Here at Stanford, where CS classes account for more than half of all cheating incidents, we've been using a system like this for a couple of years. Apparently, rather than comparing source code, it actually compares object code so that it can detect people who change variable names and so on. The theory is that no two people should actually write code which compiles to the exact same object code, no matter how similar their algorithms, unless they really are cheating.
The concept that your rights are inaliable. Nobody can take them away, you can't sign them away or agree not to excercise them.
Um, no. Ever hear of a non-disclosure agreement? A right being inalienable means that noone else can take it way; with many (although not all) rights, you can agree not to exercise it and, yes, expect to have that agreement enforced..
Yes! Good! Google finds credit card numbers which are publicly available to anyone who can find them! It should do that.
If someone's credit card number is accessible on the internet then search engines should be finding it, because the baddies already can. Security through obscurity doesn't work; if someones broadcasting credit card numbers over the internet, this will telling you who's doing it and what numbers are insecure. The next step is for MasterCard, Visa, et. al. to start searching google for their credit card numbers and contacting people whose numbers are compromised (oh year, and cancelling the accounts of people stupid enough to do that).
The problem with rating systems, as we have them now, is that they don't try to provide information. Instead they provide value judgements. They say "in the opinion of a faceless beaurocrat who you've never met, this is appropriate for kids over ten."
Providing information is a little mark saying "this is violent," or even better "has simulated bloodshed" or "realistic bloodshed" or "disembowled kitty cats" and so on. Yes, there's some judgement involved, but the information provided should be as factual as possible. Then parents can actually make an informed decision, rather than relying on some government-imposed generic opinion about how old kids need to be for it to be appropriate-as if every kid matured at the same rate.
...as you might think. You may think the judge's decision is bad, but the idea of the judge making a different decision from the arbitrator isn't. The UDRP is only supposed to resolve really obvious cases, it's not a full blown trademark decision. So in theory, a lot of cases might be okay under the UDRP but not okay to a US judge. (Of course, this isn't how it's worked in practice)
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the run-off is that it didn't matter. Contestants were eliminated in the same order as the votes in the first round. It could have been a plurality vote and it wouldn't have mattered.
That sounds fair. If they did indeed trade Metallica music (and it's not hard to get a list of people who do), then this seems pretty fair, not to mention official Napster policy. No money, no greed, just prevent illegal trading.
And of course their is such a thing as the "Right to make a profit". This is the whole point of capitalism, and without it we would still be stuck in the Dark Ages.
No no. There is a right to try to make a profit. If you can't (because your product is shoddy, because you don't advertise enough, because you're a bad buisnessperson, or whatever) then the whole point of capitalism is that your business will fail. Capitalism works because consumers have a choice> about what produce to use, and can choose the best one. Then that whole invisible hand thing comes in, and the lesser products are weeded out. It's people who claim a right to profit that lead to many of the corporate restraints we have now; you have a right to fail and a right to try—not a right to profit.
I can't speak for everyone, but, as much as I dislike spam, I don't think it's really possible (or moral) to ban it. However, sending unsolicited messages to someone who asked you to stop is called harrassment. Sending messages from a false e-mail address is called fraud. I think everyone at/. can agree that fraud and harrassment are beyond the bounds of free speech. Those are standards that hold across content borders; everyone has a right to say what they want, but not when it infringes on someone else. Someone's porn in a little corner of the net doesn't infringe on someone; if you go there, you choose to go there (and yes, a site which trickes you into doing it should prosecutable). If you mail unsolicited porn to minors, then I'm happy to "censor" you.
There's one key difference between this and what is happening in most places with filters. Your town only has filters on some computers. That's fine; it means that is parents want then their children can be limited, but there is also access to the full web without any censorship. What your town is doing is making it easier for the parent and child to make decisions, rather than simply making them.
I realize, by the way, that there are specific implementational issues people will worry about. Why aren't the lists open, will the school really let kids use the adult machines for research, and so on. But that doesn't change the fact that the idea is good, even if it can be messed up by a bad job implementing it.
Ah, but you can control who you tell it to. Yes, when someone asks you your birthday, you tell it to them, but that has more to do with the people who ask. Would you really tell it to a random person on the street? What if you were in a bad part of town and a large guy with a gun asked you? Is that someone you would want to know your birthday?
The fact that you have not yet refused to tell someone your birthday doesn't mean you don't reserve the right to do so in the future. This is even more true with other data. Many people don't want to give their phone number to people unecessarily, some for very legitimate reasons. We have unlisted numbers for just that reason.
