Yes, but the typical pro-Mozilla response is that they're faster at fixing the bugs than MS is, therefore there is a chance that hackers won't find the bug. but really, if I was a hacker, and I'm not, I would devote hours to trying to break IE, simply by doing illogical things. So I'd say that the odds of all the hackers in the world not finding a flaw in IE is pretty slim.
It's the same logic with the homeland security reports on TV. Are we bringing the flaws to the attention of the terrorists, or spurring our gov't and people to fix them?
Well said. Using iTunes is a whole lot easier and safer than filesharing (I have a friend who has done it). I mean, I don't mind 99 cents a song because I don't buy a thousand songs, I buy like 4-5 a week.
I don't think the music industry is thinking this all the way through. They don't seem to have realized that the CD is basically dead. We had the SanDisk DRM flash-card article on here two or three days ago. It seems to me that that is an attempt at reviving the CD. Most music buyers have realized that bands tend to only have 2-3 songs per CD that are worth listening too. If a CD was the price of 4-5 iTunes songs, I still wouldn't buy the CD unless I wanted 4-5 of the songs, so it seems to me that raising the price of iTunes won't sell more CDs.
However, at $2-$3 for the good songs, many new people would be tempted to try filesharing, because the songs that will have the price increases will be the easiest ones to find on a sharing network, because they are the "popular" songs.
That really hasn't been the government trend in this administration. Besides, didn't I read somewhere that Google is paying for this privledge?
I agree in principal that open bid is needed, but MS, Yahoo, and Google are fairly different. I mean, it is possible to define a set of requirements for which Google is the only real choice out there.
The airport/drunk driving legal concept you are refering to is "implied consent", as I remember it from high school Driver's Education. The concept is that since it's the government's road, and the government's skyways and the government's waterways, they have the right to check you. The same logic doesn't apply with VOIP, as these aren't the government's broadband cables.
That's not to say that the government can have a new rationale, just that the old one holds less water in this case.
Yes, proof is for trials, but in the American legal system, you have to meet a certain standard in order to get to trial. If RIAA has no actual claim that their copyright was ever infringed, they have no case, and hence get no jury trial. They need to have some sort of evidence to bring it to trial. It's a far lower bar than "reasonable doubt", but it still has to be met. If they can't get their accusations straight, they shouldn't waste 12 people's time.
Maybe it should voluntary, the imposing legal costs thing.
The problem is that the rich guy can use his money to crush the little guys. The suits don't even have to be for a profit, they just need to kill off the big file sharers, and they wager that the cost of getting rid of the major distributors will greatly hurt filesharing. And they think that a 10% to 20% reduction in piracy would greatly boost their shares, which reduction is what I guess they'd get from forcing a less centralized system and higher costs of the file sharing world.
Of course, if one guy wins, it totally forces them back to square one, esp if the winning guy shares the legal strategy that brought him victory.
In this case, I'd say the sharer is in the right, because don't you have to know exactly what you're being charged with? I mean, I can't sue someone for breaking my stuff, I have to be more specific. The same standards apply here.
Even if Google is the best at supercomputing, they would benefit from the old adage that "two heads are better than one". NASA has been at this for longer, and maybe they can together come up with something better than Google has now.
Is there any chance that Google will be paid for their work? Maybe that's happening in a less public manner (still legal and open, but not advertised)? I mean, who reads budget documents?
Or maybe Google is really trying to do something good? I mean, their motto is "Don't be Evil", right? Not that I accept what people say at face value, but it is worth considering.
It really does. But really, it sends a message that even if the MPAA or whoever takes out a few pirates, there are more ready to take their places. really, this is natural selection. The less-bright ones get caught, and the smarter ones take over. Really, the problem for the MPAA is that the pirates can learn faster and be more dynamic.
I don't think the issue is income, it's the shear ratio of RIAA size to P2P guy size. Even if the P2P guy is profitable, the RIAA is about a million times bigger. They can afford an army of lawyers, and the P2P can afford like 1-2. The legal system, with all the filings and bureaucracy, can be used to crush the smaller guy. The thrust of this problem is that a case under Betamax could be crushed far easier than a case under Grokster, allowing for a lot more chances for the RIAA to bring it's superior assets to bear.
Imagine it like a war. The little guy has a better shot at winning one battle or a few battles, but in the war, the side with the bigger warchest and material wins. Examples include the US Civil War and World War II.
