Newspapers have audited circulation. Websites do not. For example, a newspaper may have an audited circulation of 23,000. That means if an article is deemed libelous, it's assumed the newspaper was delivered to 23,000 homes where people had a chance to read it.
With newspapers, it's assumed that people have read the libelous article. That's when other defences come into play such as fair comment, prior publication, etc.
Conclusion: Don't put counters on your website, and don't keep an IP log.
Newton got lucky and got a judge that actually has a basic understanding of the Internet. Most Canadian judges are as bad, if not worse, than American judges, when it comes to understanding the "Internets."
This is great news, however, because our libel laws in Canada are a lot more strict than the U.S. Any victory that broadens free speech is great news.
There are two issues for determination in this application. First, the defendant says that there is no evidence that any person followed the hyperlinks in question or read the words that are complained of. The plaintiffs have therefore failed to prove publication, one of the essential elements of the tort of defamation.
Second, in any event, the defendant argues that creating a hyperlink to words that are defamatory is not publication of those words.
No proof links were clicked:
Regardless, the issue in this case is not how accessible the website is, but rather, if anyone followed the hyperlinks posted on the p2pnet site. Without proof that persons other than the plaintiff visited the defendant's website, clicked on the hyperlinks, and read the articles complained of, there cannot be a finding of publication. As in Crookes v. Holloway, the plaintiffs have not adduced any evidence to support this claim.
Footnotes analogy:
I agree with the defendant that footnotes in an article are an apt analogy. Where a footnote leads a reader to further material, that does not make the author who provided the footnote a publisher of what the reader finds when the footnote is followed.
Not a libel loophole:
It is not my decision that hyperlinking can never make a person liable for the contents of the remote site. For example, if Mr. Newton had written "the truth about Wayne Crookes is found here" and "here" is hyperlinked to the specific defamatory words, this might lead to a different conclusion.
the PSP's built-in web browser is useless since it runs out of memory every 15 minutes (less when browsing more media-intensive sites) requiring the system to be restarted
The Wii has a similar problem. I found a streaming feed of Discovery Channel from Southeast Asia (so it was English with Chinese subtitles) and was happily watching Mythbusters for about 15-20 minutes until it just hung. Only solution was to quit to the Wii menu and reload everything again, and even that wouldn't work for very long.
I know that's not really what the Wii is meant for, but what's the point of having an Internet channel if it barely works? Oh yeah, Facebook doesn't work right, either, because the @#@Y$^$%%$^&$%#@ Flash player is out-of-date.
That slimline PC is looking pretty attractive, too bad I just blew all my disposal income on new tires. For my truck. A real truck. Not a Slashdot analogy truck/car.
And the PSP sounds like it could be awesome if Sony would tweak it. Maybe they want people to buy a PSP for games and a digital walkman for music...double the sales.
Good point. But I believe morning stars is another term used to describe angels (Isaiah 14:13-14 KJV):
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.
I agree it's good to have everyone running the same update for service and support purposes, but this update really doesn't seem to do anything important.
Instead of wasting time developing an update to block a handful of people from hacking their Wiis, why doesn't Nintendo put their time and development cycles into upgrading the freaking Internet channel flash player already. It's over a year and a half out of date and more and more flash videos are unplayable on the Wii as websites upgrade to the newest version. At least Youtube still works (mostly).
I know I can just go use my computer, but it's fun to watch Internet videos on my couch (and streaming TV shows) instead of having everyone huddle around the computer monitor.
After discovering The Music Of The Spheres, the pair of philosopher-scientists went on to form the ambient electronica duo P&K. After three moderately successful albums they split, citing creative differences. Pythagoras now teaches high school math in Wichita, KS. Kepler is currently in the Shady Acres Sanitarium.
That must be Will Wright's philosophy if he goes around saying stuff like this (from TFA):
Last month in an hour-long show on the National Geographic channel, the game's creator, Will Wright, spoke with biologists about "the breakthrough science that's revealing the secret genetic machinery that shapes all life in the game Spore."
And the author's writing style just hurts. Pretentious twit. And he keeps trying so hard to set up a false dichotomy between scientific and religious-minded players. Give it a rest. Stop trying to stir up controversy where there isn't any.
And "The Gonzo Scientist?" Hunter S. Thompson would shoot himself if he saw that. Oh wait...
