But here in Australia, publishers still prefer to gouge their customers by only selling dead-tree copies of most quality fiction.
I don't know what paper books cost in Australia, but in the US, e-books are almost never cheaper than the paper version. Since the cost to "print" an e-book is a lot less than the physical one, I don't think it's paper books that are overpriced.
Also, it's not hard to buy a used paper book for 20% of the original MSRP, but I have never seen a "used" e-book for sale.
In any case, the data is out there to figure out whether or not someone is running a lucrative business on the side - very likely with reasonable accuracy (data protection issues notwithstanding).
With access only to public web pages, how, exactly, would a web bot be able to tell that "jimicus" (for example) on eBay was somebody who wasn't paying taxes on the eBay income?
On eBay at least, unless you buy something from a seller, you don't get any information they don't want to tell you, so it would be very hard to connect a somewhat random username to a real person. Even if you did that, then you have to prove that person is keeping the money for themselves, since they could be selling for other people, or it could be an account for the company they work for, etc.
After connecting the dots, you then have to prove that the net income was not properly declared, which means you have to know the original cost of the item, when they bought it, etc. Although this sort of system might find millions of people not properly declaring income, unless every one was avoiding at least a couple thousand in taxes, it'll end up being a net loss for the government.
And if true, someone somewhere who has an IQ bordering on mentally disabled is sitting in a jail cell for a crime he did not commit but confessed to under false pretense
Assuming that you have been advised of your rights, police in the United States are allowed to lie or otherwise mislead you when you are being questioned.
Either you blew through the light which is illegal or you were forced into it via an accident, which would counter the ticket due to the accident report.
Where I live, unless it is a personal injury accident, the police do not take reports...you can't even force them to if you ask. This is probably to avoid them being dragged into court for a purely civil matter between insurance companies.
So which is better, a rear-end collision outside the intersection, or a broadside collision inside the intersection?
Broadside collisions are worse at speed, but in theory we aren't talking about speed here.
Somebody who doesn't "beat the yellow" might be going fast, but it's unlikely that the other direction would have started moving much, especially if there is any "all red" time. I think that most of the really deadly T-bone intersection crashes are because somebody just didn't notice the light was against them, and no technology could help that.
"their relationship to the boundary line of the intersection"
How much more context do you need?
The only thing the pictures show is one with your car across the "stop line" with the light red. They can't show anything else, as they do not take pictures before you cross the stop line regardless of the state of the light.
So, the only "context" you have is that you are across the stop line when the light is red. This, by itself, is not illegal. If you first crossed that line while the light was not red and you did not block the intersection, you have not broken any laws in my state. To get around the issue, most of these cameras will not take a picture until some fraction of a second after the light turns red so that a car traveling under the speed limit cannot have been behind the line when the light changed.
But, if you entered the intersection because of an ambulance, that ambulance is not shown...only your car across the line is shown. So, the context of entering the intersection legally (which it is if you are avoiding an ambulance), is not shown.
In any case, though, the lights are timed based on the speed limit for the road
+1 Funny
There are some places (like New York City) where the lights are all timed so that driving at some speed under the speed limit will allow you to keep seeing greens for a very long stretch, but most of the time the light timings and speed limits are not in sync.
On a local stretch of road about 5 miles long, with a varying 35-45mph limit, if you drive exactly 52mph you can hit every light at the green. If you follow the speed limits exactly (changing when it changes), you will hit about every over light when it is red. Now, it might be possible to hit every light at the green by keeping to 26mph, but then you'd be doing nearly 20 less than the limit at times, and would be a hazard to traffic.
If you keep your three seconds distance and pay attention, you won't rear end anybody.
You've never been in a crowded city, have you? Maintaining a three second gap at 20mph would be 88 feet, or about 8 car-lengths. It would also require you to sit for 3 seconds at a light after the car in front of you moves.
Driving like that might get you beat up or shot in some cities.
I was going to point this out (I've been reading through the replies but haven't seen this obvious point), these simple $3 games for mobile devices can translate over to PCs, especially technologies like flash. Many are small, easy to play games that can hook a wider audience.
