From linked article from TFA: "The lawsuit was filed in June 2005, and the litigants met in court for a daylong hearing a year later to define terminology and set parameters for future court proceedings. Such hearings in patent cases are considered critical, and Judge William Sessions III issued a ruling July 24 that favored some of Contois' positions over Apple's.
The parties met the next day to begin discussing a resolution, according to court records. A first session was unsuccessful. A second session, which began at noon Aug. 16 and ended at 3:30 a.m. Aug. 17, led to the settlement. Lawyers filed court papers about the agreement last week, and Sessions dismissed the case. "
Apple proceeds like any other case like this, expecting an easy win because they honestly believe (I hope) that they've done nothing wrong. But, once rulings start coming back in favor of the other guy, Apple has to look at this and say, "Hey, we're making money hand over fist with iTunes, and this could easily get ugly like Blackberry... only our user base is slightly less addicted and will be angry with us if suddenly, like with Echostar, we have to turn off parts their devices on the next update. So, let's just ask them exactly what they want, and maybe just pay them off."
First meeting: We want $1 billion dollars!
Second meeting: Ok, we'll settle for OUR attorney fees, $x00,000, and stock options from Apple to cover future profits.
SOLD!
BTW, I think that last meeting went to 3:30am because some lawyer, not thinking, brought in an iBook and everyone wasted hours talking about favorite bands, and checking them out on iTunes.
Here is a truly inventive way of solving a difficult problem. They've basically flipped everything on its head. Instead of voting to exclude, they vote to include, without distorting the current system or balance (not everything must be tagged include).
I think many others should take note of this system if it works. It's not exactly like Digg, but the idea of inclusion moderation could work in many other areas. To me, this is like switching from blacklisting to whitelisting to stop spam, and I think it will have the same dramatic effect, with some quirky new problems (nothing is perfect).
But, take note all you web service designers. Maybe you should think about changing some of your functions from exclude to verified include if this works out. I think this could really have an impact on news related sites, like Slashdot to quickly vet story facts. Just look at this forum, it's already using such a system to verify the most competent responses, and weeding out the junk. Approval vs. Disapproval models could really expand when this is fully adopted far beyond sites like news and Wiki.
Anyone that partners with AOL goes down the tubes. If AOL were a/. user, they'd have infectiously bad karma. They're posts would not only immediately drop off the radar, but would cause all parent posts, like parent companies, to tank as well.
An "iGapple" company would at least be the guy who always gets "first post", and sums up the entire following reaction in 1 line. The number of their +5 moderations would eventually get so boring, that the only thing newsworthy would be the 3's and 4's.
It's not even apples and oranges, it's Special Ed versus Superman.
Not a biased question at all. It's the question asked daily at Novell, RedHat, IBM, etc, etc. Some sell backend services and support (equivilant to live concerts for artists). Some only charge for hard copies, but give the content away for free download (buy the CD, but feel free to purchase the CD with art, lyrics, a wall poster, and extras). Some don't make money at all through their users, except for donations, and the jobs they get because of their expertise (think Christian musicians who basically give away their music to radio stations free, because most stations, like most people, aren't rich... but make money back at wildly sold out concerts of very devoted fans).
There's an economy when the creation costs much, but manufacturing and distribution approach $0. Linux already does it. Music and Movies just need to figure it out as well. And, I have to say that the creative quality and scope in Linux far exceeds that of companies still under the old supply/demand model. Maybe the same could happen with media. Just look at all the crap music that's "popular" (I don't know with who, I suspect major $Payola$). The real break out artists are broke, indie, collaborators (including rotating band members) and just love what they do.
I wasn't even going to mention The Grateful Dead... that'd be too redundant and obvious here, regardless of the fact that its exactly what I'm talking about.
Re:It's like nothing we've seen .. since Linux
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A New Kind of OS
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Virtualization is the key here. You start off with the absolute minimum, and work your way up. If everyone did what you did, they would be amazed how powerful their home desktop really is. I use Xen to run highly optimized OSs under my top OS (which is stripped down of all but the essential applications I run daily... I run a parent heavy setup, and use the child OSs like temporary servants who are not allowed to bother "me"). I have one that's specifically a file server (using a TrueCrypt module compiled just for the minimal kernel), I have one that acts as my firewall/proxy/dns. And I have another that acts as a developmental web server. I have others for general purpose (compiling, backing up, etc.)
The idea of all-in-one, be everything to everybody, operating systems died the moment everyone realized that we've quickly come to what most of us realize, and that is the human bottleneck. The computer I'm on is several years old Celeron, and it can still outpace me, even with my XGL turned up to max and running several apps on the base OS. The key is that it only does so when you tell it what you want to do with it. If you tell it to do everything, of course it will work slowly.
The problem is that ease of use has not caught up with the pace of our new toys for truly managing our system resources. We are not the average user, who is still screaming and kicking because their brand new machine locks up when trying to read email. I think OSs would do so much better to come compartmentalized out or the box. When something is needed, it runs in its own box, and when it is not, it disappears completely. The average Windows users doesn't even realize all of the unnecessary daemons running, or that all those little icons in the bottom corner are sucking up their system resources, slowing their boot times, and opening them up to crashes, trojans, and headaches.
The day users can boot in, and be asked "What/Where do you REALLY want to do/go today?" is when they'll find a more pleasurable experience. As it is now, the average home user's computer is a car trying to drive in all directions at once, and getting nowhere. But, I guess that's what sells new computers.
If they're going for the "Wow Effect", they're a year late. Pictures in maps... I'm sorry, am I supposed to be impressed? Drag and drop, mapped pictures, picture text searches, all great, but none new. I think they did a good job, and its a welcome addition to their site, but I don't think it's going to generate the buzz they think it might. It will, imho, simply keep them competitive with the bigger draws out there, like YouTube.
If and when they release a code snippet to embed these in your own page (maybe they have, I don't know), then this will certainly be a big hit among users (though still not technically impressive). Imagine all the MySpace users who would flood to their service if they could organize their pictures by location, and even by friend's picture collections, and add it directly to their page.
As it stands now, though, this is about as exciting as watching your friend buy last year's hot computer gadget after you've already played with it for a year. They've caught up, but they've not moved ahead.
As for me, it certainly is my business. They are a "kid", a child, not an adult. Parents have the right to know where, when, who, etc. A parent has the right to tell their child, for instance, that they can't leave the state or city. A parent has the right to tell their child they can't go to a party where liquor is being served or drugs are being used. A parent has the right to tell their child that they cannot speed.
I'm not saying I'd track the kid, but I will tell them to drive the speed limit, and whether they get in trouble or not, I expect them to follow my rules. Otherwise, you're telling your kid, "Hey, as long as you don't get caught, I don't care if you [insert illegal activity here]." Children need sensable boundaries along with the freedom to be themselves.
Forget kids, if I lone my car out to anyone, I have the right to know where they are going, who will be going with them, and that they are obeying all traffic laws while using MY car.
I'm all for privacy, but call me old fashioned. Children living in MY house live under MY rules. As my father told me and his father before him... you are free to do whatever you please after you move out. This may offend some younger/.r's, but a 16 year old who just got their license is certainly NOT a mature adult capable of making their own rules up. With age and maturity comes more freedom. But for a young new driver, I can't see an almost no rules environment where the one rule is "I'm not getting bailed out of jail".
Would I actually put a GPS bug in my child's car? No. I would rather buy a pre-paid cellphone and hide it somewhere in the interior of the car with a power adapter spliced to the wiring, and let my child know about it. This for safety, not privacy invasion. Car gets stolen or child comes up missing, one phone call by the police to the cell phone company will locate the car.
Also, let's not confuse child privacy with adult privacy. I find no moral or legal grounding for a child's right to privacy from their own parents. Those who say otherwise are either trying to be the "cool" parent or are not a parent. "I don't care what he does until something happens. THAT'S when I spring into dad-mode." I'm not telling you how to raise your children, because that is certainly not my business. But, since it is your "(hypothetical)" kid, I can already guess you want to be the "cool" parent. Just realize it's a little late to spring into dad-mode when they hit a telephone poll at 100mph killing their girlfriend and paralyzing themselves, because his "best bud" wants to look the other way until something bad happens. There is no "dad-mode". You are either a dad, or you are not.
