He's talking about your provider overselling their bandwidth, and it happens. I worked for a tier 1 provider for five years, and was there before we got our first VC round. There was a point at which we were buying 1 T1 (from UUnet, I think), and selling 20+ T1s. Good stuff.
Re:It's not about the customers
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AMD's New DRM
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· Score: 1
You know, I think the PC probably WOULD become the "ultimate living room appliance", but not when it undergoes lockdown like this. The whole point of using a PC for things like this is flexibility. The whole point of the RIAA and the MPAA, and especially the DVD-CSS association, is to LIMIT what you can do. The CSS people should have been the ones pushing to license their scheme out to device makers to try to help get adoption up of popular, specialized living room devices.
Not only are people not really interested in this, but this still falls into the adage: the harder you make it for consumers to get your content, the less they'll buy it. (Are you listening, RIAA? (props to emi))
The first mistake is to think that anything mentioned even requires you to be a "superhacker". Identity theft is trivial. Stand on a street corner and say you're registering people for a contest, and put name, address, social security number on the form, and 90% of people who stop to fill it out will just put their SSN down. Stealing "software" and "media" hardly makes you a superhacker; hundreds of thousands of people do it every day, 99% have probably never even compiled a program. Virus writing isn't difficult either; it's finding the hole to exploit in the first place that CAN be difficult. But given an exploit, turning it into a virus isn't that tough.
Even when we take it up a notch and look at actually dangerous attackers, like people using widespread vulnerabilities to deploy custom rootkits, we're not talking about superhackers.
Then there's a class of people who, if they are inclined to be lawbreaking and antisocial, are superdangerous. Take a look at someone like Michal Zalewski, who's been pumping out advisories, proof of concepts, and gems like a hobby OS for...well, a long time. Can you imagine him in the wild as a black hat? Ugh, scary.
Then there's real superhackers. One former coworker built a railgun for fun, cracked DES (key recovery in 24 hours on a p3, given certain fairly common preconditions), cracked the remote management on a major commercial firewall (because we lost the password, and it was easier than going offsite for password recovery), then founded a security company, got rich when they got bought out, and moved onto toy around with things for nasa and the DoD. So, if someone like somehow finds their way onto - and stays on - a black hat path, well, the mere fact that securing something is harder than cracking it means he will always find a way in, if he wants to badly enough. I think they'd have to be unbalanced to stay black hat, since that sort of talent will either get them illegitimately rich enough that they'll avoid danger, or get them legitimately rich enough that they'll give up black hat activities to go legit.
But identity theft? Please. Peanuts. They're more likely to use large scale espionage to find some valuable nugget; perhaps upcoming M&A activites. Then they sell this info to a third party with plausible deniability and a lot of cash - say, George Soros (not that I'm saying he'd buy, but for example) - and let them profit massively off it and take a kickback. Just one significant score like that should be worth 7-8 figures. That's just one example out of a hundred scenarios where a true uberhacker could illegitimately profit. And they'd almost certainly only do it once, if money was their motivation.
Have A(i) and A(ii) ever been resolved in case law? One has to assume Google believes that unless it reviews content as it is uploaded or such, that Ai/ii do not apply. Certainly, it doesn't say the service provider needs to screen it. And there's a reason: YouTube may be the mega-infringement-fest of the net, but what applies to YouTube applies to EVERYONE. Imagine every ISP needing to vet every video clip uploaded to every webhosting account on the planet. A judgement against A(i) and A(ii) for YouTube would be Very Bad for the Internet.
Section B is a lot trickier. YouTube/Google may have legal eagles who think they can persuade a judge or jury that the fact that individual video pages do not server ads implies that they do not receive a direct financial benefit. I'm not sure if this section ever came up in the Kazaa/Grokster/etc cases, or if they sued solely on the grounds of inducement and vicarious infringement. I personally think YouTube has great value without commercial clips. I know that 90% of what I watch there, if not more, is not infringing commercial video - it's political things (Hillary v Obama), home video (pinball cars), or straight commentary that feels like a videoblog. But even if youtube has value, it must have MORE value hosting infringing material. On the contrary, a traditional ISP makes nothing from infringing material, since they are paid by the hoster/user. Since YouTube DOES profit, it may run afoul. So we'll see.
Even if Viacom, wins, imagine this:
(1) Company A operates a YouTube-like "service" where they host videos. They'll host X bytes or serve X bytes/month for a fee. They cannot be profiting from infringing material. (2) Company B hires Company A to serve up videos uploaded by its users. Videos go from users directly to company A. Company B gets to place ads on the pages. In other words, it's a bit like a hosting service with a software app grafted on. Company A is an ISP, Company B is a web service, and B has arranged for end users to interact with A, and put ads up. B earns revenue from the ads, but never touches or screens the videos. Company A receives and responds to takedowns, but they earn money solely from serving or hosting bytes of video data.
Now who is violating the DMCA? It's still effectively YouTube, but since there are two companies involved, and one profits only from hosting fees, and the other profits from ads but never touches infringing content, what happens now? Viacom and others just have to get their Takedown Printing Presses to full capacity, because there's no way it will infringe. Because YouTube IS serving the videos AND is taking in the ad money, they may run afoul of clause B. But a mere structural change can make it so there are two companies, one profiting from hosting, the other profiting from ads, but a layer that makes it fully indirect. Then it's impossible to find for Viacom, because if you did, you'd be stripping the ISP shield effectively. Now, where does this video hosting company come from? There may be one, but if Larry and Sergey told someone at Sequoia they needed such a company to appear, it would happen. A week later, $20M in capital gets dropped on the first people competent enough to make it work. Google becomes their first customer, they get paid generously for fairly simple hosting services, and Google is now safe from charges of infringement.
