And YOU are making it into a binary argument. "Since you can't effectively control what others do, then you have no say about your data whatsever."
If this were true, then wirefraud wouldn't be illegal.
The mere fact that it IS illegal, makes the "ordering 50 pizza's in somebody else's name" reference you just made specious as fuck.
Likewise, there are laws that at least TRY to restrict the distribution of priviledged data and information against the owners wishes. Or have you had your head up your ass this whole time about the DMCA and berne copyright?
Perhaps you feel patient-doctor confidentiality is "quaint", and that the laws forbidding doctors revealing all their patient's dirty laundry to "interested parties" don't fucking exist?
The error you make is ascribing a boolean Yes/No to this situation. The proper data type is double float.
If the regex nukes only his own posts, and any quoted portions of his posts, replacing it with "User has exercised his or her right to be forgotten. This post deleted." Over and over again, doe NOT remove "your" side of an argument, on whatever service or forum you post on. Your quotes will just end up looking silly, and you will just end up looking like a douche.
Nothing would prevent you from keeping your own personal version of the dialog for personal posterity, but your redistributing it after the other party has expressly stated that they do not authorize such, runs foul of not only this civil liberty, but also copyright law, and as such is *already* illegal.
Personally, I like some (SOME! Not all!) Of the features of this right to be forgotten. But in a lot of cases, a better solution is just to allow users to set privacy restrictions on content they provide, and then actually fucking obey them.
Contrary to the behavior of many social networking sites, landlords can't randomly decide to sell their rentors' stuff on a whim, nor rifle through their posessions, papers and effects, just because they own the property on which those items are stored.
Simply enforcing such things, and treating all uploads as being defacto unauthorized for marketing purposes unless explicity flagged and personally endorsed as such would basically remove almost all need for this, other than for getting old forum posts redacted.
Again, your appeal to freedom of speech about block quotation runs headfirst into current copyright law, since it is written text, and has natural copyright ascribed to its author, and not to you. Your ability to quote and use it is already limited to fair use only. You can make a parody of the post, and that can stay, but any direct quotations that don't fall inside fair use are flat out not authorized, and not protected.
You can call the person wanting the scrub job done a douche and anything else you want, but your rights end where his begin, and vice versa. If you parody his post, its totally safe, for example.
Of course, large regular expressions filters would already exclude parodies, since they aren't identical.:D
How is it impossible, other than it happens to be a conflict of interest for you?
Much like people provide records to medical institutions because it is necessary to get quality healthcare, people provide online merchants their address, telephone, and credit card numbers to make purchases and get deliveries. Nowhere in the tranaction is there even so much as a checkbox that says "yes, remember this purchase so you can suggest simular items, and share this purchase experience with other merchants." Instead, the push is to consider this "just a given! Our customers WANT this! Nevermind the sounds of the angry mob outside, that's just your imagination."
Technologically I don't see how this is hard either. Keeping the data for law enforcement subpoenas for a limited time, and pretending it doesn't exist is a far cry from embedding spybugs in your fucking checkout page so that the "user experience" extends to other site visits as well.
The latter is like putting a GPS tracking bug on the pricetags at a shopping center, so you know where else the customer shops that day.
Yet, that is EXACTLY what ad network tracing cookies do, EXACTLY what that bullshit "facebook button" does, etc.
I don't want that, I don't want the service, I don't want your ads, I don't want to be profiled, just because I casually look at a news link, etc.
I am not alone, and the EU seems to agree that you shouldn't presume I have agreed by default.
That this makes your life harder as a dev is just tough shit.
I am well aware of such ToS. I don't subscribe to such services. I don't use twitter, I don't use facebook, I don't use G+, I don't use any such service.
Yet, because OTHER people post information about me on things like their facebook page, my information gets vacuumed up and sold wholesale, just as if I had signed their ToS.
Requireing the equivalent of a model release for second and third hand data would put a very effective stop to that shit, and would actually make the data collected more valuable, because after being resold, it would be encumbered with the need to seek releases from all the people involved. This would make unencumbered data much more valuable. It would ctually HELP the industry.
If I walk into a porno set, and say I want to be in the porno, then I have to take the std test, and sign the release. That's no different from somebody going to Facebook and saying they want to be on the site, and agreeing to the ToS.
What I object to, is being put in the porno against my wishes, because somebody else supplied the director with footage.
No release, don't collect the data. It is not fucking hard. Just grep the username list to see if the person's name is associated with an account, if it isn't, don't use the image or data.
So, your argument, reframed to suit the analogy, is that the child pornographers offer lots of "free" candy and narcotics that people have gotten used to, and without the money flow from selling tight prepubescent ass to perverts, the prices for those products will go up, and people won't be able to afford them.
Forgive me when I say that very little of real value will be lost.
The civil right here, is the right to be forgotten online, meaning, the right to have your previous history expunged, and also the right to not have data collected without permission.
It's no different from whipping out a camera, photographing people who didn't sign a model release, and then lucratizing the photos in ways the people photoed don't endorse, just because they happened to be outside, or were wearing a certain brand of clothing.
Just so you know, the above is fucking illegal as hell, and people DO have legal right to demand the destruction of such imagery. (As far as I know, in bot the EU and the US.)
This is simply an expansion of the same basic premise, that you have a right to privacy, a right to not be exploited against your wishes, etc.
Proper enfocement would be to fine the fuck out of companies that refuse to comply, and persist in warehousing data.
I agree, just like it is illegal for me to set up a camera in your bathroom and then sell the pictures of you in the shower.
That is basically what the internet is right now, a big public bath house where people can see all the naughty bits.
There is money to be made by taking pictures and selling them. (That's basically what collecting personal information without permission and selling it as a bulk aggregate is. "Anonymizing" the picture by not affixing a name, and shuffling it in with hundreds of others doesn't stop you from taking the picture and selling it. Making the photography illegal, and enforcing it, makes people who peddle such wares either criminal, or highly regulated and on the up and up. Much like the legitimate porn industry, vs 3rd world sex slave racketeers.)
The comparison isn't hard. Getting people to feel violated by being the equivalent of an ameture porn star for taking a shower, but because their data was exposed and whored out IS hard.
These weasly tactics, like saying "it gives people a false impression [of safety]" are just horseshit. Just apply the same rhetoric toward rape, and see the absurdity.
Its like saing "if you don't want to get raped, don't walk on the sidewalk at night."
Let's see here. We have the EU defining a legal civil right. The corporate world says "oh noez! We can't do that! Our business model is BASED around violating that civil right! We totally can't just delete all that precious and lucrative data just because some prudes don't want to be included!"
If we adapt this, and replace some other legally recognized civil right, like say-- the right to the sanctity of one's own body, the absurdity of this attestment becomes painfully clear.
