It seems that this is an obvious no brainer. Things that we will still have to worry about.
1. His Honerable Socialist Chairperson Muckety Muck in LA country insists on using his laptop. The network traffic produced by the viral infected thing screws VoIP up for the county.
2. Expect to see the regional bell SBC sue the state, and insist that it should be paid for a percentage of VoIP traffic that travels over the network
3. Expect legislation and/or rules designed to take the software that you and I pay for through taxes, and give it to some company/cousin of the grand high supervisor elect assistants manager of garbage collection.
Have you ever been in a state that has so many damn managers and so few people actually working? If California was a company it would be ripe for a "re-structuring". Most sucessful restructures cut out middle management and promote a lean work force (ie we kept the people that actually did something). At the end of the day, what will make or break California is it's citizens. The more services that they demand from their state, without wanting to pay for them, or help in any way the worse off they will be.
cluge AngryPeopleRule
Re:Hypocracy on /. -- Is this really a suprise?
on
CAN-SPAM Is A Bust
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· Score: 1
Spam is theft of other peoples resources - plain and simple. Theft is a crime, and I find it amazing that I should have to pay for and maintain a system for other peoples unwated advertisements.
There is no "hypocracy" here. I simply want to be allowed to defend the resources that I bought and paid for. The "hypocracy" that I see is the fact that theft of services and resources is crime if your a bricks and mortor company, but not for mail servers.
cluge AngryPeopleRule
Is this really a suprise?
on
CAN-SPAM Is A Bust
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Slow news day?
Lets look at some quick facts.
1. The can spam law gave you and I (collectively the little people) exactly zero ability to extract anything from a spammer (like money) for damages.
2. The can spam law requires law enforcement to track down spammers. Honestly - does anyone think Johnny Law is going to be going through those mail headers looking for the true source of spam? Lets be honest, the first chinese IP and they quit.
3. This law does not place real world consequences for those breaking "cyber law". (It's supposed to, but the proof is in the pudding!)
4. It does not allow you to complain about spam as a denial of service attack (which it most certainly is!)
Until we start putting spammers in jail, or start forcing them to pay, and pay and pay and pay, you will continue to get spammed. Until then, lets be honest, the community is doing a better job of removing spam than the government is. Thanks NJABL, SORBS, Spam Haus et al.
I hate to say this, but their are several reasons this won't work. Unless of course YOU write your congress person. [to be honest most people are too lazy]
The EFF idea makes too much sense, and therfore violates about 10 rules of making law
10 rules of making law
a. Any law congress shall enact must be hard to understand and convoluted
b. Any oppurtunity to get your face on TV to tackle a serious problem of your campaign contributer must be taken
c. Do not pass any law that may in any way reduce any lawyers potential to earn money
d. Keep starving artists that way
e. The EFF is just like the ACLU - it's just a collection of letters that your constituants don't know about - but probably won't like
f. If I don't understant it, I must fear it and pass legislation against it
g. This letter contains the phrase " P2P technologies", get RIAA approval on how to think about this
h. This letter contains the phrase "profound threat to innovation", get Microsoft approval after talking to the RIAA
i. Anything that congress can meddle in the better
j. If it's simple, makes sense, and doesn't require congressional involvement it must be wrong.
Also remember that this is an election year. The eff proposal removes a potential income source from lawyers, the single strongest lobby in Congress. This will go nowhere until people take the time to write their congresspersons. May I humbly suggest that my fellow/.ers start writing.
So if you have a radio plugged into your music on hold PBX port and the radio station already pays to play music, wouldn't that be "double dipping"? Isn't that illegal in Canada?
Whats funny is that the article states ""The distinction is that the music is not their property," he said. "And if it's being used in a public fashion or any kind of commercial fashion, then [musicians] deserve to be compensated for its use."
Considering the horrible track-record the recording industry has for paying musicians what is owed them, does anyone think that the musicians will see a dime if such monies are collected. What isn't mentioned is that this may make it illegal for DJ's to play at weddings and bar mitzvahs without paying some sort of fee. How many times do you have to pay for music before you can really enjoy it?
1) What do you do when some person tracks you down and shoots you becasue you were causing problems? If it had been a launder of money for an orginized crime outfit, they may very well have killed you.
They had better be a better shot than I. I live in a state where it is legal to defend myself.
2) It makes it harder for law enforcement to do their job.
I call BOVINE FECES
There is no reason law enforment needed to keep you informed of what they where doing.
I just asked them to do something, I don't want a blow by blow, or a window into their investigation. Hell HOW ABOUT A REPORT NUMBER? Oh - it's a domain hosted in Russia? with false information? sorry - try again. Thats why I did something.
It could be irresposible to do so, especially if they had to keep track of telling you the information. Once that caught someone, the lawyer would have demanded a look of how the case was handled, and if you name comes up, well then look at #1
The truth is that law enforcement rarely does anything in cases like this (or so it seems). Logs are usually dead ends, proxy servers in Turkey through proxy servers in Costa Rica. I've been told that they give up pretty quick, especially if the primary domain is hosted in Russia or China.
