Amen brother. I loved my Newton and wept bitter tears when Mr. Jobs killed it out of spite. I wonder what it would do today if they'd continued development for the past decade....
I understand that there's a lot of misinformation out there, with much of it reinforced by those journalists who aren't able to describe the issues properly, but that's why I have these little chats:-).
Umm, theoretically, but if that became a standard, I'm guessing they'd just adjust the threshold. However, one of the interesting aspects of this is currently it seems as though you can grab all the music you want without fear of retribution, so long as your client is configured to not let anybody do a download....
I'm repeating myself here, but someone's "non-commercial" activity has a commercial impact when they give away enough of someone else's product that the free distribution negatively affects sales.
If you give away enough of something that somebody else is trying to sell, you'll either depress the price of their product so significantly that they can't make a profit or eventually make it impossible for them to sell their product at all. At that point you're exposed under copyright law, regardless of the fact that you're not technically selling anything. Negatively impacting a market means you can be successfully sued.
The rule is "illegal" distribution isn't actionable -- assuming you're not actually selling the stuff -- unless you negatively impact the market for the original product. I can't give you a citation for this (apologies, it's my day off and I just can't bring myself to do any real work today) but as I recall the threshold at which some courts have entertained arguments that your distribution has negatively affected their market is five distributed copies. It's not hard and fast; it's more like the concept of using excerpts of someone else's written work in your own, which is protected under Fair Use; there's no formally defined threshold at which your use of a portion of copyrighted material crosses the line into unfair use; if somebody thinks you're using too much, they have to take you to court to find out what the judge thinks...
Correct, except we're not talking about DVDs, which are typically encrypted, we're talking about music CDs, which typically are not. So the DMCA isn't a part of this conversation, nor does the RIAA typically rely on it when suing people.
An excellent point. Which is why the RIAA doesn't actually litigate against people for *making copies*, which is protected behavior. Unprotected behavior includes *distributing* those copies. In a general sense, in the United States at least, distributing five or fewer copies of a song is protected by such things as (ta-da!) the Audio Home Recording Act. Massive distribution -- the sort of thing you might be involved in if your P2P client were configured to, say, allow the entire universe of other users to grab a copy of the song stored on your hard drive -- exposes you to legal action. To repeat: to the best of my knowledge, every RIAA action has alleged illegal *distribution*, not illegal *copying.* So while this is amusing, it's not exactly exposing the RIAA as hypocrites, since the act of handing a single copied CD is clearly protected behavior...
As a general rule, sensitive information is already prohibited on military computers that are connected to the Internet. If you've ever seen an office in, say, the Department of Homeland Security, you'll notice that they have two or even three systems on each desk; that's because none of those computers are connected to each other. Computers that can touch the Internet can't have anything sensitive on them; computers that might have something sensitive on them can't touch the Internet.
Actually, it's only the process of "sharing" that exposes you to legal action (at least here in the US). Taking a copy of a file off any kind of feed is generally protected under the Fair Use exception to copyright law. However, if you've configured your P2P client to allow *other* people to make a copy of that same file from your copy, you're "distributing" that file to thousands of others, and that's actionable.
I have to say, putting in a name and email address is much less invasive than some other systems designed to deter file sharing. For example, back in 1997, Liquid Audio introduced a system that embedded the credit card number used to purchase the file within the file itself. Obviously, you'd have to be a loon to share a file like that.
Even so, I don't think it's inappropriate to be concerned about including personally identifying informamation (PII) like a name and an email address. While this sort of thing wouldn't be of any concern to the vast majority of users, there are a number of examples where such seemingly innocuous information has led to tragedy. As long as users are fully aware of the implications and can accept or reject such techniques, I don't have any problem with it.
I think you make valid points, however, TR1 also gave the player an unprecedented level of control over the character: You could leap up and hang from your fingertips, shimmy left or right, do a diving roll, do multiple jumps sideways and backwards...it was just phenomenal. It was one of those games I showed people who actively disliked videgames and they uniformly became enthralled. In addition, the settings you explored and the images portrayed, coupled with your ability to fully explore the environment (I remember spending hours crawling over those enormous statutes, looking at things from different angles) made the game quite compelling. All those aspects, combined with a reasonable storyline, make this game a standout. I firmly believe that you could sell a million copies of TR1 with merely a graphics update. The real disappointment of the more recent games, from my perspective, has been the execrebale control systems; I would argue that one of TR's greatest strenths has been to lessen the distiction between the user and the game avatar but a less than vigorous control system destroys that illusion. TR was the second game I loved (the first being Wing Commander).