How are multiple browsers counted? Because I have 4. Safari, Opera, IE, and Firefox. Does it go by use? Because I almost never use IE, I mostly use Firefox and Safari. I just haven't around to deleting IE yet. Do I count as a user of IE? Because, in that case, the market share of IE is drastically overrated.
If I use Firefox ~60% of the time, Safari ~30%, Opera ~10%, and IE 1%, do I count as one user for each? Or just as a Firefox user (which is what I'm using right now)? How about if I never use IE, and just have it on my computer?
If I count as a user of IE and a user of Firefox, it doesn't do justice to Firefox.
Well, to make that big search engine, they needed a big supercomputer, which they built themselves by networking a lot of computers together, didn't they? I mean, they might beat NSA at raw computing power. And a supercomputer, programmed differently, could run all sorts of high-power simulations and could correlate all sorts of sensory data.
Then there is the fact that Google is so adaptable that simply having them on the team gives NASA a boost. Google has done pretty much everything Internet related in the last few years, and that requires organizational flexibility. Maybe NASA wants to get an idea of how they work?
That's what SciFi is for: helping us imagine what we want. How else would we get some of these crazy ideas, like tooth-microphones, or instentaneous global communication?
On the downside, it gave Big Brother all the inspiration it needs.
but if you go about it wrongly, and say that the election in 2004 was rigged (which may or may not be true), then it doesn't matter if you're right or not, half the country will hate you.
And they're the side who side with the Big Industry slightly (but only slightly) more.
Yeah, but if that happens, we're no worse off then we were, since right now, the company in charge could rig it, and we'd have no idea. If we compile in front of everyone, then test the box the day before use, we ought to be ok. Install the same software on every box, and then pick a box at random, and vote a thousand times for each guy, then, if all goes well, wipe the box of the votes.
I think the main critique is between "successful"/"Prosperity" and "rich". My parents are by no means rich, but they live comfortably off their salaries, and own their own home (the half that the bank doesn't). Furthermore, they raised 2 kids, and have gotten me into college, with my little sister not far behind.
The American Dream is if you work hard, you'll make it through OK.
Now, on to the topic: It's a darn good thing. This way, we can all see flaws or attempts to manipulate the ballot (not that I'm accusing, just saying it could happen).
There have been innocent people put on the No-Fly list too, and they had a heck of a time getting off. It is very possible to be innocent and imprisioned.
Because there is supposed to be some right to privacy. Being constantly watched is a form of harrassment. That to me is the real point. It used to be that a man's home was his castle, and now it's becoming clear that Orwell was not paranoid enough.
It depends on whether or not whoever the gov't wants to bully/cooperate with is brick-and-mortar or not.
Anyone in the US with a physical address and someone in charge will be quickly comply, as the government can retaliate against them. That's all the US-based ISPs, and most companies that design stuff like BBulletin or whatever that forum application is.
The problem is that there are ISPs based on 800-numbers, and if they are based outside the US, they're immune to direct legal action. Ditto any company that makes software outside the US.
Also, it isn't the big chat rooms or forums the gov't should be worried about, it's the tiny, "back-alley" ones where shady people do business. And those are the ones that the gov't will miss, even if they're based here (US).
I really don't like this at all, but on the plus side, they can't possibly read it all. I mean, even without the need for translators (if they lived in world where everyone spoke English), all they can do is read everything to search for keywords, and they have to read every word written on the Net, multiplied by the number of people who heard it. If I'm in a chat with my friends, and there are 8 of us, and one of us inadvertantly said the "watch word" or whatever, it'd have to read the flagged conversation 8 times, or at least deal with it 8 times. I don't know that it can be done at a reasonable cost in realtime, and the Internet never sleeps.
Valid question. It's a law office, run by a semi-retired guy and his daughter. They do wills and probate and foreclosures and the daughter does a bit of child custody. They need the fax because that's just how people do legal documents. I guess online hasn't really caught on yet for that sort of stuff. Half the time, it'll be us getting a fax of an order or document to sign and fax back.
I mean, Hollywood revenues are declining. They claim that it is due to movies being pirated. They say that the movies are as good as they ever were.
We say that the movies just suck, straight up, and that piracy isn't having that big an impact.
To this question, I submit the following:
If all movies were being killed by piracy, all movies would have below average ticket sales. That is not the case. Crappy movies, like "The Island" or "Stealth" did bad, but good movies like "Batman" did pretty well. Ditto "Wedding Crashers". I mean, if piracy was the only problem, shouldn't all of the movies this summer have done poorly?