3) Who is to determin what justice is? If I found out it was my missing daughter, and that law enforcement was working on it, and you caused the site orinizer to flee befor that could be arrested, I would show you what vigilante justice means...for days.
If it was your daughter you would be damn glad that I got those pictures taken down, and that I forced the culprit to leave many, many, more trails. If the police had REALLY wanted to keep a site up to try and track someone, they would have contacted the free server admins. Once contacted, then my request would be ignored.
How do I know this? At my job at 3 different ISP's I've worked with both the FDLE (Florida Department of Law enforcement), the RCMP in Canada, and the FBI. They send you a subpoena for logs, or send you a court order for a tap, you send them the information. You are asked to make no changes to the account, and to even keep an account open that is past due. Lets be totally honest, my efforts would have never interfered with legitimate police work. What my efforts did was get the horrible pictures of a little girl taken down. I reported the site to law enforcement, and I reported the site to the missing and abused children online site.
I guess at the end of the day there are 3 types of people.
1. The people that throw garbage into our world
2. The people that drive by the garbage and bitch about it being there. "TSK TSK", they say, "Someone should do something".
3. The people that do something.
Put me in the last category, put you in category 2. If you not part of the solution, then your part of the problem, so in truth, you go right back to category 1. Perhaps if you joined me in category 3 the world would be a better place
Considering the lack of speed and sometimes lack of ability when it comes to investigating cyber crimes, on line vigilante's may be the only option. This type of behavior does 2 things.
1. It provides some deterrant
2. It forces law enforcement to step up to the plate.
Example? There is an on line porn site that has pictures of a girl, about the ago of ten having hard core sex with an adult. I found out because a domain I admin with a catch all e-mail was recieving bounces from this sites spam. I reported it. Nothing happened for a few days so I traced the actual source of the pictures to a freeserver. The pictures were removed in minutes, I continued to follow the sites from free server to free server until it stopped working (I haven't checked in a while).
I made that persons life more difficult and hopefully caused him to leave more "trails". Each free server admin I talked to said that they would save any logs that they had. Now why couldn't the police do what I did for the 2 weeks or so?
If you had read the reviews, you would have found them to be positive. In fact all the reviews I have read are good, but point out that this movie is far from objective. That isn't to say it's a bad movie, continue the reviewers.
Please put on your tin foil hat and return to your regularly scheduled dogma. Better yet, please try to follow the points made in the post, instead of the points imagined.
I've read several reviews, and they all contain 2 points that give me pause. The first is that this film is a "documentary" and the second is that it's very, very biased with only one point of view provided. Take the recent CNN, or NYT reviews for example.
According to webster a documenary is "factual and objective". How can this film be considered a "documentary" when even the most favorable reviewer(CNN in our example) comments that it's not even close to fair or balanced?
Considering Michaels last error and bias filled "documentary" aren't Michael Moores movies more "commentary" or propoganda? Why do people insist in calling obviously biased (ie not objective) and factually inaccurate movies "documentaries"? With so much questionable content - can these films even be called good movies? Remember the first amendment protects false speech just as much as it protects truthful speech.
Whats even sadder is that many people will simply ignore the facts if they don't agree with their opinion. With that fact in play, perhaps an objective documentary is dead. After all - a clear and objective presentation would require a great deal of thought on a complicated issue with no easy answers.
Instead of honest debate we get comments like "The arabs aren't ready for democracy". At one time, blacks weren't ready to sit at the front of the bus, women weren't ready to vote and latino's weren't ready for white schools. The pundits that made the aforementioned comments were wrong and bigotted. Some things never change.
Or perhaps they saw the follow up(unlike you), or followed the links(?), or they thought there was a good point being made? You have any counter points? You have a clue as to what point was being made? You think everyone is infallible, or that a too quick to post makes one stupid? Why do you cruise at +3 when all your posts are usually +1?
With all these questions I cruised your posts...
Was just curious as to why you chose to insult. Really - you entertained me - slashdot cheaper than a movie and nearly as funny.
60 minutes is drivel - and any one that thinks otherwise is either 1. dishonest 2. or only has 2 brain cells to rub together. Until they clean up their act - I for one will not watch them. This is of course a free country - if you feel otherwise, feel free to enjoy their programming.
there is no mention as to whether the news report was accurate or inaccurate.
Highly inaccurate - they implied that the Audi's had a simultaneous failure of the braking system while accelerating out of control. Neither was the case. Thousands, perhaps millions of dollars spent on study after study found the fault to be the driver, not the car. Additionally 60 minutes rigged a car by drilling through the transmission housing and connecting a high pressure line to "demonstrate" what "could" happen. This was never divulged to the audience. Neither was the fact that the pressures exerted by this technique simply can't happen without external intervention.
Audi sales went from stellar to almost nothing after the 60 minutes report. The drop off was close to 70% drop in sales. "The show had an enormous impact in the marketplace. Sales of all Audi models in the U.S., which had peaked at 74,061 in 1985, plunged sharply after the 60 Minutes broadcasts (see chart, page 55). "It was a nightmare for the company," says Thomas McDonald, former head of public relations at Audi's parent, Volkswagen of America, Inc. "We lost billions of dollars in sales and revenues." Audi's average annual sales of 14,000 cars from 1991 to 1995 were just 19 percent of its pre-60 Minutes peak."
