TFA says this is a service SELLING captcha breaking. If it was human powered, I'd expect it to do much better than the 20% they cite.
I suspect that Google could also have some technologies in place that vary the HTML and JavaScript used to display the captcha in the browser. The crack involves finding the image in the browser's cache! This would make it difficult to obtain the image and display it elsewhere.
Not the same thing. This company used his images for profit. What would have been analogous to file sharing might be if the defendant had photocopied the image, put it on his wall for his own personal enjoyment, and given some copies to friends for the same purpose.
Or, to put it another way: If you download an MP3 and use it in a television commercial, you're clearly violating copyright.
Silicon Valley has and continues to derive the vast majority of its income from intellectual property protections for its software. I pointed this out on Techdirt, so the commenters there hemmed and hawed with their red herring arguments about how Microsoft does not make money from software written 14 years ago. Regardless, Microsoft (which is no longer a Silicon Valley firm, I know) would make no money today if XP and Vista were free. Intel would make no money if anybody could just copy Intel chips. If they were free, nobody would bother with Linux. Where are the linux billionaires? Nor would biotech companies make any money if anybody could just copy their inventions. Sun, AIX, etc. all made fortunes in their time from selling proprietary flavors of Unix. SAS and SPSS are the industry standards for statistical computing, and they are proprietary, intellectually protected, for-profit firms.
Basically, whoever is rich is someone who's smart enough to figure out how to get other people to perform labor for him. The pyramids were built without money, (as far as we know,) yet we would consider the pharaohs very rich.
In a free economy, the rich person is whoever can figure out how to get the most people to labor his benefit. One becomes rich by organizing labor so that everyone benefits. The challenge is finding a motivation technique that can satisfy laborers more then money.
I just bought an iPhone. It's a great combo phone-email-music-camera. Assuming you are happy with an average camera and a 16-gig music player, it's tiny and it will make you very happy. For International travel, you'll need to find WiFi in order for the iPhone to get email and web. If you're picky about headphones, you'll need an adaptor because it uses a non-standard headphone port.
For DVD-quality video, I use an MPEG-2 capable Sony digital camera. It fits in my pocket. Today's cameras can do even better.
What changed my point of view? Just one thing: an Independent Lens documentary, "An Unreasonable Man".
After watching that documentary, I still don't know if Ralph Nader would have made (or would make) a good president.
I watched that same documentary. It gives me the impression that Nader is best as a watchdog instead of the leader. The president has duties that involve diplomacy and defense. Nader's focus is more of a consumer watchdog. I'd rather see him as a member of a cabinet, or a leader of some department of consumer protection.
And yes, in 2000, I voted for Nader.
Besides, as the documentary implies, the man hasn't been laid in years, if ever. IMHO, the President needs a First Lady and a First Family.
Viewing iPlayer today costs your ISP a penny a minute - but the ISP isn't gaining any additional revenue from you
(Emphasis mine)
Thus, it costs an ISP 30 cents to transmit a half-hour TV show. It seems like passing on this cost to the consumer, at a 1.5X markup, is very acceptable.
I live in the US, and I pay about $50 a month for cable TV, and another $22 for Netflix. If my ISP were to charge me 1.5 cents per minute, it would mean that my combined cable TV and Netflix bills would be worth 80 hours of Internet-delivered video per month.
This 80 hours works out to be about 2.6 hours of TV per day, which is well in line with my viewing habits. Besides, I'll be able to get any programming I want, instead of being limited to the networks that my cable operator chooses for me.
In the mid-90s, my parents picked up a cheap analog Motorolla. It sounded so good, no one could tell that it was a cell phone. When I used a StarTac in places with analog-only coverage, I also would get much better sound quality. I've never heard a digital phone come close to its quality.
I look forward to electric cars. In a lot of cities, 100% of power comes from wind and solar, so its not shifting the carbon to another source. Slow charging can be done at home, fast charging (especially with supercap batteries that can charge very quickly) can be done at the normal filling stations, so the existing gas stations won't be losing market anytime soon.
An electric car charged by a coal power plant generates significantly less carbon dioxide then a gasoline or diesel car. It's not perfect, but it'll help significantly. The same electric car will also be able to use renable energy sources without any modifications.
I don't look forward to a hydrogen economy, and the bugs and hassles a vastly new fuel infrastructure will bring with it. Not to mention the fact that someone has to pay the cost of sinking the H2 tanks underground in tens of thousands of gasoline stations... and that will end up being the customer.
The hydrogen economy will:
Keep the existing petrolium business people rich.
