Domain: boingboing.net
Stories and comments across the archive that link to boingboing.net.
Comments · 2,019
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Re:Soo....
so they buy a 500gb drive, hook it up to record for a few minutes until full, send to the court explaining this is x minutes of data from ram, we will need you to provide us with Petabox so that we may get a full hour of data for you
:) IANAL, I don't think you have to pull the ip#s out for them; and if it is in machine language they will just have to get their own interpreter. -
FCC has been obsoleted by technology
However, if broadcast spectrum was just a free-for-all of everyone doing whatever the hell they wanted, it would be chaos, since people would be free interfere like hell with each other's uses without there being a particularly clear cut way of determining what's okay and what isn't. Thus, the broadcast spectrum is more or less owned by the government who then leases out the spectrum under various conditions.
except that this is TOTALLY WRONG.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_spectrum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software-defined_radi o
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_radio
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spread_spectrum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Radio
http://www.greaterdemocracy.org/OpenSpectrumFAQ.ht ml
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/02/14/lessig_explai ns_open.html
http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/003708.shtml
http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2003/03/12 /spectrum/index.html
To enable signals to get through intact, the government has to divide the spectrum of frequencies into bands, which it then licenses to particular broadcasters. NBC has a license and you don't.
Thus, NBC gets to bathe you in "Friends," followed by a very special "Scrubs," and you get to sit passively on your couch. It's an asymmetric bargain that dominates our cultural, economic and political lives -- only the rich and famous can deliver their messages -- and it's all based on the fact that radio waves in their untamed habitat interfere with one another.
Except they don't.
"Interference is a metaphor that paints an old limitation of technology as a fact of nature." So says David P. Reed, electrical engineer, computer scientist, and one of the architects of the Internet. If he's right, then spectrum isn't a resource to be divvied up like gold or parceled out like land. It's not even a set of pipes with their capacity limited by how wide they are or an aerial highway with white lines to maintain order.
Spectrum is more like the colors of the rainbow, including the ones our eyes can't discern. Says Reed: "There's no scarcity of spectrum any more than there's a scarcity of the color green. We could instantly hook up to the Internet everyone who can pick up a radio signal, and they could pump through as many bits as they could ever want. We'd go from an economy of digital scarcity to an economy of digital abundance."
So throw out the rulebook on what should be regulated and what shouldn't. Rethink completely the role of the Federal Communications Commission in deciding who gets allocated what. If Reed is right, nearly a century of government policy on how to best administer the airwaves needs to be reconfigured, from the bottom up. -
$200 Billion
Unfortunately, the money was already spent. No new Internet for you. Make do with your old tubes. Nothing to see here - the bridge goes to nowhere. Leave Senator Stevens alone. Sorry.
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Re:Dropping seeds all over the universe?
As if anyone could deny it! This episode resolved the ambiguity at last.
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Selling out the little guy
> Yahoo Edges out Google in Customer Satisfaction
Of course. The Chinese Government is extremely satisfied with Yahoo. Unfortunately for Yahoo, Congress has just announced they're going to investigate their compliancy with the Chinese Government. Treason is still a crime, Jerry Wang.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/congress-inv estigate-yahoo-involvement-china/story.aspx?guid=% 7B1286B45B-AE3F-426B-B832-1F5E35C677D0%7D
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/07/31/yahoo_and_jai led_jou.html -
Someone got $3000 bill for using iPhone in Europe
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Re:J&J might not want to push this
The Canadian Red Cross is also wasting time and lawyer money chasing after video game makers for using it as a symbol for health. I know that they are all separate entities, but there has to be a common thread here. It sounds to me like the the whole gang are being a bunch of douchebags.
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Re:I understand...
It's not in this article, but it's been going on for many years now. The Red Cross, in it's various countries, has been actively enforcing that the Red Cross symbol is not used by anybody for anything.
Here's an article about where the Canadian Red Cross complained about the symbol being used on health kits in video games: http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/12/canadian_red_ crosss_.html -
Red Cross' own fault?
Just to put a different perspective on things:
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/11/canadian_red_ cross_v.html
J&J could just be launching a pre-emptive strike, I support the Red Cross' work but have absolutely no sympathy for them here, what goes around comes around I suppose, I'd argue they brought this upon themselves when trying to aggressively suggest they have the sole rights to the red cross symbol, something which as an Englishman, who's flag is a red cross I find rather offensive. -
Re:Here's the part you're missing
Right! Or some of these: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/07/30/list_of_50_b
e st_movi.html -
Re:High-Speed TOR Network
That claim about colluding nodes in DC was false.