It might have something to do with Cold War treaties. There was one forbidding the nukes in spaces, right?
I can't remember the specific treaty, but it may explain why they waited so long. We backed out of the ABM treaty, so maybe they're taking a looser interpretation of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_Test_Ban_Tre aty/) or something? Because the Russians in Communist times wouldn't have been limited by popular opinion very much, right?
good to know, but that actually proves a point I made elsewhere on another post. It's very hard for people to know what's illegal and what to do about it. My employers just throw out the faxes rather than calling the FCC, as they don't know what to do.
See, I think it could work, but you have to admit that it is like ten times harder. For starters, you don't get a useful trace on a spammer most of the time. Generally, all you get is a throwaway email address. The only way to hit them is to get the guys that they're spamming for. Of course, in that case, someone could just spam "for" Microsoft or any company unpaid and watch them get fined.
I'm not saying it can't be made to work, but if we have such a low rate (under 1% of complaints are fined) with DNC, and it's ten times harder with spam, there won't be much of a threat of getting caught.
Well, considering charities, political parties, pollsters, and anyone you've had a prior business relationship with can still call you, there is a significant percent of telemarketers who can get through.
Then there is the fact that to report someone, you have to jump through hoops, and have a lot of information from the telemarketer, most people probably don't report illegal calls if they get them.
Lastly, I think we need a "Do-Not-Fax" list, as it drives me crazy that people will send vacation offers (that are probably scams) to the office I work at sometimes (which is technically a residential number), and not only does it waste time, it wastes ink and paper. Essentially, we have to pay to get spammed.
I had similar thoughts, but what happens when they tie the stuff to security updates? Or using the internet?
If you play Blizzard games on "Battle.net", then you have to download the patches to play. Personally, I think this is good for Battle.net, but what if the same logic is applied to the internet in general? In order to use an ISP or access certain websites, you auto-trigger the download of the software with the DRM stuff. While they can't eliminate the use of old computers, they can make it hard to access popular sites. What if you had to have the software in order to use your cable ISP?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but the typical pro-Mozilla response is that they're faster at fixing the bugs than MS is, therefore there is a chance that hackers won't find the bug. but really, if I was a hacker, and I'm not, I would devote hours to trying to break IE, simply by doing illogical things. So I'd say that the odds of all the hackers in the world not finding a flaw in IE is pretty slim.
It's the same logic with the homeland security reports on TV. Are we bringing the flaws to the attention of the terrorists, or spurring our gov't and people to fix them?
Well said. Using iTunes is a whole lot easier and safer than filesharing (I have a friend who has done it). I mean, I don't mind 99 cents a song because I don't buy a thousand songs, I buy like 4-5 a week.
I don't think the music industry is thinking this all the way through. They don't seem to have realized that the CD is basically dead. We had the SanDisk DRM flash-card article on here two or three days ago. It seems to me that that is an attempt at reviving the CD. Most music buyers have realized that bands tend to only have 2-3 songs per CD that are worth listening too. If a CD was the price of 4-5 iTunes songs, I still wouldn't buy the CD unless I wanted 4-5 of the songs, so it seems to me that raising the price of iTunes won't sell more CDs.
However, at $2-$3 for the good songs, many new people would be tempted to try filesharing, because the songs that will have the price increases will be the easiest ones to find on a sharing network, because they are the "popular" songs.
That really hasn't been the government trend in this administration. Besides, didn't I read somewhere that Google is paying for this privledge?
I agree in principal that open bid is needed, but MS, Yahoo, and Google are fairly different. I mean, it is possible to define a set of requirements for which Google is the only real choice out there.
The airport/drunk driving legal concept you are refering to is "implied consent", as I remember it from high school Driver's Education. The concept is that since it's the government's road, and the government's skyways and the government's waterways, they have the right to check you. The same logic doesn't apply with VOIP, as these aren't the government's broadband cables.
That's not to say that the government can have a new rationale, just that the old one holds less water in this case.
Yes, proof is for trials, but in the American legal system, you have to meet a certain standard in order to get to trial. If RIAA has no actual claim that their copyright was ever infringed, they have no case, and hence get no jury trial. They need to have some sort of evidence to bring it to trial. It's a far lower bar than "reasonable doubt", but it still has to be met. If they can't get their accusations straight, they shouldn't waste 12 people's time.
