Is that even a real number? What does that mean, 3 trillion dollars? Which country would you buy?
Anyway, if anybody is going to sue, I suggest freezing all assets and bank accounts of any person or organisation even remotely linked to Sony. And do that yesterday. Otherwise they will be routing money out of the US faster than you can say DRM.
"--who will be the first to go to jail for running a p2p client?"
"I hope it will be US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's daughter. THAT would be real fun."
Since Lady Justice is supposed to blind (or at least sufficiently blindfolded) and since almost everybody uses P2P (think: e-mail), that SHOULD be likely.
Of course, that text she quoted from daddy's e-mail message is probably fair use, but fair use is a legal defense; arrest her first, and let the judge sort it out.
"Then what about film footage shot by remote controled helicoptors?"
As you say, there is an operator working there who has some control over the final images, presumably. So I would guess in such instances there would be a copyright.
Similarly, if the satellites were remote controled, if there were an operator who would be controlling things like lighting, perspective, sharpness, composition, et cetera, and whose purpose would not be to create an exact mapping of Earth as seen from space, a copyright would be generated.
I was working from the assumption that such is not the case with satellite imagery, but to be honest, I know far too little about satellite photography to make a sensible statement in this regard.
As with all space craft, having a human control it is a great boon for dealing with contingencies, but having a machine control it could greatly reduce cost under normal operation, so it is hard to guess for me which solution the satellite operators would choose. I can imagine completely automated satellites though.
"Also, launching a satellite then operating to take high-quality images is not something that can accidentally, or trivally, be done. It does require experience/choice/knowledge/skills at all stages to create a useful or meaningful product."
Undoubtedly, but creating a great artist does not lead to a copyright; only creating (great) art does.
This may be a "flaw" in copyright law, but if it is, I have not seen it lead to the creation of less works.
Whether I am right or wrong in all this, my initial reply was mostly an irritated response to the repeated assumption that if it is a work, and if it took great expense to create it, it must be copyrighted. That is simply not true. See Bridgeman v. Corel for examples.
The raw data of any satellite, if published, is in the public domain.
For anything to be copyrighted, it needs to be an original creation, which assumes a) a creator, who b) used his/her own experiences/choice/knowledge/skills in creating the work.
Both conditions fail with satellite imagery, as there is no creator (the pictures are taken by an autonomous, non-sentient machine), and the intention of the picture-taking is to create an accurate image rather than an interpretation.
If you somehow managed to intercept data sent down from a satellite, you should be able to do anything you want with it, at least according to (US) copyright law; you may be breaking other laws that I do not know about, though.
"Hmm... it seems like you're thinking more of engineering rather than science. Yes, science is concerned with making practical predictions, but I think it's also about knowledge for it's own sake. Like religion, science tries to build a model of the universe, but the difference is that science requires it's model to be rigorously and logically defined, and constrained to observable, measurable phenomena."
One of the great successes of science though must have been that bridges built according to the scientific world model did not collapse as often as bridges built according to the religious world model.
"Maybe, but those of us on the outside don't have the time to sort out which parts of your State are less fucked up than the others. Your degree has lost a lot of clout because of this; I know I'm certainly going to shuffle resumes listing Kansas to the bottom of the pile."
Same here. I really do not have the time to figure out which Kansas graduates are from the non-retard pile. It's not as if there is a lack of talent willing to work, and if it ever came to that, I'd probably train chimps before hiring anyone from Kansas.
"You know damned well that purposely compromising a computer using physical access is the context of this thread. Trying to spin things so that it appears that I said (or even implied!) that it was about people "peeking" at sensitive data is extremely dishonest."
Let me recap:
Somebody wrote that anyone can compromise a PC who has physical access to one.
Then you wrote that in a cubicle environment, threatening with loss of income would be a good defense barrier to such eventualities.
In that respect I agree with the person who replied to you that the sort of people who gain physical access to a PC to knowingly grab sensitive data off it, are not likely to be deterred by signs. They know what the consequences of their actions are.
What you are trying to do here is to create the suggestion that a cubicle environment can be defended against unauthorized access. That is simply not true.
Now, a locked room can also not be fully defended against unauthorized access, but it is a damn sight more effective against creating an accidental opportunity than putting a sign on a cubicle.
"Point out where I said that "threats are the sole motivator to get a certain thing done"."