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A dupe? Or is there a regular market in these?
...Enigma machines were offered in 2003?, and offered on eBay in 2006."
Is there a regular market in these things? Or is this the same machine going through cycles of spiffing up and reselling? Either way, I'm not sure every Enigma that goes on sale is "stuff that matters." -
Re:But why ....
I swear that's Thatcher
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Re:So what?What has he done to help MPs get re-elected? He's almost taking credit for preventing re-election of an MP, specifically Sam Bulte:
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/index.php?option=com_co ntent&task=view&id=1058&Itemid=89&nsub
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/index.php?option=com_co ntent&task=view&id=1080
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/19/hollywoods_ca nadian_.html -
Re:Fair use
There are two aspects where the law applies directly to this... that I can think of.
First of all, is the performance. By performing a piece of work, he exposes himself to the performance side of copyright law. Thankfully, this is entirely on his side. If he performs a piece of work without modifying or changing it, and acknowledges the copyright holder, he's entirely in his own right. Public performance without modification is completely legal - hence cover bands. Once you change a part, you create a derivative or modification. At that point you're no longer under fair use -
If you change the works, then suddenly require a licence from the copyright holder.
Now, there could be another aspect. Copyrighted music also has a print form. ie: on screen display and the guys website. If he's using substantial parts but minimal from the entirety - ie: licks - one could easily argue fair use because he's promoting the actual display in an educational stance in order to substantiate something (learning!)... BoingBoing recently ran a Disney mash-up that explains copyright and fair use... using Disney exerts.
There's a clear cut grey area with sheet music. You as a person can make a performing work, and copyright it (without registry!). If you were to listen to a song, learn it by ear (knowledge is not copyrightable), and then pen that song (as completely your own work) you would be the rights holder. Should it happen to sound fairly similar to another piece of work, that's their problem. In all likelihood there will be differences in the metre, key or vibrato. The degree that your rendition of a song differs from that of another copyrighted piece, however, is a case for court...
Correct me if im wrong please. I'm supposed to be doing the law conversion course in a few months!
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Re:command list (mirror)For example, so far they seem only to use the Trusted Computing to make their OS run on Apple hardware only.
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Re:LA has had these laws
Chicago too. Or at last they tried. http://www.boingboing.net/2005/05/27/chicagos_bea
n _sculpt.html NY is just so far behind. -
Re:Privacy != anonymity
For one thing, nebulous arguments about "government" like this are always weak. "Government" is rarely a single person or institution operating executively (and when it is, that's usually an abuse of the intended system of representation that needs to be fixed for a whole host of other reasons anyway).
Rarely? A single FBI agent can demand records with one of these, with no judicial oversight.
If this is still too nebulous, here are some numbers: "An internal FBI audit found that the bureau violated the rules more than 1000 times in an audit of 10% of its national investigations between 2002 and 2007. Over 20 of these involved requests by agents for information that US law did not permit them to have." Assuming the audit examined a random sampling of reuqests, that means there were ten thousand rule violations and two hundred illegal requests over that five-year period.
As long as we have a culture where both businesses and governments follow this basic principle (because they are required to by law and that law is effectively enforced),
...Business culture? AT&T volunteered to help the NSA spy on their customers. They even have a secret routing center of some sort just for this task. eBay goes out of their way to help law enforcement. Verizon hands over customer data to the NSA and outrageously tries to claim free speech protection to do so.
The government and its laws? Go read about the National Security Letters linked above, learn about the USA PATRIOT Act, read about the 2,176 secret warrants were issued in 2006,
...just for starters. The law itself authorizes most of these abuses.I actually have no problem with my ISP and the hosts at Slashdot keeping sufficient records to identify me in combination as the author of this post, as long as there are sufficient safeguards such as not releasing it without proper legal requirement to do so and only keeping it for a reasonable period of time.
