All those possible targets, and the Boston Strangler murdered a grand total of 13 of them.
The VCR was to the American film producer as the Boston Strangler was to the woman home alone: very scary to talk about, but the amount of actual damage done was negligible.
Do you know what else came out in 1998? Windows 98, which famously got Microsoft into trouble with antitrust regulators because they included a web browser as an integrated component of the operating system. And why would they do such a thing? Because by that point the Web was already everywhere, and they wanted their ubiquitous operating system to be people's default on-ramp onto the ubiquitous Web.
If you talk to people knowledgeable about the computer industry about why Microsoft today isn't the world-dominating 600-pound gorilla it was in the 90s, one of the principle answers that will always come up is that they were severely late to the party with regard to the Internet. Putting IE in Windows 98 was Microsoft recognizing that the Web had already gotten ubiquitous while they weren't paying enough attention, and they needed to play catch-up in the most aggressive way they could.
This is one of the most disturbing podcasts I've seen Techdirt do.
The idea of having a town with a "CEO" in charge, administered by a publicly-traded, for-profit entity, is not actually anything new. They were a common enough thing in the USA in the 19th century, known as "company towns," and rather than lifting people out of poverty, they quickly garnered a well-earned reputation as poverty traps to keep people trapped in poverty and limit both their opportunities for economic advancement and their ability to leave.
The ideas put forth about providing for the rule of law and making better opportunities for entrepreneurs are great, but Tamara Winter loses all credibility the second she brings up the IMF and the World Bank as "legitimate stakeholders" in the process of trying to make this scenario less dystopian. They have a long history of using their financial leverage to encourage exactly the sort of dystopian abuses that we're trying to avoid here. (Just look at the World Bank's role in the water privatization fiasco in Cochabamba, Bolivia, for one of the best-known examples.)
Not only does "all this ad targeting really not work that well," it's actually actively counterproductive. Any discussion about targeted advertising should include the principles laid out in the 2013 article Targeted Advertising Considered Harmful, which delves into the psychological reasons why when a person notices they're being targeted by a "relevant" ad, they become less inclined, rather than more, to follow it.
This has nothing to do with "governments restricting people's freedoms," and everything to do with technological progress. Radio-controlled aircraft have existed for a long time, but it's only recently that their range and agility are increasing to the point where they could reliably 1) be a credible threat to aircraft and 2) be deployed as such with a reasonable expectation that the person doing so could avoid being caught.
Plenty of things "exist for a long time" before they really take off. Karl Benz invented the automobile almost a quarter-century before the Model T Ford made them mainstream, to give just one obvious example. But once the right change occurs, a product can explode from obscurity to ubiquity practically overnight. (Look up a book called The Tipping Point for some good discussion into how this all works.)
No, because it's not about willingness; it's about convenience.
There are several orders of magnitude more people who would be willing to bring down a plane, (or even to simply present a credible threat of being able to do so, for purposes of extortion, terror, or purely for the lulz,) than people who have the capability to actually do so. To put it simply, if drones reach a point where 1) they're as easy to obtain as guns and 2) they're capable of reliably attacking a jet engine... then it's hard to escape the conclusion that that, in the absence of reliable defensive technology, (which does not currently exist,) plane-killings will become approximately as common as mass shootings are today. And condition #1 has already been satisfied.
Agreed. This is an excellent indication of why the passive voice is so insidious. Phrased properly in active voice, it's the Right To Force Others To Forget About You.
Planners are still insisting trains are needed in low-density cities and that high-speed-rail will be competitive with airlines and autonomous vehicles despite clear evidence that they will be utterly obsolete (and not just ridiculously uneconomical) in 20-30 years tops.
Depends on who you listen to. I heard one guy recently lay out a scarily plausible scenario in which the easy availability of small, cheap drones puts an end to commercial aviation entirely within the next 20-ish years, because of how ridiculously easy it will become for any bad actor anywhere to use one to create a "bird strike".
If we don't come up with a good, solid countermeasure to this, trains (or Hyperloops!) may well be the future of transportation.