Fail in the marketplace, because people will see electric cars as cheaper, faster, sleeker, more convenient, and more reliable.
I suspect that auto manufacturers may end up coming out with full electrics before hydrogen-powered cars, as it's a natural progression from hybrid vehicles.
1) Things that we believe we can't distinguish now, we may demonstrate that we can distinguish in the future. Just because you can't tell the difference consciously when you listen to two samples doesn't mean that some subconscious part of your brain can't determine a difference. We cannot rule out subsonics, subliminal effects, and so on.
Some of the "advantages" of analog recording are artifacts of its behavior. It turns out that tape has a natural compression effect built-in when the recording is too loud; digital, on the other hand, will audibly clip.
What we are finding out is that once the source medium starts to degrade, digital is harder to restore. A decaying digital tape will be much harder to play back then a decaying analog tape.
for everybody else the electric car + renting a gas car occasionally would be the much better choice.
Your solution won't work.
I live within a 5-minute walk of a rental agency, and I still consider it inconvenient to rent a car. It's expensive and time-consuming, and it won't work for when I go skiing, because the roads I drive on often require tire chains. (I live in California.)
On the other hand, there are many 2-car families in America. Such families could easily own one electric and one hybrid. This would greatly reduce our carbon footprint with minimal impact on our lifestyle. It's also a good way to transition to an infrastructure capable of recharging cars on long trips.
a train that could beat airliners from one side of the country to the other
You'd still have to arrive at the train station three hours early and take your shoes off for the TSA goons
I want a train that I can drive my car on, travel from one coast to the other coast, and drive off. It would make travel so convenient because I wouldn't have to deal with baggage claims, or arranging transportation to/from the airport.
I set up rules and filters. At my current company, people are good at keeping discussions in the appropriate mail lists, so I can easily bucket discussions into different priorities.
At a previous job, people used to spam their status reports so that they could look busy. Whenever I would get widely-distributed status reports or other useless communication from someone who I didn't know, I would immeditatly set up a rule in Outlook to dump all email from that person into a special SPAM folder.
The best you can hope for is some kind of a nag or a privacy flag. For example, a spreadsheet could have a "super confidential" flag that would put up a big red warning dialog when someone attempts to email it outside the company or save it to a flash drive. As implementing open DRM allows anyone to disable the parts that enforce DRM, I think that gentle reminders about how to properly handle information security are less likely to be disabled.
So it seems I lose no matter what I do. Either I can sell "unlimited" connections which are nice and easy for the 95% of my customers that don't spend all their time downloading movies and video games 24/7, but I have to spend ridiculous quantities of cash on transit just to stop my service grinding to a halt. Or I can try and sell capped/throttled connections, which will kill me because nobody will understand how it's measured and my customers will just go elsewhere. Or I can sell unlimited connections and throttle BitTorrent in some way, perhaps in the fine print, which makes my 95% legit customer base happy but pisses off the 5% I don't really want anyway.
The electric company handles this problem by selling metered service. They give you a connection that is capable of handling more amperage then you need, and charge based on the amount of energy used. Customers who use disproportionatly higher amounts of energy pay more.
It's probably time that ISPs do the same thing. They could charge $20 / month for an incredibly fast connection, but meter it so that the average person pays about $30 - $50 / month.
Once you get enough tabs open, there comes a point where IE7 bogs down tremendously when asked to dispaly jpgs, each in her own tab. Symptoms include clicks on the first tab are no longer acknowledged, and tremendous slowness moving between tabs.
In my experience, that's almost always caused by McAffee or any other crapware running on the system.
voila, mass manufacturing of electro-corpses. ain't the first time. won't be the last. a smart customer will put their hand on a display unit, and if it's too warm, decide to not be an early adopter.
That's why I waited for the 2nd generation MacbookPro; the first generation ones were warm when idling in the Apple store.
Given the nature of how the internet works, having a dial-up line to a management console (who then requires authentication) is much better for OOB management than using the Internet.
Dial-up is no more secure then internet. I know quite a few people who used to run war-dialers to find modems. One of them discovered a mysterious computer that behaved unlike anything ever seen before. A couple of days after he experimented with the reset command, he learned that he shut down an entire airport for an afternoon!
Everybody gets the same chip, but it will be crippled unless you pay the highest price.
Such a scenario is impossible, becausae the cheaper chips usually run hotter, have defective cache, or some other flaw that prevents them from running as well as the expensive chips.
If you don't have time, or you're just too lazy, to continue to add updates, and you want to make a quick buck off of it, don't OS it. It's that simple. OSS companies tend to sell support, and possibly custom-tailored upgrades.