As I hope you can see now, there aren't. One FBI agent can demand data from Slashdot under the authority of an NSL and can get your IP, then he can go over to your ISP and demand your name and address under another NSL. A third request under CALEA to your ISP or their upstream, and your every online move is being monitored for whatever he's looking for. And who knows how long businesses keep IP data around? There are currently no data retention laws in the US -- and if the government ever passes any, I assure you that they won't be to protect you by demanding businesses delete data after n months, they'll be to surveille you by demanding businesses keep data for at least n months. And if a businesses has it, and the government demands it, they have to yield it up.
In other words, the above means of identifying someone only works if all the parties involved are in countries where the law is compatible on these concerns.
Oh, you think being in Canada or the Netherlands or something is going to protect you from all this? That hole has been plugged, too.
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To Whomever Can Find TFA
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Re:Short-Sighted Bastards...Sucks that short-term politics and pet pork takes precedence over the future of humanity itself.
I believe Bruce Sterling put best when he said:I'll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people settling the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach. Nobody ever writes "Gobi Desert Opera" because, well, it's just kind of plonkingly obvious that there's no good reason to go there and live. It's ugly, it's inhospitable and there's no way to make it pay. Mars is just the same, really. We just romanticize it because it's so hard to reach.
Seriously, you should read this. -
Re:What is this "iPhone" thing you speak of,
I don't know, but it seems to have become a little bit smaller recently.
Apple uses big-handed model to "shrink" iPhone -
iPhone recently Shrunk
They also tweaked the iphone design to make it smaller.
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Re:Why here?
From the summary:
OK, story submitter here, blowing away my mod points by posting. (What are the odds of having mod points when a submission gets accepted? Ah well it felt like cheating somehow, modding down those I disgreed with... ahh, the power!!! *ahem*)> it would be interesting to see reasoned responses from the community
In that case why are you posting on Slashdot?I posted here because I'd had tangential down-thread discussions on this some months back. I'd noticed that whenever I suggested that basic physics rules out human colonisation without what Charlie Stross calls magic wands - hand-waving stuff about the singularity or speculative physics that fell off the back of a pre-print server - I got a lot of abuse and what seem like silly arguments ("but they said man could never fly!!" riiiight, so everything that's currently thought IMpossible, must actually be possible. Thanks for straightening that out).
Anyway someone and I had a ding-dong for 3 or 4 exchanges where it looked like there was an *actual* argument to be had, as opposed to simple assertions that I'm right, no you're not, yes I am. That was on a story that only touched tangentially onto the human colonisation thing; so I ended up saying "there's a debate to be had, this is the wrong story to have it on though - see you when someone posts something relevant". I reckon there's still signal amongst the noise on Slashdot. I'm probably wrong, but hey!! I'm a dreamer, so shoot me.
I'm sure I'd seen the "case for physics" argument against colonisation laid out elsewhere, possibly during a five year period when I read two or three popular astronomy magazines a month - Sky & Telescope, that sort of thing.) I've also got a pet hobby-horse theory about why generation ships can't work (or in fact anything that requires longer than a century, tops, in flight.) Hardware breaks, wears out, needs repairing & maintaining, and some stuff needs repairing. Now consider the reason the hundred billion dollar ISS is going to be charred scraps of molten steel and vapourised aluminium within twenty years at the very most: there's no way to do major engineering work on the fundamental structural elements in flight. Once they're up, they're up, and you better hope nothing bigger than, say, a small fridge breaks down - either you fix it in situ, or you take it out the airlock and bring a replacement unit in the same way.
I also found it interesting that there seemed to be a very knee-jerk, un-thought-through - dare I say "religious" - element to people's reactions to the idea. Sure enough, I see a lot of that already in the comments here. But from having spent much much too much time on
/. over the years, I know that if you browse at +2 and don't mind skipping a lot of repetitive crap and repetitious 'humour', there's usually SOMEONE who is at least familiar with the pros and cons of whatever's under discussion. If there ARE realistic (to me) reasons Charlie's wrong, I'd expect to find them here somewhere.So then when I saw the story on BoingBoing and read the article, I was already thinking "Great, perhaps I can get this posted to Slashdot and actually have that argument!"
Oh, and I like seeing my name in lights on the Slashdot front page once in a while. That and the girls, of course - wait! I think I hear them hammering on the front door right now. Gotta dash!!
