Yeah, nice idea. No really. But imagine the conflict with copyright laws... or even wiretapping! Any time you take part in a private conversation would you have to get permission to record or distribute - what about recalling a concert you went to?
On a slight variation, my friend's father works for a British security firm which deals with the Government. He told me I shouldn't pass this on, but I can't see the harm in sharing with a handful of slashdotters...
Anyway, they needed a way of determining where a seized laptop had travelled in the past. Many esoteric technical tracking methods were discussed, most involving network log analysis.
My friend's father suggested scraping the pollen off of the case fan.
The 3dfx Voodoo3 is placed at number 16, but the Soundblaster is way down in 40th place?
I don't know, but I'd submit that realistic polyphonic sound/music was more revolutionary than 3D hardware acceleration. 3D graphics are cool and all, but at least the CPU could generate 3D graphics (Quake?) before hardware acceleration - if it weren't for the Soundblaster we'd be playing visually stunning games with beeps and parps for sound effects.
Sounds like a good deal at first, and maybe it is.
But where does the extra money go? Does it go towards Apple's bandwidth bill? Or does it go straight to EMI's coffers? We know Apple gets pennies per download, so I suspect the latter.
The question is then: Is it fair to give more money to the record company for something that costs them nothing to produce and distribute?
I have to wonder at the reasoning for the price increase. Maybe it's simply that they're greedy, and think they can get away with it. If so, fair enough, you bastards. Maybe Someone secretly wants DRM-free music to fail, but doesn't want to be accused of price-gouging for the sake of it, so they throw in a quality carrot.
I guess my point is: The price increase isn't justified by what they're offering - we're giving EMI more money for a service that Apple's providing. If the extra money goes to Apple, then I'm wrong. But I suspect I'm not.
EMI's share price has been plummeting for months. My guess is they're desperate to try anything. Hopefully the risk will pay off, but if the share price continues to fall, it won't look encouraging for other record companies. As of this morning they're only up half a percent.
Even more ironic: The film industry set itself up in California in the far West to avoid (by way of lots of geography) all those nasty patents on filming techniques that existed on the East Coast. Hollywood would never have existed had not the film studios decided to break IP law.
The last laptop I bought for the office was a Core 2 Duo Vaio at £1100 (about $2000 I believe) direct from Sony , which came laden with shit and a "recovery partition" and not even so much as a CD (I won't be buying Sony again, but for many reasons). "You get what you pay for"? How the hell much am I supposed to pay? Is $2000 not enough?
I'm sick of buying laptops, particularly for work, which come with bundles of shit preinstalled. It enrages me more when they won't even provide a proper Windows install CD so I can wipe and clean-install. Anything that spells the end of this policy is welcome.
I wonder if VOIP might solve this to some extent. After all, with Asterisk or similar, the home user can set up an "Auto-Attendant", or menu system to filter calls that get through. Perhaps even some form of voice recognition (recognising people's voices in your address book, or, controversially, an Indian accent) might become common. I suspect VOIP will make the telemarketers' jobs harder in the end.
I believe the "news" this time is that the internals have recently been imaged in high resolution by non-invasive techniques, thus revealing more detail about its workings and purpose. This BBC article tells more, and mentions a Radio 4 programme to be shown on 12th December.
Already known criminals. The objective is not to determine who you are, but to determine whether you are a known criminal.
Of course, being as you get your DNA and fingerprints taken for simply being arrested (not charged), thousands of innocent people are already on the criminal database.
Obviously it's impossible to register every typo-variation of your real domain name, so that kinda answers my original question.
However, I remember back in 1999 or so I visited vodaphone.com, which brought up a nice friendly page explaining how thousands of their customers misspelled "vodafone", so they decided to register that domain name to correct the confusion, which I thought was rather nice.
Here's a thought - do banks have a responsibility to register domain names related to themeselves? I think one could make that argument.
Also, are these domain names coming up for sale because the banks don't want them any more or because their subscription lapsed? I would have thought they'd automatically renew.
The problem is, what senator is going to openly disapprove of a bill that "Protects us against Terrorists"? You know the spin that will be put on this, whoever's in power.
"One thing I do know is that this will allow my government to build a case against me with no warrant..."
Not sure I understand this, having not RTFAd, but doesn't the summary say the Bill will make it easier to get court-approved warrants? Not that warrants will not be needed?
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, nice idea. No really. But imagine the conflict with copyright laws... or even wiretapping! Any time you take part in a private conversation would you have to get permission to record or distribute - what about recalling a concert you went to?
On a slight variation, my friend's father works for a British security firm which deals with the Government. He told me I shouldn't pass this on, but I can't see the harm in sharing with a handful of slashdotters...
