Part of the reason of required chipping is that if a dog gets lost (they sometimes do get away on their own; probably more common than being stolen) and are caught by the dog catcher as stray, then the government can easier return it to you.
I wonder how that location service works... GPS collar or so?
It appears the one claiming to be the owner hasn't even reported the dog as stolen to the police.
If a dog has been reported and is registered as stolen, the chip company indeed should inform anyone who tries to register it as theirs that that dog is registered as stolen. However telling them to "call the real owner" (with which I think you mean "the currently registered contact person for this animal") they can not do to the people requesting registration. This after all would mean that the chip company is disclosing personal information.
However what the chip company did very correctly (and which is basically what you are asking for!) is calling the current registered contact person, telling him that they had received a request to update their database, and whether he agreed with that.
So they are not "aiding and abetting theft". They are not even the ones to determine who is the owner. They receive a request to update the contact information, attempt to contact the current registered person, and ask for permission. Which in this case was likely denied.
If he owns the dog and has all the paperwork, then getting a court order should be a no-brainer. And with that the new owner's information.
Now if the current owner (yes I call them like that) ALSO has ownership papers or otherwise claims to have obtained it in good faith, it's getting more difficult. Mind that the original owner CLAIMS that the dog was stolen - but just saying "hey my pet is stolen" doesn't necessarily make it so. But that's for them to figure out later.
By the way, I have owned pets, never had formal ownership documents though. It's not land, or a house, or a car.
Identification: "look I have a dog here, please tell me the serial number, and if available the name and other details of this dog". That the chipping company obviously has done. The current owner of the dog went to a vet, had the already present microchip read, and requested they be registered as owner of the dog.
Locating: "my dog is lost; this was its serial number, please tell me where it is and who claims to be its current owner". That the company is not allowed to disclose without court order.
If you want to sue the chipping company, you're surely on the losing side. The chip put in place is for identification as you say yourself. That's different from locating, in a way the exact opposite even. And the identification part obviously worked as advertised.
And by the way you don't have to worry about that "states" thing. This story is not set in the US, but in the UK. And no that's not a part of the US.
This person has filed suit already, the court rejected his request because (ftfa) the court ruled it was not within its jurisdiction to issue such an order. So he simply went to the "wrong" court and will have to go to a higher court or so. I do not see a reason why he can not get a court order to get the new owner's details. I'm sure he can get advice from either the judge who rejected his order or the police which court to go to next, to get the actual order. This whole story seems to be blown totally out of proportion; the man was obviously getting desperate or so and is not willing to go the proper way to get to this information.
The chip company I fully support: they should not ever give out personal information without court orders. That's basic privacy protection.
And who the dog now belongs to... well that's a whole different matter.
Not having NoScript, but FlashBlock, some interesting observations - that indicate a bug in FF even.
The cookie stored in the history data is not updated. I haven't poked through my history but guess I have several stored there now, and evercookie only reads the first it finds. Hence that's the oldest one always. A bug in the storage algorithm.
More seriously, it seems there is data leaking from Private Browsing to normal browsing mode, while Private Browsing shouldn't leave any traces of the session. When in Private Browsing the history storage fails (FF doesn't keep history so it should fail), the rest works fine.
However when switching back from Private to normal mode (with the evercookie web site still open in a tab, reopening when switching to normal mode), the pngData mechanism still shows the last cookie ID from the Private browsing session! If private is as private as it should be, this should not be possible. I'm not in the mood to start poking deeper, not too familiar with JS anyway, I bet there are/.ers that can do that much better than me. This to me appears to be a bug in FF (version 3.6.10 for me).
Android you're right; that's why I specifically mentioned the Android kernel. The rest is Apache licensed which is less restrictive than the GPL in terms of redistribution permissions and source code availability, if I understand it all correctly. I'm not really familiar with the Apache license.
I agree except for the DRM. I thought by now it's well known that it only acts to piss off legitimate buyers; it does not stop pirates (who could always copy it verbatim, DRM and all); and it costs money to add to your material to boot.
They are, one way or another, still making a lot of money based on their existing business model. People still go to movie theatres. They still buy the DVD or BR for watching at home. TV networks still pay them to program those movies - especially pay-TV channels, which people pay for to be able to watch those movies on.
GP on the other hand was talking about independent production, and independent distribution. That way GP would not have easy access to the shelves of the retailers (both on- and off-line). He would not have the budget to launch a large advertising campaign to compel people to buy his video. He would not be able to cast famous actors. That's the advantage the MPAA related companies have over independent producers like you, me and GP.
