The laws of a country are an extension of the government itself and are a manifestation of its powers. Their lawyer is not an official part of the German government, but by invoking German law against US law, he is effectively representing Germany.
My reply was to a poster who argued "Since when is it your job to tell Germany how to apply its laws?... don't advocate just ignoring the laws" My point in replying was that in his own defense of German law, the GP was ignoring the laws of a different sovereign nation.
Their lawyer is overreaching here. If he wanted to try reasonably, he could send a nice letter saying "We know you don't have to, but we'd be awfully pleased if you'd remove this info". Instead, he filed a suit to compel action he knows he is not entitled to. The world has too many frivolous lawsuits already.
Sure people died but in almost every single case the standard of living shot up massively and economically was good for both sides.
Romans killed a certain chunk of a country, mainly military since collateral damage is rarer with a spear. At worst they'd decimate a group (That means 1/10th btw) to show they mean business.
I would debate the economically good part. There are those who argue that the Roman Empire fell because it ran out of countries to invade and loot, and therefore could no longer afford the massive armies required to keep the hold on the lands they had taken. I can't imagine the outcry if the US "decimated" Iraqis to show we mean business.
After that they would make the leaders sign fealty or w/e. They'd leave a few troops there. And set about bettering the country. They would tax the country some for their own benefit. Then they would build. The barbarians they conquered were given roads, theaters, sometimes written word, law, aqueducts, plumbing, foods.
Which largely parallels what has happened in Afghanistan & Iraq. Elected governments have been set up. The elections are far from being problem-free, but things are on the right track. I think it is reasonable to expect that in the next few years as troops leave Iraq, it will continue to stabilize and grow more independent of our support. We'll probably have a few people on the ground there for the foreseeable future, but at a much, much lower level. Afghanistan is going to take longer. We have built & rebuilt infrastructure. Ultimately, the idea is to leave these countries as good / better than before.
Within a handful of years the country they decimated was much much MUCH better off. The two countries were bound together almost as kinsmen. At times these nations would even fight together in wars, Rome letting trusted nations build a military.
I don't know if the US and Iraq will ever consider each other "family", but if you consider our relations with a number of former enemies (the WW2 Axis powers for example), it's not out of the question.
The US instead lopped the head off the enemy and then said fend for yourselves (for the most part).
We wanted to avoid heavy-handed action that would backfire by polarizing the entire population against us, and the politicians here didn't want the political risks involved in waging big, expensive wars, so they convinced themselves that they could do it quickly and cheaply. In hindsight, a bad idea, at least in Iraq. I think that stepping lightly in Afghanistan was a good idea. Buying off warlords doesn't get you the best allies, but it's a whole lot better than trying to defeat the lot of them, and then convince them that you're their friend. But we didn't follow up sufficiently on our initial success there, and lost many of the advantages we first had.
This just resulted in strife. If you wanted them to respect you I think firmly making decisions and showing control was in order. Getting mired in conflict and failure ruined it for the US.
Well, any invasion is going to result in strife. The question is, what is the minimum strife necessary to achieve your goals.
The invasion plans in Afghanistan were surprisingly good, initially. We knew we would be dealing with a decentralized enemy, and that insurgency would be our key opposition, so we planned for that. But after our initial success, we turned our attention and resources elsewhere before finishing what we set out to do in Afghanistan.
In Iraq, we initially faced a conventional enemy, whose weapons and tactics were familiar to us, and whose hold on power was unstable. So, we planned a war we knew would be effective in defeating that kind of enemy, and again, initially we were very successful. We didn't count on Iraq degenerating into a guerrilla war, and it took some time to come up with a solution that would allow us to p
First: American news outlets generally avoid graphic scenes. Other news organizations may report more explicit content, but I think you're confused.
