Why do we need federal funding of this? It seems like transferring taxpayer funds to the bottom line of hugebiotechcorp.com
And this is news to you why? OK, sarcasm aside, you know that the US pours money every single year into different kinds of research. And private foundations and individuals pour another few million into "aids research" or "cancer research" or other focused causes. Then government and publicly funded hospitals use their resources to help with drug trials. Have you ever wondered why you never hear a pharm company say "we've decided to release this drug from our patent early because of the huge government and public investment we made it with."?
The patent likely won't effect which biotech company makes a mint off other peoples pain and says "but we paid all this research and development (with your tax dollors)". Stem cells exist, the patent is likely on a particular extraction or culturing method (sorry, don't have time to look for sure before work). But the fact that all this money would eventually lead to propriatory drugs and techniques being sold back to us as the fruits of our wonderful free market was a given from the start.
And if/. is still around then we can listen to the libertarians tell us how any goverment interference in drug proffiteering would lead to no more investment and research like what gave us this wonderful stem cell work. Ugh.
And apparently they are only for men. I guess women do not have a "high-tech mobile lifestyle."
however, we are perfectly capable of walking over to the men's section and picking out pants anyway - when I worked in an office setting I had only one "women's" suit because the men's suits I could find looked better and had more pocket space. Women with real hips I guess have more problems than I do, though.
I just conferred with a female friend of mine who's into wearables and she says that purses w/computers are impractical and that other spaces on females tends to be not roomy enough if you don't want to run around DDD.
Well, this female says that the right size purse/shoulder bag is fine. I mean, my teeny wallet/purse will only hold my swiss army knife, palm and tiny cell phone, but it doesn't hold my camera, bottle of excederin, first aid supplies, spare dog cookies, checkbook, book that I'm reading right now, hand lotion, charecter sheet and spell list, waterless hand sanitizer, palm folding heyboard, flashlight, interview tape recorder, small sewing kit, luna bars, bottle of water, pack of tissues or CDs I'm going to listen to at work. So unless I'm just going out for a specific time and goals, I carry my larger purse, big black bag or backpack.
If you've got a bunch of stuff you need to carry, get a satchel, fanny pack, shoulder bag, backpack, sporanz or whatever you can wear without feeling that your masculinity is threatened. Or that vest could be cool when it isn't super hot out and you don't have to wear business wear.
These lists always drive me crazy. Why, oh why, do people have this need to not just pick out the good stuff, not even try for the best stuff, but try to rank everything in a strict, linear order and claim they have determined the "absolute best" as if it is now some sort of objective reality? WHY?
Enjoyment of video games is a completely subjective expereince. Different people put together different lists. You can either have a list from the perspective of one type of gamer that everyone else will disagree with, or you can poll a lot of different people and come up with a list EVERYONE will disagree with. Whats the point?
Why not just get some friends together and say "these are the games we liked in alphebetical order and why we liked them"? Its a subjective list, why drape it in a poor imitation of objectivity through numerical ranking?
I haven't sent it yet; I'm certainly open to suggestions, but I suggest anyone else bothered by this do something similar. The article claims they will block sites they are asked to. Maybe if enough people ask they will get the picture....
A good action to take, but to some extent its just falling in and accepting their terms. You should not have to "opt out" of a situation where words are being put into your mouth withour them even telling you. I know that arround here sueing is something only "bad people" do, but if there is a web site that has the money, I hope they take these guys to hell and back through the court system. "You can ask us real nice to stop misrepresenting your page to readers after you find out about it on your own" simply does not cut it.
To put this in brick and morter terms, what if a company like (the now defunct) homeruns delivered newspapers to some people with their groceries and started putting "special suplements" in all the papers. And when the papers started asking why they were inserting content and making people think it was part of the Globe or the Herald or whatever, the company said "well, there's a request for us to do this buried in the fiftieth page of our service contract that they didn't opt out of, and it doesn't really SAY the its a globe aproved suplement, and if they were really familiar they would notice it was on a kind of paper you never use, but you know, if you don't like it you could have called us and given us a list of every issue you didn't want this to happen in...." You know, I think they'd get their asses sued.
At the very least, aside from them screwing with intellectual property, one could argue that their advertising is being done using the website's client base and reputation and thus they owe a portion of advertising revenue to the people they've been sticking it on. I could come up with a complicated analogy for that too if it isn't obvious.
My question is did they try and charge Nader too much money for a listing ?
Um, I know you're just trying to be funny like, but thats the dumbest comment made on this thread so far. Nader isn't just last year's spoiler, he's been a consumer advocate likely since you were in your flamable kiddie PJs. His group is looking at whether consumers are being lied to cause that's what he does. Of course this being/. being concerned with the rights of consumers is beyond comprehension, (ok, for most/.ers being concerned with anyone besides yourself is beyond comprehension, but I'm looking at the topic at hand) but you don't need to make dumb comments trying to drag him down to your level. You may not agree, you may not comprehend, but he's not doing this for himself, his ego, petty jealousy, petty revenge or any of the other reasons you might try to ascribe to him. He's doing it because he's made it his job to try to help consumers and this is the new consumer area that's trying the same old shit and claiming the rules don't apply to them.
