That song always sounds to me like "Dirty Deeds, Done To Sheep". And guess what, the next time you hear that song, that is probably what you are going to here too, it is infectious.
The only issue the public needs to worry about is reasonable access to the data (within limits) that they paid for. Nothing more, nothing less.
Funny, I thought what the public needed to worry about was an obnoxious little company in Central PA telling the federal government what it is and is not allowed to do with the data that we as taxpayers all pay for.
I must have been mistaken.
Accuweather can do all the value-add it wants, that is called "business", but telling the national weather service it cannot provide this data to the public in any usable fashion is not "business". It is showing that they are unable to add enough value to the data they get to re-sell it to the people who paid for it in the first place.
And what are these "limits" you speak of that can be applied to reasonable access? I was not aware limits should be in place to data the government provides to aid navigation (boat and plane), civil service, and the public at large regarding weather.
Nope, that would be the Poles who cracked the Enigma. However you get massive props for mechanising the process and making it happen fast enough to be useful as wartime intelligence.
However, you get also get docked a point for having a Field Marshal (Monty) who was too arrogent to use this intelligence and who constantly screwed up because of this. Patton and Bradley end up with a lot of credit as tactical geniuses primarily due to their use of the intelligence that Ultra gave them.
You also lose a point for persecuting perhaps the most important figure you had in this game (Turing), because he was later revealed to be a homosexual. Granted, the US would have done the same thing then, and unfortunately we probably would today as well.
Besides, don't they just get their data from the gov't and process it?
Basically yes, which is why they have been lobbying so hard recently to get the national weather service to stop giving out all this user friendly data. It hurts their business model.
So I'm confused about your position. There is no way to know if child porn is present unless they poke around where they shouldn't (ie. searching). So you are for warrantless searching on the off chance child porn is present? Does this extend to the home as well or just computers?
Not quite, Active Directory is more akin to OSF's DCE. Let's see, x.500 based directory? Check (DCE had CDS, AD fortunately uses LDAP).
KerberosV based authentication model? Check.
Using Kerberos's privilage attribute certificate to store group information inside the ticket? Check (although MS decided to digitally sign it to make sure it was hard for anyone to interoperate).
Hell, DCOM is pretty much DCE 1.1 RPC. Too bad they didn't wait until the 1.2 RPC which actually had security built into it.
Ignorant and arrogant, just what I have come to expect from people who irrationally hate amateur radio for no real reason and are uninformed enough to understand the first thing about BPL other than what marketing drones have told them.
(2) There has been SIGNIFICANT proof in almost every BPL trial that it corrupts the HF space. Thus the complaints registered to the FCC by the military, air traffic people, civil air patrol, coast guard, and amateur radio operators. The ham guys just happen to be the loudest on the net, the others carry much more weight and they don't like it either. Many BPL trials have failed for this reason.
we think that BPL is more important than HAM radio.
Yes, ignorant people who are mislead into thinking that BPL will somehow provide inexpensive broadband (it will not, it has proven to be more expensive than cable and dsl) to rural areas (again, harder to do than cable and dsl). Suprisingly, these people are not interested in technical arguments about frequencies and RF radiation becasue they don't understand the concepts.
So to recap, (1) Motorola's BPL technology mostly solves the technical problems that just about ALL HF spectrum operators have complained about, and has the support of amateur radio, and (2) it is still broadband "fools gold", but there are plenty of fools out there.
So before you express to know what goes on at the patent office, go do it, and if you did and left cause you didn't like it, don't complain that the rest of us don't do our damn job, cause we do.
You are right, I do not know what goes on there, I can only surmise based on the patents I see you guys approve. And that, my friend does not speak very highly of the work the patent office does. I do not doubt some very intelligent people work there (my moron comment was a bit strong and insulting). However I will still maintain that the people approving business process patents and software patents possess little to no experience and competence in those fields. The patents you guys issue prove this rather effectively I'm afraid.
this is a combination of obviousness and prior art, hence should not be patentable.