Although your point is good, one thing I noticed after getting hooked on "Plants vs. Zombies" after getting it free from Amazon (regularly $2.99) was that the Windows version is $19.99.
Sure, there are more "extras", but the main game is identical, and many of the extras aren't available until you complete the main game once. It might be worth $20 based on time of play, but I suspect that the $3 mobile version will keep me occupied for far more than 15% as long as the Windows version. I think they'd be better off pricing the Windows game at around $5 and adding some sort of DLC where the total outlay would be about $15 if you bought everything. This should do what you suggest, and allow them to hook a wider audience on a huge platform (I think Windows still has more installations than Android and iOS combined).
The second is the FCC - airborne cell phones are illegal, because it messes up with the way the cell network's capacity is allocated. (Multiple cells able to see the same mobile terminal is BAD.)
In cities, pretty much every cell phone is seen by multiple towers, and the algorithms (current tower load, signal strength for a device, etc.) decide which one will handle the connection. Outside the city, you'll have the same issue when you are in the "hole" between towers.
There only differences when using a cell phone in an airplane is that the towers to choose from might be more geographically diverse than usual and change more frequently due to the speed.
Anything that's transmitting on the inside will bounce around like mad until it gets absorbed by something inside, quite likely the cancer-riddled bodies of the passengers.
FTFY
Seriously, if using a cell phone causes brain tumors, then 100 people using cellphones inside a plane before takeoff should cause some serious health issues, what with none of the RF being able to escape.
The fact is, there can be interference (yes, I do trust an Associate Technical Fellow at Boeing more than random slashdotters).
Whether the pronouncement comes from the most educated person in the world or some drooling idiot, it doesn't matter...the statement "there can be interference" will always be true because commercial passenger airplanes can't afford the weight to shield every system 100% against all RF.
That said, without empirical tests, it still doesn't matter who makes the statement. As an example, does an on-board cellphone interfere more or less than the cell tower the plane flies over during landing? What about other external transmitters? What about other systems inside the plane...how much do they interfere compared to a cell phone?
As others have stated, you don't need to test every combination, but you can test some devices with the most measured RF (which can be done without the airplane). Without knowing what can be interfered with, and how much, and how bad that is compared to interference that cannot be controlled, it's all end-user anecdotes, and not very useful information.
"In development" means they put out a press release. It doesn't mean they've spent a dime.
All my information on movie count came from IMDB (not IMDB Pro) for theatrical movies (i.e., nothing with (V) behind it). The box office info is widely known (and trumpeted by the studios and the MPAA). Both are growing.
For not yet released to be listed on IMDB, it needs to have a projected release date (like next year for the Expendables sequel), which usually means that it has some money spent. For release next year, it means that principle photography is likely already done, although they still have a couple of months. For releases in 2013-2014, then at least treatments have been written, but it's likely that actual script drafts have been completed (and writers paid), and possible that a tentative schedule for filming has been blocked out, so that crew can be available.
The only reason that "mass-market studio features" might be declining is because now every studio has 20 "boutique" subsidiaries. This started with Disney and Touchstone to allow them to produce non-G movies (and other studios to pigeon-hole movies, like Warner putting sci-fi under the "New Line" label), but it has now expanded to allow the big studios a chunk of the "indie" money. So, now, only the $200M "blockbusters" get placed under the flagship label, and I think we can all agree that it's a good thing for those to be cut back. We'd all rather see 8 good $25M movies than another "Fast and Furious Transformers of the Caribbean".
Alcohol was a factor in 37% of fatalities in my state
Note that this statistic needs to be taken with a grain of salt, as if anyone in any vehicle involved in an accident is thought to be "impaired" by police, then the accident is reported as "alcohol involved". So, if someone is roaring drunk and calls a cab, and that cab is involved in an accident while carrying the drunk, then it is "alcohol-related".
Likewise, if the police believe that someone was under the influence of alcohol, regardless of any tests, an accident is still classified as "alcohol-related".
