Unfortunately, as of 11/13, you won't be able to receive credit card payments any more with a personal account. Copied from their Policy Updates page:
Notice Date: October 11, 2001 Effective Date: November 13, 2001
To reduce the costs associated with credit card processing, the ability to receive credit card funded payments will become a feature reserved for Premier and Business accounts. Personal Accounts that receive credit card funded
payments after 11/13/2001 may accept the payment by upgrading to a Premier or Business account, or they will have to deny the payment. Personal accounts will continue to be able to receive non-credit card funded payments for free. Once upgraded, Premier and Business Accounts may receive unlimited credit card funded payments.
And how would it be decoded? Won't the use of a "Gestapo Key" in the encryption, affect the decryption?
No, it wouldn't, because of the way PGP encrypts messgages. Public-key crypto is slow, while many private-key algorithms are much faster. So, when encrypting a message, PGP creates a random key, and uses that key to encrypt the plaintext with a conventional, private-key cipher (CAST, IDEA, 3DES, Blowfifh, etc.).
Then, once the message is encrypted, PGP encrypts that random key (the "session key") with the recipient('s|s') public key(s), using a public-key cipher like RSA. This allows you to encrypt a message for multiple recipients without needing a separate copy for each recipient (which would be required if the whole message were encrypted with a public-key cipher).
PGP has included a similar feature in its corporate version for some time, calling it the "additional decryption key". The idea is that it would be set by the admin in a site-wide installation, allowing messages to be recovered if one party couldn't remember his passphrase or some such thing.
This is "may" in the sense of possibility, not in the sense of permission. Check out the definition at dictionary.com.
other special, incidental, consequential, direct or indirect damages
These are standard legal terms which you're grossly misconstruing. Suppose Joe hit you in the face. Here are some possible types of damages:
General: those damages presumed by the law to exist in every case of this type. Example: pain and suffering.
Special: damages which do not arise in every such case. Example: medical bills.
Direct: damages directly caused by Joe's wrongdoing. Both of the above examples would be direct damages.
Indirect, incidental, and consequential Incidental and Consequential damages together comprise indirect damages. There's a distinction between them, but it doesn't matter. These damages refer to problems not directly caused by the wrongdoing. For example, the time off work you had, or (in a different context) lost profits.
As it happens, this is a pretty generic disclaimer; I'm pretty sure even the GPL contains similar language.
In civil court, "preponderance of evidence" is the key phrase.
True, but the plaintiff still has to produce enough evidence to allow a reasonable jury to find in its favor. As the party bringing the case, the plaintiff has the burden of production and of persuasion. "Production" means they have to present a certain amount of evidence just to avoid having the case dismissed; "persuasion" means that they have to make the jury believe they're actually right.
Did anyone else see the irony of an anti-piracy campaign going around and scaring people and threating them with suprise raids unless given money?
Sounds an awful lot like extortion, actually--consider the Ohio Code, for example:
2905.11 Extortion.
(A) No person, with purpose to obtain any valuable thing or valuable benefit or to induce another to do an unlawful act, shall do any of the following:
[snip]
(5) Expose or threaten to expose any matter tending to subject any person to hatred, contempt, or ridicule, or to damage any person's personal or business repute, or to impair any person's credit.
Yeah 1-800-AUDITME Anyone who complains will be the first targeted for audit.
...to which the appropriate response is to tell them to go fsck themselves, or come back tomorrow with a court order. Do you think they'll get an order on the basis of nothing more than your refusal to cooperate? I don't...
The Escalade 7800 (8-port, 8-channel, UDMA 100, 64-bit) starts at about $350 on pricewatch. Two of these, and a dozen 100 GB drives in two RAID 5 arrays, and you've got your terabyte. The drives start at $271, so drives and controllers together are still under $4k. Still need housing and cables, of course.
Every time a president goes throug the selection process for a supreme court justice, the candates have to get reviewed by the ABA.
Not so--it's just been the custom for the last 50 years or so. President Bush has done away with that procedure, for better or for worse. There are only two real qualifications for a Supreme Court Justice: (1) you get nominated by the President, and (2) you get confirmed by the Senate. In practice, of course, you need to be an experienced judge, but that isn't a legal requirement.
