I myself have always been arguing with my ISP over this very thing. My standpoint is this, if an ISP claims that their service is compatibile with Windows 98 or 2000 or whatever, what gives them the right to then deny you the ability to use a feature of that operating system?
Windows 98 included Personal Web Server. If you install Office you get Frontpage Server Extensions. 2000 server has VPN services. These are all part and parcel with the operating system. How then can my ISP say that even those Windows may let you share data on certain ports and protocols, we forbid it?
Obviously the clause was designed to prevent someone from running a business website on a consumer connection. But they don't write the rules to target abuse. The terms don't say "you may not run a server that consumes excessive bandwidth" or "you may not turn your connnection into a gateway to dozens of users". No, they write it as "no servers, period" and "no sharing this connection, period".
There are ISPs that don't do this. SpeakEasy comes to mind. When I was a SpeakEasy customer I ran web/ftp/vpn/shoutcast/dcc until my connection was absolutely saturated. I never heard word one from them about it. They even make a point to say they encourage you to runs servers (no porn sites, please!).
But the majority of the big ones, the AT&T Broadband and the SBC Pacific Bell want you to pay for broadband prices just to use low bandwidth protocols like e-mail and web browsing. After all, they content, you don't need all taht bandwidth we said we would give you. The only people who need to use their full quota of data is pirates, right? No one has any legitmate reason to upload a significant amount of information.
So, good for the tech companies. They have finally caught on that people aren't going to keep buying new computers and bigger hard drives and CD burners and all the trappings of a multimedia lifestyle if they get double taxed by having to pay for content. I consider my $50 broadband fee a global content tax and whether people consciously admit it or not, that's really what broadband is all about.
Given a choice between siding with the content providers and the infrastructure providers, I choose to side against the content industry because the only thing they stand to lose is potential (read: imaginary) profit. The people who actually make and sell tangible products will go out of business if they are subject to the whims of the content industry.
Okay, not being a Mac user, I don't know about the hold-down-the-button trick. My first thought when you have a CD stuck is to use the old Macintosh eject key (tm) namely a paperclip.
But people say that iMacs lack a hole. I'm sure the Pioneer drive has one. I have a hard time believing these drive were custom engineered for Apple. Aren't they just repackaged OEM units? If so, it stands to reason they have both a soft and hard eject mechanism. So if Apple covers it, whose fault is that? Apples. But if they have a substitute approach, this hold-down-button thing AND IT ACTUALLY WORKS then great, I would agree that Apple is less liable...but being that this hold-down-button technique is another soft eject mechanism, it may not work, I don't know.
Ask yourself this...why is it iMacs that are having this problem? There are Pioneer drives for PC. There are compact little all-in-one devices made by PC makers. There are bad experiences with copy protected CDs. But are there any that require any sort of NON TECHNICAL user intervention? I sure haven't heard of any.
Apple prides themselves on controlling the entire platform, from the grade of power cabling all the way to the type of plastic your fingers touch. They use that as a selling point, we control the hardware, we control the software, we guarantee you cover-to-cover and Apple experience.
Well guess what, in this case it's come back to bite them in the ass. When grandma and grandpa put in a music CD...which looks like a CD, came in a jewel case like a CD, was found in the CD section of the store...and suddenly their computer is dead and nothing they can think to do fixes it...who is going to suffer in their eyes? I'm pretty darn sure it's going to be Apple. So you can go ahead and defend/excuse them but to me, this is something that merits a helluva lot more than a couple lines in a Knowledge Base.
Precisely. I couldn't have said it better. When you get right down to it, these copy-protected discs are defective CDs. Pioneer should have surely tested for defective CDs as part of their Q&A process. Apple also should have asked themselves the same question.
Not to mention, these copy protection formats have been around for years. It's only now that they are in wide-scale production that we are learning this problem? Cactus et al talks about testing their discs in a wide assortment of players and not seeing anything significantly wrong. Did they not think to test an iMac?
This is really Ford vs. Firestone for the computer industry. Only this time there are three parties that share some of the blame for this fiasco:
Pioneer - for engineering a drive where it is possible with the wrong combination of bits or read errors to completely lock the drive and ruin the firmware.
Apple - for engineering a machine with a soft eject and no aesthetically-challenging hard backup. Mr. Jobs, would a pinhole really have offended your out-of-wack perfectionism that much? Well, I guess that's rhetorical. So then why not a hotkey during boot to eject the media or similar? Or maybe a little coverplate over the pinhole?
Cactus/MPAA - for engineering hazardous media without sufficiently warning or even preventing users from using them improperly.
Now who gets the most blame? Ford said Firestone for making crappy tires. Firestone said Ford for telling people to underinflate them. Well, now Pioneer, Apple and Cactus et al are facing a similar game of finger-pointing.
The bottom line is that it is inexcusable for a HARDWARE manufacturer to build a device in such a manner that SOFTWARE can actually cause permanent damage. That's what I was talking about with the self-distruct button.
I'm sorry, that's the fattest load of bullshit I've ever heard in my life. That's like Apple putting a big tempting red button on the side of their iMac labeled "Self Destruct" and then trying to claim that they are somehow absolved of all liability if someone actually (or accidentally) pushes it.
You can't design a product with such a significant defect and then refuse to take any part of the blame. These things look like CDs, more often than not have CD logos on them, and in no way significanly warn users.
What Apple should do is update their code to detect and eject any non-compliant CD. Then if there was somehow a way for the user to force the CD to load, Apple could easily escape liability.
I smell class action. Apple, the only question is whether it's going to be aimed at Cactus or you. I suggest you do the smart thing and have a long hard talk with your CD-ROM vendor about updating their firmware and distribute the firmware fix IMMEDIATELY.
Hey, isn't security through obscurity a bad thing?
Why are we trying to design something to prevent someone from discovering what we are hiding? That is not only counter-intuitive but doomed to failure.
I too remember reading about this long long ago. My first thought was to construct a giant thorn patch from metal and concrete. Giant spikes, each with protruding spikes, each with protruding spikes...layer them all over the area. First of all, I don't care what century you come from, thorns are thorns and things that poke give you pause. Even after hundreds of centuries they should last well enough to make it clear that this was not a place that people travelled through easily or often.
But now I'm thinking that even that might be construed as some kind of complex art project. Which brings me to my question...
Why don't we lace the site with the toxic chemicals themselves? Wouldn't that make it painfully obvious to future explorers?
Here we are at ground level. A big concrete/metal box with sharp pointed spikes sticking out of it. Inside the box...a tiny tiny microgram of the bad stuff.
Go down several feet. A bigger box with the same unfriendly exterior. Inside...a miligram of the bad stuff.
Go down several more feet...again bigger, again more bad stuff.
There should be a pattern here. If the future explorers know anything about chemistry or science in general...then they will want to know what this substance is that has been protected in this manner. Through trial and error and maybe some people getting burns on their hands, they'll llearn it's not good. When the dig down further, and find ever increasing quantities of the stuff...they'll figure out it's not going to get better and them might want to stop digging, unless they figure out a way to diffuse the material in which case...please please please do dig it up.
This doesn't take modern knowledge. Remember the Star Trek episode where Data lands on this planet searching for radioactive material but gets wonked and the material ends up being made into jewelry by the local Indians or whatever?
Well, sooner or later they figures out the stuff was bad. Of course, there was so much of it around that it caused a lot of harm. So that's why I saw give them a little bit so they can learn the lesson before digging up the main repository and rifling through it.
If Program 1's only purpose is to contribute towards producing pirated copies of X then yes it's illegal. If Program 1 also happens to produce a bitchin recipe for chicken gumbo then you might be able to get away with it...however as soon as someone posted a message saying "if you take program 1 and do such-and-such you get a free copy of X" then guess what, you'll be asked to modify Program 1 so that it maintains its primary purpose (outputting recipies) without its correlating illegal purpose (outputting X).
For the last time, it's not the parts, it's the process.
This is a silly argument. If the process is reversable you have not fundamentally altered it, merely packaged it. Warez pirates don't get off scott free because they are trading ZIP files that just happen to uncompess to WinXP.
Now, if the process isn't reversable then you have destroyed the item in question so arguably there is no copyright violation in the first place.