I'm no coder, I didn't understand most of what the article says, but I got the gist of it:
In my opinion, hand reviewing this code and successfully finding this bug would require a great deal of skill and luck.
Our present toolset does not catch this bug.
First the good news; I think perhaps we have removed a good number of the low-hanging security vulnerabilities from many of our products, especially the newer code. The bad news is, we'll continue to have vulnerabilities because you cannot train a developer to hunt for unique bugs, and creating tools to find such bugs is also hard to do without incurring an incredible volume of false positives.
I'll be blunt; our fuzz tests did not catch this and they should have. So we are going back to our fuzzing algorithms and libraries to update them accordingly.
My opinion is Microsoft should have been taking the money they were getting from charging for tech support and put it into more testing and reviewing code.
I love how at the end of the article he turns it into an ad for Windows Vista.
Why hasn't this been caught in the 3,000 previous security issues patched for Windows? It seems like kind of a biggie. In that list you linked to (thank you) it's present in all service packs for XP (the only Windows I use).
I don't have any of the affected services enabled so it doesn't affect me, but I think a lot of that stuff is on or can be easily activated by default.
Again, why did it take so long to catch this one? The tinfoil hat backdoor NSA spook theories seem almost believable.
I find social networking a chore. I would much rather fire up a single-player game than tool around on Facebook. I really don't want to know that much about my friends, I'd rather spend time in person with them than rummage through their Facebook pages.
Gaming for me is an escape from the social activities of the day. I am very fortunate that my wife and I have the same taste in games (we were in a TFC clan together, a WoW guild and both enjoy RPGs and strategy games) so we have some common ground and can talk about the game we're both playing. I also play with my kids in the room, although I had to stop playing Half-Life 2 with my daughter sitting on my knee once I got to Ravenholm. Gaming time is escape time, but not cut-myself-off-from-the-family time.
I definitely can't put the same time into it that I used to, though. My family is why we quit WoW.
I don't view gaming time as social time (not even in WoW) because I am not interested in interacting with total strangers who shout or text obscene and idiotic comments at me.
I am 32 and have been playing games since I was 6.
I don't necessarily mean your government is corrupt today
It is
If people already routinely defacated on your doorstep, would you be apathetic about a government proposal to defecate on your doorstep?
Not a great analogy, but I know what you're saying. Although the government already defecated propaganda flyers all over my doorstep during the recent election campaign, I didn't get a say in the matter and my tax dollars paid for it. Lucky me.
And I said in my post that I didn't like the photo database proposal. Not sure how that can be interpreted as me being apathetic.
Like it or not, we're stuck with this sort of shit. Apathy combined with irrational fear in the wake of 9-11 laid the groundwork and our willingness to let the government grasp broad, vague and sweeping powers for itself allowed it to embed and expand over-the-top securitythink everywhere before anyone even knew it was there.
Backpedaling now would require a major shift in thinking in Western governments, massive public outcry, lobbyists with guts that aren't on the dole from some security system manufacturer and the willingness of ordinary people to make sacrifices, like refusing to travel by air and send the message to airlines and airport authorities and governments that this is not acceptable. That we're willing to sacrifice some things to hold on to our dignity and privacy.
I think it's a safe bet none of that will happen. We'll suck it up, grumble but get in line for the man with the rubber glove like everyone else, because it's just the cost of doing business. Then we'll go home and watch Jack Bauer fight terrorists.
The summary and the Register article make it sound like Interpol wants to keep a record of everyone with a passport. This does not appear to be the case, according to the original article which the Register ripped off and rewrote.
Senior figures want a system that lets immigration officials capture digital images of passengers and immediately cross-check them against a database of pictures of terror suspects, international criminals and fugitives.
Not that I like the scheme, but it doesn't sound quite as police-state as some might think. My picture is already taken all over the place if I go to the airport, this would take my picture and cross-check it with a database of known criminals, terrorists and fugitives.
Perfect BALANCE made Starcraft the best RTS ever made.
And in which patch was that finally achieved?
While I enjoyed Starcraft, personally I thought Myth II was the "best RTS ever made" because of its balance of finite units. You would be given a handful of seemingly pathetic units -- a few archers, a few berzerkers and one dwarf -- and yet the balance, and strategy, made it possible for you to hold off wave after wave of enemies.
