If it were thermite then the termite itself would have finished burning by the the time the other passengers realised what was going on. Thermite burns well, and is known for burning quite fast. What was left burning was most certainly other material, like the cloth of his clothes. And I can't imagine he could have managed to carry on really large quantities of the stuff.
In the line of trains: China just opened a line from Guangzhou to Wuhan, almost 1100 km, travel time is now under 3 hours, similar to flying. There are nine stops on the route, trains run at 350 km/h with top speed of almost 400 km/h. It's the fastest high-speed link in the world now. And a ticket costs something like RMB500 (USD 73), eight times the cost of a normal train ticket (10-11 hour trip) and a little less than a plane ticket.
With such a system you could do your route in like yours in about 6 hours.
Check-in for Chinese trains is also still simple: buy a ticket (preferably using cash), walk through a metal detector while your bag is scanned in an x-ray device, and walk on to your train. Very efficient. And that way easily competitive with airliners.
Indeed. Besides, why do they need the root password? How about "please give me an extract of logfiles x, y and z (if syslog doesn't do), from time hh:mm to hh:mm"? That's what they are after it seems. Or how about setting up user that has read-only access to just those log files, and give that account to CS?
Secondly, if you allow a third party direct access to your hardware, then that third party can at any time access all your data, no matter what you do software-wise. Encryption just makes it a little harder. They ARE the man in the middle if need be. A hosting provider you will have to trust to respect your privacy - if you do not have that trust you'd better not put your data in their hands. It seems in this case that trust isn't there, for whatever reason, then better move to another provider and sleep better after that.
Who needs success? Plans are enough! Just plans is how we got those silly no-liquids rules. And on top of that a week of highly disrupted air traffic. Terrorism is that easy. I'd almost call it dead easy but in that case no death involved.
The only DRM that can survive is DRM that does not get in the way of what the consumer wants to do. As soon as DRM is going to do things like "I don't play on this TV screen because no-one gave me permission to play on that screen, but I will happily play on your other screens" (like that fancy HD-video connector what's it called again... HDMI or so? can do to you) then consumers will go "WTF is this? That sucks! Return that TV to the shop as it can't play my BluRay! and the DRM will whither and go in the end.
CSS has been a nuisance to me: I got a DVD player in my Linux computer like 10 years ago, right about the time of DeCSS. I had to install an extra driver and presto, all DVDs played again. That was quite irritating though. But it's now basically out of the way.
I don't have BluRay and don't have experience with their DRM mess, but as soon as it gets in the way of consumers (can't easily view their disk, whatever) they will stop buying. It's for me enough reason not to go that route: it sounds too cumbersome. Get special interface to your HD-TV and just hope it works even though the cables connect nicely, that kind of nonsense. I'm not even willing to try. Unless I read about it being as thoroughly broken as DVD's DRM, then I will consider.
There you go: one potential sale of equipment and lots of disks gone.
So I think DRM is self-defeating. From the get-go of DRM (I heard the term coined 15-20 years ago) I already wondered 'how can that work, as it's the computer that you control yourself is trying to restrict you' and well I was about right there obviously. Either it gets in the way and costs you sales, or it doesn't get in the way and then well what's the use of building in digital restrictions management that basically has no restrictions. It just costs more effort.
Case in point: region coding on DVDs. Here in Hong Kong (and I think most of Asia) it's a non-issue. I don't think you can find a DVD player with region coding built in. It's never mentioned in the manual, nor is there a region code setting to be made anywhere in the device settings. It seems to be simply absent, thus saving the makers of the device the cost of implementing that restriction. Just ignoring it is cheaper.
Probably neither plan. And it was not my intention to make it sound like Apple wanted DRM, I know it's the music labels that wanted it. In music as I see it DRM is disappearing slowly but surely.
Contracts also do not need to expire, they may be renegotiated at all times.
I don't think any DRM provider ever had "gaining distribution control" as their business plan, they just got it. They had the DRM, and part of keeping DRM working is keeping those keys secret (one of the major weaknesses of DRM of course), and of course protocols copyrighted or otherwise protected.