"Oh noez! We can't do that, our business model is BASED on forcing prepubescent children to perform sexual services without getting any permission of compensation! We can't just let those very lucrative child prostitutes go just because some prudes don't want to take diseased cock all day! We make our money selling child prostitution services! These so called "rights" are completely unworkable! How can we sell reliable prostitution services if we can't force people to be whores for us!?"
Seriously. That's what I see when I see these kinds of arguments. If your business mode revolves round violating other people's rights, then you DON'T have any right to perform that line of business. The fact that it is "unworkable" is fucking INTENTIONAL.
See, he provided his "intellectual property" with the limited terms that it would not be used to produce any derivative works whatsoever, and was provided as is, non transferable, and only for the specific activity specified, under the binding verbally contractual agreement that no such unauthorized reproduction or derivative works would be made, and that if it occured out of negligence on her part to control her own reproductive equipment, the onus of any burden would be entirely hers.
Her attempt at seeking support payments constitutes willful breach of contractual obligations, and she is seeking financial remedies she is not entitled to! Client seeks a restraining order, and official immunity from further illegal remuneration attempts via the court!
(Gawd I feel so dirty! Is this what being a lawyer feels like? Gawd I'm glad I didn't study law... as usual, IANAL, etc.)
Jello brand jello is distinct from other brands of "gelatin desert product."
At least here in flyoverland USA the term "jello" is suitably generic, and covers all brands of fruit flavored gelatin.
Similarly with "coke" being generic for almost all kinds of soda, though "pop" is also commonly used. It retains specific brand meaning when used with other flavorings, like "cherry coke" though.
I would argue that genericisation happens when a product becomes ubiquitous. Jello was basically the pioneer of chill to set fruit flavored gelatin products, and as such, the desert itself has become synonymous with the brand.
SPAM is another such product in danger of being genericised, by being the archetype for "potted pork shoulder processed meat product." It's just easier to say "spam", and everyone immediately knows what you are talking about.
Rather than force (IIRC, hormel foods?) To lose the spam trademark, or the jello company to lose thiers, simply because they have products that epitomize and set the standard by which copycats are measured by, it would be better to simply forbid commercial language publications from encroaching on the name.
I would be happy with the following language, for instance:
"Jello(tm) brand jello; the first and finest maker of commercial gelatin products."
Vs
"Newcastle fruit flavor gelatin. Offering 50 delicious and inexpensive flavors snce 1976." (Apologies if there really is such a company. Date pulled out of ass.)
Eg, just because people use "jello" to refer to all "clear gelatin deserts" in an informal fashion, shouldn't mean that Newcastle can call its product jello in commercial literature. Jello is important as a word because of the jello brand jello being ubiquitous, and the product archetype. All others aspire to be jello, but are not.
Additionally, "jello" specifically is the clear, fruit flavored desert kind. "Gelatin" can be either a coating on pills to help you swallow them, a powdered stabilizer, envelope sealant emulsion, a bacterial culture medium, an explosive composition, etc. When you say "I want jello", you mean you want the fruit flavored desert. When you say "I want gelatin", the meaning is far more ambiguous. Do you want powdered gelatin? Blasting gelatin? Gelatin culture medium? Emulsion for photo paper? You get the idea. Jello is a gelatin product, but not all gelatin products are jello. I have yet to see jello brand gelatinized explosives.:D
The law is retarded if it doesn't segregate common and commercial use of the term.
Hmm.. sounds similar to the 5 sec one I saw in Feb then. It looked a lot like a white phosphorus shell, and was equally bright. Lit up the whole area, which is what caught my attention while driving home that night.
Prior to that, the brightest I had seen this year was a lovely green one that lasted about 1 sec.
Don't get me wrong, I don't to be bag on anyone, and 8sec is a very long lived object, but it still isn't anything to be seriously concerned about. Just smile because you got to see something cool, and move on.
But really now.. I have seen many fall this year driving home from work. One even lasted 5 seconds before burning out, and was brilliant white. (Saw it sometime in February.)
Do people on the coasts just have so much light pollution that anything other than a jumbojet or helicopter with running lights on causes excitement? Seriously, meteors happen all the time. The one that fell over russia was especially large, and had a lot of energy. That's why it was news. This one over the east coast just sounds like your garden variety to me.
I dont know what the substance is with any real certainty. From personal experience, the same substance coats the walls and other surfaces of their living space as well, and they tend to have unholy disgusting and filthy houses.
(After digging around on the internet, I found a picture from somebody's blog that was dealing with it on a flipped house. Pic) It could be niccotine/tobacco related, but it actually binds permanently with metal, requiring something like brasso to remove it if you use chemicals, or lots of elbow grease and an abrasive cleansing pad otherwise. Since you cant use chemical cleansers of that sort inside a computer (unless you are an idiot)-- you have to go the physically abrasive method, and be patient. I did repair work for 4 years, and have seen this substance perhaps, 20 times, with differing levels of severity. Only about 3 times in the "OMG! WHAT IS IT!?" level of contamination. Dust is not dust in such computers. It is more like thick tar. Again, there is a correlation with old, and or seriously dirty/disgusting low income housing.
I suspect that it is a combination of skin oils, old lacquer resins, vaporized cooking oils, and the like, and that the dog's proximity just allows the oil based dog smell to stick really good.. but i really dont know for sure. I just know it is not good for computers or electronics in general.
In some cases, yes. In others... No. Not when the whole inside of the case smells like wet dog. Tobacco film doesn't smell like that. Personal experience is that "dog funk" happens when the PC owner has one of those nasty long haired little toy dogs, and puts the pet bed for said dog right there next to the PC on the floor. Intake ports get clogged with pet hair, and nasty dog smelling oily filth builds up inside.
Cats usually just have hair and dander. Dogs make oil. It's nasty. Don't let your dog lounge around next to running computers. Please.
Also, regular use of a deep fryer greatly increases the chances of a "funk" related failure. Please avoid creating hazy fogs of volatized cooking oil in your house.
Assuming the unit is in a nice, clean, and properly maintained environment, there should never be any reason to do anythiing at all to a card edge connector, or to its slot.
However, people are fucking slobs, and put computers in places they should never be placed. They suck in all kinds of horrible filth, and some very "interesting" (from a chemical standpoint) things can happen.
One noteworthy one I encountered more than once when I did professional PC repair, was the "disgusting oily film" buildup that happens when computers are kept in filthy bedrooms, dormatories, or around pets (dogs especially). This "funk", for lack of a better word, coats everything inside, causes dirt to adhere, is mildly corrosive in and of itself, and causes a kind of "organic patina" to form on edge connectors and ports.
