There are mitigation and management strategies already, and if the risk is deemed significant enough, there is hazard pay and insurance coverage available to mitigate the discomfort such a pathogen may cause.
I understand the difference; they already had him on numerous charges without playing the entire episode out to the point of placing a fake bomb.
Maybe, and maybe not... either way, if they let him just continue, the prosecution's case is that much more complete.
Yes sure, they offered multiple alternatives, prayer, made him aware there will be children and women present, no one is saying this terrorist aint a stinking pile of shit, but the FBI had him when they did the "practice run".
And at all those points, he could have said "no", and walked away... That'd be the law-abiding thing to do, and would be the easy way out of the sting.
While technically waiting to make the arrest with the fake car bomb is not exactly entrapment, the sting operation could have concluded with the detonation or even construction of the "test" bomb.
It depends on the particulars, but probably not, actually. In several states, building bombs is perfectly legal. Setting them off is also perfectly legal. In fact, I have done so personally in the past. Usually (and in my case) what would be illegal would be for that bomb to damage anyone else's (or public) property, injure any person or animal, or be transported on public roads without the proper approvals. Again, there may have been minor crimes along the way, but not enough evidence to make a case that the perpetrator was trying to commit a serious offense.
Actually, it probably could have concluded long before that with a conviction. Yes, I understand getting prosecution is harder than it sounds, but they have ample evidence prior to the fake bomb run, shit prior to the test run of his intention and activities.
What kind of irrefutable evidence did they have, exactly? Prior to actually executing the fake attack, the defendant could just argue that he took the opportunity to gather names and details into a nice little package that he planned to turn over to the authorities, and had to play along to do so. The defense could claim he was a hero all along, and the FBI just sprang their trap before he sprang his. To a jury of scared citizens who keep being told that if they "see something, say something", and with the common fantasies of being a big hero, if only they had the opportunity... Who wouldn't sympathize with this guy who just tried to do the right thing?
Also, what went wrong in this young mans head to push him this direction? Could have the perceived assistance of these agents, who to this idiot were willing accomplices (knowledgeable ones) that apparently supported his position?
How is that any different from the willing aid of an actual terrorist organization? He started by seeking willing accomplices. His head already had the criminal element. The agents just let it run its course in a (somewhat) controlled environment. In his mind, he was willingly committing a crime, and that's the ambition that the justice system is trying to remove from the rest of our law-abiding society.
Based on what evidence you assert that assumption?
That's based on the fact that he willingly went along with the first guys to offer support.
It's not entrapment. It's a sting. There are very important differences, and you'll find the situation to be much less perplexing once you understand those differences.
Entrapment is when the government agents make you commit a crime that you weren't otherwise willing to do. For example, if they threaten you or your family, that's entrapment. If they make you believe that what you're doing isn't actually a crime, that's entrapment. If they manipulate circumstances to where you believe you have absolutely no choice but to commit the crime, that's entrapment.
What is not entrapment is asking "Hey, are you willing to commit a crime?". It is also not entrapment to hand you the tools to commit the crime, and it's also not entrapment to drive you to a location for the crime, hand you the tools, and pay you a lot of money to commit the crime. Those things are not entrapment (though their legality may depend on having proper authorizations and approvals in place). You still have the option to avoid all criminal culpability by not doing the crime (though even if it turns out the tools they gave you were fake, what matters is that you thought they were real). If someone offers to help you and/or pay you to commit a crime, you can walk right down to the local police department and tell them all about it.
I've been one of the few folks dispelling the "fiduciary duty" myth for a while, but since that job's done...
Nonetheless, if the company's behavior is incompatible with the bottom line, market forces will squash that company. The company with a constraint of "never behave like a sociopath" is at a competitive disadvantage to the company without that constraint.
Bullshit.
Those "market forces" are exactly why it pays to be nice. I know a number of good engineers who left Disney when they outsourced IT, just because they disagreed with the company. Some of them intentionally went to another company that chose to cut profits rather than lay off employees during a temporary downturn.