It's not the individual steps that are the concern. It's the process. Your program B wouldn't be illegal unless the only purpose of program B was to be used in concert with number A to product free copies of Window XP.
A book is just a really long word printed on paper. A car is just a really complicated sculpture made from metal&plastic.
My point is that we need for people to separate CONTENT from DISTRIBUTION and stop thinking that objects containing both are somehow inseparable. A electronic book is the same as a book except the electronic book can be duplicated replicated and distributed far more easily than the physical book. But in the future where maybe we have robots that could flip through a book recording each page then manufacture a duplicate from raw materials...well then, suddenly its more apparant that the part of the "book" that actually has value is the word not the package and not the way it gets from point A to point B.
Even if computer code is just a really big number...it still takes a person focusing creative energy for a period of time to produce that number...or rather, find out why that number is so special (what exactly it does). But beyond the initial credit and compensation...it is flat out stupid to assign rights to the number itself. I won't purchase eBooks because they aren't going to sell me their number. They want to sell me part of it and then add a whole long list of chores I must complete to get the rest.
It's as if an artist sold you a picture in a black box and told you to hang the black box over your mantle and if you ever wanted to see the picture, call him and he'll remotely open the box. Who would be stupid enough to buy something like this? Yet if tomorrow all artists decided to do it, would we have any way to stop them? No, we wouldn't and that's when the courts are supposed to step in and say "No." They did it for book contracts back in the 1970's and established the first-sale doctrine as law.
And now idiots like this judge have decided to throw that out and go back to allowing manufactures of PACKAGING and DISTRIBUTION to made decisions regarding CONTENT.
"The DMCA (Dealer Mechanic Compensation Act) does not eliminate fair use or substantially impair the fair use rights of anyone to use their vehicle (because it states that you can only seek repairs or purchase parts from the dealer where you purchased your car),' the judge wrote in a 35-page opinion. 'The fair user may find it more inconvenient to engage in certain fair uses with regard to their modern vehicles, but nevertheless, fair use is still available, for a price."
or...
"The BMCA (Book Maker Compensation Act) does not eliminate fair use or substantially impair the fair use rights of anyone to use their books (because it states that you can only open the cover of the book using a special decoder tool that must be registered and periodically renewed by the book publisher),' the judge wrote in a 35-page opinion. 'The fair user may find it more burdernsome to engage in certain fair uses with regard to their book collection, but nevertheless, fair use is still available, as long as the book publisher remains in business."
When as these idiot judges going to learn? Either we have a first sale doctrine...or we don't. Why do such backward-thinking judges somehow decide that just because we are selling very long numbers instead of books and cars that putting rules and restrictions on ANYTHING AS PART OF A SALE is effectively doing away with this longstanding legal precident?
The day will come when matter can be easily replicated and all book publishers and car makers are going to be able to see are blueprints, designs, and other electronic information. All these companies are doing is ensuring that people turn to back alley and underground channels. But I understand their Chicken Little approach to intellectual property and the back-ass-wards way they follow it.
What I don't understand is judges...who are put in our system of government to provide a check and balance to stupid laws...basically deciding that a small risk to corporate profits outweighs a society-wide consequence to freedom of access to information. WHO IS PAYING THESE PEOPLE OFF?
Notice I didn't say "streaming" I said "downloading" as in "download the whole video file locally then watch it.
Streaming video blows. I have one of the fastest consumer Internet connections around and I still can't watch video from most overloaded sites without it skipping.
If it wasn't for programs like StreamBox and ASFRecorder I would go bonkers. But thankfully with those programs I can download them locally and then convert them to good old open MPEG file format.
I think a site would be better off giving customers access to MPEG and/or DivX versions of these file in two or three different resolutions. Perhaps a small 40-50MB DivX version for dial-up users and a nice big VCD version for broadband customers.
That's what I'm saying exists already on the Internet (actuallly, now groups are releasing SVCD copies of the newly released DVDs).
The one that that I find most upsetting about the whole Futurama/Simpsons rivalry is that Simpsons seems to be treated as FOX's little darling and Futurama is the bastard child they want to pretend they never had.
Case in point? The Simpsons Archive (snpp.com) perhaps the single greatest authoritative Simpsons information source. Mostly culled I'm sure from countless USENET postings but the information contained there is priceless to the average Simpsons fan. Someone at work will utter a butchered version of some famous quote and in seconds we will have the exact wording, the episode it came from and (with a little step 2 magic) soon be watching the hilarious moment.
But is there such a resource for Futurama? Well there was...The Futurama Cronicles (frcr.com). Had much of the same kind of information, with upcoming episode dirt and all sorts of little factoids. I can't read the alien language, but those guys had it pretty much deciphered. I always wonder what the little clips during the intro came from and they always seemed to know.
But what was it, two years ago? the site got the Cease & Desist kiss of death. How can a site like snpp.com flourish and frcr.com disappear when both are basically cataloging and organizing USENET content? And what happened to the other Futurama sites like FuturamaOutlet and so on?
Honestly, it's like FOX is trying to deny Futurama even exists. The FOX website for the show is a flash-laden piece of crap that hasn't been updated since the show premiered (same with the Family Guy show site).
Bleah. Matt Groening must has some change in his pocket. He knows about the massive following his shows have on the Internet (he has been asked about ANiVCD and the whole VCD scene at every convention he's ever attended). In this post dot-com world, I think his projects would be the only ones that have a chance at working over the Internet. Produce the show straight to video and offer streaming downloads over the Internet. Hell, I see channel after channel on IRC doing exactly that.
So he's not interested in leaving FOX. Fine. But for god's sake...don't cast pearls before swine. How many musicians say that given the choice between languishing in a corporate vault and being enjoyed and shared by fans they would much rather give their work to the fans? Why can't Matt be the same way?
Yes, that's it, attack my opinion based on my failure to grammar-check it.
The second ammendment It doesn't mean government regulation if said regulation interferes with it's primary purpose: ensure the right to bear arms. If the government required gun insurance, they automatically anyone who could not pay would be denied their right to bear arms. So in that situation, "regulation" would not be constitutional.
Requiring someone to register is the first step toward recinding a right. You have to know where the guns are to take them away. Assuming martial law was declared in the United States, the first thing the government would probably do is open up those nice fat gun license records and set about disarming them one by one.
Whether or not this is resonable or constitutional depends on how upbeat or bleak your view of the future is. But the fact remains that there must be limits to "regulation" or else it is possible to regulate something out of existence.
You say guns and cars differ in intent. I say they differ in common usage. Potato, pahtahto. I could use a gun to crack open a walnut. I could use a car as a dedicated hit-and-run device. If guns are designed to cause damage and carnage then so is dynamite, butcher knives and sledgehammers. The fact that all three of those things are considered weapons is incidental to their primary designation as tools.
Now I agree...an automatic gun with copkiller bullets is primarily designed as a human killing tool. But a.22 rifle or a blunderbus loaded with rocksalt are also guns, and the primarly design for them would be hunting and intimidation. So if you want to split hair on semantics, go ahead, but I still consider the "gun" category broad enough to include functional, tool-type uses.
You know, I think everyone who takes the stance that "driving is a privaledge, not a right" is flat out wrong. I belive that driving is a right. I believe that it is just as important as the right to bear arms. The only reason that it isn't explicitly spelled out in the US Constitution is because the technology just didn't exist. The forefathers couldn't have conceived of a world where the government could somehow prevented them from using a horse.
But ask yourself...what would happen if the procedures that applied to cars were applied to cars? You want a gun? First take a mandatory training class. Now get a practice gun that says you can only use a gun within a shooting range for a year. Now fork over your complete life's history, DNA, fingerprint, whatever to become a registered gun owner. Now be required to get gun insurance in order to purchase a gun. Now get a ticket for not keeping your gun stored in the proper location. Now have your gun impounded and lose your gun license for getting too many tickets.
That's what we would have if guns were given the same treatment under the law as cars. Yet you won't see that happen. Even thought a lot of those things are probably a sensible idea! They are adding to the burden of gun ownership which directly violates the second ammendmant.
