If they have sufficient evidence that both the existence of kiddie porn on the drives, and the defendant's ownership and control over those drives, are "foregone conclusions" (which is the standard that needs to be met to avoid 5th amendment protection), why isn't he simply charged on the basis of that evidence?
"Let me say what I think your problem is. You can use these harsh terms, but you are dealing with something new, and the question is, does the statutory monopoly that Congress has given you reach out to that something new. And that's a very debatable question. You don't solve it by calling it 'theft.' You have to show why this court should extend a statutory monopoly to cover the new thing. That's your problem. Address that if you would. And curtail the use of abusive language."
Whenever the topic of plagiarism detection comes up, there's always plenty of students who argue that it's offensive to treat them as guilty until proven innocent.
Trouble is, it's hard to tell which students are saying that because that's what they really think, and which students are just copying a response they read on the internet...
[Antarctica New Zealand chief executive officer Lou] Sanson said Antarctica New Zealand, the national scientific research program, could not provide the 47-year-old with fuel anyway because it did not have aviation gas, and the petrol it had was not of aviation quality.
"It's very unclear that at McMurdo or Scott base we have the fuel he needs," he said.
"We've done all we possibly can in terms of the resources we have."
But, of course, saying, "They didn't sell him fuel because they didn't have any," is not as "newsworthy" as saying, "Those heartless bastards refused to help him out."
While this article raises an interesting point, the GameArena software in question does *not* simply try to uniquely identify people based on MAC addresses. It uses MAC addresses as part of a unique identity, and it basically uses them as a "random" number to add on to someone's username.
Basically how the system (called COGS, for "Complete Online Gaming System") works is:
All the game servers have been moved behind a firewall. By default, it blocks all access to them.
When a user wants to play, they fire up the COGS client. They enter a username and password, and it authenticates them with the server. Server then punches a hole in the firewall for that IP.
The client has to keep running - it keeps a connection open to the server, exchanging tokens every 5 minutes or so - or the firewall will close again.
While people are connected, the client uses a combination of username and MAC to identify them - so the same user can be logged in from more than one place at once - and the same MAC could be in use by 2 people. If people were to be banned using this system, it would be the username that was flagged - and other mechanisms would be used to make it hard for the troublesome users to get a new username/password.
Those mechanisms might use MAC addresses, but they are not expected to be perfect anyway - usernames and passwords can be given from one person to another, and it's supposed to be easy for new users to create themselves an account, so there is no real way to prevent cheaters from coming back. However, with some protective measures in place, the path of least resistance becomes, "go and annoy people on a different server," so we still get rid of the idiots.
In a completely unrelated point, most gamers who've taken the time to discuss the new system, hate it. The COGS client includes an irc client (hardwired to their irc server, which doesn't like other clients connecting to it), and all sorts of other "junk". But that's a different matter...
GameArena have also "done the right thing" by making 3 clients available: One for windows, one for linux, and one for MacOS. So, any OS that could run any of the games for which they provide servers, has a COGS client they can run.
(if you're wondering why I didn't post this comment earlier, well, I'm actually in Australia, one of the people who use the game servers in question, and I only just woke up:P)
Indeed, I have an old 21" monitor that only does sync-on-green. Dirt cheap, hard to get working - and it will be unusable on the PS2.
You know why?
Well, to get it working on a normal PC, you need to give it sync-on-green (the PS2 does that for you, but keep readong for why that's not good enough). Given $5 in parts, a soldering iron, and the ability to use it, an appropriate dongle can be made to take the output from a standard video card (which gives r, g, b, hsync, vsync on 5 separate pins), and combines them in the appropriate way. Circuit diagrams easily available - do a web search.
The real problem, however, is that those old monitors are almost certainly fixed-sync. That means they will only work if your hsync is at just the right frequency, and that almost certainly isn't one of the vesa standard modes your pc puts out. It's also probably out of the range a "normal" monitor can handle. So, while you *can* set X up to work on that old monitor, doing so is a royal PITA, and you'll be switching monitors back and forth for hours. Been there, done that.
When setting up your PS2, it will pe putting out a standard VESA mode, and you won't be able to tweak it (not without a monitor to see what you're doing, anyway...)
1. your restricting fredom of speech
2. "unsuitable for children" could have a broad meaning & used to restrict things of a political nature...
Most countries in the world do not have a constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech. Australia is one of them. However, our constitution does guarantee freedom of political speech (which, in practice, is almost as good for attacking the constitutionality of laws - anyone can register a political party, include graphic descriptions of what they aim to prevent people doing to themselves in their manifesto, make said manifesto available on the web)
I also hope this bill is thrown out - but if it does pass, there are still constitutional grounds for throwing it out.
... it's a typical wet and windy British night tonight, and the Evil Things will be tucked up all warm and cosy in bed, not prowling the land looking for innocents to molest.;-)
I never realised that miserable weather could be a security feature!
The entire system is Free Software. Check out http://evacs.samba.org/, check it out of cvs, and go nuts.
