[..] in the US [..] US law [..] US indictment [..] US courts [..] US criminal trial [..] US Federal Court [..] US law [..] US.
Yes; I think we get your point.
I want to introduce you to this new concept; "independent sovereign countries"; Kim was living in New Zealand. He is subject to New Zealand law. Only if New Zealand law says he should be subject to US law can US law apply. So far he NZ judge has said that that has not been demonstrated, and in fact the investigating authorities seem to be criminals who have broken New Zealand law. If that is true then they should be in jail and Mr. Dotcom should walk free.
I rather suspect that KDC is fighting extradition because that's the way due process works. It's embarrassing to find myself having to support him, but that's he way it is if you want the rule of law and not the rule of corporations.
No, the DMCA made it 100% clear that there should no longer be any external access.
This was not a DMCA takedown notice (N.B. not a warrant). It was a warrant in an ongoing investigation. That is completely different and taking any action without direct instructions from the police can be considered as destruction of evidence.
So because she googled for "foolproof suffocation" that makes her automatically guilty in your eyes?
It's a total fuck up to not notice it, and, in the hands of a skilled interrogator almost certainly enough to get a full and convincing confession. If she actually is innocent, which I personally doubt, it's quite likely that explaining this would have made her give a sufficient explanation that the case would never proceed. If she is guilty then all they had to do was to insert it at the right moment when she's given a completely incompatible explanation of events, question her about it and end up with her confessing in a way that they could prove was true. Having said that; if they can make this kind of mess, they would probably get the interrogation wrong too.
I like the idea of removing patented features from the system and putting them in separate paid apps that cost exactly the license share...
Ubuntu had/has something like this. E.g. some hardware and media features required paying. I think it's a pretty neat idea. I don't think it would work for Google directly; people hate having to pay extra to get something that should work. However I just had a thought. I know that in the US they use mail in rebates lots for making things cheaper for those that care. They could have a patent rebate where the features are there, get enabled when you want them, but you can decide you want the money instead and get a rebate to your credit card, in which case the features are disabled until you actually pay for them. Customers would then feel they are getting free money whilst learning about the dangers of patents and having a big motivation to work around it.
Think of the usability though. The user has a working SD card; they put some data on on Windows. They put it in the other device; it "doesn't work". Do they blame the card which works everywhere else or do they blame the device where the card doesn't work?
no SD card = apple = crap
no SD card = google = forgiven
There is a reason for the disappearance of SD cards on phones. That is the patent war Apple started and the FAT patent that Microsoft, Apple's partner in the war, is using to get leverage on electronics vendors. Apple is an ally of Microsoft and has full cross licensing with them. It is completely right to blame Apple for the lack of SD cards which they cased and at the same time, completely right to forgive Google who are victims of Apple and Microsoft just the same as the rest of us.
This is before we remember that Google phones allow you to put your own software on them, not just stuff from some walled garden, including scripts which allow automatic copying to and from your home systems over WiFi and so get rid of much of the need for SD cards anyway. The lack of an SD card on a Google phone is a minor annoyance. On the other walled garden phones it is a crippling misfeature.
It's very difficult to present a coherent position of why a site like MegaUpload/MegaVideo should be allowed to exist.
Oh yeah. How about the very simple:
Everything which is not forbidden is allowed.
This is a fundamental constitutional principle inherited from English law into both US and New Zealand law. Fine, you can claim that Megaupload was illegal. However, if you want to stop it you have to actually prove that. It's not enough to just state it. The FBI seems to be deeply failing to do so.
If this was a matter of preserving the actual files, the FBI could simply download them and preserve them themselves (they are allowed to do that kind of thing in gathering evidence). The only reasonable reason they would need to keep the files in place would be to prove who was downloading them. In this case, blocking access would be interfering with that.
Now, it's theoretically possible that they meant "please preserve the access information for the files and the data whilst blocking downloading because we are so incompetent we can't do it ourselves". However, if they didn't make that 100% clear then they are fully responsible for the consequences.
Entrapment? OK, maybe there was entrapment, but why would the FBI even need to do that? Megaupload was swamped with freely downloadable copyrighted material. Users paying for premium access to download that stuff was Megaload's cheif source of income.