People talk, especially if you're in an area with several competing companies. Just like companies essentially must offer a benefits package to attract employees, their reputation also impacts what already-established talent will join the team. With a poor enough reputation, it's only the inexperienced and desperate who will accept the company's offers.
For large companies, it's a small market force, but it's often enough to outweigh a few percentage points on the profit report.
Rank is not all that hath privilege. I'd wager that the vast majority of executives would do similar things for 25-year loyal employees in such circumstances, but usually the people who know about such things aren't the ones who can authorize such unusual accommodations.
For quite a while, I've suggested that anyone starting a new job should meet the highest-ranking person in the area. Whether that's a site manager, C-level executive, or even just the accountant who didn't relocate with the rest of the higher-ups, having friends in high places allows you to ask for perfectly reasonable things, and actually have a chance at seeing them happen.
It is a mutually beneficial arrangement, because the subordinate gains a channel for fulfilling extraordinary needs, and the senior gains access to operational details that might not pass up the chain of normal status reports.
The crime is not whatever you say it is. The crime is whatever the law defines it to be, and the law in question explicitly requires that classified material be "removed from its proper place of custody or delivered" for the crime to have occurred.
Since the server was unclassified, it would not be involved in removing classified information from its proper place, so we can disregard that part of the law. Since we can't prove anyone uncleared actually received the classified information, we have to disregard the second part, too. The other options are "lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed", and none of those terms apply well, either.
Actually, yes, you can usually just remove markings from (or more precisely, rewrite without markings) unclassified material that's on a secure system. The unclassified material doesn't need to be "declassified" because it was never classified to begin with. That includes unclassified parts of a larger document that's marked as containing classified information, and by the same extension it applies to unclassified data on computer systems that are marked as containing classified data.
What's important is that no classified information actually gets out of the secure environment. Nobody cares about other information, with a few exceptions.
The words "extremely careless" were chosen carefully to avoid saying "negligent". To be careless is to be ignorant of the required security procedures, while to be ignorant is to know what's proper and required, and choosing to not attempt to follow it. If you're going to go down that road, you'll need to establish that the sysadmins responsible for that server were aware of the that the system could hold classified information, and they knew the security requirements necessary to protect a system holding classified information, and chose willingly to leave it unsecured.
What proof is there that the sysadmins were competent, beyond the faint hope that they should be?
What proof do you have that she personally put classified information on her server?
What proof is there that, at the time the server was built, it was intended to hold classified information?
There are an awful lot of bad things here... certainly enough to say the handling was careless. Unfortunately, without an absolutely solid case for a particular and completely-provable allegation, a successful prosecution is extremely unlikely, and would not serve the cause of justice in any meaningful way.
That email about the fax proves only that a particular message was requested to be transmitted in an insecure manner. That does not mean the contents of the fax were sensitive or that removing the markings was improper. As I understand, the subject of the fax was a set of talking points for a speech, which were sensitive only in that they were not yet publicly released. If there was indeed a classified piece of information in the fax, it could have been sanitized prior to the insecure transmission. Without seeing the classified version, it is impossible to tell.
It's not "moving the goal post" to point out that your kick fell far short. Again, consider that a prosecution would be arguing before a court of law. Nothing is obvious, and nothing is beyond question. If you want to prove something, you have to show your entire case.
Now, can you prove that the emails were "delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or... lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed"? Can you also prove that the delivery was due to "gross negligence", and not a hacker's skill or simple mistake? Can you also prove that it was Hillary's negligence at fault, and not an underling who was ordered to build a secure server?
Now, when I say "prove", mind you I don't mean simply making an emotional plea on the Internet to further your political beliefs. I mean you need to have actual evidence suitable to present to a court of law, and convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that all the criteria of the statute have been met.
There are lots of crimes with no punishments. This is one of them.