One person at a time license agreement? Do you know how annoying it is to go to a library (or video rental store even) and find the book you have been waiting for months to read is still on loan to somebody else?
And what do the video rental places or libraries do in this case? Do they photocopy or dub the whole thing cause they bought it once and they can? Well, no, they don't. They get another copy to keep up with demand. And if the demand radically drops after the initial popularity has passed, they sell an excess copy or two. Or they institute a reserve system or a speed read/new release standard for new popular titles. They certainly don't just give it away to whoever wants it to keep forever.
/. lied in their description of the situation, just like they did on the first "publisher's vs libraries" thread. Rule of thumb if you want to be informed about these issues -/. will tell you that there is something going on. Then they will exagrerate, spin or straight out lie about what the real details are. Always follow the links and read carefully before trusting a word written here.
Thank you, btw for your excellent demonstration of the Slashdot Entitlement Attitude. I may keep this post on file to demonstrate it to others.
They may well have shown an adjuster some of the 200 acres that were distroyed, but I doubt that the adjuster (who probably had to confirm a bunch of damages in the area) took the time to confirm that 1000 acres had been planted in the first place.
well, not just took the time, how exactly would he? I mean, even 200 acres is over the horizon, and depending on what kind of damage it was (fire for instance) destroyed planted crops might not look that different from destroyed stubble from a previous years planted crops. Maybe if he found proof that the guy hadn't bought enough fuel to have run his tractors over the whole acreage... but its hard to come up with evidence of absence after the thing that was supposed to be there was already destroyed. Except of course by using the very method that they did use. What makes the orriginal poster think that it wasn't the adjusters who flagged those cases for more investigation in the first place?
This raises a more general question about the use of data mining for law enforcement. With increased collection of data about where we go and what we do (credit card records, electronic toll paying devices, face recognition software, satellite images, etc.) Can (and should) the government search datasets that it owns (or others) looking for suspicious patterns? Yes, they can use these data once they suspect you, but can they use it to find new suspects?
Well, I will (as usual) be called a fascist, but my opinion would be that if each individual peice of data is legal for them to have, there is no reason it would not be legal for them to cross check all that data. What they do with the patterns is another question.
I don't know enough about law enforcement or (for example) drug production and dealing to know to what extent a corelation of banking habits, energy consumption, travel and or video rentals could be considered "probable cause" to start a formal or informal investigation. Where does it become harrassment based on "profile"? Its a legitamate question, but no more debilitating of one than the profiling issues that have recently plauged highway patrolmen etc. It is in other words an issue to be dealt with, not one to make us ban the practice altogether. All IMFO of course.
Maybe you really were just asking out of intelectual interest, but the general climate on this newsgroup has been that people have some god given right to break the law and endanger other people. Just look at the other responses before you shoot your mouth off.
Those sensors are great for cars but suck for motorcycles. I have to run red lights quite a bit on the bike or wait for a car to pull up and set off the sensor. On busy cross streets I usually have to press the crosswalk button to change the light.
OK, if this whole driving at night/motorcycle thing is a real concern, and not just a smokescreen agaisnt the idea (which is what the orriginal message really looked like), its not a big deal.
1) if the sensors for the light change can't feel your motorcycle, why would the ones for the camera? I would think it would be easiest to use the same sensor.
2) even at night, no matter how deserted you assume it is, you must still stop at the light at least long enough to look both ways. To do otherwise is selfish, dangerous and stupid. This isn't "Night of the Comet" there are plenty of other people out there who like to go driving (and walking) late at night too. So if you hear about these starting in your area (and you will hear about it if you bother to keep up with your local politics) write, call or go to a hearing and recomend that all lights that are rigged with these cameras also be upgraded with late night triggers as well.
3) failing that, in some states I believe it is legal to treat a red light as a stop sign under some conditions - if you have come to a full stop and can see clearly in both directions and see no oncoming traffic, you can cross. Find out what the guidelines are on this in your community and argue that those sort of exceptions should be accounted for in the enforcement of camera tickets.
Anyway, these are pretty small exceptions to a IMHO really good idea. Where I live, cars are running lights in busy pedestrian intersections in the middle of the day. If I was lucky enough that one of these programs started where I live and people started bringing up these "sob stories" I'd either laugh at them, or suggest the above solutions, depending on how obnoxious they were being. And anyone bringing up the "big brother" schtick would get a response that would likely sprain my condesension gland.
To get these things through, they use emotional stories of people getting killed so that no one can argue against it without being branded as encouraging the deaths of others. (Try debating against lowering the legal blood-alcohol levels...facts and rational thought are useless against sobbing mothers in the public eye.)
yeah, those damn propagandists! Using the real world consequences of your childish selfish actions against you. Why, the actaul truth of what inevitably happens when people drive drunk is just so intellectually dishonest. Bizzare ramblings about slippery slopes and camera's in your bedroom and OH MY GOD IT'S 1984 ANY MINUTE NOW!!!!! are such a non emotional, rational way to hold a debate about actually enforcing public safety laws.
Do you have any idea how rediculous you sound to someone who isn't a fellow paranoid libertopiest? Honestly, you're probably a politically savy libertarian's worst nightmare. "emotional stories of people getting killed" and violation activated traffic camera's are gonna lead to big brother in our homes? And you wonder why you aren't taken seriously...