Most likely because, any time someone gave them a correct notice, Megaupload would delete that stuff on demand. This means that what they were doing was legal under the terms of the DMCA and equivalent rules all around the world. The FBI needed a way to interfere with that process so that Megaupload would behave "illegally" so that by the time they found out about the trick, the FBI would have got some dirt on them (on the principle that everybody is guilty; they just don't know it yet).
That's kind of what I was thinking. Why would a frozen turkey contain any more water than a thawed turkey. I had no idea that they put extra water in the frozen ones to jack up the price. Of course, we only buy fresh, (never frozen) turkeys for thanksgiving, and for almost all our meat.
Okay, so I got curious after this. Given that we are talking about thanksgiving turkeys, so the US, I found the USDA explanation. Summary. No actual water injection. Apparently no glazing like seafood. However 12% or so "retained water" or "absorbed water" should be declared on the label and things like "up to 10% of a Solution" may be used to help with flavour. The poultry its self likely has more than 65% water, but I guess that is normally more bound up with the meat, since it doesn't cause a problem in normal deep frying. The same sheet mentions that freezing damages cells and releases water. This
cryogenic freezing sales brochure mentions up to 5% of water being released.
So, a typical US frozen turkey could be up to 25% extra frozen water by weight and quite likely up to 28% available water when dropped in to the fat. That compares to a "normal dry cleaned" (normal, cleaned, dry) frozen turkey at about 5%.
I can see we need some serious experiments by an American Slashdotter equipped with a very large back yard appropriate fire equipment and a strong set of safe experimental experience.
throw an ice cube in any amount of hot oil and you will quickly see how much that shit jumps and bubbles up
This is nothing special. If you can get a decent quantity of water under a pan of ignited oil (just pouring it on top works - remember water denser than oil) then you can get a pretty good fireball. I've seen it done with a few tens of grams of oil and a decent water-pistol - that was enough (in the sort of "don't do this at home kids" sort of sense of enough).
What I'm really curious about is whether this would happen with a normal dry cleaned turkey straightforwardly frozen or if it's extra water added to bulk up the weight by the companies that sell frozen food?
I wish these guys were in charge of gnome. Talk about getting it.
A quick question; why can't I have both mate and cinnamon installed on the same system. I'd have thought that was the most obvious gnome stupidity to get rid of?
A regular DNA test has about 1/10000 success rate, but I would think that one can run a more thorough test (for a cost) that is much more precise than that. DNA doesn't have that collision rate.
That's the theoretical rate based on calculating the genetics of the population; it assumes that you run the scan perfectly. In fact labs make mistakes and cross contamination happens. This is something where the basic principle of science; actually do the experiment and see; must override the theory.
When people actually the lab error rate for genetic tests they get numbers like 1.7 in 1000measured false positive rate. If you know a set of results where independent blind testing of the Dutch police DNA system has returned better results, please point to your peer reviewed study which shows so. I believe that most police labs aren't even subject to blind testing, so an even higher error rate should be expected.
Given that the chance of a false positive is normally between 1 in 100 and 1 in 1000 in DNA tests (this is based on cases where people have actually tested labs by sending them known matching and non matching samples - not the statistics of DNA) and they have carried out 8000 tests, that's pretty likely. Most likely they had multiple false positives, but he's the one which repeated when they retested. If he was actually guilty he probably wouldn't hand his sample in.
The most likely explanation, given that he's a farmer, is that his DNA was present on some food the lab technician put next to the original sample. Now there's no way he can prove his innocence (were were you on the 1st of May 1999? can you prove that?). He's fucked. Serves him right for trusting the police.
Let's see if the Dutch police actually investigate or if they just assume his guilt. From what I've seen whilst probably honest they're pretty narrow minded.
Look up session musicians. Most RIAA "artists" are chosen for their looks. Giving money to RIAA labels is (mostly) supporting the true "pirates" of the music seas. If you want to support artists, go see a band playing live. Even then, avoid major label bands who nowadays have to sign over their concert rights.