This needs to be noted VERY well in this discussion.
Typically, just mishandling classified information (without intentionally handing it off to others) is handled with an administrative slap on the wrist, and maybe losing clearance. There are rarely any criminal proceedings, because the higher-ups never want a subordinate to fear revealing a data spill. Instead, self-policing and self-reporting are praised, and mistakes are often just cleaned up and forgotten.
It's not the threat of punishment that matters, but the higher likelihood of being caught that has actually been shown to deter crime. Having more and better evidence from recordings improves that chance.
That's not how parallel construction works, either.
Parallel construction is where an investigator gets a tip from another agency (like the DEA or NSA) that indicated how to find evidence. Legally, it's no different from an anonymous tip, or a confidential informant. The investigators then get an appropriate warrant to gather that evidence, and that starts the chain of custody. Nothing is ever fabricated or obfuscated, except the source of the original tip.
In preservation of the accused's fourth-amendment rights, however, the evidence that led to the original tip (NSA surveillance, DEA agents, etc) are all inadmissible in court.
For example, an undercover DEA agent could watch a drug dealer kill someone and bury the body, then pass on the tip of where the body's buried to another agency. That agency could recover the body and begin following forensic evidence to connect the body to the dealer. While that would mean the prosecution's case would be weaker than if they had his eyewitness testimony, the DEA agent would not be a part of the trial, would not be called as a witness, and would not need to be revealed to the defense. The dealer's associates would have no indication of the agent's involvement, allowing further investigation of the distribution network.
This is heading into speculation territory, but I suspect both.
If I were designing such a system, I'd keep a month of raw audio on hand. That fits on a cheap 80GB hard drive. If an event gets reported, a day's recording could be pulled off for professional cleaning and analysis, to make something humans could understand. Keeping a full month provides enough time for the report to cycle through the various authorities and bureaucracies to actually get retrieved before being cycled out.
I'd also expect that the DHS would have some real-time analysis software, but its status as "magical" is certainly debatable. I'd expect it could detect gunshots, explosions, loud arguments, and maybe a few distinctive words, but I doubt it's capable of tracking and understanding multiple conversations in real time in a noisy environment.
In both cases, I think the value would be a modern equivalent to the Zapruder film. There would be many errors in an automatic analysis, but the recording would provide contributing details to reconstruct an event for detailed manual analysis after an event. That in turn can either support or disprove a theory, ultimately revealing a story closer to the truth.
You have no idea how the court system (or government in general) works, do you?
If the prosecutor can't establish where evidence came from, it's not admissible. Yes, it can be challenged by the defense, and those challenges have to be addressed. If the prosecutor can't provide a trail for the evidence from collection to the courtroom, it gets removed from the trial. If that was the prosecution's key evidence against you, you walk free.
Recording it provides evidence, which aids in the successful investigation and prosecution of perpetrators. That in turn becomes publicized, serving as a deterrent to the different guy with different reasons.
It is important to note the difference between well-controlled recordings and indiscriminate surveillance. The cameras and microphones are not what actually matters, so much as the objectives of the controlling entity. Big Brother was oppressive. Star Trek's ship computers were not.
As someone who also worked in the entertainment industry, I'd say you ought to reconsider what skilled audio engineers can do.
When we had a case of equipment get delayed, I've had to use the wrong mics and set up recording without a soundcheck. The raw recording was noisy and inconsistent, and the actors' speech was practically unintelligible. However, with a few minutes at a workstation, I was able to smooth out most of the inconsistency, and even out the noise floor. It was still unintelligible, but that cleared up after some vary careful noise filters were applied. The end result wasn't stellar, but it was passable.
The goal here isn't to have an entertaining immersive audio experience, though. The goal of audio recording on public transit is to provide evidence in a court case. A precise count of gunshots or a noisy recording of an argument are useful things in a courtroom, even without an engineer cleaning up the clip. If cleaner results are needed, an audio engineer can work his magic, and extract the evidence from the noise.
