ps - shocking that a load os slashdot readers would get all pissy when someone says SETI@home is a lost cause, even though I think most people (even geeks) know that it is.
I've bought lottery tickets in the past knowing full well the chances of my numbers coming up are pretty close to zero.
I don't see it as a waste of money, while there is a chance that I can win I can dream what it would be like to win, what I would do with the money, how my life would change. Similarly with SETI, sure we probably wont find anything, but it costs very little to do and the value is in the fact that while there is that chance it might find something you can always dream, what it would be, how it would change the whole world etc.
And like the lottery you have to be in it to win it.
Why give up the incredibly profitable Long Distance business model for the "flat rate" model of the internet, when you can convert the internet into another "long distance" service?
I think you nailed it there. Theres all this bullshit about covering the cost of "upgrading" the internet to deal with all this extra traffic. Was this under discussion with the move from dial-up to ADSL/cable connections? No. The ISPs just priced the faster connections accordingly.
If bandwith is reaching its limits under the current infrastructure then the rates are going to have to go up for EVERYONE to offset the cost of upgrading the infrastructure. Either that or the telcos are actually going to have to outlay some actual money in order to keep their current customers and continue making a profit like any normal industry would.
Analogy time:
You start a small courier company, just delivering stuff in your car. You are making a nice little profit and are getting a lot of customers so you need to expand. You need to buy a bigger vehicle to expand so you can either:
1) start charging more per delivery to offset the cost until you make enough to actually purchase a nice big truck.
2) start a super complex charging system where customers deliveries arrive faster to places that give your company money for the privelidge of receiving their deliveries faster, and the rest are just best effort deliveries.
3) suck it up and buy the truck out of your own pocket with the longer term view that you will keep all your customers, get more in the future and keep making a profit eventually paying off the truck and once it is paid off continuing to make money.
in the case of 1) you WILL drive some customers away if they have a cheaper alternative that does the same job. but then again you dont have to outlaw any cash in the first place so maybe that will offset any loss of customers. Your customers will NOT see any advantage from paying more up until you can actually afford to make the purchase, so they are paying more but for no gain up until that point. Of course they are going to look elsewhere.
with 2) no-ones going to buy that. good luck trying to get anyone to give you money up-front, what happens if no-one pays? Do you slow deliveries down to everyone until someone cracks and starts paying up?
Which do you think will happen first, someone cracks and pays or all your customers go elsewhere?
Even if you are the only courier in town they might STILL not pay up, so do you stop all deliveries completely just to prove whos boss? what are you the boss of exactly if your company is no longer actually doing anything?
its a stupid idea.
3) this is how normal companies work.
The way I see it the only viable options to the ISPs are raise rates or introduce tougher (and AS ADVERTISED - i.e. no "unlimited" but actually very limited) download limits. That is if these "upgrades" are even required in the first place. I would be very interested to see some real facts on how necessary this actually is.
I get it, this is one of those fill in the blanks games right?
Let me try.
This is mildly interesting, but not because the__curious__ employees did anything wrong. It points out that_while_ the sysadmins have been keeping horribly unpatched_computer__ systems around that could be infected by data. And old exploits, at that. ____________Merely______________ Examining data should not lead to altering other_sensitive__ data. Still less system files. Microsoft is a__spectacularly__ crufty bugfest. Nothing more to see here... move along.
I was once a victim of Sonys piece of crap ATRAC format and will never be caught out like that again.
Prior to moving overseas for an extended backpacking holiday followed up by living overseas for a while I purchased a SONY mp3 player. Like an idiot I converted all my (and my GFs) CDs to ATRAC format onto the player so we could listen to them while away as I wasnt going to bring all our CDs with us (approx 60-70 CDs).
So now living in another country I have a whole bunch of ATRAC files that I cant move to my computer or new IPODs and cant rip the CDs as they are in storage back home. REAL handy.
I have since "acquired" all these albums in mp3 format from "other sources" so now we can listen to all our music again. I only "acquired" the albums that we actually own back home, so will be interesting if the RIAA makes with the lawsuit seeing as I did actually purchase the albums, just want to actually be able to listen to them how I want.
I would say it's more a case of being able to download non-DRMed music at a low price without any risk* of getting slapped with a lawsuit from the RIAA.
