Several months ago there was an amendment to our copyright legislation (bill C-59) that made the "camcording" a criminal act....mostly due to the "rampant piracy" [insert blame canada here] reported by us corporations.
I've had several discussions with my lawyer over supper about that, and his opinion is that it is a totally bullshit law, passed just so the whiny asshole south of the border would shut the fuck up, because one cannot make a criminal act an action that does not harm the public welfare.
Camcording a movie is certainly not hurting the public welfare; it does infringe on intellectual property, but it cannot be defined as a crime, especially that the law specifically mentions that in order to be a crime, one has to camcord the movie ***WITHOUT*** the permission of the theater manager.
Judges will take a very dim view of a law that lowers them to the level of a movie house manager...
Turning off TVs showing a football game in progress at a sports bar has been shown to cause beer bottles, shot glasses, and college students to defy gravity.
That's not half as bad as turning it to the wonderful world of ponies...
Sweet, point me to the next building with 200 offices for 200 programmers.
Sneer
If a company has 200 programmers, it is either so big that it will NEVER have all it's programmers under one roof, or it is working very inefficiently.
With 30 years experience I'm sure you know this, but for everyone new to the idea: Offices are only for people who have a business need to have private meetings. No one else needs an office, that's just a waste of space and roadblock to collaboration.
This is bullshit, especially when it comes to programmers who need concentration as much as collaboration (that can be handled by telephone, e-mail or messaging).
No, the reason is plain management stupidity, that wants to be cheap and has to have something over the peons they manage just to show they are above them.
It's not quite that big now, but I have noticed train junctions being changed by hand. Is there anything in place to prevent that?
Yes, it's called a "switch lock", and it happens to be a padlock...
However, in a railroad yards, switches often are not locked, but secured with a hook inserted where the padlock normally goes. They can do this in a yard because of the lower speeds trains run in yards, and by the fact that you have to check every switch orientation before going through.
What other systems are out there created in the same context, i.e., with little thought to external interference?
I hope France's TGV has a bit more built in checks and balances than this.
One has to keep in mind that a streetcar network is **NOT** a (high-speed or not) rail network.
Rail network safety evolved gradually over the last 150 years to the point of being particularly fail-safe about a century ago.
Streetcars and trains are operated in totally different ways. Streetcars are run pretty much like buses or cars, and so rely on the driver's vision to keep a safe distance between trains (sometimes, signals are used in very specific circumstances such as blind spots). One thing that helps in that department is that the streetcar usually operates at a much lower speed than a train, and, most importantly, can come to a stop in a very short distance.
Trains, on the other hand, have a much longer stopping distance. A freight train at 100 km/h can take 2-3 km to stop. So, therefore, the safe space interval between trains has to be correspondingly longer, hence the reliance on signalling systems (it's hard to see 3 km ahead on a winding mountain line).
Streetcars can work with a system that let motormen change switches by pressing a button inside their cabs; the speeds involved are low, and it's really like driving a car. If someone gets in the way, you just stop. This is why they can design a remote control switch operation that runs like a TV remote.
A railroad network, on the other hand, will have a full fledged signalling **POLICY**, that is either implemented manually by people following strict procedures with redundant oversight (when someone on the line is told to do something by the dispatcher, he tells everyone that what he does, so if anyone hears a discrepancy, he can say it right away), follow-up and paper trail (every time a train passes by is precisely logged on a sheet, hence the extensive measures taken by rail systems to insure that everyone's watch/clock is synchronized to the second), or some sort of interlocking automated signalling system that automagically offers the above safeguards (with reduntancy and fail-safe engineered into the works).
First of all, to run a train from A to B, you need an itineary. That is, the set of track sections that will be taken by the train, as well as the various switches that will send the train from one section to the other.
This is done by setting the route by turning the switches to the proper position in order to establish the itineary. To do that, you either tell (by telephone or telegraph) people at various stations to manually turn switches a specific way, or punch buttons on a control console.
Once you have the route set, you give the go ahead ("green signal"). One important characteristic of interlocking is that you cannot give the "green signal" without having a route set, and once you give the "green signal", you cannot change the route, nor you can set a conflicting route that may send another train into the train's path.
You do not have that in streetcar systems, hence the kid's facility in playing with switches.
So, do not worry, it's not possible to play trainset with a remote and a real railroad. To do so, you'd have to break into the signalling network...
Just like the apocryphal story of the Chevy "Nova" not selling in Latin America because "no va" means "won't go", the name "Tata Nano" won't fly in (french) Canada, because both "Tata" and "Nono" (yes, it's an "o") mean "moron", "stupid" or "idiot" in french-canadian slang...
So, what's the problem? Hollywood, being Hollywood, has the RIGHT to use the material that we, mere mortals, put on the web. I mean, if mere peons had the same right as big corporations, what would the world come to????
Gonzales basically gave them a legal opinion that says you, as a foreign national, have no legal protections or expectation of privacy. I'm not sure of the specifics, but at one point, they said "we can do anything we like".
Gonzales is **NOT** the law. Only the law decides that, not Gonzales.