Except we have a mountain of evidence that the entire patent office is staffed by drooling morons who happily whack everything that comes within reaching distance with a rubber "approved" stamp. These people would not understand prior art if they were beat over the head with it. And besides, they have quotas to meet.
Well DUH! They are trying to prevent their customers from copying and giving their friends copies of their property. If, in all honesty, people were just making copies for backups there would not be a problem...the problem resides with people giving it away to the masses - even worse some of them sell it on street corners, some of them release it on the internet so its free for everyone. Yea they have a beef, and they are trying to protect their works.
DRM does nothing to prevent this. It does not even help a little bit. Read the Darknet paper for more info on this but basically it boils down to DRM can never work for this for a few reasons. (1) DRM as it stands today is only PKI reversed (give the user a private key and try to prevent them from accessing it). It will ALWAYS be broken. (2) All it takes is one person breaking it for it to utterly fail. Frankly it does not even take that as there are still plenty of non DRM copies of things (CDs etc) out there that breaking DRM is not necessary for piracy.
They are NOT using DRM to protect their works, as this has been proven time and again to not work. What they ARE using it for to ensure joe average cannot exercise fair use rights and has to purchase multiple copies, or to set the stage for a the pay per view model they have been trying to push for decades with no success. Repeat: this is NOT about preventing piracy, it is about dictating use, and preventing perfectly legal use that they find damaging to their business model.
There are a lot of importing/exporting laws and yes there is a lot of things illegal about selling these products overseas when you do not have the permission to do so, and are violating certain restrictions. For example, the US gov't forbade companies from selling/dispensing 128 bit encryption software to countires over seas (i.e. Netscape). Did it happen, well yea, but was it illegal, most certainly.
Yes, that is correct, but completely irrelevent to the point (you seem really good at that type of example). I said movies. So I will repeat myself, there is nothing illegal about selling movies overseas. It happens on ebay all the time. It happens via columbia house all the time, it happens on nearly every online video store all the time. IT IS PREFECTLY LEGAL. The question then becomes, why DRM with region encoding? Answer: not to deal with any legal issue, just to enforce control over customers (that they do not want) and prevent them from doing something otherwise perfectly legal. This is the point of DRM.
I am not a lawyer, and I will wager you are not either, so I do not know how far up the ranks this goes.
I'm not a lawyer, but I am also not an accountant and I do my own taxes. Professional label does not enter into it unless you are taking legal advice from me.
If he is proven to violate the laws accross state borders then it does become a federal issue as it is interstate commerce.
Breach of contract is not violating federal law, it is violating contract law. This is a civil matter. The only thing they might have is posting photographs of their logo on a website and violating copyright law. Then probably every website in existance with pictures that might contain logos (on products in the background, t-shirts, etc) is in violation of interstate commerce and a good portion of the US is going to be in serious trouble.
Breaching a contract has you sent to court.
Yes, civil court. Think "judge judy"
I doubt he will face jail time
Especially since civil courts cannot do that. Punitive damages are all they get.
(though it is possible if it is a federal case)
Which it is not.
but he does stand to get sued, and to lose.
That certainly is a possibility, if there was a contract and he breached it.
And those people who do not care about the restrictions should be understanding when a high priced lawyer comes a knocking on their door. And they do not gain my sympathy. Will you sympathize with a bank robber for getting caught trying to rob a bank? There is no difference here.
Region free DVD players and bank robbers are the same thing. You have an.....interesting world view.
Maybe one day EULA's and such will be a thing of the past - maybe one day people will be honest and not hack to steal things. As long as you have people willing to abuse honest people, you will have honest people trying to figure out ways to deter this activty.
You are seriously mistaken about the purpose of EULAs and DRM. Even the propoanats of them (at a high level, not the publicity drones) do not fool themselves about that. It is ALL about controling the customer's behavior regarding how they use the product. There is NOTHING illegal about selling movies overseas, but DRM and region coding have been put into place to prevent this. This is only so they can charge higher prices to certain segments of the population. Piracy is the red-herring excuse, not the purpose.
