- The distinction between functions and procedures (the language sports an artifical difference.) The lack of parenthesis in the declaration make it difficult to quickly visually spot functions.
That's not actually an artificial difference. The choice behind two reserved words for procedures and functions allows the language's grammar to keep its LALR form, which means you can compile it much much faster. The form of Pascal's grammar is one of the biggest reason it compiles so damn fast compared to C++: there is no operator ambiguity. The same goes for the ":=" operator.
- Operators, or the lack of them (no bit shifts, scope operator, namespaces?)
bitshifts operators: "shl" and "shr". You can apply "and", "or", "not", etc to bits as well.
Namespace: You can delimit namespace by prefixing the name of the unit. Example: MyUnit.TMyClass.Create works perfectly.
Language preference is just that, a preference, but I just wanted to explain some of the features which you seemed to dislike. =)
You're right, the purpose of the RIAA in this matter cannot be denied.
Fair-use quote from the article:
Record labels hope to make the point that subscription services such as MusicNet or Pressplay, which will launch on Yahoo, America Online, MSN and RealNetworks by year's end, will not be subject to the same doubtful quality of service.
So basically they are saying that they will degrade quality of peer-to-peer services in order to show that their services are of higher quality. This is called unfair competition, and under the new laws adopted, would probably qualify as an act of terrorism for financial gain...
I don't know what they smoked to think that they were allowed to do this with the current law. Probably they figured that nobody who was sharing their music would sue them for damages, since they'd bring attention to themselves...
Let's see... They are swamped in email, so it's unlikely that they will listen to your message if you send it that way. Snailmail is a bit better, but not yet very effective, since they get so many letters.
So what we need is some way to stick out from the crowd. How about...
Printing your message on a shirt and sending it to him?
Sending them a clown singing a telegram to their office? Something about a clown singing DMCA...
Writing it on a card and sending it with flowers?
Finding out where they live and sticking a letter on their front door?
There are many more ways, but those I can think of would probably not be legal;P
There are three feasible alternatives which high-speed ISPs could take that I can see:
- Leave it alone, and maybe warn clients that they are infected. However, clients will probably get infected faster than they can fix their systems, especially those who don't even know what a web server is.
- Block incoming traffic on port 80 to all clients. Affects all of your clients, even those that are and will not be infected, and most likely gets you a bunch of angry users (which are those who know what they're doing anyway, the ones that ISPs like least).
- Temporarily disable access to the infected clients. You can be SURE you will hear from them VERY soon after their cable modem stops working. This also affects only clients that ARE infected, and is quite easy to automate. If the virus causes so much problems, then I think it's only fair that clients who have compromised systems be disconnected until they fix them.
I was a Videotron cable client until they started "handling" Code Red. Their solution was to suddenly block all incoming traffic to port 80 at their router, which, needless to say, is tough luck for my personal web server. I moved it to another port, but it took me a while to realize it was being blocked, since they did not inform anyone of their new restrictions. That measure has been "temporary" for nearly two months now, and the number of code red infected clients has not dropped. More recently they started blocking incoming traffic on port 25 to all of their cable clients, to "prevent clients from sending spam". That was the last straw, and I switched providers.
There were three words missing from my above post:
"here in Quebec", where the Mafiaboy in question happens to live. I was by no means asserting something true for all of the world's youth centers.
that's a full year of school you'd have to miss, and take again with kids 2 years younger than you. and a year after _that_ you still wouldn't be able to leave the state or be out after curfew.
Actually, in Quebec, that's a full year of school you'll actually be forced by a judge to attend every single of your classes. There is no calling in faking to be sick, the educators at the center know better. Instead of being withdrawn from society, you're being supervised and forced to face it, which gives pretty good results.
So here in an interesting thought then, who is the bigger joke here, the kid for getting caught, or the people thinking this will be a message to all script kiddies.
Maybe by American standards it is. But by Canadian laws in general, and Quebec's system in particular, it seems appropriate. The funny idea that people have around here is that kids that commit crimes are not yet beyond being brought back on the right track. The juvenile centers here are very supervised, but not by armed guards. The kids are followed by psychologists and educators, forced to go to school and get deprived of some of the few things they have when they get too bad results.