To go back to your comment, you say you like presents. Well, plenty of people don't like to be reminded of their birthday; those people are perfectly justified to keep their birthday a secret. It is a violation of privacy if anyone, not just your friends, but that guy in the bushes with binoculars can access anything about you. Information about you is yours and you should retain control of it.
I would submit that hate speech could be defined as the advocation of the annhilation, forced separation, or intimidation of any group of people based on beliefs, genetic factors, physical or mental prowess, or anything else other than the objective merits of the individuals within that group. Does anyone agree or disagree?
Hmm. So that would include your post (forced separation...of any goup...based on belief). That's the problem; anything reasonable you apply to "them" applies to "us" too. It won't kill people to have to click away from a hate site they accidentally find.
Noone thinks that you should have to pay royalties to a company for having black hair. However if a company spends millions of dollars researching a gene and figuring out what it does (and yes, it takes that much) then they have a right to make that money back. Noone will develop a treatment or product (like a cancer cure) based on that unless they publish, and they have no reason to publish unless they get a royalty. The choice isn't cheap treatment or expensive treatment, it's no treatment or expensive treatment.
There's a problem with saying the credit card company shouldn't issue cards to compulsive gamblers. Then what do those people do? It's basicly impossible to go through modern life without a credit card, and if AmEx decided not to give a card to a compulsive gambler who still had a good credit rating, you can be AmEx would be in court for descrimination. Frankly, I don't want my credit card "protecting" me by telling me what I can and can't spend my money on. People should take the money, spend it how they like, and be responsible for it. Period.
This probably isn't worth worrying about. Most class actions end up hurting the company and enriching the lawyers, but doing nothing for the consumers. Remember the big monitor lawsuit, where all the major monitor companies apologized for including the black border as part of the monitor size? I think I have a five dollar rebate for the purchase of my next monitor lying around somewhere. That's not an atypical settlement; if this case gets won, it will just be with a similar settlement. (Actually persuing a class action lawsuit into the court room is virtually unheard of.)
He got his site shut-down by harassing a 17 year old girl, which shortly after being shutdown, Ken sold for a reported $125,000 to Kroll. Okay, it's a minor thing, but doesn't this sentence say that Ken sold a 17 year old girl?
This is definately a good decision. Lockheed wants NSI to become the judge for trademark infringement; they want NSI to take alleged cases of infringement and decide whether or not it really is with the knowledge that the company trying to block the name probably has more legal and financial power and can sue for damages if a court disagrees. The courts should have control over the decision all the way, not some private organization. Especially not NSI.
Actually, animal and plant genes are identical. In fact, the genes of all multi-cellular creatures and some single cellular ones are all completely interchangeable. Insulin, for example, is now made by transplanting the human gene for insulin into a yeast.
Sure, and the kid who's building a bomb in his basement will be totally honest about the answers. If the questions are all like the "gun access" question then they're pretty face apparent.
Although I realize it may not be their intent, I get the impression that at a lot of schools this would replace any attempt to deal with the causes of the problem. By the time a student is thinking of doing something like that, that student is already the first casualty.
Maybe I'm missing something, but the FTC seems to be thinking it terms of selling a child's address along with marketing data, rather than just reporting demographics to marketers. I don't think prevening demographics collection was the intent of the FTC. Regardless, I'm still opposed to this. Although it's not as bad as most examples, it still takes responsibility over children away from their parents and gives it to the rest of the world. If a parent gives their child unsupervised access to the internet then they should trust their child enough to either make those judgements on their own or ask a parent's permission on their own ("this is important Timmy. Never give anyone on the internet your address or phone number with out Mommy's permission").
I'm normally the first person to defend free speech, but I would put malicious, knowing falsehood outside of the protected area. I see no constitutional right to damage someone's character with attacks known to be untrue. If he had believed his accusations to be true I would consider it protected, but he knew that he was misleading people in a way damaging to the teacher's reputation. A $500 penalty seems perfectly reasonable.
It's unfortunate that we need an opt-out system where we have to actively remove ourselves, but it's a worthwhile sacrifice to avoid the potential constitutional issues. Personally, I have no problem with sending one e-mail to get rid of spam forever.
I hate to say it, but there is a justification for the tax. After all, why should people who aren't using modems, or are using them less, pay for upgrades the phone company makes only for the modem users. It's unfortunate, but modem users should pay their fair share, and if they use the lines more, they should pay for that usage.
Don't forget that anything which has been available for a year is no longer patentable (at least in theory). Most of open source is protected by that. Not all, unfotunately, but most.