There is DEFINITLY an expected assumption that the person will use the boxes to ship fedex packages - you and I and he and everyone else all know this.
Yup, but like I said, there is nothing illegal about it. Breach of contract MAYBE, but certainly no ferderal or state laws have been broken.
Actually this is very different. Also, if I give you a scanner for free, but you need to buy my software to use the scanner - you have the option of buying the software or not using the scanner. By bypassing any security systems (though in FedEx's case it is hard if not impossible to provide security on boxes), any written/verbal agreements you become in the wrong.
I hate to be so callous, but boo-freaking-hoo. Honestly, most people could care less about bypassing security measures (secure measures put into place not to aid customers in any way, but to limit them for the benefit of the customer) if it gains them more "bang for their buck". It seems most people are ok with being in the wrong in this way. Region free DVD players are certainly popular these days, same thing.
I imagine someday (or at least I hope) things like ultra restrictive EULAs, DRM, and all other attempts to lock people into using products only as the manufacturers allow them all go the way of the dodo.
As for the matter at hand, it seems the only legally wrong thing the FedEx guy did was post pictures of a copywrited logo. There is really nothing legally wrong with him requesting boxes and making chairs out of them. Morally? Perhaps but I bet most people wouldn't get their panties in a bunch over it.
The DMCA probably came out, if i remember correctly, because the boxes have the FedEX logo's.
And are they digital? Or is this something that should fall under regular copyright now. What clause in the DMCA applies to freaking BOXES?
FedExs business model is a good business model, and god forbid, a company that is putting faith in the people. Aren't we always complaining how companies do not trust us so they DRM the hell out of their products? Now look, a company that DOES trust us, gives us the benefit of the doubt (at their obvious expense) and they are getting screwed....and look some people in/. think they are wrong for doing this.
The FexEx business model is indeed a good one. However the idea of giving free boxes is kinda naive. I'm all for people being good to each other HOWEVER you do not often find much public goodwill toward major corporations, given the massive screwing they as a group usually attempt every chance they get.
This is not different than giving out cheap CUECAT scanners, only to have people figure out how to use them without your crappy software. Or selling powerful machines as game systems only to have people load Linux onto them and not buy the games you hoped to sell. It's a risk you take by giving free stuff to the public with no actual strings attached. I do not see at all how this relates to DRM, except to say that both have the (misguided in my opinion) idea to sell or give things to people than try to enforce a narrow use of them. Also note that I do not support violating copyright in the way of sharing music, so don't think I mean that.
Ok, let's look at it this way. Let's say he sold them outright. How is that a violation of te DMCA?
Frankly it is just taking advantage of a really shitty business model. Once again (remember cuecat, "disposable" digital cameras, etc) we see that it is not a good idea to give people free stuff on the assumption that they will use it in a way that makes money for you. Unless he signed a contract stating how he would use the boxes, they have nothing on him.
Oh for the love of god, please do not use u-haul. Use ANY truck rental company except them. Crappy, broken down trucks, customer service that seems trained to be as useless and annoying as possible, and management that puts the "ass" back into asshole.
Plus they stranded me for 19 hours with a broken alternator a month ago, and I had to fight for weeks to even get half my money back. Hell, I had to fight all 19 hours just to get someone out to fix the truck.
Of the people incarcerated inthe U.S. how many of them had access to the evidence arrayed against them?
Almost all of them.
You are correct, and it is sickening that the answer is not "all of them".
Of the people who are not given access to the evidence, not charged, not informed of their situation, how many of them do you think find themselves there completely arbitrarly.
Some, but I'd doubt anywhere close to all.
I doubt that as well, however that "some" is not acceptable. That is completely contrary to what this country is supposed to stand for. How can we claim the terrorists hate our freedom on one hand, then OURSELVES curb that freedom in a sad effort to feel safer? Are we not winning their "war" for them if they truely hate our freedom?
Secret evidence is not non-existant evidence and it has been stated here the variety of reasons why some evidence cannot just be broadcasted around the globe.