I'd agree there. It's an awful piece of writing which the university should be ashamed of. However it doesn't actually say anything threatening and if they did try it on they would lose of ever pushed to it.
this page this page is more coherent, laying out the "hostile environment" terms. Whether harassment has occurred is "judged both objectively and subjectively", which is another way of saying "No Men Allowed."
I definitely support the principle that "The issue is not whether you are paranoid, the issue is whether you are paranoid enough" but in this case you are being paranoid;-) The fact is though, that this is basically just a direct cut'n paste from Davis, the related supreme court judgement. For the University it's saying we match exactly what the supreme court told us to do. For real life it's saying that you can't be done for harassment just because some delicate flower felt harassed; you have to actually objectively harass them. It's also saying that if they were (literally) asking for it and don't feel that they were harassed, it's still okay even if, according to the objective standards you could have been said to be harassing them.
In other words, this particular statement is pretty much 100% on the side of sanity and definitely doesn't mean "man == harasser", however much Andrea Dworkin might wish it to mean that.
Yes, but the whole point of my comment is that, in this case, it has not found acorns but worthless stones. And now it's trying to get us to eat them.
My oldest made the comment that "children are nothing but a black hole of need." Some PC idiot said "you can't say that, that's racist." The teacher walked by and told her that she wasn't to make such racist comments in the future (and threatened her with explosion).
Universities are no longer liberal institutions where ideas can be freely discussed. Idiocy and censorship do abound. But feel free to shoot the messenger and ignore the problem.
I like your story; it's almost as good as some of the ones around niggardly. How about you set her up with a decent portable video camera or two, and arrange a repeat situation. Let's see if we can get the idiot teacher exploded[sic] from her job instead.
The writer is selecting the parts that support the thesis, but says nothing inaccurate. The policy does in fact threaten sanctions for a "condescending sex-based attitude".
a) the writer says it is considered harassment to hold a "condescending sex-based attitude." where actually harassment is defined as unwelcome sexual conduct which is related to any condition of employment or evaluation of student performance. So the writer is actually saying something "inaccurate"
b) I can't see any sanctions clearly linked to not being "sensitive" which is the only context where this occurs. Now, I am not a lawyer, so I'm quite willing to bow to your 'expert' opinion, however please do explain how you parse the policy so that you see sanctions linked to a "condescending sex-based attitude". I have no doubt that my fascination will be fully aroused by your explanation.
"If my guy does it, you're just overreacting if you disagree," and "if their guy does it, it's automatically suspect, move along, nothing to see."
Except, you and the guy you are supporting are completely wrong about what's going on here. This really is a Murdock propaganda piece. Look, sometimes a person is reliably and consistently stupid and evil. This means saying "oh, I'm sure Ghengis isn't riding towards those young girls to be nice to them" is not prejudice, just justifiable wisdom. Now your point would be really great if this was an exception. But let's see what I find if I look it up.
WSJ:
At Western Michigan University, it is considered harassment to hold a "condescending sex-based attitude."
Actual policy (I'm not going to include the context here; please read yourself):
Sexual harassment is defined as unwelcome sexual conduct which is related to any condition of employment or evaluation of student performance.
and in a separate paragraph near to but not related to the definition of harassment, the only use of the word condescending:
All persons should be sensitive to situations that may affect or cause the recipient discomfort or humiliation or may display a condescending sex-based attitude towards a person.
If something is put in a media outlet which belongs to Murdock, assuming that the truth is the opposite will only make you wrong about 10% of the time. In this case, it's about Murdock trying to attack the freedom of speech of the people at universities.
I think you are talking "moral" justification. I was talking legal. Unfortunately the TSA does have wide powers to stop and search and "I'm stupid and don't understand electronics" is a sufficient legal justification for an extra search (know as "suspicious"). What matters is that, once the guy is shown to be innocent then he should be left alone.
Morally, of course, the guy should be allowed to travel freely in the way that he wants without harassment. That's a different argument and I'm with you on that one. It needs to be tempered with measures that make it difficult to use a plane as a weapon, however locked cockpit doors are the correct measure here, where x-ray machines and TSA guards have almost nothing to say.
Slashdot Mirror
[..] in the US [..] US law [..] US indictment [..] US courts [..] US criminal trial [..] US Federal Court [..] US law [..] US.
Yes; I think we get your point.