That shit is nasty, and chemically binds to the metal, altering the conductivity of the edge connector pad, and causing very intermittent and irritating problems.
RAM is especially susceptible to "funk" buildup, and can cause some really irritating and difficult to reproduce/diagnose errors.
I found that a white vinyl eraser (made for archival paper, acid free, pumice free) on card edges can safely and efficiently clean the funk off. Just do so gently, and with slow motions to avoid static exchanges on the card's contact pads.
Usually, cleaning the card edge is enough. Occasionally though, the "funk" contamination is so extreme (literally, it is fucking "sticky and brown" inside! Blch!) That you will be presented with having to decide between telling the customer that their fucking filthy living conditions have ruined their computer and that they need a new one, (and for whatever reason, the people to which this applies are always dead ass broke and can't afford such a solution) or you have to grit your teeth, put on some nitrile gloves, and gently clean the slots as well in order for anything to fucking work even half-assedly.
In case of the latter, you offer to attempt cleaning under the firmly and fully understood condition that this is not something that can be waranteed, is dangerous, and can totally hose the computer permanently. Literally, at this point the options are replacement, or hairbrained cleaning, with the slim prospect that a few more months or years of service can be squeezed out. Eg, the system is beyond normal help, the preferred solution is replacement, but if they can't afford that, this is the only alternative, and that you won't do warantee work if it fails later, and that you refuse to be held liable for damages. If they agree, then you can proceed. Otherwise close it up and send them on their merry way with their box of filth.
In the unfortunate event that they agree to those terms, you can half-assedly clean a PCI slot with one of those cellulose sponge business cards. (Essentially a tightly pressed dry cellulose sponge, cut to the size of a businss card, and printed as such. They are a novelty product, but are also conveniently the right combination of chemical free mild abrasive, nonconductive, disposable, and correct thickness.) This process can only be performed once. It is not something I ever suggest doing, because PCI slots are precision made, and jamming things in there is simply not smart. Again, this is only for a system where it has been determined it is beyond normal help, and in all seriousness should be at a recycling center, and not your repair shop, and where everyone involved knows painfully well that this is a kludge to squeeze a few more hours out of it, and nothing else.
Ram slots are even more sensitive. Before cleaning, remove the cpu from the socket. Leave the board plugged in, but turned off. Cross your fingers, and pray to whatever deity you feel most appropriate. If you have to clean the ram slot, it is almost assuredly a lost cause anyway.
I have actually revived many machines this way, which is quite surprising. Many more than were killed by the attempt. Again, not recommended. Only for ex
I don't mind paying for bridges, roads, police officers, and other such vital services. In fact, if I could see a garantee that the money collected went for *those things*, and not "senator Taint Brownstain's new fantastic porkbarrel boondoggle that 'so totally isn't the pro quo from quid pro quo'", I wouldn't complain about taxation.
However, since all fed tax money gets stirred up in a big pot, I get no such assurances.
I don't like financing the killing of brown people, just because I want paved roads, for instance.
Again, that is because of region locking itself. Removing the DRM from the picture completely, such as with the wood pulp based textbooks so that we don't have to deal with absurd legislation about redistribution, (since region locking is straight up protectionism and market manipulation.) And suddenly the comparison between the textbooks and the DVDs becomes much different.
If you can't hande apples to oranges, try this: region free dvds with different sales prices.
I buy the region free dvds that are made that way at the factory in china, via a chinese wholesale dealer, and get them for way below my local wholesale cost. I then sell the shit out of them locally for way cheaper than in the store, and they sell like hotcakes.
That is not illegal, even in the EU. This is exactly the same thing I am advocating for: the disallowment of region locking itself, because it is an abusive practice to compartmentalize the market, and a racketeer method of inflating and maintaning high unit prices through tightly controlling supply. Both practices are illegal. The MPAA, RIAA and pals are not any more special than mafia drug lords are. What's good for the goose, is good for the gander.
1) the cost of production is fungible. There is no real need to subsidize any market in a true free market. You are confusing the employment of a command economy with price fixing and subsidies with a free market economy. This is because when you factor out a ratio of unit production cost as a part of the price component, and retain it in all sales, you will always recoup the unit production costs. Eg, I can look at the supply and demand curves, and see the projected sales price, and use historic data to compute a sales estimate. I can then factor my cost of production into the price as a ratio. Eg, if it costs me 10,000 dollars to make the product, and I expect to sell 200 thousand units, the ratio comes out to.05%. I can therefor realistically recoup some of my development costs from the botswanan economy, if I bake in my costs, computed for their market's demand and currency power.
That is to say, I still get my money if I sell 500 million units at 5$, or 50 million at 50$. There is no legitimate reason to price gouge one market, and subsidise another, other than that one CAN do so, and get away with it.
Here's the kicker, AC.
If everyone rushes to buy the resold botswani dvds instead of the 50$ local offers, money will rush into botswana as a result of the trade. This devalues the american dollar in botswana, and changes the equation. The influx means more money changing hands in botswana, and thus, more disposable wealth in the economy. The local price for the DVD stops being 5$. The incentive to buy from botswana dries up, as the system reaches equilibrium. Eventually, it is cheaper to buy the DVD locally, now for 30$, instead of paying the newly inflated price in botswana, plus shipping, plus markup. The drain stops.
Even while the drain is occuring, while sales at 50$ have dropped precipitously, demand for the 5$ price unit has skyrocketed. Again, if I have been smart and not greedy, I have baked my production cost ratio directly into that unit price, and the huge surge in demand produces my profit. I sell many times the unit number at the lower price, but still hit the same financials.
Your argument that the reduced price in botswana is the result of necessary subsidization makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Here is why:
If we accept the absurd notion that the distributor cannot sell for less than the 50$ point, irrespective of local economies, then selling at 5$ is selling at a loss. Not only that, we are offering and advertising that product at a loss, warehousing the product at a loss, creating regionally locked units that can *ONLY* be sold at a loss, since they can't be used elsewhere.... see where this is going? What you assert as being true will only serve to radically increase production cost, with no sensible benefit. Allowing the rampant piracy you complain about would actually cost significantly less than making physica product available at such a substantial real outlay.
The truth is that due to the overall reductions in market costs of the botswani economy, it costs significantly less to send the freight, significantly less to warehouse, significantly less to advertise, etc. The result is that the costs associated are proportionally reduced in conjunction with the price. It is simply easier to do business in botswana. The ratio remains the same. All that changed is the unit price compared to a different market, with higher penetration costs.
Allowing the customers in the more costly to penetrate market to buy like crazy from the easily penetrated and lower price market, and relying on the free advertisment that will flow as a result of entreprenures marketing their discount DVD shopping services, you can simply invest in a little infrastructure in the cheaper economy and make a fucking killing.