Except that the system of full disclosure of evidence and charges has served this country well for a couple hundred years. Are we so short sighted that we believe a single terror act justifies throwing all of that away? I certainly do question the validity of holding someone if the ONLY evidence you have is "secret". And as for prosecution, how is someone supposed to get a fair trial if only the prosecution is allowed to know the case against them?
I'm not saying the system isn't open to abuse, or that it isn't being abused, just that it's a completely understandable system and assuming that it's only use is to be abused is nuts.
Like anything (law, gun, nmap, box cutter) it can be used for good or bad purposes. I don't think anyone claimed that the system's only use is to be abused, that would be nuts. (side note: let's try to not assign positions to each other without basis)
However, by its very nature (secret prosecution, evidence, and charges), the system is quite abusable. Who is to know it is abused, since it is designed to be secret? Given that we have seen time and again the government abuse power when it is NOT so easy to hide, I think we can almost take it as a given that this will be abused (if it has no already). And there is my concern.
Do the ends justify the means? Is it ok to trample on the freedoms this country stands for in order to feel safer from those who we claim do not like those freedoms? Does that approach even make sense?
I'd be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt if they were moving toward a more open, accountable system of criminal justice. Unfortunately they are moving toward a more "secret police, secret evidence, secret trial" style. This does not fill me with a warm sense of trust.
That necessarily means that Intelligent Design is true, and may entail that evolution is false (as it pertains to explaining the origin of the species).
Um, how do you figure it entails evolution is false? That translation could easily be interperted as "God created the universe and set it up for the big bang which set everything into motion", could it not?
Nowhere in the bible did it say HOW God created the heavens and the earth. And put yourself in God's place, is it easier to tell your people you created the heavens and earth or would you launch into a several year long discussion on advanced partical physics with the farmers and sheepherders of the time?
I don't think they should ever just be presumed guilty based on previous mistakes.
Boy, I do. When you consider the previous mistakes (mistakes is an pretty damn positive way to describe them) AND the fact that now they are ramping up the secrecy in a major way, I'm not sure why you are so willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. What (besides poor pattern recognition) would lead anyone to believe they deserve the benefit of the doubt?
We have basically two givens (which many can argue the finer points of but I think it is safe to assume most agree): (1) The government has abused power in the not too distant past, and has lied to the US about these abuses and other issues as well. (2) The government is becoming much more secretive.
Do you really think they are cleaning up their act and acting more constitutionally, even though they showed no signs of that BEFORE all this secrecy started?
Obviously everyone in jail is innocent, obviously George Bush is pouring sugar in your gas tank while sodomizing your mother.
And of course nobody has ever been wrongfully held in jail, and Bush has never once misled the American public about anything.
Rather than toss irrelevent absolutes at each other, let's try keeping this discussion rooted in some kind of reality.
Which is worse, a reasonable assumetion (blind trust) or cynical parnoia.
I'd have to go with blind trust as the worse option, and it is amusing you consider that to be a reasonable assumption.
Obviously neither are ideal, which is why the US government was always supposed to be "open". You know, for the people and by the people, and all that oudated jazz.
Given the track record of the US government, do you honestly just believe everything they say and always assume they must be correct? What is wrong with a little government accountability to the citizens it represents?
Slashdot Mirror
And one thing to consider is that even if you had a 2m radio, range on those is generally limited to about 5 miles or so.
You are off by about a factor of 10.
Finkployd
That song always sounds to me like "Dirty Deeds, Done To Sheep". And guess what, the next time you hear that song, that is probably what you are going to here too, it is infectious.
Finkployd
I eagerly await this problem this "master tech" solved by looking in an images folder, or better yet, one called "porn".
Finkployd
The only issue the public needs to worry about is reasonable access to the data (within limits) that they paid for. Nothing more, nothing less.
Funny, I thought what the public needed to worry about was an obnoxious little company in Central PA telling the federal government what it is and is not allowed to do with the data that we as taxpayers all pay for.
I must have been mistaken.