You did not say that literally, as you very well know, but it is the only logical conclusion to what you wrote earlier:
"A good first defense barrier for an administrative PC in a cubicle environment is to flag those cubicles with a warning "With the exception of PHB's X, Y, and Z, anyone found in this cubicle when the employee who uses it is absent will be TERMINATED."
If your second defense barrier is as effective as your first, you don't need a first defense barrier. So the only way your statement could ever make sense, is if your first defense barrier catches things that consecutive barriers would not catch.
The only thing you suggest for these things is a threat.
"Point out where I said that I did my "darndest to put information that shouldn't be seen by everyone out in the open"."
Again, this logically follows from your "first defense barrier" statement. Assuming that there will always be people who do not pay much heed to Verboten-signs, you seem to think a certain amount of leakage is acceptable. You prefer to catch some leaks only by explicitely forbidding people to peek at sensitive data.
I would have taken your suggestion of putting up a no-tresspassing sign a lot more serious as a heuristic for stopping leaks if we had been discussing sysadmins working from their own, locked offices. But we are not; we are discussing sysadmins being forced to work in an inherently unsafe environment.
"I have heard this over and over again. "Macs don't have viruses because they don't have marketshare." I have seen people saying that for years, and it's starting to grow extremely stale. Macs are inherently more secure machines. They are not susceptible to viruses. Until proven otherwise, this remains a truism."
To prove otherwise would be a crime in most jurisdictions. Not that I would not love to.
"Violation of company policy would be handled by upper management. If the person couldn't come up with a damned good reason he entered a verboten area, then he will be fired by them. He's obviously up to no good."
Having been in a situation where I accidentally stumbled upon sensitive information, I definitely would not want to work in your company. Not only do you rely on threats as the sole motivator to get a certain thing done, but you also do your darndest best to put information that should not be seen by everybody out in the open. Doesn't sound like a healthy company, to be honest.
"You're not the right person to trust anecdotal evidence from, in this case. None of us here on Slashdot are. The average user doesn't have an arsenal of machines, he has one."
I know lots of "average" people who own more than one computer.
In some cases they own a laptop for on the road and a desktop for playing at home.
In some cases they are families that keep their old computers around for the kids (or most likely the other way around, as kids' requirements seem to be higher). Contrary to what you suggest in another post, this does not mean that the kids get to "own" the hand-me-down in any legal sense. It is still the parent who counts as having more than one computer.
In some cases, several computers are used for specific tasks (for instance, work/play, or scan/misc).
In some cases, they have a media PC in the living room and a hobby PC in the attic.
I also know several Mac users who bought a PC, because until recently they could not use their Macs for electronic banking. I hope you don't believe that means they "switched" to PC.
Sure, these are all anecdotes, but anecdotes may well serve as a starting point for quantitive analysis.
"A good first defense barrier for an administrative PC in a cubicle environment is to flag those cubicles with a warning "With the exception of PHB's X, Y, and Z, anyone found in this cubicle when the employee who uses it is absent will be TERMINATED.""
Ah yes, the sysadmin who just got shoved out of his own office and into a cubicle is very likely to have the power to fire anybody at will... not!
"Then I realized there are actually people who pay real money for a subscription and are thanked with a handful of bogus articles, so the failure to verify sources and articles is nice smack in the face."
There is a similarity between CmdrTaco's experience and yours. In both cases you have certain expectations of the product you purchased that somehow turned out to be untrue.
Whether or not you were right to have these expectations depends on what you were promised by the supplier, and what the conditions of the deal were.
Even then, it could be in the supplier's best interest to cater for expectations that are not founded on promise or agreement.
You posted 6 variations on this exact same comment so far. Three of them have been replied to, one has been modded up and none have been modded down.
What's your problem? Are you so insecure that you need to repeat yourself again and again? The biggest enemy of the argument you are trying to forward is you.
"Correct. The Internet is, fundamentally, an invention of the United States."
Nowadays when you post here, you must take into account that there is an editor called Zonk who barely has enough braincells to keep breathing. He continuously gets tiny things wrong, such as "is this at all interesting?" and "what is this story about?".
The story is not about control of the internet, it is about control of one small internet service, and a fairly insignificant one at that, called DNS. Invented by one Paul Mockapetris, who I assume was an American. I don't know how that should mean that the USA should control my DNS servers, but I guess some justification could be made up.
Anyway, I hope this all blows up in our governments' faces: I have always disliked the way the DNS was controlled, and I will be glad when we need to start thinking of alternatives, and much more diverse naming systems will emerge. Several ones that will not be governed my grey men in grey suits.
