I'm not convinced from the paper that these techniques are exact enough to narrow it down to a specific printer. Realigning the print heads or changing cartridges would change the printing effect and make it harder to trace. Kind of like running a file down a gun barrel.
It seems it would be technically possible to add taggants to trace ink and toner like they do for some explosives and fertilizer. Still, given the retail nature of ink/toner cartridges it would be difficult to narrow it down past a particular model of printer and lot number of ink/toner.
Certainly, banding effects like they show in the article might be something that is relatively unique. Most printers have a way to align the printheads to eliminate that, I wonder if they tried matching in the face of print head realignment.
No, it's the same accounting used by Microsoft and the RIAA. If someone has a copy then you assume they would pay (or could be forced to pay) the full retail price of the product as defined by its maker.
That's not the way the market works though. Only a small fraction of people pay full asking price. The others pay less via sales, rebates, coupons, volume discounts, or other incentives. And yes, some will pay zero by stealing it.
The key to maximizing profit is not to have one price, but to have a spectrum of prices that extracts the most money that each group is willing to pay...
Nonsense! The FCC has the authority to prevent "harmful interference", and the lack of a broadcast flag would harmfully interfere with the profits of Disney, Sony, etc.;-)
They probably will get a court to agree and stop the FCC. Temporarily. Does anyone find it curious that Congress hasn't been yelling about the FCC overstepping their bounds? Well, that's because if the FCC is prevented from enforcing the broadcast flag due to lack of authority, most likely the Disney-aligned Congress will give them that authority. It's for our own good, you know, because without those protections the content providers will never let their precious content be broacast in HD and we'll all be looking at blank screens.
Get a Kill-a-Watt meter and you can find out exactly how much it uses. You can also monitor the line voltage and/or check the cumulative power usage over time. They're only about $30 at your local Radio Shack or Froogle for them. My big Athlon64 3400+ with three drives uses about 250W when idle, not counting the monitor. When it boots it peaks around 310 watts.
I just 'asked jeeves' to look up my real name in quotation marks: 481 hits. Google? 1420.
No, the real problem with AskJeeves is that you have to scroll past the first screen to see NON-PAID results. Try auto loans or spyware.
The spyware search is especially scary. Naive users (are there any others that visit AskJeeves?) are going to think the paid links are reputable sources of information. Instead of using Ad Aware or Spybot they'll be buying garbage products that don't work or make the problem worse.
Wow. It does work if you drag the mouse off the scroll bar into the client area; you'll see the little cursor with the "plus sign" indicating a drag-drop is occurring.
To view the Javascript source you may need to use a "get" utility or something similar; View/Source doesn't show you everything. It depends on the <a folder="shell:startup"> as a drop target to get the link into the startup folder. Now show me where Microsoft documents the "folder" attribute of the "a" tag, I just checked the MSDN site and saw nothing.
I know this is heresy for a technology site, but why allow all this privacy-invading electronics in the car if we could do it much more simply with a gas tax? Sure it's not perfect but it doesn't require any extra technology costs and it eliminates a lot of overhead from the current system.
Seriously, as more places try to "legitimize" their revenue by branching out what they do, it'll take longer for most companies to sit back and say "we can't do this because of your questionable business model." Yahoo took long enough, but they finally did.
Sorry, but I missed the press release where Yahoo/Overture said they would no longer provide 31% of Claria/Gator's revenue. Can you post a URL for that? Sure they have it so their toolbar finds Claria by default but that's not much of a consolation prize when they're paying over $30 million a year to the scum.
Sure, I admit that I don't fully read EULAs. The problem is that there needs to be some limit on what can be casually thrown into a EULA and be legally binding. As a software developer I fully expect most EULAs to say "we aren't responsible if you use our software and somehow it formats your drive or crashes your system and you lose valuable data". I say that too. But it's different to put all kinds of spyware provisions in there, or to allow the original software carte blanche to install any other software it sees fit and claim that you will be bound by their EULAs as well, even though you haven't seen them.
