Don't you think your FBI would shut these sites down as soon as words gets out? There goes your "free speech"...
Free speech is not a blanket clause to let you say whatever you want.
The first amendment is still bound within the confines of the law. For example, it's illegal to threaten the lives of certain government officials. No first amendment argument is gonna help there.
The FBI might go after said site. They might go after sites with similar content, in hopes of getting to a network behind it. But I highly doubt they would go after Google for merely indexing it. That's like suing the phone company for listing a criminal in the phone book.
Not fair to take a piece of my comment out and bend the meaning. Read the whole thing:
Thousands of people doing the same wrong thing doesn't make it necessarily right. It should make people re-examine the definition of wrong and right, but it doesn't make it right by default.
Note the second sentence. Very important. Thousands of people breaking the law/rule/social more means that said law/rule/social more should br re-evaluated. Thousands of people going against the grain is reason to look at why and how things are changing.
Wait, are they going after those who pirate software, or a thing that a certain subset of software pirates have in
common?
*Bing*
Welcome to today's legal system. The Napster case set precedent -- those who obviously facilitate copyright violations can be held accountable. It doesn't matter whether you think Napster was innocent or guilty, that was the ruling.
Based on that, if Blizzard feels that there are copyright violations a la bnetd, they MUST go after them, or risk losing the right to sue entirely.
IF A LOT OF KIDDIES DID NOT USE IT TO PLAY THEIR PIRATED VERSIONS OF BLIZZARD GAMES
Thank you.
I'm not particularly thrilled that Blizzard is attacking bnetd with the cadre of ninja attack lawyers, but what are their other options? They have found a 'single source' which happens to contain an enormous number users who pirated games. They have every right to go after those who did pirate software.
And, like Metallica did through Napster, they're going for the one thing that all said pirates have in common. Thousands of people doing the same wrong thing doesn't make it necessarily right. It should make people re-examine the definition of wrong and right, but it doesn't make it right by default.
I'm not so angry at Blizzard as I am the people who are encouraging them to do this. If Blizzard believed that 95% of all players on bnetd actually owned a legit copy, do you think they'd be going after them? Doubtful -- it would destroy their customer base. The people they are going after aren't their customers to begin with...
And Guinness would be tricky for this poor little glass. I hope it's configurable...how dorky-cool would that be -- to know what kind of beer you were drinking and how long it takes to properly pour it...
The article doesn't say anything. There's a little more information in this CNet story though. Turns out they nailed a Florida based company, alleging that the company offered incentives for 3rd parties to transmit spam.
It's neither. It's a story about how AOL came under fire for changing its marketing policies, and how Yahoo isn't guilty of the same practice because they 'notified' their users (after the article came out, of course)
Unfortunately, it's got nothing to do with the settlement...
I'd still be interested to see exactly what they'd come up with for real-time pitch correction though. I wanna see how it works.
The only way I can see to do it is to assume the singer is wrong. Always. (This totally removes the ability for any deviation from "right", but how else could they know) At any given time, you know the Hz of note they're supposed to be hitting, so you just mod the vocal input to said Hz and you're good to go.
But there's gotta be some fuzziness to the algorithm to find the how the vocal input lines up with the actual rythym (nobody's going to be exactly on time, especially when you'd probably have to be sampling for it at an absurdly quick rate) as well as some fuzziness in the Hz itself...it's possible to recognize a bend, technically, you could stick it in there as long as you wound up on the right note. I think I'm just more interested in how the hell they think they're gonna get it to work decently enough to use...
But I'd still take it anyday for the transposition...very useful for all those songs that just need to be a half step lower/higher to fit in my range!
It doesn't quite have the full effect as one might be lead to believe. Looks like they've got tempo adjustments, which is good for the speed demons; and key calibration (which is nice, letting all those altos sing Diana Ross now) but they're basically adjusting the music coming out, rather than the vocal input.
Thus, bad karaoke is still bad karaoke. Good for all of us with pitch, we'll still impress.:)
Adjusting the voice on the fly is going to be a different problem -- it would probably be easiest solved by hard coding the Hz at each given moment of a song (with some fuzzy boundaries) and then running the mic input through.
But what fun is that? How can we be impressed by the guys who can sing A-Ha's 'Take on Me' if everyone can do it?