*downloading via P2P there is a risk that you are caught due to the nature of P2P (i.e. RIAA have their "investigators" in the P2P networks noting IP addresses), but if you download direct from allofmp3.com then there really isnt a way that the RIAA can catch you doing that unless a) allofmp3.com logs somehow get into the hands of the RIAA (even if this happens woudl this be enough to prosecute?) or b) you ISP logs your usage and hands this over to the RIAA (and even if this happens they would have to be pretty detailed logs to see what you actually downloaded from there).
So nothing to do with guilt, just willing to pay a reasonable price to avoid a lawsuit. The RIAAs lawsuits are actually creating more business of allofmp3.com and sites like it.
A lot of players pulled out as it was before the normal regular season so they claimed they werent game ready yet, but most of the big names were there. Another big factor was the risk of injury, although no-one actually used that as a reason not to play.
This was the first World Baseball Classic, a bit of a trial, but I think it was seen as a success and will continue as an annual event.
I agree with you on the naming thing, they should call the World Baseball Classic the World Series, and the finals something else all together.
In Baseball the ratio is even worse. The only country that could challenge US baseball amateurs is Cuba, and it is a very very long way from there up to the Major Leagues, and of course even longer to the World Series.
In amateur only competition (e.g. the Olympics) in baseball the reason Cuba are so strong is that they dont have a professional league (havent since 1961). So every player in Cuba is eligible to play (not the ones that have defected to the USA to play in the majors though of course).
In competitions where professionals are able to play there are quite a few teams better than the USA. In the recent World Baseball Classic pros were able to play and most players from the major leagues were allowed/agreed to play (this usually doesnt happen for fear of injury to VERY expensive players).
The USA won 3 of its 6 games and didnt even make the semi finals. They finished 8th overall. Teams above them were (in order). Japan, Cuba, Korea, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Mexico and Venezuela.
USA has the Major league that players world wide want to play in as it is the top competition and pays by far the best, but they dont own baseball. Baseball is apparently the national pastime in the USA but its the national sport/pastime and religion in countries like the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Cuba etc.)
So the theme of this "marketing" is that it takes a team of the top microsoft engineers a few days to find out that they couldnt fix the machine without a re-install.
So now you can pay $50 a year and what? some low level techie will try to fix your machine as well and then tell you to re-install when they can't fix that either?
I think I will keep my $50 and re-install myself thanks.
....
no safe harbors for Internet copyright thieves ....
The major motion picture studios lost an estimated $6.1 billion to piracy in 2005. Internet
piracy alone cost the studios $2.3 billion. The .....
For more information, contact:
MPAA Los Angeles
Kori Bernards or Elizabeth Kaltman
(818) 995-6600
MPAA Washington, D.C.
John Feehery or Gayle Osterberg
(202) 293-1966
I would really like some more information on this propaganda, and to share my views on this topic, if only there were a way to make free phone calls to US phone numbers from anywhere in the world with no way to trace where the phone call is coming from.........
This means that concerts will increasingly become the past time of the rich, yes, and they will leave some of their best fans, the teenagers, out in the cold.
I think this is a big point that could hurt this model long term, while it makes big bucks and is popular short term.
Usually an artist will schedule say three shows in any given city. If/when these sell-out very quickly then more shows are announced which also sell out. Generally more shows arent announced when demand starts to slow, so all shows sell-out, but also a lot of people get to see the show.
Under this new model three shows are announced in the city, people bid up big for the tickets to these shows, the artist/promoters/ticketmaster rake in the dough, as much if not more than if they had put no more shows for the cheaper prices, so no more shows are announced.
Now a lot less fans see the show, but everyone else gets their money (except the scalpers and ebay of course). So will they schedule more shows in this case? or take the money and run?
And if they take the money and run is this sustainable in the long run? will the artist/promoters/ticketmaster lose out on album sales, future event ticket sales because less people are interested after missing out on the show?
Why bother interviewing the reporter to find out his anon source? just look up his call records for the last couple of weeks and they can find out for themselves.
Perhaps the ABC could now go back through that page and post the IP address that every comment was made from next to each comment. Surely no-one would have a problem with that. Losing a little privacy/anonimity is a small price to pay in the War on Terror right?
This smacks of journalists pompously elevating their self-importance to levels higher than they deserve. There are many examples of inappropriate treatment of journalists. This doesn't feel like one of them.
If you^H^H^Hthe government has nothing to hide, you^H^H^Hthe government has nothing to fear from leaks to the press.