(Gasp! That's what fucking china is doing! They are making it simply cheaper to do business in china, then getting everything set to pull the rug when the sucking lev
Take for instance, information about how Time Warner cable handles cable deployments and service franchising.
The state needs to know that, in order to follow the terms of the franchise, but the actual terms of the franchise agreement may forbid disclosure of any such information. A FOIA would thus have lots and lots of blacked out text dealing with the specifics of how these are handled, and how those things have contributed to overhead and wasted taxpayer funds.
The lackey that gets smeared may not have had any alternatives, and actually acted as sensibly as is possible. But you would never know that, because the truly damning information is in the franchise agreement and policies concerning same. There could be provisions requiring hookers and blow at all meetings with executives in there. Its a private and confidential agreement with a private enterprise that said enterprise considers proprietary. It can't be disclosed by foia. As such, you would never know.
"If you think I can seriously get these people to vote sensibly, then you must think I am jesus fucking christ."
And, through the power of omission, you write this as a synopsis:
"..I can seriously get these people to vote sensibly.. I am jesus fucking christ."
You are clearly misrepresenting what I actually said, without actually lying. Hence, defamation.
A FOIA document can only contain information the government is at liberty to disclose. Proprietary processes and proprietary information that the goverment has knowedge of, and has policies in place to fascilitate, pose just this obstacle. The person who gets smeared may not actually be the crazy, wasteful, assfuck that the redacted FOIA portrays them as being. Hence, defamation.
I was referring to a more general condition for how something batshit absurd, like "we won't honor FOIA because it will embarrass somebody." Could have a somewhat reasonable basis, even if only applicable if you wiggle your ass just right, and happen to live in bizzaro world.
Not specifically in relation to this specific intance, though it still might.
Releasing the documents without also releasing a lot of priviledged information would paint at least one person with a very broad brush, and with a very unflattering color. This could very likely jeapordize their careers and good names, and thus has defamation suit written all over it. So, denying access to the information to prevent defamation suits seems crooked, but at least potentially plausible, especially if the situation really is the result of onerous BS further up the totem pole, and the person who will get the bad rap for it really had no other recourse. (Again, that is priviledged information about internal policies, and may be proprietary information from a vendor, and thus not safe to release with FOIA documents unredacted. The redacted form is what paints the negative image.)
On the other hand:
Allowing a refusal to satisfy a FOIA request on grounds of "embarasment" is not just a slippery slope; it's a freaking crazyslide, made of tefon, leading into a bottomless pit. Embarking down it is "not a good idea(tm)".
This is one of those cases where you can't make an omlette without breaking some eggs.
Personally, I think the "best" solution to this intractable condition is to make govt agencies immune to defamation suits pertaining to information released via FOIA. That's also a slippery slope, but considerably less "teflon crazyslide" slippery than permitting arbitrary denials.
Region locking flat out puts nails in it, and tries everything possible to kill it with fire.
Without region locking, the right of first sale would permit entreprenurial individuals to buy up cheap(er) product in one target market, then resell the units at a higher (to them, but lower for the downstream customer) price elsewhere, and undercut the phyrric bloodletting bullshit of the publishers and distributors.
That is completely legal. See the supreme court ruling concerning foriegn textbooks.
Modern playback equipment boasts scaler chips in their design already to support the many different HD television formats, so claiming "regional formatting" is bullshit. Doubly so considering that the data is digital, and the medium itself is a universal standard.
I agree that people should pay for their candy. I disagree that they should be barred from buying candy in one place, and selling it in another, taking advantage of price differences. The supreme court recently ruled in my favor on this.
Region locking exists exclusively to compartmentalize the world economy, and relies on de-facto collusion for price fixing. Laws to enforce the region locking restrictions directly add legitimacy to that collusion. It only works when everyone plays the collusion game, which is why they are lobbying so very fucking hard to kill first sale. First sale lets the cat out of the bag, and deflates the collusion enforced price by opening up alternative markets and pricing.
Basically, I should be allowed to pay some guy in botswana to buy a dvd for 5$ for me, and ship it overnight air for 15$, for a net of 20$, if I want to. The fact that this would undercut the "handed down from god" price of 50$ in my region for the same product simply doesn't mean dick, other than that the big distributor has a control fettish, and is being abusive. There should be no technological obstrctions to my doing this. The disc is a legitimately printed and authorized copy. The guy in botswana is permitted under the first sale doctrine to transfer his user licesence to me. No illegal copis are made, and no illegal activity is being performed. Especially if free trade agreements remove all import duties and tarrifs as considerations.
That it makes you feel "oh so bad" as a rights holder that I don't share your estimation of what constitutes a fair market price for your product does not factor into the equasion, and you do NOT have a legitimate basis to enforce your price by locking out foriegn markets from domestic purchasers.
Vicks formula 44: contains alcohol, often abused, despite danger of liver damage. Carded.
Nyquil: same as above
Pseudoephedrine: can't even buy it (the real thing) anymore, because of meth cooks. In the RARE event you actually find it as a generic and it is actually for sale, you get carded, and your purchase is recorded, to prevent you buying in bulk from multiple sources. This is to prevent meth cooks from making their product. Big brother is TOTALLY watching on that shit. Sucks to be you if you buy several boxes so you have some at work and some at home, or have several sick people in your house.
Anymore, about the only things you don't get carded for are NSAIDs.
They have over 1000 stuffed pidgeons though. Assuming only half of them have extractable dna (a very pessimistic figure), even if a single stuffed corpse is missing a viable gene sequence, there are 499 other birds that might have the missing section. Odds are good that they will be able to assemble a few "complete bibles" from the patched together scraps.
The long term issue I see is genetic bottlenecking, like what currently plagues the cheetah. 1000 COMPLETE copies is the bare minimum, assuming that all samples are unrelated, to efficiently preserve and purpetuate a species without having lots of deleterious homolozygous mutations showing up over time. These passenger pidgeons would be likely to develop sterility issues, and deleterious genetic disorders. "De-extincting" them would mean continual cloning and reintroduction of birds into the genepool to boost the numbers of healthy genes in the population. I doubt he would be able to crowdsource that kind of long term financial investment.
What we have here, is around 1000 incomplete copies. The number of whole genome sequences they can lift from those pieces greatly determines how viable the passenger pidgeon will be as a reintroduced wild species. With their sample size, and the conditions of their samples, however, prospects aren't terribly optimistic.
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And YOU are making it into a binary argument. "Since you can't effectively control what others do, then you have no say about your data whatsever."
If this were true, then wirefraud wouldn't be illegal.