This story seems to jump all over the place, but it seems to me that the book in question is about the changing economic rules -- and there's a specific point that isn't particularly true:
Since capital can move anywhere in seconds, any nation-state's ability
to exercise control over an economy has been radically undermined.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Just because Britain couldn't hold on to Hong Kong through finances doesn't mean it can't be done. The rules are different. But that doesn't mean that countries can't exercise control over one another. Standing armies don't work -- that's fine. Shut down the flow of money. Shut down trade. If said economy is freely traded, send their stock market down the toilet. Don't say it can't happen. To bring an obnoxious, overused post 9-11 reference (hey, he used it first!), look at the damage 4 planes did. It still happens, the rules just changed.
This topic is grossly overanalyzed -- perhaps instead of reflecting on how things just don't apply anymore, one would think about how things still do, and it what context...
Sony (rightly) believes that giving this case the time of day is in a way admitting possibility of fault.
Agreed. It is interesting to think of the possibility of subpoena though -- the fact that they maintain game data means that it could be subpoenaed. Which brings about the question of calling witnesses. I wonder if the Everquest population ever expected that they could be called before a court of law....
It's probably most likely that the case will get thrown out (I'm not sure the lawyers have grounds for the class action suit they mention any more than compulsive gamblers can sue casinos) but if it doesn't, it'll be interesting to see how far it goes...
Ya know, generally I'm all for standing up for the girlies (being one myself) Equal rights, equal salaries, equal whatever -- rah rah and all that.
But puh-leaze. It's April Fool's Day. It's funny (well, that might be pushing it -- worth a chuckle maybe? -- but it wasn't offensive) Furthermore, for someone who keeps pointing out that she doesn't care about all the "crass sex talk" you're certainly leading an attack.
There's many reasons why women don't go into IT (hours, lack of schedule flexibility, lack of interest, lack of natural light) To blame it all on the merits of Perl over Python as the sexiest language is shortsighted at best.
Besides, I like the geek guys the way they are. They are least likely to get offended when I belch.
where the party is trying to claim to be both available (by e-mail) and NOT available
(physically)
Agreed, and that's the weird thing -- since the whois shows that Harrah's owns the site, which is a perfectly accessible land based casino.
You can bet that they aren't web hosting...they've probably just created a shell company to try and gain more the of the market share from Rio.
I guess I'm just surprised that they haven't tried to go through Harrah's...one would think there would have to be some linkage to a 'physical' company.
The interesting thing is that it's a choice to purchase things with credit/debit cards. Granted, I'll generally have a paper trail with my bills, but if I'm in the supermarket or the drugstore buying stuff I don't want the world to know I have - I skip the little saver card thing and I pay cash.
The reason this is a little sketchy (and maybe different) is that I _don't_ know where scanned license information is going.
I know exactly what happens to my information when I buy something on a credit/debit card with a little saver thing(it gets sold to anyone who might give a rats ass) and I can judge accordingly.
But the article pointed out itself -- that the information for that particular system was stored locally. It's a little scarier (maybe it's just a girl thing) to think that the sketchy bartender now has access to stuff without my noticing. All he's gotta do now is remember my name, instead of name, address, and everything else on my license.
If you don't want to reveal personal info, don't go into that club! I am sure that there are plenty
of gin mills in Gotham that won't mind if you're anonymous.
Sure, that works now -- but as the penalties for getting caught with an underage drinker increase, more and more bars are going to turn to systems which are more failsafe than just the human eye...like this one. It's important to point out where this system fails _now_ before everyone else adopts it...and your choice becomes go out and get scanned, or stay in.
'Cause I'd be really pissed if my local bar started doing this...the Rack's worth skipping, but I'm not about to sacrifice the rest of the city.
I think the apple didn't necessarily fall far from the tree...
An older article from the Washington Post (back when he fired his first lawyer) doesn't show his dad in the most intelligent of lights either.
I think it's more of a case of hid dad having a blind belief that Heckenkamp didn't do it, and everything that comes out of the mouth relates to that...
Honestly, I think my click-thru rate on Slashdot is absurdly high. (The fact that it exists at all says something)
I _like_ the ads. (except for that new black IBM one that hangs my browser -- stupid irix.) I like being reminded that Thinkgeek is there, and I should go check out their new stuff. The ads work because they are well targeted. I'll check out stuff I haven't heard of simply _because_ it's an ad on Slashdot.
While (like others have also said) I think the new larger ads look horribly out of place, I think I'd rather reserve the flames and "I hate Slashdot" rants until things have settled a bit. It's one thing to point out that things look like they don't have a home. It's another to totally roast the editors for it.