It will be interesting to see. Personally, DRM IS the #1 reason I don't buy more music. I can't be bothered fooling around with p2p networks. Busy, bad quality, lawsuits, spyware, etc. Unacceptable. On the other hand, I don't want to buy from places like iTunes - though I occasionally do - because I'm already irked about CDs I can't locate or that suffered damage when moving that I can't rip. I'm not interested in a bunch of music I won't be able to play when Apple goes bankrupt or only produces mp3 players I hate. (long live the iPod)
But am I normal? I don't think so. Some of my other technical co-workers have argued that iTunes and the iPod have won massive acceptance via ease of use, and that's all most people think about. I'm not completely in concurrence: I think people know that "mp3" means fully cross-platform compatible. No matter what you're using for software or hardware, the mp3s will play. People confused about what will work - iTunes, iPod, Zune, playsforsure, Rhapsody, ogg, m4p, m4a, aac - could easily get dizzy from the myriad technologies in play, and simply not want to buy. They get iPods, rip their CDs, and that's that.
I don't think that DRM-free music will kill filesharing. But I am quite certain it will not ENABLE more filesharing. It's already trivial, and frankly, p2p networks are now overrated. People have built such monstrous mp3 collections and storage is now cheap that the duplication is happening en masse. People who connect in real life can easily swap gigs of data. Broadband is more widely deployed, and a simple memory stick with 2GB worth of music is a fast way to distribute massive amounts of music. Or burn a data DVD.
But even if DRM inhibits online music sales to would-be legitimate customers like myself, is that sufficient? Would music priced at $.99/song and $9.99/album be sufficient to attract? Certainly I'd buy a fair bit. I'm not at all against flexible pricing, because I buy music for the long haul, and my interest in collecting the latest hits is nil. I'd prefer access to a backcatalog for less, over $.99 fresh hits. (Although they could price the backcatalog cheaper AND still cap at $.99)
Either way, DRM is bad for consumers, bad for music, and AT BEST non-impactful for record companies. Removing it may not save them, but it won't hurt them. There's only upside here.
So, Kucinich apparently hasn't found a place for this on his newer site, but thankfully via the magic of the Wayback Machine, I can point out that Kucinich has received the endorsement of Grandfather Twilight, a classic children's book character. Clearly, that lends him enormous credibility for 2008, as it did in 2004.
As I noted, I think this is more targetted at the religious vote than anything in reality. Frist is pandering, and I doubt he cares what the net effect is. It's not likely to do him a lot of good. There are a LOT of people playing poker online right now, and those who are "into" it are severely ticked. Meanwhile, I think the religious groups he was targeting with the move are likely to be unimpressed, because the legislation THEY were seeking was an expansion of the 1961 Wire Fraud Act into explicitly covering online gambling, so that individuals could be prosecuted for doing it.
I've seen that comment elsewhere - that some banks will and will not currently process stuff. My impression is that somehow the credit/debit system "knows" that a site is involved in gambling and MOST financial institutions in the US won't process that. IIRC, that's actually not a government mandated legal requirement, although there was some bluster about the Wire Fraud Act; it was that people were charging their cards to gamble, then refusing to pay, claiming that they weren't liable for the charges since charging up a gambling account was illegal in the first place. I wouldn't be surprised if your check card worked but a credit card from BofA would fail.
I hestitate to strongly declare the net effect, though. It seemed fairly toothless in this analysis, but PartyGaming PLC basically said they're blocking US accounts the moment Bush signs it - and they are the largest poker site out there (or... were). If they really thought this was toothless and unenforceable, why would they block US accounts? And for that matter, even IF it were enforceable, they're outside US jurisdiction, so why should they care? It won't be enforced against THEM. And yet they're claiming they're going to forego millions of dollars in US revenue?
So, the ultimate answer is that the law has added a lot of grey for now, and we'll have to see how everything shakes out. The regs the US Treasury dept comes up with may make the difference. The PPA (Poker Players Alliance) is fighting hard to get Poker an exemption, and given that poker online actually has significant domestic economic benefits (ie, the throng of tourists in Vegas during the WSOP, and to a lesser extent at other major events), I could see a carve-out for "skill based games" like poker happening before the treasury implements this. (They have a 270 day window under the law)
Credit cards were already not accepted. This bill is aiming to stop banks from transfering money to online gaming services via Firepay, Neteller, etc. It requires a coding scheme for ETF transfers be put in place to "code" the purpose of each transaction. And it's sort of weird, really, given that if I send $x to Neteller, and I'm not specifying a purpose at the time - since they will hold funds - how can that be enforced? It remains to be seen whether this can effectively do anything at all other than burden the US banking system with an ineffective regulation which costs millions or billions to implement.
Also, it wasn't a surprise that the legislation PASSED - the Port Security bill was getting passed, period. What IS surprising is that Frist managed to attach this to it. Democrats were trying hard to attach relevant amendments, like a measure to increase security of the rail transit system. These amendments were all rejected, yet Frist manages to get his "pander to the religious right" amendment attached? The mind boggles.
Anyhow, there's a good analysis of the bill reposted here, which includes:
The great unknown is how far into the Internet commerce stream federal regulators are willing to go. The Act requires institutions like the Bank of America and Neteller to i.d. and block transactions to unlawful gambling sites, whatever they are. But, while the Bank of America will comply, Neteller might not, because it is not subject to U.S. regulations. Will federal regulators then prohibit U.S. banks from sending funds to Neteller? And would they then prohibit U.S. banks from sending funds to an overseas bank, which forwards the money to Neteller?