That's equivalent to not telling your child to not play with the stove until they get 3rd degree burns on their hands. I'd be interested to hear your comments when you actually have a 16 year old with a license.
It's called parenting. And you haven't learned that yet.
I love this judge. None of this pussyfooting around like with the Blackberry case. 'You're in violation and you shut down now, no exceptions, motions denied, and if you keep whining, I swear to God Almighty I'll throw this gavel at your forehead!'
I've really got to side with Tivo here. This is straight forward, whether 1 company stole the patent or 50. Just because 50 companies all stole the same idea and created their own markets for it, it's still theft. You steal, you lose. Why is this such a "bad for consumers" things? Bad because we won't let companies get away with theft with a slap on the wrist?
Screw the media companies. They've been suing us for years for infringement, now they get a taste of their own medicine. I can't wait until Tivo takes on every other media provider that uses DVR. The fur will fly and customers will jump ships, demand refunds, and maybe they'll finally get good customer service, instead of that snotty operator who knows you'll never leave because you only have 1 real alternative. And in the end, practices will be more respectful of other companies, of indemnifying customers, and for going with the original source of technology to ensure quality.
This is a win-win for Tivo and consumers in the end. It's a win for the inventor and innovator, and a lose for talentless copy-cat hacks trying to protect their own regional monopolies. It's David vs. Goliath... and Goliath's cousin, and nephew, and brothers, and grandma, and David just whipped all their asses.
It's almost like watching Ralph Nader beat both the Democrats and Republicans, only this is Cable (who's mascot is also ironically an ass) and Satellite (who's mascot is a turtle... on downers... taking a nap... for the next 6 months).
I agree, but it goes even further. It assumes you've obtained the file initially through a legal means (much like the bartender assumes you got your license from the government, not from Joe Fraudster in his garage). If you copied the song from a legitimate source or program, it should have a license or DRM or something saying, "You can't trade this on a file sharing network." Limewire gives copyright holders the opportunity then to actively prevent trading.
The legal defense, I think, has to then come back and prove that Limewire is taking every reasonable measure to actively promote the ability of the RIAA to censor trading without suing them or the traders. It also removes some liability to traders who use legitimate programs by telling them to just share everything, because existing DRM will prevent you from inadvertently sharing something you are not allowed.
For instance, I buy a CD. I assume I own that CD and the music on it. But, when I copy it, the DRM attached to it says no sharing. I won't inadvertently share all the music on my harddrive and break the law, because this should prevent sharing. On the other hand, if I remove the DRM, or circumvent it, then at least Limewire made every effort short of downloading your file and examining it themselves. Limewire can basically say, hey, we're like a car dealership. We take every measure possible to confirm the odometer. But, if someone messes with it in a way we can't detect, it would be an undo burden for us to follow the driver around everywhere to confirm it. I think the license check is a reasonable and active prevention of copyright infringement.
On the other hand, I could buy a CD from a progressive band who puts a DRM on it that specifically says, "Yeah, share this all you want!" I certainly would want to financially support such an artist.
The RIAA should then only really go after ripping programs that strip out their license information. Even on Linux, the license information could be stored in the meta-data, even if the DRM has to be stripped for the file to play correctly. This doesn't need to be done at the ripper level, but at the player level. The player then, by stripping the DRM to play, could still lock out all copy features if any DRM exists.
It all comes down to the honor system. Limewire works on the honor system that you won't go out of your way to avoid the license. RIAA should accept this, and only go after those who don't want to play by the honor system... much like video game ratings are by the honor system. It works because the only time you have to react is when someone goes out of their way to break the honor system. In this case, the user has to go out of their way to modify the license data, or the RIAA fails to include it, and they only have themselves to blame for that.
If licenses were standardized like the Creative Commons is, if the RIAA included them, if the rippers included them (maybe transferring them to a different format if need be), and services like Limewire honors them... what's the problem? In this way, it's certainly not Limewire that's doing anything wrong, but is the fault of the user who broke the DRM. As a backup, why doesn't the RIAA provide file names to automatically filter as well. Not just to Limewire, but to the public? Better yet, why not also use signed certificate licenses with hashes on the file names (not the content, because that is altered during ripping)? Sure, someone could modify the name in such a way as "br1tn3y sp34rs", but the RIAA could include permutations to the extent that anything they don't catch, it should be obvious someone is trying to scam the license system (much like spammers trying to avoid filters).
Besides, nobody usually searches for such wild permutations, so they are naturally censored. I actually wish it worked this way. That way, you could go on a file sharing network, and download all music, because only legal music would be available. And, if Joe Fraudster puts up something that was circumve
You mean to tell me people download music on Limewire? And all this time, I thought it was for porn. Downloading porn is still legal... right? RIGHT?
Oh man, this is gonna suck if they shut Limewire down. I mean, it'll suck if you're into that sort of thing... such a nasty habit. Nasty and dirty and... uh yeah...
I guess you weren't there or just don't remember when AOL connected to the Internet.
I remember them quite well. I go back to the 300 baud days on a Commodore 64/128. I remember the first services like Compuserv, that only let you get on for 30 minutes a day, and watching text type itself out on my monochrome screen.
BBSes were NOT one at a time. Plenty were linked up in FIDO or RIME, and other smaller networks.
Maybe for you, in a large location. I lived in a medium sized rural town. We didn't have our first independant ISP until around 1996. The BBS's that weren't long distance were setup by guys who had an extra computer and phone line, and mostly ran either ACiD art sites, porn sites, or warez sites, or a combination of all there of. The only real use for them was to grab things like freeware and to play door games like Legend of the Red Dragon. And, with only 1 phone line in, all but the long distance phone calls were definately one at a time.
As for FIDO, it may have been great where you were, but only one board locally had it setup, was rarely updated because it meant using up the dial in number to do it, was a bear to figure out for most users, and pretty useless because the sysop didn't make any effort to give users info to contacting the outside world. Friends and I played around with our own Wildcat BBS for a while, but it was never exciting enough to keep doing.
As for AOL, one click and I was chatting to people around the world. It was not a tough choice over which to use. I tried Compuserv's CB, and it just wasn't as good imho. I left AOL just after I found a new independant ISP that was far far cheaper to use.
As I said, maybe this was a bad thing for everyone else, but AOL eclipsed everything else out there in terms of actually being useful. I wouldn't dare use them today, so it's a snapshot in time.
The point is asking the question of what makes a "worst product of all time". To me, it's how it's changed the world. And, like it or not, the Internet would not have become as popular as fast without AOL. The Internet got a lot of free publicity from them, and it let the average user get online. Make fun of the ALL CAPS people now, but A) that's elitist in that it's the idea that the Internet was some exclusive geek club and B) those people learned about the technology before the rest 99% of the rest of the population and went on to create many of the sites and companies today. I too have felt a bit of the elitist twinge, because I came from the BBS croud, the Tandy croud that had to program their computers from scratch to use them. But, it is elitist none the less.
Without all those "dumbass n00bs" that were there then and now on cable modems today... It may be the geeks that built the eBays and Amazons, but it's the people who don't even know what Usenet is that spends their money online that is the reason you even have a cable or DSL modem. Companies and investors are not out to build massive infrastructure for a few geeks.
That's the impact of AOL, because it was the first charge that really got those users online. It let anyone with a computer go out who could get a modem installed to find out what all the fuss was about the "Information Superhighway" politicians and CEOs kept talking about. It wasn't the easiest thing to install or configure, but from my experience, it sure was easier than COMiT or other programs at the time to access BBSs and other services available in my area.
I'm sorry if others feel it broke the sanctity of their little clubs. Yeah, damn AOLers, they completely ruined alt.fetish.;)
People blame AOL because of the types of users. Whether AOL or another service, they would have eventually gotten online. AOL just did it faster and better than everyone else.
nobody wanted to wait for images to load
Good thing services like AOL drove sales for newer and faster connection devices every single year until phone modems gave way to broadban
Oh, now I get it. I was so brand confused. I thought that other Apple company was suing bloggers. Like most people when I think Apple, I instantly think Beatles.;)
I couldn't agree more. Already reading many comments on this article in other locations that are crying foul over AOL. Not that AOL was the best thing since sliced bread. But before other dial up ISPs, they were the only bread in town, unless you logged in to text services or one-at-a-time BBSs. Looking at AOL then, you see where the leap was made from online computing before 1989 and after. Color, pictures, multiuser chat, news, message boards, and email.