Now of course the traditional movie studios see the writing on the wall, which is why they are fighting hand and tooth to keep it as it is. They will have to change, eventually. But when that is, that's everyones guess. It's not now at least, they are still making money, and lots of it, considering the millions actors get paid for starring in their movies.
OS-X may be based on BSD code, it's now closed-source and highly protected. You may not redistribute it, even though a lot of it is based on BSD coded. Those parts may be redistributable, however that will not result in a working system. And forget about having a look at the source code.
So a lot of freedom has been lost: the freedom to look at the source, the freedom to modify the software, the freedom to distribute it.
Otoh look at Android: this system is based on the GPLed Linux kernel. Therefore the Android kernel is still GPLed which means you can get the source code for the Android kernel, and that you can redistribute it. No freedom has been lost there.
Some people own guns because no government fears an unarmed populace, and government only works in the interest of the people when the government fears the people and not the other way around.
I think you have a problem even worse than high gun ownership when everybody is doing their best to fear each other. That's what you're saying here. Fear - creating fear - not creating understanding or cooperation but fear. It worked to keep Big Brother in power (1984). It works to keep the Kims in power (N.-Korea). But do you really want a government like that? One that has to fear it's population, and that it's population fears? I do hope that's not what you really want.
It's a concept, a thought experiment basically. They asked their engineers to dream up stuff based on current tech (even if that tech is lab-only), and this is what they came up with. Also no glass or PC involved; some transparent ceramics they were thinking of.
The project leader thinks that these technologies could be implemented by 2050, that's 40 years later!
Nonetheless it's interesting. Scary, yes sure! I find it scary to step on a glass floor in a high building looking down 100m to the ground. Most people do, naturally. A plane is worse. But also it sounds really really cool.
Paris also had to do with helping the police/military crack down on revolutionists. The thing is the locals were perfectly happy with the maze, they just knew their way around. The police trying to track down those revolutionaries not: they got lost, and were an easy target. That's why there was this redesign, and nowadays Paris has these huge boulevards.
Many European cities to this day are like that, a bit like a maze, mainly because they grew organically, without any central planning. Newly built neighbourhoods nowadays are also often built with bending roads, not so straight. Because it looks nicer, and it slows down cars (for safety).
Indeed making it no more or less secure than other two-factor systems that require some USB token or so.
As a matter of fact today when I came back from lunch I found such a USB token, in this case to access an e-banking web site. Someone from the neighbouring office dropped it while opening their gate or so, it was in the middle of the corridor. Not smart. I just rang their door bell and returned it to them.
I happen to know which bank it belongs to (I have a similar token), it wouldn't have given me access to their account even if I wanted to. I still missed the un/pw combination that goes with it.
Something you have plus something you know... pretty secure with fairly little hassle.
Well obviously talking about trademarks is fine. Otherwise/. would have been sued all over by all the brands that are commonly mentioned in the postings. Linux, Microsoft, HP, Dell, Nokia. I'm free to name them, I can just not claim them as my own.
As another poster already pointed out, talking about trademarks is fine, trying to sell a product/service using the mark while you do not own the mark and you may confuse the buyer is not OK. It is even possible to have the same mark registered by multiple people/companies, as long as they are not in the same business. Think Apple Computer vs. Apple Music (hope I recall that name correctly). They were in different businesses (until iTunes, which caused Apple Music to sue again over trademark infringement). And there exist many similar examples. As long as you are in a different market you can register a trademark. You could for example start selling erectile dysfunction drugs under the "Microsoft" brand if you would be inclined to do so. And if you have deep enough pockets to fight the likely case brought against you by the software company of the same name, you may actually come out victorious.
Technically you do not even have to register, a trademark becomes yours as soon as you start using it, but registering important marks is a good idea of course. Makes winning lawsuits easier. No time limit; a trademark remains yours as long as you use it. This in contrast with other IP such as copyrights and patents which do have an expiry date (though the expiry time for copyright is practically "never"). Also I know one may lose a trademark by not using it - if a mark is in disuse long enough and someone else starts using it, you may lose it.
who apart from us here understands what an entropy file is? A judge sure doesn't.)
That's where expert witnesses are for. To explain this and the many many many other things a judge doesn't understand. There is way too much going on in this world for a single person to understand.