The mere fact that it IS illegal, makes the "ordering 50 pizza's in somebody else's name" reference you just made specious as fuck.
Likewise, there are laws that at least TRY to restrict the distribution of priviledged data and information against the owners wishes. Or have you had your head up your ass this whole time about the DMCA and berne copyright?
Perhaps you feel patient-doctor confidentiality is "quaint", and that the laws forbidding doctors revealing all their patient's dirty laundry to "interested parties" don't fucking exist?
The error you make is ascribing a boolean Yes/No to this situation. The proper data type is double float.
Who says it does?
If the regex nukes only his own posts, and any quoted portions of his posts, replacing it with "User has exercised his or her right to be forgotten. This post deleted." Over and over again, doe NOT remove "your" side of an argument, on whatever service or forum you post on. Your quotes will just end up looking silly, and you will just end up looking like a douche.
Nothing would prevent you from keeping your own personal version of the dialog for personal posterity, but your redistributing it after the other party has expressly stated that they do not authorize such, runs foul of not only this civil liberty, but also copyright law, and as such is *already* illegal.
Personally, I like some (SOME! Not all!) Of the features of this right to be forgotten. But in a lot of cases, a better solution is just to allow users to set privacy restrictions on content they provide, and then actually fucking obey them.
Contrary to the behavior of many social networking sites, landlords can't randomly decide to sell their rentors' stuff on a whim, nor rifle through their posessions, papers and effects, just because they own the property on which those items are stored.
Simply enforcing such things, and treating all uploads as being defacto unauthorized for marketing purposes unless explicity flagged and personally endorsed as such would basically remove almost all need for this, other than for getting old forum posts redacted.
Again, your appeal to freedom of speech about block quotation runs headfirst into current copyright law, since it is written text, and has natural copyright ascribed to its author, and not to you. Your ability to quote and use it is already limited to fair use only. You can make a parody of the post, and that can stay, but any direct quotations that don't fall inside fair use are flat out not authorized, and not protected.
You can call the person wanting the scrub job done a douche and anything else you want, but your rights end where his begin, and vice versa. If you parody his post, its totally safe, for example.
Of course, large regular expressions filters would already exclude parodies, since they aren't identical. :D
How is it impossible, other than it happens to be a conflict of interest for you?
Much like people provide records to medical institutions because it is necessary to get quality healthcare, people provide online merchants their address, telephone, and credit card numbers to make purchases and get deliveries. Nowhere in the tranaction is there even so much as a checkbox that says "yes, remember this purchase so you can suggest simular items, and share this purchase experience with other merchants." Instead, the push is to consider this "just a given! Our customers WANT this! Nevermind the sounds of the angry mob outside, that's just your imagination."
Technologically I don't see how this is hard either. Keeping the data for law enforcement subpoenas for a limited time, and pretending it doesn't exist is a far cry from embedding spybugs in your fucking checkout page so that the "user experience" extends to other site visits as well.
The latter is like putting a GPS tracking bug on the pricetags at a shopping center, so you know where else the customer shops that day.
Yet, that is EXACTLY what ad network tracing cookies do, EXACTLY what that bullshit "facebook button" does, etc.
I don't want that, I don't want the service, I don't want your ads, I don't want to be profiled, just because I casually look at a news link, etc.
I am not alone, and the EU seems to agree that you shouldn't presume I have agreed by default.
That this makes your life harder as a dev is just tough shit.
I am well aware of such ToS. I don't subscribe to such services. I don't use twitter, I don't use facebook, I don't use G+, I don't use any such service.
Yet, because OTHER people post information about me on things like their facebook page, my information gets vacuumed up and sold wholesale, just as if I had signed their ToS.
Requireing the equivalent of a model release for second and third hand data would put a very effective stop to that shit, and would actually make the data collected more valuable, because after being resold, it would be encumbered with the need to seek releases from all the people involved. This would make unencumbered data much more valuable. It would ctually HELP the industry.
If I walk into a porno set, and say I want to be in the porno, then I have to take the std test, and sign the release. That's no different from somebody going to Facebook and saying they want to be on the site, and agreeing to the ToS.
What I object to, is being put in the porno against my wishes, because somebody else supplied the director with footage.
No release, don't collect the data. It is not fucking hard. Just grep the username list to see if the person's name is associated with an account, if it isn't, don't use the image or data.
So, your argument, reframed to suit the analogy, is that the child pornographers offer lots of "free" candy and narcotics that people have gotten used to, and without the money flow from selling tight prepubescent ass to perverts, the prices for those products will go up, and people won't be able to afford them.
Forgive me when I say that very little of real value will be lost.
The civil right here, is the right to be forgotten online, meaning, the right to have your previous history expunged, and also the right to not have data collected without permission.
It's no different from whipping out a camera, photographing people who didn't sign a model release, and then lucratizing the photos in ways the people photoed don't endorse, just because they happened to be outside, or were wearing a certain brand of clothing.
Just so you know, the above is fucking illegal as hell, and people DO have legal right to demand the destruction of such imagery. (As far as I know, in bot the EU and the US.)
This is simply an expansion of the same basic premise, that you have a right to privacy, a right to not be exploited against your wishes, etc.
Proper enfocement would be to fine the fuck out of companies that refuse to comply, and persist in warehousing data.
I agree, just like it is illegal for me to set up a camera in your bathroom and then sell the pictures of you in the shower.
That is basically what the internet is right now, a big public bath house where people can see all the naughty bits.
There is money to be made by taking pictures and selling them. (That's basically what collecting personal information without permission and selling it as a bulk aggregate is. "Anonymizing" the picture by not affixing a name, and shuffling it in with hundreds of others doesn't stop you from taking the picture and selling it. Making the photography illegal, and enforcing it, makes people who peddle such wares either criminal, or highly regulated and on the up and up. Much like the legitimate porn industry, vs 3rd world sex slave racketeers.)
The comparison isn't hard. Getting people to feel violated by being the equivalent of an ameture porn star for taking a shower, but because their data was exposed and whored out IS hard.
These weasly tactics, like saying "it gives people a false impression [of safety]" are just horseshit. Just apply the same rhetoric toward rape, and see the absurdity.
Its like saing "if you don't want to get raped, don't walk on the sidewalk at night."
Let's see here. We have the EU defining a legal civil right. The corporate world says "oh noez! We can't do that! Our business model is BASED around violating that civil right! We totally can't just delete all that precious and lucrative data just because some prudes don't want to be included!"
If we adapt this, and replace some other legally recognized civil right, like say-- the right to the sanctity of one's own body, the absurdity of this attestment becomes painfully clear.