Second: Any rational, independent-thinking person knows there is a considerable difference between filming action between armed combatants on a battlefield, and the producing a video of the execution of an innocent, helpless, non-combatant hostage. Furthermore, in the first situation the video is a by-product of the main action. If anything, knowledge that the battle is documented may inhibit excessive violence. In the second situation, the video is the primary aim of the action, and because the nature of the video is to cause terror, it encourages greater inhumanity in its actors. But then again, you already knew that.
The hypocrisy and filthy double standard here is in those who would equate the actions of nameless, faceless terrorists with those of the US military. While they are far from perfect, all branches of the US military bring court martials against those in their command believed to have committed atrocities. There are those who would argue that little has resulted from them, (and they would mostly be right) but that misses the point: No terrorist organization holds (or attempts to hold) itself to nearly the same standards that the US does. No member of al Quaida has ever faced a disciplinary hearing for bombing a mosque, market or school. No insurgent has ever been indicted by his own organization for intentionally targeting innocent civilians. Far from being despised, they are called heros. But then again, you already knew that.
There are times the US should listen more closely to other voices in the world. Just not to yours. Quite frankly, I wonder why you think the US should give a damn about your opinion, or the opinion of people like you. Not because you think differently, or because we're evil, or we don't listen to our neighbors, but because you obviously care more about your anti-American agenda than you do about dialog. But then again, you already knew that.
Ask the british, french or the romans, most of the countries they conquered don't hate them... and the US was just liberating countries. Something to do with trade, peace, talks, cultural exchange, improving the country and oh... not killing them in droves followed by massively dropping the standard of living.
The British , French, and Romans killed lots of natives building their empires, they had no compunctions about doing it, and they certainly didn't feel bad about it after. So did the Spanish, for that matter. They also imposed their own laws on other cultures, and taxed their new "subjects", drawing more wealth out of the colonies than they put in, thereby driving down the local economy. The primary reason for being a colonial power has always been to exploit someone else's wealth.
The US has built (or rebuilt) a lot of infrastructure in the wake of its various invasions. The standard of living in these places would be a lot higher if said infrastructure wasn't still being blown up, this time by people other than the US.
Not justifying invasions or civilian deaths, just saying I don't agree with your comparison.
Microsoft made a business decision based on what was best for them at the time. Apparently the benefits they think they will get from this (benevolent PR, etc) outweigh the costs (releasing a small bit of GPL-tainted MS code under GPL rather than delay it and rewrite, or wage a protracted legal battle). Who knows, maybe they'll start to see the benefits of releasing GPL'ed code.
MS releasing GPL code is not a kick in the nuts to FOSS. Quite the opposite.
Yeah, right, like someone on the run could afford to stay there. To afford a life like that, you'd have to... I don't know... maybe find a way to steal billions of dollars, or work for someone who did. Oh, wait...
The guy drugged and anally raped a 13 year old girl(*). And by "raped", I don't mean "had sorta-consensual sex with", I mean "she said 'no' a lot and tried to get away". He deserves more punishment than whatever +/- 40-50 days in a psych facility he initially did in the US, followed by an extended vacation in Europe. The reason he didn't serve more time is he ran before a judge incarcerated him longer, and he ran because he knew it was coming.
If it had been my daughter I wouldn't care how rich & famous the guy was, how many people loved his movies, or felt sorry about the whole Manson/Tate thing, or how long he had been on the run. I'd want the coward to come back and face the music.
In my mind, the ONLY reason to consider dropping the case is the victim's preference to put all this behind her.
What next, Linus stars in an "I'm a PC" commercial?
Those Windows 7 commercials where random people describe how they emailed Microsoft about making Windows 7 better all end with the person saying "... and Windows 7 was my idea!"
It all makes sense now. The people in the commercial weren't protected by the GPL, and MS took their ideas.
perhaps some programmers were in on the fact that it was a scam
FTFA:
[according to the prosecutor] The computer codes and random algorithms they allegedly designed served to deceive investors and regulators and concealed Madoff's crimes
At one point they tried to cover their tracks by erasing files, but did an incomplete job.