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Re:My Prediction
And mothers of young kids of course : http://www.boingboing.net/2007/06/14/tsa_detains_
w oman_ov.html -
Re:That's really funny
Fonts aren't copyrightable, based on numerous court precedents (note: a font is distinct from a typeface: a font is a typeface with a style, weight, size applied)
Not 100% correct. The designs of the characters are not copyrightable in the US, sure, and this is by intent. You can clone any popular typeface by reverse engineering and sell it or give it away, no problem. However, there are two kinds of protection that computer fonts can and do enjoy:- Trademark protection -- a font's name can be trademarked, which is why many Helvetica clones are called anything but Helvetica.
- Copyright -- Yes, really. Not on the font design itself, because that's not allowed. What is the copyright on, then? You see, computer software vendors came up with the clever idea of packaging fonts (really typefaces) as software. The idea was pioneered by Adobe with PostScript Type I fonts -- the "font" (typeface) is a set of instructions for stroking and rendering, including hinting for rendering at low resolutions (something that most public domain and freeware fonts don't have).
Currently, the United States is the only country (according to certain partisans, anyway) which does not recognize the copyrightability of non-computer fonts. So your statements are even wrong on the international level. Many countries recognize font designs as artistic works.
Regardless, companies like Adobe and Microsoft can and do claim copyright on PostScript and TrueType fonts. The PostScript case is fairly clear, since PostScript is a complete programming language, and thus such fonts can be copyrighted as software. See also this BoingBoing post which actually cites precedent for Adobe and Emigre Fonts successfully suing another software vendor over computer fonts. In such cases, the rulings talk about "font software programs." -
Re:A universal maxim that applies here:IMHO, any person who thinks Bush is retarded needs a reality check. No other president has succeeded in subverting the entire system to his advantage and to the advantage of his cronies while we sat and mocked his english, his lack of knowledge etc. This man is robbing the US blind! He is a complete dictator and the people are powerless to stop him.
You believe, naively, that you can get the people to gather to stop this man. I think it may be too late for that:
Some info that may help clear up what I am getting at:- Bush has issued signing statements indicating that he can take full and absolute control over *any* and *all* branches of government in the time of catastrophe. What a catastrophe is, is not defined - this JFK episode could be defined by him as a catastrophe and he can take absolute control.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20 070509-12.html
Read through the document carefully - you can see that there is not a *single* mention of any role for congress or any elected representative except the President and the Vice President. Also note that the person second in command in times of "catastrophe" would be the head of the HLS. A scary thought.
You may claim that this can be fought on the ground by rallying the support of the people. Bush and his henchmen have already thought of this - which is why they have secret prisons, illegal wiretapping (to dig up dirt), private armies (to deal with dissenters) etc. - The government can send you to G Bay or any of the other secret prisons around the world without even *informing* law enforcement, your family or the judiciary. You have no recourse to any legal options. So if you are the one who is going to be trying to rally up the people to go against the government:
- They can try and destroy you because I am guessing that you may have something in your past which you don't want to be publicised.. and the intelligence community can find that information and use it against you.
- If you cannot be silenced like that, they can try the same technique against your family members / friends etc.
- If you still won't shut up, you can be moved to any of the secret prisons on a trumped up charge of terrorism. Actually, they don't need to charge you at all.
- Or they can arrange an accident.
- You may claim that even if the people by themselves are unable to stop it, the law enforcement
.. and perhaps the armed forces can stop the designs of Bush and his henchmen. However, Bush already has a very large private army (Blackwater being one part of this). Their numbers are not made public, but all we know is that they are very heavily armed, are authorized to use plain clothes, can use arms not available to the general public and they operate across the continental US (and other parts of the world). They were already used in the New Orleans in the aftermath of the Katrina disaster.
NOTE: Read this link below from the Blackwater website. It is an eye opener to realize where Blackwater sees itself in the scheme of things.
http://www.blackwaterusa.com/btw2005/archive/09050 5btw.html
Blackwater is not under *any* congressional review or supervision. They can be used against you and there is very little that you can do against it.
In New Orleans, Blackwater could enter in while the Red Cross couldn't:
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/09/katrina_autho rities_.html/ - If by some freak accident, they do allow you to rally up the kind of support you would need to take this on, and if you get to the point where an inquiry is ordered into the allegations raise by you and your friends, they can se
- Bush has issued signing statements indicating that he can take full and absolute control over *any* and *all* branches of government in the time of catastrophe. What a catastrophe is, is not defined - this JFK episode could be defined by him as a catastrophe and he can take absolute control.
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How many are using Vista?