You may find it funny, but alot of the kids that get put through this find it very hard, and think twice about it. What's more, they can't just hide in their corner forever, they have to open up sooner or later. And not surprisingly to me, alot end up very good citizens afterwards.
So basically, different countries, different approaches. And I kinda like ours.
I don't know where you are from, but it definitely does not sound like Quebec (where Mafiaboy happens to live).
Juvenile centers here are geared towards rehabilitating the kids. The kids are followed by psychologists and educators, forced to take standard provincial education (skip class and you end up before a judge who will most likely make your sentence more severe).
My mother has been working in a juvenile center for over 25 years, with kids who murdered their parents, stole from almost everyone in their town, drug addicts, and worse. Some of the kids are irrecuperable, but most you CAN get to change and to function in society. Not once as she been physically attacked by kids there.
He's going to get the shit kicked out of him regularly, I would surmise. That's a pretty hard sentence for running some other idiot's code.
No, he's not. Juvenile centers are nothing like jails. There are always educators with the kids, and bullies would not get away even with threatening to beat him up. They'd be brought back before a judge before they know it.
Most juvenile centers also have kids from the "Youth Protection Department" (DPJ in French) that have been taken from their families for their OWN safety. Therefore, the centers know very well how to protect their "residents".
p>
The other message is that even if you get caught, your sentence will be ridiculously easy.
Before judging on a sentence on a juvenile in the province of Quebec, you need a crash course on the approach that is prevalent here with kids, and works very well.
Kids are NOT sent to jail. Whatever they commited. Why? Because jail is not where you learn about life as an adult.
Juvenile centers are not vacation centers. My mother has been working in one for over 25 years, and the kids are severly watched, and most definitely not free to do what they want. They are locked in their rooms at night, and whenever they cause any kind of trouble. As long as they behave, they get to interact with other kids there, and they are forced to go to school.
Most of Canada wants tougher laws towards the kids, but Quebec's system has the lowest rate of kids being sentenced that commit other crimes when they grow up. By any means, 8 months is not a light sentence, and the kid will have that time to think about what he did, and perhaps find something else he is good at, instead of thinking how he will make society pay for his incarceration when he gets out of jail.
Waging war in "deserts somewhere" was never the point. The point of war is to disable an enemy, and that implies striking its cities.
But I agree that the war stopped being "just over there" when the US kept supporting Israel even when they used excessive force and escaladed violence, actions that the rest of the world condemned. The USA have been walking into this war knowingly, at least on a political level. Its citizens were probably not aware of it, but the government knew full well that they were bringing themselves in a warzone. They just thought nobody would dare attack the almighty United States, because they would be crushed. They were wrong there, because some people had nothing to lose.
I'm not saying that the US should not intervene in world wide conflicts. But if they want to, then they should expect to make enemies, some of which will have no compassion and will dare attack them back.
I've also heard the flawed "if there's a war, then it should not be in New-York" argument over and over, and I can't help but wonder... Who are we to decide that war in other people's cities was better than war in our own?
Sure, it doesn't affect us, so it's easier to ignore when war goes on far away. But to the civilians there, who are also human beings that more often than not have absolutely nothing to do with the conflicts, war would probably better in New-York. The "Not in my backyard" attitude never solves anything. If something is so terrible that we don't want it in our yards, let's not wish it was in someone else's.
Passenger plane crews are not armed for a very good reason: any weapon on board can also be used by pirates if they get a hold of it. In the end, it would probably be more dangerous for the crew and passengers than doing any good.
Re:This might mean something...
on
eBay Beats DMCA
·
· Score: 1
Personally, I would be okay with it if service only got terminated when there was something physical and immediate to point to.
Yep, I think we agree on the whole thing. This is already the standard for other illegal things, such as denial of service attacks: If there is observable evidence that proves that the client is doing illegal things, he gets his account terminated. It should be no different for copyright violations, which arguably cause less harm than DDoS.
Re:This might mean something...
on
eBay Beats DMCA
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
The DMCA does explicitly allow you recourse however. Pursuant to Section 512(g)(3) you can file a counter notice with the ISP and they have to restore your access within 14 days unless the copyright holder files for a court order against you.