To even practice law, you have to pass an ABA exam.
Again, not so. You must (usually--WI does things differently) pass a bar exam, which is created by the committee of bar examiners of the state in which you wish to practice. The ABA has no connection whatsoever to the bar examination process, though they do accredit law schools.
The ABA is far from the most powerful organization in the country. However, their opposition to UCITA will probably help us out.
What happens when technology like this or much, much better IS available to the public?
The opinion doesn't directly address this question, but seems to assume the answer--if everybody has (or can easily get) technology X, then there isn't a reasonable expectation of privacy in things which can be observed with that technology.
Is it not the same with gun technology, also?
Not even remotely. Police have access to all the latest and greatest technology already, while private citizens are strictly restricted--and what they can get of the neat stuff is much more expensive than what a police department would pay.
Personally, I think it should go the other way--we, the people, should have access to whatever the police get to use. It's not like a cop's life is more valuable than a non-cop's (nor is it less valuable, of course).
(which does violate their privacy... of course, if they're committing a crime, they've waived such a right).
No, they have done no such thing. Criminals have (in theory) the same protections against unreasonable searches as the rest of the public (almost none, in other words). If the police have probable cause to believe that you're involved in criminal activity, they can get a warrant, specifying where to search and what to search for--but even then, you haven't waived anything; it's just that you don't have an absolute right to never be searched.
I, personally, have ideological problems with the idea that the law should stand steadfast.
I tend to agree with you, as did the framers of the Constitution. That's why they included a procedure for amending it. If you (generic you) believe that American culture has changed to such a degree that private ownership of firearms is a bad thing (or that protection from unreasonable search and siezure is counterproductive, or that due process of law is overrated), there is a remedy, and it isn't through the courts. You need to get legislatures involved, and amend the Constitution.
Until it's amended, though, it is the supreme law of the land (in its own terms), and every federal and state official in the country takes an oath to "preserve, protect, and defend" it. IMO, that is not effectively done when judges substitute their feelings of what the law should be for the fact of what the law is.
in 'Employment at will' states, the one year employment contract(most commonly seen in cases of recently hired college grads) is uninforcable.
Nonsense. "Employment at will" means that, in the absence of an agreement to the contrary, either party may terminate the employment at any time, for any (or no) reason. I believe that employment is presumed to be at will in every state, but I may be wrong.
In an "at will" state, such as California, employment contracts for any length of time are perfectly enforcable. If I sign a one-year contract with my employer, and I'm laid off six months later, they owe me the remaining six months' salary. If I quit, I owe them the expenses of hiring and training somebody else for the position, and they may be able to prevent me from working anywhere else (this is fairly uncommon, but it can happen).
There are cars you can buy today that get 50 mpg. Do people buy them? No. They are wimpy and in a crash, you die.
There are other cars that get 50 mpg, aren't wimpy, and are very safe (among the safest in their class)--namely, the Volkswagen New Beetle, Golf, and Jetta with the TDI engine, the current incarnation of the VW diesel. Performance isn't earth-shaking, but it's comparable to the standard gas engine.
Hell, there's at least one car that pushes 100 mpg, which is the VW Lupo TDI (not sold in the US, though). It's a much smaller car than the Golf/Jetta, but at least the size of the Geo Metro, and certainly no less safe (though possibly no safer, either).
So far, everything I use that has been deregulated now costs me much more.
I dunno... Do you use long distance telephone service? How about air travel? I guess neither of those is, strictly speaking, deregulated, but they're certainly much less regulated than they used to be.
Don't know about eudora, but in netscape, it's easy enough to set a filter such that if you address does not appear in the to: or cc: field, the message is trashed. Obviously, you'd want to apply this filter after any filters that recognized mailing list messages, etc., and might might still catch items which were bcc'd to you.
You may be thinking of The Age of Innocence, by David Hamilton. The photographs are not sexually explicit, but some of them are very suggestive. Last April, a man was convicted in San Diego for possession of child pornography, which included photocopies made from that book at the public library.
As yet, nobody has been convicted of selling child pornography for dealing in this book, which is probably a good thing, as just about every chain bookstore in the country (as well as Amazon) either stocks it or can special order it.