Some stats on vista:
http://boingboing.net/stats/awstats.boingboing.net .osdetail.html - 4% (june 4, 2007)
http://w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp - 2.6% (may 2007)
http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php?date=2007 -05-30 - 1.91% (May 30, 2007)
Varies a bit by site, but even 4% is quite low... -
Re:Google operating system?
To be grammatically precise: "a cat" will be fed.
after it feeds 'a cat', will google then take a picture of it too?
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And don't forget the cost of one's rights.
Lossless would be more useful in the future—I might want to archive the recordings in a format I know I'll be able to play/transcode to something else later on (FLAC is ideal for this).
As for Apple's new offering, I wouldn't pay 3x for a difference that I personally would only maybe be able to detect in a back-to-back comparison that will never happen.
You're not just paying more for something you might not hear, you're also paying more for embedding personal data in the track. According to ArsTechnica Apple embeds customer information in the DRM-free tracks too. Customers didn't get that when they bought wax cylinders, records, or tapes, nor do customers get that when they buy CDs. Customers can easily resell all of the older media without divulging personal information (theirs or anyone else's). I doubt most people leveraging their first-sale right by selling their iTunes tracks want to distribute anyone's personal information along with it. But maybe Apple has this covered: as George Hotelling learned, it's harder to sell one's iTunes tracks than it needs to be.
And now it appears that the new iTunes version will not let you "convert the music you've bought -- even "DRM-free" songs sold at a 30 percent premium -- into MP3s that will play on your iPod" when you rip the CD with iTunes. I believe most MacOS X users manage their audio tracks exclusively with iTunes from ripping and uploading to a portable digital audio device, to searching and playback. I could do the same thing with Rhythmbox on a free software OS (minus the digital restrictions management and personal data embedding, of course) if I weren't so finicky about processing the ripped WAV file with other programs before I encode with FLAC.
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Bjork ReactTable at Coachella
The ReacTable has been used recently by Bjork at the Coachella festival.
There are lots of good videos linked from the BoingBoing article including one of Robert Moog interacting with a ReactTable.
The software is available so if you want one have a crack at building your own.
As best as I can tell the only innovation that Microsoft has added to their interactive table is the wireless interface support (Bluetooth etc). All the shape and "domino" tags recognition have been done before. It would be interesting to see how many of the developers of other interactive tables have been involved with this project.
Other interactive tables can be found here.
http://mtg.upf.es/reactable/?related
http://www.tangibletable.de/
http://www.ipsi.fraunhofer.de/ambiente/english/pro jekte/projekte/ineractable.html
http://www.jamespatten.com/audiopad/
http://tecfa.unige.ch/perso/staf/nova/blog/2005/01 /10/space-and-place-a-list-fo-interactive-tables/ -
Re:An important debating point
Here is a better link to some opposing viewpoints: Venezuelan media crackdown: the other POV
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Re:An important debating point
It seems there might be a bit more to this. Not even sure if anyone is still following this thread, but I would like to point out that the station that the poster above referenced was not shut down, per se, their license expired. It was not renewed by the Venezuelan government. I am not by any means intimate with the details of this, but the word on boingboing is that the station in question was responsible for encouraging a coup in 2002. In some people's opinion, the station not only called for a coup but staged footage to encourage violence.
That is illegal, one of the terms of their license is to abide by Venezuelan law.
I'm no fan of shutting down a dissenter's news station, but it seems quite reasonable, even by our own standards, to take measures against someone advocating armed overthrow of the government. Interestingly, the story you linked to doesn't mention the station's connection to the failed coup at all. -
Re:Kill Disney
Speaking of Disney and copyrights, I found a nice movie about copyrights made from small parts of Disney cartoons on BoingBoing, here.
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It's probably True
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Re:enough already!
So go do something worth mentioning at your school.
The students at University of California Santa Cruz (Go Slugs!) did the bit with post-its and got blag coverage just fine.
boingboing /.
digg
(and in the blue)
Parent should stop whining on /. and go actually DO SOMETHING!
--
But to spit on the very act of creation is cheap nihilism.
-Metafilter -
Re:Next step
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/28/bouncing_bre
a st_simu.html
here as well.... despite being a science article- it's probably NSFW. -
As long as you use PORN it should work.
and let the internet people reassemble those docs.