"Oh noez! We can't do that, our business model is BASED on forcing prepubescent children to perform sexual services without getting any permission of compensation! We can't just let those very lucrative child prostitutes go just because some prudes don't want to take diseased cock all day! We make our money selling child prostitution services! These so called "rights" are completely unworkable! How can we sell reliable prostitution services if we can't force people to be whores for us!?"
Seriously. That's what I see when I see these kinds of arguments. If your business mode revolves round violating other people's rights, then you DON'T have any right to perform that line of business. The fact that it is "unworkable" is fucking INTENTIONAL.
Nono, this is about license violation.
See, he provided his "intellectual property" with the limited terms that it would not be used to produce any derivative works whatsoever, and was provided as is, non transferable, and only for the specific activity specified, under the binding verbally contractual agreement that no such unauthorized reproduction or derivative works would be made, and that if it occured out of negligence on her part to control her own reproductive equipment, the onus of any burden would be entirely hers.
Her attempt at seeking support payments constitutes willful breach of contractual obligations, and she is seeking financial remedies she is not entitled to! Client seeks a restraining order, and official immunity from further illegal remuneration attempts via the court!
(Gawd I feel so dirty! Is this what being a lawyer feels like? Gawd I'm glad I didn't study law... as usual, IANAL, etc.)
What about Jello?
Jello brand jello is distinct from other brands of "gelatin desert product."
At least here in flyoverland USA the term "jello" is suitably generic, and covers all brands of fruit flavored gelatin.
Similarly with "coke" being generic for almost all kinds of soda, though "pop" is also commonly used. It retains specific brand meaning when used with other flavorings, like "cherry coke" though.
I would argue that genericisation happens when a product becomes ubiquitous. Jello was basically the pioneer of chill to set fruit flavored gelatin products, and as such, the desert itself has become synonymous with the brand.
SPAM is another such product in danger of being genericised, by being the archetype for "potted pork shoulder processed meat product." It's just easier to say "spam", and everyone immediately knows what you are talking about.
Rather than force (IIRC, hormel foods?) To lose the spam trademark, or the jello company to lose thiers, simply because they have products that epitomize and set the standard by which copycats are measured by, it would be better to simply forbid commercial language publications from encroaching on the name.
I would be happy with the following language, for instance:
"Jello(tm) brand jello; the first and finest maker of commercial gelatin products."
Vs
"Newcastle fruit flavor gelatin. Offering 50 delicious and inexpensive flavors snce 1976." (Apologies if there really is such a company. Date pulled out of ass.)
Eg, just because people use "jello" to refer to all "clear gelatin deserts" in an informal fashion, shouldn't mean that Newcastle can call its product jello in commercial literature. Jello is important as a word because of the jello brand jello being ubiquitous, and the product archetype. All others aspire to be jello, but are not.
Additionally, "jello" specifically is the clear, fruit flavored desert kind. "Gelatin" can be either a coating on pills to help you swallow them, a powdered stabilizer, envelope sealant emulsion, a bacterial culture medium, an explosive composition, etc. When you say "I want jello", you mean you want the fruit flavored desert. When you say "I want gelatin", the meaning is far more ambiguous. Do you want powdered gelatin? Blasting gelatin? Gelatin culture medium? Emulsion for photo paper? You get the idea. Jello is a gelatin product, but not all gelatin products are jello. I have yet to see jello brand gelatinized explosives. :D
The law is retarded if it doesn't segregate common and commercial use of the term.
Hmm.. sounds similar to the 5 sec one I saw in Feb then. It looked a lot like a white phosphorus shell, and was equally bright. Lit up the whole area, which is what caught my attention while driving home that night.
Prior to that, the brightest I had seen this year was a lovely green one that lasted about 1 sec.
Don't get me wrong, I don't to be bag on anyone, and 8sec is a very long lived object, but it still isn't anything to be seriously concerned about. Just smile because you got to see something cool, and move on.
*shrug*
But really now.. I have seen many fall this year driving home from work. One even lasted 5 seconds before burning out, and was brilliant white. (Saw it sometime in February.)
Do people on the coasts just have so much light pollution that anything other than a jumbojet or helicopter with running lights on causes excitement? Seriously, meteors happen all the time. The one that fell over russia was especially large, and had a lot of energy. That's why it was news. This one over the east coast just sounds like your garden variety to me.
What's all the buzz about?
I dont know what the substance is with any real certainty. From personal experience, the same substance coats the walls and other surfaces of their living space as well, and they tend to have unholy disgusting and filthy houses.
(After digging around on the internet, I found a picture from somebody's blog that was dealing with it on a flipped house. Pic) It could be niccotine/tobacco related, but it actually binds permanently with metal, requiring something like brasso to remove it if you use chemicals, or lots of elbow grease and an abrasive cleansing pad otherwise. Since you cant use chemical cleansers of that sort inside a computer (unless you are an idiot)-- you have to go the physically abrasive method, and be patient. I did repair work for 4 years, and have seen this substance perhaps, 20 times, with differing levels of severity. Only about 3 times in the "OMG! WHAT IS IT!?" level of contamination. Dust is not dust in such computers. It is more like thick tar. Again, there is a correlation with old, and or seriously dirty/disgusting low income housing.
I suspect that it is a combination of skin oils, old lacquer resins, vaporized cooking oils, and the like, and that the dog's proximity just allows the oil based dog smell to stick really good.. but i really dont know for sure. I just know it is not good for computers or electronics in general.
In some cases, yes. In others... No. Not when the whole inside of the case smells like wet dog. Tobacco film doesn't smell like that. Personal experience is that "dog funk" happens when the PC owner has one of those nasty long haired little toy dogs, and puts the pet bed for said dog right there next to the PC on the floor. Intake ports get clogged with pet hair, and nasty dog smelling oily filth builds up inside.
Cats usually just have hair and dander. Dogs make oil. It's nasty. Don't let your dog lounge around next to running computers. Please.
Also, regular use of a deep fryer greatly increases the chances of a "funk" related failure. Please avoid creating hazy fogs of volatized cooking oil in your house.
This depends.
Assuming the unit is in a nice, clean, and properly maintained environment, there should never be any reason to do anythiing at all to a card edge connector, or to its slot.
However, people are fucking slobs, and put computers in places they should never be placed. They suck in all kinds of horrible filth, and some very "interesting" (from a chemical standpoint) things can happen.
One noteworthy one I encountered more than once when I did professional PC repair, was the "disgusting oily film" buildup that happens when computers are kept in filthy bedrooms, dormatories, or around pets (dogs especially). This "funk", for lack of a better word, coats everything inside, causes dirt to adhere, is mildly corrosive in and of itself, and causes a kind of "organic patina" to form on edge connectors and ports.