For the most part, they loose money on each ebook sale.
OK the grammar is a bit whacky but what he meant is of course that the profit margin is so huge that they end up with some money lying around loose because nobody knows what to do with all that spare change.
If publishers were really thinking that, they were not really smart.
DRM has two sides. The content producer, and the consumer. Both lose control to the DRM provider. Look at iTunes and the ITMS. Apple got a virtual monopoly on digital music players, so any music publisher wanting DRM and sell music online and wanting to have an audience larger than 10 would have to go to Apple. Apple knew that. It gave them a lot of pricing power and control.
Now the music publishers realised that, and have started to sell non-DRM music, so they can at least dictate the terms again. There is competition between the stores: they all want to sell music.
At the moment ebooks go the same way. Amazon is a giant, their Kindle is very popular. If a publisher wants to sell DRMed books, they have to go the Amazon/Kindle route. Great for Amazon: they have a double monopoly (readers and content). Not good for authors and publishers. Amazon can demand a greater profit on sales than in an open market, and if Amazon doesn't like your title too bad. You can not go for another DRM as the most common reader can not read it.
I have argued the same before, and will continue to do: DRM goes away because it gives all control to the DRM provider. And the content provider (music labels, publishers, authors, movie studios, TV channels, etc) have to sing to their tune. On top of that it fragments the market: imagine, you are an author, you want to publish your book, and not knowing much about digital technology and distribution you want to "protect it against copying because otherwise everyone will steal my work" so you want to add that cool DRM technology. Then you have a choice of distributors: you could go with DRM1 and you get 40% market share, as their DRM1Reader has a 40% share of e-book readers. Or you could go with DRM2 and you get 30%. DRM3 and DRM4 each have 15% market share. And neither allows you to license to anyone else, so you can not reach more than 40% of the market.
Of course everyone will go to the DRM1 company to grab the largest distribution potential for their work, which then grows and grows and grows to say 80% of the market. And has full control over everything: distribution, pricing, commission for themselves, whether or not to promote/feature your work, etc.
That is what happened to Apple's iTunes. And that is the real reason why everyone is now selling DRM free music. Not because consumers do not like it because in this game no-one cares about the consumer as long as they consume. But the content owners lose control over their content, and lose sales.
What is that based on? As long as the tender is open ("we want option x and we are willing to pay no more than $y for it") and offered to all other competitors as well where is the problem? Or are you not allowed to put a price on a tender beforehand?
If you would offer directly to a developer or two without allowing competitors to bid, I can imagine it's illegal indeed.
Now I don't know the constitution exactly however there are problem areas. Such as racism. Many constitutions will say that everyone is equal regardless of race/gender/religion/etc. Then comes a person claiming "blacks are inferior!", without any argumentation, scientific or otherwise.
Free speech maybe - but how about the equality?
Doesn't this person deny just that?
Maybe not the best example but I bet you get the idea. Freedom of speech is not necessarily absolute: there is such thing as hate speech for example, forbidden in many parts of the world. Shouting insults at a police officer is also not always a good idea. And how about direct threats? Are those also fully allowed under "free speech"? Holocaust denial is simply illegal in Germany for example.
This is not the forum for such a discussion but I just want to make the point that freedom of speech may certainly have its limits. However I think those tests should be done AFTER something has been said. And the person uttering the speech may then be held responsible.
In short: a jury can acquit a suspect even when the law says he is guilty of a crime, so going against the letter of the law. In case multiple juries in separate cases do this, precedent is created that in effect overturns the law in question.
Juries however can NOT by themselves overturn a law. There have to be multiple juries deciding against a law, and even then the law itself is still there, and will have to be removed by the government.
In the United States, laws, as well as the accused, are on trial in a courtroom. If the people find a law to be unjust, the jury can strike it down with nullification.
Can be done, I know, however I heard in other/. comments that this is really rare. I'd like to see some examples where this was done. The consequences can be "interesting" I'd say.