The actual reason Drunk driving is a problem is the random deaths on the roads caused by people driving drunk.
So, how do these checkpoints solve the problem?
There would need to be many checkpoints in each city every day, because having them only sometimes would help on that day, but the real problem is that too many people are arrested multiple times for DUI and yet somehow still manage to be on the road again.
However, 85 in a 55 going from the far left lane to the far right lane, and various lanes in between on the DC beltway means that everyone not doing your speed should just pull over to the shoulder?
Between 7am and 7pm on workdays, if they can drive over 70mph on the Capitol Beltway for more than a mile, they must be using their Spy Hunter weapons to clear a path, so I say, yeah, you should probably pull over.
The only reason kino.to existed was to make advertising money on piracy and the police suspect that kino.to had mutual agreements with the hosters.
Then, they should have issued subpoenas for that information, not sent SWAT teams. Of course, if it turns out the police were completely wrong and kino.to had no direct relationship to the sites that host the files, then they will get heartfelt apologies and compensation for their trouble. And, we'll all be getting ponies.
But aquiring the source material to stream definitely involves piracy.
So, why not shut down the hosting sites? By doing that, kino.to would automatically stop indexing the sites.
If a website doesn't make any effort to remove copyright content after being notified, then it will be much harder for them to defend themselves.
If a website doesn't stream any video (copyrighted or not), how can it "remove content"?
Since the site in TFA is merely an index, it doesn't have any copyrighted material that can be removed. The sites that it indexes might have every movie ever made, and if they were issued take-down notices and did not comply, then maybe there is a reason to shut them down in some other way. But, since nothing in the article mentions anything about contact with the sites that actually host the content, it looks like another case where laws that were purchased by big media are being ignored in favor of thuggish activities. It appears that the media companies could have saved a lot of lobbying money and just went straight to the SWAT teams every time.
In every case, the example is doing exactly what the site in TFA did...indexing copyrighted material. The only difference is that the indexed material is "video streams", while sites like Google tend to index files for download (which is all any website really is).
Just so you know, downing a submarine is easy, but only if you know where it is. Their whole defense system is based, almost purely, on the enemy not knowing their location.
In general, the only people that know the exact location of any US submarine are the people on board. They stay out of contact for long periods of time, and so only their general position is known. And, because of their speed, even when they do report their exact position, it's not long before that's a 50mi diameter area, with excellent sonar only good for about 30-40 miles on even a quickly moving US sub.
It's so fucking easy that you're actually right, somali pirates might actually succeed in downing one of them.
With the general position and many millions of dollars of sonar gear, along with torpedoes that cost more than $2M each, yes, Somali pirates could sink a US submarine. Although depth charges are cheap, without a precise location, they are pretty much useless. Also, there are many submarines in the US fleet that can dive deep enough that a cheap depth charge will crush under the water pressure before it can reach the submarine.
The email system is broken, and has been broken since the start. The problem is that anybody can put any email address they want as the return or reply address, whether it belongs to them or not. There's no verification of identity or "ownership".
This is not a problem with "e-mail". You can replace "e-mail" with "physical mail" everywhere in your statement and it's still true. Before caller ID, the phone system had exactly the same problem (at least until some real crime was committed that rated a trace on a call).
And, both of them still have the same "typo" issue as e-mail does, especially if you have to enter the "address" using a different system (e.g., phone number entered into a website or "account" card at a B&M business).
Try to get firstname.mi.lastname@gmail.com at minimum if you name is really common.
Since periods are ignored in gmail addresses, this might just shift the problem a bit, depending on whether adding a letter to the end of your first name (or beginning of your last) still results in a common name.
Delete it. If it keeps coming through from an individual source, set up a rule to automatically delete it.
And, if you have access to your e-mail server, have the server reject it with a 5xx response code. For one thing, it might get you removed from lists on legitimate sources.
Slashdot Mirror
But here in Australia, publishers still prefer to gouge their customers by only selling dead-tree copies of most quality fiction.