It would be a lot easier to accept this "the sky is falling" complaint by the ISPs as a possibility if they hadnt been sprouting all this crap about Google et al. getting a "free ride" on their infrastructure and using all kinds of obvious rubbish as an excuse to charge more on the consumer and provider end.
At the moment though the timing is very suspicious. After the response to the "free ride" fud-fest was not in their favor all of sudden they have just now realised that there is another reason why they should implement tiered pricing?
after getting off the phone with their buddy in Jordan (who just talked to his buddy in Germany, who earlier that day was talking to his buddy in Boston about renting that car that they left in the parking lot when they got on the plane).
But this database wouldn't make the link between these two individuals in the US!
Individual A who is calling flights schools etc calls Individual B in Jordan.
Individual B (in Jordan) previously called Individual C in Germany.
Individual C (in Germany) previously spoke to Individual D in Boston.
The only info in the NSA database is that:
1. Individual A called someone in Jordan
2. Individual D called someone in Germany
there is no link between these two calls. Unless there is some other surveillance then put on either Individual B (in Jordan) to Individual C (in Germany) and then this data is correlated with the NSA database.
Unless B and C are already under suspicion for something else the only reason to put them under surveillance would be because someone from the US called them.
So basically you are a potential terrorist if you:
a) call anyone outside the US (or they call you)
b) call anyone in a) (or they call you).
(and so is the person you called or called you that is outside of the US).
That should pretty neatly cover just about everyone.
Tom, you really should have mentioned this in the article...
Are you insane?!
That would have added at least another 7 pages to the article!
Do you even know how much people hate reading Really Long Reviews (tm)?!?
Slashdot Mirror
through lots of tubes (not trucks).
ps - shocking that a load os slashdot readers would get all pissy when someone says SETI@home is a lost cause, even though I think most people (even geeks) know that it is.
I've bought lottery tickets in the past knowing full well the chances of my numbers coming up are pretty close to zero.
I don't see it as a waste of money, while there is a chance that I can win I can dream what it would be like to win, what I would do with the money, how my life would change. Similarly with SETI, sure we probably wont find anything, but it costs very little to do and the value is in the fact that while there is that chance it might find something you can always dream, what it would be, how it would change the whole world etc.
And like the lottery you have to be in it to win it.
the famous physicist Niels Bohr was definitely not a layman in other fields, say chemistry.
He was also played a little professional football (soccer) as a goalkeeper.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Aecis/Trivia
Quite the all rounder that guy.
Why give up the incredibly profitable Long Distance business model for the "flat rate" model of the internet, when you can convert the internet into another "long distance" service?
I think you nailed it there. Theres all this bullshit about covering the cost of "upgrading" the internet to deal with all this extra traffic. Was this under discussion with the move from dial-up to ADSL/cable connections? No. The ISPs just priced the faster connections accordingly.
If bandwith is reaching its limits under the current infrastructure then the rates are going to have to go up for EVERYONE to offset the cost of upgrading the infrastructure. Either that or the telcos are actually going to have to outlay some actual money in order to keep their current customers and continue making a profit like any normal industry would.
Analogy time:
You start a small courier company, just delivering stuff in your car. You are making a nice little profit and are getting a lot of customers so you need to expand. You need to buy a bigger vehicle to expand so you can either:
1) start charging more per delivery to offset the cost until you make enough to actually purchase a nice big truck.
2) start a super complex charging system where customers deliveries arrive faster to places that give your company money for the privelidge of receiving their deliveries faster, and the rest are just best effort deliveries.
3) suck it up and buy the truck out of your own pocket with the longer term view that you will keep all your customers, get more in the future and keep making a profit eventually paying off the truck and once it is paid off continuing to make money.
in the case of 1) you WILL drive some customers away if they have a cheaper alternative that does the same job. but then again you dont have to outlaw any cash in the first place so maybe that will offset any loss of customers. Your customers will NOT see any advantage from paying more up until you can actually afford to make the purchase, so they are paying more but for no gain up until that point. Of course they are going to look elsewhere.
with 2) no-ones going to buy that. good luck trying to get anyone to give you money up-front, what happens if no-one pays?
Do you slow deliveries down to everyone until someone cracks and starts paying up?
Which do you think will happen first, someone cracks and pays or all your customers go elsewhere?
Even if you are the only courier in town they might STILL not pay up, so do you stop all deliveries completely just to prove whos boss? what are you the boss of exactly if your company is no longer actually doing anything? its a stupid idea.