And I think many judges will accept an expert witness' statement without personal understanding of the tech/science behind it: 'expert witness says "it could be an entropy file" so it could be an entropy file instead of encrypted data'.
Yes know about the sorry state of politics in the US. Luckily the rest of the world has more than two choices, and those choices are actually different.
Europe (my origin) indeed makes region-freeness a selling point. Here it's not even an issue; when buying a DVD player I asked the sales about region locking. He had barely heard about it. There basically are none that have region coding; that's what I mean with "it's not an issue".
At least where I live it's hard to find a DVD player that actually follows region codes. They just haven't implemented that "feature". Region codes are just not an issue.
You would be hard pressed to not even find a PERSON who hasn't put in an attempt to change the law in his/her favour - as that's what elections are about. At least I for one when I have the chance to vote will vote for a person/party that wants laws to work in the same way I want it to.
The goal is the same, just the process is a bit different.
Who wins is depending on how you set your contest. And as this is no more than a publicity stunt, it's of course set up in a way that the pigeon is guaranteed to win.
200 MB on a memory card has the same "transfer time" as 16 GB. Yet suddenly the bandwidth is some 80 times as great.
A 10 Mbit connection has the same transfer speed whether it is to the neighbour's or across the ocean. Oh wait that's downstream; upstream is always slower. On my broadband connection uploading 200 MB will take about 45 minutes - downloading the same amount of data is done within 5 minutes. No wonder you pit the pigeon against an upstream.
And why not ask this pigeon to deliver the video file actually to YouTube? Not to some other point from where it's transferred to YouTube? Is that maybe because YouTube is in the US and that's too far to fly for the pigeon?
TFA admits it: "Also the farms connection speed is just 100-200 Kbps (Kilobits per second), so it never really stood a chance of winning but then that's not the point?". It is set up so the pigeon would win. And 100-200 Kbps up is not even that bad assuming ADSL over normal copper, and farms tend to be far far away from the nearest switch. It's one of those things one will have to live with when trying to live away from the civilised world.
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Part of the reason of required chipping is that if a dog gets lost (they sometimes do get away on their own; probably more common than being stolen) and are caught by the dog catcher as stray, then the government can easier return it to you.
I wonder how that location service works... GPS collar or so?
It appears the one claiming to be the owner hasn't even reported the dog as stolen to the police.
If a dog has been reported and is registered as stolen, the chip company indeed should inform anyone who tries to register it as theirs that that dog is registered as stolen. However telling them to "call the real owner" (with which I think you mean "the currently registered contact person for this animal") they can not do to the people requesting registration. This after all would mean that the chip company is disclosing personal information.
However what the chip company did very correctly (and which is basically what you are asking for!) is calling the current registered contact person, telling him that they had received a request to update their database, and whether he agreed with that.
So they are not "aiding and abetting theft". They are not even the ones to determine who is the owner. They receive a request to update the contact information, attempt to contact the current registered person, and ask for permission. Which in this case was likely denied.
If he owns the dog and has all the paperwork, then getting a court order should be a no-brainer. And with that the new owner's information.
Now if the current owner (yes I call them like that) ALSO has ownership papers or otherwise claims to have obtained it in good faith, it's getting more difficult. Mind that the original owner CLAIMS that the dog was stolen - but just saying "hey my pet is stolen" doesn't necessarily make it so. But that's for them to figure out later.
By the way, I have owned pets, never had formal ownership documents though. It's not land, or a house, or a car.
You are mixing up identification with locating.
Identification: "look I have a dog here, please tell me the serial number, and if available the name and other details of this dog". That the chipping company obviously has done. The current owner of the dog went to a vet, had the already present microchip read, and requested they be registered as owner of the dog.
Locating: "my dog is lost; this was its serial number, please tell me where it is and who claims to be its current owner". That the company is not allowed to disclose without court order.
If you want to sue the chipping company, you're surely on the losing side. The chip put in place is for identification as you say yourself. That's different from locating, in a way the exact opposite even. And the identification part obviously worked as advertised.
And by the way you don't have to worry about that "states" thing. This story is not set in the US, but in the UK. And no that's not a part of the US.
This person has filed suit already, the court rejected his request because (ftfa) the court ruled it was not within its jurisdiction to issue such an order. So he simply went to the "wrong" court and will have to go to a higher court or so. I do not see a reason why he can not get a court order to get the new owner's details. I'm sure he can get advice from either the judge who rejected his order or the police which court to go to next, to get the actual order. This whole story seems to be blown totally out of proportion; the man was obviously getting desperate or so and is not willing to go the proper way to get to this information.