It said on the ticket that a seat belt violation carries no points and cannot be used to affect your insurace rates (like you, I would not have taken the officer's word for it); I can tell this is true because years later I still have my "good driver discount" on my policy. I'm sure there's an interesting story about why they set up the seatbelt enforcement law like this, but I have no idea what it is.
I'm frankly astounded that no other major newspaper has a guy on the computer security beat full time, though technically I think Brian Krebs is attached to the Post's Web site. In any event, I think Krebs is absolutely the best reporter writing about computer security in the mainstream media today. At least since I stopped:-).
Not sure I'm following you here; I got pulled over for doing ten miles an hour over the limit during a laser training exercise (old cop and new cop). Old cop checks me out, walks back to my car and offers to write me up a ticket for not having my seatbelt on instead of a speeding ticket (I did have my seatbelt on at the time). I intially got a little hot about this when the cop offered it to me, but he pointed out that a seat belt violation had no points, doesn't affect my insurance rates, and it's a lot cheaper than a speeding ticket. I genuinely felt like the cop was cutting me a break, acknowledging that normally I wouldn't have even been pulled over in that situation. The last time I got a ticket before that I also got pulled over for speeding but instead of writing me up for speeding, a California cop cited me for not having the car registered in the state (which I needed to do anyway). Again, no points, no insurance penalty, blah blah. Now, in both these instances I was speeding; how is the issuance of a non-moving violation to me in this situation abuse of power? Both times I was and remain exceedingly grateful to those cops who recognized that I wasn't endangering anybody with my driving (and of course I didn't have any outstanding warrants).
Two things: First, the telegraph was the first binary "digital" device. It communicated information using dots and dashes.
Second, I last sent a telegram about six years ago when a friend of mine finished up her PhD. Western Union knocked on the door of her victory party and hand delivered it. She was flabbergasted, had never gotten one before, and none of her friends had ever seen one. She still has it in a frame. I don't know of anybody that's got any bit of email I've ever sent them in a frame.
Your analogy is more precise than mine; nicely done. But I think MS does "get" networking these days; they're just in this huge bind because they can't repair all the problems without breaking nearly every existing application out there. Most people won't throw away their entire investment in software for an OS upgrade -- even a a more secure OS upgrade -- so Microsoft winds up muddling along with things like XP Service Pack 2 (the 2 stands for "too little, too late"). Must stop typing these at 3 AM....
The purpose of Internet Explorer is to download third party files (by viewing Web pages). Mr Gates's claim that vulnerabilites exist because of such downloads is therefore nonsensical; it's like saying we could end deaths due to automobile accidents by banning automobiles. Yeah, there's a certain logic to that, but it sort of misses the point. To take a recent, ongoing example: A malevolent Web page can use an image file to compromise a Windows system. This vulnerability is not created by users who have somehow previously contaiminated the local environment; it's a part of the system's design. The OS was originally built to offer features over security, and maintaining backward compatability rather than fixing those issues would make it more difficult to coax existing users into upgrading (and would also make it easier for existing users to consider alternatives rather than upgrading). I lost two years of my life covering the antitrust trial, listening to this guy and his minions cheerfully perjure themselves, and he just can't seem to stop making it up.
Not too elderly friend of mine (he's 64) and his wife rented Segways in DC. Now, just so you know he's not a complete klutz, he and his wife go dancing several nights a week. So, he's on this thing for less than 15 minutes, drops his left wheel off the curb, and is thrown a good four feet into the street. Helmet on, otherwise would have smashed his skull against the pavement. As it was, narrowly avoided being run over by a car, had a dandy and debilitating bruise over much of his left hip, and has no interest in ever getting on one again.
Actually, a couple of the stories, such as the one in the Register, mention Valve's claim that release of Half Life 2 source delayed release of that game, but I'd argue that the two situations aren't comparable.
Court ruling only directs FEC to examine online advertisements, not, as the summary claims, speech online. Thus, the FEC has merely been directed to monitor compliance with campaign advertising restrictions currently applicable in meatspace.
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Amen brother. I loved my Newton and wept bitter tears when Mr. Jobs killed it out of spite. I wonder what it would do today if they'd continued development for the past decade....