While in theory it's a good idea -- you've also got one of the major flaws in your sig:
If you don't like it, ignore it. All negative mods are meta-moderated 'unfair'. ALL OF THEM.
If the majority of people M2 this way, people aiming for the 'karma discount' aren't going to moderate negatively, even if they feel as such, because their karma will ultimately be hurt by M2.
Furthermore, anyone feeling like knocking down someone with something positive to say could do so by M2ing the positives unfair.
While both of these are a little extreme, I think it makes the point that the system generally works ok now BECAUSE karma has no real value. People moderate and meta moderate to either contribute to the group, or be an obnoxious pain in the ass, but overall - no real love is lost. Putting a price tag on the damage done just opens up a can of worms...
I don't want to be able to punish software companies that make insecure software. It's a blanket statement that makes no sense -- there are plenty of things that are insecure by design. There are lots of things that really don't NEED tight security.
What I do want is to KNOW when a supposedly secure product has a security leak. Moreover, I want to know the ramifications of the issue, the patch progress, and current known virii/worms/other explotations roaming around.
I really don't want to sue company X for making insecure software -- but I don't like the idea of them holding back on vulnerability announcements one they've been exploited.
The major difference here is that USD was around long before USI registered their mark, but how that fact will
play out is a very interesting question. I know of cases where that's happened, just cant think of any right now.
Luckily, his lawyers can come up with plenty...the Motion to Dismiss probably has 25 or so that line up in their favor in one way or another. Reading the sources...generally good.
Furthermore, this isn't a case of a personal website vs. corporation website -- this is corp. vs. corp. Both companies are using the name for business, made slightly more confusing by the fact that they are in the same general market of computers.
It's not necessarily cake to USI -- they have to show the proof of infringement, intent to damage, and a laundry list of claims that they make. USI probably isn't helped by the fact that they are only selectively enforcing the unicom name (since multiple companies use it, and they're only going after one), and that they attempted to purchase the domain multiple times (and being told no) before they tried to sue.
Furthermore - what about all the states that DON'T let you opt out of having your SSN on your license. Imagine having your credit rating linked to your driving record linked to the number of bars you visit linked to your medical records....
Right now the SSN is the key to a whole lot of information - one of the few things keeping the world from being 1984-like is the fact that the databases aren't readily accessible. The more the SSN becomes a commonplace number, the more someone can track/grab your identity.
While this case doesn't get into the issues of whether or not CT is a disability (leaving it as a case by case basis probably to avoid setting a precedent) - this isn't quite the right case for CT arguers to champion. Her employer did actually make some attempts to keep her employed at the company by shifting her work. (I believe the last case that got significant media attention also had the same situation) If employers make reasonable attempts to keep the person employed, the employee loses significant ground for lawsuits.
Nah, we've already spent a fortune on *almost* useful projects.
Next, we'll spend billions of dollars implanting GPS locators into any comet/asteroid that could possibly come near the earth. For extra credit, we'll even give the asteroids a fighting chance by installing a decoy balloon to try and trick us.
Then, we'll just use our trusty missle defense system. No problems...
Slashdot Mirror
Free speech is not a blanket clause to let you say whatever you want.
The first amendment is still bound within the confines of the law. For example, it's illegal to threaten the lives of certain government officials. No first amendment argument is gonna help there.
The FBI might go after said site. They might go after sites with similar content, in hopes of getting to a network behind it. But I highly doubt they would go after Google for merely indexing it. That's like suing the phone company for listing a criminal in the phone book.
Thousands of people doing the same wrong thing doesn't make it necessarily right. It should make people re-examine the definition of wrong and right, but it doesn't make it right by default.
Note the second sentence. Very important. Thousands of people breaking the law/rule/social more means that said law/rule/social more should br re-evaluated. Thousands of people going against the grain is reason to look at why and how things are changing.
It doesn't make it right by default.
*Bing*
Welcome to today's legal system. The Napster case set precedent -- those who obviously facilitate copyright violations can be held accountable. It doesn't matter whether you think Napster was innocent or guilty, that was the ruling.
Based on that, if Blizzard feels that there are copyright violations a la bnetd, they MUST go after them, or risk losing the right to sue entirely.
Thank you.