As far as I know, everyone feels misrepresented by movies. Psychiatrists complain that all movie psychiatrists are unethical; so do lawyers (instert snide comment about accuracy here). Hollywood isn't about accuracy and fair protrayals, it's about excitement and stereotypes. The movie-geek works because an audience can see a geek in a movie and instantly figure out exactly what kind of person that character will be. The same thing happens to everyone in a mainstream movie. It won't get better because reality is confusing and complicated, and that doesn't work in a movie which has to be two hours of non-stop excitement.
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Here at Stanford, where CS classes account for more than half of all cheating incidents, we've been using a system like this for a couple of years. Apparently, rather than comparing source code, it actually compares object code so that it can detect people who change variable names and so on. The theory is that no two people should actually write code which compiles to the exact same object code, no matter how similar their algorithms, unless they really are cheating.
Um, no. Ever hear of a non-disclosure agreement? A right being inalienable means that noone else can take it way; with many (although not all) rights, you can agree not to exercise it and, yes, expect to have that agreement enforced..
Yes! Good! Google finds credit card numbers which are publicly available to anyone who can find them! It should do that.
If someone's credit card number is accessible on the internet then search engines should be finding it, because the baddies already can. Security through obscurity doesn't work; if someones broadcasting credit card numbers over the internet, this will telling you who's doing it and what numbers are insecure. The next step is for MasterCard, Visa, et. al. to start searching google for their credit card numbers and contacting people whose numbers are compromised (oh year, and cancelling the accounts of people stupid enough to do that).
The problem with rating systems, as we have them now, is that they don't try to provide information. Instead they provide value judgements. They say "in the opinion of a faceless beaurocrat who you've never met, this is appropriate for kids over ten."
Providing information is a little mark saying "this is violent," or even better "has simulated bloodshed" or "realistic bloodshed" or "disembowled kitty cats" and so on. Yes, there's some judgement involved, but the information provided should be as factual as possible. Then parents can actually make an informed decision, rather than relying on some government-imposed generic opinion about how old kids need to be for it to be appropriate-as if every kid matured at the same rate.
...as you might think. You may think the judge's decision is bad, but the idea of the judge making a different decision from the arbitrator isn't. The UDRP is only supposed to resolve really obvious cases, it's not a full blown trademark decision. So in theory, a lot of cases might be okay under the UDRP but not okay to a US judge. (Of course, this isn't how it's worked in practice)
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the run-off is that it didn't matter. Contestants were eliminated in the same order as the votes in the first round. It could have been a plurality vote and it wouldn't have mattered.
That sounds fair. If they did indeed trade Metallica music (and it's not hard to get a list of people who do), then this seems pretty fair, not to mention official Napster policy. No money, no greed, just prevent illegal trading.
No no. There is a right to try to make a profit. If you can't (because your product is shoddy, because you don't advertise enough, because you're a bad buisnessperson, or whatever) then the whole point of capitalism is that your business will fail. Capitalism works because consumers have a choice> about what produce to use, and can choose the best one. Then that whole invisible hand thing comes in, and the lesser products are weeded out. It's people who claim a right to profit that lead to many of the corporate restraints we have now; you have a right to fail and a right to try—not a right to profit.
I can't speak for everyone, but, as much as I dislike spam, I don't think it's really possible (or moral) to ban it. However, sending unsolicited messages to someone who asked you to stop is called harrassment. Sending messages from a false e-mail address is called fraud. I think everyone at /. can agree that fraud and harrassment are beyond the bounds of free speech. Those are standards that hold across content borders; everyone has a right to say what they want, but not when it infringes on someone else. Someone's porn in a little corner of the net doesn't infringe on someone; if you go there, you choose to go there (and yes, a site which trickes you into doing it should prosecutable). If you mail unsolicited porn to minors, then I'm happy to "censor" you.
I realize, by the way, that there are specific implementational issues people will worry about. Why aren't the lists open, will the school really let kids use the adult machines for research, and so on. But that doesn't change the fact that the idea is good, even if it can be messed up by a bad job implementing it.
The fact that you have not yet refused to tell someone your birthday doesn't mean you don't reserve the right to do so in the future. This is even more true with other data. Many people don't want to give their phone number to people unecessarily, some for very legitimate reasons. We have unlisted numbers for just that reason.
To go back to your comment, you say you like presents. Well, plenty of people don't like to be reminded of their birthday; those people are perfectly justified to keep their birthday a secret. It is a violation of privacy if anyone, not just your friends, but that guy in the bushes with binoculars can access anything about you. Information about you is yours and you should retain control of it.
