Yes, we've heard here on/. about how enlightened you Australians are when it comes to matters of technology and privacy. The rest of your diatribe is basically anti-pirate propaganda.
There seems to be a mentality that these vigilante actions are somehow acceptable because of the moral rightness of them.
Yes, and human history is full of vigilantes. History often shows that they were, in fact, right to stand up against their oppressors. I don't think they were too worried about how other people saw their actions. Moral rightness is a funny thing to argue. You obviously don't believe there is such a thing. I say that time will prove otherwise. The history of iTunes and the piracy that forced the media conglomerates to finally provide such a service shows that standing up for consumer rights works. Netflix is the beginning of the digital video revolution. These services would not exist without pirates; we'd still be renting DVDs or buying CDs instead.
Downloading digital copies of movies and games is not illegal in Canada (and probably other countries as well). Distribution is still a tort, not a crime. It is only recently in the USA that either has become a crime. It became a crime because the mega-rich media lobby convinced some clueless politicians that it was the only way to keep the gravy train going. And, because USians are about the stupidest people on Earth, the clueless politicians rammed the law down everyone's throat. Your analogy is not only not perfect, it's an example of the clueless idiocy that propagates myths about piracy.
If they thought to win over anyone in the FOSS camp with that kinda crap they must really be drinking some very special KoolAid.
And here I was thinking that the FOSS people were drinking the Kool-Aid. In 15 years, Linux has guaranteed its survival, nothing more. Continuing to rail against the company that did all those evil things and succeeded looks like FOSS people are immature and impulsive. Microsoft slights you or your precious OS, and you spout crap about Jonestown. When did Microsoft tell its people to commit suicide? From what I've heard, the Redmond campus is filled with people.
It's this constant overreaction by FOSS people that's intolerable. Listening to Stallman tell me what I can and can't do with a FOSS system is the best part. This video codec is evil, that one isn't. Playing games, even ones you own, is anti-FOSS. And, of course, Linux is only a temporary fix until those academics finally finish Hurd. Face it, Stallman has his crew drinking Kool-Aid a lot more than the Microsoft people do.
I jumped from Linux to Microsoft for one simple reason: I'm sick of dicking around with my computer. I don't feel all warm and fuzzy just because someone didn't get paid to write my e-mail client. I certainly don't feel all warm and fuzzy when my network driver gets upgraded and suddenly stops working. And, I really don't feel warm and fuzzy when I have to resort to the command line. Licensing issues aside, Windows costs less of my life then Linux ever did, and no one complains when I don't give them technical support. And, until I'm employed, I'm still "learning" Windows (for DMCA reasons, of course).
Yes, but so will their profits, and remember, no freedom is worth a drop in their profits.
The entire point is that their profits will go up, since piracy is such a horrible drain on their income. This is posturing, nothing more. Pride goeth before the fall.
Such technology certainly does make one worry about fishing expeditions. Now police work can be nothing more than sitting in a vehicle taking pictures of people and looking for criminals. And, of course, there's no need for warrants to do this sort of thing (I can think of at least a dozen lies off the top of my head once I have a "perp" in my sights). I'm glad I don't really look like anyone else.
This is a job for the FBI, CIA, NSA, DHS and whatever other scary three-letter organizations are down there. The military is about the last group on the list qualified to fight a cyberwar. They're useful for taking objectives and escorting in the smart guys. Expecting them to be the smart guys is just silly.
Sean Penn examines California in the early eighties, and a number of innocent people who spent a combined total of over 50 years in jail in the name of prosecuting "child pornography". It is an extremely disturbing movie. I can see why IMDb doesn't have it in their database.
So the fact that other countries are more oppressive is an excuse for governments to take away liberties? Fine, I'm not rotting in jail or anything like that, but I find myself unable to make even the most basic living under these wartime conditions. Jail is not much worse than my current situation.
This is what happens when a government oppresses its people for too long -- anarchy. Obama wants people to believe he can control the Internet, but he can't. "The more you tighten your grasp, Tarkan, the more the galaxies slip through your fingers."