Maybe it should voluntary, the imposing legal costs thing.
The problem is that the rich guy can use his money to crush the little guys. The suits don't even have to be for a profit, they just need to kill off the big file sharers, and they wager that the cost of getting rid of the major distributors will greatly hurt filesharing. And they think that a 10% to 20% reduction in piracy would greatly boost their shares, which reduction is what I guess they'd get from forcing a less centralized system and higher costs of the file sharing world.
Of course, if one guy wins, it totally forces them back to square one, esp if the winning guy shares the legal strategy that brought him victory.
In this case, I'd say the sharer is in the right, because don't you have to know exactly what you're being charged with? I mean, I can't sue someone for breaking my stuff, I have to be more specific. The same standards apply here.
Even if Google is the best at supercomputing, they would benefit from the old adage that "two heads are better than one". NASA has been at this for longer, and maybe they can together come up with something better than Google has now.
Is there any chance that Google will be paid for their work? Maybe that's happening in a less public manner (still legal and open, but not advertised)? I mean, who reads budget documents?
Or maybe Google is really trying to do something good? I mean, their motto is "Don't be Evil", right? Not that I accept what people say at face value, but it is worth considering.
It really does. But really, it sends a message that even if the MPAA or whoever takes out a few pirates, there are more ready to take their places. really, this is natural selection. The less-bright ones get caught, and the smarter ones take over. Really, the problem for the MPAA is that the pirates can learn faster and be more dynamic.
I don't think the issue is income, it's the shear ratio of RIAA size to P2P guy size. Even if the P2P guy is profitable, the RIAA is about a million times bigger. They can afford an army of lawyers, and the P2P can afford like 1-2. The legal system, with all the filings and bureaucracy, can be used to crush the smaller guy. The thrust of this problem is that a case under Betamax could be crushed far easier than a case under Grokster, allowing for a lot more chances for the RIAA to bring it's superior assets to bear.
Imagine it like a war. The little guy has a better shot at winning one battle or a few battles, but in the war, the side with the bigger warchest and material wins. Examples include the US Civil War and World War II.
How are multiple browsers counted? Because I have 4. Safari, Opera, IE, and Firefox. Does it go by use? Because I almost never use IE, I mostly use Firefox and Safari. I just haven't around to deleting IE yet. Do I count as a user of IE? Because, in that case, the market share of IE is drastically overrated.
If I use Firefox ~60% of the time, Safari ~30%, Opera ~10%, and IE 1%, do I count as one user for each? Or just as a Firefox user (which is what I'm using right now)? How about if I never use IE, and just have it on my computer?
If I count as a user of IE and a user of Firefox, it doesn't do justice to Firefox.
Well, to make that big search engine, they needed a big supercomputer, which they built themselves by networking a lot of computers together, didn't they? I mean, they might beat NSA at raw computing power. And a supercomputer, programmed differently, could run all sorts of high-power simulations and could correlate all sorts of sensory data.
Then there is the fact that Google is so adaptable that simply having them on the team gives NASA a boost. Google has done pretty much everything Internet related in the last few years, and that requires organizational flexibility. Maybe NASA wants to get an idea of how they work?
That's what SciFi is for: helping us imagine what we want. How else would we get some of these crazy ideas, like tooth-microphones, or instentaneous global communication? On the downside, it gave Big Brother all the inspiration it needs.
but if you go about it wrongly, and say that the election in 2004 was rigged (which may or may not be true), then it doesn't matter if you're right or not, half the country will hate you. And they're the side who side with the Big Industry slightly (but only slightly) more.
Yeah, but if that happens, we're no worse off then we were, since right now, the company in charge could rig it, and we'd have no idea. If we compile in front of everyone, then test the box the day before use, we ought to be ok. Install the same software on every box, and then pick a box at random, and vote a thousand times for each guy, then, if all goes well, wipe the box of the votes.
I think the main critique is between "successful"/"Prosperity" and "rich". My parents are by no means rich, but they live comfortably off their salaries, and own their own home (the half that the bank doesn't). Furthermore, they raised 2 kids, and have gotten me into college, with my little sister not far behind. The American Dream is if you work hard, you'll make it through OK. Now, on to the topic: It's a darn good thing. This way, we can all see flaws or attempts to manipulate the ballot (not that I'm accusing, just saying it could happen).