3) this is how normal companies work.
The way I see it the only viable options to the ISPs are raise rates or introduce tougher (and AS ADVERTISED - i.e. no "unlimited" but actually very limited) download limits. That is if these "upgrades" are even required in the first place. I would be very interested to see some real facts on how necessary this actually is.
I get it, this is one of those fill in the blanks games right?
... move along.
Let me try.
This is mildly interesting, but not because the__curious__ employees did anything wrong. It points out that_while_ the sysadmins have been keeping horribly unpatched_computer__ systems around that could be infected by data. And old exploits, at that.
____________Merely______________ Examining data should not lead to altering other_sensitive__ data. Still less system files. Microsoft is a__spectacularly__ crufty bugfest. Nothing more to see here
Do I win a prize?
Exactly.
I was once a victim of Sonys piece of crap ATRAC format and will never be caught out like that again.
Prior to moving overseas for an extended backpacking holiday followed up by living overseas for a while I purchased a SONY mp3 player. Like an idiot I converted all my (and my GFs) CDs to ATRAC format onto the player so we could listen to them while away as I wasnt going to bring all our CDs with us (approx 60-70 CDs).
So now living in another country I have a whole bunch of ATRAC files that I cant move to my computer or new IPODs and cant rip the CDs as they are in storage back home. REAL handy.
I have since "acquired" all these albums in mp3 format from "other sources" so now we can listen to all our music again. I only "acquired" the albums that we actually own back home, so will be interesting if the RIAA makes with the lawsuit seeing as I did actually purchase the albums, just want to actually be able to listen to them how I want.
I would say it's more a case of being able to download non-DRMed music at a low price without any risk* of getting slapped with a lawsuit from the RIAA.
*downloading via P2P there is a risk that you are caught due to the nature of P2P (i.e. RIAA have their "investigators" in the P2P networks noting IP addresses), but if you download direct from allofmp3.com then there really isnt a way that the RIAA can catch you doing that unless a) allofmp3.com logs somehow get into the hands of the RIAA (even if this happens woudl this be enough to prosecute?) or b) you ISP logs your usage and hands this over to the RIAA (and even if this happens they would have to be pretty detailed logs to see what you actually downloaded from there).
So nothing to do with guilt, just willing to pay a reasonable price to avoid a lawsuit. The RIAAs lawsuits are actually creating more business of allofmp3.com and sites like it.
A lot of players pulled out as it was before the normal regular season so they claimed they werent game ready yet, but most of the big names were there. Another big factor was the risk of injury, although no-one actually used that as a reason not to play.
This was the first World Baseball Classic, a bit of a trial, but I think it was seen as a success and will continue as an annual event.
I agree with you on the naming thing, they should call the World Baseball Classic the World Series, and the finals something else all together.
In Baseball the ratio is even worse. The only country that could challenge US baseball amateurs is Cuba, and it is a very very long way from there up to the Major Leagues, and of course even longer to the World Series.
In amateur only competition (e.g. the Olympics) in baseball the reason Cuba are so strong is that they dont have a professional league (havent since 1961). So every player in Cuba is eligible to play (not the ones that have defected to the USA to play in the majors though of course).
In competitions where professionals are able to play there are quite a few teams better than the USA. In the recent World Baseball Classic pros were able to play and most players from the major leagues were allowed/agreed to play (this usually doesnt happen for fear of injury to VERY expensive players).
The USA won 3 of its 6 games and didnt even make the semi finals. They finished 8th overall. Teams above them were (in order). Japan, Cuba, Korea, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Mexico and Venezuela.
USA has the Major league that players world wide want to play in as it is the top competition and pays by far the best, but they dont own baseball. Baseball is apparently the national pastime in the USA but its the national sport/pastime and religion in countries like the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Cuba etc.)
So the theme of this "marketing" is that it takes a team of the top microsoft engineers a few days to find out that they couldnt fix the machine without a re-install.
So now you can pay $50 a year and what? some low level techie will try to fix your machine as well and then tell you to re-install when they can't fix that either?
I think I will keep my $50 and re-install myself thanks.
Why not outsource the 'Bordercam' watching to India or China?
or Mexico....
from the MPAA pdf:
....
....
.....
no safe harbors for Internet copyright thieves
The major motion picture studios lost an estimated $6.1 billion to piracy in 2005. Internet
piracy alone cost the studios $2.3 billion. The
For more information, contact:
MPAA Los Angeles
Kori Bernards or Elizabeth Kaltman
(818) 995-6600
MPAA Washington, D.C.