Yup, I gave Spore a miss for the same reason (the phone-home activation nonsense), and also passed on Mass Effect and Tomb Raider: Anniversary. Bought Civ IV: Colonization on Steam instead. Apparently even the Steam version has SecuROM (which is idiotic when there's no effing disk to check) but so far it's playing a passive role and isn't running and services or checks or anything.
I forgot to mention another reason I hate SecuROM is because it doesn't play nice with Daemon Tools (on my system at least), which (before I reinstalled Windows) I used to run image files of game disks instead of having a pile of disks on the desk to swap around and for my daughter to grab, scratch, smear jam on and then insert backwards into the Wii.
I'm still a PC gamer. I made the decision this year to upgrade my PC one more time rather than buy an XBox 360 and I don't regret it. I can play Half-Life 2 (Episode 2), Titan Quest and Civ IV: Colonization, all great games that are not found anywhere else but the PC.
However, and take note of this, any lurking EA PR flacks, I have made the conscious decision to not buy several games with Securom and other irritating DRM (Bioshock, for example) because of the last time a game with it (Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory) left a bunch of crap lurking in my system that caused my DVD burner to just halt or fail for no reason when I was burning backup discs of my family photos and documents.
That's intrusive, irritating and unacceptable, EA. If you're going to put crap like that in your games, the installer must clearly state everything that is being installed on my system.
That said, I know Titan Quest has Securom but there are ways to remove it that don't require visiting dodgy Russian websites.
Slashdot Mirror
Newspapers have audited circulation. Websites do not. For example, a newspaper may have an audited circulation of 23,000. That means if an article is deemed libelous, it's assumed the newspaper was delivered to 23,000 homes where people had a chance to read it.
With newspapers, it's assumed that people have read the libelous article. That's when other defences come into play such as fair comment, prior publication, etc.
Conclusion: Don't put counters on your website, and don't keep an IP log.
Newton got lucky and got a judge that actually has a basic understanding of the Internet. Most Canadian judges are as bad, if not worse, than American judges, when it comes to understanding the "Internets." This is great news, however, because our libel laws in Canada are a lot more strict than the U.S. Any victory that broadens free speech is great news.
I always laugh when the Monster cables go on sale for 75 per cent off. My cheap Chinese HDMI cable works just fine, thanks.
There are two issues for determination in this application. First, the defendant says that there is no evidence that any person followed the hyperlinks in question or read the words that are complained of. The plaintiffs have therefore failed to prove publication, one of the essential elements of the tort of defamation.
Second, in any event, the defendant argues that creating a hyperlink to words that are defamatory is not publication of those words.
No proof links were clicked:
Regardless, the issue in this case is not how accessible the website is, but rather, if anyone followed the hyperlinks posted on the p2pnet site. Without proof that persons other than the plaintiff visited the defendant's website, clicked on the hyperlinks, and read the articles complained of, there cannot be a finding of publication. As in Crookes v. Holloway, the plaintiffs have not adduced any evidence to support this claim.
Footnotes analogy:
I agree with the defendant that footnotes in an article are an apt analogy. Where a footnote leads a reader to further material, that does not make the author who provided the footnote a publisher of what the reader finds when the footnote is followed.
Not a libel loophole:
It is not my decision that hyperlinking can never make a person liable for the contents of the remote site. For example, if Mr. Newton had written "the truth about Wayne Crookes is found here" and "here" is hyperlinked to the specific defamatory words, this might lead to a different conclusion.
1) I don't want to move my computer all the way across the house to do this.
2) I don't want to build another PC just for the express purpose of doing this.
3) Dirt Cheap is still at least a couple hundred bucks to build a box that does this. Not in my budget, not with two little kids.
4) I don't have any room in my living room to have a "media centre" box sitting around.
5) The $5 Wii Internet Channel was working well enough for watching streaming video until more websites started using the latest flash player version.
the PSP's built-in web browser is useless since it runs out of memory every 15 minutes (less when browsing more media-intensive sites) requiring the system to be restarted
The Wii has a similar problem. I found a streaming feed of Discovery Channel from Southeast Asia (so it was English with Chinese subtitles) and was happily watching Mythbusters for about 15-20 minutes until it just hung. Only solution was to quit to the Wii menu and reload everything again, and even that wouldn't work for very long.