Accuweather can do all the value-add it wants, that is called "business", but telling the national weather service it cannot provide this data to the public in any usable fashion is not "business". It is showing that they are unable to add enough value to the data they get to re-sell it to the people who paid for it in the first place.
And what are these "limits" you speak of that can be applied to reasonable access? I was not aware limits should be in place to data the government provides to aid navigation (boat and plane), civil service, and the public at large regarding weather.
Finkployd
Nope, that would be the Poles who cracked the Enigma. However you get massive props for mechanising the process and making it happen fast enough to be useful as wartime intelligence.
However, you get also get docked a point for having a Field Marshal (Monty) who was too arrogent to use this intelligence and who constantly screwed up because of this. Patton and Bradley end up with a lot of credit as tactical geniuses primarily due to their use of the intelligence that Ultra gave them.
You also lose a point for persecuting perhaps the most important figure you had in this game (Turing), because he was later revealed to be a homosexual. Granted, the US would have done the same thing then, and unfortunately we probably would today as well.
Finkployd
Besides, don't they just get their data from the gov't and process it?
Basically yes, which is why they have been lobbying so hard recently to get the national weather service to stop giving out all this user friendly data. It hurts their business model.
Finkployd
So I'm confused about your position. There is no way to know if child porn is present unless they poke around where they shouldn't (ie. searching). So you are for warrantless searching on the off chance child porn is present? Does this extend to the home as well or just computers?
Finkployd
Doesn't previous art count for anything anymore?
Not to the technology challanged mouth breathers we have running the patent office. They are either morons or corrupt (or both).
It is amazing that anyone would actually admit to working there these days.
Finkployd
Active Directory (Novell)
Not quite, Active Directory is more akin to OSF's DCE.
Let's see, x.500 based directory? Check (DCE had CDS, AD fortunately uses LDAP).
KerberosV based authentication model? Check.
Using Kerberos's privilage attribute certificate to store group information inside the ticket? Check (although MS decided to digitally sign it to make sure it was hard for anyone to interoperate).
Hell, DCOM is pretty much DCE 1.1 RPC. Too bad they didn't wait until the 1.2 RPC which actually had security built into it.
Finkployd
Ignorant and arrogant, just what I have come to expect from people who irrationally hate amateur radio for no real reason and are uninformed enough to understand the first thing about BPL other than what marketing drones have told them.
(1) The Amercian Radio Relay League (primary amateur radio group) supports this. http://www.arrl.org/news/features/2005/08/01/1/
(2) There has been SIGNIFICANT proof in almost every BPL trial that it corrupts the HF space. Thus the complaints registered to the FCC by the military, air traffic people, civil air patrol, coast guard, and amateur radio operators. The ham guys just happen to be the loudest on the net, the others carry much more weight and they don't like it either. Many BPL trials have failed for this reason.
we think that BPL is more important than HAM radio.
Yes, ignorant people who are mislead into thinking that BPL will somehow provide inexpensive broadband (it will not, it has proven to be more expensive than cable and dsl) to rural areas (again, harder to do than cable and dsl). Suprisingly, these people are not interested in technical arguments about frequencies and RF radiation becasue they don't understand the concepts.
So to recap, (1) Motorola's BPL technology mostly solves the technical problems that just about ALL HF spectrum operators have complained about, and has the support of amateur radio, and (2) it is still broadband "fools gold", but there are plenty of fools out there.
Finkployd
So before you express to know what goes on at the patent office, go do it, and if you did and left cause you didn't like it, don't complain that the rest of us don't do our damn job, cause we do.
You are right, I do not know what goes on there, I can only surmise based on the patents I see you guys approve. And that, my friend does not speak very highly of the work the patent office does. I do not doubt some very intelligent people work there (my moron comment was a bit strong and insulting). However I will still maintain that the people approving business process patents and software patents possess little to no experience and competence in those fields. The patents you guys issue prove this rather effectively I'm afraid.
Finkployd
this is a combination of obviousness and prior art, hence should not be patentable.