I understand that there's a lot of misinformation out there, with much of it reinforced by those journalists who aren't able to describe the issues properly, but that's why I have these little chats :-).
Umm, theoretically, but if that became a standard, I'm guessing they'd just adjust the threshold. However, one of the interesting aspects of this is currently it seems as though you can grab all the music you want without fear of retribution, so long as your client is configured to not let anybody do a download....
I'm repeating myself here, but someone's "non-commercial" activity has a commercial impact when they give away enough of someone else's product that the free distribution negatively affects sales.
If you give away enough of something that somebody else is trying to sell, you'll either depress the price of their product so significantly that they can't make a profit or eventually make it impossible for them to sell their product at all. At that point you're exposed under copyright law, regardless of the fact that you're not technically selling anything. Negatively impacting a market means you can be successfully sued.
The rule is "illegal" distribution isn't actionable -- assuming you're not actually selling the stuff -- unless you negatively impact the market for the original product. I can't give you a citation for this (apologies, it's my day off and I just can't bring myself to do any real work today) but as I recall the threshold at which some courts have entertained arguments that your distribution has negatively affected their market is five distributed copies. It's not hard and fast; it's more like the concept of using excerpts of someone else's written work in your own, which is protected under Fair Use; there's no formally defined threshold at which your use of a portion of copyrighted material crosses the line into unfair use; if somebody thinks you're using too much, they have to take you to court to find out what the judge thinks...
Correct, except we're not talking about DVDs, which are typically encrypted, we're talking about music CDs, which typically are not. So the DMCA isn't a part of this conversation, nor does the RIAA typically rely on it when suing people.
An excellent point. Which is why the RIAA doesn't actually litigate against people for *making copies*, which is protected behavior. Unprotected behavior includes *distributing* those copies. In a general sense, in the United States at least, distributing five or fewer copies of a song is protected by such things as (ta-da!) the Audio Home Recording Act. Massive distribution -- the sort of thing you might be involved in if your P2P client were configured to, say, allow the entire universe of other users to grab a copy of the song stored on your hard drive -- exposes you to legal action. To repeat: to the best of my knowledge, every RIAA action has alleged illegal *distribution*, not illegal *copying.* So while this is amusing, it's not exactly exposing the RIAA as hypocrites, since the act of handing a single copied CD is clearly protected behavior...
As a general rule, sensitive information is already prohibited on military computers that are connected to the Internet. If you've ever seen an office in, say, the Department of Homeland Security, you'll notice that they have two or even three systems on each desk; that's because none of those computers are connected to each other. Computers that can touch the Internet can't have anything sensitive on them; computers that might have something sensitive on them can't touch the Internet.
Actually, it's only the process of "sharing" that exposes you to legal action (at least here in the US). Taking a copy of a file off any kind of feed is generally protected under the Fair Use exception to copyright law. However, if you've configured your P2P client to allow *other* people to make a copy of that same file from your copy, you're "distributing" that file to thousands of others, and that's actionable.
I have to say, putting in a name and email address is much less invasive than some other systems designed to deter file sharing. For example, back in 1997, Liquid Audio introduced a system that embedded the credit card number used to purchase the file within the file itself. Obviously, you'd have to be a loon to share a file like that.
Even so, I don't think it's inappropriate to be concerned about including personally identifying informamation (PII) like a name and an email address. While this sort of thing wouldn't be of any concern to the vast majority of users, there are a number of examples where such seemingly innocuous information has led to tragedy. As long as users are fully aware of the implications and can accept or reject such techniques, I don't have any problem with it.
http://www.nsa.gov/snac/downloads_voip.cfm?MenuID= scg10.3.1
I think you make valid points, however, TR1 also gave the player an unprecedented level of control over the character: You could leap up and hang from your fingertips, shimmy left or right, do a diving roll, do multiple jumps sideways and backwards...it was just phenomenal. It was one of those games I showed people who actively disliked videgames and they uniformly became enthralled. In addition, the settings you explored and the images portrayed, coupled with your ability to fully explore the environment (I remember spending hours crawling over those enormous statutes, looking at things from different angles) made the game quite compelling. All those aspects, combined with a reasonable storyline, make this game a standout. I firmly believe that you could sell a million copies of TR1 with merely a graphics update. The real disappointment of the more recent games, from my perspective, has been the execrebale control systems; I would argue that one of TR's greatest strenths has been to lessen the distiction between the user and the game avatar but a less than vigorous control system destroys that illusion. TR was the second game I loved (the first being Wing Commander).