Did you look at the parent of the post you referenced, or at the cartoon it linked to? Perhaps he was too laconic for you but I think he was trying to make the point that "M$" is an unprofessional low blow. Seems consistent with his comment here.
Okay, now we can verify that a mail server that says it is someserver.com is really someserver.com. Back when the big problem was open SMTP relays that sure would have been helpful.
But now that the problem is spam zombies on millions of user PCs, how will this put a dent in the problem? Sure they won't be able to connect directly to Hotmail to say they're someserver.com, but it won't stop them from sending spam through their own ISP's mail server. Since the key to spam zombies is having a lot of PCs that send relatively few spams per PC, it will be very difficult for each ISP to track down and stop each zombie.
I pine for the old days too, and loved the VAX, but you are romanticizing it too much and ignoring the realities of 2004.
In the mid-1980s our Vax was connected to the outside world via a UUCP dial-up connection for news and mail. We didn't have to worry about installing weekly patches for various exploits that might arrive on our doorstep from the Internet. I would guess that most downtime today has to do with either attacks or the need to reboot for security patches.
IANAAccountant, but I do my own taxes and forget it.
Employee business expenses have a 2% AGI floor on Schedule A. What that means is if your income is about $60K a year, you don't get to deduct ANY of those expenses until they are more than $1200. If you have $1500 in expenses you get to deduct $300. (If you make more than $140K it's even further limited.) Whoop de frickin do.
Sure, they can do that but that's the long way around if it has admin privileges on the box already. Instead they can just add themselves to the whitelist using the Windows Firewall API, or they can infect a program that already has access. It depends on how stealthy they want to be.
You got that wrong. XP's firewall blocks programs from listening on ports--incoming traffic. XP SP2 does not block outgoing traffic, for example a web browser that establishes an outgoing TCP connection will get through just fine, no special configuration required. There is no special whitelist entry for IE, as you'll notice that Firefox or Opera get through fine as well.
ZoneAlarm does much more in that it can block outgoing traffic on a program-by-program basis. But ZoneAlarm also asks questions that are impossible for most users to answer without a course in Windows XP internals, like "Do you want to allow SVCHOST.EXE to access the Internet?" I can see why Microsoft decided to leave this functionality out.
The best outcome would be if programs like ZoneAlarm coordinate their work with the built-in firewall and extend its functionality. I don't think they are in danger of becoming obsolete. Similarly, Windows has bundled a defragger since Win95 but that hasn't stopped a half-dozen companies from writing better ones.
Yep, hydroelectric power can do a lot of local damage. But it doesn't poison the whole world. Also, the floods it controls have killed thousands in the past, so there is a benefit. Unless the dam breaks--there are legitimate concerns about that.
Also, China is making an important strategic and economic decision by using hydroelectric. Their economy will not be dependent on foreign oil, and won't need to become involved in Middle Eastern politics to protect their country. Now there's a real tar pit.
There is no lack of oil at reasonable prices. Even with the recent price spike, US gas prices are lower in inflation-adjusted terms than they were during the "Oil Crisis" of the late-1970s. Prices would be a lot higher if we were running out of oil.
The problem comes if China and the Third World follow in the footsteps of our oil-wasteful economy. The planet's atmosphere is not going to like that. Although there's a lot of concern about the Three Gorges Dam in China, I would rather see them submerge some local Chinese history than throw tons of hydrocarbons into the world's atmosphere.
"Yahoo's Overture division, a leading provider of paid search listings, contributed 31 percent of Claria's 2003 revenues"
This is the part that people should be yelling about. Claria had $90 million of revenues in 2003, according to its S-1 statement. How can Yahoo/Overture give more than 28 million dollars to a company that treats consumers the way Claria does?