I had no idea it was that bad during WWII. Problems in Greece and Ireland show that socialism is not the answer to worldwide chaos. Still, it's difficult to swallow the idea that the only solution is war, especially when so many people are willing to profit by it. I'm glad that troops are starting to pull out, and that foreign countries are being shown that with sovereignty comes responsibility. War destroys truth, and suppresses freedoms in the name of national security. This can only be tolerated for so long. I look forward to a 21st century where diplomacy, not military might prevails.
Investigation always equals punishment, or people think that cops are useless. You won't see any police force on this planet go, "Oops, we screwed up and [bought a really expensive computer] that doesn't work." Nope, problems get swept under the carpet and the PR department starts to spin things. People would hate cops less if they didn't pretend to be infallible.
No thanks, telecommunications and utilities should be owned by the people (i.e., the government).
Agreed. TELUS was started when the government gave away what was previously government infrastructure to a few pals. Now they are a bunch of intolerable fucks. Maybe my Internet wouldn't be as fast, but at least I wouldn't have to suffer TELUS.
The connections they make are incredible and they do successfully predict consumer behaviors that are verified at the cash register.
The difference, of course, being that if a fast food joint is wrong about their profiling, they will simply lose some money. If the police are wrong, then an innocent person spends time in jail...
When Obama failed to get his tax hike through, the Chinese bought all your bad debt, and Congress refused to allow Obama anymore money. Happy fucking Independence Day:D
I've known lots of people whose lives have been fucked up by marijuana. They simply couldn't live without it and spent everything they could get their hands on to get it. When they finally ran out of money, the withdrawal symptoms made it impossible to be around them. Just because it didn't happen to anybody you know doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I don't know what happened to them, and I no longer care. They were a changed person, and probably not for the better. Don't claim it's not addictive and I'll support legalization. Promoting marijuana as a completely safe drug is not going to help getting it legalized.
I think you need to lay off a bit. While you're right about marijuana being a relatively safe drug, you're making wild claims that just aren't supported by fact. Marijuana most certainly is habit-forming, and like any drug, an addict can really ruin their life. It has a lethal dose, though it's basically impossible for a human to consume that much (1500lbs in 15 minutes). It is also harmful to children, and given the choice, I'd give my child an aspirin if they seriously hurt themself. There is no way I would let my child have even a puff of marijuana. The claim that politicians are in the pay of gangsters selling pot is nothing but a paranoid conspiracy theory, completely unsupportable.
That said, I agree that marijuana should be legalized. At a minimum, the ability to regulate sellers makes it clear that the assholes who sell to schoolchildren are criminals. If people could purchase marijuana legally, then they would probably not associate with criminals. While the government probably receives some of their income tax money (everyone remembers Al Capone), taxing legitimately sold marijuana would likely increase their revenue from the drug. Finally, it's getting pretty hard to convince people of the propaganda of the fifties. Marijuana and its effects have been studied for a long time now, and its clear that its not a very harmful drug, and has considerable recreational benefits. Medical arguments aside, it's a lifestyle that many have shown themselves capable of living.
The problems that remain are the finding of content, for that there is still no solution to the current centralised databases (aka "torrent sites"), and longevity of the content: as soon as the last seeder stops seeding, the file is lost from the network.
I don't see these as problems. The torrent sites can be made anonymous, and have multiple mirrors. If an entire organization is somehow taken down, a new one will pop up very quickly. The fact that you can't search a tracker or a peer for content is a good thing. And, as to longevity, it means that as long as content is popular, there will be a seeder. It's reasonably safe to say, with the popularity of BitTorrent itself, that if a seed doesn't exist, the content just isn't popular.
After the way I've been treated, I will call a lawyer for an "ordinary" job contract. Such "ordinary" contracts include:
no stipulation on number of hours per week
vague ownership clauses that take ownership of creative efforts outside work hours
any number of reasons an employer can terminate without cause or notice
These are all violations of the local labor law, but "it's the norm". Most agencies now won't give you anything that's enforceable in a court of law. Basically, they give you a job one day, and you just keep showing up until they tell you to go home, usually a scant week or two after you've started. The employment agreement basically says "not an agreement" at the bottom. Employees have no rights left, and contracting and employment agencies are to blame.