Unfortunately, that's precisely where the privacy concerns come from, as well. If a skilled editor wants to extract speech from a recording, he can probably do it. If the subject happened to sit near a microphone, it makes the job easier. There must be clear rules in place for who can have access to the recordings and under what authorization, and that hasn't happened in many places that have implemented audio recordings.
Were the sites operated in compliance with gambling laws? Were there audits to ensure that the system wasn't rigged unfairly (apart from the inherent and well-known house advantage)? Were all transactions accounted for and recorded properly?
There are a lot of regulations that make gambling a mostly-fair enterprise. Yes, you're still likely to lose, but it's entertaining to play and sometimes win. It's not entertaining to play and never have a chance of winning, and that would put the site in the "scam" category.
What ever happened to Apple's patent on a magnetic jack?
The idea was that a normal headphone plug could be placed against an indentation on the phone, and the magnet would hold it fairly securely against the electrical contacts. That would allow it to be thinner and smaller than a normal jack that surrounds the plug.
I'm hopeful that these rumors of not having a headphone jack refer to a regular jack...
I'm quite familiar with the subject... but did you have a point to make, or did you think that merely mentioning a mistake relieves you of the duty to make an argument?
My personal nightmare was three VM servers on two identical ESXi VM hosts (a primary, replicated for a hot spare), running four quad-core CPUs virtually allocated to only commit 8 cores to each VM, and each VM also got 4 GB of memory. One of those VMs ran our Exchange server. We also had a Win7 VM to run on the server, and needed to upgrade about a dozen WinXP clients to Windows 7. Several new computers had been purchased prior to this project with Win7 already installed, and they weren't going to be changed at this time. In addition, we also had several appliances that needed service accounts (like the voicemail-to-email feature on our PBX). We also wanted to move toward volume licensing, so we could avoid the spreadsheet lists of license keys.
We called our preferred software vendor, and got their Microsoft-certified Licensing Specialist (and the fact that there is such a thing is a big warning) to figure out what we needed. A different vendor gave us a different answer. We also contacted Microsoft directly, and got another different answer.
As I recall, they were, in no particular order, and with elements shuffled around by my attempts to repress the memories:
A boatload of device CALs, 12 copies of Windows Server 2012 (3 VMs * 2 servers * 4 processors / 2 processors per license), a special VM license for Windows 7, then several retail Win7 licenses for the desktop machines.
A mix of device and user CALs, 6 copies of Windows Server 2012, and individual retail upgrades for Win7.
Only user CALs, 3 copies of Windows Server, a volume license for all the Win7 systems.
I remember something about a suggestion to scrap our ESXi infrastructure, and running Windows Server as a Hyper-V host because that'd give us some VM allocations, too.
-if you own a software license bought outright at any time you own it in perpetuity
Unless you're using a capability of that outright-license software that is separately licensed under Software Assurance, in which case you can only use that feature while your SA entitlement is active.
-CALs are bought yearly (typically) but are "essentially" the same no matter the platform or age. There are exceptions for this (dynamics CRM end user vs admin licenses, etc) but in general it works this way
CALs do not expire, but they also do not transfer, and they do not apply to other versions. It doesn't matter that you bought too many CALs in 2008, because you'll be buying all new ones for 2012.
-Licenses are separate from support contracts, so you can opt for zero support for zero fee, or have MS premier support on-site 24/7 for a HUGE fee
Unless "support" is in the form of Software Assurance, in which case you must purchase SA to get certain volume licenses, and certain products are not available with SA, and certain products are not available without volume licensing.
You can optionally pay an annuity to get free upgrades for any software you use, but again not required
I think, again, you're referring to SA. Please tell me how to get Windows 7 Enterprise N without Software Assurance, because nobody has yet been able to accomplish that legally.
Slashdot Mirror
You mean like hospital IT workers do every day?