Except we have a mountain of evidence that the entire patent office is staffed by drooling morons who happily whack everything that comes within reaching distance with a rubber "approved" stamp. These people would not understand prior art if they were beat over the head with it. And besides, they have quotas to meet.
Finkployd
Well DUH! They are trying to prevent their customers from copying and giving their friends copies of their property. If, in all honesty, people were just making copies for backups there would not be a problem...the problem resides with people giving it away to the masses - even worse some of them sell it on street corners, some of them release it on the internet so its free for everyone. Yea they have a beef, and they are trying to protect their works.
DRM does nothing to prevent this. It does not even help a little bit. Read the Darknet paper for more info on this but basically it boils down to DRM can never work for this for a few reasons.
(1) DRM as it stands today is only PKI reversed (give the user a private key and try to prevent them from accessing it). It will ALWAYS be broken.
(2) All it takes is one person breaking it for it to utterly fail. Frankly it does not even take that as there are still plenty of non DRM copies of things (CDs etc) out there that breaking DRM is not necessary for piracy.
They are NOT using DRM to protect their works, as this has been proven time and again to not work. What they ARE using it for to ensure joe average cannot exercise fair use rights and has to purchase multiple copies, or to set the stage for a the pay per view model they have been trying to push for decades with no success. Repeat: this is NOT about preventing piracy, it is about dictating use, and preventing perfectly legal use that they find damaging to their business model.
There are a lot of importing/exporting laws and yes there is a lot of things illegal about selling these products overseas when you do not have the permission to do so, and are violating certain restrictions. For example, the US gov't forbade companies from selling/dispensing 128 bit encryption software to countires over seas (i.e. Netscape). Did it happen, well yea, but was it illegal, most certainly.
Yes, that is correct, but completely irrelevent to the point (you seem really good at that type of example). I said movies. So I will repeat myself, there is nothing illegal about selling movies overseas. It happens on ebay all the time. It happens via columbia house all the time, it happens on nearly every online video store all the time. IT IS PREFECTLY LEGAL.
The question then becomes, why DRM with region encoding? Answer: not to deal with any legal issue, just to enforce control over customers (that they do not want) and prevent them from doing something otherwise perfectly legal. This is the point of DRM.
I am not a lawyer, and I will wager you are not either, so I do not know how far up the ranks this goes.
I'm not a lawyer, but I am also not an accountant and I do my own taxes. Professional label does not enter into it unless you are taking legal advice from me.
If he is proven to violate the laws accross state borders then it does become a federal issue as it is interstate commerce.
Breach of contract is not violating federal law, it is violating contract law. This is a civil matter. The only thing they might have is posting photographs of their logo on a website and violating copyright law. Then probably every website in existance with pictures that might contain logos (on products in the background, t-shirts, etc) is in violation of interstate commerce and a good portion of the US is going to be in serious trouble.
Breaching a contract has you sent to court.
Yes, civil court. Think "judge judy"
I doubt he will face jail time
Especially since civil courts cannot do that. Punitive damages are all they get.
(though it is possible if it is a federal case)
Which it is not.
but he does stand to get sued, and to lose.
That certainly is a possibility, if there was a contract and he breached it.
Finkployd
And those people who do not care about the restrictions should be understanding when a high priced lawyer comes a knocking on their door. And they do not gain my sympathy. Will you sympathize with a bank robber for getting caught trying to rob a bank? There is no difference here.
Region free DVD players and bank robbers are the same thing. You have an.....interesting world view.
Maybe one day EULA's and such will be a thing of the past - maybe one day people will be honest and not hack to steal things. As long as you have people willing to abuse honest people, you will have honest people trying to figure out ways to deter this activty.
You are seriously mistaken about the purpose of EULAs and DRM. Even the propoanats of them (at a high level, not the publicity drones) do not fool themselves about that. It is ALL about controling the customer's behavior regarding how they use the product. There is NOTHING illegal about selling movies overseas, but DRM and region coding have been put into place to prevent this. This is only so they can charge higher prices to certain segments of the population. Piracy is the red-herring excuse, not the purpose.