I don't know what paper books cost in Australia, but in the US, e-books are almost never cheaper than the paper version. Since the cost to "print" an e-book is a lot less than the physical one, I don't think it's paper books that are overpriced.
Also, it's not hard to buy a used paper book for 20% of the original MSRP, but I have never seen a "used" e-book for sale.
In any case, the data is out there to figure out whether or not someone is running a lucrative business on the side - very likely with reasonable accuracy (data protection issues notwithstanding).
With access only to public web pages, how, exactly, would a web bot be able to tell that "jimicus" (for example) on eBay was somebody who wasn't paying taxes on the eBay income?
On eBay at least, unless you buy something from a seller, you don't get any information they don't want to tell you, so it would be very hard to connect a somewhat random username to a real person. Even if you did that, then you have to prove that person is keeping the money for themselves, since they could be selling for other people, or it could be an account for the company they work for, etc.
After connecting the dots, you then have to prove that the net income was not properly declared, which means you have to know the original cost of the item, when they bought it, etc. Although this sort of system might find millions of people not properly declaring income, unless every one was avoiding at least a couple thousand in taxes, it'll end up being a net loss for the government.
And if true, someone somewhere who has an IQ bordering on mentally disabled is sitting in a jail cell for a crime he did not commit but confessed to under false pretense
Assuming that you have been advised of your rights, police in the United States are allowed to lie or otherwise mislead you when you are being questioned.
Either you blew through the light which is illegal or you were forced into it via an accident, which would counter the ticket due to the accident report.
Where I live, unless it is a personal injury accident, the police do not take reports...you can't even force them to if you ask. This is probably to avoid them being dragged into court for a purely civil matter between insurance companies.
So which is better, a rear-end collision outside the intersection, or a broadside collision inside the intersection?
Broadside collisions are worse at speed, but in theory we aren't talking about speed here.
Somebody who doesn't "beat the yellow" might be going fast, but it's unlikely that the other direction would have started moving much, especially if there is any "all red" time. I think that most of the really deadly T-bone intersection crashes are because somebody just didn't notice the light was against them, and no technology could help that.
"their relationship to the boundary line of the intersection"
How much more context do you need?
The only thing the pictures show is one with your car across the "stop line" with the light red. They can't show anything else, as they do not take pictures before you cross the stop line regardless of the state of the light.
So, the only "context" you have is that you are across the stop line when the light is red. This, by itself, is not illegal. If you first crossed that line while the light was not red and you did not block the intersection, you have not broken any laws in my state. To get around the issue, most of these cameras will not take a picture until some fraction of a second after the light turns red so that a car traveling under the speed limit cannot have been behind the line when the light changed.
But, if you entered the intersection because of an ambulance, that ambulance is not shown...only your car across the line is shown. So, the context of entering the intersection legally (which it is if you are avoiding an ambulance), is not shown.
In any case, though, the lights are timed based on the speed limit for the road
+1 Funny
There are some places (like New York City) where the lights are all timed so that driving at some speed under the speed limit will allow you to keep seeing greens for a very long stretch, but most of the time the light timings and speed limits are not in sync.
On a local stretch of road about 5 miles long, with a varying 35-45mph limit, if you drive exactly 52mph you can hit every light at the green. If you follow the speed limits exactly (changing when it changes), you will hit about every over light when it is red. Now, it might be possible to hit every light at the green by keeping to 26mph, but then you'd be doing nearly 20 less than the limit at times, and would be a hazard to traffic.
If you keep your three seconds distance and pay attention, you won't rear end anybody.
You've never been in a crowded city, have you? Maintaining a three second gap at 20mph would be 88 feet, or about 8 car-lengths. It would also require you to sit for 3 seconds at a light after the car in front of you moves.
Driving like that might get you beat up or shot in some cities.
I was going to point this out (I've been reading through the replies but haven't seen this obvious point), these simple $3 games for mobile devices can translate over to PCs, especially technologies like flash. Many are small, easy to play games that can hook a wider audience.