I'm not particularly thrilled that Blizzard is attacking bnetd with the cadre of ninja attack lawyers, but what are their other options? They have found a 'single source' which happens to contain an enormous number users who pirated games. They have every right to go after those who did pirate software.
And, like Metallica did through Napster, they're going for the one thing that all said pirates have in common. Thousands of people doing the same wrong thing doesn't make it necessarily right. It should make people re-examine the definition of wrong and right, but it doesn't make it right by default.
I'm not so angry at Blizzard as I am the people who are encouraging them to do this. If Blizzard believed that 95% of all players on bnetd actually owned a legit copy, do you think they'd be going after them? Doubtful -- it would destroy their customer base. The people they are going after aren't their customers to begin with...
"Sorry, this bulletin board is temporarily unavailable, while we perform some routine maintenance. Please try back again later."
That didn't take very long...
The article doesn't say anything. There's a little more information in this CNet story though. Turns out they nailed a Florida based company, alleging that the company offered incentives for 3rd parties to transmit spam.
Unfortunately, it's got nothing to do with the settlement...
The only way I can see to do it is to assume the singer is wrong. Always. (This totally removes the ability for any deviation from "right", but how else could they know) At any given time, you know the Hz of note they're supposed to be hitting, so you just mod the vocal input to said Hz and you're good to go.
But there's gotta be some fuzziness to the algorithm to find the how the vocal input lines up with the actual rythym (nobody's going to be exactly on time, especially when you'd probably have to be sampling for it at an absurdly quick rate) as well as some fuzziness in the Hz itself...it's possible to recognize a bend, technically, you could stick it in there as long as you wound up on the right note. I think I'm just more interested in how the hell they think they're gonna get it to work decently enough to use...
But I'd still take it anyday for the transposition...very useful for all those songs that just need to be a half step lower/higher to fit in my range!
Thus, bad karaoke is still bad karaoke. Good for all of us with pitch, we'll still impress. :)
Adjusting the voice on the fly is going to be a different problem -- it would probably be easiest solved by hard coding the Hz at each given moment of a song (with some fuzzy boundaries) and then running the mic input through.
But what fun is that? How can we be impressed by the guys who can sing A-Ha's 'Take on Me' if everyone can do it?
Since capital can move anywhere in seconds, any nation-state's ability to exercise control over an economy has been radically undermined.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Just because Britain couldn't hold on to Hong Kong through finances doesn't mean it can't be done. The rules are different. But that doesn't mean that countries can't exercise control over one another. Standing armies don't work -- that's fine. Shut down the flow of money. Shut down trade. If said economy is freely traded, send their stock market down the toilet. Don't say it can't happen. To bring an obnoxious, overused post 9-11 reference (hey, he used it first!), look at the damage 4 planes did. It still happens, the rules just changed.
This topic is grossly overanalyzed -- perhaps instead of reflecting on how things just don't apply anymore, one would think about how things still do, and it what context...
Agreed. It is interesting to think of the possibility of subpoena though -- the fact that they maintain game data means that it could be subpoenaed. Which brings about the question of calling witnesses. I wonder if the Everquest population ever expected that they could be called before a court of law....
It's probably most likely that the case will get thrown out (I'm not sure the lawyers have grounds for the class action suit they mention any more than compulsive gamblers can sue casinos) but if it doesn't, it'll be interesting to see how far it goes...
Well, it's not as funny, but check out the fierce pandaren race
But puh-leaze. It's April Fool's Day. It's funny (well, that might be pushing it -- worth a chuckle maybe? -- but it wasn't offensive) Furthermore, for someone who keeps pointing out that she doesn't care about all the "crass sex talk" you're certainly leading an attack.
There's many reasons why women don't go into IT (hours, lack of schedule flexibility, lack of interest, lack of natural light) To blame it all on the merits of Perl over Python as the sexiest language is shortsighted at best.
Besides, I like the geek guys the way they are. They are least likely to get offended when I belch.
Agreed, and that's the weird thing -- since the whois shows that Harrah's owns the site, which is a perfectly accessible land based casino.
You can bet that they aren't web hosting...they've probably just created a shell company to try and gain more the of the market share from Rio.
I guess I'm just surprised that they haven't tried to go through Harrah's...one would think there would have to be some linkage to a 'physical' company.
The reason this is a little sketchy (and maybe different) is that I _don't_ know where scanned license information is going.
I know exactly what happens to my information when I buy something on a credit/debit card with a little saver thing(it gets sold to anyone who might give a rats ass) and I can judge accordingly.