The problem, of course, being that you have still suffered an interruption of a service you pay for, because some copyright owner said you were doing illegal things. The source of the problem is that the law asserts good faith from the copyright holders, and relies on them to not make any errors. When an error *does* occur, then the customer ends up being branded a criminal without having any kind of chance to challenge this verdict BEFORE his access is terminated.
Presumption of innocence does not work for companies, and the DMCA seems to openly take advantage of that fact to try to scare people who might want to violate copyrights: "We need proof to send you to jail, but we don't need any to cut your internet access..."
Welcome... to the Corporate Democracy. Do you want the blue pill or the red pill?
I've seen a word that describes this pretty well: a Capitalacy. It's like a Democracy, the power is in the hands of the "people". However, instead of being 1 person = 1 vote, it's 1$ = 1 vote.
Unfortunately, it's starting to look more and more like this...
Yes, that is exactly why. Afterall, corporations don't vote.
Just to extend a bit on your point of view, which I totally agree with:
Corporations don't vote in the traditional sense of the word. However, through their huge contributions, their "votes" are actually considered more important by politicians. Which is why I say we no longer live in a democracy, i.e. a political system where each person is worth a vote. We live in a capitalicy, a political system where each dollar is worth a vote.
With M$ pushing for Windows Media, Real for Real Media, MP3, and now Ogg, we're going to end up with a different problem: fragmentation.
Your average user does not want to install 10 different players to listen to music and view movie clips. So they'll often not bother installing a new player and stick with what they already have (which is, surprise surprise, Windows Media that comes with Windows).
Not convinced? Look at what happened to Netscape... =\
With all the hype around the DMCA, he had to be aware of the risks involved. He was most likely warned about the possible consequences, and decided to make a statement.
Are you aware of Russian copyright law? I certainly did not know before this whole mess that it required software to allow for backups. Did you?
My point is, most people are not even aware of what is illegal in their own country.
This is a perfect case to go to trial, and overthrow the ridiculous - big business paid for - DMCA.
Perfect except for the fact that the person currently in jail did not ask to be there. If you want someone to rot in jail, away from his family, paying tons of money on lawyers for his defense while his case goes to trial, here's a suggestion: Break the DMCA in a very obviously morally correct way, get arrested and get the law overturned on your own case. There is no way to justify imposing on someone who is unwilling to be part of it.
I see all these posts about how it's sad it had to be him, but it's for the greater good of the citizens of the United States. How would you feel if you got arrested wrongly in another country and people said "Oh, no no, don't set him free! He has to go to trial, his case MIGHT overturn a bad law!" There's no point in turning people into unwilling martyrs.
(You seem to be trolling, but I'll respond anyways because I have seen this argument over and over)
What is the price of your little experiment?
Do I need to remind you we are talking about a human being held against his will?
Science does not (or at least cannot be justified to) experiment on unwilling subjects. "Leaving him for a while, in the name of science" is as morally corrupt as researchers infecting thousands of black citizen with syphillis to see how the disease evolved (that happened in the '40s, in the US). By saying that he should be held in jail to see how things go, you're implicitely saying that you judge him a being of lesser importance than yourself, since you're advocating that he suffers to fulfill your own curiosity.
Of course, in the name of science, by all means do something that so obviously violates the DMCA so that you get arrested. That way, we can conduct this experiment with someone who is willing to be in jail during this time. Or maybe you suddenly don't like it as much?
And you'd probably volunteer to exchange places with him to be the one jailed during this time? Challenging a law in court can and will take years. There are ways to challenge a law that don't need anyone to be in jail.
He's Russian, not American. This is not his fight, and it is unfair for him to be taken hostage to remove a bad US law.
As for why he SHOULD be released, as far as I know, he was not allowed to consult his ambassy, and still not officially charged. This violates international treaties on foreign prisonners. Actually, it is a violation for which the US would have raised hell if the exact same thing happened to an American that was detained in China or Russia without accusations and without being allowed to consult his ambassy.