CN did not RTFA, but Frist used some procedural trickery to attach this to the Port Security bill late last night. Frist is from Tennessee, where they have a Lotto. (AKA: A tax on people who are bad at math) Frist's amendment carves out a ridiculous exception for horse racing, also. But playing poker - a game of skill - will now be nearly impossible if you are in the United States.
I'm just glad Frist is considering a run for President, so I will hopefully get a chance to oppose him with my vote.
When I bought a beefy gaming box in April of 2005, I started with Alienware. Then I looked at VoodooPC. Then I went to the "money is no object" PC mag reviews, and was comparing good looking choices, and finally found, called, and settled on OverdrivePC. The thing that made me a fan boy was, in my excitement, I was specing out top-of-the-line everything. The guy I talked to actually asked what I was using it for, and talked me out of the latest-and-greatest processor in favor of one one step down, but more overclocked, since they were getting a lot more overclocking out of the Athlon 3200 and 3500s than the FX series. Since THEY did the overclocking, it was still supported. When I've needed tech support, it's been excellent. I'm not quite as busy now as I was then, so I might build-rather-than-buy, since I have the tech knowhow for it... but if I did have to buy again, I'd probably patronize them again if they were still price competitive. (And back then, the reviews had them coming in #1 in showdowns performance wise, but priced at the bottom end vs competitive machines; a very nice combo). I know they've been growing, but I was pretty darn happy.
I know a lot of people who have bought Alienware, because they wanted a kickass PC, had money to burn, and didn't know how to evaluate offerings themselves. Alienware has a very strong brand name, now, though, and I think you pay a premium for it.
The way their predictions are set up, their 89% success rate is thoroughly unimpressive. There are often several mutually exclusive choices (e.g., 2006 Kerry VP running mate choice), as well as repeated submissions of ridiculously longshot possibilities (which, quickly relegated to the CON scrap heap still bring up the accuracy average). I was amused, however, by how many people ended up getting the John Roberts confirmation wrong, because the wording said, "To replace retiring justice Sandra Day O'Connor", and of course, he ended up replacing Rehnquist.
We didn't really even need xmlhttprequest; you could use iframes, too. (And some notable "2.0" apps have)
Useful bits I've found getting into ajax stuff:
Dojo Toolkit, a nifty framework for doing all sorts of good stuff. Of particular note to me was dojo.io.* with its dojo.io.bind() function, which provides a simple, cross-platform compatible way to do an xmlhttprequest, with callback functions for completion and errors, an easy way to post variables, specify a method and caching, etc.
openrico. This provides all sorts of fun stuff. The smart stuff starts with declaring $ as a function, which after you get used to it provides a very convenient cross-platform way to access DOM nodes (ie, $('mydiv') or $(divvar)), and has all sorts of canned widgets for effects, like accordian widgets, move&resize, etc... although I've found practical application usually requires a bit more additional work, but their functions help get started.
It's only natural for the most talented people with the widest array of knowledge to not know what they want to do - too much interests them.
For someone with a focused desire, what's their excuse for not pursuing it with a diploma?
Aside from which, in 95% of work, if a would-be employee tells you the job you're offering is just what they always wanted, it's just a line. If people were honest, 75%+ of resumes would start with:
Objective: Make as much money as I can, with as little time as I can.
Sure, there's massive amounts of content. Massive amounts of randomly laid out "warehouses", "office buildings", and "labs" stocked with thugs that just stand around waiting for you to fight them. The combat is the most fun of any MMO I've ever played, but the volume and variety of content is not very impressive.
Very astute. Definitely the worst thing; but CoV helped. The maps are still a bit redundant, but the storylines are VASTLY improved. Far less Kill-X, far less random, "SaveX", and a lot more story. Some of which is actually touching (in a bad way; the westin phipps arcs/missions are downright freaky because he is so *evil*).
And yeah, I'm engaging in a bit of fanboiism. But yeah, for me, the MMO play is about two things: (1) The character, and (2) the fighting. And CoX has, by far, the best character creation. By FAR. And then the combat - a bit dull solo, but 8-team CoX > 5 member WoW any day of the week, and twice on Sunday. The chaos, the variety... it's awesome.
If you were a comic fan, why not play City of Heroes? It has 2 years of maturity, massive amounts of content, has been kept graphically up to date and is gorgeous (and can put a 7900GTX through the paces, I can add)... I guess we'll have to see what it's like, but I don't see how DC translates into an MMO anyhow. I guess I'll wait to see the features, but I remain incredibly skeptical they can overcome what CoH has done in 6.5+ years in total development.
He definitely *only* won in 2000 on a legal technicality. It has now been proven that had all the votes been counted, Gore would have won.
In 2004, he somehow managed to carry Ohio despite exit polls showing he should lose and massive discrepancies in data (counties that polled 80% Democrat voting 80% Republican).
Is it possible this is coincidence? Yes. To mangle Arthur C. Clarke, in fact, "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from conspiracy."
But frankly, even if I'd supported Bush (which I did marginally in 2000, though I voted for Browne because I was in TX and knew he'd carry it), I'd be inclined to vote for a Democrat now just as a check against his wild beliefs about executive power.
We're not at war, and whatever we are "at", it isn't supported; not by Congress, and not by the people. At best, there's a fairly large contingent who would LIKE to see Iraq stable when we leave. But frankly, I'm about ready to leave, stable or not, before our own country suffers a catastrophic economic collapse because of the problems this war is causing the economny. (Inflation and massive deficit spending, in particular)
We knew that there were ideological battles taking place in the school, we knew that teachers were throwing ideas at us. We knew that we were being graded on whether or not we conformed with ideas that were not necessarily true. We knew that things were complicated. We did not have the language to describe the kinds of things we were intuited. But our brains knew that there was a conflict taking place, and so when our brains reified what we were seeing, it did it in the language of violence: A struggle to get out. A struggle to be free.