"What do you call people who study less in school, do the bare minimum to get by? could you call them, perhaps, less motivated?"
No, because motivation requires a stimulus; just stating that people study less in school is leaving the stimulus out of the equation. Undoubtedly, there is a reason why group A does things different from group B, and if you were a functional psychologist, you would talk in terms of reward and punishment, but that still doesn't prove anything. You still need to prove cause and effect.
So, what your study has proven is that there can be more than one type of stimulus, and that some stimuli are more effective than others. I could have told you that beforehand.
"I guess this means that since China can now afford to send (two) ships into space, it doesn't need any more Foreign Aid from the EU, Japan or the US."
I guess that much was already clear when China started sending money to the US.
Re:Do you not buy a magazine because it has too ma
on
Why Do You Block Ads?
·
· Score: 1
I used to work as an editor and a publisher before I switched to web development. In my former occupation it is considered bad business if the magazine is not paid for by the advertisments. Money generated through the sales of a magazine is considered "found money", something that adds to the profits. Probably the only reason magazines charge money at all in some cases is because consumers regard free and cheap with distrust.
If your House works a bit like my House, the committee tells the House what its recommendation is, the party specialists tell the other members whether or not they agree, and then everybody will vote for it.
You did not actually believe the members read all the laws they vote on, did you?
Re:Someone else should pay for my free.
on
Why Do You Block Ads?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"Oh lovely. The same argument people use to justify pirating content makes an appearance. "I would have never bought it, but I will download it to use". The web version "I would have never bought anything, but I will download the content to use"."
Oh lovely. Now you're comparing people who do not wish to see ads with criminals.
BTW, only the middlemen--you know, the real profiteers--are cynical enough to call creative works "content".
Nobody. Websites should just shrivel up and die. I did not ask for companies to join the web, and would shed no tears if they all left. Somebody please close the door behind them.
Slashdot Mirror
"$3 trillion dollars"
Is that even a real number? What does that mean, 3 trillion dollars? Which country would you buy?
Anyway, if anybody is going to sue, I suggest freezing all assets and bank accounts of any person or organisation even remotely linked to Sony. And do that yesterday. Otherwise they will be routing money out of the US faster than you can say DRM.
"--who will be the first to go to jail for running a p2p client?"
"I hope it will be US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's daughter. THAT would be real fun."
Since Lady Justice is supposed to blind (or at least sufficiently blindfolded) and since almost everybody uses P2P (think: e-mail), that SHOULD be likely.
Of course, that text she quoted from daddy's e-mail message is probably fair use, but fair use is a legal defense; arrest her first, and let the judge sort it out.
"Then what about film footage shot by remote controled helicoptors?"
As you say, there is an operator working there who has some control over the final images, presumably. So I would guess in such instances there would be a copyright.
Similarly, if the satellites were remote controled, if there were an operator who would be controlling things like lighting, perspective, sharpness, composition, et cetera, and whose purpose would not be to create an exact mapping of Earth as seen from space, a copyright would be generated.
I was working from the assumption that such is not the case with satellite imagery, but to be honest, I know far too little about satellite photography to make a sensible statement in this regard.
As with all space craft, having a human control it is a great boon for dealing with contingencies, but having a machine control it could greatly reduce cost under normal operation, so it is hard to guess for me which solution the satellite operators would choose. I can imagine completely automated satellites though.
"Also, launching a satellite then operating to take high-quality images is not something that can accidentally, or trivally, be done. It does require experience/choice/knowledge/skills at all stages to create a useful or meaningful product."
Undoubtedly, but creating a great artist does not lead to a copyright; only creating (great) art does.
This may be a "flaw" in copyright law, but if it is, I have not seen it lead to the creation of less works.
Whether I am right or wrong in all this, my initial reply was mostly an irritated response to the repeated assumption that if it is a work, and if it took great expense to create it, it must be copyrighted. That is simply not true. See Bridgeman v. Corel for examples.
The raw data of any satellite, if published, is in the public domain.
For anything to be copyrighted, it needs to be an original creation, which assumes a) a creator, who b) used his/her own experiences/choice/knowledge/skills in creating the work.
Both conditions fail with satellite imagery, as there is no creator (the pictures are taken by an autonomous, non-sentient machine), and the intention of the picture-taking is to create an accurate image rather than an interpretation.