Imagine that I own the cola.com domain (currently owned but not in use, btw), and I name two of my hosts in cola.com Pepsi and Coca. This would give me two hosts, one called pepsi.cola.com, and the other called coca.cola.com. Could this be taken as cybersquating/typosquating, even if cola.com and my two hosts were legitimately serving webpages for the "Canadian OnLine Alliance" (COLA)?
I think you are probably brighter than that. There is no reason to use those names except to make an semi inside joke, so why would someone running a legitamate site risk getting everyone who types "pepsi cola" into Google showing up on his site and getting confused. There is no reason for it to be "protected" except to give you one chance to shange the names and say "sorry".
Have we reached the point where silly jokes having nothing to do with your site, their site or anything else HAVE to be protected? I know satire is protected, but I have my doubts on throwaway puns.
Pathetic example: we all agree that killing other people is wrong most of the time, but that sometimes it may be okay or even desirable. But you can't simply spell out most of this stuff, so you have to have a way for human judgement to enter. I mean, at what point does self-defense become aggressive retribution. Even if you can define this exactly in English, you still need to have someone come into the case and look at the facts and decide which way this case looks according to the law.
Actually, I think its an excellent example. I have noticed in other threads a trend on/. to say that if any law is written so that at some point there will come a gray area where a judgment call will have to be made, the law is declared arbitrary and evil and obviously this bit of discretion will be used to take the enforcement to the most outlandish totalitarian reach of the slippery slope that the poster can come up with. Its good to remind people that every law we have will have an element of discretion in it.
Whenever I hear people use the argument "you say X is one thing and Y is another, but I can come up with some thouroughly improbably and bizzare case where its hard to say with precision whether its X or Y so there is actually no difference at all." I think of gender. Yes there are a very small number of true intersexuals (hermaphrodites) and a few transexuals and the odd deactivated Y genetic male/biological female out there. But only a very few politically motivated radicals will deny that the catogories of male and female are real and accurate for most of the population. Grey areas do not remove the significance of drawing distinctions, unless you are so afraid of ambiguity that you can't take knowing someday it may be a tossup.
For example, Operation Rescue (radical anti-abortion group) was prosecuted under RICO statutes -- a law created to control organized crime. Similarly, Blue Cross Health Insurance is being sued under RICO because they control how physicians deal out healthcare to their clients. Appropriate?
But Microsoft isn't, even though their OEM pricing (and telling OEMs what they can and can't sell with Microsoft software) dosn't sound too difficult from a health insurance organisation telling physicans how to do their job.
uh, only if you honestly think your life depends on your OS. Perspective, guys, perspective....
I agree with your sentiment entirely, as a should-case. I have no faith in it, however, as a would-case. How many dads put the Hustler under the bed and are angry or surprised to find out their kids are reading it? To filch another comic's line, the problem with this country is that half the poeple in it are dumber than average.
yes, the parents would be angry, but in this case, I believe that the responsibility would legitamately be on the parents, not the provider. In a case where, as mentioned earlier, the only provider level screening was a click through, I would ballance the responsibility differently.
A responsible parent can already make the decision of whether to have porn in the house and readily available to the children, even in the case of the Internet/computer. A responsible parent can learn firewalls, allow-list filtering, and a truly secure operating system -- or at least one that requires non-trivial attempts to crack, such that those attempts can be traced.
A responsible, tech savvy parent can take those steps. But parenting is a pretty big, learning intensive job already, and a person who is only user literate before they become a parent is not likely to become sys admin literate in order to let kids on the computer. They are more likely to turn to either the government or commercially avalible products, both of which we have seen have flaws. My question is, does the tech literate community want to oppose those alternatives while offering nothing to the parents but learning intensive solutions, or should they also work to develope better solutions while they're at it. Every "product" be it filterware or governement regulation, has a consumer. I am completely sympathetic to the consumer base for these "products". If we think that a consumer need is being taken advantage of to foist off a inferior or even dangerous product (this would certainly not be the first time - think about the more fringe "alternative" healing products) then we have to decrease or meet the consumer need. Otherwise Smith's hidden hand will keep wacking off and whatever comes out will be the "free market solution".
I fully support the idea that adults who want to view these materials have a legitimate right. I pretty much agreed with the general thrust of your post. My only quibble, really, was technical.
I'm not as technical as the vast majority of this group so I apriciate that feedback. My only quibble with your quibble was to point out that I was aware of the non technical drawback that you pointed out and was willing to make that a considered choice on the part of the parent.
Are there actually 4 justices who don't realize that this is just a high-tech extension of searching your home?
No, there are 4 justices who don't AGREE that this is a high tech extension of searching you home. Those 4 justices consider it a high tech extension of the "plain view" doctrine. They disagree with the 5 majority justices and aparently with you. But the use of a term like "realize" over what is a well informed difference of legal opinion is just egotistical.