There is DEFINITLY an expected assumption that the person will use the boxes to ship fedex packages - you and I and he and everyone else all know this.
Yup, but like I said, there is nothing illegal about it. Breach of contract MAYBE, but certainly no ferderal or state laws have been broken.
Finkployd
Actually this is very different. Also, if I give you a scanner for free, but you need to buy my software to use the scanner - you have the option of buying the software or not using the scanner. By bypassing any security systems (though in FedEx's case it is hard if not impossible to provide security on boxes), any written/verbal agreements you become in the wrong.
I hate to be so callous, but boo-freaking-hoo. Honestly, most people could care less about bypassing security measures (secure measures put into place not to aid customers in any way, but to limit them for the benefit of the customer) if it gains them more "bang for their buck". It seems most people are ok with being in the wrong in this way. Region free DVD players are certainly popular these days, same thing.
I imagine someday (or at least I hope) things like ultra restrictive EULAs, DRM, and all other attempts to lock people into using products only as the manufacturers allow them all go the way of the dodo.
As for the matter at hand, it seems the only legally wrong thing the FedEx guy did was post pictures of a copywrited logo. There is really nothing legally wrong with him requesting boxes and making chairs out of them. Morally? Perhaps but I bet most people wouldn't get their panties in a bunch over it.
Finkployd
The DMCA probably came out, if i remember correctly, because the boxes have the FedEX logo's.
/. think they are wrong for doing this.
And are they digital? Or is this something that should fall under regular copyright now. What clause in the DMCA applies to freaking BOXES?
FedExs business model is a good business model, and god forbid, a company that is putting faith in the people. Aren't we always complaining how companies do not trust us so they DRM the hell out of their products? Now look, a company that DOES trust us, gives us the benefit of the doubt (at their obvious expense) and they are getting screwed....and look some people in
The FexEx business model is indeed a good one. However the idea of giving free boxes is kinda naive. I'm all for people being good to each other HOWEVER you do not often find much public goodwill toward major corporations, given the massive screwing they as a group usually attempt every chance they get.
This is not different than giving out cheap CUECAT scanners, only to have people figure out how to use them without your crappy software. Or selling powerful machines as game systems only to have people load Linux onto them and not buy the games you hoped to sell. It's a risk you take by giving free stuff to the public with no actual strings attached. I do not see at all how this relates to DRM, except to say that both have the (misguided in my opinion) idea to sell or give things to people than try to enforce a narrow use of them. Also note that I do not support violating copyright in the way of sharing music, so don't think I mean that.
Finkployd
Ok, let's look at it this way. Let's say he sold them outright. How is that a violation of te DMCA?
Frankly it is just taking advantage of a really shitty business model. Once again (remember cuecat, "disposable" digital cameras, etc) we see that it is not a good idea to give people free stuff on the assumption that they will use it in a way that makes money for you. Unless he signed a contract stating how he would use the boxes, they have nothing on him.
Finkployd
First if he is starting to accept donations, he needs to report these to the fed.
Yes he does, but that has NOTHING to do with the DMCA.
A week later the guy gets a fedex desk in the mail. THats a sale.
Has that happened? I haven't seen anything remotely resembling a sale in what I have read on this.
Finkployd
Oh for the love of god, please do not use u-haul. Use ANY truck rental company except them. Crappy, broken down trucks, customer service that seems trained to be as useless and annoying as possible, and management that puts the "ass" back into asshole.
Plus they stranded me for 19 hours with a broken alternator a month ago, and I had to fight for weeks to even get half my money back. Hell, I had to fight all 19 hours just to get someone out to fix the truck.
anyway, -1 offtopic
Finkployd
Funny, I always thought of a "sale" as an exchange of money, goods or services for money, goods or services.
Are you saying now that if I "donate" money to someone and get nothing in return, that is a sale? Should I be paying sales tax? Please advise...
Finkployd
Of the people incarcerated inthe U.S. how many of them had access to the evidence arrayed against them?