I know that's not really what the Wii is meant for, but what's the point of having an Internet channel if it barely works? Oh yeah, Facebook doesn't work right, either, because the @#@Y$^$%%$^&$%#@ Flash player is out-of-date.
That slimline PC is looking pretty attractive, too bad I just blew all my disposal income on new tires. For my truck. A real truck. Not a Slashdot analogy truck/car.
And the PSP sounds like it could be awesome if Sony would tweak it. Maybe they want people to buy a PSP for games and a digital walkman for music...double the sales.
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.
And apparently there's a link to the Latin root of Lucifer.
Conclusion: Lucifer was thrown out of heaven for singing too loud and messing up the Music of the Spheres.
Wow, those comics are either some sophisticated post-modern irony or a big bag of suck. You made me look, though ;)
I agree it's good to have everyone running the same update for service and support purposes, but this update really doesn't seem to do anything important.
Instead of wasting time developing an update to block a handful of people from hacking their Wiis, why doesn't Nintendo put their time and development cycles into upgrading the freaking Internet channel flash player already. It's over a year and a half out of date and more and more flash videos are unplayable on the Wii as websites upgrade to the newest version. At least Youtube still works (mostly).
I know I can just go use my computer, but it's fun to watch Internet videos on my couch (and streaming TV shows) instead of having everyone huddle around the computer monitor.
This just shows that Pythagoras and Kepler were right!
After discovering The Music Of The Spheres, the pair of philosopher-scientists went on to form the ambient electronica duo P&K. After three moderately successful albums they split, citing creative differences. Pythagoras now teaches high school math in Wichita, KS. Kepler is currently in the Shady Acres Sanitarium.
Roll credits.
So the game was almost as big as an actual tennis court, because station wagons in those days doubled as aircraft carriers.
That must be Will Wright's philosophy if he goes around saying stuff like this (from TFA):
Last month in an hour-long show on the National Geographic channel, the game's creator, Will Wright, spoke with biologists about "the breakthrough science that's revealing the secret genetic machinery that shapes all life in the game Spore."
And the author's writing style just hurts. Pretentious twit. And he keeps trying so hard to set up a false dichotomy between scientific and religious-minded players. Give it a rest. Stop trying to stir up controversy where there isn't any.
And "The Gonzo Scientist?" Hunter S. Thompson would shoot himself if he saw that. Oh wait...
Mod this AC up, the link is an interesting read.
I'm no coder, I didn't understand most of what the article says, but I got the gist of it:
In my opinion, hand reviewing this code and successfully finding this bug would require a great deal of skill and luck.
Our present toolset does not catch this bug.
First the good news; I think perhaps we have removed a good number of the low-hanging security vulnerabilities from many of our products, especially the newer code. The bad news is, we'll continue to have vulnerabilities because you cannot train a developer to hunt for unique bugs, and creating tools to find such bugs is also hard to do without incurring an incredible volume of false positives.
I'll be blunt; our fuzz tests did not catch this and they should have. So we are going back to our fuzzing algorithms and libraries to update them accordingly.
My opinion is Microsoft should have been taking the money they were getting from charging for tech support and put it into more testing and reviewing code.
I love how at the end of the article he turns it into an ad for Windows Vista.
Why hasn't this been caught in the 3,000 previous security issues patched for Windows? It seems like kind of a biggie. In that list you linked to (thank you) it's present in all service packs for XP (the only Windows I use).
I don't have any of the affected services enabled so it doesn't affect me, but I think a lot of that stuff is on or can be easily activated by default.
Again, why did it take so long to catch this one? The tinfoil hat backdoor NSA spook theories seem almost believable.
I find social networking a chore. I would much rather fire up a single-player game than tool around on Facebook. I really don't want to know that much about my friends, I'd rather spend time in person with them than rummage through their Facebook pages.
Gaming for me is an escape from the social activities of the day. I am very fortunate that my wife and I have the same taste in games (we were in a TFC clan together, a WoW guild and both enjoy RPGs and strategy games) so we have some common ground and can talk about the game we're both playing. I also play with my kids in the room, although I had to stop playing Half-Life 2 with my daughter sitting on my knee once I got to Ravenholm. Gaming time is escape time, but not cut-myself-off-from-the-family time.
I definitely can't put the same time into it that I used to, though. My family is why we quit WoW.