After that, the SEC said DiPascali convinced the programmers to modify programs so that he and other employees could create [fake] reports themselves.
... which indicates that although they might have been bothered by what they were doing, they weren't bothered enough to quit,or call in the Feds themselves, or take any other redeeming action.
Granted, they're innocent until proven guilty, etc., but it appears they were in this up to their ears.
Everyone wanted that joke, including the uptight wussies with all the "-1, Overrated" mod points today. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that when we all heard "water" we all thought "Goddammit, it's Friday, where's my scotch?"
My daughter went to see Taylor Swift perform in New York this year on the Today show. Lacking a spiffy new DVR, I dragged out our old VCR, cabled it up, and managed to catch the performance. She and her friend were on TV twice, briefly, and in one shot they were posing/taking pictures with TS. Being able to capture that was priceless to us.
I'll grant you this was a fringe example, but it falls squarely within the Fair Use doctrine, and illustrates the fact that the legitimate uses of analog out ports are likely as diverse as the people using them.
Not to mention, how exactly do I get a viewer to click "accept" on a typical TV.
I would imagine a solution something similar to the way people order pay-per-view. You flip to a channel for a movie, and could be presented with a screen that says that the content you want to view requires analog-out restrictions, do you accept, y/n? If you don't agree, you don't get access. If you agree, the set-top box tickles the "analog-out-off" switch for your TV, and the box streams the show to you.
Of course, this all depends on the hardware that supports the desired functionality. Do modern TVs support this? I have no idea. What about TVs from 5 or 10 years ago? What about the set-top boxes from cable & satellite providers?
Exactly. Any since they weren't able to get their hands on the actual HW/SW the feds use, their expectation of "probably" becomes even less trustworthy.
IANAL, but theoretically speaking I don't see why they would be prevented from making such a deal directly with consumers. Practically speaking however, I don't think such a move would work well or suit their purposes.
Problem: They claim they want to eliminate piracy. If they have to ask people for permission to do this, obviously anyone who actually uses these analog ports for piracy will simply decline the contract, or find some other hole to exploit. In reality, it's close to a non-issue, since the bulk of piracy doesn't appear to come via the analog ports the MPAA is looking to control.
Problem: In the US there are over 100 million households, most of which have at least 1 television, many of which have more. In your model, the MPAA would have to get that contract with everyone. Time consuming. Expensive. Complicated. Going to the FCC is one-stop shopping, and grants precedent for whatever intrusive favor they want to ask next.
Alternate approach: They could negotiate their deals with cable and satellite TV companies, and have the cable and satellite companies simply include it in their boilerplate customer agreements. Problems: 1) Not all TV providers will necessarily be on-board with this. Will there be new hardware required, e.g., a new generation of set-top boxes?
2) Cable and satellite are ultra-competitive right now, and providers may try to avoid alienating customers that might object to this. I don't think enough people would care to make this an issue, but the potential for negative PR is there.
3) New customers may have no choice but accept the new cable/satellite contract, but existing customers might (I am guessing) have a legal leg to stand on. Even though these contracts typically allow the provider to update and change the agreement, I doubt that gives the provider the right to do anything they want, like grant themselves and their MPAA partners control of your TV without your explicit, informed, before-the-fact consent. I would expect a lawsuit and bad PR would follow, plus a courtroom loss for the industry if they were crass enough to fight rather than quietly withdraw.
Of course, criminals have plenty of easier ways to dodge police surveillance. They can use cash to buy prepaid mobile phones anonymously, or reach out to their accomplices with encrypted Skype calls, said Robert Graham, CEO with Errata Security.
Don't listen to those who tell you to give up or make it unpleasant for family to turn to you for help. If you are at least a halfway decent person, chances are you got that way because your parents didn't give up on you when you needed help and education. Time to pay back the favor. I'd guess that re-educating them on computer use may help things, but will not fix them. My suggestions:
Be prepared.