Inconclusive evidence and exaggeration.
Neither exist sir -
1. My evidence is backed up by at least 3 seperate NHTSA reports. 2. My evidence is backed up by the engineers at Audi. 3. My evidence comes from sales numbers that Audi reported. Please feel free to look these up. You can verify this either with Audi USA import records, or Audi of Germany's sales figures for the US market. (Oh yeah, even Ed Bradley says that Audi's sales plummet of almost "2/3" was 60 minutes fault.)
POINT: I am not a "news magazine" I'm a poster on slashdot. Yet my ethical base doesn't give me the latitude that the ethics model that 60 minutes uses. Notice in my original post, where in my haste I made a mistake. I posted a correction pretty quickly (In fact before anyone else caught my error). 60 minutes doesn't even have the decency to admit any error.
But they have done and continue to do good journalism alongside their puff pieces
Baloney - ask Audi how good their "journalism" is. Do some research. CBS/60 minutes never even apologized for their fraud.
If that show had aired in Germany, you could have sued CBS for presenting obviously fradualent and misleading evidence. The first amendament doesn't say you have to speak the truth. 60 minutes has been taking advantage of that fact for 20 plus years.
For every 1 "good" piece, I woudl see 2 heavily slanted and obvioulsy biased pieces of bovine feces. Those odds lead me to give up paying attention to the miserable excuse for "hard journalism" a long time ago. In college I used to do research before almost every 60 minutes episode for a class in world history. We would get a small description of the segments before they aired.
After that semester I never watched the program again. I was that dissapointed in them. Previously I had thought that such hard biases and bad reporting were aberations. After watching for a full semster and doing my own research - I came to the conclusion that it was the rule.
One can't help but feel sorry for the legit news folks over at CBS' "60 Minutes" and other excellent news programs....
You are kidding right? The news program that almost drove Audi out of business with it's false inaccurate reporting?[ http://www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/1115/6412145a_pr int.html] The same news program that lines up it's guests to co-incide with their book releases (See Bill Clinton)? The same network (CBS) that uses pyrotechnics (20/20) to "demonstrate" what happens when a full sized pickup was hit - because it wouldn't catch on fire otherwise? [http://www.car-forums.com/s10/t2240.html]
I thought the author was a bright guy, up until that comment. 60 minutes may have at one time been a respectable news magazine. That has not been the case for almost 2 decades IMHO. If 60 minutes knocks on your door and they have decided your "guilty", you have a better chance at getting your side of the story heard on cross balls.
This is a joke right? It's April first? - no thats not it. May day? - nope Then why on God's green earth (Pun's intended) would this article be considered even mildly slashdot worthy?
One of the biggest problems with voting machines is cost per use. Voting machines are relatively" expensive and are used at most twice a year, and often only once every 2-4 years. If they aren't being used, they are simple taking up room in storage (which costs money).
Cost Advantages: NOW as distros like knoppix have proven, putting a full featured desktop on a CD is possible. That being said - putting your "voting machine" on a CD, and using standard PC hardware makes a lot of sense. You don't have to buy a bunch of larg proprietary machines that only get used ones in a while. The CD's can be verified. If one is careful it would even be easy to use hardware already in place - or obsoleted hardware. Such a system would also use a simple standard printer to print an encrypted voter verification (audit) record in case a recount is requested. This should eliminate the long standing problem with most other electronic voting systems (no real audit trail).
Development is spread out over a large not for profit group of programmers with the end result being free. The only real cost is the certification procedure each state decides to institute - and thus it is the state that becomes accountable. If a states procedures are not robust enough to catch dangerous bugs then it's their own fault. I would think that several states go in together and split the certification costs. Since the buy in price is almost nothing (essentially media) the states have more money to play with and spend on voter training AND certification.
Considering Diebold and others - this seems like a natural, easy and simple solution.
Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country - Come up with a simple, secure, reliable voting system on a CD that will boot from standard PC hardware.
SIDE NOTE: If my county uses electronic voting machines that do not have a paper trail - then I will vote by absentee ballot. I would STRONGLY urge any US voter to do the same.
Expect to see legislation with some assinine label like "The VoIP pro competition rules". This will be of course a couple of millions lines of regulatory text that will be sold to the public as "deregulation".
What will this legislation accomplish? It will help the baby bells and large phone companies hold on to their market shares and stifle competition.
Jaded? Me ? Naaaaa, just experienceed with more than a decade of being told "We are for de-regulation" while signing bills that give the big guys even more. The FCC unep ruling recently is a perfect example of such double talk.
Portable CD players can be picked up for 13-19 dollars in some stores. Burn a CD for each one that contains a single track. You can get video game style buttons on ebay or around the internet (http://www.moneymachines.com/cabinetparts.html). These heavy duty switches are pretty simple to use, and wiring them into the portable CD's shouldn't be a challenge (works on my old radio shack player). 2 buttons, play, and stop/station.