Corporate Intranet applications are generally webapps unless they are sufficiently complex to be made into desktop applications. Webapps do not have to be deployed to clients and are thus easier to test and maintain. Thus, the web browser becomes an essential tool for a very large number of people. A Fortune 500 organization could easily have hundreds of internal webapps written using various technologies. If even one of them breaks, there will be a help desk call from an employee who can`t do their job. Like it or not, each browser and version will make enough changes that the likelihood of any one out of hundreds of webapps being broken is very good. So, it`s not bollocks.
Agreed. If they joined before the unjust laws, they can always quit/retire, or leak information anonymously to the media. If they joined after, then they are truly horrible people.
So you have agreed it's reasonable for police to ask for a driver's license for some kind of traffic violation (wrongdoing), right? Given that they don't have one, is it reasonable to ask why they don't have it?
The leaked e-mails include an incident where a car was impounded because his ID was suspected to be a fraudulent Mexican driver's license. When it turned out that the ID was genuine, there were still issues for the driver to get their vehicle back. Some officers are apparently very bad at doing the follow-up paperwork when a vehicle is impounded. Furthermore, there was at one point some confusion about when a car could be impounded. AZ state law requires that AZ has suspended the driver's license before the vehicle is impounded, not just that a person is driving without a license.
Actually reading the e-mails suggests there is a problem with specific officers, not the AZ police department as a whole. 500MB is a lot of documents to wade through, and I've only read the e-mails from the first couple of officers. So far, it's been a few minor isolated incidents attributable to very few, with a whole lot of nothing in between. On the other hand, the passwords still work, so the PD might want to get on that...
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In Australia, it is classified as a crime.
Yes, we've heard here on /. about how enlightened you Australians are when it comes to matters of technology and privacy. The rest of your diatribe is basically anti-pirate propaganda.
There seems to be a mentality that these vigilante actions are somehow acceptable because of the moral rightness of them.
Yes, and human history is full of vigilantes. History often shows that they were, in fact, right to stand up against their oppressors. I don't think they were too worried about how other people saw their actions. Moral rightness is a funny thing to argue. You obviously don't believe there is such a thing. I say that time will prove otherwise. The history of iTunes and the piracy that forced the media conglomerates to finally provide such a service shows that standing up for consumer rights works. Netflix is the beginning of the digital video revolution. These services would not exist without pirates; we'd still be renting DVDs or buying CDs instead.
Downloading digital copies of movies and games is not illegal in Canada (and probably other countries as well). Distribution is still a tort, not a crime. It is only recently in the USA that either has become a crime. It became a crime because the mega-rich media lobby convinced some clueless politicians that it was the only way to keep the gravy train going. And, because USians are about the stupidest people on Earth, the clueless politicians rammed the law down everyone's throat. Your analogy is not only not perfect, it's an example of the clueless idiocy that propagates myths about piracy.
If they thought to win over anyone in the FOSS camp with that kinda crap they must really be drinking some very special KoolAid.
And here I was thinking that the FOSS people were drinking the Kool-Aid. In 15 years, Linux has guaranteed its survival, nothing more. Continuing to rail against the company that did all those evil things and succeeded looks like FOSS people are immature and impulsive. Microsoft slights you or your precious OS, and you spout crap about Jonestown. When did Microsoft tell its people to commit suicide? From what I've heard, the Redmond campus is filled with people.
It's this constant overreaction by FOSS people that's intolerable. Listening to Stallman tell me what I can and can't do with a FOSS system is the best part. This video codec is evil, that one isn't. Playing games, even ones you own, is anti-FOSS. And, of course, Linux is only a temporary fix until those academics finally finish Hurd. Face it, Stallman has his crew drinking Kool-Aid a lot more than the Microsoft people do.