The chip company I fully support: they should not ever give out personal information without court orders. That's basic privacy protection.
And who the dog now belongs to... well that's a whole different matter.
Not having NoScript, but FlashBlock, some interesting observations - that indicate a bug in FF even.
The cookie stored in the history data is not updated. I haven't poked through my history but guess I have several stored there now, and evercookie only reads the first it finds. Hence that's the oldest one always. A bug in the storage algorithm.
More seriously, it seems there is data leaking from Private Browsing to normal browsing mode, while Private Browsing shouldn't leave any traces of the session. When in Private Browsing the history storage fails (FF doesn't keep history so it should fail), the rest works fine.
However when switching back from Private to normal mode (with the evercookie web site still open in a tab, reopening when switching to normal mode), the pngData mechanism still shows the last cookie ID from the Private browsing session! If private is as private as it should be, this should not be possible. I'm not in the mood to start poking deeper, not too familiar with JS anyway, I bet there are /.ers that can do that much better than me. This to me appears to be a bug in FF (version 3.6.10 for me).
Android you're right; that's why I specifically mentioned the Android kernel. The rest is Apache licensed which is less restrictive than the GPL in terms of redistribution permissions and source code availability, if I understand it all correctly. I'm not really familiar with the Apache license.
I agree except for the DRM. I thought by now it's well known that it only acts to piss off legitimate buyers; it does not stop pirates (who could always copy it verbatim, DRM and all); and it costs money to add to your material to boot.
They are, one way or another, still making a lot of money based on their existing business model. People still go to movie theatres. They still buy the DVD or BR for watching at home. TV networks still pay them to program those movies - especially pay-TV channels, which people pay for to be able to watch those movies on.
GP on the other hand was talking about independent production, and independent distribution. That way GP would not have easy access to the shelves of the retailers (both on- and off-line). He would not have the budget to launch a large advertising campaign to compel people to buy his video. He would not be able to cast famous actors. That's the advantage the MPAA related companies have over independent producers like you, me and GP.
Now of course the traditional movie studios see the writing on the wall, which is why they are fighting hand and tooth to keep it as it is. They will have to change, eventually. But when that is, that's everyones guess. It's not now at least, they are still making money, and lots of it, considering the millions actors get paid for starring in their movies.
OS-X may be based on BSD code, it's now closed-source and highly protected. You may not redistribute it, even though a lot of it is based on BSD coded. Those parts may be redistributable, however that will not result in a working system. And forget about having a look at the source code.
So a lot of freedom has been lost: the freedom to look at the source, the freedom to modify the software, the freedom to distribute it.
Otoh look at Android: this system is based on the GPLed Linux kernel. Therefore the Android kernel is still GPLed which means you can get the source code for the Android kernel, and that you can redistribute it. No freedom has been lost there.
So now the computer starts looking at me, instead of just me looking at the computer?
Interesting. But sounds a bit scary too.
Some people own guns because no government fears an unarmed populace, and government only works in the interest of the people when the government fears the people and not the other way around.
I think you have a problem even worse than high gun ownership when everybody is doing their best to fear each other. That's what you're saying here. Fear - creating fear - not creating understanding or cooperation but fear. It worked to keep Big Brother in power (1984). It works to keep the Kims in power (N.-Korea). But do you really want a government like that? One that has to fear it's population, and that it's population fears? I do hope that's not what you really want.
It's a concept, a thought experiment basically. They asked their engineers to dream up stuff based on current tech (even if that tech is lab-only), and this is what they came up with. Also no glass or PC involved; some transparent ceramics they were thinking of.
The project leader thinks that these technologies could be implemented by 2050, that's 40 years later!
Nonetheless it's interesting. Scary, yes sure! I find it scary to step on a glass floor in a high building looking down 100m to the ground. Most people do, naturally. A plane is worse. But also it sounds really really cool.
Paris also had to do with helping the police/military crack down on revolutionists. The thing is the locals were perfectly happy with the maze, they just knew their way around. The police trying to track down those revolutionaries not: they got lost, and were an easy target. That's why there was this redesign, and nowadays Paris has these huge boulevards.
Many European cities to this day are like that, a bit like a maze, mainly because they grew organically, without any central planning. Newly built neighbourhoods nowadays are also often built with bending roads, not so straight. Because it looks nicer, and it slows down cars (for safety).
You'd have to go for a walk to get your authentication code.