If you think it'll be mildly popular, and you really want to OS it, throw up a paypal donation link. You may not get as much, but you'll be staying true to your scruples.
There are a few other variants:
Version N costs money, but N-1 is free/open.
The basic software is free/open, but specific features cost money.
I've been buying old records for about seven years. I got into it because they were cheap. Heck, today I stuck my rack of CDs in a back room because they're all ripped neatly into iTunes. My records are proudly displayed under my TV, and I have a few hanging on the wall.
The thing with vinyl is that it's fun. I tend to "stumble" across rare records in stores, like my original pressing of "Switched on Bach,". About a year ago, I picked up a record of interviews with John Lennon that never made it to CD.
I have a Santana record that just can't sound as good on CD. It sounds like they played in time with 33RPM, this way that pops & clicks, and wow & flutter, will sound like it's part of the album. The digital version will be too clean.
I got into Air because their record had a cool cover. (I didn't buy the record because it turns out that a friend of mine already owned the CD.)
Likewise, I got into Synergy because the record had a cool cover. I've only listened to the record a few times, but I regular listen to Synergy on my iPod.
21? What country is this? Iran?
Surely you're not telling me the legal drinking age in the US is 21? Hell.. I the worst hangover of my life was the day of my 16th birthday when I could finally drink legally (everyone in this country drinks illegally from about 14). The second worst hangover was at the school party that year where they'd thoughtfully provided free drinks..
You'll never learn to drink responsibly unless you've drunk irresponsibly a few times when you're younger. OTOH I was drinking wine with meals at 7 years old, so was kinda used to it by then.
The problem with underage binge drinking is that we're just starting to learn the subtle damage it causes, even when only done for a short period of time: http://xpress.sfsu.edu/archives/news/003094.html/
These kind of articles make me regret the one time that I put just a little too much vodka into a bottle of soda.
Slashdot Mirror
Results sponsored by PharmCo's Hibnaberian. (Side effects include...)
Just kidding...
I suspect that Google could also have some technologies in place that vary the HTML and JavaScript used to display the captcha in the browser. The crack involves finding the image in the browser's cache! This would make it difficult to obtain the image and display it elsewhere.
... the cartridge to make a comeback.There are movies for the Game Boy. One of the kids in my apartment complex showed me Shrek 3 on his Game Boy. The video quality is very low bit rate.
Or, to put it another way: If you download an MP3 and use it in a television commercial, you're clearly violating copyright.
Basically, whoever is rich is someone who's smart enough to figure out how to get other people to perform labor for him. The pyramids were built without money, (as far as we know,) yet we would consider the pharaohs very rich.
In a free economy, the rich person is whoever can figure out how to get the most people to labor his benefit. One becomes rich by organizing labor so that everyone benefits. The challenge is finding a motivation technique that can satisfy laborers more then money.
I just bought an iPhone. It's a great combo phone-email-music-camera. Assuming you are happy with an average camera and a 16-gig music player, it's tiny and it will make you very happy. For International travel, you'll need to find WiFi in order for the iPhone to get email and web. If you're picky about headphones, you'll need an adaptor because it uses a non-standard headphone port.
For DVD-quality video, I use an MPEG-2 capable Sony digital camera. It fits in my pocket. Today's cameras can do even better.
I watched that same documentary. It gives me the impression that Nader is best as a watchdog instead of the leader. The president has duties that involve diplomacy and defense. Nader's focus is more of a consumer watchdog. I'd rather see him as a member of a cabinet, or a leader of some department of consumer protection.
And yes, in 2000, I voted for Nader.
Besides, as the documentary implies, the man hasn't been laid in years, if ever. IMHO, the President needs a First Lady and a First Family.
(Emphasis mine)
Thus, it costs an ISP 30 cents to transmit a half-hour TV show. It seems like passing on this cost to the consumer, at a 1.5X markup, is very acceptable.
I live in the US, and I pay about $50 a month for cable TV, and another $22 for Netflix. If my ISP were to charge me 1.5 cents per minute, it would mean that my combined cable TV and Netflix bills would be worth 80 hours of Internet-delivered video per month.
This 80 hours works out to be about 2.6 hours of TV per day, which is well in line with my viewing habits. Besides, I'll be able to get any programming I want, instead of being limited to the networks that my cable operator chooses for me.
In the mid-90s, my parents picked up a cheap analog Motorolla. It sounded so good, no one could tell that it was a cell phone. When I used a StarTac in places with analog-only coverage, I also would get much better sound quality. I've never heard a digital phone come close to its quality.