I didn't want to be a karma whore, but nobody else seems to have posted that link... and there's not much point talking about a wonderful, new, GPL'd program without also telling people where to get it from.
REP. BOB GOODLATTE, R-Va., told MSNBC.com that the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act will now include language making it clear that it "does nothing to legalize anything that's illegal and will not take away something that... is now lawful."
In other words, this bill does absolutely nothing, so why are people worried about it? Trust us, we're not going to do anything bad, ever.
And if it's said by a politician, it must be true...
If the MPAA used what appears to be the standard form for issuing notice of a DMCA violation, then their letter would read something like:
"We hereby state, under penalty of perjury, that we
believe that blah blah violates our copyright blah blah"
In other words, the fact that the site which so offenced them did not, in fact, violate their copyright, implies that the author of the letter (the MPAA, or an employee/lawyer thereof) is either (a) guilty of perjury, or (b) incompetent.
Slashdot Mirror
If they have sufficient evidence that both the existence of kiddie porn on the drives, and the defendant's ownership and control over those drives, are "foregone conclusions" (which is the standard that needs to be met to avoid 5th amendment protection), why isn't he simply charged on the basis of that evidence?
Includes the exact quote from the judge:
Good to see at least one judge "gets it".Whenever the topic of plagiarism detection comes up, there's always plenty of students who argue that it's offensive to treat them as guilty until proven innocent.
Trouble is, it's hard to tell which students are saying that because that's what they really think, and which students are just copying a response they read on the internet...
It included the following paragraph:
But, of course, saying, "They didn't sell him fuel because they didn't have any," is not as "newsworthy" as saying, "Those heartless bastards refused to help him out."Basically how the system (called COGS, for "Complete Online Gaming System") works is: All the game servers have been moved behind a firewall. By default, it blocks all access to them.
When a user wants to play, they fire up the COGS client. They enter a username and password, and it authenticates them with the server. Server then punches a hole in the firewall for that IP. The client has to keep running - it keeps a connection open to the server, exchanging tokens every 5 minutes or so - or the firewall will close again.
While people are connected, the client uses a combination of username and MAC to identify them - so the same user can be logged in from more than one place at once - and the same MAC could be in use by 2 people. If people were to be banned using this system, it would be the username that was flagged - and other mechanisms would be used to make it hard for the troublesome users to get a new username/password.
Those mechanisms might use MAC addresses, but they are not expected to be perfect anyway - usernames and passwords can be given from one person to another, and it's supposed to be easy for new users to create themselves an account, so there is no real way to prevent cheaters from coming back. However, with some protective measures in place, the path of least resistance becomes, "go and annoy people on a different server," so we still get rid of the idiots.
In a completely unrelated point, most gamers who've taken the time to discuss the new system, hate it. The COGS client includes an irc client (hardwired to their irc server, which doesn't like other clients connecting to it), and all sorts of other "junk". But that's a different matter...
GameArena have also "done the right thing" by making 3 clients available: One for windows, one for linux, and one for MacOS. So, any OS that could run any of the games for which they provide servers, has a COGS client they can run.
(if you're wondering why I didn't post this comment earlier, well, I'm actually in Australia, one of the people who use the game servers in question, and I only just woke up :P)
Indeed, I have an old 21" monitor that only does sync-on-green. Dirt cheap, hard to get working - and it will be unusable on the PS2.
You know why?
Well, to get it working on a normal PC, you need to give it sync-on-green (the PS2 does that for you, but keep readong for why that's not good enough). Given $5 in parts, a soldering iron, and the ability to use it, an appropriate dongle can be made to take the output from a standard video card (which gives r, g, b, hsync, vsync on 5 separate pins), and combines them in the appropriate way. Circuit diagrams easily available - do a web search.
The real problem, however, is that those old monitors are almost certainly fixed-sync. That means they will only work if your hsync is at just the right frequency, and that almost certainly isn't one of the vesa standard modes your pc puts out. It's also probably out of the range a "normal" monitor can handle. So, while you *can* set X up to work on that old monitor, doing so is a royal PITA, and you'll be switching monitors back and forth for hours. Been there, done that.
When setting up your PS2, it will pe putting out a standard VESA mode, and you won't be able to tweak it (not without a monitor to see what you're doing, anyway...)
I also hope this bill is thrown out - but if it does pass, there are still constitutional grounds for throwing it out.
I never realised that miserable weather could be a security feature!
I didn't want to be a karma whore, but nobody else seems to have posted that link... and there's not much point talking about a wonderful, new, GPL'd program without also telling people where to get it from.
...is most definitely not zero-sum :-)
And if it's said by a politician, it must be true...
If the MPAA used what appears to be the standard form for issuing notice of a DMCA violation, then their letter would read something like:
In other words, the fact that the site which so offenced them did not, in fact, violate their copyright, implies that the author of the letter (the MPAA, or an employee/lawyer thereof) is either (a) guilty of perjury, or (b) incompetent.Unfortunately, incompetence is not a crime...