Now I ask you, which is more important, a gun or a car? Back in the 1700's, you have to pretty much to with gun. A gun could provide food for your family. A gun could protect you from robbers and highwaymen. A gun could protect you from wild animals. A gun could make sure that your newly formed government didn't decide to come and oppress you (or at least do so over your dead body). A gun put you on equal terms with the lawmakers...as long as the numbers of you outnumbered the numbers of them.
Today in the year 2002...which is more important, a gun or a car? A car provides me with a means to earn a living at a job that might be otherwise out of my range of trave...a car provides food for my family. A car gives me the ability to flee danger should I live in a remote area...a car protects me from robber. A car gives me a secure mode of transportation through dark and troublesome terrain...it afford me protection from wild animals I wouldn't have walking. A car allows me to escape from a situation where I am being persecuted...a car protects me from n oppressive government. A car puts me on equal terms with those in authority...as long as I keep driving until they stop following.
Everyone is fooling themselves into believing you don't need a car in today's society. Walk, ride a bike, take a bus. But if push came to shove, what of those options will save you from any of the terrors I mentioned above? Would we all sleep easy if cars were outlawed entirely and we were forced to use a public transportation system? Go only when and where they allow us to go? Allow our movements to be tracked from start to finish? This is the future that "driving is a privaledge" is heading us towards.
Stop it people, for the love of god, stop it. A car and a gun are both useful tools, that happen to have the side effect of being capable of causing damage and carnage. But there is no deny the benefit they both provide to our society. The tables have turned...I can pretty much get along without a gun in the yer 2000...the same way someone who carefully arranges their life can get along without a car. But I'm sure glad that if the situation were to change...if my wife were being stalked, or some hoodlums were hanging around my neighborhood...I can count on the fact that I can be guaranteed a means of protecting myself. Why on earth shouldn't the same be true for a car?
No, AOL is a perfect example. Back in 1991 they were a very small bulletin board service that was dwarfed by online giants such as Compuseve, Prodigy, GEnie and the like. The people who joined at this point were almost entirely joining to play Neverwinter Nights. In all other categories of online services, AOL stunk across the board (I think PC World gave them the lowest score of all online services when it was first reviewed).
However, for broke teenagers, there was one reason to use AOL...it was free. Thanks to the easy availablity of sign-up disks, anyone could get online. All you had to do was sign up, fill in bogus payment information, and enjoy a month or more of free service. This went on for years. There were even tools written to automate the account generation process. From 1991 to about 1996 there was absolutely no authentication of payment information before activating an account. AOL would simply let the account run and then after a couple of months of sending "your payment information is invalid" messages it would finally close the account.
Each of these AOL accounts had five screennames. Each of these five screennames could have 550 e-mails stored on AOL servers. Each of these 550 e-mails could have up to 10MB in attachments. So here's how it worked. Someone would get online to their local warez BBS and download the latest warez release. That person would then repack the release into 10MB pieces and send them to himself via AOL (uploading the files to AOL). From there he would forward the e-mails to everyone else, essentially e-mailing gigabytes of warez to you with a single click. This also went on for years. AOL warez groups were flourishing right up until around 1996.
Surely this couldn't have escaped AOL's knowledge. In these days, you were lucky if an ISP let you keep 10MB on a server and here AOL was giving you basically 2.5GB of online storage. As long as you kept forwarding to fresh accounts before your old ones expired, you had access to all the programs you could ever want. But they had to be kept somewhere...and AOL had to pay for that storage not...to mention all those countless modems and dial-in access minutes.
So why would an ISP allow such rampant abuse of their account and mail system? Well from 1991 to 1996 something else was happening...AOL was growing. On the books, they went from about 100,000 members to 1,000,000 members in about two years. They surpassed Compuserve a couple years later. I seriously doubt that at any time during this era that more than a 1/3 of the accounts on AOL were actually valid paying customers (besides all the fraudulently generated accounts, there were boatloads of AOL4Free Macintosh customers). But on paper, I'm sure it looked good to investors to see how the membership was growing. And I'm sure it looked really good when they had more members than any other ISP.
Most telling to me is the fact that right around 1996 when they were working on getting, IIRC, their sixth millionth customer...AOL suddenly implemented a raft of policies that killed the AOL warez community. First, they started actually trying to verify payment on what was entered during sign-up. That did away with the fake generators...now you actually had to have stolen credit cards to get online (much harder to come by). Two, they started deleting files after they had been downloaded a certain number of times (people estimated it to be about between 250 and 500 times) or the account that uploaded it was cancelled. Last, they started blocking the private rooms where people met to trade mail forwarding with each other. These things happened boom, boom, boom within months of each other.
But by then, AOL was the number one ISP, and if I remember correctly, this was right around the time they moved to flat rate unlimited access so they could no longer afford to have a huge population of floating freeloaders when they didn't even have the capacity to support all of their legitamately paying customers.
So, call me a conspiracy theorist if you must, but to this day I belive that AOL turned a blind eye to piracy to enjoy the rapid growth that it encouraged, and then once they had grown as much as they good, they easily were able to disable the piracy. So do I think it took a major corporation six years to notice the problem (despite the BSA and others constantly launching tirades about AOL warez scene) and figure out a way to stop pirates (despite e-mails where techies suggest inplementing call-backs during the sign-up process to counter theft and their bosses responding it might scare off legit customers)? Or do I think they didn't really want to stop the problem until the potential risk for getting caught was suddenly higher than the potential gains from it?
Step 1) Create a system or product that, while having some legitmate use, also enables a much more popular illegal use.
Step 2) Gain a huge user base while fretting and pretending to "study solutions" to the illegal use.
Step 3) Once your system or product has become a leader in the marketplace, throw a switch and make the illegal use much harder.
Hey, it worked for countless companies throughout the ages. I mean, when did AOL enable the features that prevented users from e-mailing warez to each other, before or after they became the number one ISP in the US? So, it's not surprising that DivX and Frau. would be following the pattern like everyone else.
Before travelling overseas, I signed up for a MCI Worldcom plan that included, along with long distance service, a Worldcom phone card that had very low rates for the countries I would be visiting (UK was 25 cents per minute, France was about 40 cents per minute).
Because I was travelling, I never saw the bill until I returned home. It was then that I discovered the rates on the card and accompanying material were only good for calls TO or FROM the United States. Since I had made several local calls to relatives and friends during my UK and France stays, I had not been billed at those rates. The rates I got charged were as high as $8 per minute.
What was particularly galling was the fact that they could have bounced the call over the Atlantic twice, and I still would have be charges at the most 50 cents per minute.
I called MCI to complain, but they refused to negotiate with me. They insisted that since I had already used the airtime I was required to pay the full amount.
Angry, I flipped over my phone bill and, as per California law, there was instructions for filing a grievance with the California Public Utilities Commission. I was to make out a check for the amount in question and sent it, with my complaint, to the CPUC. I suppose in this fashion the CPUC was acting a big like an escrow agent, holding the money until they determined the outcome.
But it never came to that. A couple weeks after I mailed my letter to the CPUC I got an envelope from MCI Worldcom. Inside was a letter that had been sent to the CPUC and carbon copied to me. The letter basically asked the CPUC to disregard the matter, as MCI had concluded that "in the interest of customer service" and because "there was the chance that an unwary customer could be misled" they were going to only charge me at the 25 cent per minute rate I originally expected to get.
To this day, I'm not sure if this is a matter of the squeaky wheel getting the grease, or the phone company really and truly afraid of whatever big stick the CPUC may wield. However, I am at this point quite glad for the CPUC. However bumbling or inept a government agency might be, they have a process for getting things done and if you are willing to spent the time learning and following it, it's amazing what you can accomplish.
This is way bigger news than any previous Google censorship story. This is censorship most foul...in my opinion, this kind of action is suicidal! What the F can they be thinking?
Here's basically what Google has done:
A) Shown that the ad system is not an automated process. As such, ANY ad that someone finds offensive is now subject to removal. Because as Napster found out the hard way, if you exercise control in one instance you prove that you can do it, and then the law will say you MUST do it.
B) Turned away money...real $$$$...because of some perceived "higher priority". So, what's next Google? Are you going to stop RAdmin from purchasing an AdWord on "VNC" because their website says VNC is slow and featureless? The whole #$@##$ point of AdWords is to trigger on your competitors so that you can let them know that ALTERNATIVES EXIST. What you are doing with this policy is effectively only allowing ads when people search on the items in the ad. How useful is that?