I'd invest in a large sheath that will cover and protect the headphone cables and invest in heavy duty headphones. Probably total cost would be about
10 x 15.00 150 for the CD players 20 x.40 8 to buy and burn 20 CD's (spares just in case) 10 x 20.00 200 for good sturdy headphones that can stand the abuse 20 x 6.00 120 for heavy duty switches to wire into said CD players
75 miscellaneous parts, wires, drill bits wood etc for you stations.
Total cost 553 or their abouts. Remember, don't skimp on bad switches that can't take a pounding. Also get your museum's tax ID for your purchases so most places you don't have to pay sales tax for a non-profit.
Problems - most CD players the play is also a "pause" button. My old CD player here isn't - so if you can find them with play and pause as seperate buttons, your golden. Also soldering the switches on the landing pads requires some patience - but if I can do it - any one can.
Lets see - the large RBOC's and ILEC's have convinced the FCC that UNEP should be killed. God forbid that everyone has access to the infrastructure that your tax dollar helped build. Considering that many of the RBOC's are loosing money on DSL - it makes a lot of sense to not have competition in the area.
These same people have been working very hard and were able to convince some PSC that rate hikes were in order. [This besides the fact that they had highly profitable quarters even during the economic down turn] Thus stuffing the war chests of the big guys, helping them roll out their "loss leaders" in an effort to crush any competition.
Now they are agitating for VoIP with no taxes. Why? Simple. They've finally agreed to come to the party. Many companies have been doing VoIP for some time, and the idea that VoIP would be taxed has been held out, but now that the RBOC's and ILECS all have made major VoIP announcements suddenly we're considering legislation! IMAGNINE THAT!
At VON this year everyone was screaming that the government should take a "hand off approach". This included a rep from the FCC, AT&T legal, california and florida PSD reps. No one wants to "kill the goose that lays the golden egg". From my POV that is ideal. Let us compete and we will crush the inefficient, lazy, technically inept RBOC and ILECS. The problem is that I don't see this hands off approach staying that way. The FCC and california PSC guy hinted that some sort fo universal access fee may be in order. The other thing that was strongly hinted at is that the state's are going to loose a larege source of recouring revenue that they can't afford to loose. so a state tax may be considered.
In the end, I see VoIP taxes heading the same way as our current PSC and FCC. Favor the big guy (ie campaign contributers), and lets not have too much competition. It wasn't more than 2 years ago when somone said that VoIP will take 2 decades to become mainstream. Sprint, AT&T, Bell South and Verizon will all be switching voice at their cores within 7.
This bill is a step in the right direction. Lets see if the congress can keep the playing field even. If they do - the RBOC's and ILECs are in trouble unless they make some fundemental changes to their corporate cultures. I bet they will protect their little fiefdoms - look for modified legislation in the next 12-18 months to give them a leg up. (As if their monopoly's weren't enough)
Some things that probably meet the such a broad definition of spyware -
Windows XP Windows Media Player Internet Explorer
All of these programs transmit personal information without your consent (sometimes this depends on your patch level and the virus du jour as well). That being said, as soon as you turned the computer on, or opened the shrink wrap you accepted the EULA. Thus you explicitly accept that your personal information will be transmitted. The same types of wording are in the EULA's often accompany spyware that people install. In the end - it's probably a mute point. Personally I think it would be more important to look at EULA as a whole and how they are used to take away the rights of consumers, as well a shield companies that knowingly sell out defective software.
**note location of tongue** Of all the odd places to find anti-spam technology, was this killer solution in WalMart. Yep, it turns out they have a remarkable tool that convinces spammers to stop spamming! I was AMAZED. This tool usually only has to be applied once, and the affect lasts for years. It doesn't require updating or re-installation. I was also suprised to find these very same tools in other places, like sears, and even in a "sneaker" store. What is this tool you ask? An aluminem baseball bat. It seems sadly though that there is a law protecting spammers. I believe useing this AWESOME anti spam technology falls under something called assault There is hope that exceptions for spammers could be provided for in a constitutional amendment! **note location of cheek**
The more you dig into SCO, the more bovine feces you find. Some of these feces have a the distinct "redmond feces" smell, while other feces seem to have a vague odor of "corruption" and "bad legal advice". It's hard to tell the last 2 apart.
The fact is that Microsoft had dominated the software market because the identified who/what was the industry standard and they under cut their price, and/or provided the product free OR bought out the competitor and silently buried the product. With Linux - it becomes very hard to utilize this successful strategy. This article seems to point to the developing theory that MS has taken the low road. When you can't compete, sue (in thise case finance the suer, keeping pretty hands "clean").
In the end - this deserves more investigation. I'm still not convinced that this isn't just the most ellaborate pump and dump scheme yet devised.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems that this is an obvious no brainer. Things that we will still have to worry about.
1. His Honerable Socialist Chairperson Muckety Muck in LA country insists on using his laptop. The network traffic produced by the viral infected thing screws VoIP up for the county.
2. Expect to see the regional bell SBC sue the state, and insist that it should be paid for a percentage of VoIP traffic that travels over the network
3. Expect legislation and/or rules designed to take the software that you and I pay for through taxes, and give it to some company/cousin of the grand high supervisor elect assistants manager of garbage collection.