If a judge deems a law contrary to higher law, such as state/federal constitutions, the judge is able to throw the law out.
That is not specific to common law - and that is indeed how this discussion started: the testing of a law (copyright term) against the constitution. All countries with constitution or something like can subject laws to such tests. In case of the EU, national laws can be tested against EU laws (though I have no idea what would happen if an EU law goes against a member country's constitution). This is similar to the US with states and central government, albeit that there is a central constitution, while in the EU most if not all member states have their own constitution, and there is also that document called EU constitution nowadays. How much that is really a constitution in the traditional sense I don't know. It's a complex mess at best. At that point the US is way ahead of the EU but then the EU is younger and came into existence differently.
The legal system (courts, lawyers, judges, etc) is imho not supposed to have "common sense" whatever that may be for you. Their task is to implement and enforce laws, no more no less. There may be ambiguities in laws - then courts can decide which way to go. But when the law says that e.g. copyright infringement has statutory damages of $1 mln per count then the court has no choice but to lay down such fines.
It is the task of the government to write laws based on common sense. That is where you really have to complain: the government that prescribes 100-year copyright terms, not the courts that allow that to happen.
That way they may lose the copyrights on old cartoons featuring Mickey but no-one will be able to make any works with Mickey in it's current looks. There is afaik no need for copyright to keep Mickey Mouse the unique symbol/character that belongs to Disney.
This way it becomes kind of a logo. A moving, talking logo. And trademarks iirc are protected for as long as they are in use.
And in defense again of SCOTUS, they are correct here. There is a limit. Albeit a limit that is so long that it basically becomes "forever" for all practical purposes. It will have to become much worse before it will improve.
Just like DRM: the only reason it will go away is when it gets in the way of people's daily life. Copyright doesn't get in the way of many people's lives, so they do not care. Even with copyrights they can watch TV, watch their DVDs, listen to the radio, go to the movies, etc.
Too black-and-white stated. On the Chinese side that is. A lot of censorship in China is in the form of self-censorship: newspapers have some vague guidelines on not publishing stories that could "cause civil unrest" for example. They are generally NOT checked before publishing, only afterwards, and punishment can be severe. Thus they self-censor. The same accounts for web sites and other media outlets.
Allowing private persons to register domains of course helps them to publish their views, and that's I think the main reason of this new regulation. Porn is just a nice excuse.
Most of the single men are poor, and can not afford to go to a hooker.
This is partly because the male/female ratio is worst in the poor countryside (boys are extra important on farms, as they can help with the heavy work, plus the more traditional values and desire to keep the family line). Secondly, women have a preference for better-off men. Women like to "marry up", while men don't mind to "marry down". In Western society we see the same effect but then at the "high end": successful career-women who can not find a husband.
Yes the prostitution industry is doing very well, but that has other reasons.
No-one forces you to get onto a stupid TV contract in the first place. That was voluntary. Moving home was customer's choice, has nothing to do with DirecTV. Too bad for her that this particular satellite is not in view, that dishes on the roof are not allowed, whatever.
This person wants to break a contract for reasons that the other side has no fault of. DirecTV is in their full right to stand on their side of the contract.
The problem is not just that IE is installed by default, but that MS long time has prevented resellers to install another browser, let alone make another browser the default.
Yes it's easy to install another browser, but it's even easier to use the one that comes installed by default, is used by other parts of the O/S for various display tasks, and will nag you to become the default every time it's invoked even if not for browsing the Internet.
Partly thanks to this policy of having IE installed and preventing any other browser to be present, many people don't realise there are more browsers.
And finally installing software in Windows may be reasonably easy, it's still harder and less straightforward than the dead-easy GUIs and linked software repositories that most Linux distributions come with. If I want to install some software, I fire up "Add/Remove Software", and can browse and install easily. I don't have to know the name of the software, or which website to download it from, etc. I can look for "image editor" without having to know it's called "The Gimp" or so - searching for some decent software that way in Google is way way harder!