This paragraph is worth its weight in gold. And this is why I shudder at the court calling the IM icon a threat. I don't really think anyone can actually believe it was a threat; it lacked the specificity to believe it implied an intention to take action. But frankly, letting it go pokes a hole in the authority of the teacher and the school. And what are schools about now? Conformity. That's the only thing they're GOOD at teaching.
Freedom of speech is not absolute and is frequently determined to be more "pure" when considering speech around protest, opinion, etc. Showing an icon, with an explicit reference to killing (as an active "directive") and the teacher's name falls pretty far outside the boundaries for reasonable people, and apparently for the court of law. The article says most students laughed it off as a joke... it's difficult to see what's funny in a gun pointed at someone's head, even as a thumbnail sized icon.
The "boundaries of normal people" have no bearing on the law. "Boundaries of normal people" sounds, to me, like you need some sort of endorsement from a majority that your speech is civil, reasonable, or in some way okay. You don't. People can and do say a lot of horrendous things, but someone can stand on a street corner, talking about the virtues of Hitler, and how he almost saved the world from jews, and the vast majority of people, myself included, are going to find it absolutely detestable.
It's not difficult to see what's funny about the icon if you're a powerless 15 year old with an asshole for a teacher. Of course, it could easily be the student who is the asshole here, too; but there's an enormous power teachers have over students and their future. Not all teachers use it responsibly or judiciously, and some are rude, cruel, capricious, and probably deserve every bit of mockery they get.
The court in this case ruled that the icon constituted a threat. I think that's preposterous; it completely lacks specificity. It doesn't say "I will kill", it just says, "kill", which is more the imperative voice. As such, if it were anything, it would have to be incitement, but it lacks specificity as well. In other words, it's just a really vicious way to say, "I completely hate this person, and if they were dead, I'd do a little happy dance". Yeah, it's a terrible thing to say. But imagine if instead, his icon was the teacher, tied to a post with flames dancing all around, and it said, "Mr. X belongs in hell". I think that's about equally offensive, it just isn't phrased in a way that could be misinterpreted. In this case, I think it's clear the icon is the equivalent of someone saying in frustration, "I'd like to KILL that guy!" No one ever interprets a comment like that literally, and you have to be willfully ignorant to do so.
In any event, there are very specific things only which are not protected by free speech: threats, incitement to commit a crime, speech giving rise to immediate danger (e.g., "Fire!" in a crowded theater), as well as libel/slander/defamation. So what is this? It certainly causes no immediate danger. There are no crowds to be trampled while viewing an icon. It can't be libel/slander/defamation, because it isn't stating anything that could be interpreted as a fact. It lacks specificity to be considered an incitement. It's like saying, "You should go rob a bank" when someone says they're broke. It just doesn't count. Incitement requires some reasonable expectation someone might immediately take the person up on the request. If I'm standing in front of the White House saying, "Get out your guns. We're going in, and we're getting answers, and anyone who gets in our way, we shoot!", then I'm inciting those present (especially if they have guns) to commit a crime. I'm being specific, in that circumstance. That's not protected.
Finally, there's a threat. Here's where the court actually ruled.
I can certainly see, from the teacher's perspective, why he would WANT this to be considered a threat. I can see why a judge would want to rule it as such; because frankly, the icon is repulsive. Intuitively, you'd almost expect it to be illegal. But it can't be unless you can reasonably believe that it implies that the student is actually claiming, via the icon, that he plans to harm the teacher.
You can agree or disagree that it constitutes a threat, but lets be clear: the social acceptability of speech has nothing to do with its legality. There are very few things which are NOT protected.
Technically, "intrinsic value" has a meaning - it refers to the value of metal in a coin. If I have a gold coin worth $30, but the metal itself is worth $9, its intrinsic value is $9. Your quarter is "worth" $.25 thanks to the government, but the actual metal is not worth $.25, so it has a much lower intrinsic value.
So, the OP is technically correct. Paper, glue, and bindings cost money, and bits do not. In fact, technically, bits cost YOU money, since you need something to store your PDF on. Books don't actually require a bookshelf. If you're using "intrinsic" to mean "market value of component parts", then the components of the book are worth more.
I think the OP meant market value when he said "intrinsic". In this case, he's using "intrinsic" to mean, "it possesses value" due to its nature, implying that for someone to prefer a PDF (as you do), they would need to have an extrinsic motivation (such as an uncommon need for portability).
Sure, some people prefer (and would therefore value higher, and pay more for) bound physical copies over pdfs
Not "some" - "nearly all".
My point, though, was that there is no intrinsic value in an object. My personal valuation was just used as an example of that.
I'm not sure what made you think that wasn't completely obvious.
"In a sense, you could say that the less valuable product, in this case, has more utility to you."
Not at all. I could say that the pdf is less valuable to me. Or I could say that I value the hardbound copies less than most people. I think that you're confusing 'market value' with 'value' -- 'market' defines who is assigning the value in that case. So I could say that I believe the pdf version to have a higher value than the market value -- or rather, that the market undervalues the pdf version.
When I used value in that sentence, I was referring to market value. Which should be the default assumption if I don't refer to anyone. If someone asks, "How much is an ounce of gold worth?", no one asks, "To who?", even though most people wouldn't have any use at all for an ounce of gold, other than to sell or trade it.