There are mitigation and management strategies already, and if the risk is deemed significant enough, there is hazard pay and insurance coverage available to mitigate the discomfort such a pathogen may cause.
I understand the difference; they already had him on numerous charges without playing the entire episode out to the point of placing a fake bomb.
Maybe, and maybe not... either way, if they let him just continue, the prosecution's case is that much more complete.
Yes sure, they offered multiple alternatives, prayer, made him aware there will be children and women present, no one is saying this terrorist aint a stinking pile of shit, but the FBI had him when they did the "practice run".
And at all those points, he could have said "no", and walked away... That'd be the law-abiding thing to do, and would be the easy way out of the sting.
While technically waiting to make the arrest with the fake car bomb is not exactly entrapment, the sting operation could have concluded with the detonation or even construction of the "test" bomb.
It depends on the particulars, but probably not, actually. In several states, building bombs is perfectly legal. Setting them off is also perfectly legal. In fact, I have done so personally in the past. Usually (and in my case) what would be illegal would be for that bomb to damage anyone else's (or public) property, injure any person or animal, or be transported on public roads without the proper approvals. Again, there may have been minor crimes along the way, but not enough evidence to make a case that the perpetrator was trying to commit a serious offense.
Actually, it probably could have concluded long before that with a conviction. Yes, I understand getting prosecution is harder than it sounds, but they have ample evidence prior to the fake bomb run, shit prior to the test run of his intention and activities.
What kind of irrefutable evidence did they have, exactly? Prior to actually executing the fake attack, the defendant could just argue that he took the opportunity to gather names and details into a nice little package that he planned to turn over to the authorities, and had to play along to do so. The defense could claim he was a hero all along, and the FBI just sprang their trap before he sprang his. To a jury of scared citizens who keep being told that if they "see something, say something", and with the common fantasies of being a big hero, if only they had the opportunity... Who wouldn't sympathize with this guy who just tried to do the right thing?
Also, what went wrong in this young mans head to push him this direction? Could have the perceived assistance of these agents, who to this idiot were willing accomplices (knowledgeable ones) that apparently supported his position?
How is that any different from the willing aid of an actual terrorist organization? He started by seeking willing accomplices. His head already had the criminal element. The agents just let it run its course in a (somewhat) controlled environment. In his mind, he was willingly committing a crime, and that's the ambition that the justice system is trying to remove from the rest of our law-abiding society.
Based on what evidence you assert that assumption?
That's based on the fact that he willingly went along with the first guys to offer support.
It's not entrapment. It's a sting. There are very important differences, and you'll find the situation to be much less perplexing once you understand those differences.
If that's not entrapment, I'm not sure what is.
You're not sure what entrapment is, then.
Entrapment is when the government agents make you commit a crime that you weren't otherwise willing to do. For example, if they threaten you or your family, that's entrapment. If they make you believe that what you're doing isn't actually a crime, that's entrapment. If they manipulate circumstances to where you believe you have absolutely no choice but to commit the crime, that's entrapment.
What is not entrapment is asking "Hey, are you willing to commit a crime?". It is also not entrapment to hand you the tools to commit the crime, and it's also not entrapment to drive you to a location for the crime, hand you the tools, and pay you a lot of money to commit the crime. Those things are not entrapment (though their legality may depend on having proper authorizations and approvals in place). You still have the option to avoid all criminal culpability by not doing the crime (though even if it turns out the tools they gave you were fake, what matters is that you thought they were real). If someone offers to help you and/or pay you to commit a crime, you can walk right down to the local police department and tell them all about it.
I've been one of the few folks dispelling the "fiduciary duty" myth for a while, but since that job's done...
Nonetheless, if the company's behavior is incompatible with the bottom line, market forces will squash that company. The company with a constraint of "never behave like a sociopath" is at a competitive disadvantage to the company without that constraint.
Bullshit.