Although your point is good, one thing I noticed after getting hooked on "Plants vs. Zombies" after getting it free from Amazon (regularly $2.99) was that the Windows version is $19.99.
Sure, there are more "extras", but the main game is identical, and many of the extras aren't available until you complete the main game once. It might be worth $20 based on time of play, but I suspect that the $3 mobile version will keep me occupied for far more than 15% as long as the Windows version. I think they'd be better off pricing the Windows game at around $5 and adding some sort of DLC where the total outlay would be about $15 if you bought everything. This should do what you suggest, and allow them to hook a wider audience on a huge platform (I think Windows still has more installations than Android and iOS combined).
The second is the FCC - airborne cell phones are illegal, because it messes up with the way the cell network's capacity is allocated. (Multiple cells able to see the same mobile terminal is BAD.)
In cities, pretty much every cell phone is seen by multiple towers, and the algorithms (current tower load, signal strength for a device, etc.) decide which one will handle the connection. Outside the city, you'll have the same issue when you are in the "hole" between towers.
There only differences when using a cell phone in an airplane is that the towers to choose from might be more geographically diverse than usual and change more frequently due to the speed.
Anything that's transmitting on the inside will bounce around like mad until it gets absorbed by something inside, quite likely the cancer-riddled bodies of the passengers.
FTFY
Seriously, if using a cell phone causes brain tumors, then 100 people using cellphones inside a plane before takeoff should cause some serious health issues, what with none of the RF being able to escape.
The fact is, there can be interference (yes, I do trust an Associate Technical Fellow at Boeing more than random slashdotters).
Whether the pronouncement comes from the most educated person in the world or some drooling idiot, it doesn't matter...the statement "there can be interference" will always be true because commercial passenger airplanes can't afford the weight to shield every system 100% against all RF.
That said, without empirical tests, it still doesn't matter who makes the statement. As an example, does an on-board cellphone interfere more or less than the cell tower the plane flies over during landing? What about other external transmitters? What about other systems inside the plane...how much do they interfere compared to a cell phone?
As others have stated, you don't need to test every combination, but you can test some devices with the most measured RF (which can be done without the airplane). Without knowing what can be interfered with, and how much, and how bad that is compared to interference that cannot be controlled, it's all end-user anecdotes, and not very useful information.
"In development" means they put out a press release. It doesn't mean they've spent a dime.
All my information on movie count came from IMDB (not IMDB Pro) for theatrical movies (i.e., nothing with (V) behind it). The box office info is widely known (and trumpeted by the studios and the MPAA). Both are growing.
For not yet released to be listed on IMDB, it needs to have a projected release date (like next year for the Expendables sequel), which usually means that it has some money spent. For release next year, it means that principle photography is likely already done, although they still have a couple of months. For releases in 2013-2014, then at least treatments have been written, but it's likely that actual script drafts have been completed (and writers paid), and possible that a tentative schedule for filming has been blocked out, so that crew can be available.
The only reason that "mass-market studio features" might be declining is because now every studio has 20 "boutique" subsidiaries. This started with Disney and Touchstone to allow them to produce non-G movies (and other studios to pigeon-hole movies, like Warner putting sci-fi under the "New Line" label), but it has now expanded to allow the big studios a chunk of the "indie" money. So, now, only the $200M "blockbusters" get placed under the flagship label, and I think we can all agree that it's a good thing for those to be cut back. We'd all rather see 8 good $25M movies than another "Fast and Furious Transformers of the Caribbean".
Alcohol was a factor in 37% of fatalities in my state
Note that this statistic needs to be taken with a grain of salt, as if anyone in any vehicle involved in an accident is thought to be "impaired" by police, then the accident is reported as "alcohol involved". So, if someone is roaring drunk and calls a cab, and that cab is involved in an accident while carrying the drunk, then it is "alcohol-related".
Likewise, if the police believe that someone was under the influence of alcohol, regardless of any tests, an accident is still classified as "alcohol-related".
The actual reason Drunk driving is a problem is the random deaths on the roads caused by people driving drunk.
