I must say that I find this article astonishing on two levels:
1) Why on earth does Joe User believe that his employer needs to install Linux before he can read his email and log his keystrokes? Surely its easy for a corporate system admin to do this under Windows?
2) These council employees seem to have the bizare view that the computers they use at work are in some way their own property on which they can run any old virus laden game they happen to come across.
Can I conclude that these views are widespread amongst lusers?
And for those who are wondering, yes it is easy and cheap to get a pager. In the UK I rent mine for the equivalent of about $10 per month from LDC Pagers. It is a number only one (i.e. it can only display numbers). I got it when my wife was pregnant because for security reasons I am not allowed a cellphone at work. We came up with a simple code (1 = "Give me a call when its convenient" through to 5 = "Aaaagh! Meet me at the hospital").
In the end I didn't need it since our daughter arrived at night, but I am going to keep it precisely becuase it is untrackable and the UK government are getting cellphone companies to keep records of everyone's movements for at least a year.
BTW, before discovering that it was easy to rent a pager via the internet, I made the mistake of asking in a cellphone shop. They assured me that no-one sold pagers any more and that nearly all of the pager networks had been switched off.
Here in the UK, there have been a few cases over the last thirty years where courts have demanded that journalists reveal their sources and the journalists have refused (link to recent case). On more than one occasion, this has resulted in the journalist going to prison.
Have such things happened in the USA in recent times?
...then why isn't Walmart sponsoring lessons about why shoplifting is wrong featuring starving shop workers?
Actually, come to think of it, if it was possible to stop crime by teaching children in school that it is wrong, then perhaps the government should be doing it already. Sure, it would cost money, but think of the savings in police and prison costs.
Bottom line: If this was going to make any difference then others would already be using it, so its just a waste of the RIAA's time and money.
How it is possible in 21st century America for people to be trapped in elevators by a power cut? Why can't each elevator to be fitted with a small UPS which in the event of a power failure would drive it slowly to the nearest floor and open the doors?
Sure, such a thing would cost money, but so does the time of firemen and the legal costs of suits bought be people who have been trapped in your elevator. Perhaps any building needing a licence from the fire department should also need power-cut proof elevators!
Well, this had been going on for weeks and I have still to see the fundamental question addressed. Where, precisely, in the laws of the USA does it state that end users are liable for copyright infringement? Isn't copyright infringement the act of copying or distributing some copyrighted work owned by somebody else?
Perhaps I am being a bit slow, but surely, when you stand up in court at the start of a prosecution case you have to begin by identifying a law passed by Congress which you claim that the other side has broken. The fact that the other side did something which you didn't like isn't sufficient, is it? Surely Congress has to have agreed at some point that that action should be illegal. Having identified the law you then go on to try to prove that the defence broke it. Or am I missing something about US law here?
I use Gentoo because getting it working properly is FUN! Back when I started using Linux (1994?) getting it to do anything at all was a fun challenge. These days I think there is a good chance that my mother could install Mandrake. Where's the fun in that?
I used to spend hours fiddling around with the printer config files trying to find the best ghostscript command options, never mind trying to get X working properly. I run Mandrake on systems where folks will complain if it breaks, but on other machines I have hours of amusement tweaking Gentoo. Recently I tried to install it on a 66 MHz 486. It took 6 weeks of almost solid compiling before I could get KDE working on it! Now I'm looking for a 386 and I have a SPARC and Alpha which I am going to try.
I sudden thought has occured to me. If these cases get to court, will there be a jury? I am in the UK, so excuse my ignorance of the US legal system.
Anyway, given the vast number of people who are alledged to be sharing music online (more than voted for Bush?). Doesn't that mean that practically every possible juror will either have committed this crime or have a close family member who has done so. Presumably this has the potential to make the jury selection process particularly long winded in these cases?
As I understand it, seven people tried to sue DirecTV and failed and now they have to pay DirecTV's legal bills ($100,000). I also understand that many people who receive these $3500 threats, send in the money because fighting the case would cost more than $3500. If they fight the case and win, doesn't DirecTV have to pay THEIR legal fees, exactly as in the class action above?