Have you ever been in a state that has so many damn managers and so few people actually working? If California was a company it would be ripe for a "re-structuring". Most sucessful restructures cut out middle management and promote a lean work force (ie we kept the people that actually did something). At the end of the day, what will make or break California is it's citizens. The more services that they demand from their state, without wanting to pay for them, or help in any way the worse off they will be.
cluge
AngryPeopleRule
Spam is theft of other peoples resources - plain and simple. Theft is a crime, and I find it amazing that I should have to pay for and maintain a system for other peoples unwated advertisements.
There is no "hypocracy" here. I simply want to be allowed to defend the resources that I bought and paid for. The "hypocracy" that I see is the fact that theft of services and resources is crime if your a bricks and mortor company, but not for mail servers.
cluge
AngryPeopleRule
Slow news day?
Lets look at some quick facts.
1. The can spam law gave you and I (collectively the little people) exactly zero ability to extract anything from a spammer (like money) for damages.
2. The can spam law requires law enforcement to track down spammers. Honestly - does anyone think Johnny Law is going to be going through those mail headers looking for the true source of spam? Lets be honest, the first chinese IP and they quit.
3. This law does not place real world consequences for those breaking "cyber law". (It's supposed to, but the proof is in the pudding!)
4. It does not allow you to complain about spam as a denial of service attack (which it most certainly is!)
Until we start putting spammers in jail, or start forcing them to pay, and pay and pay and pay, you will continue to get spammed. Until then, lets be honest, the community is doing a better job of removing spam than the government is. Thanks NJABL, SORBS, Spam Haus et al.
cluge
I hate to say this, but their are several reasons this won't work. Unless of course YOU write your congress person. [to be honest most people are too lazy]
/.ers start writing.
The EFF idea makes too much sense, and therfore violates about 10 rules of making law
10 rules of making law
a. Any law congress shall enact must be hard to understand and convoluted
b. Any oppurtunity to get your face on TV to tackle a serious problem of your campaign contributer must be taken
c. Do not pass any law that may in any way reduce any lawyers potential to earn money
d. Keep starving artists that way
e. The EFF is just like the ACLU - it's just a collection of letters that your constituants don't know about - but probably won't like
f. If I don't understant it, I must fear it and pass legislation against it
g. This letter contains the phrase " P2P technologies", get RIAA approval on how to think about this
h. This letter contains the phrase "profound threat to innovation", get Microsoft approval after talking to the RIAA
i. Anything that congress can meddle in the better
j. If it's simple, makes sense, and doesn't require congressional involvement it must be wrong.
Also remember that this is an election year. The eff proposal removes a potential income source from lawyers, the single strongest lobby in Congress. This will go nowhere until people take the time to write their congresspersons. May I humbly suggest that my fellow
cluge
AngryPeopleRule
So if you have a radio plugged into your music on hold PBX port and the radio station already pays to play music, wouldn't that be "double dipping"? Isn't that illegal in Canada?
Whats funny is that the article states ""The distinction is that the music is not their property," he said. "And if it's being used in a public fashion or any kind of commercial fashion, then [musicians] deserve to be compensated for its use."
Considering the horrible track-record the recording industry has for paying musicians what is owed them, does anyone think that the musicians will see a dime if such monies are collected. What isn't mentioned is that this may make it illegal for DJ's to play at weddings and bar mitzvahs without paying some sort of fee. How many times do you have to pay for music before you can really enjoy it?
cluge
AngryPeopleRule
How long until all these users switch to new hardware?"
Considering the number of Amiga fan sites, and people that still use Amigas - not any time soon.
cluge
AnygryPeopleRule
1) What do you do when some person tracks you down and shoots you becasue you were causing problems? If it had been a launder of money for an orginized crime outfit, they may very well have killed you.
They had better be a better shot than I. I live in a state where it is legal to defend myself.
2) It makes it harder for law enforcement to do their job.
I call BOVINE FECES
There is no reason law enforment needed to keep you informed of what they where doing.
I just asked them to do something, I don't want a blow by blow, or a window into their investigation. Hell HOW ABOUT A REPORT NUMBER? Oh - it's a domain hosted in Russia? with false information? sorry - try again. Thats why I did something.
It could be irresposible to do so, especially if they had to keep track of telling you the information. Once that caught someone, the lawyer would have demanded a look of how the case was handled, and if you name comes up, well then look at #1
The truth is that law enforcement rarely does anything in cases like this (or so it seems). Logs are usually dead ends, proxy servers in Turkey through proxy servers in Costa Rica. I've been told that they give up pretty quick, especially if the primary domain is hosted in Russia or China.
3) Who is to determin what justice is? If I found out it was my missing daughter, and that law enforcement was working on it, and you caused the site orinizer to flee befor that could be arrested, I would show you what vigilante justice means...for days.
If it was your daughter you would be damn glad that I got those pictures taken down, and that I forced the culprit to leave many, many, more trails. If the police had REALLY wanted to keep a site up to try and track someone, they would have contacted the free server admins. Once contacted, then my request would be ignored.