Almost all of them.
You are correct, and it is sickening that the answer is not "all of them".
Of the people who are not given access to the evidence, not charged, not informed of their situation, how many of them do you think find themselves there completely arbitrarly.
Some, but I'd doubt anywhere close to all.
I doubt that as well, however that "some" is not acceptable. That is completely contrary to what this country is supposed to stand for. How can we claim the terrorists hate our freedom on one hand, then OURSELVES curb that freedom in a sad effort to feel safer? Are we not winning their "war" for them if they truely hate our freedom?
Secret evidence is not non-existant evidence and it has been stated here the variety of reasons why some evidence cannot just be broadcasted around the globe.
Except that the system of full disclosure of evidence and charges has served this country well for a couple hundred years. Are we so short sighted that we believe a single terror act justifies throwing all of that away? I certainly do question the validity of holding someone if the ONLY evidence you have is "secret". And as for prosecution, how is someone supposed to get a fair trial if only the prosecution is allowed to know the case against them?
I'm not saying the system isn't open to abuse, or that it isn't being abused, just that it's a completely understandable system and assuming that it's only use is to be abused is nuts.
Like anything (law, gun, nmap, box cutter) it can be used for good or bad purposes. I don't think anyone claimed that the system's only use is to be abused, that would be nuts. (side note: let's try to not assign positions to each other without basis)
However, by its very nature (secret prosecution, evidence, and charges), the system is quite abusable. Who is to know it is abused, since it is designed to be secret? Given that we have seen time and again the government abuse power when it is NOT so easy to hide, I think we can almost take it as a given that this will be abused (if it has no already). And there is my concern.
Do the ends justify the means? Is it ok to trample on the freedoms this country stands for in order to feel safer from those who we claim do not like those freedoms? Does that approach even make sense?
Finkployd
I'd be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt if they were moving toward a more open, accountable system of criminal justice. Unfortunately they are moving toward a more "secret police, secret evidence, secret trial" style. This does not fill me with a warm sense of trust.
Finkployd
That necessarily means that Intelligent Design is true, and may entail that evolution is false (as it pertains to explaining the origin of the species).
Um, how do you figure it entails evolution is false? That translation could easily be interperted as "God created the universe and set it up for the big bang which set everything into motion", could it not?
Nowhere in the bible did it say HOW God created the heavens and the earth. And put yourself in God's place, is it easier to tell your people you created the heavens and earth or would you launch into a several year long discussion on advanced partical physics with the farmers and sheepherders of the time?
The lord works in mysterious ways right?
Finkployd
I don't think they should ever just be presumed guilty based on previous mistakes.
Boy, I do. When you consider the previous mistakes (mistakes is an pretty damn positive way to describe them) AND the fact that now they are ramping up the secrecy in a major way, I'm not sure why you are so willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. What (besides poor pattern recognition) would lead anyone to believe they deserve the benefit of the doubt?
We have basically two givens (which many can argue the finer points of but I think it is safe to assume most agree):
(1) The government has abused power in the not too distant past, and has lied to the US about these abuses and other issues as well.
(2) The government is becoming much more secretive.
Do you really think they are cleaning up their act and acting more constitutionally, even though they showed no signs of that BEFORE all this secrecy started?
Obviously everyone in jail is innocent, obviously George Bush is pouring sugar in your gas tank while sodomizing your mother.
And of course nobody has ever been wrongfully held in jail, and Bush has never once misled the American public about anything.
Rather than toss irrelevent absolutes at each other, let's try keeping this discussion rooted in some kind of reality.
Finkployd
Which is worse, a reasonable assumetion (blind trust) or cynical parnoia.
I'd have to go with blind trust as the worse option, and it is amusing you consider that to be a reasonable assumption.
Obviously neither are ideal, which is why the US government was always supposed to be "open". You know, for the people and by the people, and all that oudated jazz.
Given the track record of the US government, do you honestly just believe everything they say and always assume they must be correct? What is wrong with a little government accountability to the citizens it represents?
Finkployd