John Feehery or Gayle Osterberg
(202) 293-1966
I would really like some more information on this propaganda, and to share my views on this topic, if only there were a way to make free phone calls to US phone numbers from anywhere in the world with no way to trace where the phone call is coming from.........
listen to them, and then vote them into office. exhibit A - The Governator of California.
I'd like to point out that this is brilliantly advanced... in theory. It's completely possible and will likely be buildable... in theory.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.
--Yogi Berra
This means that concerts will increasingly become the past time of the rich, yes, and they will leave some of their best fans, the teenagers, out in the cold.
I think this is a big point that could hurt this model long term, while it makes big bucks and is popular short term.
Usually an artist will schedule say three shows in any given city. If/when these sell-out very quickly then more shows are announced which also sell out. Generally more shows arent announced when demand starts to slow, so all shows sell-out, but also a lot of people get to see the show.
Under this new model three shows are announced in the city, people bid up big for the tickets to these shows, the artist/promoters/ticketmaster rake in the dough, as much if not more than if they had put no more shows for the cheaper prices, so no more shows are announced.
Now a lot less fans see the show, but everyone else gets their money (except the scalpers and ebay of course). So will they schedule more shows in this case? or take the money and run?
And if they take the money and run is this sustainable in the long run? will the artist/promoters/ticketmaster lose out on album sales, future event ticket sales because less people are interested after missing out on the show?
Why bother interviewing the reporter to find out his anon source? just look up his call records for the last couple of weeks and they can find out for themselves.
9 22209
Reporters are worried they are already subject to this kind of thing http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/15/1
Is your connection to google and wikipedia running a little slow today? maybe they didnt pay their bills this month.
Perhaps the ABC could now go back through that page and post the IP address that every comment was made from next to each comment. Surely no-one would have a problem with that. Losing a little privacy/anonimity is a small price to pay in the War on Terror right?
This smacks of journalists pompously elevating their self-importance to levels higher than they deserve. There are many examples of inappropriate treatment of journalists. This doesn't feel like one of them.
If you^H^H^Hthe government has nothing to hide, you^H^H^Hthe government has nothing to fear from leaks to the press.
Seems like they have plenty to hide to me.
It would be a lot easier to accept this "the sky is falling" complaint by the ISPs as a possibility if they hadnt been sprouting all this crap about Google et al. getting a "free ride" on their infrastructure and using all kinds of obvious rubbish as an excuse to charge more on the consumer and provider end.
At the moment though the timing is very suspicious. After the response to the "free ride" fud-fest was not in their favor all of sudden they have just now realised that there is another reason why they should implement tiered pricing?
Excuse me if I dont just take their word for it.
after getting off the phone with their buddy in Jordan (who just talked to his buddy in Germany, who earlier that day was talking to his buddy in Boston about renting that car that they left in the parking lot when they got on the plane).
:
But this database wouldn't make the link between these two individuals in the US!
Individual A who is calling flights schools etc calls Individual B in Jordan.
Individual B (in Jordan) previously called Individual C in Germany.
Individual C (in Germany) previously spoke to Individual D in Boston.
The only info in the NSA database is that:
1. Individual A called someone in Jordan
2. Individual D called someone in Germany
there is no link between these two calls. Unless there is some other surveillance then put on either Individual B (in Jordan) to Individual C (in Germany) and then this data is correlated with the NSA database.
Unless B and C are already under suspicion for something else the only reason to put them under surveillance would be because someone from the US called them.
So basically you are a potential terrorist if you
a) call anyone outside the US (or they call you)
b) call anyone in a) (or they call you).
(and so is the person you called or called you that is outside of the US).
That should pretty neatly cover just about everyone.
I'm not sure how easy it would be to find someone with a prior conviction to send on the road trip.
Yeah, everything else on the list should be a piece of cake, but where the hell are you going to find someone thats had a moving violation?!
well at least they wouldn't run out of shit in a hurry.
http://www.big.co.ck/ is still available I believe; let the auctioning commence!
If you think I am going to click that link from my work PC to see if it is still available then you are very much mistaken!
Tom, you really should have mentioned this in the article...
Are you insane?!
That would have added at least another 7 pages to the article!
Do you even know how much people hate reading Really Long Reviews (tm)?!?