If you somehow managed to intercept data sent down from a satellite, you should be able to do anything you want with it, at least according to (US) copyright law; you may be breaking other laws that I do not know about, though.
(IANAL; this is not legal advice.)
"Hmm... it seems like you're thinking more of engineering rather than science. Yes, science is concerned with making practical predictions, but I think it's also about knowledge for it's own sake. Like religion, science tries to build a model of the universe, but the difference is that science requires it's model to be rigorously and logically defined, and constrained to observable, measurable phenomena."
One of the great successes of science though must have been that bridges built according to the scientific world model did not collapse as often as bridges built according to the religious world model.
"Maybe, but those of us on the outside don't have the time to sort out which parts of your State are less fucked up than the others. Your degree has lost a lot of clout because of this; I know I'm certainly going to shuffle resumes listing Kansas to the bottom of the pile."
Same here. I really do not have the time to figure out which Kansas graduates are from the non-retard pile. It's not as if there is a lack of talent willing to work, and if it ever came to that, I'd probably train chimps before hiring anyone from Kansas.
"You know damned well that purposely compromising a computer using physical access is the context of this thread. Trying to spin things so that it appears that I said (or even implied!) that it was about people "peeking" at sensitive data is extremely dishonest."
Let me recap:
Somebody wrote that anyone can compromise a PC who has physical access to one.
Then you wrote that in a cubicle environment, threatening with loss of income would be a good defense barrier to such eventualities.
In that respect I agree with the person who replied to you that the sort of people who gain physical access to a PC to knowingly grab sensitive data off it, are not likely to be deterred by signs. They know what the consequences of their actions are.
What you are trying to do here is to create the suggestion that a cubicle environment can be defended against unauthorized access. That is simply not true.
Now, a locked room can also not be fully defended against unauthorized access, but it is a damn sight more effective against creating an accidental opportunity than putting a sign on a cubicle.
"Point out where I said that "threats are the sole motivator to get a certain thing done"."
You did not say that literally, as you very well know, but it is the only logical conclusion to what you wrote earlier:
"A good first defense barrier for an administrative PC in a cubicle environment is to flag those cubicles with a warning "With the exception of PHB's X, Y, and Z, anyone found in this cubicle when the employee who uses it is absent will be TERMINATED."
If your second defense barrier is as effective as your first, you don't need a first defense barrier. So the only way your statement could ever make sense, is if your first defense barrier catches things that consecutive barriers would not catch.
The only thing you suggest for these things is a threat.
"Point out where I said that I did my "darndest to put information that shouldn't be seen by everyone out in the open"."
Again, this logically follows from your "first defense barrier" statement. Assuming that there will always be people who do not pay much heed to Verboten-signs, you seem to think a certain amount of leakage is acceptable. You prefer to catch some leaks only by explicitely forbidding people to peek at sensitive data.
I would have taken your suggestion of putting up a no-tresspassing sign a lot more serious as a heuristic for stopping leaks if we had been discussing sysadmins working from their own, locked offices. But we are not; we are discussing sysadmins being forced to work in an inherently unsafe environment.
"I have heard this over and over again. "Macs don't have viruses because they don't have marketshare." I have seen people saying that for years, and it's starting to grow extremely stale. Macs are inherently more secure machines. They are not susceptible to viruses. Until proven otherwise, this remains a truism."
To prove otherwise would be a crime in most jurisdictions. Not that I would not love to.
"Violation of company policy would be handled by upper management. If the person couldn't come up with a damned good reason he entered a verboten area, then he will be fired by them. He's obviously up to no good."
Having been in a situation where I accidentally stumbled upon sensitive information, I definitely would not want to work in your company. Not only do you rely on threats as the sole motivator to get a certain thing done, but you also do your darndest best to put information that should not be seen by everybody out in the open. Doesn't sound like a healthy company, to be honest.
"You're not the right person to trust anecdotal evidence from, in this case. None of us here on Slashdot are. The average user doesn't have an arsenal of machines, he has one."
I know lots of "average" people who own more than one computer.
In some cases they own a laptop for on the road and a desktop for playing at home.
In some cases they are families that keep their old computers around for the kids (or most likely the other way around, as kids' requirements seem to be higher). Contrary to what you suggest in another post, this does not mean that the kids get to "own" the hand-me-down in any legal sense. It is still the parent who counts as having more than one computer.
In some cases, several computers are used for specific tasks (for instance, work/play, or scan/misc).
In some cases, they have a media PC in the living room and a hobby PC in the attic.