I jumped from Linux to Microsoft for one simple reason: I'm sick of dicking around with my computer. I don't feel all warm and fuzzy just because someone didn't get paid to write my e-mail client. I certainly don't feel all warm and fuzzy when my network driver gets upgraded and suddenly stops working. And, I really don't feel warm and fuzzy when I have to resort to the command line. Licensing issues aside, Windows costs less of my life then Linux ever did, and no one complains when I don't give them technical support. And, until I'm employed, I'm still "learning" Windows (for DMCA reasons, of course).
And what's wrong with this ExtN FS reader? Do you expect Microsoft to write everything that runs on Windows?
Yes, but so will their profits, and remember, no freedom is worth a drop in their profits.
The entire point is that their profits will go up, since piracy is such a horrible drain on their income. This is posturing, nothing more. Pride goeth before the fall.
Such technology certainly does make one worry about fishing expeditions. Now police work can be nothing more than sitting in a vehicle taking pictures of people and looking for criminals. And, of course, there's no need for warrants to do this sort of thing (I can think of at least a dozen lies off the top of my head once I have a "perp" in my sights). I'm glad I don't really look like anyone else.
This is a job for the FBI, CIA, NSA, DHS and whatever other scary three-letter organizations are down there. The military is about the last group on the list qualified to fight a cyberwar. They're useful for taking objectives and escorting in the smart guys. Expecting them to be the smart guys is just silly.
OK, that's the one. A lot later than I expected.
http://www.witchhuntmovie.com/
Sean Penn examines California in the early eighties, and a number of innocent people who spent a combined total of over 50 years in jail in the name of prosecuting "child pornography". It is an extremely disturbing movie. I can see why IMDb doesn't have it in their database.
So the fact that other countries are more oppressive is an excuse for governments to take away liberties? Fine, I'm not rotting in jail or anything like that, but I find myself unable to make even the most basic living under these wartime conditions. Jail is not much worse than my current situation.
This is what happens when a government oppresses its people for too long -- anarchy. Obama wants people to believe he can control the Internet, but he can't. "The more you tighten your grasp, Tarkan, the more the galaxies slip through your fingers."
I had no idea it was that bad during WWII. Problems in Greece and Ireland show that socialism is not the answer to worldwide chaos. Still, it's difficult to swallow the idea that the only solution is war, especially when so many people are willing to profit by it. I'm glad that troops are starting to pull out, and that foreign countries are being shown that with sovereignty comes responsibility. War destroys truth, and suppresses freedoms in the name of national security. This can only be tolerated for so long. I look forward to a 21st century where diplomacy, not military might prevails.
Investigation always equals punishment, or people think that cops are useless. You won't see any police force on this planet go, "Oops, we screwed up and [bought a really expensive computer] that doesn't work." Nope, problems get swept under the carpet and the PR department starts to spin things. People would hate cops less if they didn't pretend to be infallible.
No thanks, telecommunications and utilities should be owned by the people (i.e., the government).
Agreed. TELUS was started when the government gave away what was previously government infrastructure to a few pals. Now they are a bunch of intolerable fucks. Maybe my Internet wouldn't be as fast, but at least I wouldn't have to suffer TELUS.
The connections they make are incredible and they do successfully predict consumer behaviors that are verified at the cash register.
The difference, of course, being that if a fast food joint is wrong about their profiling, they will simply lose some money. If the police are wrong, then an innocent person spends time in jail...
When did we stop nation building again?
When Obama failed to get his tax hike through, the Chinese bought all your bad debt, and Congress refused to allow Obama anymore money. Happy fucking Independence Day :D
"Think of the children" - why make learning hard/repetitive/stale when we have choices?
Because Facebook has nothing to do with learning, and is about the stupidest application of social networking out there.
I've known lots of people whose lives have been fucked up by marijuana. They simply couldn't live without it and spent everything they could get their hands on to get it. When they finally ran out of money, the withdrawal symptoms made it impossible to be around them. Just because it didn't happen to anybody you know doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I don't know what happened to them, and I no longer care. They were a changed person, and probably not for the better. Don't claim it's not addictive and I'll support legalization. Promoting marijuana as a completely safe drug is not going to help getting it legalized.