There have been innocent people put on the No-Fly list too, and they had a heck of a time getting off. It is very possible to be innocent and imprisioned. Because there is supposed to be some right to privacy. Being constantly watched is a form of harrassment. That to me is the real point. It used to be that a man's home was his castle, and now it's becoming clear that Orwell was not paranoid enough.
It depends on whether or not whoever the gov't wants to bully/cooperate with is brick-and-mortar or not.
Anyone in the US with a physical address and someone in charge will be quickly comply, as the government can retaliate against them. That's all the US-based ISPs, and most companies that design stuff like BBulletin or whatever that forum application is.
The problem is that there are ISPs based on 800-numbers, and if they are based outside the US, they're immune to direct legal action. Ditto any company that makes software outside the US.
Also, it isn't the big chat rooms or forums the gov't should be worried about, it's the tiny, "back-alley" ones where shady people do business. And those are the ones that the gov't will miss, even if they're based here (US).
I really don't like this at all, but on the plus side, they can't possibly read it all. I mean, even without the need for translators (if they lived in world where everyone spoke English), all they can do is read everything to search for keywords, and they have to read every word written on the Net, multiplied by the number of people who heard it. If I'm in a chat with my friends, and there are 8 of us, and one of us inadvertantly said the "watch word" or whatever, it'd have to read the flagged conversation 8 times, or at least deal with it 8 times. I don't know that it can be done at a reasonable cost in realtime, and the Internet never sleeps.
Valid question. It's a law office, run by a semi-retired guy and his daughter. They do wills and probate and foreclosures and the daughter does a bit of child custody. They need the fax because that's just how people do legal documents. I guess online hasn't really caught on yet for that sort of stuff. Half the time, it'll be us getting a fax of an order or document to sign and fax back.
thanks, I'll pass it on. The FCC really needs to publish that sort of stuff better.
I mean, Hollywood revenues are declining. They claim that it is due to movies being pirated. They say that the movies are as good as they ever were.
We say that the movies just suck, straight up, and that piracy isn't having that big an impact.
To this question, I submit the following:
If all movies were being killed by piracy, all movies would have below average ticket sales. That is not the case. Crappy movies, like "The Island" or "Stealth" did bad, but good movies like "Batman" did pretty well. Ditto "Wedding Crashers". I mean, if piracy was the only problem, shouldn't all of the movies this summer have done poorly?
It might have something to do with Cold War treaties. There was one forbidding the nukes in spaces, right?
e aty/) or something? Because the Russians in Communist times wouldn't have been limited by popular opinion very much, right?
I can't remember the specific treaty, but it may explain why they waited so long. We backed out of the ABM treaty, so maybe they're taking a looser interpretation of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_Test_Ban_Tr
good to know, but that actually proves a point I made elsewhere on another post. It's very hard for people to know what's illegal and what to do about it. My employers just throw out the faxes rather than calling the FCC, as they don't know what to do.
See, I think it could work, but you have to admit that it is like ten times harder. For starters, you don't get a useful trace on a spammer most of the time. Generally, all you get is a throwaway email address. The only way to hit them is to get the guys that they're spamming for. Of course, in that case, someone could just spam "for" Microsoft or any company unpaid and watch them get fined.
I'm not saying it can't be made to work, but if we have such a low rate (under 1% of complaints are fined) with DNC, and it's ten times harder with spam, there won't be much of a threat of getting caught.
Well, considering charities, political parties, pollsters, and anyone you've had a prior business relationship with can still call you, there is a significant percent of telemarketers who can get through.
Then there is the fact that to report someone, you have to jump through hoops, and have a lot of information from the telemarketer, most people probably don't report illegal calls if they get them.
Lastly, I think we need a "Do-Not-Fax" list, as it drives me crazy that people will send vacation offers (that are probably scams) to the office I work at sometimes (which is technically a residential number), and not only does it waste time, it wastes ink and paper. Essentially, we have to pay to get spammed.
I had similar thoughts, but what happens when they tie the stuff to security updates? Or using the internet?
If you play Blizzard games on "Battle.net", then you have to download the patches to play. Personally, I think this is good for Battle.net, but what if the same logic is applied to the internet in general? In order to use an ISP or access certain websites, you auto-trigger the download of the software with the DRM stuff. While they can't eliminate the use of old computers, they can make it hard to access popular sites. What if you had to have the software in order to use your cable ISP?
just a thought