It said on the ticket that a seat belt violation carries no points and cannot be used to affect your insurace rates (like you, I would not have taken the officer's word for it); I can tell this is true because years later I still have my "good driver discount" on my policy. I'm sure there's an interesting story about why they set up the seatbelt enforcement law like this, but I have no idea what it is.
I'm frankly astounded that no other major newspaper has a guy on the computer security beat full time, though technically I think Brian Krebs is attached to the Post's Web site. In any event, I think Krebs is absolutely the best reporter writing about computer security in the mainstream media today. At least since I stopped :-).
Not sure I'm following you here; I got pulled over for doing ten miles an hour over the limit during a laser training exercise (old cop and new cop). Old cop checks me out, walks back to my car and offers to write me up a ticket for not having my seatbelt on instead of a speeding ticket (I did have my seatbelt on at the time). I intially got a little hot about this when the cop offered it to me, but he pointed out that a seat belt violation had no points, doesn't affect my insurance rates, and it's a lot cheaper than a speeding ticket. I genuinely felt like the cop was cutting me a break, acknowledging that normally I wouldn't have even been pulled over in that situation. The last time I got a ticket before that I also got pulled over for speeding but instead of writing me up for speeding, a California cop cited me for not having the car registered in the state (which I needed to do anyway). Again, no points, no insurance penalty, blah blah. Now, in both these instances I was speeding; how is the issuance of a non-moving violation to me in this situation abuse of power? Both times I was and remain exceedingly grateful to those cops who recognized that I wasn't endangering anybody with my driving (and of course I didn't have any outstanding warrants).
Two things: First, the telegraph was the first binary "digital" device. It communicated information using dots and dashes.
Second, I last sent a telegram about six years ago when a friend of mine finished up her PhD. Western Union knocked on the door of her victory party and hand delivered it. She was flabbergasted, had never gotten one before, and none of her friends had ever seen one. She still has it in a frame. I don't know of anybody that's got any bit of email I've ever sent them in a frame.
I'm avoiding it by, you know, not using a messenger client hard-wired to the operating system...
For many years I regularly needed to refer to a book entitled "DICNAVAB," which stands of course for the "Dictionary of Naval Abbreviations"
Your analogy is more precise than mine; nicely done. But I think MS does "get" networking these days; they're just in this huge bind because they can't repair all the problems without breaking nearly every existing application out there. Most people won't throw away their entire investment in software for an OS upgrade -- even a a more secure OS upgrade -- so Microsoft winds up muddling along with things like XP Service Pack 2 (the 2 stands for "too little, too late"). Must stop typing these at 3 AM....
The purpose of Internet Explorer is to download third party files (by viewing Web pages). Mr Gates's claim that vulnerabilites exist because of such downloads is therefore nonsensical; it's like saying we could end deaths due to automobile accidents by banning automobiles. Yeah, there's a certain logic to that, but it sort of misses the point. To take a recent, ongoing example: A malevolent Web page can use an image file to compromise a Windows system. This vulnerability is not created by users who have somehow previously contaiminated the local environment; it's a part of the system's design. The OS was originally built to offer features over security, and maintaining backward compatability rather than fixing those issues would make it more difficult to coax existing users into upgrading (and would also make it easier for existing users to consider alternatives rather than upgrading). I lost two years of my life covering the antitrust trial, listening to this guy and his minions cheerfully perjure themselves, and he just can't seem to stop making it up.
Not too elderly friend of mine (he's 64) and his wife rented Segways in DC. Now, just so you know he's not a complete klutz, he and his wife go dancing several nights a week. So, he's on this thing for less than 15 minutes, drops his left wheel off the curb, and is thrown a good four feet into the street. Helmet on, otherwise would have smashed his skull against the pavement. As it was, narrowly avoided being run over by a car, had a dandy and debilitating bruise over much of his left hip, and has no interest in ever getting on one again.
Actually, a couple of the stories, such as the one in the Register, mention Valve's claim that release of Half Life 2 source delayed release of that game, but I'd argue that the two situations aren't comparable.
Court ruling only directs FEC to examine online advertisements, not, as the summary claims, speech online. Thus, the FEC has merely been directed to monitor compliance with campaign advertising restrictions currently applicable in meatspace.
Deliberately took a friend who has never seen South Park. She thought the movie was painfully funny.