Those "market forces" are exactly why it pays to be nice. I know a number of good engineers who left Disney when they outsourced IT, just because they disagreed with the company. Some of them intentionally went to another company that chose to cut profits rather than lay off employees during a temporary downturn.
People talk, especially if you're in an area with several competing companies. Just like companies essentially must offer a benefits package to attract employees, their reputation also impacts what already-established talent will join the team. With a poor enough reputation, it's only the inexperienced and desperate who will accept the company's offers.
For large companies, it's a small market force, but it's often enough to outweigh a few percentage points on the profit report.
Your father was connected. That explains it.
Fixed that for you.
Rank is not all that hath privilege. I'd wager that the vast majority of executives would do similar things for 25-year loyal employees in such circumstances, but usually the people who know about such things aren't the ones who can authorize such unusual accommodations.
For quite a while, I've suggested that anyone starting a new job should meet the highest-ranking person in the area. Whether that's a site manager, C-level executive, or even just the accountant who didn't relocate with the rest of the higher-ups, having friends in high places allows you to ask for perfectly reasonable things, and actually have a chance at seeing them happen.
It is a mutually beneficial arrangement, because the subordinate gains a channel for fulfilling extraordinary needs, and the senior gains access to operational details that might not pass up the chain of normal status reports.
The crime is not whatever you say it is. The crime is whatever the law defines it to be, and the law in question explicitly requires that classified material be "removed from its proper place of custody or delivered" for the crime to have occurred.
Since the server was unclassified, it would not be involved in removing classified information from its proper place, so we can disregard that part of the law. Since we can't prove anyone uncleared actually received the classified information, we have to disregard the second part, too. The other options are "lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed", and none of those terms apply well, either.
I'm sorry, but rule of law still applies.
Actually, yes, you can usually just remove markings from (or more precisely, rewrite without markings) unclassified material that's on a secure system. The unclassified material doesn't need to be "declassified" because it was never classified to begin with. That includes unclassified parts of a larger document that's marked as containing classified information, and by the same extension it applies to unclassified data on computer systems that are marked as containing classified data.
What's important is that no classified information actually gets out of the secure environment. Nobody cares about other information, with a few exceptions.
The words "extremely careless" were chosen carefully to avoid saying "negligent". To be careless is to be ignorant of the required security procedures, while to be ignorant is to know what's proper and required, and choosing to not attempt to follow it. If you're going to go down that road, you'll need to establish that the sysadmins responsible for that server were aware of the that the system could hold classified information, and they knew the security requirements necessary to protect a system holding classified information, and chose willingly to leave it unsecured.
What proof is there that the sysadmins were competent, beyond the faint hope that they should be?
What proof do you have that she personally put classified information on her server?
What proof is there that, at the time the server was built, it was intended to hold classified information?
There are an awful lot of bad things here... certainly enough to say the handling was careless. Unfortunately, without an absolutely solid case for a particular and completely-provable allegation, a successful prosecution is extremely unlikely, and would not serve the cause of justice in any meaningful way.
That email about the fax proves only that a particular message was requested to be transmitted in an insecure manner. That does not mean the contents of the fax were sensitive or that removing the markings was improper. As I understand, the subject of the fax was a set of talking points for a speech, which were sensitive only in that they were not yet publicly released. If there was indeed a classified piece of information in the fax, it could have been sanitized prior to the insecure transmission. Without seeing the classified version, it is impossible to tell.
It's not "moving the goal post" to point out that your kick fell far short. Again, consider that a prosecution would be arguing before a court of law. Nothing is obvious, and nothing is beyond question. If you want to prove something, you have to show your entire case.
Now, can you prove that the emails were "delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or ... lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed"? Can you also prove that the delivery was due to "gross negligence", and not a hacker's skill or simple mistake? Can you also prove that it was Hillary's negligence at fault, and not an underling who was ordered to build a secure server?