C) Flat-ass bald faced lied. It says right in their message "Decisions concerning advertising in no way affect the search results" and "we will continue to show search results for this type of site". BS Google! You already delisted Xenu once and you have continued to delist every single subpage on the site. How do we know you won't in the future?
jouralist guy, I strongly encourage you to submit this information to slashdot, maybe under slashback. This is indeed newsworthly. I can't believe Google would choose to side with Scientology on this. It's only thing to refuse ads on keywords like "kiddie porn" but to refuse ads because they advocate against something...that's just plain idiotic.
Now we don't have to worry about CBDTPA. Because even if the FCC tells the tech industry to adopt encryption to protect content, we can say "Sorry Disney, er, FCC...but that technology has been patented!"
Why didn't we think of this. Let's get patents on watermarking and other intrusive technologies being rammed down our throats by content providers. Then just sit on them and thumb our noses.
They may run "an" AOL client and they may read mail off "an" AOL server but how do you know they are the same client/server as what the rank and file use?
That was my point. Many times executives are not aware they get privaledged treatment. They wonder why people complain about Help Desk response time since everytime they call the Help Desk they get someone there within ten minutes.
It takes a brilliant and humble executive to basically force himself not to take advantage of the special treatment offered him. At the Fortune 500 company I was talking about, the CEO would eat at the cafeteria and would even sit down and have lunch with people from the mailroom. Just a regular ol' guy.
But then all it took was for his laptop to freeze up once during a presentation and all hell broke loose in the IT department. Less than a week later, we had a new Director with a sudden focus on deploying Windows NT right now even on laptops which everyone knew basically weren't built for NT (power saving, USB, port replicators, all of them threw NT for a loop).
So, I don't know. I still believe that at any major corporation the executives have no idea what technology is really like in the trenches, hence Executive Shielding.
From the article "The reversal is particularly awkward for Robert Pittman, AOL Time Warner's co-chief operating officer, who had pushed through the move to use AOL's e-mail."
How many people here thing that Mr. Pittman ever had a problem with his AOL mail? I'd bet dollars to pesos that anyone at AOL with a capital "C" in their title has their e-mail running off their own custom-built server.
This was literally the case for one fortune 500 company I contracted for. The CEO/CIO/CFO had their own Compaq Proliant server fully loaded (for the time). It was segregated from the other machines and was constantly watched by at least one Network Engineer. The rest of the company was subjected to constant crap in switching from AT&T outsourcing of e-mail service to in-house properly deployed UNIX solution, then someone falling for the Netscape sales pitch and switching to that, then Microsoft saving us from Netscape by bringing in Exchange, then ended up having Exchange do the mail but Netscape do the directory services...etc.
But the top right wing with all the mahogany furniture never once had a problem with their e-mail. Because of the aforementioned dedicated server which, as far as I know, was running the original UNIX solution and never got touched.
The problem is that this solution can't be applied on a large scale. I think the Steve Case and company probably have (knowingly or unknowingly) been the victims of executive shielding. The people whose jobs rely on their satisfaction would be fools not to. But then along comes some Time Warner company. The AOL brass aren't going to recommended Executive Shielding because they probably don't know about it. The AOL techies doing the shielding aren't going to tell their Time Warner opposites because they don't report to Time Warner. And the Time Warner techies are going to walk naively into the situation and get their asses blamed. But after a year of fired techies you eventually figure out that maybe the problem isn't the staff, it's the damn product.
Well that's just my impression anyway. But I wouldn't be at all surprised if it were true. I wonder how many people at Time Warner lost their job because they couldn't get a square peg through a round hole for Time Warner management. They never knew the answer was to use one of those new round holes with four corners.
I saw the Xenu ad when I was reading the previous story and I thought "wow, that's really clever!"...here's why:
Separation of editors and advertisers. Sometimes it's almost as strong as separation of church and state (although like church/state it's not absolute). In fact, a lot of sites pride themselves on the fact that editors can air stories even if it pisses off advertisers.
Well why the hell not have it work in the other direction? Why not use advertising to bypass editorial waffling or censorship?
Look at it this way. Let's say we all chipped in $5 each to create a fund to ensure that Xenu.Net showed up for every even-remotely related Scientology link (ie, Scientology, Travola, Dianetics, Bukkake, etc). Now, does Scientology have the legal right to tell Google they can't run those ads (thus depriving Google of its income). Couldn't Google argue that pulling ads that have been paid for would damage its business?
What about extending the principle to other sites like Yahoo, or heck the NY Times. The way I see it, all Scientology could do is threaten to boycott Google/Yahoo/NY Times...they routinely ignore boycotts from groups all the time. Or they could pay to run ads countering the Xenu ads.
Well of course I don't know for sure if things would be this simple but...you know, why can't we geeks take a page from the Corporate Dirty Playbook...fight with advertising.
I'm all for giving money to the EFF but I think I would almost rather spend my money creating an ad campaign...along the lines of TheTruth ads you see against the tobacco industry. I mean, even smokers curse Big Tobacco out the side of their mouth as they buy another pack. The Tobacco Industry has a PR nightmare...so why can't Disney or Scientology or the MPAA or RIAA?
Which makes more sense? Getting rid of flourescent lights because putting a flourescent light over a computer monitor makes it flicker, or having some sense and keeping said light as far away from the monitor as possible.
I understand what you are talking about, but I think everyone understands that whenever possible, keep your radio devices away from each other. I've managed to have a cordless phone and a microwave both work because I don't put the phone's base station on top of the microwave.
Now, when my neighbor used to have a CB radio so powerful that his voice broadcasting came through on my television speakers...that was overloaded.
On point one: Medical devices have in fact failed due to bugs, and some of them are software related. I specifically remember some case in Boston where a dosing machine malfunctioned and administered a lethal level of a medication because of unit conversion error. In cases like that, the manufacturer is responsible and quick/quiet settlements are guaranteed. So maybe there hasn't been a CodeRed death but if not it would be primarily because Microsoft doesn't allow their software to be used in life or death situations (read the license) at least not yet. But my comment was about SOFTWARE, not MICROSOFT.
On point two: if MS knew of an exploit and DID COVER IT UP then it stands to reason you very well wouldn't know, would you? That's what NDAs are for. You are arguing that because Microsoft has never been stupid enough to get caught covering something up they must not do it. That's hardly a provable thesis.
Last but not least, Microsoft has goals to put Windows everywhere. We have battleships now running Windows NT-based products. They have released XP embedded. There are a huge number of non-interactive devices like drive arrays running NT kernals. Guidelines or not, mistakes can be made and it's only a matter of time before a traffic light blue-screens and causes a 20-car pile up.
My comparison to Ford/Firestone was talking specifically about how the incident brough critical (and congressional) attention to some little known text carved on the side of a tire that had basically gone unnoticed before. Now because of that backlash, SUVs are (hopefully) safer. There is no Ford/Firestone incident in the software world that had caused a similar grass-roots movement for better software. As bad as CodeRed was, nothing appears to have resulted from it. Bill Gates professes a keen interest in security but this is just a sound byte because it's exactly the same lip service that any CEO would give when confronted with problem X.
My comparison wasn't trivializing Ford/Firestone...it was foreshadowing Microsoft/Nuclear Launch Agency.
Maybe now that companies are offering hacker insurance some standards and guidelines will develop?
On the other hand...when has the computer industry ever mirror any real world industry? We still don't have the equivalent of the Consumer Product Safety Commission nor is there product liability, recalls, or defect-related lawsuits.
If there were, Microsoft would make the Ford/Firestone fiasco look like nothing.
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I myself have always been arguing with my ISP over this very thing. My standpoint is this, if an ISP claims that their service is compatibile with Windows 98 or 2000 or whatever, what gives them the right to then deny you the ability to use a feature of that operating system?
Windows 98 included Personal Web Server. If you install Office you get Frontpage Server Extensions. 2000 server has VPN services. These are all part and parcel with the operating system. How then can my ISP say that even those Windows may let you share data on certain ports and protocols, we forbid it?