As long as Frauenhoffer give those people PORN in reward, previous litterature evidence shows that it would work very well. -
Re:best is to shift to picasaweb!
Specifically, I refuse to throw money at Yahoo! because of their actions in China. You know, the whole dissident who was jailed because of information provided by Yahoo!. I realize that Google is guilty of similar things both in China, and in countries like Brazil. But, thankfully, the Picassa interface is so bad, I wouldn't really consider using it anyhow. And, of course, I think that most countries (save for the United States) have better records on human rights than China does.
As far as every communications company cooperating, that's true to some extent. However, the level to which the company complies varies quite a bit. For instance, AT&T having a secret room is far different than Verizon attempting to not cooperate with the NSA. Maybe Verizon's got a secret room or two. But, for now, I'll find Verizon to be the lesser of two evils. -
Re:Sure
Like the Corn Field?
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Re:Glad to see it
It seems that today's judges are the looniest of all. This Judge is a plaintiff in a RIDICULOUS case, where he is suing a dry cleaner who lost his pants... To the tune of $67 Million. Simply amazing.
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Sounds like old (overblown) news to me!The funny thing is that there was another article that was on Slashdot a few months ago. It was titled "Google Aids Indian Goverment [sic] Censorship". Now in response, a Google spokesperson had said (quote via Boing Boing)
The reporting tool that was offered to authorities acts as a hotline to Google Inc., allowing the authorities to communicate requests for removal of content to us. The reporting tool does not give the police any privilege other than a speedier vehicle to notify Google Inc. about flagged users or communities. Authorities have no access to user data and can not remove content themselves by using this tool. The tool is not used to provide authorities with user information such as IP addresses. Google investigates reports received by the authorities via the reporting tool to determine whether a user or community has in fact violated orkut's terms of use. Authorities may use the reporting tool to ask Google to preserve user identifying information for a certain period of time (in anticipation of serving formal legal process for such information), and we will preserve the information accordingly. But no user data is turned over to the authorities absent valid legal process.
So what we seem to have now is another article that basically says the same thing as the first Slashdotted article. And from the Google statement, it appears that the "Priority Reporting Tool" is nothing but a glorified version of the "report abuse" link that every user gets on Orkut. Or did something change at Google in these past few weeks? Is this a new interpretation of the "valid legal process" that the Google spokesperson mentioned in her statement above?
(P.S: For all those of you who are wondering, Orkut is a (Google promoted) Friendster like social networking site that is very popular in the Indian subcontinent and in Brazil too. Recent surveys indicate that Orkut ranks 9th in terms of membership size, behind Myspace et. al.) -
Re:This sucks
You're hardly an ass, as you're one of few skeptics to admit that your original (hardly outlandish) accusations turned out to be wrong, which makes you more intellectually honest than many self-appointed DRM wonks. That group includes, most notably, Cory Doctorow, who blasted Jobs in a Salon article after "Thoughts on Music" was first posted on Apple's web site. When Jobs came through on his pledge, Doctorow was pleased but never saw fit to mention, "Hey, I probably went a bit overboard with that screed in Salon."
Unless...Cory, is that you? -
Re:The Essay?
Sounds like a nut job? To me, he sounds like a teen following the directions of the assignment and trying to determine where the limits lie. While not as well executed, Lee's essay has elements that are similar to sections of T.S. Elliot's The Wasteland, the drug advocacy of Alan Ginsberg, the poetry of Sylvia Plath. Literature is filled with dead people we now refer to as artists and legends who became thus because they explored the dark edges of humanity. Oedipus Rex is all about incest and patricide, the works of Shakespeare are filled with violence, sex, and death. So, take this background, a bright student, and an assignment that instructs the students not to censor themselves, and just what did you expect to come out? No poets get recognized for writing about happy puppies and cute kittens.
Add to that, the only text from the essay I've seen has been excerpted out of context. If I just give you this text "And ate the fellow, raw.", what would you think the poem was about? Perhaps a bit from Silence of the Lambs? A quote from Penthouse Letters? A story about eating octopus? Nope. That's from Emily Dickinson's "In the garden". Context is key to meaning.
Should the teacher have done something? Probably. Should someone have talked with Lee to find out if he really had violent tendencies? Sure. Should they have charged the kid with a crime for following, perhaps to the logical extreme, the explicit instructions on the assignment? Definitely not.