Don't do a complete re-install every time. Do a full, fresh install once, patch it, apply anti virus/malware/spyware software, and install applications that they want. Once in a known-good state, back up the system. (1)
Be proactive and do periodic maintenance. Every month or so, check that their system is clean and fully patched and do another backup. Never overwrite your first full backup.
If you are not familiar with a live-cd version of linux, start learning. As long as the problem isn't the hardware, having a bootable linux cd as a rescue disk is often my first step in un-borking a friend/family member's PC.
Give them accounts with limited privileges.
When re-imaging a system:
Boot to a live cd, back up any data (pictures, email folders, etc) might be recently changed and still wanted.
Wipe out the hard drive completely. If your parents' system is chronically infested, there is a distinct chance that very nasty content has found its way onto that drive and could be found in a forensic examination. Use the "wipe" utility, or the "dd" utility to make sure you have a squeaky clean slate to work on.
Restore the patched OS from your last known-good backup, reinstall any apps not previously backed up, and restore the user data.
Doing all that will take a lot of time, but can mostly run without a babysitter.
If their computer has enough power to make it worthwhile, you could also set up a VM machine for them to run in. Start with a known-good OS image, create a VM from it, clone the VM, and let them run the clone. Erase the clone when it gets buggy, re-clone the original, patch it, and off they go again.
(1) - There are a number of different ways to do backups with little or no further hardware investment. If there is a network available with more than one computer attached, I might load one system with cheap disk and back up to that. Otherwise, I'd get an external drive with a USB connection and dump my backups to that as needed. Or you can get a USB key and back up to that, although that won't give you much room for incremental backups. Or back up to DVD+R, although restoring from DVD might not be convenient on a system with only 1 CD/DVD drive if you are running from a live cd.
I would think he would want them to display partial "teaser" results, and when people click through to his site to read the rest, he hits them with a page that says "Pay or GTFO". Some will pay, and he'll make money. Others will remember that the Google page had links to 12,000 other similar articles, and tell Murdoch to fuck off.
Actually, I have several old disassembled hard drives sitting next to me. At least two of them are from between '96 (Quantum) and '98 (Maxtor), and both have metal platters.
Slashdot Mirror
The laws of a country are an extension of the government itself and are a manifestation of its powers. Their lawyer is not an official part of the German government, but by invoking German law against US law, he is effectively representing Germany.
... don't advocate just ignoring the laws" My point in replying was that in his own defense of German law, the GP was ignoring the laws of a different sovereign nation.
My reply was to a poster who argued "Since when is it your job to tell Germany how to apply its laws?
Their lawyer is overreaching here. If he wanted to try reasonably, he could send a nice letter saying "We know you don't have to, but we'd be awfully pleased if you'd remove this info". Instead, he filed a suit to compel action he knows he is not entitled to. The world has too many frivolous lawsuits already.
Sure people died but in almost every single case the standard of living shot up massively and economically was good for both sides. Romans killed a certain chunk of a country, mainly military since collateral damage is rarer with a spear. At worst they'd decimate a group (That means 1/10th btw) to show they mean business.
I would debate the economically good part. There are those who argue that the Roman Empire fell because it ran out of countries to invade and loot, and therefore could no longer afford the massive armies required to keep the hold on the lands they had taken. I can't imagine the outcry if the US "decimated" Iraqis to show we mean business.
After that they would make the leaders sign fealty or w/e. They'd leave a few troops there. And set about bettering the country. They would tax the country some for their own benefit. Then they would build. The barbarians they conquered were given roads, theaters, sometimes written word, law, aqueducts, plumbing, foods.
Which largely parallels what has happened in Afghanistan & Iraq. Elected governments have been set up. The elections are far from being problem-free, but things are on the right track. I think it is reasonable to expect that in the next few years as troops leave Iraq, it will continue to stabilize and grow more independent of our support. We'll probably have a few people on the ground there for the foreseeable future, but at a much, much lower level. Afghanistan is going to take longer. We have built & rebuilt infrastructure. Ultimately, the idea is to leave these countries as good / better than before.