Yes, this is both a rant and a nitpick, but this is the kind of language that makes me crazy on this group. There will be times in life where people don't agree with you because there is some facet of the issue that you understand better than they do, but there will be far, far more times in your life where people who are just as well as or better informed than you will still disagree in the end judgement. If you get in the habit of dissmissing these people intelectually because they don't agree with you, you will never change anyone's mind. (this, IMHO and to be a teensy bit flamish, is one of the reasons that libertarians have never gotten much of anywhere. I see this attitude with them more than from any other political group I've dealt with.)
Unfortunately the dissenting judges didn't appear to understand this distinction.
Actually, they didn't AGREE with the legal significance or correctness of that distinction or the exact place where you personally are drawing it. I know its perfectly natural human thinking to assume that our own opinions are the complete revealed truth and anyone who disagrees with us just doesn't understand, but this part of our nature is something we have to rise above in order to have mature political discussions. When talking about a sizable minority of the supreme court its even more foolish looking to treat them as ill-informed slowpokes who could be educated by the IANAL denzins of a technology discussion group.
However, the Supreme Court has in the past ruled that drug dogs are merely an extension of the officer's senses; thus, the use of a drug dog is not considered a search AT ALL - which IMO is a bunch of shit. That's just as ridiculous as saying that in the case this article refers to, the heat-sensing devices were merely an extension of the officers' own senses.
Dogs are not generally considered to be technology, so that likely has an effect on such rulings. Another issue that may come into play if someone tried to use this ruling against trained dogs is the level to which your privacy is invaded in the process of finding out about illegal activity. On this issue I'd say they are totally different. Dogs don't come into your home unless there is already a warent for your home. You don't encounter them unless you are already in a public place - which is probably why they are considered just a part of the officer. More importantly, a dog trained to sniff for drugs tells the officer he thinks he smells drugs. A dog trained to sniff for guns tell the officer he thinks he smells guns. He does not observe, record or report anything else about you, even if he has the senses to know that you also have been shagging your secretary, not using deodorent and have a twelve year old's soiled panties in your pocket. Other forms of warentless search/observation that are being rejected may have more of a capicity to invade your law abiding privacy in the course of finding illegal activity. Libertarians probably don't care if a form of warentless seach/observation is finely tuned to only detect an illegal activity without infringing at all on the rest of a person's privacy, but I suspect that it will matter to most folks.
If the use of dogs hasn't been rejected before this, I doubt this ruling would be the one to revisit the issue. They really aren't that similar.
Kahuna Burger (just posted this AC, but it killed my moderation anyway, so screw that.)
Computers today are not always "dad's computer" and "mom's computer" and "the kids' computer." If this cookie is on "the family computer" there's no point in using the scheme, because the kids will still have access.
Just for the record, if you read my entire post, I already said that:
Parents have to decide if they want to veiw porn and risk their kids seeing it or remove it from their house (just like the decision a parent can make about books or magazines.)
A responsible parent can already make the decision of whether to have porn in the house and potentially avalible to their children - except in the case of the internet/computer. People talk about "responisble parenting" as if any parent on the planet sits over a childs shoulder every minute to see if the books in the family room suddenly turned into Hustler, or the videos in the den suddenly and unexpectedly include Dilbert Does Denver. But when they try to assert the same ballance of control and independance on the computer that they give their children in every other learning/entertainment venue, suddenly they are bad, lazy parents.
Anyway, yeah, if dad wants to go to a porn site on the family computer, he may be risking little bobby seeing porn too - just like if dad brings home a penthouse and reads it in the den, he risks little bobby picking it up and reading it. But a suprising number of mature adult parents get by in life without looking at porn all the time, and I think dad can be counted on to make an adult decision - if you are willing to let it be a decision.
I thought most of those porn sites already had a "you must be 18" agreement. Damn kids, already messing with the DCMA....
Do they enforce it? Do they even try?
Convenience stores put up little signs that say "you must be 18 or older to buy cigarrettes". But if they just count on the sign to do the whole job and take everyone's word for it that they are complying, they still get in trouble. I would guess, under this law (which I actually went and read) that such a "click through" shield might form part of a legitamate good faith effort, but would not be sufficent, especially if the site had never made any effort to enforce the warning.
Random idea - state sets up a secure site where people enter their drivers license number or whatnot and get a "I can have porn" cookie put on their hard drive. State site is set up not to keep records of which license numbers it was looking up. Porn sites, which of course NEVER try to get accidental visitors or mislead anyone about their content, set it up so that anyone without the cookie who tries to enter their site gets dumped into the authorization site. Parents have to decide if they want to veiw porn and risk their kids seeing it or remove it from their house (just like the decision a parent can make about books or magazines.)
The Child Online Protection Act. As the name suggests, it is net censorship with a pro-child happy face plastered on the front of it.
So with that endorsement and knowing the general/. sense of perspective, I went and read the whole damn law (not that it was that long.) And it looked pretty good. There were specific exceptions carved out for the internet that seemd to aknowlege the lesser control site proprietors have over their traffic. For instance, while simple nudity is included in the original prohibitions, to get in trouble an internet server would have to provide obcinity (sp?) as defined (and presumedly legally upheld since its over 15 years old) in the MI laws. The overall law also does not penalize exposure to minors unless it was knowing, or if the proprietor showed reckless disregard in allowing minors access. Exceptions are made for health workers, schools AND LIBRARIANS.