I don't view gaming time as social time (not even in WoW) because I am not interested in interacting with total strangers who shout or text obscene and idiotic comments at me.
I am 32 and have been playing games since I was 6.
Cum with me if you want to live
Buh-bye karma!
I don't want to know how text messaging works with that.
I don't necessarily mean your government is corrupt today
It is
If people already routinely defacated on your doorstep, would you be apathetic about a government proposal to defecate on your doorstep?
Not a great analogy, but I know what you're saying. Although the government already defecated propaganda flyers all over my doorstep during the recent election campaign, I didn't get a say in the matter and my tax dollars paid for it. Lucky me.
And I said in my post that I didn't like the photo database proposal. Not sure how that can be interpreted as me being apathetic.
Like it or not, we're stuck with this sort of shit. Apathy combined with irrational fear in the wake of 9-11 laid the groundwork and our willingness to let the government grasp broad, vague and sweeping powers for itself allowed it to embed and expand over-the-top securitythink everywhere before anyone even knew it was there.
Backpedaling now would require a major shift in thinking in Western governments, massive public outcry, lobbyists with guts that aren't on the dole from some security system manufacturer and the willingness of ordinary people to make sacrifices, like refusing to travel by air and send the message to airlines and airport authorities and governments that this is not acceptable. That we're willing to sacrifice some things to hold on to our dignity and privacy.
I think it's a safe bet none of that will happen. We'll suck it up, grumble but get in line for the man with the rubber glove like everyone else, because it's just the cost of doing business. Then we'll go home and watch Jack Bauer fight terrorists.
The summary and the Register article make it sound like Interpol wants to keep a record of everyone with a passport. This does not appear to be the case, according to the original article which the Register ripped off and rewrote.
Senior figures want a system that lets immigration officials capture digital images of passengers and immediately cross-check them against a database of pictures of terror suspects, international criminals and fugitives.
Not that I like the scheme, but it doesn't sound quite as police-state as some might think. My picture is already taken all over the place if I go to the airport, this would take my picture and cross-check it with a database of known criminals, terrorists and fugitives.
That would be great, if their service providers would let them.
And IMOVIO sounds like something one would take to relieve constipation.
Perfect BALANCE made Starcraft the best RTS ever made.
And in which patch was that finally achieved?
While I enjoyed Starcraft, personally I thought Myth II was the "best RTS ever made" because of its balance of finite units. You would be given a handful of seemingly pathetic units -- a few archers, a few berzerkers and one dwarf -- and yet the balance, and strategy, made it possible for you to hold off wave after wave of enemies.
Right, forgot about that. Thanks for pointing that out.
But Half-Life 2 mods are only available on the PC, and I believe HL2 was designed initially as a PC title and then ported to consoles.
Why is it that games ported to consoles turn out great while games ported from consoles to PC usually run like ass (Overlord, Halo)?
Yup, I gave Spore a miss for the same reason (the phone-home activation nonsense), and also passed on Mass Effect and Tomb Raider: Anniversary. Bought Civ IV: Colonization on Steam instead. Apparently even the Steam version has SecuROM (which is idiotic when there's no effing disk to check) but so far it's playing a passive role and isn't running and services or checks or anything.
I forgot to mention another reason I hate SecuROM is because it doesn't play nice with Daemon Tools (on my system at least), which (before I reinstalled Windows) I used to run image files of game disks instead of having a pile of disks on the desk to swap around and for my daughter to grab, scratch, smear jam on and then insert backwards into the Wii.
I'm still a PC gamer. I made the decision this year to upgrade my PC one more time rather than buy an XBox 360 and I don't regret it. I can play Half-Life 2 (Episode 2), Titan Quest and Civ IV: Colonization, all great games that are not found anywhere else but the PC.
However, and take note of this, any lurking EA PR flacks, I have made the conscious decision to not buy several games with Securom and other irritating DRM (Bioshock, for example) because of the last time a game with it (Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory) left a bunch of crap lurking in my system that caused my DVD burner to just halt or fail for no reason when I was burning backup discs of my family photos and documents.
That's intrusive, irritating and unacceptable, EA. If you're going to put crap like that in your games, the installer must clearly state everything that is being installed on my system.
That said, I know Titan Quest has Securom but there are ways to remove it that don't require visiting dodgy Russian websites.
I'll ask her and see how she answers that one!