But the article pointed out itself -- that the information for that particular system was stored locally. It's a little scarier (maybe it's just a girl thing) to think that the sketchy bartender now has access to stuff without my noticing. All he's gotta do now is remember my name, instead of name, address, and everything else on my license.
Sure, that works now -- but as the penalties for getting caught with an underage drinker increase, more and more bars are going to turn to systems which are more failsafe than just the human eye...like this one. It's important to point out where this system fails _now_ before everyone else adopts it...and your choice becomes go out and get scanned, or stay in.
'Cause I'd be really pissed if my local bar started doing this...the Rack's worth skipping, but I'm not about to sacrifice the rest of the city.
An older article from the Washington Post (back when he fired his first lawyer) doesn't show his dad in the most intelligent of lights either.
I think it's more of a case of hid dad having a blind belief that Heckenkamp didn't do it, and everything that comes out of the mouth relates to that...
Heh..
:)
I thought I was the only one that did that.
Honestly, I think my click-thru rate on Slashdot is absurdly high. (The fact that it exists at all says something)
I _like_ the ads. (except for that new black IBM one that hangs my browser -- stupid irix.) I like being reminded that Thinkgeek is there, and I should go check out their new stuff. The ads work because they are well targeted. I'll check out stuff I haven't heard of simply _because_ it's an ad on Slashdot.
While (like others have also said) I think the new larger ads look horribly out of place, I think I'd rather reserve the flames and "I hate Slashdot" rants until things have settled a bit. It's one thing to point out that things look like they don't have a home. It's another to totally roast the editors for it.
While in theory it's a good idea -- you've also got one of the major flaws in your sig:
If you don't like it, ignore it. All negative mods are meta-moderated 'unfair'. ALL OF THEM.
If the majority of people M2 this way, people aiming for the 'karma discount' aren't going to moderate negatively, even if they feel as such, because their karma will ultimately be hurt by M2.
Furthermore, anyone feeling like knocking down someone with something positive to say could do so by M2ing the positives unfair.
While both of these are a little extreme, I think it makes the point that the system generally works ok now BECAUSE karma has no real value. People moderate and meta moderate to either contribute to the group, or be an obnoxious pain in the ass, but overall - no real love is lost. Putting a price tag on the damage done just opens up a can of worms...
What I do want is to KNOW when a supposedly secure product has a security leak. Moreover, I want to know the ramifications of the issue, the patch progress, and current known virii/worms/other explotations roaming around.
I really don't want to sue company X for making insecure software -- but I don't like the idea of them holding back on vulnerability announcements one they've been exploited.
Luckily, his lawyers can come up with plenty...the Motion to Dismiss probably has 25 or so that line up in their favor in one way or another. Reading the sources...generally good.
Furthermore, this isn't a case of a personal website vs. corporation website -- this is corp. vs. corp. Both companies are using the name for business, made slightly more confusing by the fact that they are in the same general market of computers.
It's not necessarily cake to USI -- they have to show the proof of infringement, intent to damage, and a laundry list of claims that they make. USI probably isn't helped by the fact that they are only selectively enforcing the unicom name (since multiple companies use it, and they're only going after one), and that they attempted to purchase the domain multiple times (and being told no) before they tried to sue.
Furthermore - what about all the states that DON'T let you opt out of having your SSN on your license. Imagine having your credit rating linked to your driving record linked to the number of bars you visit linked to your medical records....
Right now the SSN is the key to a whole lot of information - one of the few things keeping the world from being 1984-like is the fact that the databases aren't readily accessible. The more the SSN becomes a commonplace number, the more someone can track/grab your identity.
Not to be paranoid or anything...
While this case doesn't get into the issues of whether or not CT is a disability (leaving it as a case by case basis probably to avoid setting a precedent) - this isn't quite the right case for CT arguers to champion. Her employer did actually make some attempts to keep her employed at the company by shifting her work. (I believe the last case that got significant media attention also had the same situation) If employers make reasonable attempts to keep the person employed, the employee loses significant ground for lawsuits.
Nah, we've already spent a fortune on *almost* useful projects.
Next, we'll spend billions of dollars implanting GPS locators into any comet/asteroid that could possibly come near the earth. For extra credit, we'll even give the asteroids a fighting chance by installing a decoy balloon to try and trick us.
Then, we'll just use our trusty missle defense system. No problems...