As someone who is neither a puritan nor a libertarian, the law just looks like a reasonable attempt to bring internet providers into the same playing field as brick and mortar on this issue. If you oppose all those orriginal laws, just say so. But don't try to make this out as some evil and nefarious new thing.
I haven't read the book (obviously) but if its not particulary good then its only going to sour the memory of the other good books that he's done.
I wish someone had told him this _before_ he released Mostly Harmless:-)
*sigh* yeah. "So long..." was a good enough ending. Mostly Harmless, really just sucked.:-(
On the bright side it was after reading that that I discovered "Last Chance to See" a non fiction naturalist sort of book that is just lovely. So while I don't even know the actual publishing chronology, I think of "Last Chance..." as his last book and feel nice about it.
Life is too busy for parents to be around *constantly*... what might have been possible once is no longer with the rise of 2-parent income families. Not only that, but media is so pervasive now that it's now a monumental task to keep track over what kids are doing... parents can't hear the music kids listen to on their headphones, can't watch every game a kid plays when he cycles through 4 games in an hour or two, can't keep track of every show the kid watches over the course of a week. Even if the parents spend lots of time with the kids, they're not able to keep tabs on everything.
To expand ont his, parents never were around constantly. The difference is NOT that TV or the internet has "become a babysitter" anymore than books were babysitters in the past. The difference is that parents controlled which books came into their house. However, controlling which TV shows can make it into your house is more of a all or none affair and/.ers roundly condemn people who would use software to control what web sites come into their house. Also in the past, parents had more children and kids could be left to play with each other with the parent doing things around the house and keeping an ear out for crashes or screams. Now responsible parenting means not having kids you can't afford.
If and when I have kids, I will likely be something of a Luddite. NO television, because its rediculous to expect me to supervise all watching, and I'm not going to let it become a forbidden fruit by saying I'm the only one adult enough to watch. Even radio is a lot tricker than it is for our parents.
Bottom line is, people give modern parents such a hard time for not wanting to have to monitor their children 24/7, but they didn't do it in "the good old days" either. Technology and public standards made it easy on them. Now we make it much harder and insult parents who want half the top level control that the previous generations had as a matter of course.
Slashdot Mirror
And this is news to you why? OK, sarcasm aside, you know that the US pours money every single year into different kinds of research. And private foundations and individuals pour another few million into "aids research" or "cancer research" or other focused causes. Then government and publicly funded hospitals use their resources to help with drug trials. Have you ever wondered why you never hear a pharm company say "we've decided to release this drug from our patent early because of the huge government and public investment we made it with."?
The patent likely won't effect which biotech company makes a mint off other peoples pain and says "but we paid all this research and development (with your tax dollors)". Stem cells exist, the patent is likely on a particular extraction or culturing method (sorry, don't have time to look for sure before work). But the fact that all this money would eventually lead to propriatory drugs and techniques being sold back to us as the fruits of our wonderful free market was a given from the start.
And if
Kahuna Burger
however, we are perfectly capable of walking over to the men's section and picking out pants anyway - when I worked in an office setting I had only one "women's" suit because the men's suits I could find looked better and had more pocket space. Women with real hips I guess have more problems than I do, though.
Kahuna Burger
Well, this female says that the right size purse/shoulder bag is fine. I mean, my teeny wallet/purse will only hold my swiss army knife, palm and tiny cell phone, but it doesn't hold my camera, bottle of excederin, first aid supplies, spare dog cookies, checkbook, book that I'm reading right now, hand lotion, charecter sheet and spell list, waterless hand sanitizer, palm folding heyboard, flashlight, interview tape recorder, small sewing kit, luna bars, bottle of water, pack of tissues or CDs I'm going to listen to at work. So unless I'm just going out for a specific time and goals, I carry my larger purse, big black bag or backpack.
If you've got a bunch of stuff you need to carry, get a satchel, fanny pack, shoulder bag, backpack, sporanz or whatever you can wear without feeling that your masculinity is threatened. Or that vest could be cool when it isn't super hot out and you don't have to wear business wear.
Kahuna Burger
Enjoyment of video games is a completely subjective expereince. Different people put together different lists. You can either have a list from the perspective of one type of gamer that everyone else will disagree with, or you can poll a lot of different people and come up with a list EVERYONE will disagree with. Whats the point?
Why not just get some friends together and say "these are the games we liked in alphebetical order and why we liked them"? Its a subjective list, why drape it in a poor imitation of objectivity through numerical ranking?
Kahuna Burger
A good action to take, but to some extent its just falling in and accepting their terms. You should not have to "opt out" of a situation where words are being put into your mouth withour them even telling you. I know that arround here sueing is something only "bad people" do, but if there is a web site that has the money, I hope they take these guys to hell and back through the court system. "You can ask us real nice to stop misrepresenting your page to readers after you find out about it on your own" simply does not cut it.
To put this in brick and morter terms, what if a company like (the now defunct) homeruns delivered newspapers to some people with their groceries and started putting "special suplements" in all the papers. And when the papers started asking why they were inserting content and making people think it was part of the Globe or the Herald or whatever, the company said "well, there's a request for us to do this buried in the fiftieth page of our service contract that they didn't opt out of, and it doesn't really SAY the its a globe aproved suplement, and if they were really familiar they would notice it was on a kind of paper you never use, but you know, if you don't like it you could have called us and given us a list of every issue you didn't want this to happen in...." You know, I think they'd get their asses sued.