Strange, that's pretty similar to what we have now. If you read what they complain about, it is painfully obvious that the writer is either some 16 year old AOL basher without a clue or worse, an old elitist that wonders, "Didn't we all have private (D)Arpanet connections?"
Here's their complaints about AOL:
"How do we loathe AOL? Let us count the ways. Since America Online emerged from the belly of a BBS called Quantum "PC-Link" in 1989, users have suffered through..."
1. awful software 2. inaccessible dial-up numbers 3. rapacious marketing 4. in-your-face advertising 5. questionable billing practices 6. inexcusably poor customer service 7. enough spam to last a lifetime 8. more expensive than its major competitors
"This lethal combination earned the world's biggest ISP the top spot on our list of bottom feeders."
It goes on to say:
"AOL succeeded initially by targeting newbies, using brute-force marketing techniques. In the 90s you couldn't open a magazine (PC World included) or your mailbox without an AOL disk falling out of it. This carpet-bombing technique yielded big numbers: At its peak, AOL claimed 34 million subscribers worldwide, though it never revealed how many were just using up their free hours.
Advertisement (This is an actual paste... sorry, PC world gave me IN-YOUR-FACE advertising.)
Now, there are some valid arguments. For instance, they are notorious for screwing up your billing and not cancelling accounts properly. On the other hand, this article is targeting the original AOL. In your face advertising? Nobody but geeks knew what the net was in the early 90s. In the 90s, you couldn't exactly download the AOL client (more evidence this guy is 16). But let's go back.
Awful software: What did you expect, it ran on Windows 3.1. It was probably the only useful thing a home user ever ran on Windows 3.1
Inaccessible dial-up numbers: I had about 4 numbers locally, and most problems were because I screwed with my modem baud trying to squeeze out top speed.
Marketing: Back then, you had to convince people that they had a reason to even buy a computer, let alone get online with it.
Spam: We're placing the blame on AOL for this now?
Expensive: That's certainly true. I remember a point when they charged over $6 an hour or there abouts. Let's just say that you used your AOL time wisely (downloading all the porn you could within an hour), hehe. Yes, it would be considered highway robbery these days. Then again, so many out there are willing to pay $2 for a tv show (free to watch on your very large TV) to play on a itsy bitsy iPod screen. I'd rather pay $6 an hour for my Internet connection.
PCWorld probably made hundreds of thousands of dollars from AOL to carry their CDs for them. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.
I don't mean to be smug about it, but that is similar to saying that 3D is a terrible interface for a shopping mall, grocery, library, park, theater, restaurant, etc. Beyond the written word (books, news, advertisements), all of those existing 3D interfaces have been "ported" to 2D.
And frankly (though I don't like them), any local Walmart is a better walk in experience in 3D than their site is in 2D. I've yet to see any Wikipedia article anywhere as interesting as an equivalent museum exhibit.
In the way that 3D eclipses 2D, talking will always be faster than typing, and video holds much more information than a picture. We're equipped with stereo-vision for a reason. Currently, everyone on the web might as well be a cyclops.
"If Skype bows to FCC pressure (which they will) then they will not provide encryption in their service which means that the people using Skype won't be able to encrypt their calls."
From the link: "Zfone uses a new protocol called ZRTP, which is better than the other approaches to secure VoIP, because it achieves security without reliance on a PKI, key certification, trust models, certificate authorities, or key management complexity that bedevils the email encryption world. It also does not rely on SIP signaling for the key management, and in fact does not rely on any servers at all. It performs its key agreements and key management in a purely peer-to-peer manner over the RTP packet stream. It interoperates with any standard SIP phone, but naturally only encrypts the call if you are calling another ZRTP client. This new protocol has been submitted to the IETF as a proposal for a public standard, to enable interoperability of SIP endpoints from different vendors."
If it's digital, its encrypt-able. They can monitor everything they want, but as long as VoIP goes through an internet connection (which is the whole point of VoIP), it's encrypt-able. The same goes for all things over the internet.
Remember, the NSA is alreadymonitoring lots of internet and phone traffic. They're blanket tapping us all. Right now, if my connection is going out over an AT&T line, they are watching me. No longer is it just paranoia that we're all being watched. If you want privacy, don't just encrypt your phone conversations. Encrypt your searches, encrypt your email, encrypt your downloads, encrypt your files. The NSA may be able to see the traffic, but you can prevent them from red flagging you by your content.
It is no longer akin to an act of civil disobedience to run encryption, it is a survival tactic for what another poster called Joe Sixpack (aka Joe Bloe, John Smith, Average Joe).
I shy away from most things Microsoft, but honestly, they blow away the competition in so many small services (which is overshadowed by their OS flaws most of the time). For instance, I think for video conferencing, Microsoft has the upper hand their version on MSN which looks really nice maximized on a TV set (living room video phone setup).
Microsoft's Live Local is truely an exciting picture to see even after using Google Earth/Maps. The "Bird's Eye" view of my own house is a bit dated but very detailed. I shows the top of a swing on my back deck that I no longer own. I can make out my car parked out front. What's also amazing is being able to "swing" the picture around. Because it's at an angle, not every picture was taken at the same time.
But what really scares me here is that the resolution here is so good that if it were detailed any more, you could see into any of my windows. That's not a problem with direct overhead pictures that Google uses. A 45 degree downward slope angle makes me want to double check that not even the open sky is visible above my shower curtain.
I think there are too many doomsday scenario people out there, like the recent ruffle over MySpace which is completely overblown. But, let's take the natural progression of this technology to a few years down the road. Higher resolutions and daily or live images. You're a single woman living at home. Do you really want someone looking into your windows at high resolution? A married person may see it as a double edged sword. On one hand, the husband can make sure the milk man isn't staying 3 hours at his house. On the other, a stalker could watch for a husband to leave, police to go on break, and no service trucks enter the area before deciding to attack the person still in the house, or rob it if no one is in it.
Empowering criminals as if they were mafia hitmen with 20 accomplices is not my idea of meaningful progress. I think the current detail and timeframes are really as far as this should go. When it gets to the point of actually looking into our houses, then it goes too far. I'm sure the government can already do this. I may not like it, but I rather it just be the government, not every pervert with a computer.
The article is interesting in the use of GPS recievers to gather information. Let's look at two datasets.
From Wikipedia: "The accuracy of the GPS signal itself is about 5 meters (16 ft) as of 2005 and has steadily improved over the last 15 years. Using differential GPS and other error-correcting techniques, the accuracy can be improved to about 1 cm (.4 in) over short distances."
From NASA: "Large earthquakes often cause permanent movement of the Earth's surface, a result of the motion that occurs deep underground. The tsunamis spawned by the magnitude 9.0 earthquake on December 26, 2004, were the result of motions of the sea floor above the earthquake fault. Seismic measurements and computer models show that the Burma Plate slipped up to 20 meters (66 feet) at the location of the earthquake, 18 kilometers underground. The sea floor above moved less, up to 5 meters (16 feet) vertically and 11 meters (36 feet) horizontally."
So, the practical uses of this, even without error-correction, are theoretically viable for creating an early warning system for Tsunamis.
The article states that it should only really take 70 seconds for "a good idea of the final deformation". Linking this data to website and government run servers, the early warning system for Tsunamis would be far greater and accurate that say, tornado early warning systems. Consider the following exerpt from PBS's NewsHour: Developing a Global Tsunami Warning System: "STUART WEINSTEIN, Geophysicist, Pacific Tsunami Warning Center: I think the 'holy cow' moment didn't occur until we started getting the first preliminary reports over the wire services that, in fact, a damaging wave struck Phuket, Thailand and Sri Lanka.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: Were you frustrated?
Stuart WeinsteinSTUART WEINSTEIN: Very frustrated. Frustrated and to a certain extent humiliated. It's humiliating for me as a geophysicist working for a tsunami-warning program to learn first of a tsunami from a wire service than from a tide gauge. That -- it doesn't get any worse than that, quite frankly.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: Thousands of miles away at NOAA's Pacific Marine Research Lab in Seattle, tsunami researcher Vasily Titov was also frustrated. It took him until 4 a.m. in the morning of the next day to run this computer model, because he didn't have tsunami readings either."