Obviously the clause was designed to prevent someone from running a business website on a consumer connection. But they don't write the rules to target abuse. The terms don't say "you may not run a server that consumes excessive bandwidth" or "you may not turn your connnection into a gateway to dozens of users". No, they write it as "no servers, period" and "no sharing this connection, period".
There are ISPs that don't do this. SpeakEasy comes to mind. When I was a SpeakEasy customer I ran web/ftp/vpn/shoutcast/dcc until my connection was absolutely saturated. I never heard word one from them about it. They even make a point to say they encourage you to runs servers (no porn sites, please!).
But the majority of the big ones, the AT&T Broadband and the SBC Pacific Bell want you to pay for broadband prices just to use low bandwidth protocols like e-mail and web browsing. After all, they content, you don't need all taht bandwidth we said we would give you. The only people who need to use their full quota of data is pirates, right? No one has any legitmate reason to upload a significant amount of information.
So, good for the tech companies. They have finally caught on that people aren't going to keep buying new computers and bigger hard drives and CD burners and all the trappings of a multimedia lifestyle if they get double taxed by having to pay for content. I consider my $50 broadband fee a global content tax and whether people consciously admit it or not, that's really what broadband is all about.
Given a choice between siding with the content providers and the infrastructure providers, I choose to side against the content industry because the only thing they stand to lose is potential (read: imaginary) profit. The people who actually make and sell tangible products will go out of business if they are subject to the whims of the content industry.
- JoeShmoe
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Okay, not being a Mac user, I don't know about the hold-down-the-button trick. My first thought when you have a CD stuck is to use the old Macintosh eject key (tm) namely a paperclip.
...which looks like a CD, came in a jewel case like a CD, was found in the CD section of the store...and suddenly their computer is dead and nothing they can think to do fixes it...who is going to suffer in their eyes? I'm pretty darn sure it's going to be Apple. So you can go ahead and defend/excuse them but to me, this is something that merits a helluva lot more than a couple lines in a Knowledge Base.
But people say that iMacs lack a hole. I'm sure the Pioneer drive has one. I have a hard time believing these drive were custom engineered for Apple. Aren't they just repackaged OEM units? If so, it stands to reason they have both a soft and hard eject mechanism. So if Apple covers it, whose fault is that? Apples. But if they have a substitute approach, this hold-down-button thing AND IT ACTUALLY WORKS then great, I would agree that Apple is less liable...but being that this hold-down-button technique is another soft eject mechanism, it may not work, I don't know.
Ask yourself this...why is it iMacs that are having this problem? There are Pioneer drives for PC. There are compact little all-in-one devices made by PC makers. There are bad experiences with copy protected CDs. But are there any that require any sort of NON TECHNICAL user intervention? I sure haven't heard of any.
Apple prides themselves on controlling the entire platform, from the grade of power cabling all the way to the type of plastic your fingers touch. They use that as a selling point, we control the hardware, we control the software, we guarantee you cover-to-cover and Apple experience.
Well guess what, in this case it's come back to bite them in the ass. When grandma and grandpa put in a music CD
- JoeShmoe
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Precisely. I couldn't have said it better. When you get right down to it, these copy-protected discs are defective CDs. Pioneer should have surely tested for defective CDs as part of their Q&A process. Apple also should have asked themselves the same question.
Not to mention, these copy protection formats have been around for years. It's only now that they are in wide-scale production that we are learning this problem? Cactus et al talks about testing their discs in a wide assortment of players and not seeing anything significantly wrong. Did they not think to test an iMac?
This is really Ford vs. Firestone for the computer industry. Only this time there are three parties that share some of the blame for this fiasco:
Pioneer - for engineering a drive where it is possible with the wrong combination of bits or read errors to completely lock the drive and ruin the firmware.
Apple - for engineering a machine with a soft eject and no aesthetically-challenging hard backup. Mr. Jobs, would a pinhole really have offended your out-of-wack perfectionism that much? Well, I guess that's rhetorical. So then why not a hotkey during boot to eject the media or similar? Or maybe a little coverplate over the pinhole?
Cactus/MPAA - for engineering hazardous media without sufficiently warning or even preventing users from using them improperly.
Now who gets the most blame? Ford said Firestone for making crappy tires. Firestone said Ford for telling people to underinflate them. Well, now Pioneer, Apple and Cactus et al are facing a similar game of finger-pointing.
The bottom line is that it is inexcusable for a HARDWARE manufacturer to build a device in such a manner that SOFTWARE can actually cause permanent damage. That's what I was talking about with the self-distruct button.
- JoeShmoe
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I'm sorry, that's the fattest load of bullshit I've ever heard in my life. That's like Apple putting a big tempting red button on the side of their iMac labeled "Self Destruct" and then trying to claim that they are somehow absolved of all liability if someone actually (or accidentally) pushes it.
You can't design a product with such a significant defect and then refuse to take any part of the blame. These things look like CDs, more often than not have CD logos on them, and in no way significanly warn users.
What Apple should do is update their code to detect and eject any non-compliant CD. Then if there was somehow a way for the user to force the CD to load, Apple could easily escape liability.
I smell class action. Apple, the only question is whether it's going to be aimed at Cactus or you. I suggest you do the smart thing and have a long hard talk with your CD-ROM vendor about updating their firmware and distribute the firmware fix IMMEDIATELY.
- JoeShmoe
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Hey, isn't security through obscurity a bad thing?
Why are we trying to design something to prevent someone from discovering what we are hiding? That is not only counter-intuitive but doomed to failure.
I too remember reading about this long long ago. My first thought was to construct a giant thorn patch from metal and concrete. Giant spikes, each with protruding spikes, each with protruding spikes...layer them all over the area. First of all, I don't care what century you come from, thorns are thorns and things that poke give you pause. Even after hundreds of centuries they should last well enough to make it clear that this was not a place that people travelled through easily or often.
But now I'm thinking that even that might be construed as some kind of complex art project. Which brings me to my question...
Why don't we lace the site with the toxic chemicals themselves? Wouldn't that make it painfully obvious to future explorers?
Here we are at ground level. A big concrete/metal box with sharp pointed spikes sticking out of it. Inside the box...a tiny tiny microgram of the bad stuff.
Go down several feet. A bigger box with the same unfriendly exterior. Inside...a miligram of the bad stuff.
Go down several more feet...again bigger, again more bad stuff.
There should be a pattern here. If the future explorers know anything about chemistry or science in general...then they will want to know what this substance is that has been protected in this manner. Through trial and error and maybe some people getting burns on their hands, they'll llearn it's not good. When the dig down further, and find ever increasing quantities of the stuff...they'll figure out it's not going to get better and them might want to stop digging, unless they figure out a way to diffuse the material in which case...please please please do dig it up.
This doesn't take modern knowledge. Remember the Star Trek episode where Data lands on this planet searching for radioactive material but gets wonked and the material ends up being made into jewelry by the local Indians or whatever?
Well, sooner or later they figures out the stuff was bad. Of course, there was so much of it around that it caused a lot of harm. So that's why I saw give them a little bit so they can learn the lesson before digging up the main repository and rifling through it.
- JoeShmoe
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You've changed nothing. Again, I repeat myself.
If Program 1's only purpose is to contribute towards producing pirated copies of X then yes it's illegal. If Program 1 also happens to produce a bitchin recipe for chicken gumbo then you might be able to get away with it...however as soon as someone posted a message saying "if you take program 1 and do such-and-such you get a free copy of X" then guess what, you'll be asked to modify Program 1 so that it maintains its primary purpose (outputting recipies) without its correlating illegal purpose (outputting X).
For the last time, it's not the parts, it's the process.
- JoeShmoe
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This is a silly argument. If the process is reversable you have not fundamentally altered it, merely packaged it. Warez pirates don't get off scott free because they are trading ZIP files that just happen to uncompess to WinXP.
Now, if the process isn't reversable then you have destroyed the item in question so arguably there is no copyright violation in the first place.
It's not the individual steps that are the concern. It's the process. Your program B wouldn't be illegal unless the only purpose of program B was to be used in concert with number A to product free copies of Window XP.
A book is just a really long word printed on paper. A car is just a really complicated sculpture made from metal&plastic.