I want to introduce you to this new concept; "independent sovereign countries"; Kim was living in New Zealand. He is subject to New Zealand law. Only if New Zealand law says he should be subject to US law can US law apply. So far he NZ judge has said that that has not been demonstrated, and in fact the investigating authorities seem to be criminals who have broken New Zealand law. If that is true then they should be in jail and Mr. Dotcom should walk free.
I rather suspect that KDC is fighting extradition because that's the way due process works. It's embarrassing to find myself having to support him, but that's he way it is if you want the rule of law and not the rule of corporations.
No, the DMCA made it 100% clear that there should no longer be any external access.
This was not a DMCA takedown notice (N.B. not a warrant). It was a warrant in an ongoing investigation. That is completely different and taking any action without direct instructions from the police can be considered as destruction of evidence.
So because she googled for "foolproof suffocation" that makes her automatically guilty in your eyes?
It's a total fuck up to not notice it, and, in the hands of a skilled interrogator almost certainly enough to get a full and convincing confession. If she actually is innocent, which I personally doubt, it's quite likely that explaining this would have made her give a sufficient explanation that the case would never proceed. If she is guilty then all they had to do was to insert it at the right moment when she's given a completely incompatible explanation of events, question her about it and end up with her confessing in a way that they could prove was true. Having said that; if they can make this kind of mess, they would probably get the interrogation wrong too.
feeling
You are assuming something for which there is little evidence.
I like the idea of removing patented features from the system and putting them in separate paid apps that cost exactly the license share...
Ubuntu had/has something like this. E.g. some hardware and media features required paying. I think it's a pretty neat idea. I don't think it would work for Google directly; people hate having to pay extra to get something that should work. However I just had a thought. I know that in the US they use mail in rebates lots for making things cheaper for those that care. They could have a patent rebate where the features are there, get enabled when you want them, but you can decide you want the money instead and get a rebate to your credit card, in which case the features are disabled until you actually pay for them. Customers would then feel they are getting free money whilst learning about the dangers of patents and having a big motivation to work around it.
Think of the usability though. The user has a working SD card; they put some data on on Windows. They put it in the other device; it "doesn't work". Do they blame the card which works everywhere else or do they blame the device where the card doesn't work?
no SD card = apple = crap no SD card = google = forgiven
There is a reason for the disappearance of SD cards on phones. That is the patent war Apple started and the FAT patent that Microsoft, Apple's partner in the war, is using to get leverage on electronics vendors. Apple is an ally of Microsoft and has full cross licensing with them. It is completely right to blame Apple for the lack of SD cards which they cased and at the same time, completely right to forgive Google who are victims of Apple and Microsoft just the same as the rest of us.
This is before we remember that Google phones allow you to put your own software on them, not just stuff from some walled garden, including scripts which allow automatic copying to and from your home systems over WiFi and so get rid of much of the need for SD cards anyway. The lack of an SD card on a Google phone is a minor annoyance. On the other walled garden phones it is a crippling misfeature.
It's very difficult to present a coherent position of why a site like MegaUpload/MegaVideo should be allowed to exist.
Oh yeah. How about the very simple:
This is a fundamental constitutional principle inherited from English law into both US and New Zealand law. Fine, you can claim that Megaupload was illegal. However, if you want to stop it you have to actually prove that. It's not enough to just state it. The FBI seems to be deeply failing to do so.
If this was a matter of preserving the actual files, the FBI could simply download them and preserve them themselves (they are allowed to do that kind of thing in gathering evidence). The only reasonable reason they would need to keep the files in place would be to prove who was downloading them. In this case, blocking access would be interfering with that.
Now, it's theoretically possible that they meant "please preserve the access information for the files and the data whilst blocking downloading because we are so incompetent we can't do it ourselves". However, if they didn't make that 100% clear then they are fully responsible for the consequences.
DMCA is a US law. Megaupload wasn't a US site.
The FBI is trying to charge him under US law. Without the warrant trick, the DMCA would stop them from doing that.
Entrapment? OK, maybe there was entrapment, but why would the FBI even need to do that? Megaupload was swamped with freely downloadable copyrighted material. Users paying for premium access to download that stuff was Megaload's cheif source of income.