Considering the earthquake hit at 00:59 GMT, and the wave first makes landfall at Sumatra 01:30 GMT, then 02:30 GMT in Thailand, then 03:00GMT in Sri Lanka and India... having a result from this system at 01:00GMT (70 seconds) automatically piped to the national emergency centers of governments, could have at least mobilized aid faster in Sumatra, and could have evacuated thousands in Thailand, Sri Lanka, and India.
A total of approximately 275,000 died in the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004. At a cost of even $10,000 per detector, 5000 detectors for $50million USD would have only cost $181 for every person that died.
"This just in: Businesses and Government IT Professionals quickly abandon Common Criteria security certification as a security standard of any useful purpose."
From Wikipedia on a previous certification: "The fact that Microsoft Windows 2000 remains an ISO 15408 certified product, without including the application of any Microsoft security vulnerability patches in its evaluated configuration, shows both the limitation and strength of an evaluated configuration."
I believe that it also shows the limitation and inherent weakness of this criteria as a "security" certification or a confidence booster for consumers. Unless, of course, anyone here reasonably believes that any completely unpatched version of Windows is secure by any stretch of the imagination. I read about a machine like that once that never needed patching... it was unplugged from the net, stripped of all peripherals, dipped in molten lead, and buried inside 10m^3 of concrete and dropped into the middle of the ocean, thus becoming the most secure PC ever. I think it ran FreeBSD, too.
If you have 500 CDs, I could understand giving it a break every once in a while. But for someone that has 50 CDs, I would return that CD drive for not being able to play 50 CDs, even if in a row at 100% throughput. Besides, the CD drive isn't going to be running the entire time, as it must take some time to encode the files as well. I did a test on a 13 track CD, roughly 565MB, and it took 2 minutes to copy it to the HDD. Assuming very good and consistent encoding speeds, figure at another minute, figure 30 seconds to change out CDs, enter any dialog information, etc. So, the CD-ROM is only going to be doing any work about 60% of the time, and that's if you are a machine, pumping in CD's non stop. But, I think the average person with an average person's collection and not rushing will do just fine on their own.
I'm sure its a bit more intensive than simply playing a CD on repeat all day, as you're only copying the full CD about once an hour, but it should be well within the limitations of modern CD players to handles a few hours of reading. If the drive is still overheating, there are ways to solve this problem.
In a desktop: first try moving the drive away from any other drives it may be touching or close to. If it is in the top slot, move it to the next one down to allow room for heat to escape on top. To speed cooling, put a drive cooler in the slot above the drive. Also, pull the back of the desktop off the floor and away from walls. Having your fan plugged up by carpet fibers or blocked by the wall will increase drive heat. If the problem is drastic, pull the drive out completely and set a small fan to blow on it directly. Make sure to set it on something that will allow air to flow beneath the drive.
In a laptop: Make sure there is airflow beneath the laptop. Most laptops allow a tiny amount of room. Anyone who carries their laptop around can tell you that leaving it on a cushion or carpet will cause it to overheat rather quickly. So, increase cooling by increasing airflow. You can also buy a "cold plate" to set the laptop on, to ensure that its sucking up nice cool air.
If it's still overheating, I'd move to a desktop. Ripping on a flimsy (and probably slower) laptop drive would just get annoying. If the desktop is still overheating, be it CPU/HDD/CD-ROM... seriously look at getting a new computer. If CD ripping is what brings down the box, then the box wasn't very great to begin with.
What really amazes me is that every day, users are finding new ways to stream content over just about any protocol or program. And yet, these companies that are supposed to be shaking in their boots over lose of control over their programs are still working on streaming TV over the Internet. Sure, they are looking for a Pay-Per-View option, so as to not stream completely free, but I pose this to them.
Do: First, with commercial television, just stream it as is in very high quality (HD if available) over existing channels. I know they have local affiliate licensing issues, but they need to start new shows that are net-only. Try the ones that the networks won't pick up or aren't running anymore. AOL is doing exactly that, and all should follow suit.
Why: Because you make money on the advertising. If you restrict it to current channels, the redistributed pirated versions will strip away your advertising, and you gain nothing. The best way to compete with the pirates is to mimic their channels, but improve the service. Just look at Shoutcast TV. So many of those pirate channels are always maxed out. If you provide a 600Kbps+ streams that are always available and never full, nobody will bother with those cheap imitators. And guess what, your advertisers will LOVE you! Why? Because as a streamer, you have automatic statistics on how many viewers, time of day, and length of watching.
Do: Utilize a channel like Skype for your own pay-per-view/commercial-free television.
Why: Because you could set up your own payment scheme with Skype (who already has a system to pay for phone calls), and charge viewers just like a phone call. $1 per month per channel. That's competitive with cable television. I, for one, would gladly pay you to watch Discovery, Comedy Central (Daily Show/Colbert Report), History Channel, CNN, and Sci-Fi online anytime I want. Better yet, add $0.25 per channel for on demand show watching. As it is now, I've done away with a huge $30 a month package (rape) charged by my cable company. But, I and others are more than willing to pay for online a la carte programming.
So, you see, it's pretty simple really. They don't even have to restructure any of their operations, only the mode of transfer. Unfortunately, none of this will happen anytime soon. The grasp of the technology still escapes people who think that Survivor is quality programming, that Gigli was a brilliant idea for a movie, and that 14yr old girls who download Happy_Birthday.mp3 are the scourge of the music industry.
'Competition between standards we believe is a very good thing.'
Now I know MS is on crack. The whole point of a standard is that it is standard. MS even helped develop the standard they plan on competing with. Now, they've embraced and extended it, and hope to "converge" their proprietary licensing on top of it. No, competition between standards is a very bad thing. The VHS Beta-max wars didn't result in any great euphoria of enlightenment upon the VHS standard. That's like saying that Compact Disks somehow benefited from competition from Cassette Tapes. Its the same with the BluRay/HD-DVD fight that is about to ensue. It's not beneficial to anyone that this happens. All it will do is put more money in the pocket of the winner, because the consumer who initially chose the loser will have to go out and repurchase everything they bought in the new format.
No, there is little or no benefit here. An open standard can always be improved upon. Competing against a proprietary standard only muddies the water. This is much like MS creating their own proprietary web standards. Are those also "very beneficial"? Are we all reaping the rewards of divergent standards? If divergent standards are so beneficial, then the whole idea of "standards" are then, what... not beneficial?
Someone help me understand this, because every time MS talks about OpenDocument, it sounds like they are either A) talking completely out of their ass, and are having the marketing guys (who couldn't tell a TCP from an IP) make these decisions, or B) flat out lying to the non-tech public about what this debate really is about. And what it really is about is that going to OpenDocument, which is fully supportable in MS Office if they want it to be, is one VERY large step towards putting MS Office out the way Firefox put out IE, and that they are willing to do anything to prevent that from happening, even if it means forking an open standard with a proprietary one, muddying the waters, FUD, and preventing governments from doing whats best for its citizens.
Ever wish you could have been that guy that threw the cream pie in Gate's face?
I completely agree, but also believe it will never happen that way at all. Hundreds of millions of dollars in R&D, licensing, and new factories... to give us a better nutritional label? Highly doubt it, at least for the short term (5 years after deployment). This is going 100% into selling more products. Because, if it doesn't help the product sell, its essentially worthless to a corporation, unfortunately.
On the other hand, I'm just waiting for that digital wallpaper we were promissed about a year ago so I can go to a 8'x20' screen.
Slashdot Mirror
From linked article from TFA: "The lawsuit was filed in June 2005, and the litigants met in court for a daylong hearing a year later to define terminology and set parameters for future court proceedings. Such hearings in patent cases are considered critical, and Judge William Sessions III issued a ruling July 24 that favored some of Contois' positions over Apple's.