My point is that we need for people to separate CONTENT from DISTRIBUTION and stop thinking that objects containing both are somehow inseparable. A electronic book is the same as a book except the electronic book can be duplicated replicated and distributed far more easily than the physical book. But in the future where maybe we have robots that could flip through a book recording each page then manufacture a duplicate from raw materials...well then, suddenly its more apparant that the part of the "book" that actually has value is the word not the package and not the way it gets from point A to point B.
Even if computer code is just a really big number...it still takes a person focusing creative energy for a period of time to produce that number...or rather, find out why that number is so special (what exactly it does). But beyond the initial credit and compensation...it is flat out stupid to assign rights to the number itself. I won't purchase eBooks because they aren't going to sell me their number. They want to sell me part of it and then add a whole long list of chores I must complete to get the rest.
It's as if an artist sold you a picture in a black box and told you to hang the black box over your mantle and if you ever wanted to see the picture, call him and he'll remotely open the box. Who would be stupid enough to buy something like this? Yet if tomorrow all artists decided to do it, would we have any way to stop them? No, we wouldn't and that's when the courts are supposed to step in and say "No." They did it for book contracts back in the 1970's and established the first-sale doctrine as law.
And now idiots like this judge have decided to throw that out and go back to allowing manufactures of PACKAGING and DISTRIBUTION to made decisions regarding CONTENT.
- JoeShmoe
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Here's an analogy you may find interesting:
"The DMCA (Dealer Mechanic Compensation Act) does not eliminate fair use or substantially impair the fair use rights of anyone to use their vehicle (because it states that you can only seek repairs or purchase parts from the dealer where you purchased your car),' the judge wrote in a 35-page opinion. 'The fair user may find it more inconvenient to engage in certain fair uses with regard to their modern vehicles, but nevertheless, fair use is still available, for a price."
or...
"The BMCA (Book Maker Compensation Act) does not eliminate fair use or substantially impair the fair use rights of anyone to use their books (because it states that you can only open the cover of the book using a special decoder tool that must be registered and periodically renewed by the book publisher),' the judge wrote in a 35-page opinion. 'The fair user may find it more burdernsome to engage in certain fair uses with regard to their book collection, but nevertheless, fair use is still available, as long as the book publisher remains in business."
When as these idiot judges going to learn? Either we have a first sale doctrine...or we don't. Why do such backward-thinking judges somehow decide that just because we are selling very long numbers instead of books and cars that putting rules and restrictions on ANYTHING AS PART OF A SALE is effectively doing away with this longstanding legal precident?
The day will come when matter can be easily replicated and all book publishers and car makers are going to be able to see are blueprints, designs, and other electronic information. All these companies are doing is ensuring that people turn to back alley and underground channels. But I understand their Chicken Little approach to intellectual property and the back-ass-wards way they follow it.
What I don't understand is judges...who are put in our system of government to provide a check and balance to stupid laws...basically deciding that a small risk to corporate profits outweighs a society-wide consequence to freedom of access to information. WHO IS PAYING THESE PEOPLE OFF?
- JoeShmoe
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Notice I didn't say "streaming" I said "downloading" as in "download the whole video file locally then watch it.
Streaming video blows. I have one of the fastest consumer Internet connections around and I still can't watch video from most overloaded sites without it skipping.
If it wasn't for programs like StreamBox and ASFRecorder I would go bonkers. But thankfully with those programs I can download them locally and then convert them to good old open MPEG file format.
I think a site would be better off giving customers access to MPEG and/or DivX versions of these file in two or three different resolutions. Perhaps a small 40-50MB DivX version for dial-up users and a nice big VCD version for broadband customers.
That's what I'm saying exists already on the Internet (actuallly, now groups are releasing SVCD copies of the newly released DVDs).
- JoeShmoe
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The one that that I find most upsetting about the whole Futurama/Simpsons rivalry is that Simpsons seems to be treated as FOX's little darling and Futurama is the bastard child they want to pretend they never had.
Case in point? The Simpsons Archive (snpp.com) perhaps the single greatest authoritative Simpsons information source. Mostly culled I'm sure from countless USENET postings but the information contained there is priceless to the average Simpsons fan. Someone at work will utter a butchered version of some famous quote and in seconds we will have the exact wording, the episode it came from and (with a little step 2 magic) soon be watching the hilarious moment.
But is there such a resource for Futurama? Well there was...The Futurama Cronicles (frcr.com). Had much of the same kind of information, with upcoming episode dirt and all sorts of little factoids. I can't read the alien language, but those guys had it pretty much deciphered. I always wonder what the little clips during the intro came from and they always seemed to know.
But what was it, two years ago? the site got the Cease & Desist kiss of death. How can a site like snpp.com flourish and frcr.com disappear when both are basically cataloging and organizing USENET content? And what happened to the other Futurama sites like FuturamaOutlet and so on?
Honestly, it's like FOX is trying to deny Futurama even exists. The FOX website for the show is a flash-laden piece of crap that hasn't been updated since the show premiered (same with the Family Guy show site).
Bleah. Matt Groening must has some change in his pocket. He knows about the massive following his shows have on the Internet (he has been asked about ANiVCD and the whole VCD scene at every convention he's ever attended). In this post dot-com world, I think his projects would be the only ones that have a chance at working over the Internet. Produce the show straight to video and offer streaming downloads over the Internet. Hell, I see channel after channel on IRC doing exactly that.
So he's not interested in leaving FOX. Fine. But for god's sake...don't cast pearls before swine. How many musicians say that given the choice between languishing in a corporate vault and being enjoyed and shared by fans they would much rather give their work to the fans? Why can't Matt be the same way?
- JoeShmoe
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Yes, that's it, attack my opinion based on my failure to grammar-check it.
.22 rifle or a blunderbus loaded with rocksalt are also guns, and the primarly design for them would be hunting and intimidation. So if you want to split hair on semantics, go ahead, but I still consider the "gun" category broad enough to include functional, tool-type uses.
The second ammendment It doesn't mean government regulation if said regulation interferes with it's primary purpose: ensure the right to bear arms. If the government required gun insurance, they automatically anyone who could not pay would be denied their right to bear arms. So in that situation, "regulation" would not be constitutional.
Requiring someone to register is the first step toward recinding a right. You have to know where the guns are to take them away. Assuming martial law was declared in the United States, the first thing the government would probably do is open up those nice fat gun license records and set about disarming them one by one.
Whether or not this is resonable or constitutional depends on how upbeat or bleak your view of the future is. But the fact remains that there must be limits to "regulation" or else it is possible to regulate something out of existence.
You say guns and cars differ in intent. I say they differ in common usage. Potato, pahtahto. I could use a gun to crack open a walnut. I could use a car as a dedicated hit-and-run device. If guns are designed to cause damage and carnage then so is dynamite, butcher knives and sledgehammers. The fact that all three of those things are considered weapons is incidental to their primary designation as tools.
Now I agree...an automatic gun with copkiller bullets is primarily designed as a human killing tool. But a
- JoeShmoe
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You know, I think everyone who takes the stance that "driving is a privaledge, not a right" is flat out wrong. I belive that driving is a right. I believe that it is just as important as the right to bear arms. The only reason that it isn't explicitly spelled out in the US Constitution is because the technology just didn't exist. The forefathers couldn't have conceived of a world where the government could somehow prevented them from using a horse.
But ask yourself...what would happen if the procedures that applied to cars were applied to cars? You want a gun? First take a mandatory training class. Now get a practice gun that says you can only use a gun within a shooting range for a year. Now fork over your complete life's history, DNA, fingerprint, whatever to become a registered gun owner. Now be required to get gun insurance in order to purchase a gun. Now get a ticket for not keeping your gun stored in the proper location. Now have your gun impounded and lose your gun license for getting too many tickets.
That's what we would have if guns were given the same treatment under the law as cars. Yet you won't see that happen. Even thought a lot of those things are probably a sensible idea! They are adding to the burden of gun ownership which directly violates the second ammendmant.
Now I ask you, which is more important, a gun or a car? Back in the 1700's, you have to pretty much to with gun. A gun could provide food for your family. A gun could protect you from robbers and highwaymen. A gun could protect you from wild animals. A gun could make sure that your newly formed government didn't decide to come and oppress you (or at least do so over your dead body). A gun put you on equal terms with the lawmakers...as long as the numbers of you outnumbered the numbers of them.