Most likely because, any time someone gave them a correct notice, Megaupload would delete that stuff on demand. This means that what they were doing was legal under the terms of the DMCA and equivalent rules all around the world. The FBI needed a way to interfere with that process so that Megaupload would behave "illegally" so that by the time they found out about the trick, the FBI would have got some dirt on them (on the principle that everybody is guilty; they just don't know it yet).
You know how long it takes to create an "app"? About a week. You can always catch up because it takes minimal investment to get an app.
You are the guy getting all the Windows App bounties; aren't you?
That's kind of what I was thinking. Why would a frozen turkey contain any more water than a thawed turkey. I had no idea that they put extra water in the frozen ones to jack up the price. Of course, we only buy fresh, (never frozen) turkeys for thanksgiving, and for almost all our meat.
Okay, so I got curious after this. Given that we are talking about thanksgiving turkeys, so the US, I found the USDA explanation. Summary. No actual water injection. Apparently no glazing like seafood. However 12% or so "retained water" or "absorbed water" should be declared on the label and things like "up to 10% of a Solution" may be used to help with flavour. The poultry its self likely has more than 65% water, but I guess that is normally more bound up with the meat, since it doesn't cause a problem in normal deep frying. The same sheet mentions that freezing damages cells and releases water. This cryogenic freezing sales brochure mentions up to 5% of water being released.
So, a typical US frozen turkey could be up to 25% extra frozen water by weight and quite likely up to 28% available water when dropped in to the fat. That compares to a "normal dry cleaned" (normal, cleaned, dry) frozen turkey at about 5%.
I can see we need some serious experiments by an American Slashdotter equipped with a very large back yard appropriate fire equipment and a strong set of safe experimental experience.
Damnit; Grammar fail. I will read Eats, Shoots & Leaves again as a form of self punishment. I promise.
throw an ice cube in any amount of hot oil and you will quickly see how much that shit jumps and bubbles up
This is nothing special. If you can get a decent quantity of water under a pan of ignited oil (just pouring it on top works - remember water denser than oil) then you can get a pretty good fireball. I've seen it done with a few tens of grams of oil and a decent water-pistol - that was enough (in the sort of "don't do this at home kids" sort of sense of enough).
What I'm really curious about is whether this would happen with a normal dry cleaned turkey straightforwardly frozen or if it's extra water added to bulk up the weight by the companies that sell frozen food?
I wish these guys were in charge of gnome. Talk about getting it.
A quick question; why can't I have both mate and cinnamon installed on the same system. I'd have thought that was the most obvious gnome stupidity to get rid of?
A regular DNA test has about 1/10000 success rate, but I would think that one can run a more thorough test (for a cost) that is much more precise than that. DNA doesn't have that collision rate.
That's the theoretical rate based on calculating the genetics of the population; it assumes that you run the scan perfectly. In fact labs make mistakes and cross contamination happens. This is something where the basic principle of science; actually do the experiment and see; must override the theory.
When people actually the lab error rate for genetic tests they get numbers like 1.7 in 1000 measured false positive rate. If you know a set of results where independent blind testing of the Dutch police DNA system has returned better results, please point to your peer reviewed study which shows so. I believe that most police labs aren't even subject to blind testing, so an even higher error rate should be expected.
What if it's a false positive?
Given that the chance of a false positive is normally between 1 in 100 and 1 in 1000 in DNA tests (this is based on cases where people have actually tested labs by sending them known matching and non matching samples - not the statistics of DNA) and they have carried out 8000 tests, that's pretty likely. Most likely they had multiple false positives, but he's the one which repeated when they retested. If he was actually guilty he probably wouldn't hand his sample in.
The most likely explanation, given that he's a farmer, is that his DNA was present on some food the lab technician put next to the original sample. Now there's no way he can prove his innocence (were were you on the 1st of May 1999? can you prove that?). He's fucked. Serves him right for trusting the police.
Let's see if the Dutch police actually investigate or if they just assume his guilt. From what I've seen whilst probably honest they're pretty narrow minded.