For it to be a felony under the CFAA, they have to prove that you intended to damage the network, and bypassing geoblocking does not damage their network, so CFAA does not apply
Up until now, this has been true, but with the new regime I'm not so sure. I could see a case being made for the notion that knowingly, deliberately introducing legal liability to a site where none existed before does real, actionable damage.
In this corner, the RIAA. In this corner, a cable company ISP. The RIAA brings a very bad argument, but if they succeed it could lead to judicial review invalidating a part of the DMCA!
This is one of those "I really have no idea which side to root for" cases...
On the post: The Sky Is Rising: The Entertainment Industry Is Thriving, Almost Entirely Because Of The Internet
Valenti was probably right... just not in the way he thought.
During the 1960s, the population of Boston was between approximately 640,000 and 700,000 people. Statistically, approximately half of them would have been women, and between approximately 65-70% of Americans were children during that time. A bit of quick math gives us approximately 100,000 adult women.
All those possible targets, and the Boston Strangler murdered a grand total of 13 of them.
The VCR was to the American film producer as the Boston Strangler was to the woman home alone: very scary to talk about, but the amount of actual damage done was negligible.
On the post: German Government's Bullying Of FOI Group Provides A Warning Of How EU's New Upload Filters Will Be Used For Censorship
Re: Re: Re:
I don't agree.
Do you know what else came out in 1998? Windows 98, which famously got Microsoft into trouble with antitrust regulators because they included a web browser as an integrated component of the operating system. And why would they do such a thing? Because by that point the Web was already everywhere, and they wanted their ubiquitous operating system to be people's default on-ramp onto the ubiquitous Web.
If you talk to people knowledgeable about the computer industry about why Microsoft today isn't the world-dominating 600-pound gorilla it was in the 90s, one of the principle answers that will always come up is that they were severely late to the party with regard to the Internet. Putting IE in Windows 98 was Microsoft recognizing that the Web had already gotten ubiquitous while they weren't paying enough attention, and they needed to play catch-up in the most aggressive way they could.
On the post: Copyright Enforcement Service Claims $600 Billion-Worth Of Images Are 'Stolen' Every Day
typo
I believe this sentence should begin with the word "not".
On the post: German Government's Bullying Of FOI Group Provides A Warning Of How EU's New Upload Filters Will Be Used For Censorship
Re: Re:
Not at all. About 90% of people are basically honest and decent. It's just a matter of a few "bad apples" screwing things up for the rest of us.
On the post: German Government's Bullying Of FOI Group Provides A Warning Of How EU's New Upload Filters Will Be Used For Censorship
Re:
Not really, seeing as how it's the parts that were written after the creation of the World Wide Web that do the most harm.
On the post: Techdirt Podcast Episode 206: Charter Cities & Innovative Governance
This is one of the most disturbing podcasts I've seen Techdirt do.
The idea of having a town with a "CEO" in charge, administered by a publicly-traded, for-profit entity, is not actually anything new. They were a common enough thing in the USA in the 19th century, known as "company towns," and rather than lifting people out of poverty, they quickly garnered a well-earned reputation as poverty traps to keep people trapped in poverty and limit both their opportunities for economic advancement and their ability to leave.
The ideas put forth about providing for the rule of law and making better opportunities for entrepreneurs are great, but Tamara Winter loses all credibility the second she brings up the IMF and the World Bank as "legitimate stakeholders" in the process of trying to make this scenario less dystopian. They have a long history of using their financial leverage to encourage exactly the sort of dystopian abuses that we're trying to avoid here. (Just look at the World Bank's role in the water privatization fiasco in Cochabamba, Bolivia, for one of the best-known examples.)
On the post: Here Comes The Splinternet: How The EU Is Helping Break Apart The Internet
Re: Re: Re:
Time to Godwin: 22 comments. Not the fastest I've seen on here, but still pretty impressive...
On the post: What If Google And Facebook Admitted That All This Ad Targeting Really Doesn't Work That Well?
Not only does "all this ad targeting really not work that well," it's actually actively counterproductive. Any discussion about targeted advertising should include the principles laid out in the 2013 article Targeted Advertising Considered Harmful, which delves into the psychological reasons why when a person notices they're being targeted by a "relevant" ad, they become less inclined, rather than more, to follow it.