The parties met the next day to begin discussing a resolution, according to court records. A first session was unsuccessful. A second session, which began at noon Aug. 16 and ended at 3:30 a.m. Aug. 17, led to the settlement. Lawyers filed court papers about the agreement last week, and Sessions dismissed the case. "
Apple proceeds like any other case like this, expecting an easy win because they honestly believe (I hope) that they've done nothing wrong. But, once rulings start coming back in favor of the other guy, Apple has to look at this and say, "Hey, we're making money hand over fist with iTunes, and this could easily get ugly like Blackberry... only our user base is slightly less addicted and will be angry with us if suddenly, like with Echostar, we have to turn off parts their devices on the next update. So, let's just ask them exactly what they want, and maybe just pay them off."
First meeting: We want $1 billion dollars!
Second meeting: Ok, we'll settle for OUR attorney fees, $x00,000, and stock options from Apple to cover future profits.
SOLD!
BTW, I think that last meeting went to 3:30am because some lawyer, not thinking, brought in an iBook and everyone wasted hours talking about favorite bands, and checking them out on iTunes.
I know what he's thinking right now:
"Wow, I got slash-dotted! I must have done something awesome on the wiki!"
15 seconds later pulling up the story all the referrers show.
"Ah crap!"
Here is a truly inventive way of solving a difficult problem. They've basically flipped everything on its head. Instead of voting to exclude, they vote to include, without distorting the current system or balance (not everything must be tagged include).
I think many others should take note of this system if it works. It's not exactly like Digg, but the idea of inclusion moderation could work in many other areas. To me, this is like switching from blacklisting to whitelisting to stop spam, and I think it will have the same dramatic effect, with some quirky new problems (nothing is perfect).
But, take note all you web service designers. Maybe you should think about changing some of your functions from exclude to verified include if this works out. I think this could really have an impact on news related sites, like Slashdot to quickly vet story facts. Just look at this forum, it's already using such a system to verify the most competent responses, and weeding out the junk. Approval vs. Disapproval models could really expand when this is fully adopted far beyond sites like news and Wiki.
AOL-Netscape? How about AOL-TimeWarner?
/. user, they'd have infectiously bad karma. They're posts would not only immediately drop off the radar, but would cause all parent posts, like parent companies, to tank as well.
Anyone that partners with AOL goes down the tubes. If AOL were a
An "iGapple" company would at least be the guy who always gets "first post", and sums up the entire following reaction in 1 line. The number of their +5 moderations would eventually get so boring, that the only thing newsworthy would be the 3's and 4's.
It's not even apples and oranges, it's Special Ed versus Superman.
"The company also has made available a toll-free number to affected customers to call for more information."
AT&T: Thank you for calling AT&T, how may I help you?
Me: Yes, I'm calling because I have learned through the news that my personal information may have been stolen.
AT&T: Did you have a DSL account with us?
Me: DSL?
AT&T: Yes, sir, high speed internet? This affects DSL customers.
Me: I thought this was for phone calls. You mean the NSA stole my internet data too? Those bastards!
*click*
Me: Oh wait, I have Vonage, the phone is just an old one branded from AT&T... hehe, my bad. Hello? Hello?
Not a biased question at all. It's the question asked daily at Novell, RedHat, IBM, etc, etc. Some sell backend services and support (equivilant to live concerts for artists). Some only charge for hard copies, but give the content away for free download (buy the CD, but feel free to purchase the CD with art, lyrics, a wall poster, and extras). Some don't make money at all through their users, except for donations, and the jobs they get because of their expertise (think Christian musicians who basically give away their music to radio stations free, because most stations, like most people, aren't rich... but make money back at wildly sold out concerts of very devoted fans).
There's an economy when the creation costs much, but manufacturing and distribution approach $0. Linux already does it. Music and Movies just need to figure it out as well. And, I have to say that the creative quality and scope in Linux far exceeds that of companies still under the old supply/demand model. Maybe the same could happen with media. Just look at all the crap music that's "popular" (I don't know with who, I suspect major $Payola$). The real break out artists are broke, indie, collaborators (including rotating band members) and just love what they do.
I wasn't even going to mention The Grateful Dead... that'd be too redundant and obvious here, regardless of the fact that its exactly what I'm talking about.
Virtualization is the key here. You start off with the absolute minimum, and work your way up. If everyone did what you did, they would be amazed how powerful their home desktop really is. I use Xen to run highly optimized OSs under my top OS (which is stripped down of all but the essential applications I run daily... I run a parent heavy setup, and use the child OSs like temporary servants who are not allowed to bother "me"). I have one that's specifically a file server (using a TrueCrypt module compiled just for the minimal kernel), I have one that acts as my firewall/proxy/dns. And I have another that acts as a developmental web server. I have others for general purpose (compiling, backing up, etc.)
The idea of all-in-one, be everything to everybody, operating systems died the moment everyone realized that we've quickly come to what most of us realize, and that is the human bottleneck. The computer I'm on is several years old Celeron, and it can still outpace me, even with my XGL turned up to max and running several apps on the base OS. The key is that it only does so when you tell it what you want to do with it. If you tell it to do everything, of course it will work slowly.
The problem is that ease of use has not caught up with the pace of our new toys for truly managing our system resources. We are not the average user, who is still screaming and kicking because their brand new machine locks up when trying to read email. I think OSs would do so much better to come compartmentalized out or the box. When something is needed, it runs in its own box, and when it is not, it disappears completely. The average Windows users doesn't even realize all of the unnecessary daemons running, or that all those little icons in the bottom corner are sucking up their system resources, slowing their boot times, and opening them up to crashes, trojans, and headaches.
The day users can boot in, and be asked "What/Where do you REALLY want to do/go today?" is when they'll find a more pleasurable experience. As it is now, the average home user's computer is a car trying to drive in all directions at once, and getting nowhere. But, I guess that's what sells new computers.
If they're going for the "Wow Effect", they're a year late. Pictures in maps... I'm sorry, am I supposed to be impressed? Drag and drop, mapped pictures, picture text searches, all great, but none new. I think they did a good job, and its a welcome addition to their site, but I don't think it's going to generate the buzz they think it might. It will, imho, simply keep them competitive with the bigger draws out there, like YouTube.
If and when they release a code snippet to embed these in your own page (maybe they have, I don't know), then this will certainly be a big hit among users (though still not technically impressive). Imagine all the MySpace users who would flood to their service if they could organize their pictures by location, and even by friend's picture collections, and add it directly to their page.
As it stands now, though, this is about as exciting as watching your friend buy last year's hot computer gadget after you've already played with it for a year. They've caught up, but they've not moved ahead.
As for me, it certainly is my business. They are a "kid", a child, not an adult. Parents have the right to know where, when, who, etc. A parent has the right to tell their child, for instance, that they can't leave the state or city. A parent has the right to tell their child they can't go to a party where liquor is being served or drugs are being used. A parent has the right to tell their child that they cannot speed.
/.r's, but a 16 year old who just got their license is certainly NOT a mature adult capable of making their own rules up. With age and maturity comes more freedom. But for a young new driver, I can't see an almost no rules environment where the one rule is "I'm not getting bailed out of jail".
I'm not saying I'd track the kid, but I will tell them to drive the speed limit, and whether they get in trouble or not, I expect them to follow my rules. Otherwise, you're telling your kid, "Hey, as long as you don't get caught, I don't care if you [insert illegal activity here]." Children need sensable boundaries along with the freedom to be themselves.
Forget kids, if I lone my car out to anyone, I have the right to know where they are going, who will be going with them, and that they are obeying all traffic laws while using MY car.
I'm all for privacy, but call me old fashioned. Children living in MY house live under MY rules. As my father told me and his father before him... you are free to do whatever you please after you move out. This may offend some younger
Would I actually put a GPS bug in my child's car? No. I would rather buy a pre-paid cellphone and hide it somewhere in the interior of the car with a power adapter spliced to the wiring, and let my child know about it. This for safety, not privacy invasion. Car gets stolen or child comes up missing, one phone call by the police to the cell phone company will locate the car.
Also, let's not confuse child privacy with adult privacy. I find no moral or legal grounding for a child's right to privacy from their own parents. Those who say otherwise are either trying to be the "cool" parent or are not a parent. "I don't care what he does until something happens. THAT'S when I spring into dad-mode." I'm not telling you how to raise your children, because that is certainly not my business. But, since it is your "(hypothetical)" kid, I can already guess you want to be the "cool" parent. Just realize it's a little late to spring into dad-mode when they hit a telephone poll at 100mph killing their girlfriend and paralyzing themselves, because his "best bud" wants to look the other way until something bad happens. There is no "dad-mode". You are either a dad, or you are not.