At the very least, aside from them screwing with intellectual property, one could argue that their advertising is being done using the website's client base and reputation and thus they owe a portion of advertising revenue to the people they've been sticking it on. I could come up with a complicated analogy for that too if it isn't obvious.
Kahuna Burger
Um, I know you're just trying to be funny like, but thats the dumbest comment made on this thread so far. Nader isn't just last year's spoiler, he's been a consumer advocate likely since you were in your flamable kiddie PJs. His group is looking at whether consumers are being lied to cause that's what he does. Of course this being /. being concerned with the rights of consumers is beyond comprehension, (ok, for most /.ers being concerned with anyone besides yourself is beyond comprehension, but I'm looking at the topic at hand) but you don't need to make dumb comments trying to drag him down to your level. You may not agree, you may not comprehend, but he's not doing this for himself, his ego, petty jealousy, petty revenge or any of the other reasons you might try to ascribe to him. He's doing it because he's made it his job to try to help consumers and this is the new consumer area that's trying the same old shit and claiming the rules don't apply to them.
Kahuna Burger
And what do the video rental places or libraries do in this case? Do they photocopy or dub the whole thing cause they bought it once and they can? Well, no, they don't. They get another copy to keep up with demand. And if the demand radically drops after the initial popularity has passed, they sell an excess copy or two. Or they institute a reserve system or a speed read/new release standard for new popular titles. They certainly don't just give it away to whoever wants it to keep forever.
Thank you, btw for your excellent demonstration of the Slashdot Entitlement Attitude. I may keep this post on file to demonstrate it to others.
Kahuna Burger
Wouldn't it be more constructive to have a meeting about preventing fraud from driving up everyone elses premiums? just checking.
Kahuna Burger
well, not just took the time, how exactly would he? I mean, even 200 acres is over the horizon, and depending on what kind of damage it was (fire for instance) destroyed planted crops might not look that different from destroyed stubble from a previous years planted crops. Maybe if he found proof that the guy hadn't bought enough fuel to have run his tractors over the whole acreage... but its hard to come up with evidence of absence after the thing that was supposed to be there was already destroyed. Except of course by using the very method that they did use. What makes the orriginal poster think that it wasn't the adjusters who flagged those cases for more investigation in the first place?
Kahuna Burger
Well, I will (as usual) be called a fascist, but my opinion would be that if each individual peice of data is legal for them to have, there is no reason it would not be legal for them to cross check all that data. What they do with the patterns is another question.
I don't know enough about law enforcement or (for example) drug production and dealing to know to what extent a corelation of banking habits, energy consumption, travel and or video rentals could be considered "probable cause" to start a formal or informal investigation. Where does it become harrassment based on "profile"? Its a legitamate question, but no more debilitating of one than the profiling issues that have recently plauged highway patrolmen etc. It is in other words an issue to be dealt with, not one to make us ban the practice altogether. All IMFO of course.
Kahuna Burger
No, he wasn't, but you're coming pretty close.
Maybe you really were just asking out of intelectual interest, but the general climate on this newsgroup has been that people have some god given right to break the law and endanger other people. Just look at the other responses before you shoot your mouth off.
Kahuna Burger
OK, if this whole driving at night/motorcycle thing is a real concern, and not just a smokescreen agaisnt the idea (which is what the orriginal message really looked like), its not a big deal.
1) if the sensors for the light change can't feel your motorcycle, why would the ones for the camera? I would think it would be easiest to use the same sensor.
2) even at night, no matter how deserted you assume it is, you must still stop at the light at least long enough to look both ways. To do otherwise is selfish, dangerous and stupid. This isn't "Night of the Comet" there are plenty of other people out there who like to go driving (and walking) late at night too. So if you hear about these starting in your area (and you will hear about it if you bother to keep up with your local politics) write, call or go to a hearing and recomend that all lights that are rigged with these cameras also be upgraded with late night triggers as well.
3) failing that, in some states I believe it is legal to treat a red light as a stop sign under some conditions - if you have come to a full stop and can see clearly in both directions and see no oncoming traffic, you can cross. Find out what the guidelines are on this in your community and argue that those sort of exceptions should be accounted for in the enforcement of camera tickets.
Anyway, these are pretty small exceptions to a IMHO really good idea. Where I live, cars are running lights in busy pedestrian intersections in the middle of the day. If I was lucky enough that one of these programs started where I live and people started bringing up these "sob stories" I'd either laugh at them, or suggest the above solutions, depending on how obnoxious they were being. And anyone bringing up the "big brother" schtick would get a response that would likely sprain my condesension gland.
Kahuna Burger
yeah, those damn propagandists! Using the real world consequences of your childish selfish actions against you. Why, the actaul truth of what inevitably happens when people drive drunk is just so intellectually dishonest. Bizzare ramblings about slippery slopes and camera's in your bedroom and OH MY GOD IT'S 1984 ANY MINUTE NOW!!!!! are such a non emotional, rational way to hold a debate about actually enforcing public safety laws.