On these grounds alone, the United States have proven to the world that they are no better defenders of human rights than China or other repressive countries. In China, if you speak against the governement, you risk being labeled a traitor and being jailed. In the United States, if you make a company who happens to have copyrights mad, you risk being labeled as an evil hacker and jailed.
Slashdot Mirror
- The distinction between functions and procedures (the language sports an artifical difference.) The lack of parenthesis in the declaration make it difficult to quickly visually spot functions.
That's not actually an artificial difference. The choice behind two reserved words for procedures and functions allows the language's grammar to keep its LALR form, which means you can compile it much much faster. The form of Pascal's grammar is one of the biggest reason it compiles so damn fast compared to C++: there is no operator ambiguity. The same goes for the ":=" operator.
- Operators, or the lack of them (no bit shifts, scope operator, namespaces?)
bitshifts operators: "shl" and "shr". You can apply "and", "or", "not", etc to bits as well.
Namespace: You can delimit namespace by prefixing the name of the unit. Example: MyUnit.TMyClass.Create works perfectly.
Language preference is just that, a preference, but I just wanted to explain some of the features which you seemed to dislike. =)
Regards,
You're right, the purpose of the RIAA in this matter cannot be denied.
Fair-use quote from the article:
Record labels hope to make the point that subscription services such as MusicNet or Pressplay, which will launch on Yahoo, America Online, MSN and RealNetworks by year's end, will not be subject to the same doubtful quality of service.
So basically they are saying that they will degrade quality of peer-to-peer services in order to show that their services are of higher quality. This is called unfair competition, and under the new laws adopted, would probably qualify as an act of terrorism for financial gain...
I don't know what they smoked to think that they were allowed to do this with the current law. Probably they figured that nobody who was sharing their music would sue them for damages, since they'd bring attention to themselves...
Let's see... They are swamped in email, so it's unlikely that they will listen to your message if you send it that way. Snailmail is a bit better, but not yet very effective, since they get so many letters.
;P
So what we need is some way to stick out from the crowd. How about...
Printing your message on a shirt and sending it to him?
Sending them a clown singing a telegram to their office? Something about a clown singing DMCA...
Writing it on a card and sending it with flowers?
Finding out where they live and sticking a letter on their front door?
There are many more ways, but those I can think of would probably not be legal
Less so when your personnal server hosts 15 mail accounts... =\
But yes, I managed to get a good laugh at them when I called to tell them they lost a client. They're clueless.
There are three feasible alternatives which high-speed ISPs could take that I can see:
- Leave it alone, and maybe warn clients that they are infected. However, clients will probably get infected faster than they can fix their systems, especially those who don't even know what a web server is.
- Block incoming traffic on port 80 to all clients. Affects all of your clients, even those that are and will not be infected, and most likely gets you a bunch of angry users (which are those who know what they're doing anyway, the ones that ISPs like least).
- Temporarily disable access to the infected clients. You can be SURE you will hear from them VERY soon after their cable modem stops working. This also affects only clients that ARE infected, and is quite easy to automate. If the virus causes so much problems, then I think it's only fair that clients who have compromised systems be disconnected until they fix them.
I was a Videotron cable client until they started "handling" Code Red. Their solution was to suddenly block all incoming traffic to port 80 at their router, which, needless to say, is tough luck for my personal web server. I moved it to another port, but it took me a while to realize it was being blocked, since they did not inform anyone of their new restrictions. That measure has been "temporary" for nearly two months now, and the number of code red infected clients has not dropped. More recently they started blocking incoming traffic on port 25 to all of their cable clients, to "prevent clients from sending spam". That was the last straw, and I switched providers.
Who the heck modded the parent as off-topic?
He is talking about how people answered a poll about encryption, attached to a story which is exactly about a poll on encryption controls...
Could some nice moderator please spare one point to fix this?
You've missed the trend in the last years. The US is currently under a capitalocracy, a regime where one dollar equals one vote.
There were three words missing from my above post:
"here in Quebec", where the Mafiaboy in question happens to live. I was by no means asserting something true for all of the world's youth centers.
Just to be sure, I was talking about Quebec juvenile centers, not juvenile centers in general.