Yes, prohibiting "Fire!" in a crowded theater is a restriction on speech. It's a fairly minimal restriction, and the Supreme Court has often cited it as the most obvious example of a restriction that's permissible under the First Amendment, but it's a restriction nonetheless.
...and even when the company policy does get you transferred you to an actual supervisor, it doesn't do a whole lot of good. People are generally not promoted to supervisor because of their technical expertise, and in my experience, once the supervisor is finished pacifying the caller, s/he usually ends up sending the call back to the same tech who took it in the first place.
Now, slightly more relevant to the original ost, once when I was a tech at Earthlink, I had a call from AOL's NOC, asking for a couple of traceroutes. I was able to take care of it, and the caller was happy.
Bunk. In fact, it is settled law that it is unconstitutional for a public library to censor material.
Prior to the advent of the Internet, there really wasn't any way that a library, public or not, could censor. They choose to carry materials, or not, and they have broad discretion in making those choices. You can't, for example, sue your local library because they've chosen not to carry Playboy (or any other publication you might want).
Similarly, contrary to the ALA's annual statements in connection with Banned Books Week, removing a book from circulation at a library is not in any way the same as banning that book--but this is somewhat of a tangent.
There are really two distinct issues here:
Whether libraries may constitutionally use filtering software, and
Whether the federal government may constitutionally mandate filters in connection with receiving federal money.
As to the first issue, I think they legally can. I've heard some fairly strong arguments on both sides, but I expect that the analogy of a selection policy would hold up. Libraries indisputably have the right to create a policy for selecting materials to purchase for the library, and this is probably close enough.
As to the second issue, it's a bit tougher. In general, the federal government can give money away with lots of strings attached, even if those strings are things they couldn't otherwise enforce. Remember the 55 MPH speed limits? Further, nobody has a constitutional right to government-provided Internet access. There's not even any direct application of the First Amendment, as that amendment does not mention a right to read whatever you want. However, the Supreme Court may well consider that right to be implied by the freedom of the press, and that, I think, is the ALA's only real hope here.
As has already been pointed out, Mandrake 7.2 does include RieserFS. For that matter, so does SuSE 7.0 (possibly earlier versions too). It's (correctly) tagged experimental in Mandrake, but it's there.
Yes, you are wrong. A federal agency or department may not (there may be exceptions, but in general) hold a copyright, but states (or counties, etc.) may, unless the state in question has a law prohibiting it.
In many jurisdictions, giving false legal advice is itself a crime.
Say what? I'm not aware of any US jurisdiction in which this is the case. In most, if not all, of them, it is a crime to practice law (which would generally include giving legal advice of any kind) without a license, but no distinction is made as to whether the advice is correct. I can't imagine, though, that a general discussion of legal principles, as happened here, would rise to the level of legal advice. Heck, just look at Nolo Press.
If you are a licensed attorney, you're not likely to encounter criminal prosecution for giving bad advice, but you may well be sued.
OBTW, I am a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer, and this isn't legal advice.
In fact, under the UCC, any mark intended to authenticate a writing is considered a signature. UCC sec. 1-201 (38). So the X could be, the thumbprint could be if made intentionally, a PGP signature probably could be, even a piece of letterhead could be.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, as of 11/13, you won't be able to receive credit card payments any more with a personal account. Copied from their Policy Updates page:
Notice Date: October 11, 2001
Effective Date: November 13, 2001
To reduce the costs associated with credit card processing, the ability to receive credit card funded payments will become a feature reserved for Premier and Business accounts. Personal Accounts that receive credit card funded payments after 11/13/2001 may accept the payment by upgrading to a Premier or Business account, or they will have to deny the payment. Personal accounts will continue to be able to receive non-credit card funded payments for free. Once upgraded, Premier and Business Accounts may receive unlimited credit card funded payments.
No, it wouldn't, because of the way PGP encrypts messgages. Public-key crypto is slow, while many private-key algorithms are much faster. So, when encrypting a message, PGP creates a random key, and uses that key to encrypt the plaintext with a conventional, private-key cipher (CAST, IDEA, 3DES, Blowfifh, etc.).