Do you have any idea how rediculous you sound to someone who isn't a fellow paranoid libertopiest? Honestly, you're probably a politically savy libertarian's worst nightmare. "emotional stories of people getting killed" and violation activated traffic camera's are gonna lead to big brother in our homes? And you wonder why you aren't taken seriously...
Kahuna Burger
I think you are probably brighter than that. There is no reason to use those names except to make an semi inside joke, so why would someone running a legitamate site risk getting everyone who types "pepsi cola" into Google showing up on his site and getting confused. There is no reason for it to be "protected" except to give you one chance to shange the names and say "sorry".
Have we reached the point where silly jokes having nothing to do with your site, their site or anything else HAVE to be protected? I know satire is protected, but I have my doubts on throwaway puns.
Kahuna Burger
Actually, I think its an excellent example. I have noticed in other threads a trend on /. to say that if any law is written so that at some point there will come a gray area where a judgment call will have to be made, the law is declared arbitrary and evil and obviously this bit of discretion will be used to take the enforcement to the most outlandish totalitarian reach of the slippery slope that the poster can come up with. Its good to remind people that every law we have will have an element of discretion in it.
Whenever I hear people use the argument "you say X is one thing and Y is another, but I can come up with some thouroughly improbably and bizzare case where its hard to say with precision whether its X or Y so there is actually no difference at all." I think of gender. Yes there are a very small number of true intersexuals (hermaphrodites) and a few transexuals and the odd deactivated Y genetic male/biological female out there. But only a very few politically motivated radicals will deny that the catogories of male and female are real and accurate for most of the population. Grey areas do not remove the significance of drawing distinctions, unless you are so afraid of ambiguity that you can't take knowing someday it may be a tossup.
Kahuna Burger
But Microsoft isn't, even though their OEM pricing (and telling OEMs what they can and can't sell with Microsoft software) dosn't sound too difficult from a health insurance organisation telling physicans how to do their job.
uh, only if you honestly think your life depends on your OS. Perspective, guys, perspective....
Kahuna Burger
yes, the parents would be angry, but in this case, I believe that the responsibility would legitamately be on the parents, not the provider. In a case where, as mentioned earlier, the only provider level screening was a click through, I would ballance the responsibility differently.
A responsible parent can already make the decision of whether to have porn in the house and readily available to the children, even in the case of the Internet/computer. A responsible parent can learn firewalls, allow-list filtering, and a truly secure operating system -- or at least one that requires non-trivial attempts to crack, such that those attempts can be traced.
A responsible, tech savvy parent can take those steps. But parenting is a pretty big, learning intensive job already, and a person who is only user literate before they become a parent is not likely to become sys admin literate in order to let kids on the computer. They are more likely to turn to either the government or commercially avalible products, both of which we have seen have flaws. My question is, does the tech literate community want to oppose those alternatives while offering nothing to the parents but learning intensive solutions, or should they also work to develope better solutions while they're at it. Every "product" be it filterware or governement regulation, has a consumer. I am completely sympathetic to the consumer base for these "products". If we think that a consumer need is being taken advantage of to foist off a inferior or even dangerous product (this would certainly not be the first time - think about the more fringe "alternative" healing products) then we have to decrease or meet the consumer need. Otherwise Smith's hidden hand will keep wacking off and whatever comes out will be the "free market solution".
I fully support the idea that adults who want to view these materials have a legitimate right. I pretty much agreed with the general thrust of your post. My only quibble, really, was technical.
I'm not as technical as the vast majority of this group so I apriciate that feedback. My only quibble with your quibble was to point out that I was aware of the non technical drawback that you pointed out and was willing to make that a considered choice on the part of the parent.
kahuna Burger
No, there are 4 justices who don't AGREE that this is a high tech extension of searching you home. Those 4 justices consider it a high tech extension of the "plain view" doctrine. They disagree with the 5 majority justices and aparently with you. But the use of a term like "realize" over what is a well informed difference of legal opinion is just egotistical.
Yes, this is both a rant and a nitpick, but this is the kind of language that makes me crazy on this group. There will be times in life where people don't agree with you because there is some facet of the issue that you understand better than they do, but there will be far, far more times in your life where people who are just as well as or better informed than you will still disagree in the end judgement. If you get in the habit of dissmissing these people intelectually because they don't agree with you, you will never change anyone's mind. (this, IMHO and to be a teensy bit flamish, is one of the reasons that libertarians have never gotten much of anywhere. I see this attitude with them more than from any other political group I've dealt with.)
Kahuna Burger
Actually, they didn't AGREE with the legal significance or correctness of that distinction or the exact place where you personally are drawing it. I know its perfectly natural human thinking to assume that our own opinions are the complete revealed truth and anyone who disagrees with us just doesn't understand , but this part of our nature is something we have to rise above in order to have mature political discussions. When talking about a sizable minority of the supreme court its even more foolish looking to treat them as ill-informed slowpokes who could be educated by the IANAL denzins of a technology discussion group.