Actually, in Quebec, that's a full year of school you'll actually be forced by a judge to attend every single of your classes. There is no calling in faking to be sick, the educators at the center know better. Instead of being withdrawn from society, you're being supervised and forced to face it, which gives pretty good results.
Maybe by American standards it is. But by Canadian laws in general, and Quebec's system in particular, it seems appropriate. The funny idea that people have around here is that kids that commit crimes are not yet beyond being brought back on the right track. The juvenile centers here are very supervised, but not by armed guards. The kids are followed by psychologists and educators, forced to go to school and get deprived of some of the few things they have when they get too bad results.
You may find it funny, but alot of the kids that get put through this find it very hard, and think twice about it. What's more, they can't just hide in their corner forever, they have to open up sooner or later. And not surprisingly to me, alot end up very good citizens afterwards.
So basically, different countries, different approaches. And I kinda like ours.
I don't know where you are from, but it definitely does not sound like Quebec (where Mafiaboy happens to live).
Juvenile centers here are geared towards rehabilitating the kids. The kids are followed by psychologists and educators, forced to take standard provincial education (skip class and you end up before a judge who will most likely make your sentence more severe).
My mother has been working in a juvenile center for over 25 years, with kids who murdered their parents, stole from almost everyone in their town, drug addicts, and worse. Some of the kids are irrecuperable, but most you CAN get to change and to function in society. Not once as she been physically attacked by kids there.
No, he's not. Juvenile centers are nothing like jails. There are always educators with the kids, and bullies would not get away even with threatening to beat him up. They'd be brought back before a judge before they know it.
Most juvenile centers also have kids from the "Youth Protection Department" (DPJ in French) that have been taken from their families for their OWN safety. Therefore, the centers know very well how to protect their "residents".
p>
Before judging on a sentence on a juvenile in the province of Quebec, you need a crash course on the approach that is prevalent here with kids, and works very well.
- Kids are NOT sent to jail. Whatever they commited. Why? Because jail is not where you learn about life as an adult.
- Juvenile centers are not vacation centers. My mother has been working in one for over 25 years, and the kids are severly watched, and most definitely not free to do what they want. They are locked in their rooms at night, and whenever they cause any kind of trouble. As long as they behave, they get to interact with other kids there, and they are forced to go to school.
Most of Canada wants tougher laws towards the kids, but Quebec's system has the lowest rate of kids being sentenced that commit other crimes when they grow up. By any means, 8 months is not a light sentence, and the kid will have that time to think about what he did, and perhaps find something else he is good at, instead of thinking how he will make society pay for his incarceration when he gets out of jail.Waging war in "deserts somewhere" was never the point. The point of war is to disable an enemy, and that implies striking its cities.
But I agree that the war stopped being "just over there" when the US kept supporting Israel even when they used excessive force and escaladed violence, actions that the rest of the world condemned. The USA have been walking into this war knowingly, at least on a political level. Its citizens were probably not aware of it, but the government knew full well that they were bringing themselves in a warzone. They just thought nobody would dare attack the almighty United States, because they would be crushed. They were wrong there, because some people had nothing to lose.
I'm not saying that the US should not intervene in world wide conflicts. But if they want to, then they should expect to make enemies, some of which will have no compassion and will dare attack them back.
I've also heard the flawed "if there's a war, then it should not be in New-York" argument over and over, and I can't help but wonder... Who are we to decide that war in other people's cities was better than war in our own?
Sure, it doesn't affect us, so it's easier to ignore when war goes on far away. But to the civilians there, who are also human beings that more often than not have absolutely nothing to do with the conflicts, war would probably better in New-York. The "Not in my backyard" attitude never solves anything. If something is so terrible that we don't want it in our yards, let's not wish it was in someone else's.
That is a bad idea.
Passenger plane crews are not armed for a very good reason: any weapon on board can also be used by pirates if they get a hold of it. In the end, it would probably be more dangerous for the crew and passengers than doing any good.
Yep, I think we agree on the whole thing. This is already the standard for other illegal things, such as denial of service attacks: If there is observable evidence that proves that the client is doing illegal things, he gets his account terminated. It should be no different for copyright violations, which arguably cause less harm than DDoS.