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I'm not convinced from the paper that these techniques are exact enough to narrow it down to a specific printer. Realigning the print heads or changing cartridges would change the printing effect and make it harder to trace. Kind of like running a file down a gun barrel.
It seems it would be technically possible to add taggants to trace ink and toner like they do for some explosives and fertilizer. Still, given the retail nature of ink/toner cartridges it would be difficult to narrow it down past a particular model of printer and lot number of ink/toner.
Certainly, banding effects like they show in the article might be something that is relatively unique. Most printers have a way to align the printheads to eliminate that, I wonder if they tried matching in the face of print head realignment.
No, it's the same accounting used by Microsoft and the RIAA. If someone has a copy then you assume they would pay (or could be forced to pay) the full retail price of the product as defined by its maker.
That's not the way the market works though. Only a small fraction of people pay full asking price. The others pay less via sales, rebates, coupons, volume discounts, or other incentives. And yes, some will pay zero by stealing it.
The key to maximizing profit is not to have one price, but to have a spectrum of prices that extracts the most money that each group is willing to pay...
Nonsense! The FCC has the authority to prevent "harmful interference", and the lack of a broadcast flag would harmfully interfere with the profits of Disney, Sony, etc. ;-)
They probably will get a court to agree and stop the FCC. Temporarily. Does anyone find it curious that Congress hasn't been yelling about the FCC overstepping their bounds? Well, that's because if the FCC is prevented from enforcing the broadcast flag due to lack of authority, most likely the Disney-aligned Congress will give them that authority. It's for our own good, you know, because without those protections the content providers will never let their precious content be broacast in HD and we'll all be looking at blank screens.
Get a Kill-a-Watt meter and you can find out exactly how much it uses. You can also monitor the line voltage and/or check the cumulative power usage over time. They're only about $30 at your local Radio Shack or Froogle for them. My big Athlon64 3400+ with three drives uses about 250W when idle, not counting the monitor. When it boots it peaks around 310 watts.
If Sun really wanted to give something back, they would donate the patent directly to the public domain.
No matter where the money goes, the fact is that Sun can still use this patent like a club to beat people into submission when and if they please.
I just 'asked jeeves' to look up my real name in quotation marks: 481 hits. Google? 1420.
No, the real problem with AskJeeves is that you have to scroll past the first screen to see NON-PAID results. Try auto loans or spyware.
The spyware search is especially scary. Naive users (are there any others that visit AskJeeves?) are going to think the paid links are reputable sources of information. Instead of using Ad Aware or Spybot they'll be buying garbage products that don't work or make the problem worse.
Sorry it took me a while to respond. I was down in the computer room re-punching my card decks to comply with the new Fortran 2003 standard.
It's not spyware, it's a virus! McAfee says so.
Wow. It does work if you drag the mouse off the scroll bar into the client area; you'll see the little cursor with the "plus sign" indicating a drag-drop is occurring.
To view the Javascript source you may need to use a "get" utility or something similar; View/Source doesn't show you everything. It depends on the <a folder="shell:startup"> as a drop target to get the link into the startup folder. Now show me where Microsoft documents the "folder" attribute of the "a" tag, I just checked the MSDN site and saw nothing.
I know this is heresy for a technology site, but why allow all this privacy-invading electronics in the car if we could do it much more simply with a gas tax? Sure it's not perfect but it doesn't require any extra technology costs and it eliminates a lot of overhead from the current system.
Sure, I admit that I don't fully read EULAs. The problem is that there needs to be some limit on what can be casually thrown into a EULA and be legally binding. As a software developer I fully expect most EULAs to say "we aren't responsible if you use our software and somehow it formats your drive or crashes your system and you lose valuable data". I say that too. But it's different to put all kinds of spyware provisions in there, or to allow the original software carte blanche to install any other software it sees fit and claim that you will be bound by their EULAs as well, even though you haven't seen them.
Did you look at the parent of the post you referenced, or at the cartoon it linked to? Perhaps he was too laconic for you but I think he was trying to make the point that "M$" is an unprofessional low blow. Seems consistent with his comment here.