How do I know this? At my job at 3 different ISP's I've worked with both the FDLE (Florida Department of Law enforcement), the RCMP in Canada, and the FBI. They send you a subpoena for logs, or send you a court order for a tap, you send them the information. You are asked to make no changes to the account, and to even keep an account open that is past due. Lets be totally honest, my efforts would have never interfered with legitimate police work. What my efforts did was get the horrible pictures of a little girl taken down. I reported the site to law enforcement, and I reported the site to the missing and abused children online site.
I guess at the end of the day there are 3 types of people.
1. The people that throw garbage into our world
2. The people that drive by the garbage and bitch about it being there. "TSK TSK", they say, "Someone should do something".
3. The people that do something.
Put me in the last category, put you in category 2. If you not part of the solution, then your part of the problem, so in truth, you go right back to category 1. Perhaps if you joined me in category 3 the world would be a better place
cluge
AngryPeopleRule
Considering the lack of speed and sometimes lack of ability when it comes to investigating cyber crimes, on line vigilante's may be the only option. This type of behavior does 2 things.
1. It provides some deterrant
2. It forces law enforcement to step up to the plate.
Example? There is an on line porn site that has pictures of a girl, about the ago of ten having hard core sex with an adult. I found out because a domain I admin with a catch all e-mail was recieving bounces from this sites spam. I reported it. Nothing happened for a few days so I traced the actual source of the pictures to a freeserver. The pictures were removed in minutes, I continued to follow the sites from free server to free server until it stopped working (I haven't checked in a while).
I made that persons life more difficult and hopefully caused him to leave more "trails". Each free server admin I talked to said that they would save any logs that they had. Now why couldn't the police do what I did for the 2 weeks or so?
cluge
AngryPeopleRule
If you had read the reviews, you would have found them to be positive. In fact all the reviews I have read are good, but point out that this movie is far from objective. That isn't to say it's a bad movie, continue the reviewers.
Please put on your tin foil hat and return to your regularly scheduled dogma. Better yet, please try to follow the points made in the post, instead of the points imagined.
cluge
AngryPeopleRule
I've read several reviews, and they all contain 2 points that give me pause. The first is that this film is a "documentary" and the second is that it's very, very biased with only one point of view provided. Take the recent CNN, or NYT reviews for example.
According to webster a documenary is "factual and objective". How can this film be considered a "documentary" when even the most favorable reviewer(CNN in our example) comments that it's not even close to fair or balanced?
Considering Michaels last error and bias filled "documentary" aren't Michael Moores movies more "commentary" or propoganda? Why do people insist in calling obviously biased (ie not objective) and factually inaccurate movies "documentaries"? With so much questionable content - can these films even be called good movies? Remember the first amendment protects false speech just as much as it protects truthful speech.
http://www.mooreexposed.com/
http://www.bowlingfortruth.com/
Whats even sadder is that many people will simply ignore the facts if they don't agree with their opinion. With that fact in play, perhaps an objective documentary is dead. After all - a clear and objective presentation would require a great deal of thought on a complicated issue with no easy answers.
Instead of honest debate we get comments like "The arabs aren't ready for democracy". At one time, blacks weren't ready to sit at the front of the bus, women weren't ready to vote and latino's weren't ready for white schools. The pundits that made the aforementioned comments were wrong and bigotted. Some things never change.
cluge
AngryPeopleRule
Or perhaps they saw the follow up(unlike you), or followed the links(?), or they thought there was a good point being made? You have any counter points? You have a clue as to what point was being made? You think everyone is infallible, or that a too quick to post makes one stupid? Why do you cruise at +3 when all your posts are usually +1?
/.
With all these questions I cruised your posts...
Was just curious as to why you chose to insult. Really - you entertained me - slashdot cheaper than a movie and nearly as funny.
60 minutes is drivel - and any one that thinks otherwise is either 1. dishonest 2. or only has 2 brain cells to rub together. Until they clean up their act - I for one will not watch them. This is of course a free country - if you feel otherwise, feel free to enjoy their programming.
take care and have fun on
cluge
Look up - notice I posted a correction, yesterday, long before the wanna bes and cowards posted. So who's stupid?
there is no mention as to whether the news report was accurate or inaccurate.
Highly inaccurate - they implied that the Audi's had a simultaneous failure of the braking system while accelerating out of control. Neither was the case. Thousands, perhaps millions of dollars spent on study after study found the fault to be the driver, not the car. Additionally 60 minutes rigged a car by drilling through the transmission housing and connecting a high pressure line to "demonstrate" what "could" happen. This was never divulged to the audience. Neither was the fact that the pressures exerted by this technique simply can't happen without external intervention.
Audi sales went from stellar to almost nothing after the 60 minutes report. The drop off was close to 70% drop in sales. "The show had an enormous impact in the marketplace. Sales of all Audi models in the U.S., which had peaked at 74,061 in 1985, plunged sharply after the 60 Minutes broadcasts (see chart, page 55). "It was a nightmare for the company," says Thomas McDonald, former head of public relations at Audi's parent, Volkswagen of America, Inc. "We lost billions of dollars in sales and revenues." Audi's average annual sales of 14,000 cars from 1991 to 1995 were just 19 percent of its pre-60 Minutes peak."
Inconclusive evidence and exaggeration.