Hmm. So that would include your post (forced separation...of any goup...based on belief). That's the problem; anything reasonable you apply to "them" applies to "us" too. It won't kill people to have to click away from a hate site they accidentally find.
Noone thinks that you should have to pay royalties to a company for having black hair. However if a company spends millions of dollars researching a gene and figuring out what it does (and yes, it takes that much) then they have a right to make that money back. Noone will develop a treatment or product (like a cancer cure) based on that unless they publish, and they have no reason to publish unless they get a royalty. The choice isn't cheap treatment or expensive treatment, it's no treatment or expensive treatment.
There's a problem with saying the credit card company shouldn't issue cards to compulsive gamblers. Then what do those people do? It's basicly impossible to go through modern life without a credit card, and if AmEx decided not to give a card to a compulsive gambler who still had a good credit rating, you can be AmEx would be in court for descrimination. Frankly, I don't want my credit card "protecting" me by telling me what I can and can't spend my money on. People should take the money, spend it how they like, and be responsible for it. Period.
This probably isn't worth worrying about. Most class actions end up hurting the company and enriching the lawyers, but doing nothing for the consumers. Remember the big monitor lawsuit, where all the major monitor companies apologized for including the black border as part of the monitor size? I think I have a five dollar rebate for the purchase of my next monitor lying around somewhere. That's not an atypical settlement; if this case gets won, it will just be with a similar settlement. (Actually persuing a class action lawsuit into the court room is virtually unheard of.)
He got his site shut-down by harassing a 17 year old girl, which shortly after being shutdown, Ken sold for a reported $125,000 to Kroll. Okay, it's a minor thing, but doesn't this sentence say that Ken sold a 17 year old girl?
This is definately a good decision. Lockheed wants NSI to become the judge for trademark infringement; they want NSI to take alleged cases of infringement and decide whether or not it really is with the knowledge that the company trying to block the name probably has more legal and financial power and can sue for damages if a court disagrees. The courts should have control over the decision all the way, not some private organization. Especially not NSI.
Actually, animal and plant genes are identical. In fact, the genes of all multi-cellular creatures and some single cellular ones are all completely interchangeable. Insulin, for example, is now made by transplanting the human gene for insulin into a yeast.
Sure, and the kid who's building a bomb in his basement will be totally honest about the answers. If the questions are all like the "gun access" question then they're pretty face apparent.
Although I realize it may not be their intent, I get the impression that at a lot of schools this would replace any attempt to deal with the causes of the problem. By the time a student is thinking of doing something like that, that student is already the first casualty.
Maybe I'm missing something, but the FTC seems to be thinking it terms of selling a child's address along with marketing data, rather than just reporting demographics to marketers. I don't think prevening demographics collection was the intent of the FTC. Regardless, I'm still opposed to this. Although it's not as bad as most examples, it still takes responsibility over children away from their parents and gives it to the rest of the world. If a parent gives their child unsupervised access to the internet then they should trust their child enough to either make those judgements on their own or ask a parent's permission on their own ("this is important Timmy. Never give anyone on the internet your address or phone number with out Mommy's permission").
I'm normally the first person to defend free speech, but I would put malicious, knowing falsehood outside of the protected area. I see no constitutional right to damage someone's character with attacks known to be untrue. If he had believed his accusations to be true I would consider it protected, but he knew that he was misleading people in a way damaging to the teacher's reputation. A $500 penalty seems perfectly reasonable.
It's unfortunate that we need an opt-out system where we have to actively remove ourselves, but it's a worthwhile sacrifice to avoid the potential constitutional issues. Personally, I have no problem with sending one e-mail to get rid of spam forever.
I hate to say it, but there is a justification for the tax. After all, why should people who aren't using modems, or are using them less, pay for upgrades the phone company makes only for the modem users. It's unfortunate, but modem users should pay their fair share, and if they use the lines more, they should pay for that usage.
Don't forget that anything which has been available for a year is no longer patentable (at least in theory). Most of open source is protected by that. Not all, unfotunately, but most.
As far as I know, everyone feels misrepresented by movies. Psychiatrists complain that all movie psychiatrists are unethical; so do lawyers (instert snide comment about accuracy here). Hollywood isn't about accuracy and fair protrayals, it's about excitement and stereotypes. The movie-geek works because an audience can see a geek in a movie and instantly figure out exactly what kind of person that character will be. The same thing happens to everyone in a mainstream movie. It won't get better because reality is confusing and complicated, and that doesn't work in a movie which has to be two hours of non-stop excitement.