Look up session musicians. Most RIAA "artists" are chosen for their looks. Giving money to RIAA labels is (mostly) supporting the true "pirates" of the music seas. If you want to support artists, go see a band playing live. Even then, avoid major label bands who nowadays have to sign over their concert rights.
I don't think it's clear at all there,
I'd agree there. It's an awful piece of writing which the university should be ashamed of. However it doesn't actually say anything threatening and if they did try it on they would lose of ever pushed to it.
this page this page is more coherent, laying out the "hostile environment" terms. Whether harassment has occurred is "judged both objectively and subjectively", which is another way of saying "No Men Allowed."
I definitely support the principle that "The issue is not whether you are paranoid, the issue is whether you are paranoid enough" but in this case you are being paranoid ;-) The fact is though, that this is basically just a direct cut'n paste from Davis, the related supreme court judgement. For the University it's saying we match exactly what the supreme court told us to do. For real life it's saying that you can't be done for harassment just because some delicate flower felt harassed; you have to actually objectively harass them. It's also saying that if they were (literally) asking for it and don't feel that they were harassed, it's still okay even if, according to the objective standards you could have been said to be harassing them.
In other words, this particular statement is pretty much 100% on the side of sanity and definitely doesn't mean "man == harasser", however much Andrea Dworkin might wish it to mean that.
Even a blind pig occasionally finds acorns.
Yes, but the whole point of my comment is that, in this case, it has not found acorns but worthless stones. And now it's trying to get us to eat them.
My oldest made the comment that "children are nothing but a black hole of need." Some PC idiot said "you can't say that, that's racist." The teacher walked by and told her that she wasn't to make such racist comments in the future (and threatened her with explosion).
Universities are no longer liberal institutions where ideas can be freely discussed. Idiocy and censorship do abound. But feel free to shoot the messenger and ignore the problem.
I like your story; it's almost as good as some of the ones around niggardly. How about you set her up with a decent portable video camera or two, and arrange a repeat situation. Let's see if we can get the idiot teacher exploded[sic] from her job instead.
The writer is selecting the parts that support the thesis, but says nothing inaccurate. The policy does in fact threaten sanctions for a "condescending sex-based attitude".
a) the writer says it is considered harassment to hold a "condescending sex-based attitude." where actually harassment is defined as unwelcome sexual conduct which is related to any condition of employment or evaluation of student performance. So the writer is actually saying something "inaccurate"
b) I can't see any sanctions clearly linked to not being "sensitive" which is the only context where this occurs. Now, I am not a lawyer, so I'm quite willing to bow to your 'expert' opinion, however please do explain how you parse the policy so that you see sanctions linked to a "condescending sex-based attitude". I have no doubt that my fascination will be fully aroused by your explanation.
"All persons should be sensitive"
Complete and utter hogwash.....blah blah....
Are you saying that they should or shouldn't be allowed to say that?
"If my guy does it, you're just overreacting if you disagree," and "if their guy does it, it's automatically suspect, move along, nothing to see."
Except, you and the guy you are supporting are completely wrong about what's going on here. This really is a Murdock propaganda piece. Look, sometimes a person is reliably and consistently stupid and evil. This means saying "oh, I'm sure Ghengis isn't riding towards those young girls to be nice to them" is not prejudice, just justifiable wisdom. Now your point would be really great if this was an exception. But let's see what I find if I look it up.
WSJ:
Actual policy (I'm not going to include the context here; please read yourself):
and in a separate paragraph near to but not related to the definition of harassment, the only use of the word condescending:
If something is put in a media outlet which belongs to Murdock, assuming that the truth is the opposite will only make you wrong about 10% of the time. In this case, it's about Murdock trying to attack the freedom of speech of the people at universities.
I think you are talking "moral" justification. I was talking legal. Unfortunately the TSA does have wide powers to stop and search and "I'm stupid and don't understand electronics" is a sufficient legal justification for an extra search (know as "suspicious"). What matters is that, once the guy is shown to be innocent then he should be left alone.
Morally, of course, the guy should be allowed to travel freely in the way that he wants without harassment. That's a different argument and I'm with you on that one. It needs to be tempered with measures that make it difficult to use a plane as a weapon, however locked cockpit doors are the correct measure here, where x-ray machines and TSA guards have almost nothing to say.