That's equivalent to not telling your child to not play with the stove until they get 3rd degree burns on their hands. I'd be interested to hear your comments when you actually have a 16 year old with a license.
It's called parenting. And you haven't learned that yet.
I love this judge. None of this pussyfooting around like with the Blackberry case. 'You're in violation and you shut down now, no exceptions, motions denied, and if you keep whining, I swear to God Almighty I'll throw this gavel at your forehead!'
I've really got to side with Tivo here. This is straight forward, whether 1 company stole the patent or 50. Just because 50 companies all stole the same idea and created their own markets for it, it's still theft. You steal, you lose. Why is this such a "bad for consumers" things? Bad because we won't let companies get away with theft with a slap on the wrist?
Screw the media companies. They've been suing us for years for infringement, now they get a taste of their own medicine. I can't wait until Tivo takes on every other media provider that uses DVR. The fur will fly and customers will jump ships, demand refunds, and maybe they'll finally get good customer service, instead of that snotty operator who knows you'll never leave because you only have 1 real alternative. And in the end, practices will be more respectful of other companies, of indemnifying customers, and for going with the original source of technology to ensure quality.
This is a win-win for Tivo and consumers in the end. It's a win for the inventor and innovator, and a lose for talentless copy-cat hacks trying to protect their own regional monopolies. It's David vs. Goliath... and Goliath's cousin, and nephew, and brothers, and grandma, and David just whipped all their asses.
It's almost like watching Ralph Nader beat both the Democrats and Republicans, only this is Cable (who's mascot is also ironically an ass) and Satellite (who's mascot is a turtle... on downers... taking a nap... for the next 6 months).
I agree, but it goes even further. It assumes you've obtained the file initially through a legal means (much like the bartender assumes you got your license from the government, not from Joe Fraudster in his garage). If you copied the song from a legitimate source or program, it should have a license or DRM or something saying, "You can't trade this on a file sharing network." Limewire gives copyright holders the opportunity then to actively prevent trading.
The legal defense, I think, has to then come back and prove that Limewire is taking every reasonable measure to actively promote the ability of the RIAA to censor trading without suing them or the traders. It also removes some liability to traders who use legitimate programs by telling them to just share everything, because existing DRM will prevent you from inadvertently sharing something you are not allowed.
For instance, I buy a CD. I assume I own that CD and the music on it. But, when I copy it, the DRM attached to it says no sharing. I won't inadvertently share all the music on my harddrive and break the law, because this should prevent sharing. On the other hand, if I remove the DRM, or circumvent it, then at least Limewire made every effort short of downloading your file and examining it themselves. Limewire can basically say, hey, we're like a car dealership. We take every measure possible to confirm the odometer. But, if someone messes with it in a way we can't detect, it would be an undo burden for us to follow the driver around everywhere to confirm it. I think the license check is a reasonable and active prevention of copyright infringement.
On the other hand, I could buy a CD from a progressive band who puts a DRM on it that specifically says, "Yeah, share this all you want!" I certainly would want to financially support such an artist.
The RIAA should then only really go after ripping programs that strip out their license information. Even on Linux, the license information could be stored in the meta-data, even if the DRM has to be stripped for the file to play correctly. This doesn't need to be done at the ripper level, but at the player level. The player then, by stripping the DRM to play, could still lock out all copy features if any DRM exists.
It all comes down to the honor system. Limewire works on the honor system that you won't go out of your way to avoid the license. RIAA should accept this, and only go after those who don't want to play by the honor system... much like video game ratings are by the honor system. It works because the only time you have to react is when someone goes out of their way to break the honor system. In this case, the user has to go out of their way to modify the license data, or the RIAA fails to include it, and they only have themselves to blame for that.
If licenses were standardized like the Creative Commons is, if the RIAA included them, if the rippers included them (maybe transferring them to a different format if need be), and services like Limewire honors them... what's the problem? In this way, it's certainly not Limewire that's doing anything wrong, but is the fault of the user who broke the DRM. As a backup, why doesn't the RIAA provide file names to automatically filter as well. Not just to Limewire, but to the public? Better yet, why not also use signed certificate licenses with hashes on the file names (not the content, because that is altered during ripping)? Sure, someone could modify the name in such a way as "br1tn3y sp34rs", but the RIAA could include permutations to the extent that anything they don't catch, it should be obvious someone is trying to scam the license system (much like spammers trying to avoid filters).
Besides, nobody usually searches for such wild permutations, so they are naturally censored. I actually wish it worked this way. That way, you could go on a file sharing network, and download all music, because only legal music would be available. And, if Joe Fraudster puts up something that was circumve
You mean to tell me people download music on Limewire? And all this time, I thought it was for porn. Downloading porn is still legal... right? RIGHT?
... uh yeah...
Oh man, this is gonna suck if they shut Limewire down. I mean, it'll suck if you're into that sort of thing... such a nasty habit. Nasty and dirty and
I guess you weren't there or just don't remember when AOL connected to the Internet.
;)
I remember them quite well. I go back to the 300 baud days on a Commodore 64/128. I remember the first services like Compuserv, that only let you get on for 30 minutes a day, and watching text type itself out on my monochrome screen.
BBSes were NOT one at a time. Plenty were linked up in FIDO or RIME, and other smaller networks.
Maybe for you, in a large location. I lived in a medium sized rural town. We didn't have our first independant ISP until around 1996. The BBS's that weren't long distance were setup by guys who had an extra computer and phone line, and mostly ran either ACiD art sites, porn sites, or warez sites, or a combination of all there of. The only real use for them was to grab things like freeware and to play door games like Legend of the Red Dragon. And, with only 1 phone line in, all but the long distance phone calls were definately one at a time.
As for FIDO, it may have been great where you were, but only one board locally had it setup, was rarely updated because it meant using up the dial in number to do it, was a bear to figure out for most users, and pretty useless because the sysop didn't make any effort to give users info to contacting the outside world. Friends and I played around with our own Wildcat BBS for a while, but it was never exciting enough to keep doing.
As for AOL, one click and I was chatting to people around the world. It was not a tough choice over which to use. I tried Compuserv's CB, and it just wasn't as good imho. I left AOL just after I found a new independant ISP that was far far cheaper to use.
As I said, maybe this was a bad thing for everyone else, but AOL eclipsed everything else out there in terms of actually being useful. I wouldn't dare use them today, so it's a snapshot in time.
The point is asking the question of what makes a "worst product of all time". To me, it's how it's changed the world. And, like it or not, the Internet would not have become as popular as fast without AOL. The Internet got a lot of free publicity from them, and it let the average user get online. Make fun of the ALL CAPS people now, but A) that's elitist in that it's the idea that the Internet was some exclusive geek club and B) those people learned about the technology before the rest 99% of the rest of the population and went on to create many of the sites and companies today. I too have felt a bit of the elitist twinge, because I came from the BBS croud, the Tandy croud that had to program their computers from scratch to use them. But, it is elitist none the less.
Without all those "dumbass n00bs" that were there then and now on cable modems today... It may be the geeks that built the eBays and Amazons, but it's the people who don't even know what Usenet is that spends their money online that is the reason you even have a cable or DSL modem. Companies and investors are not out to build massive infrastructure for a few geeks.
That's the impact of AOL, because it was the first charge that really got those users online. It let anyone with a computer go out who could get a modem installed to find out what all the fuss was about the "Information Superhighway" politicians and CEOs kept talking about. It wasn't the easiest thing to install or configure, but from my experience, it sure was easier than COMiT or other programs at the time to access BBSs and other services available in my area.
I'm sorry if others feel it broke the sanctity of their little clubs. Yeah, damn AOLers, they completely ruined alt.fetish.