I'm running SpamAssassin on Debian, pretty much in default settings (just set it up, training on the go). It checks SPF and scores a little for failures, no points for matching SPF or missing SPF.
That's the few spams that get past greylisting... which in itself blocks about 90% of my spam before it even reaches me.
Maybe I'm infected but I do like Google's ads on their site. Unblocked those in ABP. I literally missed them: that's where you find the commercial search results.
But reading this article I recalled that some time ago I actually disabled ABP specifically for Google.com. This as I was searching for something to buy or so, and I missed the ads. When searching for commercial services I very often click those ads: they often offer exactly what I am looking for. The ad-results sometimes suit me better than the normal search results - the normal results are more non-commercial in nature. That's not good if you are looking for commercial sites.
So indeed Google doesn't have to be afraid. Not at all. Text ads on their site I like, really. Text ads in other people's blogs I don't care about (those are usually not relevant to me, or just not interesting).
And I have of course Flashblock. Click to play. That's one of the most important extensions to Firefox, really couldn't do without. No ABP? Too bad (flashblock takes care of the most irritating ads already anyway). No Flashblock? Disaster.
Now I'm not sure if it's a fine (which I'd expect is payable to the court or the government), or a penalty (payable to the rights holder whose rights have been infringed). TFS and TFA use both terms.
Anyway keeping those penalties at relative low level (though NZ$15,000 is a lot of money for most people) there is a good chance that the cost of the rights holders per case is similar to the settlement they could get. Especially if a hearing is requested and lawyers are needed. That should be a great deterrent against abuse. Also they appear to have to prove that there is a lot of damage before they can even get that much.
And in case the penalty is "just" disconnection, then the rights holders don't get anything. They still have their cost.
The Wiimote measurements must be accurate for a proper gaming experience, but not necessarily reproducible.
This kind of measurements are nice if you wish to measure changes (change in water level), not if you wish to measure something absolute (the actual water level).
Slashdot Mirror
If it were thermite then the termite itself would have finished burning by the the time the other passengers realised what was going on. Thermite burns well, and is known for burning quite fast. What was left burning was most certainly other material, like the cloth of his clothes. And I can't imagine he could have managed to carry on really large quantities of the stuff.
In the line of trains: China just opened a line from Guangzhou to Wuhan, almost 1100 km, travel time is now under 3 hours, similar to flying. There are nine stops on the route, trains run at 350 km/h with top speed of almost 400 km/h. It's the fastest high-speed link in the world now. And a ticket costs something like RMB500 (USD 73), eight times the cost of a normal train ticket (10-11 hour trip) and a little less than a plane ticket.
With such a system you could do your route in like yours in about 6 hours.
Check-in for Chinese trains is also still simple: buy a ticket (preferably using cash), walk through a metal detector while your bag is scanned in an x-ray device, and walk on to your train. Very efficient. And that way easily competitive with airliners.
Indeed. Besides, why do they need the root password? How about "please give me an extract of logfiles x, y and z (if syslog doesn't do), from time hh:mm to hh:mm"? That's what they are after it seems. Or how about setting up user that has read-only access to just those log files, and give that account to CS?
Secondly, if you allow a third party direct access to your hardware, then that third party can at any time access all your data, no matter what you do software-wise. Encryption just makes it a little harder. They ARE the man in the middle if need be. A hosting provider you will have to trust to respect your privacy - if you do not have that trust you'd better not put your data in their hands. It seems in this case that trust isn't there, for whatever reason, then better move to another provider and sleep better after that.
Who needs success? Plans are enough! Just plans is how we got those silly no-liquids rules. And on top of that a week of highly disrupted air traffic. Terrorism is that easy. I'd almost call it dead easy but in that case no death involved.
The only DRM that can survive is DRM that does not get in the way of what the consumer wants to do. As soon as DRM is going to do things like "I don't play on this TV screen because no-one gave me permission to play on that screen, but I will happily play on your other screens" (like that fancy HD-video connector what's it called again... HDMI or so? can do to you) then consumers will go "WTF is this? That sucks! Return that TV to the shop as it can't play my BluRay! and the DRM will whither and go in the end.