On the post: Australian Prosecutors Trying To Throw Reporters In Jail For Accurately Reporting On Cardinal George Pell's Conviction
Re: Re:
Wow, really?
Australia is weird!
On the post: Enough MEPs Say They Mistakenly Voted For Articles 11 & 13 That The Vote Should Have Flipped; EU Parliament Says Too Bad
Re: Re: Re: Re:
This has nothing to do with "governments restricting people's freedoms," and everything to do with technological progress. Radio-controlled aircraft have existed for a long time, but it's only recently that their range and agility are increasing to the point where they could reliably 1) be a credible threat to aircraft and 2) be deployed as such with a reasonable expectation that the person doing so could avoid being caught.
Plenty of things "exist for a long time" before they really take off. Karl Benz invented the automobile almost a quarter-century before the Model T Ford made them mainstream, to give just one obvious example. But once the right change occurs, a product can explode from obscurity to ubiquity practically overnight. (Look up a book called The Tipping Point for some good discussion into how this all works.)
On the post: Enough MEPs Say They Mistakenly Voted For Articles 11 & 13 That The Vote Should Have Flipped; EU Parliament Says Too Bad
Re: Re: Re: Re:
No, because it's not about willingness; it's about convenience.
There are several orders of magnitude more people who would be willing to bring down a plane, (or even to simply present a credible threat of being able to do so, for purposes of extortion, terror, or purely for the lulz,) than people who have the capability to actually do so. To put it simply, if drones reach a point where 1) they're as easy to obtain as guns and 2) they're capable of reliably attacking a jet engine... then it's hard to escape the conclusion that that, in the absence of reliable defensive technology, (which does not currently exist,) plane-killings will become approximately as common as mass shootings are today. And condition #1 has already been satisfied.
On the post: New York City Apartment Residents Sue Landlord Over New Smart Locks [Updated]
Remember, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
On the post: Thomas Goolnik Again Convinces Google To Forget Our Story About Thomas Goolnik Getting Google To Forget Our Story About Thomas Goolnik
Re: Re: Re:
Agreed. This is an excellent indication of why the passive voice is so insidious. Phrased properly in active voice, it's the Right To Force Others To Forget About You.
On the post: Thomas Goolnik Again Convinces Google To Forget Our Story About Thomas Goolnik Getting Google To Forget Our Story About Thomas Goolnik
It's Thomas Goolnik all the way down...
On the post: Enough MEPs Say They Mistakenly Voted For Articles 11 & 13 That The Vote Should Have Flipped; EU Parliament Says Too Bad
Re: Re:
Depends on who you listen to. I heard one guy recently lay out a scarily plausible scenario in which the easy availability of small, cheap drones puts an end to commercial aviation entirely within the next 20-ish years, because of how ridiculously easy it will become for any bad actor anywhere to use one to create a "bird strike".
If we don't come up with a good, solid countermeasure to this, trains (or Hyperloops!) may well be the future of transportation.
On the post: Enough MEPs Say They Mistakenly Voted For Articles 11 & 13 That The Vote Should Have Flipped; EU Parliament Says Too Bad
Re: Re: Re: Blocking won't work
Up until now, this has been true, but with the new regime I'm not so sure. I could see a case being made for the notion that knowingly, deliberately introducing legal liability to a site where none existed before does real, actionable damage.
On the post: RIAA Continues Its Legal War To Turn ISPs Into The Copyright Police: Sues Charter Communications
Re:
No thanks, I'd prefer to help save it. Why? Because I'm one of the idiots who lives in the world!
On the post: New Zealand Censors Declare Christchurch Shooting Footage Illegal; Start Rounding Up Violators
Re: Re: Re: Re:
OK, that makes more sense.
On the post: RIAA Continues Its Legal War To Turn ISPs Into The Copyright Police: Sues Charter Communications
In this corner, the RIAA. In this corner, a cable company ISP. The RIAA brings a very bad argument, but if they succeed it could lead to judicial review invalidating a part of the DMCA!
This is one of those "I really have no idea which side to root for" cases...
On the post: EU Puts An End To The Open Internet: Link Taxes And Filters Approved By Just 5 Votes
Re: It appears...
That seems to be a somewhat overbroad statement, considering the widespread existence of shopping malls and similar setups...
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