I also know several Mac users who bought a PC, because until recently they could not use their Macs for electronic banking. I hope you don't believe that means they "switched" to PC.
Sure, these are all anecdotes, but anecdotes may well serve as a starting point for quantitive analysis.
"A good first defense barrier for an administrative PC in a cubicle environment is to flag those cubicles with a warning "With the exception of PHB's X, Y, and Z, anyone found in this cubicle when the employee who uses it is absent will be TERMINATED.""
Ah yes, the sysadmin who just got shoved out of his own office and into a cubicle is very likely to have the power to fire anybody at will... not!
"Then I realized there are actually people who pay real money for a subscription and are thanked with a handful of bogus articles, so the failure to verify sources and articles is nice smack in the face."
There is a similarity between CmdrTaco's experience and yours. In both cases you have certain expectations of the product you purchased that somehow turned out to be untrue.
Whether or not you were right to have these expectations depends on what you were promised by the supplier, and what the conditions of the deal were.
Even then, it could be in the supplier's best interest to cater for expectations that are not founded on promise or agreement.
"Whats the matter, you like .XXX but not .KKK?!! Are you half fundie or something?"
Wow, straw men and insults. I bow to your rethorical prowess, master.
Now, where did I leave these meta-mod thingies...
You posted 6 variations on this exact same comment so far. Three of them have been replied to, one has been modded up and none have been modded down.
What's your problem? Are you so insecure that you need to repeat yourself again and again? The biggest enemy of the argument you are trying to forward is you.
Thanks for the explanation.
.xxx, it can just go ahead and do so?
So, there isn't really a problem, is there? I mean, if the world wants to OK
"There is a reason why important jobs generally require years of experience...not just an education."
Thanks for so succinctly summing up why ICANN should not be in charge top-level domains.
"Correct. The Internet is, fundamentally, an invention of the United States."
Nowadays when you post here, you must take into account that there is an editor called Zonk who barely has enough braincells to keep breathing. He continuously gets tiny things wrong, such as "is this at all interesting?" and "what is this story about?".
The story is not about control of the internet, it is about control of one small internet service, and a fairly insignificant one at that, called DNS. Invented by one Paul Mockapetris, who I assume was an American. I don't know how that should mean that the USA should control my DNS servers, but I guess some justification could be made up.
Anyway, I hope this all blows up in our governments' faces: I have always disliked the way the DNS was controlled, and I will be glad when we need to start thinking of alternatives, and much more diverse naming systems will emerge. Several ones that will not be governed my grey men in grey suits.
"What do you call people who study less in school, do the bare minimum to get by? could you call them, perhaps, less motivated?"
No, because motivation requires a stimulus; just stating that people study less in school is leaving the stimulus out of the equation. Undoubtedly, there is a reason why group A does things different from group B, and if you were a functional psychologist, you would talk in terms of reward and punishment, but that still doesn't prove anything. You still need to prove cause and effect.
So, what your study has proven is that there can be more than one type of stimulus, and that some stimuli are more effective than others. I could have told you that beforehand.
I think the Chinese rocket program is a little bit older than that.
"I guess this means that since China can now afford to send (two) ships into space, it doesn't need any more Foreign Aid from the EU, Japan or the US."
I guess that much was already clear when China started sending money to the US.
I used to work as an editor and a publisher before I switched to web development. In my former occupation it is considered bad business if the magazine is not paid for by the advertisments. Money generated through the sales of a magazine is considered "found money", something that adds to the profits. Probably the only reason magazines charge money at all in some cases is because consumers regard free and cheap with distrust.
"Why the worry?"
If your House works a bit like my House, the committee tells the House what its recommendation is, the party specialists tell the other members whether or not they agree, and then everybody will vote for it.
You did not actually believe the members read all the laws they vote on, did you?
"Oh lovely. The same argument people use to justify pirating content makes an appearance. "I would have never bought it, but I will download it to use". The web version "I would have never bought anything, but I will download the content to use"."
Oh lovely. Now you're comparing people who do not wish to see ads with criminals.
BTW, only the middlemen--you know, the real profiteers--are cynical enough to call creative works "content".
"the rest of us [...] put you on our hate list."
Oh lovely. The same list the terrorists use.
"So who should pay for content if ads shouldn't?"
Nobody. Websites should just shrivel up and die. I did not ask for companies to join the web, and would shed no tears if they all left. Somebody please close the door behind them.