I think you need to lay off a bit. While you're right about marijuana being a relatively safe drug, you're making wild claims that just aren't supported by fact. Marijuana most certainly is habit-forming, and like any drug, an addict can really ruin their life. It has a lethal dose, though it's basically impossible for a human to consume that much (1500lbs in 15 minutes). It is also harmful to children, and given the choice, I'd give my child an aspirin if they seriously hurt themself. There is no way I would let my child have even a puff of marijuana. The claim that politicians are in the pay of gangsters selling pot is nothing but a paranoid conspiracy theory, completely unsupportable.
That said, I agree that marijuana should be legalized. At a minimum, the ability to regulate sellers makes it clear that the assholes who sell to schoolchildren are criminals. If people could purchase marijuana legally, then they would probably not associate with criminals. While the government probably receives some of their income tax money (everyone remembers Al Capone), taxing legitimately sold marijuana would likely increase their revenue from the drug. Finally, it's getting pretty hard to convince people of the propaganda of the fifties. Marijuana and its effects have been studied for a long time now, and its clear that its not a very harmful drug, and has considerable recreational benefits. Medical arguments aside, it's a lifestyle that many have shown themselves capable of living.
The problems that remain are the finding of content, for that there is still no solution to the current centralised databases (aka "torrent sites"), and longevity of the content: as soon as the last seeder stops seeding, the file is lost from the network.
I don't see these as problems. The torrent sites can be made anonymous, and have multiple mirrors. If an entire organization is somehow taken down, a new one will pop up very quickly. The fact that you can't search a tracker or a peer for content is a good thing. And, as to longevity, it means that as long as content is popular, there will be a seeder. It's reasonably safe to say, with the popularity of BitTorrent itself, that if a seed doesn't exist, the content just isn't popular.
After the way I've been treated, I will call a lawyer for an "ordinary" job contract. Such "ordinary" contracts include:
These are all violations of the local labor law, but "it's the norm". Most agencies now won't give you anything that's enforceable in a court of law. Basically, they give you a job one day, and you just keep showing up until they tell you to go home, usually a scant week or two after you've started. The employment agreement basically says "not an agreement" at the bottom. Employees have no rights left, and contracting and employment agencies are to blame.
Corporate Intranet applications are generally webapps unless they are sufficiently complex to be made into desktop applications. Webapps do not have to be deployed to clients and are thus easier to test and maintain. Thus, the web browser becomes an essential tool for a very large number of people. A Fortune 500 organization could easily have hundreds of internal webapps written using various technologies. If even one of them breaks, there will be a help desk call from an employee who can`t do their job. Like it or not, each browser and version will make enough changes that the likelihood of any one out of hundreds of webapps being broken is very good. So, it`s not bollocks.
Agreed. If they joined before the unjust laws, they can always quit/retire, or leak information anonymously to the media. If they joined after, then they are truly horrible people.
So you have agreed it's reasonable for police to ask for a driver's license for some kind of traffic violation (wrongdoing), right? Given that they don't have one, is it reasonable to ask why they don't have it?
The leaked e-mails include an incident where a car was impounded because his ID was suspected to be a fraudulent Mexican driver's license. When it turned out that the ID was genuine, there were still issues for the driver to get their vehicle back. Some officers are apparently very bad at doing the follow-up paperwork when a vehicle is impounded. Furthermore, there was at one point some confusion about when a car could be impounded. AZ state law requires that AZ has suspended the driver's license before the vehicle is impounded, not just that a person is driving without a license.
Actually reading the e-mails suggests there is a problem with specific officers, not the AZ police department as a whole. 500MB is a lot of documents to wade through, and I've only read the e-mails from the first couple of officers. So far, it's been a few minor isolated incidents attributable to very few, with a whole lot of nothing in between. On the other hand, the passwords still work, so the PD might want to get on that...