I think what the poster really means to say is that MOST people value a PDF far less than a hardbound book, and therefore if they want to maximize their sales (the sum of X*Y where X is the units sold and Y is the price, knowing that X will decline as Y goes up), they should be pricing it competitively against the book. Also, it is a great deal less costly to convert a book to PDF than it is to convert a PDF to a book. That implies that the book has intrinsic value the PDF does not have. They both contain the same information, but the book has a binding, paper, shipping, etc. The PDF requires a small amount of bandwidth. You may value a PDF more than the book, due to its higher utility to you, but you may also value a 1984 Toyota Celica over a 2005 Mercedes, if it is extremely important to you to not appear ostentatious. But that doesn't mean the actual value of the Celica is more. Likewise, you might prefer a piece of etched glass over a diamond, but that also doesn't mean the glass has a "higher value". Rather, value is a perception of value, and the vast majority of people will value the hardbound book more. In a sense, you could say that the less valuable product, in this case, has more utility to you.
Ironically, when I saw this headline in my RSS feeder, I thought: oh, cool, they're going to just give away the PDFs. That's smart, now people will see the material and end up buying physical copies, so they can have all the cool stuff they come across in an easy-reference format when gaming. Oops. Silly me. SELLING PDFs. Good luck with that, WotC.
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You sound really angry.
He's talking about your provider overselling their bandwidth, and it happens. I worked for a tier 1 provider for five years, and was there before we got our first VC round. There was a point at which we were buying 1 T1 (from UUnet, I think), and selling 20+ T1s. Good stuff.
You know, I think the PC probably WOULD become the "ultimate living room appliance", but not when it undergoes lockdown like this. The whole point of using a PC for things like this is flexibility. The whole point of the RIAA and the MPAA, and especially the DVD-CSS association, is to LIMIT what you can do. The CSS people should have been the ones pushing to license their scheme out to device makers to try to help get adoption up of popular, specialized living room devices.
Not only are people not really interested in this, but this still falls into the adage: the harder you make it for consumers to get your content, the less they'll buy it. (Are you listening, RIAA? (props to emi))
The first mistake is to think that anything mentioned even requires you to be a "superhacker". Identity theft is trivial. Stand on a street corner and say you're registering people for a contest, and put name, address, social security number on the form, and 90% of people who stop to fill it out will just put their SSN down. Stealing "software" and "media" hardly makes you a superhacker; hundreds of thousands of people do it every day, 99% have probably never even compiled a program. Virus writing isn't difficult either; it's finding the hole to exploit in the first place that CAN be difficult. But given an exploit, turning it into a virus isn't that tough.
Even when we take it up a notch and look at actually dangerous attackers, like people using widespread vulnerabilities to deploy custom rootkits, we're not talking about superhackers.
Then there's a class of people who, if they are inclined to be lawbreaking and antisocial, are superdangerous. Take a look at someone like Michal Zalewski, who's been pumping out advisories, proof of concepts, and gems like a hobby OS for...well, a long time. Can you imagine him in the wild as a black hat? Ugh, scary.
Then there's real superhackers. One former coworker built a railgun for fun, cracked DES (key recovery in 24 hours on a p3, given certain fairly common preconditions), cracked the remote management on a major commercial firewall (because we lost the password, and it was easier than going offsite for password recovery), then founded a security company, got rich when they got bought out, and moved onto toy around with things for nasa and the DoD. So, if someone like somehow finds their way onto - and stays on - a black hat path, well, the mere fact that securing something is harder than cracking it means he will always find a way in, if he wants to badly enough. I think they'd have to be unbalanced to stay black hat, since that sort of talent will either get them illegitimately rich enough that they'll avoid danger, or get them legitimately rich enough that they'll give up black hat activities to go legit.
But identity theft? Please. Peanuts. They're more likely to use large scale espionage to find some valuable nugget; perhaps upcoming M&A activites. Then they sell this info to a third party with plausible deniability and a lot of cash - say, George Soros (not that I'm saying he'd buy, but for example) - and let them profit massively off it and take a kickback. Just one significant score like that should be worth 7-8 figures. That's just one example out of a hundred scenarios where a true uberhacker could illegitimately profit. And they'd almost certainly only do it once, if money was their motivation.
There are lots of places which respect you, and pay you a salary, and only expect a normal number of hours.
Have A(i) and A(ii) ever been resolved in case law? One has to assume Google believes that unless it reviews content as it is uploaded or such, that Ai/ii do not apply. Certainly, it doesn't say the service provider needs to screen it. And there's a reason: YouTube may be the mega-infringement-fest of the net, but what applies to YouTube applies to EVERYONE. Imagine every ISP needing to vet every video clip uploaded to every webhosting account on the planet. A judgement against A(i) and A(ii) for YouTube would be Very Bad for the Internet.
Section B is a lot trickier. YouTube/Google may have legal eagles who think they can persuade a judge or jury that the fact that individual video pages do not server ads implies that they do not receive a direct financial benefit. I'm not sure if this section ever came up in the Kazaa/Grokster/etc cases, or if they sued solely on the grounds of inducement and vicarious infringement. I personally think YouTube has great value without commercial clips. I know that 90% of what I watch there, if not more, is not infringing commercial video - it's political things (Hillary v Obama), home video (pinball cars), or straight commentary that feels like a videoblog. But even if youtube has value, it must have MORE value hosting infringing material. On the contrary, a traditional ISP makes nothing from infringing material, since they are paid by the hoster/user. Since YouTube DOES profit, it may run afoul. So we'll see.
Even if Viacom, wins, imagine this:
(1) Company A operates a YouTube-like "service" where they host videos. They'll host X bytes or serve X bytes/month for a fee. They cannot be profiting from infringing material.