Kahuna Burger
Dogs are not generally considered to be technology, so that likely has an effect on such rulings. Another issue that may come into play if someone tried to use this ruling against trained dogs is the level to which your privacy is invaded in the process of finding out about illegal activity. On this issue I'd say they are totally different. Dogs don't come into your home unless there is already a warent for your home. You don't encounter them unless you are already in a public place - which is probably why they are considered just a part of the officer. More importantly, a dog trained to sniff for drugs tells the officer he thinks he smells drugs. A dog trained to sniff for guns tell the officer he thinks he smells guns. He does not observe, record or report anything else about you, even if he has the senses to know that you also have been shagging your secretary, not using deodorent and have a twelve year old's soiled panties in your pocket. Other forms of warentless search/observation that are being rejected may have more of a capicity to invade your law abiding privacy in the course of finding illegal activity. Libertarians probably don't care if a form of warentless seach/observation is finely tuned to only detect an illegal activity without infringing at all on the rest of a person's privacy, but I suspect that it will matter to most folks.
If the use of dogs hasn't been rejected before this, I doubt this ruling would be the one to revisit the issue. They really aren't that similar.
Kahuna Burger (just posted this AC, but it killed my moderation anyway, so screw that.)
Just for the record, if you read my entire post, I already said that:
Parents have to decide if they want to veiw porn and risk their kids seeing it or remove it from their house (just like the decision a parent can make about books or magazines.)
A responsible parent can already make the decision of whether to have porn in the house and potentially avalible to their children - except in the case of the internet/computer. People talk about "responisble parenting" as if any parent on the planet sits over a childs shoulder every minute to see if the books in the family room suddenly turned into Hustler, or the videos in the den suddenly and unexpectedly include Dilbert Does Denver. But when they try to assert the same ballance of control and independance on the computer that they give their children in every other learning/entertainment venue, suddenly they are bad, lazy parents.
Anyway, yeah, if dad wants to go to a porn site on the family computer, he may be risking little bobby seeing porn too - just like if dad brings home a penthouse and reads it in the den, he risks little bobby picking it up and reading it. But a suprising number of mature adult parents get by in life without looking at porn all the time, and I think dad can be counted on to make an adult decision - if you are willing to let it be a decision.
Kahuna Burger
Do they enforce it? Do they even try?
Convenience stores put up little signs that say "you must be 18 or older to buy cigarrettes". But if they just count on the sign to do the whole job and take everyone's word for it that they are complying, they still get in trouble. I would guess, under this law (which I actually went and read) that such a "click through" shield might form part of a legitamate good faith effort, but would not be sufficent, especially if the site had never made any effort to enforce the warning.
Random idea - state sets up a secure site where people enter their drivers license number or whatnot and get a "I can have porn" cookie put on their hard drive. State site is set up not to keep records of which license numbers it was looking up. Porn sites, which of course NEVER try to get accidental visitors or mislead anyone about their content, set it up so that anyone without the cookie who tries to enter their site gets dumped into the authorization site. Parents have to decide if they want to veiw porn and risk their kids seeing it or remove it from their house (just like the decision a parent can make about books or magazines.)
Kahuna Burger
So with that endorsement and knowing the general /. sense of perspective, I went and read the whole damn law (not that it was that long.) And it looked pretty good. There were specific exceptions carved out for the internet that seemd to aknowlege the lesser control site proprietors have over their traffic. For instance, while simple nudity is included in the original prohibitions, to get in trouble an internet server would have to provide obcinity (sp?) as defined (and presumedly legally upheld since its over 15 years old) in the MI laws. The overall law also does not penalize exposure to minors unless it was knowing, or if the proprietor showed reckless disregard in allowing minors access. Exceptions are made for health workers, schools AND LIBRARIANS.
As someone who is neither a puritan nor a libertarian, the law just looks like a reasonable attempt to bring internet providers into the same playing field as brick and mortar on this issue. If you oppose all those orriginal laws, just say so. But don't try to make this out as some evil and nefarious new thing.
Kahuna Burger
I wish someone had told him this _before_ he released Mostly Harmless :-)
*sigh* yeah. "So long..." was a good enough ending. Mostly Harmless, really just sucked. :-(
On the bright side it was after reading that that I discovered "Last Chance to See" a non fiction naturalist sort of book that is just lovely. So while I don't even know the actual publishing chronology, I think of "Last Chance..." as his last book and feel nice about it.
Kahuna Burger
To expand ont his, parents never were around constantly. The difference is NOT that TV or the internet has "become a babysitter" anymore than books were babysitters in the past. The difference is that parents controlled which books came into their house. However, controlling which TV shows can make it into your house is more of a all or none affair and /.ers roundly condemn people who would use software to control what web sites come into their house. Also in the past, parents had more children and kids could be left to play with each other with the parent doing things around the house and keeping an ear out for crashes or screams. Now responsible parenting means not having kids you can't afford.
If and when I have kids, I will likely be something of a Luddite. NO television, because its rediculous to expect me to supervise all watching, and I'm not going to let it become a forbidden fruit by saying I'm the only one adult enough to watch. Even radio is a lot tricker than it is for our parents.
Bottom line is, people give modern parents such a hard time for not wanting to have to monitor their children 24/7, but they didn't do it in "the good old days" either. Technology and public standards made it easy on them. Now we make it much harder and insult parents who want half the top level control that the previous generations had as a matter of course.
Kahuna Burger