An electric car charged by a coal power plant generates significantly less carbon dioxide then a gasoline or diesel car. It's not perfect, but it'll help significantly. The same electric car will also be able to use renable energy sources without any modifications.
I don't look forward to a hydrogen economy, and the bugs and hassles a vastly new fuel infrastructure will bring with it. Not to mention the fact that someone has to pay the cost of sinking the H2 tanks underground in tens of thousands of gasoline stations... and that will end up being the customer.The hydrogen economy will:
I suspect that auto manufacturers may end up coming out with full electrics before hydrogen-powered cars, as it's a natural progression from hybrid vehicles.
Some of the "advantages" of analog recording are artifacts of its behavior. It turns out that tape has a natural compression effect built-in when the recording is too loud; digital, on the other hand, will audibly clip.
What we are finding out is that once the source medium starts to degrade, digital is harder to restore. A decaying digital tape will be much harder to play back then a decaying analog tape.
Your solution won't work.
I live within a 5-minute walk of a rental agency, and I still consider it inconvenient to rent a car. It's expensive and time-consuming, and it won't work for when I go skiing, because the roads I drive on often require tire chains. (I live in California.)
On the other hand, there are many 2-car families in America. Such families could easily own one electric and one hybrid. This would greatly reduce our carbon footprint with minimal impact on our lifestyle. It's also a good way to transition to an infrastructure capable of recharging cars on long trips.
I want a train that I can drive my car on, travel from one coast to the other coast, and drive off. It would make travel so convenient because I wouldn't have to deal with baggage claims, or arranging transportation to/from the airport.
I set up rules and filters. At my current company, people are good at keeping discussions in the appropriate mail lists, so I can easily bucket discussions into different priorities.
At a previous job, people used to spam their status reports so that they could look busy. Whenever I would get widely-distributed status reports or other useless communication from someone who I didn't know, I would immeditatly set up a rule in Outlook to dump all email from that person into a special SPAM folder.
The best you can hope for is some kind of a nag or a privacy flag. For example, a spreadsheet could have a "super confidential" flag that would put up a big red warning dialog when someone attempts to email it outside the company or save it to a flash drive. As implementing open DRM allows anyone to disable the parts that enforce DRM, I think that gentle reminders about how to properly handle information security are less likely to be disabled.
The electric company handles this problem by selling metered service. They give you a connection that is capable of handling more amperage then you need, and charge based on the amount of energy used. Customers who use disproportionatly higher amounts of energy pay more.
It's probably time that ISPs do the same thing. They could charge $20 / month for an incredibly fast connection, but meter it so that the average person pays about $30 - $50 / month.
In my experience, that's almost always caused by McAffee or any other crapware running on the system.
That's why I waited for the 2nd generation MacbookPro; the first generation ones were warm when idling in the Apple store.
Dial-up is no more secure then internet. I know quite a few people who used to run war-dialers to find modems. One of them discovered a mysterious computer that behaved unlike anything ever seen before. A couple of days after he experimented with the reset command, he learned that he shut down an entire airport for an afternoon!
Such a scenario is impossible, becausae the cheaper chips usually run hotter, have defective cache, or some other flaw that prevents them from running as well as the expensive chips.
I have a feeling that the picture might be larger then a normal field of vision. This could lead to interesting ways of framing a picture.
There are a few other variants:
I've been buying old records for about seven years. I got into it because they were cheap. Heck, today I stuck my rack of CDs in a back room because they're all ripped neatly into iTunes. My records are proudly displayed under my TV, and I have a few hanging on the wall.
The thing with vinyl is that it's fun. I tend to "stumble" across rare records in stores, like my original pressing of "Switched on Bach,". About a year ago, I picked up a record of interviews with John Lennon that never made it to CD.
I have a Santana record that just can't sound as good on CD. It sounds like they played in time with 33RPM, this way that pops & clicks, and wow & flutter, will sound like it's part of the album. The digital version will be too clean.
I got into Air because their record had a cool cover. (I didn't buy the record because it turns out that a friend of mine already owned the CD.)
Likewise, I got into Synergy because the record had a cool cover. I've only listened to the record a few times, but I regular listen to Synergy on my iPod.
I always hide my taskbar. The "Windows" key automatically shows the taskbar, which is useful when some programs block it.
The problem with underage binge drinking is that we're just starting to learn the subtle damage it causes, even when only done for a short period of time: http://xpress.sfsu.edu/archives/news/003094.html/
These kind of articles make me regret the one time that I put just a little too much vodka into a bottle of soda.