People blame AOL because of the types of users. Whether AOL or another service, they would have eventually gotten online. AOL just did it faster and better than everyone else.
nobody wanted to wait for images to load
Good thing services like AOL drove sales for newer and faster connection devices every single year until phone modems gave way to broadban
Basically, the court afforded bloggers the same protections under the law that are given to all journalists, including shield laws.
shield law n. A law that protects journalists from being compelled to reveal confidential sources of information. - Answers.com
Oh, now I get it. I was so brand confused. I thought that other Apple company was suing bloggers. Like most people when I think Apple, I instantly think Beatles. ;)
I couldn't agree more. Already reading many comments on this article in other locations that are crying foul over AOL. Not that AOL was the best thing since sliced bread. But before other dial up ISPs, they were the only bread in town, unless you logged in to text services or one-at-a-time BBSs. Looking at AOL then, you see where the leap was made from online computing before 1989 and after. Color, pictures, multiuser chat, news, message boards, and email.
Strange, that's pretty similar to what we have now. If you read what they complain about, it is painfully obvious that the writer is either some 16 year old AOL basher without a clue or worse, an old elitist that wonders, "Didn't we all have private (D)Arpanet connections?"
Here's their complaints about AOL:
"How do we loathe AOL? Let us count the ways. Since America Online emerged from the belly of a BBS called Quantum "PC-Link" in 1989, users have suffered through..."
1. awful software
2. inaccessible dial-up numbers
3. rapacious marketing
4. in-your-face advertising
5. questionable billing practices
6. inexcusably poor customer service
7. enough spam to last a lifetime
8. more expensive than its major competitors
"This lethal combination earned the world's biggest ISP the top spot on our list of bottom feeders."
It goes on to say:
"AOL succeeded initially by targeting newbies, using brute-force marketing techniques. In the 90s you couldn't open a magazine (PC World included) or your mailbox without an AOL disk falling out of it. This carpet-bombing technique yielded big numbers: At its peak, AOL claimed 34 million subscribers worldwide, though it never revealed how many were just using up their free hours.
Advertisement (This is an actual paste... sorry, PC world gave me IN-YOUR-FACE advertising.)
Now, there are some valid arguments. For instance, they are notorious for screwing up your billing and not cancelling accounts properly. On the other hand, this article is targeting the original AOL. In your face advertising? Nobody but geeks knew what the net was in the early 90s. In the 90s, you couldn't exactly download the AOL client (more evidence this guy is 16). But let's go back.
Awful software: What did you expect, it ran on Windows 3.1. It was probably the only useful thing a home user ever ran on Windows 3.1
Inaccessible dial-up numbers: I had about 4 numbers locally, and most problems were because I screwed with my modem baud trying to squeeze out top speed.
Marketing: Back then, you had to convince people that they had a reason to even buy a computer, let alone get online with it.
Spam: We're placing the blame on AOL for this now?
Expensive: That's certainly true. I remember a point when they charged over $6 an hour or there abouts. Let's just say that you used your AOL time wisely (downloading all the porn you could within an hour), hehe. Yes, it would be considered highway robbery these days. Then again, so many out there are willing to pay $2 for a tv show (free to watch on your very large TV) to play on a itsy bitsy iPod screen. I'd rather pay $6 an hour for my Internet connection.
PCWorld probably made hundreds of thousands of dollars from AOL to carry their CDs for them. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.
I don't mean to be smug about it, but that is similar to saying that 3D is a terrible interface for a shopping mall, grocery, library, park, theater, restaurant, etc. Beyond the written word (books, news, advertisements), all of those existing 3D interfaces have been "ported" to 2D.
And frankly (though I don't like them), any local Walmart is a better walk in experience in 3D than their site is in 2D. I've yet to see any Wikipedia article anywhere as interesting as an equivalent museum exhibit.
In the way that 3D eclipses 2D, talking will always be faster than typing, and video holds much more information than a picture. We're equipped with stereo-vision for a reason. Currently, everyone on the web might as well be a cyclops.
"If Skype bows to FCC pressure (which they will) then they will not provide encryption in their service which means that the people using Skype won't be able to encrypt their calls."
http://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/zfone/
From the link: "Zfone uses a new protocol called ZRTP, which is better than the other approaches to secure VoIP, because it achieves security without reliance on a PKI, key certification, trust models, certificate authorities, or key management complexity that bedevils the email encryption world. It also does not rely on SIP signaling for the key management, and in fact does not rely on any servers at all. It performs its key agreements and key management in a purely peer-to-peer manner over the RTP packet stream. It interoperates with any standard SIP phone, but naturally only encrypts the call if you are calling another ZRTP client. This new protocol has been submitted to the IETF as a proposal for a public standard, to enable interoperability of SIP endpoints from different vendors."
If it's digital, its encrypt-able. They can monitor everything they want, but as long as VoIP goes through an internet connection (which is the whole point of VoIP), it's encrypt-able. The same goes for all things over the internet.
Remember, the NSA is already monitoring lots of internet and phone traffic. They're blanket tapping us all. Right now, if my connection is going out over an AT&T line, they are watching me. No longer is it just paranoia that we're all being watched. If you want privacy, don't just encrypt your phone conversations. Encrypt your searches, encrypt your email, encrypt your downloads, encrypt your files. The NSA may be able to see the traffic, but you can prevent them from red flagging you by your content.
It is no longer akin to an act of civil disobedience to run encryption, it is a survival tactic for what another poster called Joe Sixpack (aka Joe Bloe, John Smith, Average Joe).
I shy away from most things Microsoft, but honestly, they blow away the competition in so many small services (which is overshadowed by their OS flaws most of the time). For instance, I think for video conferencing, Microsoft has the upper hand their version on MSN which looks really nice maximized on a TV set (living room video phone setup).
Microsoft's Live Local is truely an exciting picture to see even after using Google Earth/Maps. The "Bird's Eye" view of my own house is a bit dated but very detailed. I shows the top of a swing on my back deck that I no longer own. I can make out my car parked out front. What's also amazing is being able to "swing" the picture around. Because it's at an angle, not every picture was taken at the same time.
But what really scares me here is that the resolution here is so good that if it were detailed any more, you could see into any of my windows. That's not a problem with direct overhead pictures that Google uses. A 45 degree downward slope angle makes me want to double check that not even the open sky is visible above my shower curtain.
I think there are too many doomsday scenario people out there, like the recent ruffle over MySpace which is completely overblown. But, let's take the natural progression of this technology to a few years down the road. Higher resolutions and daily or live images. You're a single woman living at home. Do you really want someone looking into your windows at high resolution? A married person may see it as a double edged sword. On one hand, the husband can make sure the milk man isn't staying 3 hours at his house. On the other, a stalker could watch for a husband to leave, police to go on break, and no service trucks enter the area before deciding to attack the person still in the house, or rob it if no one is in it.
Empowering criminals as if they were mafia hitmen with 20 accomplices is not my idea of meaningful progress. I think the current detail and timeframes are really as far as this should go. When it gets to the point of actually looking into our houses, then it goes too far. I'm sure the government can already do this. I may not like it, but I rather it just be the government, not every pervert with a computer.
The article is interesting in the use of GPS recievers to gather information. Let's look at two datasets.
From Wikipedia: "The accuracy of the GPS signal itself is about 5 meters (16 ft) as of 2005 and has steadily improved over the last 15 years. Using differential GPS and other error-correcting techniques, the accuracy can be improved to about 1 cm (.4 in) over short distances."
From NASA: "Large earthquakes often cause permanent movement of the Earth's surface, a result of the motion that occurs deep underground. The tsunamis spawned by the magnitude 9.0 earthquake on December 26, 2004, were the result of motions of the sea floor above the earthquake fault. Seismic measurements and computer models show that the Burma Plate slipped up to 20 meters (66 feet) at the location of the earthquake, 18 kilometers underground. The sea floor above moved less, up to 5 meters (16 feet) vertically and 11 meters (36 feet) horizontally."
So, the practical uses of this, even without error-correction, are theoretically viable for creating an early warning system for Tsunamis.
The article states that it should only really take 70 seconds for "a good idea of the final deformation". Linking this data to website and government run servers, the early warning system for Tsunamis would be far greater and accurate that say, tornado early warning systems. Consider the following exerpt from PBS's NewsHour: Developing a Global Tsunami Warning System: "STUART WEINSTEIN, Geophysicist, Pacific Tsunami Warning Center: I think the 'holy cow' moment didn't occur until we started getting the first preliminary reports over the wire services that, in fact, a damaging wave struck Phuket, Thailand and Sri Lanka.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: Were you frustrated?