Okay, now we can verify that a mail server that says it is someserver.com is really someserver.com. Back when the big problem was open SMTP relays that sure would have been helpful.
But now that the problem is spam zombies on millions of user PCs, how will this put a dent in the problem? Sure they won't be able to connect directly to Hotmail to say they're someserver.com, but it won't stop them from sending spam through their own ISP's mail server. Since the key to spam zombies is having a lot of PCs that send relatively few spams per PC, it will be very difficult for each ISP to track down and stop each zombie.
I pine for the old days too, and loved the VAX, but you are romanticizing it too much and ignoring the realities of 2004.
In the mid-1980s our Vax was connected to the outside world via a UUCP dial-up connection for news and mail. We didn't have to worry about installing weekly patches for various exploits that might arrive on our doorstep from the Internet. I would guess that most downtime today has to do with either attacks or the need to reboot for security patches.
IANAAccountant, but I do my own taxes and forget it.
Employee business expenses have a 2% AGI floor on Schedule A. What that means is if your income is about $60K a year, you don't get to deduct ANY of those expenses until they are more than $1200. If you have $1500 in expenses you get to deduct $300. (If you make more than $140K it's even further limited.) Whoop de frickin do.
Sure, they can do that but that's the long way around if it has admin privileges on the box already. Instead they can just add themselves to the whitelist using the Windows Firewall API, or they can infect a program that already has access. It depends on how stealthy they want to be.
If you paid $300 retail or even the $40 or so from an oem, you should be entitled to a free update CD with no shipping cost.
Hmm, like this free CD available directly from Microsoft? You don't even need to show a proof of purchase.
You got that wrong. XP's firewall blocks programs from listening on ports--incoming traffic. XP SP2 does not block outgoing traffic, for example a web browser that establishes an outgoing TCP connection will get through just fine, no special configuration required. There is no special whitelist entry for IE, as you'll notice that Firefox or Opera get through fine as well.
ZoneAlarm does much more in that it can block outgoing traffic on a program-by-program basis. But ZoneAlarm also asks questions that are impossible for most users to answer without a course in Windows XP internals, like "Do you want to allow SVCHOST.EXE to access the Internet?" I can see why Microsoft decided to leave this functionality out.
The best outcome would be if programs like ZoneAlarm coordinate their work with the built-in firewall and extend its functionality. I don't think they are in danger of becoming obsolete. Similarly, Windows has bundled a defragger since Win95 but that hasn't stopped a half-dozen companies from writing better ones.
Yep, hydroelectric power can do a lot of local damage. But it doesn't poison the whole world. Also, the floods it controls have killed thousands in the past, so there is a benefit. Unless the dam breaks--there are legitimate concerns about that.
Also, China is making an important strategic and economic decision by using hydroelectric. Their economy will not be dependent on foreign oil, and won't need to become involved in Middle Eastern politics to protect their country. Now there's a real tar pit.
There is no lack of oil at reasonable prices. Even with the recent price spike, US gas prices are lower in inflation-adjusted terms than they were during the "Oil Crisis" of the late-1970s. Prices would be a lot higher if we were running out of oil.
The problem comes if China and the Third World follow in the footsteps of our oil-wasteful economy. The planet's atmosphere is not going to like that. Although there's a lot of concern about the Three Gorges Dam in China, I would rather see them submerge some local Chinese history than throw tons of hydrocarbons into the world's atmosphere.
I'd be surprised if someone hasn't written a tool that can do it.
Yep. Here's the tool (and source code).
"Yahoo's Overture division, a leading provider of paid search listings, contributed 31 percent of Claria's 2003 revenues"
This is the part that people should be yelling about. Claria had $90 million of revenues in 2003, according to its S-1 statement. How can Yahoo/Overture give more than 28 million dollars to a company that treats consumers the way Claria does?