Only to get timed out by the time you return of course.
Indeed making it no more or less secure than other two-factor systems that require some USB token or so.
As a matter of fact today when I came back from lunch I found such a USB token, in this case to access an e-banking web site. Someone from the neighbouring office dropped it while opening their gate or so, it was in the middle of the corridor. Not smart. I just rang their door bell and returned it to them.
I happen to know which bank it belongs to (I have a similar token), it wouldn't have given me access to their account even if I wanted to. I still missed the un/pw combination that goes with it.
Something you have plus something you know... pretty secure with fairly little hassle.
Well obviously talking about trademarks is fine. Otherwise /. would have been sued all over by all the brands that are commonly mentioned in the postings. Linux, Microsoft, HP, Dell, Nokia. I'm free to name them, I can just not claim them as my own.
As another poster already pointed out, talking about trademarks is fine, trying to sell a product/service using the mark while you do not own the mark and you may confuse the buyer is not OK. It is even possible to have the same mark registered by multiple people/companies, as long as they are not in the same business. Think Apple Computer vs. Apple Music (hope I recall that name correctly). They were in different businesses (until iTunes, which caused Apple Music to sue again over trademark infringement). And there exist many similar examples. As long as you are in a different market you can register a trademark. You could for example start selling erectile dysfunction drugs under the "Microsoft" brand if you would be inclined to do so. And if you have deep enough pockets to fight the likely case brought against you by the software company of the same name, you may actually come out victorious.
Technically you do not even have to register, a trademark becomes yours as soon as you start using it, but registering important marks is a good idea of course. Makes winning lawsuits easier. No time limit; a trademark remains yours as long as you use it. This in contrast with other IP such as copyrights and patents which do have an expiry date (though the expiry time for copyright is practically "never"). Also I know one may lose a trademark by not using it - if a mark is in disuse long enough and someone else starts using it, you may lose it.
Shouldn't be too hard. Two pieces is probably enough.
Take your data, compress it in a single file, then break it in two: the odd bytes in file1, the even bytes in file2.
I don't think it's practically possible to decompress any information from file1 without access to file2.
who apart from us here understands what an entropy file is? A judge sure doesn't.)
That's where expert witnesses are for. To explain this and the many many many other things a judge doesn't understand. There is way too much going on in this world for a single person to understand.
And I think many judges will accept an expert witness' statement without personal understanding of the tech/science behind it: 'expert witness says "it could be an entropy file" so it could be an entropy file instead of encrypted data'.
Yes know about the sorry state of politics in the US. Luckily the rest of the world has more than two choices, and those choices are actually different.
True - I live in Asia.
Europe (my origin) indeed makes region-freeness a selling point. Here it's not even an issue; when buying a DVD player I asked the sales about region locking. He had barely heard about it. There basically are none that have region coding; that's what I mean with "it's not an issue".
At least where I live it's hard to find a DVD player that actually follows region codes. They just haven't implemented that "feature". Region codes are just not an issue.
You would be hard pressed to not even find a PERSON who hasn't put in an attempt to change the law in his/her favour - as that's what elections are about. At least I for one when I have the chance to vote will vote for a person/party that wants laws to work in the same way I want it to.
The goal is the same, just the process is a bit different.
Who wins is depending on how you set your contest. And as this is no more than a publicity stunt, it's of course set up in a way that the pigeon is guaranteed to win.
200 MB on a memory card has the same "transfer time" as 16 GB. Yet suddenly the bandwidth is some 80 times as great.
A 10 Mbit connection has the same transfer speed whether it is to the neighbour's or across the ocean. Oh wait that's downstream; upstream is always slower. On my broadband connection uploading 200 MB will take about 45 minutes - downloading the same amount of data is done within 5 minutes. No wonder you pit the pigeon against an upstream.
And why not ask this pigeon to deliver the video file actually to YouTube? Not to some other point from where it's transferred to YouTube? Is that maybe because YouTube is in the US and that's too far to fly for the pigeon?
TFA admits it: "Also the farms connection speed is just 100-200 Kbps (Kilobits per second), so it never really stood a chance of winning but then that's not the point?". It is set up so the pigeon would win. And 100-200 Kbps up is not even that bad assuming ADSL over normal copper, and farms tend to be far far away from the nearest switch. It's one of those things one will have to live with when trying to live away from the civilised world.
Speeding up from 60 mph to mach-10 immediately made me think of one of the mantras of the Mythbusters: "if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing!"