Today in the year 2002...which is more important, a gun or a car? A car provides me with a means to earn a living at a job that might be otherwise out of my range of trave...a car provides food for my family. A car gives me the ability to flee danger should I live in a remote area...a car protects me from robber. A car gives me a secure mode of transportation through dark and troublesome terrain...it afford me protection from wild animals I wouldn't have walking. A car allows me to escape from a situation where I am being persecuted...a car protects me from n oppressive government. A car puts me on equal terms with those in authority...as long as I keep driving until they stop following.
Everyone is fooling themselves into believing you don't need a car in today's society. Walk, ride a bike, take a bus. But if push came to shove, what of those options will save you from any of the terrors I mentioned above? Would we all sleep easy if cars were outlawed entirely and we were forced to use a public transportation system? Go only when and where they allow us to go? Allow our movements to be tracked from start to finish? This is the future that "driving is a privaledge" is heading us towards.
Stop it people, for the love of god, stop it. A car and a gun are both useful tools, that happen to have the side effect of being capable of causing damage and carnage. But there is no deny the benefit they both provide to our society. The tables have turned...I can pretty much get along without a gun in the yer 2000...the same way someone who carefully arranges their life can get along without a car. But I'm sure glad that if the situation were to change...if my wife were being stalked, or some hoodlums were hanging around my neighborhood...I can count on the fact that I can be guaranteed a means of protecting myself. Why on earth shouldn't the same be true for a car?
- JoeShmoe
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No, AOL is a perfect example. Back in 1991 they were a very small bulletin board service that was dwarfed by online giants such as Compuseve, Prodigy, GEnie and the like. The people who joined at this point were almost entirely joining to play Neverwinter Nights. In all other categories of online services, AOL stunk across the board (I think PC World gave them the lowest score of all online services when it was first reviewed).
However, for broke teenagers, there was one reason to use AOL...it was free. Thanks to the easy availablity of sign-up disks, anyone could get online. All you had to do was sign up, fill in bogus payment information, and enjoy a month or more of free service. This went on for years. There were even tools written to automate the account generation process. From 1991 to about 1996 there was absolutely no authentication of payment information before activating an account. AOL would simply let the account run and then after a couple of months of sending "your payment information is invalid" messages it would finally close the account.
Each of these AOL accounts had five screennames. Each of these five screennames could have 550 e-mails stored on AOL servers. Each of these 550 e-mails could have up to 10MB in attachments. So here's how it worked. Someone would get online to their local warez BBS and download the latest warez release. That person would then repack the release into 10MB pieces and send them to himself via AOL (uploading the files to AOL). From there he would forward the e-mails to everyone else, essentially e-mailing gigabytes of warez to you with a single click. This also went on for years. AOL warez groups were flourishing right up until around 1996.
Surely this couldn't have escaped AOL's knowledge. In these days, you were lucky if an ISP let you keep 10MB on a server and here AOL was giving you basically 2.5GB of online storage. As long as you kept forwarding to fresh accounts before your old ones expired, you had access to all the programs you could ever want. But they had to be kept somewhere...and AOL had to pay for that storage not...to mention all those countless modems and dial-in access minutes.
So why would an ISP allow such rampant abuse of their account and mail system? Well from 1991 to 1996 something else was happening...AOL was growing. On the books, they went from about 100,000 members to 1,000,000 members in about two years. They surpassed Compuserve a couple years later. I seriously doubt that at any time during this era that more than a 1/3 of the accounts on AOL were actually valid paying customers (besides all the fraudulently generated accounts, there were boatloads of AOL4Free Macintosh customers). But on paper, I'm sure it looked good to investors to see how the membership was growing. And I'm sure it looked really good when they had more members than any other ISP.
Most telling to me is the fact that right around 1996 when they were working on getting, IIRC, their sixth millionth customer...AOL suddenly implemented a raft of policies that killed the AOL warez community. First, they started actually trying to verify payment on what was entered during sign-up. That did away with the fake generators...now you actually had to have stolen credit cards to get online (much harder to come by). Two, they started deleting files after they had been downloaded a certain number of times (people estimated it to be about between 250 and 500 times) or the account that uploaded it was cancelled. Last, they started blocking the private rooms where people met to trade mail forwarding with each other. These things happened boom, boom, boom within months of each other.
But by then, AOL was the number one ISP, and if I remember correctly, this was right around the time they moved to flat rate unlimited access so they could no longer afford to have a huge population of floating freeloaders when they didn't even have the capacity to support all of their legitamately paying customers.
So, call me a conspiracy theorist if you must, but to this day I belive that AOL turned a blind eye to piracy to enjoy the rapid growth that it encouraged, and then once they had grown as much as they good, they easily were able to disable the piracy. So do I think it took a major corporation six years to notice the problem (despite the BSA and others constantly launching tirades about AOL warez scene) and figure out a way to stop pirates (despite e-mails where techies suggest inplementing call-backs during the sign-up process to counter theft and their bosses responding it might scare off legit customers)? Or do I think they didn't really want to stop the problem until the potential risk for getting caught was suddenly higher than the potential gains from it?
- JoeShmoe
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Step 1) Create a system or product that, while having some legitmate use, also enables a much more popular illegal use.
Step 2) Gain a huge user base while fretting and pretending to "study solutions" to the illegal use.
Step 3) Once your system or product has become a leader in the marketplace, throw a switch and make the illegal use much harder.
Hey, it worked for countless companies throughout the ages. I mean, when did AOL enable the features that prevented users from e-mailing warez to each other, before or after they became the number one ISP in the US? So, it's not surprising that DivX and Frau. would be following the pattern like everyone else.
- JoeShmoe
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Before travelling overseas, I signed up for a MCI Worldcom plan that included, along with long distance service, a Worldcom phone card that had very low rates for the countries I would be visiting (UK was 25 cents per minute, France was about 40 cents per minute).
Because I was travelling, I never saw the bill until I returned home. It was then that I discovered the rates on the card and accompanying material were only good for calls TO or FROM the United States. Since I had made several local calls to relatives and friends during my UK and France stays, I had not been billed at those rates. The rates I got charged were as high as $8 per minute.
What was particularly galling was the fact that they could have bounced the call over the Atlantic twice, and I still would have be charges at the most 50 cents per minute.
I called MCI to complain, but they refused to negotiate with me. They insisted that since I had already used the airtime I was required to pay the full amount.
Angry, I flipped over my phone bill and, as per California law, there was instructions for filing a grievance with the California Public Utilities Commission. I was to make out a check for the amount in question and sent it, with my complaint, to the CPUC. I suppose in this fashion the CPUC was acting a big like an escrow agent, holding the money until they determined the outcome.
But it never came to that. A couple weeks after I mailed my letter to the CPUC I got an envelope from MCI Worldcom. Inside was a letter that had been sent to the CPUC and carbon copied to me. The letter basically asked the CPUC to disregard the matter, as MCI had concluded that "in the interest of customer service" and because "there was the chance that an unwary customer could be misled" they were going to only charge me at the 25 cent per minute rate I originally expected to get.
To this day, I'm not sure if this is a matter of the squeaky wheel getting the grease, or the phone company really and truly afraid of whatever big stick the CPUC may wield. However, I am at this point quite glad for the CPUC. However bumbling or inept a government agency might be, they have a process for getting things done and if you are willing to spent the time learning and following it, it's amazing what you can accomplish.
- JoeShmoe
.
This is way bigger news than any previous Google censorship story. This is censorship most foul...in my opinion, this kind of action is suicidal! What the F can they be thinking?
Here's basically what Google has done:
A) Shown that the ad system is not an automated process. As such, ANY ad that someone finds offensive is now subject to removal. Because as Napster found out the hard way, if you exercise control in one instance you prove that you can do it, and then the law will say you MUST do it.
B) Turned away money...real $$$$...because of some perceived "higher priority". So, what's next Google? Are you going to stop RAdmin from purchasing an AdWord on "VNC" because their website says VNC is slow and featureless? The whole #$@##$ point of AdWords is to trigger on your competitors so that you can let them know that ALTERNATIVES EXIST. What you are doing with this policy is effectively only allowing ads when people search on the items in the ad. How useful is that?