Then, once the message is encrypted, PGP encrypts that random key (the "session key") with the recipient('s|s') public key(s), using a public-key cipher like RSA. This allows you to encrypt a message for multiple recipients without needing a separate copy for each recipient (which would be required if the whole message were encrypted with a public-key cipher).
PGP has included a similar feature in its corporate version for some time, calling it the "additional decryption key". The idea is that it would be set by the admin in a site-wide installation, allowing messages to be recovered if one party couldn't remember his passphrase or some such thing.
- General: those damages presumed by the law to exist in every case of this type. Example: pain and suffering.
- Special: damages which do not arise in every such case. Example: medical bills.
- Direct: damages directly caused by Joe's wrongdoing. Both of the above examples would be direct damages.
- Indirect, incidental, and consequential Incidental and Consequential damages together comprise indirect damages. There's a distinction between them, but it doesn't matter. These damages refer to problems not directly caused by the wrongdoing. For example, the time off work you had, or (in a different context) lost profits.
As it happens, this is a pretty generic disclaimer; I'm pretty sure even the GPL contains similar language.2905.11 Extortion.
(A) No person, with purpose to obtain any valuable thing or valuable benefit or to induce another to do an unlawful act, shall do any of the following:
[snip]
(5) Expose or threaten to expose any matter tending to subject any person to hatred, contempt, or ridicule, or to damage any person's personal or business repute, or to impair any person's credit.
The Escalade 7800 (8-port, 8-channel, UDMA 100, 64-bit) starts at about $350 on pricewatch. Two of these, and a dozen 100 GB drives in two RAID 5 arrays, and you've got your terabyte. The drives start at $271, so drives and controllers together are still under $4k. Still need housing and cables, of course.
Not so--it's just been the custom for the last 50 years or so. President Bush has done away with that procedure, for better or for worse. There are only two real qualifications for a Supreme Court Justice: (1) you get nominated by the President, and (2) you get confirmed by the Senate. In practice, of course, you need to be an experienced judge, but that isn't a legal requirement.
To even practice law, you have to pass an ABA exam.
Again, not so. You must (usually--WI does things differently) pass a bar exam, which is created by the committee of bar examiners of the state in which you wish to practice. The ABA has no connection whatsoever to the bar examination process, though they do accredit law schools.
The ABA is far from the most powerful organization in the country. However, their opposition to UCITA will probably help us out.
The opinion doesn't directly address this question, but seems to assume the answer--if everybody has (or can easily get) technology X, then there isn't a reasonable expectation of privacy in things which can be observed with that technology.
Is it not the same with gun technology, also?
Not even remotely. Police have access to all the latest and greatest technology already, while private citizens are strictly restricted--and what they can get of the neat stuff is much more expensive than what a police department would pay.
Personally, I think it should go the other way--we, the people, should have access to whatever the police get to use. It's not like a cop's life is more valuable than a non-cop's (nor is it less valuable, of course).
No, they have done no such thing. Criminals have (in theory) the same protections against unreasonable searches as the rest of the public (almost none, in other words). If the police have probable cause to believe that you're involved in criminal activity, they can get a warrant, specifying where to search and what to search for--but even then, you haven't waived anything; it's just that you don't have an absolute right to never be searched.
I tend to agree with you, as did the framers of the Constitution. That's why they included a procedure for amending it. If you (generic you) believe that American culture has changed to such a degree that private ownership of firearms is a bad thing (or that protection from unreasonable search and siezure is counterproductive, or that due process of law is overrated), there is a remedy, and it isn't through the courts. You need to get legislatures involved, and amend the Constitution.
Until it's amended, though, it is the supreme law of the land (in its own terms), and every federal and state official in the country takes an oath to "preserve, protect, and defend" it. IMO, that is not effectively done when judges substitute their feelings of what the law should be for the fact of what the law is.
Nonsense. "Employment at will" means that, in the absence of an agreement to the contrary, either party may terminate the employment at any time, for any (or no) reason. I believe that employment is presumed to be at will in every state, but I may be wrong.
In an "at will" state, such as California, employment contracts for any length of time are perfectly enforcable. If I sign a one-year contract with my employer, and I'm laid off six months later, they owe me the remaining six months' salary. If I quit, I owe them the expenses of hiring and training somebody else for the position, and they may be able to prevent me from working anywhere else (this is fairly uncommon, but it can happen).