Neither exist sir -
1. My evidence is backed up by at least 3 seperate NHTSA reports.
2. My evidence is backed up by the engineers at Audi.
3. My evidence comes from sales numbers that Audi reported. Please feel free to look these up. You can verify this either with Audi USA import records, or Audi of Germany's sales figures for the US market. (Oh yeah, even Ed Bradley says that Audi's sales plummet of almost "2/3" was 60 minutes fault.)
POINT: I am not a "news magazine" I'm a poster on slashdot. Yet my ethical base doesn't give me the latitude that the ethics model that 60 minutes uses. Notice in my original post, where in my haste I made a mistake. I posted a correction pretty quickly (In fact before anyone else caught my error). 60 minutes doesn't even have the decency to admit any error.
cluge
AngryPeopleRule
But they have done and continue to do good journalism alongside their puff pieces
Baloney - ask Audi how good their "journalism" is. Do some research. CBS/60 minutes never even apologized for their fraud.
If that show had aired in Germany, you could have sued CBS for presenting obviously fradualent and misleading evidence. The first amendament doesn't say you have to speak the truth. 60 minutes has been taking advantage of that fact for 20 plus years.
For every 1 "good" piece, I woudl see 2 heavily slanted and obvioulsy biased pieces of bovine feces. Those odds lead me to give up paying attention to the miserable excuse for "hard journalism" a long time ago. In college I used to do research before almost every 60 minutes episode for a class in world history. We would get a small description of the segments before they aired.
After that semester I never watched the program again. I was that dissapointed in them. Previously I had thought that such hard biases and bad reporting were aberations. After watching for a full semster and doing my own research - I came to the conclusion that it was the rule.
cluge
AngryPeopleRule
Sorry the GM truck pyrotechnics was NBC NOT CBS. CBS/ 60 minutes was the Nissan debacle. I had the right link - but got description was wrong.
cluge
AngryPeopleRule
One can't help but feel sorry for the legit news folks over at CBS' "60 Minutes" and other excellent news programs....
r int.html] The same news program that lines up it's guests to co-incide with their book releases (See Bill Clinton)? The same network (CBS) that uses pyrotechnics (20/20) to "demonstrate" what happens when a full sized pickup was hit - because it wouldn't catch on fire otherwise? [http://www.car-forums.com/s10/t2240.html]
You are kidding right? The news program that almost drove Audi out of business with it's false inaccurate reporting?[ http://www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/1115/6412145a_p
I thought the author was a bright guy, up until that comment. 60 minutes may have at one time been a respectable news magazine. That has not been the case for almost 2 decades IMHO. If 60 minutes knocks on your door and they have decided your "guilty", you have a better chance at getting your side of the story heard on cross balls.
In the end - isn't that whats the most sad?
cluge
AngryPeopleRule
This is a joke right? It's April first? - no thats not it. May day? - nope Then why on God's green earth (Pun's intended) would this article be considered even mildly slashdot worthy?
Oh - 3 day weekend, beer + article submission = crap
Got it - knew it was something.
One of the biggest problems with voting machines is cost per use. Voting machines are relatively" expensive and are used at most twice a year, and often only once every 2-4 years. If they aren't being used, they are simple taking up room in storage (which costs money).
Cost Advantages:
NOW as distros like knoppix have proven, putting a full featured desktop on a CD is possible. That being said - putting your "voting machine" on a CD, and using standard PC hardware makes a lot of sense. You don't have to buy a bunch of larg proprietary machines that only get used ones in a while. The CD's can be verified. If one is careful it would even be easy to use hardware already in place - or obsoleted hardware. Such a system would also use a simple standard printer to print an encrypted voter verification (audit) record in case a recount is requested. This should eliminate the long standing problem with most other electronic voting systems (no real audit trail).
Development is spread out over a large not for profit group of programmers with the end result being free. The only real cost is the certification procedure each state decides to institute - and thus it is the state that becomes accountable. If a states procedures are not robust enough to catch dangerous bugs then it's their own fault. I would think that several states go in together and split the certification costs. Since the buy in price is almost nothing (essentially media) the states have more money to play with and spend on voter training AND certification.
Considering Diebold and others - this seems like a natural, easy and simple solution.
Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country - Come up with a simple, secure, reliable voting system on a CD that will boot from standard PC hardware.
SIDE NOTE: If my county uses electronic voting machines that do not have a paper trail - then I will vote by absentee ballot. I would STRONGLY urge any US voter to do the same.
cluge
AngryPeopleRule
Expect to see legislation with some assinine label like "The VoIP pro competition rules". This will be of course a couple of millions lines of regulatory text that will be sold to the public as "deregulation".
What will this legislation accomplish? It will help the baby bells and large phone companies hold on to their market shares and stifle competition.
Jaded? Me ? Naaaaa, just experienceed with more than a decade of being told "We are for de-regulation" while signing bills that give the big guys even more. The FCC unep ruling recently is a perfect example of such double talk.
cluge
Portable CD players can be picked up for 13-19 dollars in some stores. Burn a CD for each one that contains a single track. You can get video game style buttons on ebay or around the internet (http://www.moneymachines.com/cabinetparts.html). These heavy duty switches are pretty simple to use, and wiring them into the portable CD's shouldn't be a challenge (works on my old radio shack player). 2 buttons, play, and stop/station.
