogs are just SEO link farms (ironically, the majority of which are hosted by Blogger).
Web 2.0ish, but all style, gloss and less substance. So yes, very Web 2.0ish
... does it come in brown?
A really sneaky computer will get you under the desk, when you're not expecting it.
I, for one, do not want computers programmed to do that. Chess? Fine. Go? Sure. Poker? Why not. Martial arts? Not so much.
Does this mean that closed formats are now pining for the fjords?
My issues are that.
1. Russia is not a member of the European Union. EU laws do not apply to that country in any way.
2. Russia is a Member of the Council of Europe so European Human Rights Laws do apply - this has nothing whatsoever to do with the EU. The Council of Europe and the European Union are not in any way the same, nor are they connected.
3. The European Court of Human Rights is an organ of the Council of Europe, it is not connected to the European Union.
But, searching the Council of Europe website, as well as other official pages, brings up no reference to this case. So, I'm puzzled.
So, TFA is wrong then? (out by 300 degrees C) Um, yes... why, precisely, should anyone read it?
Of course, that isn't simple.
I love Google, but in truth we do very much need someone to do that.
1. Search, regardless of Google, or politics, or anything else, does NOT meet most peoples' needs. There's far too much gaming, far too much blackhattery, and image search is a complete lottery (although Ask seems to do a much better job of this than the others).
2. It's been around ten years since there was any significant breakthrough in search technology. While it IS hard, that's still kind of lame. I suspect part of the reason for lack of development is that search, you know, kinda mostly works, and Google, kinda mostly, does an ok job. If it totally sucked, I bet we'd have new tech by now.
3. Evil or no, competition is healthy. Google needs serious challengers to evolve. It's good for them, good for us all.
4. Few people know how to legitimately promote a website on Google. If you are de-ranked, most people don't know why, or how to solve that problem. Your site is vulnerable to your competitors deliberately Blackhat SEO-ing your site to de-rank it. There's nothing you can do about it. Your business can be destroyed. No-one to appeal to, and no way of finding why, or what happened. That's too much power.
I'm inclined at this point to say that the situation was healthier, if more time consuming, in the days before Google. I always searched in Yahoo, Infoseek, Altavista and MSN. Between these four I would find what I was looking for by page 3 or 4 of the results, and sometimes curiously serendipitous results would take me off somewhere more interesting.
I find that most searches I perform in Google these days have to be qualified with -ebay, -amazon, -wikipedia, -about, etc. to find relevant results. I'm still faced with about five SEO link farm sites per page for most searches.
For example, try searching for a celebrity's name. You'll get an (usually very useful) Imdb entry, a wikipedia entry (that's usually copied and pasted from Imdb), and then dozens and dozens of SEO link farms or celebrities picture page scams (there's so many of these that they are hard to filter). If you are very lucky you might find the celebrity's own website by page 4 or 5. You might also begin to see interesting fan pages by that time too. You'll be 10 or 20 pages in before you start seeing things like legitimate newspaper or TV reports about that person.
No folks, if you are are currently working on new search tech, please I beg you, work faster!
Makes no sense. The News Corp purchase should really have been the instant death of MySpace cool.
It's not just work, why not also study? Why on Earth, with the technology available, does anyone need to go to a building and sit with 100 other students in a cold lecture hall for an hour or too. There's no reason why that can be video streamed and questions handled by chat or email. Then you can fit in the lecture when you brain is most receptive, and take breaks when you wish, or replay parts you didn't get. In fact for many subjects, the lectures need only be recorded once for use over many years. Transcripts of previous Q and A's can also be available online.
Sure, labs and tutorials need face to face, but that can be one day per week.
The thing about goatse is though, is that it's NOT porn.
It's probably more akin to horror. It's eye violence, eye rape. It actually is offensive to most people, it's design and utilization is to shock and offend.
Not so with porn. While that does offend right wing religious fascists and left wing womens groups (what a nightmare combination), it does not offend many other people - most people, in fact.
The object of porn is enjoyment. Thus it should really be embraced and encouraged as long as (some) controls are in place to ensure it gets to its appropriate audience. Arresting people for pasting links is not appropriate control.
And since this thread can be safely considered NSFW, and is going to be a NSFW link free-for-all, then here's my preferred site.
My thinking is that this must be overall positive in Northern climes.
The winter deaths toll will also include death due to heart attacks and strokes from cold related vasoconstriction as well as increased numbers of accidents due to ice/snow/ice rain, etc.
Heat related deaths there may be a problem, but one that air conditioning would solve, most houses in Germany don't have that, but of course could (and should, it's pretty stifling in July and August in Berlin as it is).
Tropical diseases might eventually be a problem, but many of the deadly tropical diseases are preventable or treatable with Western facilities. This being one the the great tragedies of human selfishness - most Africans don't need to die the way they do.
But what happens when Africa, or South America or Asia gets hotter? I don't think this article is really considering things from their point of view.
It would also mean pulling out of Germany, France, and a few other European countries that demand, and receive, anti-nazi censorship from Google.
And as a matter of fact, not all the Stasi files are in Germany. The CIA swiped a significant number of them when The Wall fell. They returned some of them, but still retain quite a few.
So yes, I agree, evil / trust is a merely question of perspective.
Piecing these together is going to make a lot of people very nervous - as indeed it should.
No, I've never heard of the sites either.
Well, after all, sightings of Bigfoot have tripled in the past six months.
as a quick summary:
1. It's bureaucratic and expensive.
2. It's open to abuse of power
3. It's only one thing to forge / steal - makes faking your ID and ID theft much simpler
4. It leads to all sorts of data mining privacy issues - one ring to rule them all - get the ID card, get everything else.
5. It's easy to stay outside the system - unless there are regular checkpoints and official stop and searches.
I used to live in Germany and I've seen every single one of these be a problem at some point. Biggest issues are 1. the expense - this is serious money for something that is very ineffective, and 2. the abuse of power - ask anyone who looks Turkish in Germany how often they are stopped and asked for ID. It's pretty much daily in some areas.
That said, there is a huge number of people living illegally in Germany that have no ID, and have been doing so for many years. It is an inconvenience to the law abiding, and no hassle to a criminal, possibly even an advantage.
I guess he cares because he's British.
In Britain there seems to be no option for registering disgust at our national ID scheme - seems we're getting one and that is that. For all the horrific breaches of privacy and freedom that the Patriot Act etc have brought you over there - at least you do have the right to protest. PLEASE PLEASE DO!!!
If you can regain your freedom, then there's some hope for us over here in Airstrip One - maybe they'll even take down a couple of million cameras - you, know like 25% of them... (sounds like that's a sarcastic exaggeration doesn't it. But it's not, sadly)