(2) Company B hires Company A to serve up videos uploaded by its users. Videos go from users directly to company A. Company B gets to place ads on the pages. In other words, it's a bit like a hosting service with a software app grafted on. Company A is an ISP, Company B is a web service, and B has arranged for end users to interact with A, and put ads up. B earns revenue from the ads, but never touches or screens the videos. Company A receives and responds to takedowns, but they earn money solely from serving or hosting bytes of video data.
Now who is violating the DMCA? It's still effectively YouTube, but since there are two companies involved, and one profits only from hosting fees, and the other profits from ads but never touches infringing content, what happens now? Viacom and others just have to get their Takedown Printing Presses to full capacity, because there's no way it will infringe. Because YouTube IS serving the videos AND is taking in the ad money, they may run afoul of clause B. But a mere structural change can make it so there are two companies, one profiting from hosting, the other profiting from ads, but a layer that makes it fully indirect. Then it's impossible to find for Viacom, because if you did, you'd be stripping the ISP shield effectively. Now, where does this video hosting company come from? There may be one, but if Larry and Sergey told someone at Sequoia they needed such a company to appear, it would happen. A week later, $20M in capital gets dropped on the first people competent enough to make it work. Google becomes their first customer, they get paid generously for fairly simple hosting services, and Google is now safe from charges of infringement.
It will be interesting to see. Personally, DRM IS the #1 reason I don't buy more music. I can't be bothered fooling around with p2p networks. Busy, bad quality, lawsuits, spyware, etc. Unacceptable. On the other hand, I don't want to buy from places like iTunes - though I occasionally do - because I'm already irked about CDs I can't locate or that suffered damage when moving that I can't rip. I'm not interested in a bunch of music I won't be able to play when Apple goes bankrupt or only produces mp3 players I hate. (long live the iPod)
But am I normal? I don't think so. Some of my other technical co-workers have argued that iTunes and the iPod have won massive acceptance via ease of use, and that's all most people think about. I'm not completely in concurrence: I think people know that "mp3" means fully cross-platform compatible. No matter what you're using for software or hardware, the mp3s will play. People confused about what will work - iTunes, iPod, Zune, playsforsure, Rhapsody, ogg, m4p, m4a, aac - could easily get dizzy from the myriad technologies in play, and simply not want to buy. They get iPods, rip their CDs, and that's that.
I don't think that DRM-free music will kill filesharing. But I am quite certain it will not ENABLE more filesharing. It's already trivial, and frankly, p2p networks are now overrated. People have built such monstrous mp3 collections and storage is now cheap that the duplication is happening en masse. People who connect in real life can easily swap gigs of data. Broadband is more widely deployed, and a simple memory stick with 2GB worth of music is a fast way to distribute massive amounts of music. Or burn a data DVD.
But even if DRM inhibits online music sales to would-be legitimate customers like myself, is that sufficient? Would music priced at $.99/song and $9.99/album be sufficient to attract? Certainly I'd buy a fair bit. I'm not at all against flexible pricing, because I buy music for the long haul, and my interest in collecting the latest hits is nil. I'd prefer access to a backcatalog for less, over $.99 fresh hits. (Although they could price the backcatalog cheaper AND still cap at $.99)
Either way, DRM is bad for consumers, bad for music, and AT BEST non-impactful for record companies. Removing it may not save them, but it won't hurt them. There's only upside here.
So, Kucinich apparently hasn't found a place for this on his newer site, but thankfully via the magic of the Wayback Machine, I can point out that Kucinich has received the endorsement of Grandfather Twilight, a classic children's book character. Clearly, that lends him enormous credibility for 2008, as it did in 2004.
I know 3 people who are trying to avoid buying phones until the apple ones come out.
As I noted, I think this is more targetted at the religious vote than anything in reality. Frist is pandering, and I doubt he cares what the net effect is. It's not likely to do him a lot of good. There are a LOT of people playing poker online right now, and those who are "into" it are severely ticked. Meanwhile, I think the religious groups he was targeting with the move are likely to be unimpressed, because the legislation THEY were seeking was an expansion of the 1961 Wire Fraud Act into explicitly covering online gambling, so that individuals could be prosecuted for doing it.
I've seen that comment elsewhere - that some banks will and will not currently process stuff. My impression is that somehow the credit/debit system "knows" that a site is involved in gambling and MOST financial institutions in the US won't process that. IIRC, that's actually not a government mandated legal requirement, although there was some bluster about the Wire Fraud Act; it was that people were charging their cards to gamble, then refusing to pay, claiming that they weren't liable for the charges since charging up a gambling account was illegal in the first place. I wouldn't be surprised if your check card worked but a credit card from BofA would fail.
I hestitate to strongly declare the net effect, though. It seemed fairly toothless in this analysis, but PartyGaming PLC basically said they're blocking US accounts the moment Bush signs it - and they are the largest poker site out there (or... were). If they really thought this was toothless and unenforceable, why would they block US accounts? And for that matter, even IF it were enforceable, they're outside US jurisdiction, so why should they care? It won't be enforced against THEM. And yet they're claiming they're going to forego millions of dollars in US revenue?
So, the ultimate answer is that the law has added a lot of grey for now, and we'll have to see how everything shakes out. The regs the US Treasury dept comes up with may make the difference. The PPA (Poker Players Alliance) is fighting hard to get Poker an exemption, and given that poker online actually has significant domestic economic benefits (ie, the throng of tourists in Vegas during the WSOP, and to a lesser extent at other major events), I could see a carve-out for "skill based games" like poker happening before the treasury implements this. (They have a 270 day window under the law)
Also, it wasn't a surprise that the legislation PASSED - the Port Security bill was getting passed, period. What IS surprising is that Frist managed to attach this to it. Democrats were trying hard to attach relevant amendments, like a measure to increase security of the rail transit system. These amendments were all rejected, yet Frist manages to get his "pander to the religious right" amendment attached? The mind boggles.