Stuart WeinsteinSTUART WEINSTEIN: Very frustrated. Frustrated and to a certain extent humiliated. It's humiliating for me as a geophysicist working for a tsunami-warning program to learn first of a tsunami from a wire service than from a tide gauge. That -- it doesn't get any worse than that, quite frankly.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: Thousands of miles away at NOAA's Pacific Marine Research Lab in Seattle, tsunami researcher Vasily Titov was also frustrated. It took him until 4 a.m. in the morning of the next day to run this computer model, because he didn't have tsunami readings either."
Considering the earthquake hit at 00:59 GMT, and the wave first makes landfall at Sumatra 01:30 GMT, then 02:30 GMT in Thailand, then 03:00GMT in Sri Lanka and India... having a result from this system at 01:00GMT (70 seconds) automatically piped to the national emergency centers of governments, could have at least mobilized aid faster in Sumatra, and could have evacuated thousands in Thailand, Sri Lanka, and India.
A total of approximately 275,000 died in the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004. At a cost of even $10,000 per detector, 5000 detectors for $50million USD would have only cost $181 for every person that died.
"This just in: Businesses and Government IT Professionals quickly abandon Common Criteria security certification as a security standard of any useful purpose."
From Wikipedia on a previous certification: "The fact that Microsoft Windows 2000 remains an ISO 15408 certified product, without including the application of any Microsoft security vulnerability patches in its evaluated configuration, shows both the limitation and strength of an evaluated configuration."
I believe that it also shows the limitation and inherent weakness of this criteria as a "security" certification or a confidence booster for consumers. Unless, of course, anyone here reasonably believes that any completely unpatched version of Windows is secure by any stretch of the imagination. I read about a machine like that once that never needed patching... it was unplugged from the net, stripped of all peripherals, dipped in molten lead, and buried inside 10m^3 of concrete and dropped into the middle of the ocean, thus becoming the most secure PC ever. I think it ran FreeBSD, too.
If you have 500 CDs, I could understand giving it a break every once in a while. But for someone that has 50 CDs, I would return that CD drive for not being able to play 50 CDs, even if in a row at 100% throughput. Besides, the CD drive isn't going to be running the entire time, as it must take some time to encode the files as well. I did a test on a 13 track CD, roughly 565MB, and it took 2 minutes to copy it to the HDD. Assuming very good and consistent encoding speeds, figure at another minute, figure 30 seconds to change out CDs, enter any dialog information, etc. So, the CD-ROM is only going to be doing any work about 60% of the time, and that's if you are a machine, pumping in CD's non stop. But, I think the average person with an average person's collection and not rushing will do just fine on their own.
I'm sure its a bit more intensive than simply playing a CD on repeat all day, as you're only copying the full CD about once an hour, but it should be well within the limitations of modern CD players to handles a few hours of reading. If the drive is still overheating, there are ways to solve this problem.
In a desktop: first try moving the drive away from any other drives it may be touching or close to. If it is in the top slot, move it to the next one down to allow room for heat to escape on top. To speed cooling, put a drive cooler in the slot above the drive. Also, pull the back of the desktop off the floor and away from walls. Having your fan plugged up by carpet fibers or blocked by the wall will increase drive heat. If the problem is drastic, pull the drive out completely and set a small fan to blow on it directly. Make sure to set it on something that will allow air to flow beneath the drive.
In a laptop: Make sure there is airflow beneath the laptop. Most laptops allow a tiny amount of room. Anyone who carries their laptop around can tell you that leaving it on a cushion or carpet will cause it to overheat rather quickly. So, increase cooling by increasing airflow. You can also buy a "cold plate" to set the laptop on, to ensure that its sucking up nice cool air.
If it's still overheating, I'd move to a desktop. Ripping on a flimsy (and probably slower) laptop drive would just get annoying. If the desktop is still overheating, be it CPU/HDD/CD-ROM... seriously look at getting a new computer. If CD ripping is what brings down the box, then the box wasn't very great to begin with.
What really amazes me is that every day, users are finding new ways to stream content over just about any protocol or program. And yet, these companies that are supposed to be shaking in their boots over lose of control over their programs are still working on streaming TV over the Internet. Sure, they are looking for a Pay-Per-View option, so as to not stream completely free, but I pose this to them.
Do: First, with commercial television, just stream it as is in very high quality (HD if available) over existing channels. I know they have local affiliate licensing issues, but they need to start new shows that are net-only. Try the ones that the networks won't pick up or aren't running anymore. AOL is doing exactly that, and all should follow suit.
Why: Because you make money on the advertising. If you restrict it to current channels, the redistributed pirated versions will strip away your advertising, and you gain nothing. The best way to compete with the pirates is to mimic their channels, but improve the service. Just look at Shoutcast TV. So many of those pirate channels are always maxed out. If you provide a 600Kbps+ streams that are always available and never full, nobody will bother with those cheap imitators. And guess what, your advertisers will LOVE you! Why? Because as a streamer, you have automatic statistics on how many viewers, time of day, and length of watching.
Do: Utilize a channel like Skype for your own pay-per-view/commercial-free television.
Why: Because you could set up your own payment scheme with Skype (who already has a system to pay for phone calls), and charge viewers just like a phone call. $1 per month per channel. That's competitive with cable television. I, for one, would gladly pay you to watch Discovery, Comedy Central (Daily Show/Colbert Report), History Channel, CNN, and Sci-Fi online anytime I want. Better yet, add $0.25 per channel for on demand show watching. As it is now, I've done away with a huge $30 a month package (rape) charged by my cable company. But, I and others are more than willing to pay for online a la carte programming.
So, you see, it's pretty simple really. They don't even have to restructure any of their operations, only the mode of transfer. Unfortunately, none of this will happen anytime soon. The grasp of the technology still escapes people who think that Survivor is quality programming, that Gigli was a brilliant idea for a movie, and that 14yr old girls who download Happy_Birthday.mp3 are the scourge of the music industry.
'Competition between standards we believe is a very good thing.'
Now I know MS is on crack. The whole point of a standard is that it is standard. MS even helped develop the standard they plan on competing with. Now, they've embraced and extended it, and hope to "converge" their proprietary licensing on top of it. No, competition between standards is a very bad thing. The VHS Beta-max wars didn't result in any great euphoria of enlightenment upon the VHS standard. That's like saying that Compact Disks somehow benefited from competition from Cassette Tapes. Its the same with the BluRay/HD-DVD fight that is about to ensue. It's not beneficial to anyone that this happens. All it will do is put more money in the pocket of the winner, because the consumer who initially chose the loser will have to go out and repurchase everything they bought in the new format.
No, there is little or no benefit here. An open standard can always be improved upon. Competing against a proprietary standard only muddies the water. This is much like MS creating their own proprietary web standards. Are those also "very beneficial"? Are we all reaping the rewards of divergent standards? If divergent standards are so beneficial, then the whole idea of "standards" are then, what... not beneficial?
Someone help me understand this, because every time MS talks about OpenDocument, it sounds like they are either A) talking completely out of their ass, and are having the marketing guys (who couldn't tell a TCP from an IP) make these decisions, or B) flat out lying to the non-tech public about what this debate really is about. And what it really is about is that going to OpenDocument, which is fully supportable in MS Office if they want it to be, is one VERY large step towards putting MS Office out the way Firefox put out IE, and that they are willing to do anything to prevent that from happening, even if it means forking an open standard with a proprietary one, muddying the waters, FUD, and preventing governments from doing whats best for its citizens.
Ever wish you could have been that guy that threw the cream pie in Gate's face?
"There are potential benefits here, though."
I completely agree, but also believe it will never happen that way at all. Hundreds of millions of dollars in R&D, licensing, and new factories... to give us a better nutritional label? Highly doubt it, at least for the short term (5 years after deployment). This is going 100% into selling more products. Because, if it doesn't help the product sell, its essentially worthless to a corporation, unfortunately.
On the other hand, I'm just waiting for that digital wallpaper we were promissed about a year ago so I can go to a 8'x20' screen.