CSS has been a nuisance to me: I got a DVD player in my Linux computer like 10 years ago, right about the time of DeCSS. I had to install an extra driver and presto, all DVDs played again. That was quite irritating though. But it's now basically out of the way.
I don't have BluRay and don't have experience with their DRM mess, but as soon as it gets in the way of consumers (can't easily view their disk, whatever) they will stop buying. It's for me enough reason not to go that route: it sounds too cumbersome. Get special interface to your HD-TV and just hope it works even though the cables connect nicely, that kind of nonsense. I'm not even willing to try. Unless I read about it being as thoroughly broken as DVD's DRM, then I will consider.
There you go: one potential sale of equipment and lots of disks gone.
So I think DRM is self-defeating. From the get-go of DRM (I heard the term coined 15-20 years ago) I already wondered 'how can that work, as it's the computer that you control yourself is trying to restrict you' and well I was about right there obviously. Either it gets in the way and costs you sales, or it doesn't get in the way and then well what's the use of building in digital restrictions management that basically has no restrictions. It just costs more effort.
Case in point: region coding on DVDs. Here in Hong Kong (and I think most of Asia) it's a non-issue. I don't think you can find a DVD player with region coding built in. It's never mentioned in the manual, nor is there a region code setting to be made anywhere in the device settings. It seems to be simply absent, thus saving the makers of the device the cost of implementing that restriction. Just ignoring it is cheaper.
Probably neither plan. And it was not my intention to make it sound like Apple wanted DRM, I know it's the music labels that wanted it. In music as I see it DRM is disappearing slowly but surely.
Contracts also do not need to expire, they may be renegotiated at all times.
I don't think any DRM provider ever had "gaining distribution control" as their business plan, they just got it. They had the DRM, and part of keeping DRM working is keeping those keys secret (one of the major weaknesses of DRM of course), and of course protocols copyrighted or otherwise protected.
Nonono.
Read that quote from GP again:
For the most part, they loose money on each ebook sale.
OK the grammar is a bit whacky but what he meant is of course that the profit margin is so huge that they end up with some money lying around loose because nobody knows what to do with all that spare change.
If publishers were really thinking that, they were not really smart.
DRM has two sides. The content producer, and the consumer. Both lose control to the DRM provider. Look at iTunes and the ITMS. Apple got a virtual monopoly on digital music players, so any music publisher wanting DRM and sell music online and wanting to have an audience larger than 10 would have to go to Apple. Apple knew that. It gave them a lot of pricing power and control.
Now the music publishers realised that, and have started to sell non-DRM music, so they can at least dictate the terms again. There is competition between the stores: they all want to sell music.
At the moment ebooks go the same way. Amazon is a giant, their Kindle is very popular. If a publisher wants to sell DRMed books, they have to go the Amazon/Kindle route. Great for Amazon: they have a double monopoly (readers and content). Not good for authors and publishers. Amazon can demand a greater profit on sales than in an open market, and if Amazon doesn't like your title too bad. You can not go for another DRM as the most common reader can not read it.
I have argued the same before, and will continue to do: DRM goes away because it gives all control to the DRM provider. And the content provider (music labels, publishers, authors, movie studios, TV channels, etc) have to sing to their tune. On top of that it fragments the market: imagine, you are an author, you want to publish your book, and not knowing much about digital technology and distribution you want to "protect it against copying because otherwise everyone will steal my work" so you want to add that cool DRM technology. Then you have a choice of distributors: you could go with DRM1 and you get 40% market share, as their DRM1Reader has a 40% share of e-book readers. Or you could go with DRM2 and you get 30%. DRM3 and DRM4 each have 15% market share. And neither allows you to license to anyone else, so you can not reach more than 40% of the market.
Of course everyone will go to the DRM1 company to grab the largest distribution potential for their work, which then grows and grows and grows to say 80% of the market. And has full control over everything: distribution, pricing, commission for themselves, whether or not to promote/feature your work, etc.