Anyhow, there's a good analysis of the bill reposted here, which includes:
CN did not RTFA, but Frist used some procedural trickery to attach this to the Port Security bill late last night. Frist is from Tennessee, where they have a Lotto. (AKA: A tax on people who are bad at math) Frist's amendment carves out a ridiculous exception for horse racing, also. But playing poker - a game of skill - will now be nearly impossible if you are in the United States.
I'm just glad Frist is considering a run for President, so I will hopefully get a chance to oppose him with my vote.
So long as they don't change the color of the Red Shirt guy who dies each episode, that's okay.
The GPL exists to protect rights; DRM exists to take them away. Duh.
When I bought a beefy gaming box in April of 2005, I started with Alienware. Then I looked at VoodooPC. Then I went to the "money is no object" PC mag reviews, and was comparing good looking choices, and finally found, called, and settled on OverdrivePC. The thing that made me a fan boy was, in my excitement, I was specing out top-of-the-line everything. The guy I talked to actually asked what I was using it for, and talked me out of the latest-and-greatest processor in favor of one one step down, but more overclocked, since they were getting a lot more overclocking out of the Athlon 3200 and 3500s than the FX series. Since THEY did the overclocking, it was still supported. When I've needed tech support, it's been excellent. I'm not quite as busy now as I was then, so I might build-rather-than-buy, since I have the tech knowhow for it... but if I did have to buy again, I'd probably patronize them again if they were still price competitive. (And back then, the reviews had them coming in #1 in showdowns performance wise, but priced at the bottom end vs competitive machines; a very nice combo). I know they've been growing, but I was pretty darn happy.
I know a lot of people who have bought Alienware, because they wanted a kickass PC, had money to burn, and didn't know how to evaluate offerings themselves. Alienware has a very strong brand name, now, though, and I think you pay a premium for it.
The way their predictions are set up, their 89% success rate is thoroughly unimpressive. There are often several mutually exclusive choices (e.g., 2006 Kerry VP running mate choice), as well as repeated submissions of ridiculously longshot possibilities (which, quickly relegated to the CON scrap heap still bring up the accuracy average). I was amused, however, by how many people ended up getting the John Roberts confirmation wrong, because the wording said, "To replace retiring justice Sandra Day O'Connor", and of course, he ended up replacing Rehnquist.
We didn't really even need xmlhttprequest; you could use iframes, too. (And some notable "2.0" apps have)
Useful bits I've found getting into ajax stuff:
Dojo Toolkit, a nifty framework for doing all sorts of good stuff. Of particular note to me was dojo.io.* with its dojo.io.bind() function, which provides a simple, cross-platform compatible way to do an xmlhttprequest, with callback functions for completion and errors, an easy way to post variables, specify a method and caching, etc.
openrico. This provides all sorts of fun stuff. The smart stuff starts with declaring $ as a function, which after you get used to it provides a very convenient cross-platform way to access DOM nodes (ie, $('mydiv') or $(divvar)), and has all sorts of canned widgets for effects, like accordian widgets, move&resize, etc... although I've found practical application usually requires a bit more additional work, but their functions help get started.
It's only natural for the most talented people with the widest array of knowledge to not know what they want to do - too much interests them.
For someone with a focused desire, what's their excuse for not pursuing it with a diploma?
Aside from which, in 95% of work, if a would-be employee tells you the job you're offering is just what they always wanted, it's just a line. If people were honest, 75%+ of resumes would start with:
Objective: Make as much money as I can, with as little time as I can.
Very astute. Definitely the worst thing; but CoV helped. The maps are still a bit redundant, but the storylines are VASTLY improved. Far less Kill-X, far less random, "SaveX", and a lot more story. Some of which is actually touching (in a bad way; the westin phipps arcs/missions are downright freaky because he is so *evil*).
And yeah, I'm engaging in a bit of fanboiism. But yeah, for me, the MMO play is about two things: (1) The character, and (2) the fighting. And CoX has, by far, the best character creation. By FAR. And then the combat - a bit dull solo, but 8-team CoX > 5 member WoW any day of the week, and twice on Sunday. The chaos, the variety... it's awesome.
If you were a comic fan, why not play City of Heroes? It has 2 years of maturity, massive amounts of content, has been kept graphically up to date and is gorgeous (and can put a 7900GTX through the paces, I can add)... I guess we'll have to see what it's like, but I don't see how DC translates into an MMO anyhow. I guess I'll wait to see the features, but I remain incredibly skeptical they can overcome what CoH has done in 6.5+ years in total development.
As for SWG... isn't it dead yet?
Are you sure Bush won either election?
He definitely *only* won in 2000 on a legal technicality. It has now been proven that had all the votes been counted, Gore would have won.
In 2004, he somehow managed to carry Ohio despite exit polls showing he should lose and massive discrepancies in data (counties that polled 80% Democrat voting 80% Republican).
Is it possible this is coincidence? Yes. To mangle Arthur C. Clarke, in fact, "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from conspiracy."
But frankly, even if I'd supported Bush (which I did marginally in 2000, though I voted for Browne because I was in TX and knew he'd carry it), I'd be inclined to vote for a Democrat now just as a check against his wild beliefs about executive power.