C) Flat-ass bald faced lied. It says right in their message "Decisions concerning advertising in no way affect the search results" and "we will continue to show search results for this type of site". BS Google! You already delisted Xenu once and you have continued to delist every single subpage on the site. How do we know you won't in the future?
jouralist guy, I strongly encourage you to submit this information to slashdot, maybe under slashback. This is indeed newsworthly. I can't believe Google would choose to side with Scientology on this. It's only thing to refuse ads on keywords like "kiddie porn" but to refuse ads because they advocate against something...that's just plain idiotic.
- JoeShmoe
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Now we don't have to worry about CBDTPA. Because even if the FCC tells the tech industry to adopt encryption to protect content, we can say "Sorry Disney, er, FCC...but that technology has been patented!"
Why didn't we think of this. Let's get patents on watermarking and other intrusive technologies being rammed down our throats by content providers. Then just sit on them and thumb our noses.
- JoeShmoe
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Touche.
- JoeShmoe
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They may run "an" AOL client and they may read mail off "an" AOL server but how do you know they are the same client/server as what the rank and file use?
That was my point. Many times executives are not aware they get privaledged treatment. They wonder why people complain about Help Desk response time since everytime they call the Help Desk they get someone there within ten minutes.
It takes a brilliant and humble executive to basically force himself not to take advantage of the special treatment offered him. At the Fortune 500 company I was talking about, the CEO would eat at the cafeteria and would even sit down and have lunch with people from the mailroom. Just a regular ol' guy.
But then all it took was for his laptop to freeze up once during a presentation and all hell broke loose in the IT department. Less than a week later, we had a new Director with a sudden focus on deploying Windows NT right now even on laptops which everyone knew basically weren't built for NT (power saving, USB, port replicators, all of them threw NT for a loop).
So, I don't know. I still believe that at any major corporation the executives have no idea what technology is really like in the trenches, hence Executive Shielding.
- JoeShmoe
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From the article "The reversal is particularly awkward for Robert Pittman, AOL Time Warner's co-chief operating officer, who had pushed through the move to use AOL's e-mail."
How many people here thing that Mr. Pittman ever had a problem with his AOL mail? I'd bet dollars to pesos that anyone at AOL with a capital "C" in their title has their e-mail running off their own custom-built server.
This was literally the case for one fortune 500 company I contracted for. The CEO/CIO/CFO had their own Compaq Proliant server fully loaded (for the time). It was segregated from the other machines and was constantly watched by at least one Network Engineer. The rest of the company was subjected to constant crap in switching from AT&T outsourcing of e-mail service to in-house properly deployed UNIX solution, then someone falling for the Netscape sales pitch and switching to that, then Microsoft saving us from Netscape by bringing in Exchange, then ended up having Exchange do the mail but Netscape do the directory services...etc.
But the top right wing with all the mahogany furniture never once had a problem with their e-mail. Because of the aforementioned dedicated server which, as far as I know, was running the original UNIX solution and never got touched.
The problem is that this solution can't be applied on a large scale. I think the Steve Case and company probably have (knowingly or unknowingly) been the victims of executive shielding. The people whose jobs rely on their satisfaction would be fools not to. But then along comes some Time Warner company. The AOL brass aren't going to recommended Executive Shielding because they probably don't know about it. The AOL techies doing the shielding aren't going to tell their Time Warner opposites because they don't report to Time Warner. And the Time Warner techies are going to walk naively into the situation and get their asses blamed. But after a year of fired techies you eventually figure out that maybe the problem isn't the staff, it's the damn product.
Well that's just my impression anyway. But I wouldn't be at all surprised if it were true. I wonder how many people at Time Warner lost their job because they couldn't get a square peg through a round hole for Time Warner management. They never knew the answer was to use one of those new round holes with four corners.
- JoeShmoe
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I saw the Xenu ad when I was reading the previous story and I thought "wow, that's really clever!"...here's why:
Separation of editors and advertisers. Sometimes it's almost as strong as separation of church and state (although like church/state it's not absolute). In fact, a lot of sites pride themselves on the fact that editors can air stories even if it pisses off advertisers.
Well why the hell not have it work in the other direction? Why not use advertising to bypass editorial waffling or censorship?
Look at it this way. Let's say we all chipped in $5 each to create a fund to ensure that Xenu.Net showed up for every even-remotely related Scientology link (ie, Scientology, Travola, Dianetics, Bukkake, etc). Now, does Scientology have the legal right to tell Google they can't run those ads (thus depriving Google of its income). Couldn't Google argue that pulling ads that have been paid for would damage its business?
What about extending the principle to other sites like Yahoo, or heck the NY Times. The way I see it, all Scientology could do is threaten to boycott Google/Yahoo/NY Times...they routinely ignore boycotts from groups all the time. Or they could pay to run ads countering the Xenu ads.
Well of course I don't know for sure if things would be this simple but...you know, why can't we geeks take a page from the Corporate Dirty Playbook...fight with advertising.
I'm all for giving money to the EFF but I think I would almost rather spend my money creating an ad campaign...along the lines of TheTruth ads you see against the tobacco industry. I mean, even smokers curse Big Tobacco out the side of their mouth as they buy another pack. The Tobacco Industry has a PR nightmare...so why can't Disney or Scientology or the MPAA or RIAA?
I've got $20 right here I'll pitch in.
- JoeShmoe
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Which makes more sense? Getting rid of flourescent lights because putting a flourescent light over a computer monitor makes it flicker, or having some sense and keeping said light as far away from the monitor as possible.
I understand what you are talking about, but I think everyone understands that whenever possible, keep your radio devices away from each other. I've managed to have a cordless phone and a microwave both work because I don't put the phone's base station on top of the microwave.
Now, when my neighbor used to have a CB radio so powerful that his voice broadcasting came through on my television speakers...that was overloaded.
- JoeShmoe
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And those frequencys are .2 MHz apart!
Besides, I was under the (mistaken?) impression that one of the selling features of this satellite radio crap is that it is all digital.
Thus said, could there ever be enough bleed through to completely wipe out their signal?
OR is Sirius more afraid people will start driving around town listening to Shoutcasted streams on 802.11 networks? Oh yeah, gee, I wonder.
- JoeShmoe
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On point one: Medical devices have in fact failed due to bugs, and some of them are software related. I specifically remember some case in Boston where a dosing machine malfunctioned and administered a lethal level of a medication because of unit conversion error. In cases like that, the manufacturer is responsible and quick/quiet settlements are guaranteed. So maybe there hasn't been a CodeRed death but if not it would be primarily because Microsoft doesn't allow their software to be used in life or death situations (read the license) at least not yet. But my comment was about SOFTWARE, not MICROSOFT.
On point two: if MS knew of an exploit and DID COVER IT UP then it stands to reason you very well wouldn't know, would you? That's what NDAs are for. You are arguing that because Microsoft has never been stupid enough to get caught covering something up they must not do it. That's hardly a provable thesis.
Last but not least, Microsoft has goals to put Windows everywhere. We have battleships now running Windows NT-based products. They have released XP embedded. There are a huge number of non-interactive devices like drive arrays running NT kernals. Guidelines or not, mistakes can be made and it's only a matter of time before a traffic light blue-screens and causes a 20-car pile up.
My comparison to Ford/Firestone was talking specifically about how the incident brough critical (and congressional) attention to some little known text carved on the side of a tire that had basically gone unnoticed before. Now because of that backlash, SUVs are (hopefully) safer. There is no Ford/Firestone incident in the software world that had caused a similar grass-roots movement for better software. As bad as CodeRed was, nothing appears to have resulted from it. Bill Gates professes a keen interest in security but this is just a sound byte because it's exactly the same lip service that any CEO would give when confronted with problem X.
My comparison wasn't trivializing Ford/Firestone...it was foreshadowing Microsoft/Nuclear Launch Agency.
- JoeShmoe
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Maybe now that companies are offering hacker insurance some standards and guidelines will develop?
On the other hand...when has the computer industry ever mirror any real world industry? We still don't have the equivalent of the Consumer Product Safety Commission nor is there product liability, recalls, or defect-related lawsuits.
If there were, Microsoft would make the Ford/Firestone fiasco look like nothing.
- JoeShmoe
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