.40 8 to buy and burn 20 CD's (spares just in case)
I'd invest in a large sheath that will cover and protect the headphone cables and invest in heavy duty headphones. Probably total cost would be about
10 x 15.00 150 for the CD players
20 x
10 x 20.00 200 for good sturdy headphones that can stand the abuse
20 x 6.00 120 for heavy duty switches to wire into said CD players
75 miscellaneous parts, wires, drill bits wood etc for you stations.
Total cost 553 or their abouts. Remember, don't skimp on bad switches that can't take a pounding. Also get your museum's tax ID for your purchases so most places you don't have to pay sales tax for a non-profit.
Problems - most CD players the play is also a "pause" button. My old CD player here isn't - so if you can find them with play and pause as seperate buttons, your golden. Also soldering the switches on the landing pads requires some patience - but if I can do it - any one can.
cluge
Somwhere at an RIAA office:
"Hello, kettle it's the pot, line 2, he's says your black"
cluge
Lets see - the large RBOC's and ILEC's have convinced the FCC that UNEP should be killed. God forbid that everyone has access to the infrastructure that your tax dollar helped build. Considering that many of the RBOC's are loosing money on DSL - it makes a lot of sense to not have competition in the area.
These same people have been working very hard and were able to convince some PSC that rate hikes were in order. [This besides the fact that they had highly profitable quarters even during the economic down turn] Thus stuffing the war chests of the big guys, helping them roll out their "loss leaders" in an effort to crush any competition.
Now they are agitating for VoIP with no taxes. Why? Simple. They've finally agreed to come to the party. Many companies have been doing VoIP for some time, and the idea that VoIP would be taxed has been held out, but now that the RBOC's and ILECS all have made major VoIP announcements suddenly we're considering legislation! IMAGNINE THAT!
At VON this year everyone was screaming that the government should take a "hand off approach". This included a rep from the FCC, AT&T legal, california and florida PSD reps. No one wants to "kill the goose that lays the golden egg". From my POV that is ideal. Let us compete and we will crush the inefficient, lazy, technically inept RBOC and ILECS. The problem is that I don't see this hands off approach staying that way. The FCC and california PSC guy hinted that some sort fo universal access fee may be in order. The other thing that was strongly hinted at is that the state's are going to loose a larege source of recouring revenue that they can't afford to loose. so a state tax may be considered.
In the end, I see VoIP taxes heading the same way as our current PSC and FCC. Favor the big guy (ie campaign contributers), and lets not have too much competition. It wasn't more than 2 years ago when somone said that VoIP will take 2 decades to become mainstream. Sprint, AT&T, Bell South and Verizon will all be switching voice at their cores within 7.
This bill is a step in the right direction. Lets see if the congress can keep the playing field even. If they do - the RBOC's and ILECs are in trouble unless they make some fundemental changes to their corporate cultures. I bet they will protect their little fiefdoms - look for modified legislation in the next 12-18 months to give them a leg up. (As if their monopoly's weren't enough)
cluge
AngryPeopleRule
Some things that probably meet the such a broad definition of spyware -
Windows XP
Windows Media Player
Internet Explorer
All of these programs transmit personal information without your consent (sometimes this depends on your patch level and the virus du jour as well). That being said, as soon as you turned the computer on, or opened the shrink wrap you accepted the EULA. Thus you explicitly accept that your personal information will be transmitted. The same types of wording are in the EULA's often accompany spyware that people install. In the end - it's probably a mute point. Personally I think it would be more important to look at EULA as a whole and how they are used to take away the rights of consumers, as well a shield companies that knowingly sell out defective software.
cluge
AngryPeopleRule
**note location of tongue**
Of all the odd places to find anti-spam technology, was this killer solution in WalMart. Yep, it turns out they have a remarkable tool that convinces spammers to stop spamming! I was AMAZED. This tool usually only has to be applied once, and the affect lasts for years. It doesn't require updating or re-installation. I was also suprised to find these very same tools in other places, like sears, and even in a "sneaker" store. What is this tool you ask? An aluminem baseball bat. It seems sadly though that there is a law protecting spammers. I believe useing this AWESOME anti spam technology falls under something called assault There is hope that exceptions for spammers could be provided for in a constitutional amendment!
**note location of cheek**
AngryPeopleRule
The more you dig into SCO, the more bovine feces you find. Some of these feces have a the distinct "redmond feces" smell, while other feces seem to have a vague odor of "corruption" and "bad legal advice". It's hard to tell the last 2 apart.
The fact is that Microsoft had dominated the software market because the identified who/what was the industry standard and they under cut their price, and/or provided the product free OR bought out the competitor and silently buried the product. With Linux - it becomes very hard to utilize this successful strategy. This article seems to point to the developing theory that MS has taken the low road. When you can't compete, sue (in thise case finance the suer, keeping pretty hands "clean").
In the end - this deserves more investigation. I'm still not convinced that this isn't just the most ellaborate pump and dump scheme yet devised.
AngryPeopleRule