There are other cars that get 50 mpg, aren't wimpy, and are very safe (among the safest in their class)--namely, the Volkswagen New Beetle, Golf, and Jetta with the TDI engine, the current incarnation of the VW diesel. Performance isn't earth-shaking, but it's comparable to the standard gas engine.
Hell, there's at least one car that pushes 100 mpg, which is the VW Lupo TDI (not sold in the US, though). It's a much smaller car than the Golf/Jetta, but at least the size of the Geo Metro, and certainly no less safe (though possibly no safer, either).
I dunno... Do you use long distance telephone service? How about air travel? I guess neither of those is, strictly speaking, deregulated, but they're certainly much less regulated than they used to be.
LOL! Especially as I'm listening to the Mikado at the moment. Of course, if the tin were open, it probably wouldn't be too smooth...
Don't know about eudora, but in netscape, it's easy enough to set a filter such that if you address does not appear in the to: or cc: field, the message is trashed. Obviously, you'd want to apply this filter after any filters that recognized mailing list messages, etc., and might might still catch items which were bcc'd to you.
You may be thinking of The Age of Innocence, by David Hamilton. The photographs are not sexually explicit, but some of them are very suggestive. Last April, a man was convicted in San Diego for possession of child pornography, which included photocopies made from that book at the public library. As yet, nobody has been convicted of selling child pornography for dealing in this book, which is probably a good thing, as just about every chain bookstore in the country (as well as Amazon) either stocks it or can special order it.
Yes, prohibiting "Fire!" in a crowded theater is a restriction on speech. It's a fairly minimal restriction, and the Supreme Court has often cited it as the most obvious example of a restriction that's permissible under the First Amendment, but it's a restriction nonetheless.
Now, slightly more relevant to the original ost, once when I was a tech at Earthlink, I had a call from AOL's NOC, asking for a couple of traceroutes. I was able to take care of it, and the caller was happy.
That would be the Second Amendment, not the Fourth.
Prior to the advent of the Internet, there really wasn't any way that a library, public or not, could censor. They choose to carry materials, or not, and they have broad discretion in making those choices. You can't, for example, sue your local library because they've chosen not to carry Playboy (or any other publication you might want).
Similarly, contrary to the ALA's annual statements in connection with Banned Books Week, removing a book from circulation at a library is not in any way the same as banning that book--but this is somewhat of a tangent.
There are really two distinct issues here:
As to the first issue, I think they legally can. I've heard some fairly strong arguments on both sides, but I expect that the analogy of a selection policy would hold up. Libraries indisputably have the right to create a policy for selecting materials to purchase for the library, and this is probably close enough.
As to the second issue, it's a bit tougher. In general, the federal government can give money away with lots of strings attached, even if those strings are things they couldn't otherwise enforce. Remember the 55 MPH speed limits? Further, nobody has a constitutional right to government-provided Internet access. There's not even any direct application of the First Amendment, as that amendment does not mention a right to read whatever you want. However, the Supreme Court may well consider that right to be implied by the freedom of the press, and that, I think, is the ALA's only real hope here.
As has already been pointed out, Mandrake 7.2 does include RieserFS. For that matter, so does SuSE 7.0 (possibly earlier versions too). It's (correctly) tagged experimental in Mandrake, but it's there.
Yes, you are wrong. A federal agency or department may not (there may be exceptions, but in general) hold a copyright, but states (or counties, etc.) may, unless the state in question has a law prohibiting it.
Say what? I'm not aware of any US jurisdiction in which this is the case. In most, if not all, of them, it is a crime to practice law (which would generally include giving legal advice of any kind) without a license, but no distinction is made as to whether the advice is correct. I can't imagine, though, that a general discussion of legal principles, as happened here, would rise to the level of legal advice. Heck, just look at Nolo Press.
If you are a licensed attorney, you're not likely to encounter criminal prosecution for giving bad advice, but you may well be sued.
OBTW, I am a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer, and this isn't legal advice.
In fact, under the UCC, any mark intended to authenticate a writing is considered a signature. UCC sec. 1-201 (38). So the X could be, the thumbprint could be if made intentionally, a PGP signature probably could be, even a piece of letterhead could be.