Within a handful of years the country they decimated was much much MUCH better off. The two countries were bound together almost as kinsmen. At times these nations would even fight together in wars, Rome letting trusted nations build a military.
I don't know if the US and Iraq will ever consider each other "family", but if you consider our relations with a number of former enemies (the WW2 Axis powers for example), it's not out of the question.
The US instead lopped the head off the enemy and then said fend for yourselves (for the most part).
We wanted to avoid heavy-handed action that would backfire by polarizing the entire population against us, and the politicians here didn't want the political risks involved in waging big, expensive wars, so they convinced themselves that they could do it quickly and cheaply. In hindsight, a bad idea, at least in Iraq. I think that stepping lightly in Afghanistan was a good idea. Buying off warlords doesn't get you the best allies, but it's a whole lot better than trying to defeat the lot of them, and then convince them that you're their friend. But we didn't follow up sufficiently on our initial success there, and lost many of the advantages we first had.
This just resulted in strife. If you wanted them to respect you I think firmly making decisions and showing control was in order. Getting mired in conflict and failure ruined it for the US.
Well, any invasion is going to result in strife. The question is, what is the minimum strife necessary to achieve your goals.
The invasion plans in Afghanistan were surprisingly good, initially. We knew we would be dealing with a decentralized enemy, and that insurgency would be our key opposition, so we planned for that. But after our initial success, we turned our attention and resources elsewhere before finishing what we set out to do in Afghanistan.
In Iraq, we initially faced a conventional enemy, whose weapons and tactics were familiar to us, and whose hold on power was unstable. So, we planned a war we knew would be effective in defeating that kind of enemy, and again, initially we were very successful. We didn't count on Iraq degenerating into a guerrilla war, and it took some time to come up with a solution that would allow us to p
You would probably enjoy this, if you haven't read it already. http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html
Since when is it Germany's job to tell the US how to apply the First Amendment?
First: American news outlets generally avoid graphic scenes. Other news organizations may report more explicit content, but I think you're confused.
Second: Any rational, independent-thinking person knows there is a considerable difference between filming action between armed combatants on a battlefield, and the producing a video of the execution of an innocent, helpless, non-combatant hostage. Furthermore, in the first situation the video is a by-product of the main action. If anything, knowledge that the battle is documented may inhibit excessive violence. In the second situation, the video is the primary aim of the action, and because the nature of the video is to cause terror, it encourages greater inhumanity in its actors. But then again, you already knew that.
The hypocrisy and filthy double standard here is in those who would equate the actions of nameless, faceless terrorists with those of the US military. While they are far from perfect, all branches of the US military bring court martials against those in their command believed to have committed atrocities. There are those who would argue that little has resulted from them, (and they would mostly be right) but that misses the point: No terrorist organization holds (or attempts to hold) itself to nearly the same standards that the US does. No member of al Quaida has ever faced a disciplinary hearing for bombing a mosque, market or school. No insurgent has ever been indicted by his own organization for intentionally targeting innocent civilians. Far from being despised, they are called heros. But then again, you already knew that.
There are times the US should listen more closely to other voices in the world. Just not to yours. Quite frankly, I wonder why you think the US should give a damn about your opinion, or the opinion of people like you. Not because you think differently, or because we're evil, or we don't listen to our neighbors, but because you obviously care more about your anti-American agenda than you do about dialog. But then again, you already knew that.
Ask the british, french or the romans, most of the countries they conquered don't hate them... and the US was just liberating countries. Something to do with trade, peace, talks, cultural exchange, improving the country and oh... not killing them in droves followed by massively dropping the standard of living.
The British , French, and Romans killed lots of natives building their empires, they had no compunctions about doing it, and they certainly didn't feel bad about it after. So did the Spanish, for that matter. They also imposed their own laws on other cultures, and taxed their new "subjects", drawing more wealth out of the colonies than they put in, thereby driving down the local economy. The primary reason for being a colonial power has always been to exploit someone else's wealth.