Anyway, they needed a way of determining where a seized laptop had travelled in the past. Many esoteric technical tracking methods were discussed, most involving network log analysis.
My friend's father suggested scraping the pollen off of the case fan.
The 3dfx Voodoo3 is placed at number 16, but the Soundblaster is way down in 40th place?
I don't know, but I'd submit that realistic polyphonic sound/music was more revolutionary than 3D hardware acceleration. 3D graphics are cool and all, but at least the CPU could generate 3D graphics (Quake?) before hardware acceleration - if it weren't for the Soundblaster we'd be playing visually stunning games with beeps and parps for sound effects.
Sounds like a good deal at first, and maybe it is.
But where does the extra money go? Does it go towards Apple's bandwidth bill? Or does it go straight to EMI's coffers? We know Apple gets pennies per download, so I suspect the latter.
The question is then: Is it fair to give more money to the record company for something that costs them nothing to produce and distribute?
I have to wonder at the reasoning for the price increase. Maybe it's simply that they're greedy, and think they can get away with it. If so, fair enough, you bastards. Maybe Someone secretly wants DRM-free music to fail, but doesn't want to be accused of price-gouging for the sake of it, so they throw in a quality carrot.
I guess my point is: The price increase isn't justified by what they're offering - we're giving EMI more money for a service that Apple's providing. If the extra money goes to Apple, then I'm wrong. But I suspect I'm not.
EMI's share price has been plummeting for months. My guess is they're desperate to try anything. Hopefully the risk will pay off, but if the share price continues to fall, it won't look encouraging for other record companies. As of this morning they're only up half a percent.
Dell's website consumer pricing generator.
Even more ironic: The film industry set itself up in California in the far West to avoid (by way of lots of geography) all those nasty patents on filming techniques that existed on the East Coast. Hollywood would never have existed had not the film studios decided to break IP law.
The last laptop I bought for the office was a Core 2 Duo Vaio at £1100 (about $2000 I believe) direct from Sony , which came laden with shit and a "recovery partition" and not even so much as a CD (I won't be buying Sony again, but for many reasons). "You get what you pay for"? How the hell much am I supposed to pay? Is $2000 not enough?
I'm sick of buying laptops, particularly for work, which come with bundles of shit preinstalled. It enrages me more when they won't even provide a proper Windows install CD so I can wipe and clean-install. Anything that spells the end of this policy is welcome.
So you set up a menu system: "Press 3 if you're not a spambot". Solved, more or less.
I wonder if VOIP might solve this to some extent. After all, with Asterisk or similar, the home user can set up an "Auto-Attendant", or menu system to filter calls that get through. Perhaps even some form of voice recognition (recognising people's voices in your address book, or, controversially, an Indian accent) might become common. I suspect VOIP will make the telemarketers' jobs harder in the end.
I believe the "news" this time is that the internals have recently been imaged in high resolution by non-invasive techniques, thus revealing more detail about its workings and purpose. This BBC article tells more, and mentions a Radio 4 programme to be shown on 12th December.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6191462.stm
The first three are joint-first.
Already known criminals. The objective is not to determine who you are, but to determine whether you are a known criminal.
Of course, being as you get your DNA and fingerprints taken for simply being arrested (not charged), thousands of innocent people are already on the criminal database.
Replying to myself, sorry.
Obviously it's impossible to register every typo-variation of your real domain name, so that kinda answers my original question.
However, I remember back in 1999 or so I visited vodaphone.com, which brought up a nice friendly page explaining how thousands of their customers misspelled "vodafone", so they decided to register that domain name to correct the confusion, which I thought was rather nice.
Here's a thought - do banks have a responsibility to register domain names related to themeselves? I think one could make that argument.
Also, are these domain names coming up for sale because the banks don't want them any more or because their subscription lapsed? I would have thought they'd automatically renew.
Otherwise the result could be perpetually set to "0% Truth" and we'd never know if it worked or not.
Christ, could the summary sound any more like a PR press release?
You would choose to use a web-based spreadsheet in a large investment bank? I don't think many slashdotters are in THAT boat.
Christ, if TFA says stuff like that, I'm not sure I WANT to read the rest of it...
The problem is, what senator is going to openly disapprove of a bill that "Protects us against Terrorists"? You know the spin that will be put on this, whoever's in power.
"One thing I do know is that this will allow my government to build a case against me with no warrant..."
Not sure I understand this, having not RTFAd, but doesn't the summary say the Bill will make it easier to get court-approved warrants? Not that warrants will not be needed?
...(-1, Flamebait).
'Indulgence is just a click away, and nobody needs to know, except you and some server somewhere.'
;)
Tell that to those AOL users.
It's times like this that I wish there was a "-1 Lame" moderation option.
Get it? Lame? Oh, come on.