Can they ask to see the contents of a company laptop? If that information is proprietary you have every right to deny them access as an employee or face legal liability for showing others that information.
Not at all. Law **ALWAYS** trumps company policies.
Border agents will disagree though. Unless it's in a diplomatic immunity pouch, they tend to want to get their grubby hands on it.
I once crossed into Maine through a remote customs post. I was wearing a fanny pouch and a customs agent wanted to look inside it. So I handed it to him and he proceeded to rummage through it looking exactly like a paraphiliac rummaging throuh a pile of soiled underwear.
Yes, those guys definitely have a **problem** (but it doesn't prevent them from working! Quite the contrary...)
I come from working in a Law enforcement field where at one time I had a pretty good outlook on humankind, afterwards have a very low expectation of society.
That's because:
Cops only see the worst of society
Cops think they are better than non-cops, so eventually everyone else is regarded as inferior.
Slashdot Mirror
Camcording a movie is certainly not hurting the public welfare; it does infringe on intellectual property, but it cannot be defined as a crime, especially that the law specifically mentions that in order to be a crime, one has to camcord the movie ***WITHOUT*** the permission of the theater manager.
Judges will take a very dim view of a law that lowers them to the level of a movie house manager...
Think of it as evolution in action...
-- L. Niven
I have been moderated "funny".
You weren't.
Get over it.
All your images are belong to us.
If a company has 200 programmers, it is either so big that it will NEVER have all it's programmers under one roof, or it is working very inefficiently.
No, the reason is plain management stupidity, that wants to be cheap and has to have something over the peons they manage just to show they are above them.
I guess that they gonna say that Britain has Weapons of Mass destruction very soon...
However, in a railroad yards, switches often are not locked, but secured with a hook inserted where the padlock normally goes. They can do this in a yard because of the lower speeds trains run in yards, and by the fact that you have to check every switch orientation before going through.
Rail network safety evolved gradually over the last 150 years to the point of being particularly fail-safe about a century ago.
Streetcars and trains are operated in totally different ways. Streetcars are run pretty much like buses or cars, and so rely on the driver's vision to keep a safe distance between trains (sometimes, signals are used in very specific circumstances such as blind spots). One thing that helps in that department is that the streetcar usually operates at a much lower speed than a train, and, most importantly, can come to a stop in a very short distance.
Trains, on the other hand, have a much longer stopping distance. A freight train at 100 km/h can take 2-3 km to stop. So, therefore, the safe space interval between trains has to be correspondingly longer, hence the reliance on signalling systems (it's hard to see 3 km ahead on a winding mountain line).
Streetcars can work with a system that let motormen change switches by pressing a button inside their cabs; the speeds involved are low, and it's really like driving a car. If someone gets in the way, you just stop. This is why they can design a remote control switch operation that runs like a TV remote.
A railroad network, on the other hand, will have a full fledged signalling **POLICY**, that is either implemented manually by people following strict procedures with redundant oversight (when someone on the line is told to do something by the dispatcher, he tells everyone that what he does, so if anyone hears a discrepancy, he can say it right away), follow-up and paper trail (every time a train passes by is precisely logged on a sheet, hence the extensive measures taken by rail systems to insure that everyone's watch/clock is synchronized to the second), or some sort of interlocking automated signalling system that automagically offers the above safeguards (with reduntancy and fail-safe engineered into the works).
First of all, to run a train from A to B, you need an itineary. That is, the set of track sections that will be taken by the train, as well as the various switches that will send the train from one section to the other.
This is done by setting the route by turning the switches to the proper position in order to establish the itineary. To do that, you either tell (by telephone or telegraph) people at various stations to manually turn switches a specific way, or punch buttons on a control console.
Once you have the route set, you give the go ahead ("green signal"). One important characteristic of interlocking is that you cannot give the "green signal" without having a route set, and once you give the "green signal", you cannot change the route, nor you can set a conflicting route that may send another train into the train's path.
You do not have that in streetcar systems, hence the kid's facility in playing with switches.
So, do not worry, it's not possible to play trainset with a remote and a real railroad. To do so, you'd have to break into the signalling network...
Just like the apocryphal story of the Chevy "Nova" not selling in Latin America because "no va" means "won't go", the name "Tata Nano" won't fly in (french) Canada, because both "Tata" and "Nono" (yes, it's an "o") mean "moron", "stupid" or "idiot" in french-canadian slang...
So, what's the problem? Hollywood, being Hollywood, has the RIGHT to use the material that we, mere mortals, put on the web. I mean, if mere peons had the same right as big corporations, what would the world come to????
Which figures...
Yes, those guys definitely have a **problem** (but it doesn't prevent them from working! Quite the contrary...)
OLPC can blame itself... Comeon, letting Intel sit on it's board as a partner? It's like Colonel Sanders admintting a fox on it's board!!!!
The best hardware firewall is air. Air between the electrical conductors of each network.
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Education != schooling. There is an awful lot of cultural glorification of utterly selfish people. Eventually, it will seep though the neurons.