That is what happened to Apple's iTunes. And that is the real reason why everyone is now selling DRM free music. Not because consumers do not like it because in this game no-one cares about the consumer as long as they consume. But the content owners lose control over their content, and lose sales.
What is that based on? As long as the tender is open ("we want option x and we are willing to pay no more than $y for it") and offered to all other competitors as well where is the problem? Or are you not allowed to put a price on a tender beforehand?
If you would offer directly to a developer or two without allowing competitors to bid, I can imagine it's illegal indeed.
Now I don't know the constitution exactly however there are problem areas. Such as racism. Many constitutions will say that everyone is equal regardless of race/gender/religion/etc. Then comes a person claiming "blacks are inferior!", without any argumentation, scientific or otherwise.
Free speech maybe - but how about the equality? Doesn't this person deny just that?
Maybe not the best example but I bet you get the idea. Freedom of speech is not necessarily absolute: there is such thing as hate speech for example, forbidden in many parts of the world. Shouting insults at a police officer is also not always a good idea. And how about direct threats? Are those also fully allowed under "free speech"? Holocaust denial is simply illegal in Germany for example.
This is not the forum for such a discussion but I just want to make the point that freedom of speech may certainly have its limits. However I think those tests should be done AFTER something has been said. And the person uttering the speech may then be held responsible.
Wikipedia has a long article about it here.
In short: a jury can acquit a suspect even when the law says he is guilty of a crime, so going against the letter of the law. In case multiple juries in separate cases do this, precedent is created that in effect overturns the law in question.
Juries however can NOT by themselves overturn a law. There have to be multiple juries deciding against a law, and even then the law itself is still there, and will have to be removed by the government.
In the United States, laws, as well as the accused, are on trial in a courtroom. If the people find a law to be unjust, the jury can strike it down with nullification.
Can be done, I know, however I heard in other /. comments that this is really rare. I'd like to see some examples where this was done. The consequences can be "interesting" I'd say.
If a judge deems a law contrary to higher law, such as state/federal constitutions, the judge is able to throw the law out.
That is not specific to common law - and that is indeed how this discussion started: the testing of a law (copyright term) against the constitution. All countries with constitution or something like can subject laws to such tests. In case of the EU, national laws can be tested against EU laws (though I have no idea what would happen if an EU law goes against a member country's constitution). This is similar to the US with states and central government, albeit that there is a central constitution, while in the EU most if not all member states have their own constitution, and there is also that document called EU constitution nowadays. How much that is really a constitution in the traditional sense I don't know. It's a complex mess at best. At that point the US is way ahead of the EU but then the EU is younger and came into existence differently.
The legal system (courts, lawyers, judges, etc) is imho not supposed to have "common sense" whatever that may be for you. Their task is to implement and enforce laws, no more no less. There may be ambiguities in laws - then courts can decide which way to go. But when the law says that e.g. copyright infringement has statutory damages of $1 mln per count then the court has no choice but to lay down such fines.
It is the task of the government to write laws based on common sense. That is where you really have to complain: the government that prescribes 100-year copyright terms, not the courts that allow that to happen.
They could trademark it.
That way they may lose the copyrights on old cartoons featuring Mickey but no-one will be able to make any works with Mickey in it's current looks. There is afaik no need for copyright to keep Mickey Mouse the unique symbol/character that belongs to Disney.
This way it becomes kind of a logo. A moving, talking logo. And trademarks iirc are protected for as long as they are in use.
And in defense again of SCOTUS, they are correct here. There is a limit. Albeit a limit that is so long that it basically becomes "forever" for all practical purposes. It will have to become much worse before it will improve.
Just like DRM: the only reason it will go away is when it gets in the way of people's daily life. Copyright doesn't get in the way of many people's lives, so they do not care. Even with copyrights they can watch TV, watch their DVDs, listen to the radio, go to the movies, etc.