That shit is nasty, and chemically binds to the metal, altering the conductivity of the edge connector pad, and causing very intermittent and irritating problems.
RAM is especially susceptible to "funk" buildup, and can cause some really irritating and difficult to reproduce/diagnose errors.
I found that a white vinyl eraser (made for archival paper, acid free, pumice free) on card edges can safely and efficiently clean the funk off. Just do so gently, and with slow motions to avoid static exchanges on the card's contact pads.
Usually, cleaning the card edge is enough. Occasionally though, the "funk" contamination is so extreme (literally, it is fucking "sticky and brown" inside! Blch!) That you will be presented with having to decide between telling the customer that their fucking filthy living conditions have ruined their computer and that they need a new one, (and for whatever reason, the people to which this applies are always dead ass broke and can't afford such a solution) or you have to grit your teeth, put on some nitrile gloves, and gently clean the slots as well in order for anything to fucking work even half-assedly.
In case of the latter, you offer to attempt cleaning under the firmly and fully understood condition that this is not something that can be waranteed, is dangerous, and can totally hose the computer permanently. Literally, at this point the options are replacement, or hairbrained cleaning, with the slim prospect that a few more months or years of service can be squeezed out. Eg, the system is beyond normal help, the preferred solution is replacement, but if they can't afford that, this is the only alternative, and that you won't do warantee work if it fails later, and that you refuse to be held liable for damages. If they agree, then you can proceed. Otherwise close it up and send them on their merry way with their box of filth.
In the unfortunate event that they agree to those terms, you can half-assedly clean a PCI slot with one of those cellulose sponge business cards. (Essentially a tightly pressed dry cellulose sponge, cut to the size of a businss card, and printed as such. They are a novelty product, but are also conveniently the right combination of chemical free mild abrasive, nonconductive, disposable, and correct thickness.) This process can only be performed once. It is not something I ever suggest doing, because PCI slots are precision made, and jamming things in there is simply not smart. Again, this is only for a system where it has been determined it is beyond normal help, and in all seriousness should be at a recycling center, and not your repair shop, and where everyone involved knows painfully well that this is a kludge to squeeze a few more hours out of it, and nothing else.
Ram slots are even more sensitive. Before cleaning, remove the cpu from the socket. Leave the board plugged in, but turned off. Cross your fingers, and pray to whatever deity you feel most appropriate. If you have to clean the ram slot, it is almost assuredly a lost cause anyway.
I have actually revived many machines this way, which is quite surprising. Many more than were killed by the attempt. Again, not recommended. Only for ex
Here's the deal..
I don't mind paying for bridges, roads, police officers, and other such vital services. In fact, if I could see a garantee that the money collected went for *those things*, and not "senator Taint Brownstain's new fantastic porkbarrel boondoggle that 'so totally isn't the pro quo from quid pro quo'", I wouldn't complain about taxation.
However, since all fed tax money gets stirred up in a big pot, I get no such assurances.
I don't like financing the killing of brown people, just because I want paved roads, for instance.
Again, that is because of region locking itself. Removing the DRM from the picture completely, such as with the wood pulp based textbooks so that we don't have to deal with absurd legislation about redistribution, (since region locking is straight up protectionism and market manipulation.) And suddenly the comparison between the textbooks and the DVDs becomes much different.
If you can't hande apples to oranges, try this: region free dvds with different sales prices.
I buy the region free dvds that are made that way at the factory in china, via a chinese wholesale dealer, and get them for way below my local wholesale cost. I then sell the shit out of them locally for way cheaper than in the store, and they sell like hotcakes.
That is not illegal, even in the EU. This is exactly the same thing I am advocating for: the disallowment of region locking itself, because it is an abusive practice to compartmentalize the market, and a racketeer method of inflating and maintaning high unit prices through tightly controlling supply. Both practices are illegal. The MPAA, RIAA and pals are not any more special than mafia drug lords are. What's good for the goose, is good for the gander.
*rofl*
Here, let me help your addled mind.
1) the cost of production is fungible. There is no real need to subsidize any market in a true free market. You are confusing the employment of a command economy with price fixing and subsidies with a free market economy. This is because when you factor out a ratio of unit production cost as a part of the price component, and retain it in all sales, you will always recoup the unit production costs. Eg, I can look at the supply and demand curves, and see the projected sales price, and use historic data to compute a sales estimate. I can then factor my cost of production into the price as a ratio. Eg, if it costs me 10,000 dollars to make the product, and I expect to sell 200 thousand units, the ratio comes out to .05%. I can therefor realistically recoup some of my development costs from the botswanan economy, if I bake in my costs, computed for their market's demand and currency power.
That is to say, I still get my money if I sell 500 million units at 5$, or 50 million at 50$. There is no legitimate reason to price gouge one market, and subsidise another, other than that one CAN do so, and get away with it.
Here's the kicker, AC.
If everyone rushes to buy the resold botswani dvds instead of the 50$ local offers, money will rush into botswana as a result of the trade. This devalues the american dollar in botswana, and changes the equation. The influx means more money changing hands in botswana, and thus, more disposable wealth in the economy. The local price for the DVD stops being 5$. The incentive to buy from botswana dries up, as the system reaches equilibrium. Eventually, it is cheaper to buy the DVD locally, now for 30$, instead of paying the newly inflated price in botswana, plus shipping, plus markup. The drain stops.
Even while the drain is occuring, while sales at 50$ have dropped precipitously, demand for the 5$ price unit has skyrocketed. Again, if I have been smart and not greedy, I have baked my production cost ratio directly into that unit price, and the huge surge in demand produces my profit. I sell many times the unit number at the lower price, but still hit the same financials.
Your argument that the reduced price in botswana is the result of necessary subsidization makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Here is why:
If we accept the absurd notion that the distributor cannot sell for less than the 50$ point, irrespective of local economies, then selling at 5$ is selling at a loss. Not only that, we are offering and advertising that product at a loss, warehousing the product at a loss, creating regionally locked units that can *ONLY* be sold at a loss, since they can't be used elsewhere.... see where this is going? What you assert as being true will only serve to radically increase production cost, with no sensible benefit. Allowing the rampant piracy you complain about would actually cost significantly less than making physica product available at such a substantial real outlay.
The truth is that due to the overall reductions in market costs of the botswani economy, it costs significantly less to send the freight, significantly less to warehouse, significantly less to advertise, etc. The result is that the costs associated are proportionally reduced in conjunction with the price. It is simply easier to do business in botswana. The ratio remains the same. All that changed is the unit price compared to a different market, with higher penetration costs.
Allowing the customers in the more costly to penetrate market to buy like crazy from the easily penetrated and lower price market, and relying on the free advertisment that will flow as a result of entreprenures marketing their discount DVD shopping services, you can simply invest in a little infrastructure in the cheaper economy and make a fucking killing.