The US has built (or rebuilt) a lot of infrastructure in the wake of its various invasions. The standard of living in these places would be a lot higher if said infrastructure wasn't still being blown up, this time by people other than the US.
Not justifying invasions or civilian deaths, just saying I don't agree with your comparison.
[yes, i'm faking bashing Microsoft]
I want to learn how to be subtle like you.
Microsoft made a business decision based on what was best for them at the time. Apparently the benefits they think they will get from this (benevolent PR, etc) outweigh the costs (releasing a small bit of GPL-tainted MS code under GPL rather than delay it and rewrite, or wage a protracted legal battle). Who knows, maybe they'll start to see the benefits of releasing GPL'ed code.
MS releasing GPL code is not a kick in the nuts to FOSS. Quite the opposite.
Yeah, right, like someone on the run could afford to stay there. To afford a life like that, you'd have to ... I don't know ... maybe find a way to steal billions of dollars, or work for someone who did. Oh, wait ...
The guy drugged and anally raped a 13 year old girl(*). And by "raped", I don't mean "had sorta-consensual sex with", I mean "she said 'no' a lot and tried to get away". He deserves more punishment than whatever +/- 40-50 days in a psych facility he initially did in the US, followed by an extended vacation in Europe. The reason he didn't serve more time is he ran before a judge incarcerated him longer, and he ran because he knew it was coming.
If it had been my daughter I wouldn't care how rich & famous the guy was, how many people loved his movies, or felt sorry about the whole Manson/Tate thing, or how long he had been on the run. I'd want the coward to come back and face the music.
In my mind, the ONLY reason to consider dropping the case is the victim's preference to put all this behind her.
(*) According to her grand jury testimony.
Hah! That's what you think. We don't have an extradition treaty with anything or anyone in the Saturnian system, so I'll finally be safe.
Copying Apple has been the best business plan MS ever ran with. Why stop now?
What next, Linus stars in an "I'm a PC" commercial?
Those Windows 7 commercials where random people describe how they emailed Microsoft about making Windows 7 better all end with the person saying " ... and Windows 7 was my idea!"
It all makes sense now. The people in the commercial weren't protected by the GPL, and MS took their ideas.
any particular kind of metal you'd like the chains made from
Mercury.
perhaps some programmers were in on the fact that it was a scam
FTFA:
[according to the prosecutor] The computer codes and random algorithms they allegedly designed served to deceive investors and regulators and concealed Madoff's crimes
At one point they tried to cover their tracks by erasing files, but did an incomplete job.
After that, the SEC said DiPascali convinced the programmers to modify programs so that he and other employees could create [fake] reports themselves.
... which indicates that although they might have been bothered by what they were doing, they weren't bothered enough to quit,or call in the Feds themselves, or take any other redeeming action.
Granted, they're innocent until proven guilty, etc., but it appears they were in this up to their ears.
... and when your boss gets 150 years, get your ass to a country without an extradition treaty with the US.
Everyone wanted that joke, including the uptight wussies with all the "-1, Overrated" mod points today. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that when we all heard "water" we all thought "Goddammit, it's Friday, where's my scotch?"
My daughter went to see Taylor Swift perform in New York this year on the Today show. Lacking a spiffy new DVR, I dragged out our old VCR, cabled it up, and managed to catch the performance. She and her friend were on TV twice, briefly, and in one shot they were posing/taking pictures with TS. Being able to capture that was priceless to us.
I'll grant you this was a fringe example, but it falls squarely within the Fair Use doctrine, and illustrates the fact that the legitimate uses of analog out ports are likely as diverse as the people using them.
Not to mention, how exactly do I get a viewer to click "accept" on a typical TV.