The problem, of course, being that you have still suffered an interruption of a service you pay for, because some copyright owner said you were doing illegal things. The source of the problem is that the law asserts good faith from the copyright holders, and relies on them to not make any errors. When an error *does* occur, then the customer ends up being branded a criminal without having any kind of chance to challenge this verdict BEFORE his access is terminated.
Presumption of innocence does not work for companies, and the DMCA seems to openly take advantage of that fact to try to scare people who might want to violate copyrights: "We need proof to send you to jail, but we don't need any to cut your internet access..."
Woops. Capitalocracy is the word that should have been there. Should have hit preview...
I've seen a word that describes this pretty well: a Capitalacy. It's like a Democracy, the power is in the hands of the "people". However, instead of being 1 person = 1 vote, it's 1$ = 1 vote.
Unfortunately, it's starting to look more and more like this...
Just to extend a bit on your point of view, which I totally agree with:
Corporations don't vote in the traditional sense of the word. However, through their huge contributions, their "votes" are actually considered more important by politicians. Which is why I say we no longer live in a democracy, i.e. a political system where each person is worth a vote. We live in a capitalicy, a political system where each dollar is worth a vote.
With M$ pushing for Windows Media, Real for Real Media, MP3, and now Ogg, we're going to end up with a different problem: fragmentation.
Your average user does not want to install 10 different players to listen to music and view movie clips. So they'll often not bother installing a new player and stick with what they already have (which is, surprise surprise, Windows Media that comes with Windows).
Not convinced? Look at what happened to Netscape... =\
Are you aware of Russian copyright law? I certainly did not know before this whole mess that it required software to allow for backups. Did you?
My point is, most people are not even aware of what is illegal in their own country.
This is a perfect case to go to trial, and overthrow the ridiculous - big business paid for - DMCA.
Perfect except for the fact that the person currently in jail did not ask to be there. If you want someone to rot in jail, away from his family, paying tons of money on lawyers for his defense while his case goes to trial, here's a suggestion: Break the DMCA in a very obviously morally correct way, get arrested and get the law overturned on your own case. There is no way to justify imposing on someone who is unwilling to be part of it.
I see all these posts about how it's sad it had to be him, but it's for the greater good of the citizens of the United States. How would you feel if you got arrested wrongly in another country and people said "Oh, no no, don't set him free! He has to go to trial, his case MIGHT overturn a bad law!" There's no point in turning people into unwilling martyrs.
(You seem to be trolling, but I'll respond anyways because I have seen this argument over and over)
What is the price of your little experiment?
Do I need to remind you we are talking about a human being held against his will?
Science does not (or at least cannot be justified to) experiment on unwilling subjects. "Leaving him for a while, in the name of science" is as morally corrupt as researchers infecting thousands of black citizen with syphillis to see how the disease evolved (that happened in the '40s, in the US). By saying that he should be held in jail to see how things go, you're implicitely saying that you judge him a being of lesser importance than yourself, since you're advocating that he suffers to fulfill your own curiosity.
Of course, in the name of science, by all means do something that so obviously violates the DMCA so that you get arrested. That way, we can conduct this experiment with someone who is willing to be in jail during this time. Or maybe you suddenly don't like it as much?
And you'd probably volunteer to exchange places with him to be the one jailed during this time? Challenging a law in court can and will take years. There are ways to challenge a law that don't need anyone to be in jail.
He's Russian, not American. This is not his fight, and it is unfair for him to be taken hostage to remove a bad US law.
As for why he SHOULD be released, as far as I know, he was not allowed to consult his ambassy, and still not officially charged. This violates international treaties on foreign prisonners. Actually, it is a violation for which the US would have raised hell if the exact same thing happened to an American that was detained in China or Russia without accusations and without being allowed to consult his ambassy.
On these grounds alone, the United States have proven to the world that they are no better defenders of human rights than China or other repressive countries. In China, if you speak against the governement, you risk being labeled a traitor and being jailed. In the United States, if you make a company who happens to have copyrights mad, you risk being labeled as an evil hacker and jailed.