Too black-and-white stated. On the Chinese side that is. A lot of censorship in China is in the form of self-censorship: newspapers have some vague guidelines on not publishing stories that could "cause civil unrest" for example. They are generally NOT checked before publishing, only afterwards, and punishment can be severe. Thus they self-censor. The same accounts for web sites and other media outlets.
Allowing private persons to register domains of course helps them to publish their views, and that's I think the main reason of this new regulation. Porn is just a nice excuse.
Most of the single men are poor, and can not afford to go to a hooker.
This is partly because the male/female ratio is worst in the poor countryside (boys are extra important on farms, as they can help with the heavy work, plus the more traditional values and desire to keep the family line). Secondly, women have a preference for better-off men. Women like to "marry up", while men don't mind to "marry down". In Western society we see the same effect but then at the "high end": successful career-women who can not find a husband.
Yes the prostitution industry is doing very well, but that has other reasons.
No-one forces you to get onto a stupid TV contract in the first place. That was voluntary. Moving home was customer's choice, has nothing to do with DirecTV. Too bad for her that this particular satellite is not in view, that dishes on the roof are not allowed, whatever.
This person wants to break a contract for reasons that the other side has no fault of. DirecTV is in their full right to stand on their side of the contract.
The first category probably wouldn't even realise they are working with FF or Safari instead of IE.
The problem is not just that IE is installed by default, but that MS long time has prevented resellers to install another browser, let alone make another browser the default.
Yes it's easy to install another browser, but it's even easier to use the one that comes installed by default, is used by other parts of the O/S for various display tasks, and will nag you to become the default every time it's invoked even if not for browsing the Internet.
Partly thanks to this policy of having IE installed and preventing any other browser to be present, many people don't realise there are more browsers.
And finally installing software in Windows may be reasonably easy, it's still harder and less straightforward than the dead-easy GUIs and linked software repositories that most Linux distributions come with. If I want to install some software, I fire up "Add/Remove Software", and can browse and install easily. I don't have to know the name of the software, or which website to download it from, etc. I can look for "image editor" without having to know it's called "The Gimp" or so - searching for some decent software that way in Google is way way harder!
I'm running SpamAssassin on Debian, pretty much in default settings (just set it up, training on the go). It checks SPF and scores a little for failures, no points for matching SPF or missing SPF.
That's the few spams that get past greylisting... which in itself blocks about 90% of my spam before it even reaches me.
Maybe I'm infected but I do like Google's ads on their site. Unblocked those in ABP. I literally missed them: that's where you find the commercial search results.
I'm using AdBlockPlus. It's great.
But reading this article I recalled that some time ago I actually disabled ABP specifically for Google.com. This as I was searching for something to buy or so, and I missed the ads. When searching for commercial services I very often click those ads: they often offer exactly what I am looking for. The ad-results sometimes suit me better than the normal search results - the normal results are more non-commercial in nature. That's not good if you are looking for commercial sites.
So indeed Google doesn't have to be afraid. Not at all. Text ads on their site I like, really. Text ads in other people's blogs I don't care about (those are usually not relevant to me, or just not interesting).
And I have of course Flashblock. Click to play. That's one of the most important extensions to Firefox, really couldn't do without. No ABP? Too bad (flashblock takes care of the most irritating ads already anyway). No Flashblock? Disaster.
Now I'm not sure if it's a fine (which I'd expect is payable to the court or the government), or a penalty (payable to the rights holder whose rights have been infringed). TFS and TFA use both terms.
Anyway keeping those penalties at relative low level (though NZ$15,000 is a lot of money for most people) there is a good chance that the cost of the rights holders per case is similar to the settlement they could get. Especially if a hearing is requested and lawyers are needed. That should be a great deterrent against abuse. Also they appear to have to prove that there is a lot of damage before they can even get that much.
And in case the penalty is "just" disconnection, then the rights holders don't get anything. They still have their cost.
There is accuracy.
Then there is reproducibility.
Those two are not the same.
The Wiimote measurements must be accurate for a proper gaming experience, but not necessarily reproducible.
This kind of measurements are nice if you wish to measure changes (change in water level), not if you wish to measure something absolute (the actual water level).