I would imagine a solution something similar to the way people order pay-per-view. You flip to a channel for a movie, and could be presented with a screen that says that the content you want to view requires analog-out restrictions, do you accept, y/n? If you don't agree, you don't get access. If you agree, the set-top box tickles the "analog-out-off" switch for your TV, and the box streams the show to you.
Of course, this all depends on the hardware that supports the desired functionality. Do modern TVs support this? I have no idea. What about TVs from 5 or 10 years ago? What about the set-top boxes from cable & satellite providers?
Exactly. Any since they weren't able to get their hands on the actual HW/SW the feds use, their expectation of "probably" becomes even less trustworthy.
IANAL, but theoretically speaking I don't see why they would be prevented from making such a deal directly with consumers. Practically speaking however, I don't think such a move would work well or suit their purposes.
Problem: They claim they want to eliminate piracy. If they have to ask people for permission to do this, obviously anyone who actually uses these analog ports for piracy will simply decline the contract, or find some other hole to exploit. In reality, it's close to a non-issue, since the bulk of piracy doesn't appear to come via the analog ports the MPAA is looking to control.
Problem: In the US there are over 100 million households, most of which have at least 1 television, many of which have more. In your model, the MPAA would have to get that contract with everyone. Time consuming. Expensive. Complicated. Going to the FCC is one-stop shopping, and grants precedent for whatever intrusive favor they want to ask next.
Alternate approach: They could negotiate their deals with cable and satellite TV companies, and have the cable and satellite companies simply include it in their boilerplate customer agreements. Problems:
1) Not all TV providers will necessarily be on-board with this. Will there be new hardware required, e.g., a new generation of set-top boxes?
2) Cable and satellite are ultra-competitive right now, and providers may try to avoid alienating customers that might object to this. I don't think enough people would care to make this an issue, but the potential for negative PR is there.
3) New customers may have no choice but accept the new cable/satellite contract, but existing customers might (I am guessing) have a legal leg to stand on. Even though these contracts typically allow the provider to update and change the agreement, I doubt that gives the provider the right to do anything they want, like grant themselves and their MPAA partners control of your TV without your explicit, informed, before-the-fact consent. I would expect a lawsuit and bad PR would follow, plus a courtroom loss for the industry if they were crass enough to fight rather than quietly withdraw.
Of course, criminals have plenty of easier ways to dodge police surveillance. They can use cash to buy prepaid mobile phones anonymously, or reach out to their accomplices with encrypted Skype calls, said Robert Graham, CEO with Errata Security.
Duh.
Don't listen to those who tell you to give up or make it unpleasant for family to turn to you for help. If you are at least a halfway decent person, chances are you got that way because your parents didn't give up on you when you needed help and education. Time to pay back the favor. I'd guess that re-educating them on computer use may help things, but will not fix them. My suggestions:
Be prepared.
When re-imaging a system:
Doing all that will take a lot of time, but can mostly run without a babysitter.
If their computer has enough power to make it worthwhile, you could also set up a VM machine for them to run in. Start with a known-good OS image, create a VM from it, clone the VM, and let them run the clone. Erase the clone when it gets buggy, re-clone the original, patch it, and off they go again.
(1) - There are a number of different ways to do backups with little or no further hardware investment. If there is a network available with more than one computer attached, I might load one system with cheap disk and back up to that. Otherwise, I'd get an external drive with a USB connection and dump my backups to that as needed. Or you can get a USB key and back up to that, although that won't give you much room for incremental backups. Or back up to DVD+R, although restoring from DVD might not be convenient on a system with only 1 CD/DVD drive if you are running from a live cd.
I would think he would want them to display partial "teaser" results, and when people click through to his site to read the rest, he hits them with a page that says "Pay or GTFO". Some will pay, and he'll make money. Others will remember that the Google page had links to 12,000 other similar articles, and tell Murdoch to fuck off.
Actually, I have several old disassembled hard drives sitting next to me. At least two of them are from between '96 (Quantum) and '98 (Maxtor), and both have metal platters.
Thanks! My day isn't complete until I've pissed off an AC.