So, how do these checkpoints solve the problem?
There would need to be many checkpoints in each city every day, because having them only sometimes would help on that day, but the real problem is that too many people are arrested multiple times for DUI and yet somehow still manage to be on the road again.
However, 85 in a 55 going from the far left lane to the far right lane, and various lanes in between on the DC beltway means that everyone not doing your speed should just pull over to the shoulder?
Between 7am and 7pm on workdays, if they can drive over 70mph on the Capitol Beltway for more than a mile, they must be using their Spy Hunter weapons to clear a path, so I say, yeah, you should probably pull over.
The only reason kino.to existed was to make advertising money on piracy and the police suspect that kino.to had mutual agreements with the hosters.
Then, they should have issued subpoenas for that information, not sent SWAT teams. Of course, if it turns out the police were completely wrong and kino.to had no direct relationship to the sites that host the files, then they will get heartfelt apologies and compensation for their trouble. And, we'll all be getting ponies.
But aquiring the source material to stream definitely involves piracy.
So, why not shut down the hosting sites? By doing that, kino.to would automatically stop indexing the sites.
If a website doesn't make any effort to remove copyright content after being notified, then it will be much harder for them to defend themselves.
If a website doesn't stream any video (copyrighted or not), how can it "remove content"?
Since the site in TFA is merely an index, it doesn't have any copyrighted material that can be removed. The sites that it indexes might have every movie ever made, and if they were issued take-down notices and did not comply, then maybe there is a reason to shut them down in some other way. But, since nothing in the article mentions anything about contact with the sites that actually host the content, it looks like another case where laws that were purchased by big media are being ignored in favor of thuggish activities. It appears that the media companies could have saved a lot of lobbying money and just went straight to the SWAT teams every time.
How, exactly, are these examples "straw man"?
In every case, the example is doing exactly what the site in TFA did...indexing copyrighted material. The only difference is that the indexed material is "video streams", while sites like Google tend to index files for download (which is all any website really is).
Just so you know, downing a submarine is easy, but only if you know where it is. Their whole defense system is based, almost purely, on the enemy not knowing their location.
In general, the only people that know the exact location of any US submarine are the people on board. They stay out of contact for long periods of time, and so only their general position is known. And, because of their speed, even when they do report their exact position, it's not long before that's a 50mi diameter area, with excellent sonar only good for about 30-40 miles on even a quickly moving US sub.
It's so fucking easy that you're actually right, somali pirates might actually succeed in downing one of them.
With the general position and many millions of dollars of sonar gear, along with torpedoes that cost more than $2M each, yes, Somali pirates could sink a US submarine. Although depth charges are cheap, without a precise location, they are pretty much useless. Also, there are many submarines in the US fleet that can dive deep enough that a cheap depth charge will crush under the water pressure before it can reach the submarine.
The email system is broken, and has been broken since the start. The problem is that anybody can put any email address they want as the return or reply address, whether it belongs to them or not. There's no verification of identity or "ownership".
This is not a problem with "e-mail". You can replace "e-mail" with "physical mail" everywhere in your statement and it's still true. Before caller ID, the phone system had exactly the same problem (at least until some real crime was committed that rated a trace on a call).
And, both of them still have the same "typo" issue as e-mail does, especially if you have to enter the "address" using a different system (e.g., phone number entered into a website or "account" card at a B&M business).
But where's the fun in that?
I'm hoping their account creation filter knows this, and doesn't let someone create joe.smith if joesmith already exists.
Why "hope"? This is /., and we expect people who want to know the answer would just test it out.
Try to get firstname.mi.lastname@gmail.com at minimum if you name is really common.
Since periods are ignored in gmail addresses, this might just shift the problem a bit, depending on whether adding a letter to the end of your first name (or beginning of your last) still results in a common name.
Delete it. If it keeps coming through from an individual source, set up a rule to automatically delete it.
And, if you have access to your e-mail server, have the server reject it with a 5xx response code. For one thing, it might get you removed from lists on legitimate sources.