Now, when I say "prove", mind you I don't mean simply making an emotional plea on the Internet to further your political beliefs. I mean you need to have actual evidence suitable to present to a court of law, and convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that all the criteria of the statute have been met.
Good luck with that.
There are lots of crimes with no punishments. This is one of them.
This needs to be noted VERY well in this discussion.
Typically, just mishandling classified information (without intentionally handing it off to others) is handled with an administrative slap on the wrist, and maybe losing clearance. There are rarely any criminal proceedings, because the higher-ups never want a subordinate to fear revealing a data spill. Instead, self-policing and self-reporting are praised, and mistakes are often just cleaned up and forgotten.
Never mind that the investigation started explicitly because of a FOIA request...
Half-wit.
It's not the threat of punishment that matters, but the higher likelihood of being caught that has actually been shown to deter crime. Having more and better evidence from recordings improves that chance.
That's not how parallel construction works, either.
Parallel construction is where an investigator gets a tip from another agency (like the DEA or NSA) that indicated how to find evidence. Legally, it's no different from an anonymous tip, or a confidential informant. The investigators then get an appropriate warrant to gather that evidence, and that starts the chain of custody. Nothing is ever fabricated or obfuscated, except the source of the original tip.
In preservation of the accused's fourth-amendment rights, however, the evidence that led to the original tip (NSA surveillance, DEA agents, etc) are all inadmissible in court.
For example, an undercover DEA agent could watch a drug dealer kill someone and bury the body, then pass on the tip of where the body's buried to another agency. That agency could recover the body and begin following forensic evidence to connect the body to the dealer. While that would mean the prosecution's case would be weaker than if they had his eyewitness testimony, the DEA agent would not be a part of the trial, would not be called as a witness, and would not need to be revealed to the defense. The dealer's associates would have no indication of the agent's involvement, allowing further investigation of the distribution network.
This is heading into speculation territory, but I suspect both.
If I were designing such a system, I'd keep a month of raw audio on hand. That fits on a cheap 80GB hard drive. If an event gets reported, a day's recording could be pulled off for professional cleaning and analysis, to make something humans could understand. Keeping a full month provides enough time for the report to cycle through the various authorities and bureaucracies to actually get retrieved before being cycled out.
I'd also expect that the DHS would have some real-time analysis software, but its status as "magical" is certainly debatable. I'd expect it could detect gunshots, explosions, loud arguments, and maybe a few distinctive words, but I doubt it's capable of tracking and understanding multiple conversations in real time in a noisy environment.
In both cases, I think the value would be a modern equivalent to the Zapruder film. There would be many errors in an automatic analysis, but the recording would provide contributing details to reconstruct an event for detailed manual analysis after an event. That in turn can either support or disprove a theory, ultimately revealing a story closer to the truth.
You have no idea how the court system (or government in general) works, do you?
If the prosecutor can't establish where evidence came from, it's not admissible. Yes, it can be challenged by the defense, and those challenges have to be addressed. If the prosecutor can't provide a trail for the evidence from collection to the courtroom, it gets removed from the trial. If that was the prosecution's key evidence against you, you walk free.
Moron.
Recording it provides evidence, which aids in the successful investigation and prosecution of perpetrators. That in turn becomes publicized, serving as a deterrent to the different guy with different reasons.
It is important to note the difference between well-controlled recordings and indiscriminate surveillance. The cameras and microphones are not what actually matters, so much as the objectives of the controlling entity. Big Brother was oppressive. Star Trek's ship computers were not.
...because vandalism and destruction of city property is what heroes do!
As someone who also worked in the entertainment industry, I'd say you ought to reconsider what skilled audio engineers can do.
When we had a case of equipment get delayed, I've had to use the wrong mics and set up recording without a soundcheck. The raw recording was noisy and inconsistent, and the actors' speech was practically unintelligible. However, with a few minutes at a workstation, I was able to smooth out most of the inconsistency, and even out the noise floor. It was still unintelligible, but that cleared up after some vary careful noise filters were applied. The end result wasn't stellar, but it was passable.