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Series of tubes is a good metaphor
I know people joke about the series of tubes thing, but it seems to me that was the least wrong part of Stevens' totally confused statement.
Politics aside, I don't really see the technical problem with comparing the Internet to a series of tubes. Tubes have a predictable bandwidth, i.e. you can only pump a certain amount of liquid or gas through them in a given time; and they have predictable latency, i.e. you push something in one end, it takes some time to come out the other end. So far, a lot like a network connection.
What the "series of tubes" doesn't capture is the packetized nature of the internet, or the complexities of routing, and other such details. However, at the abstraction level at which Stevens was talking, I'm not sure any of that matters. If you're talking about things like "clogging up the Internet", it's true that that can happen, for the same reasons that tubes can get clogged: if you try to put too much stuff in, at too many entry points, your backbone tubes are going to become a bottleneck. So the metaphor holds up in this case, and predicts behavior that you can see on actual networks.
The fact that the email problem Stevens was describing had nothing to do with Internet congestion is a separate issue, which doesn't actually detract from "series of tubes" as a metaphor for the Internet at a certain level of abstraction.
I'd love to hear reasons why I'm wrong. Other than "Ignore the facts, we must excoriate politicians who are against network neutrality!" Ridiculing a perfectly good metaphor just because you don't agree with the guy using it is not the way to sensible public policy, although I admit it does seem to be how politics is often conducted. -
While we're discussing terrible internet laws...I strongly urge any European slashdot denizens to contact their MEP(s) and advise them to vote for amendments to IPRED2 on the twenty-fifth of April. There's a BoingBoing post about it *here*, please don't let Cory's well-intentioned hyperbole sway you away from action.
The ammendments would-* LIMIT the scope of IPRED2 to true criminal enterprises, involving copyright piracy and trademark violations done on a commercial scale, with malice and the intention of earning a profit from the enterprise, rather than criminalizing all intellectual property infringement as the current directive does; * AVOID creating an unprecedented scope of secondary liability for Internet intermediaries, ICTs, software vendors and a range of legitimate business activity, by removing the words "aiding or abetting and inciting" from Article 3. * PROVIDE LEGAL CERTAINTY by adopting precise and appropriate definitions of "on a commercial scale" and "intentional infringement" in Article 2 as commercial activity done with the intent to earn a profit directly attributable to the infringing activity.
There's some more info *here*. -
Re:So what?
You'll have, what maybe one guy do this just to see if it works?
I can't be the only other person interested in doing this. Imagine hiding a properly labeled small homebuilt device near a busy interesection, which broadcasts obviously bogus alerts. Using off-the-shelf stuff, it sounds like it would be quite legal to build and deploy something like this as a stunt, and proof-of-concept. I'm most interested in building things than scaring people, of course (and yes I did post anonymously).
I recommend hiding the device, because if you put it in plain sight, it will be discovered easily. I also recommend properly labeling the device with something like these stickers, which can kinda specify that you're not building a bomb. -
Re:Well, in that case
According to the link in the update to the summary:
This is the message that appeared in the server log:
http://www.boingboing.net/ *DENIED* Banned combination phrase found: google, &safe=off
It looks like the "Banned combination phrase" was the following link, because of the search with SafeSearch set to "off":
Much more of Biskup on Boing Boing Link -
Re:political speech is our most protected speech
Now take a wild guess as to what phrases might appear on Boing-Boing that the city of Boston might want to block?
Goatse? Bong? Dildo? Shit? I dunno, your guess is as good as mine
Also, if you want to try something fun, look up reviews of the ATHF Movie. It got around 2-3 stars from most news papers.
"Most"? Are you sure about that?
-
Re:political speech is our most protected speech
Now take a wild guess as to what phrases might appear on Boing-Boing that the city of Boston might want to block?
Goatse? Bong? Dildo? Shit? I dunno, your guess is as good as mine
Also, if you want to try something fun, look up reviews of the ATHF Movie. It got around 2-3 stars from most news papers.
"Most"? Are you sure about that?
-
Re:political speech is our most protected speech
Now take a wild guess as to what phrases might appear on Boing-Boing that the city of Boston might want to block?
Goatse? Bong? Dildo? Shit? I dunno, your guess is as good as mine
Also, if you want to try something fun, look up reviews of the ATHF Movie. It got around 2-3 stars from most news papers.
"Most"? Are you sure about that?