(Gasp! That's what fucking china is doing! They are making it simply cheaper to do business in china, then getting everything set to pull the rug when the sucking lev
It may not necessarily be classified.
Take for instance, information about how Time Warner cable handles cable deployments and service franchising.
The state needs to know that, in order to follow the terms of the franchise, but the actual terms of the franchise agreement may forbid disclosure of any such information. A FOIA would thus have lots and lots of blacked out text dealing with the specifics of how these are handled, and how those things have contributed to overhead and wasted taxpayer funds.
The lackey that gets smeared may not have had any alternatives, and actually acted as sensibly as is possible. But you would never know that, because the truly damning information is in the franchise agreement and policies concerning same. There could be provisions requiring hookers and blow at all meetings with executives in there. Its a private and confidential agreement with a private enterprise that said enterprise considers proprietary. It can't be disclosed by foia. As such, you would never know.
Omission can be just as bad as lying.
Take for instance, if I write this:
"If you think I can seriously get these people to vote sensibly, then you must think I am jesus fucking christ."
And, through the power of omission, you write this as a synopsis:
"..I can seriously get these people to vote sensibly.. I am jesus fucking christ."
You are clearly misrepresenting what I actually said, without actually lying. Hence, defamation.
A FOIA document can only contain information the government is at liberty to disclose. Proprietary processes and proprietary information that the goverment has knowedge of, and has policies in place to fascilitate, pose just this obstacle. The person who gets smeared may not actually be the crazy, wasteful, assfuck that the redacted FOIA portrays them as being. Hence, defamation.
I was referring to a more general condition for how something batshit absurd, like "we won't honor FOIA because it will embarrass somebody." Could have a somewhat reasonable basis, even if only applicable if you wiggle your ass just right, and happen to live in bizzaro world.
Not specifically in relation to this specific intance, though it still might.
I could see a nasty bed of serpents here.
On one side:
Releasing the documents without also releasing a lot of priviledged information would paint at least one person with a very broad brush, and with a very unflattering color. This could very likely jeapordize their careers and good names, and thus has defamation suit written all over it. So, denying access to the information to prevent defamation suits seems crooked, but at least potentially plausible, especially if the situation really is the result of onerous BS further up the totem pole, and the person who will get the bad rap for it really had no other recourse. (Again, that is priviledged information about internal policies, and may be proprietary information from a vendor, and thus not safe to release with FOIA documents unredacted. The redacted form is what paints the negative image.)
On the other hand:
Allowing a refusal to satisfy a FOIA request on grounds of "embarasment" is not just a slippery slope; it's a freaking crazyslide, made of tefon, leading into a bottomless pit. Embarking down it is "not a good idea(tm)".
This is one of those cases where you can't make an omlette without breaking some eggs.
Personally, I think the "best" solution to this intractable condition is to make govt agencies immune to defamation suits pertaining to information released via FOIA. That's also a slippery slope, but considerably less "teflon crazyslide" slippery than permitting arbitrary denials.
Right of first sale bitch.
Region locking flat out puts nails in it, and tries everything possible to kill it with fire.
Without region locking, the right of first sale would permit entreprenurial individuals to buy up cheap(er) product in one target market, then resell the units at a higher (to them, but lower for the downstream customer) price elsewhere, and undercut the phyrric bloodletting bullshit of the publishers and distributors.
That is completely legal. See the supreme court ruling concerning foriegn textbooks.
Modern playback equipment boasts scaler chips in their design already to support the many different HD television formats, so claiming "regional formatting" is bullshit. Doubly so considering that the data is digital, and the medium itself is a universal standard.
I agree that people should pay for their candy. I disagree that they should be barred from buying candy in one place, and selling it in another, taking advantage of price differences. The supreme court recently ruled in my favor on this.
Region locking exists exclusively to compartmentalize the world economy, and relies on de-facto collusion for price fixing. Laws to enforce the region locking restrictions directly add legitimacy to that collusion. It only works when everyone plays the collusion game, which is why they are lobbying so very fucking hard to kill first sale. First sale lets the cat out of the bag, and deflates the collusion enforced price by opening up alternative markets and pricing.
Basically, I should be allowed to pay some guy in botswana to buy a dvd for 5$ for me, and ship it overnight air for 15$, for a net of 20$, if I want to. The fact that this would undercut the "handed down from god" price of 50$ in my region for the same product simply doesn't mean dick, other than that the big distributor has a control fettish, and is being abusive. There should be no technological obstrctions to my doing this. The disc is a legitimately printed and authorized copy. The guy in botswana is permitted under the first sale doctrine to transfer his user licesence to me. No illegal copis are made, and no illegal activity is being performed. Especially if free trade agreements remove all import duties and tarrifs as considerations.
That it makes you feel "oh so bad" as a rights holder that I don't share your estimation of what constitutes a fair market price for your product does not factor into the equasion, and you do NOT have a legitimate basis to enforce your price by locking out foriegn markets from domestic purchasers.
Competition. Deal with it.
Vicks formula 44: contains alcohol, often abused, despite danger of liver damage. Carded.
Nyquil: same as above
Pseudoephedrine: can't even buy it (the real thing) anymore, because of meth cooks. In the RARE event you actually find it as a generic and it is actually for sale, you get carded, and your purchase is recorded, to prevent you buying in bulk from multiple sources. This is to prevent meth cooks from making their product. Big brother is TOTALLY watching on that shit. Sucks to be you if you buy several boxes so you have some at work and some at home, or have several sick people in your house.
Anymore, about the only things you don't get carded for are NSAIDs.
They have over 1000 stuffed pidgeons though. Assuming only half of them have extractable dna (a very pessimistic figure), even if a single stuffed corpse is missing a viable gene sequence, there are 499 other birds that might have the missing section. Odds are good that they will be able to assemble a few "complete bibles" from the patched together scraps.
The long term issue I see is genetic bottlenecking, like what currently plagues the cheetah. 1000 COMPLETE copies is the bare minimum, assuming that all samples are unrelated, to efficiently preserve and purpetuate a species without having lots of deleterious homolozygous mutations showing up over time. These passenger pidgeons would be likely to develop sterility issues, and deleterious genetic disorders. "De-extincting" them would mean continual cloning and reintroduction of birds into the genepool to boost the numbers of healthy genes in the population. I doubt he would be able to crowdsource that kind of long term financial investment.
What we have here, is around 1000 incomplete copies. The number of whole genome sequences they can lift from those pieces greatly determines how viable the passenger pidgeon will be as a reintroduced wild species. With their sample size, and the conditions of their samples, however, prospects aren't terribly optimistic.