We're not at war, and whatever we are "at", it isn't supported; not by Congress, and not by the people. At best, there's a fairly large contingent who would LIKE to see Iraq stable when we leave. But frankly, I'm about ready to leave, stable or not, before our own country suffers a catastrophic economic collapse because of the problems this war is causing the economny. (Inflation and massive deficit spending, in particular)
This paragraph is worth its weight in gold. And this is why I shudder at the court calling the IM icon a threat. I don't really think anyone can actually believe it was a threat; it lacked the specificity to believe it implied an intention to take action. But frankly, letting it go pokes a hole in the authority of the teacher and the school. And what are schools about now? Conformity. That's the only thing they're GOOD at teaching.
The "boundaries of normal people" have no bearing on the law. "Boundaries of normal people" sounds, to me, like you need some sort of endorsement from a majority that your speech is civil, reasonable, or in some way okay. You don't. People can and do say a lot of horrendous things, but someone can stand on a street corner, talking about the virtues of Hitler, and how he almost saved the world from jews, and the vast majority of people, myself included, are going to find it absolutely detestable.
It's not difficult to see what's funny about the icon if you're a powerless 15 year old with an asshole for a teacher. Of course, it could easily be the student who is the asshole here, too; but there's an enormous power teachers have over students and their future. Not all teachers use it responsibly or judiciously, and some are rude, cruel, capricious, and probably deserve every bit of mockery they get.
The court in this case ruled that the icon constituted a threat. I think that's preposterous; it completely lacks specificity. It doesn't say "I will kill", it just says, "kill", which is more the imperative voice. As such, if it were anything, it would have to be incitement, but it lacks specificity as well. In other words, it's just a really vicious way to say, "I completely hate this person, and if they were dead, I'd do a little happy dance". Yeah, it's a terrible thing to say. But imagine if instead, his icon was the teacher, tied to a post with flames dancing all around, and it said, "Mr. X belongs in hell". I think that's about equally offensive, it just isn't phrased in a way that could be misinterpreted. In this case, I think it's clear the icon is the equivalent of someone saying in frustration, "I'd like to KILL that guy!" No one ever interprets a comment like that literally, and you have to be willfully ignorant to do so.
In any event, there are very specific things only which are not protected by free speech: threats, incitement to commit a crime, speech giving rise to immediate danger (e.g., "Fire!" in a crowded theater), as well as libel/slander/defamation. So what is this? It certainly causes no immediate danger. There are no crowds to be trampled while viewing an icon. It can't be libel/slander/defamation, because it isn't stating anything that could be interpreted as a fact. It lacks specificity to be considered an incitement. It's like saying, "You should go rob a bank" when someone says they're broke. It just doesn't count. Incitement requires some reasonable expectation someone might immediately take the person up on the request. If I'm standing in front of the White House saying, "Get out your guns. We're going in, and we're getting answers, and anyone who gets in our way, we shoot!", then I'm inciting those present (especially if they have guns) to commit a crime. I'm being specific, in that circumstance. That's not protected.
Finally, there's a threat. Here's where the court actually ruled.
I can certainly see, from the teacher's perspective, why he would WANT this to be considered a threat. I can see why a judge would want to rule it as such; because frankly, the icon is repulsive. Intuitively, you'd almost expect it to be illegal. But it can't be unless you can reasonably believe that it implies that the student is actually claiming, via the icon, that he plans to harm the teacher.
You can agree or disagree that it constitutes a threat, but lets be clear: the social acceptability of speech has nothing to do with its legality. There are very few things which are NOT protected.
Technically, "intrinsic value" has a meaning - it refers to the value of metal in a coin. If I have a gold coin worth $30, but the metal itself is worth $9, its intrinsic value is $9. Your quarter is "worth" $.25 thanks to the government, but the actual metal is not worth $.25, so it has a much lower intrinsic value.
So, the OP is technically correct. Paper, glue, and bindings cost money, and bits do not. In fact, technically, bits cost YOU money, since you need something to store your PDF on. Books don't actually require a bookshelf. If you're using "intrinsic" to mean "market value of component parts", then the components of the book are worth more.
I think the OP meant market value when he said "intrinsic". In this case, he's using "intrinsic" to mean, "it possesses value" due to its nature, implying that for someone to prefer a PDF (as you do), they would need to have an extrinsic motivation (such as an uncommon need for portability).
Ah, the fun of semantics.
Not "some" - "nearly all".
I'm not sure what made you think that wasn't completely obvious.
When I used value in that sentence, I was referring to market value. Which should be the default assumption if I don't refer to anyone. If someone asks, "How much is an ounce of gold worth?", no one asks, "To who?", even though most people wouldn't have any use at all for an ounce of gold, other than to sell or trade it.
I think what the poster really means to say is that MOST people value a PDF far less than a hardbound book, and therefore if they want to maximize their sales (the sum of X*Y where X is the units sold and Y is the price, knowing that X will decline as Y goes up), they should be pricing it competitively against the book. Also, it is a great deal less costly to convert a book to PDF than it is to convert a PDF to a book. That implies that the book has intrinsic value the PDF does not have. They both contain the same information, but the book has a binding, paper, shipping, etc. The PDF requires a small amount of bandwidth. You may value a PDF more than the book, due to its higher utility to you, but you may also value a 1984 Toyota Celica over a 2005 Mercedes, if it is extremely important to you to not appear ostentatious. But that doesn't mean the actual value of the Celica is more. Likewise, you might prefer a piece of etched glass over a diamond, but that also doesn't mean the glass has a "higher value". Rather, value is a perception of value, and the vast majority of people will value the hardbound book more. In a sense, you could say that the less valuable product, in this case, has more utility to you.
Ironically, when I saw this headline in my RSS feeder, I thought: oh, cool, they're going to just give away the PDFs. That's smart, now people will see the material and end up buying physical copies, so they can have all the cool stuff they come across in an easy-reference format when gaming. Oops. Silly me. SELLING PDFs. Good luck with that, WotC.