The goal here isn't to have an entertaining immersive audio experience, though. The goal of audio recording on public transit is to provide evidence in a court case. A precise count of gunshots or a noisy recording of an argument are useful things in a courtroom, even without an engineer cleaning up the clip. If cleaner results are needed, an audio engineer can work his magic, and extract the evidence from the noise.
Unfortunately, that's precisely where the privacy concerns come from, as well. If a skilled editor wants to extract speech from a recording, he can probably do it. If the subject happened to sit near a microphone, it makes the job easier. There must be clear rules in place for who can have access to the recordings and under what authorization, and that hasn't happened in many places that have implemented audio recordings.
Well, it depends...
Were the sites operated in compliance with gambling laws? Were there audits to ensure that the system wasn't rigged unfairly (apart from the inherent and well-known house advantage)? Were all transactions accounted for and recorded properly?
There are a lot of regulations that make gambling a mostly-fair enterprise. Yes, you're still likely to lose, but it's entertaining to play and sometimes win. It's not entertaining to play and never have a chance of winning, and that would put the site in the "scam" category.
I found the patent again. It turns out you can.
What ever happened to Apple's patent on a magnetic jack?
The idea was that a normal headphone plug could be placed against an indentation on the phone, and the magnet would hold it fairly securely against the electrical contacts. That would allow it to be thinner and smaller than a normal jack that surrounds the plug.
I'm hopeful that these rumors of not having a headphone jack refer to a regular jack...
I'm quite familiar with the subject... but did you have a point to make, or did you think that merely mentioning a mistake relieves you of the duty to make an argument?
My personal nightmare was three VM servers on two identical ESXi VM hosts (a primary, replicated for a hot spare), running four quad-core CPUs virtually allocated to only commit 8 cores to each VM, and each VM also got 4 GB of memory. One of those VMs ran our Exchange server. We also had a Win7 VM to run on the server, and needed to upgrade about a dozen WinXP clients to Windows 7. Several new computers had been purchased prior to this project with Win7 already installed, and they weren't going to be changed at this time. In addition, we also had several appliances that needed service accounts (like the voicemail-to-email feature on our PBX). We also wanted to move toward volume licensing, so we could avoid the spreadsheet lists of license keys.
We called our preferred software vendor, and got their Microsoft-certified Licensing Specialist (and the fact that there is such a thing is a big warning) to figure out what we needed. A different vendor gave us a different answer. We also contacted Microsoft directly, and got another different answer.
As I recall, they were, in no particular order, and with elements shuffled around by my attempts to repress the memories:
I remember something about a suggestion to scrap our ESXi infrastructure, and running Windows Server as a Hyper-V host because that'd give us some VM allocations, too.
-if you own a software license bought outright at any time you own it in perpetuity
Unless you're using a capability of that outright-license software that is separately licensed under Software Assurance, in which case you can only use that feature while your SA entitlement is active.
-CALs are bought yearly (typically) but are "essentially" the same no matter the platform or age. There are exceptions for this (dynamics CRM end user vs admin licenses, etc) but in general it works this way
CALs do not expire, but they also do not transfer, and they do not apply to other versions. It doesn't matter that you bought too many CALs in 2008, because you'll be buying all new ones for 2012.
-Licenses are separate from support contracts, so you can opt for zero support for zero fee, or have MS premier support on-site 24/7 for a HUGE fee
Unless "support" is in the form of Software Assurance, in which case you must purchase SA to get certain volume licenses, and certain products are not available with SA, and certain products are not available without volume licensing.
You can optionally pay an annuity to get free upgrades for any software you use, but again not required
I think, again, you're referring to SA. Please tell me how to get Windows 7 Enterprise N without Software Assurance, because nobody has yet been able to accomplish that legally.