Is the problem:
That they don't think that they will win.
That they can't raise the money in the first place, so it doesn't matter that they will get it back.
That US law alows costs to be awarded against individuals but not against corporations (I would not be surprised if this was true).
why the hell should seller information be kept private from the police?
It shouldn't, but it should be kept private from someone who is pretending to be the police by virtue of a simple forged fax.
I suspect that eBay's policy may be illegal in the UK due to our data protection act, but I'm not sure (yes, they would still have to supply data to the police, but if they handed it over in response to a simple forged fax they could be in trouble).
Why has it has taken so many years for the aviation authorities to actually conduct some proper research into this issue. Where I work we have had an aircraft EMC group for many years who could have looked into this problem (they normally do military aircraft where the problem can be a lot worse - bigger transmitters and things which go bang!).
This whole problem is very easy to solve. Newer aircraft are probably immune, so check that this is realy the case and the allow mobiles on those flights. On older aircraft fit cellphone detectors (we have one in the reception where I work and I'm sure it wasn't expensive) or better still, cellphone jammers. A jammer would only need to radiate a tiny amount of power, so it shouldn't cause any interference itself.
turns off any ouput (except the nav system) when the car is moving at less than 2 mph. I guess you mean it turns it off when you are moving at more than 2 mph.
is not actual law, but more a government condoned guide to preferred conduct. Well, the Highway Code has a bit about this in its introduction. Firstly, it is actually published by the government (Her Majesty's Stationary Office) rather than simply being condoned. The rules themselves are partly prefered conduct and partly simplified explanations of the relevant laws. At the bottom of most rules is a bit in red which is a reference to the relevant piece of actual legislation. Breaking one of the Highway Code rules is not in itself illegal, but can be used to support a prosecution for a more generic offence (e.g. driving without due care and attention).
BTW, I tried to follow the legal references for the rules about in car technology, but it just seemed to lead to laws about paying attention when you are driving. I guess that if there are laws about fitting display screens they wouldn't be referenced by the Highway Code since it describes how to use a car rather than how to build one.
I am in the UK, and am almost entirely certain that this installation is illegal under UK law. As I recall, anything that is like a TV or video must not be visible to the driver.
However, a quick look through the Highway Code (2001 edition) (a government book giving a guide to UK traffic law) showed only the following under rule 128: ".....PCs, multi-media, etc. Do not operate, adjust or view any such system if it will distract your attention while you are driving;...", so perhaps the rules have now changed to "You can have a TV provided you don't use it when moving". Can anyone find a link to the relevant legislation?
The commentary points out several places where the RIAA's complaint appears to be factually inaccurate (e.g. the defendent's computer didn't share out the MP3s since they were all on other machines on the network) to the extent that the RIAA must have known so when they wrote it. Assuming that this is the case then:
1) Are the RIAA committing a crime? I.e. is it an offence to submit documents of this sort which you know to be factually inacurate. I must say that it sounds like perjury to me.
2) Assuming several unlikely scenarious (e.g. a sane and unbribed judge, a rich benefactor to pay the legal fees) is it possible that this would be enough to have the case dismissed?
3) Assuming the same unlikely scenarious, would it be technically possible for the RIAA to be counter sued or face criminal sanctions?
...taxation, underground storage tanks and child support.
Could someone please explain to a stupid Englishman why you have a special department whose responsibilities are taxation, underground storage tanks and child support?
I can sort of understand putting taxation and benefits together, but why only child support? Who does the other types of support or don't you have any others in Massachusetts? And as for the storage tanks, huh? And why only underground ones? What do they do with these tanks? Inspect them? Tax them? And what about above ground storage tanks? Presumably they come under some completely different department such as Education or Veteran Affairs!!!!!
Yes, but how precisely does this hurt the profits of Xerox corp? Would people buy more photocopiers from Xerox if we were able to stop people from using Xerox as a verb? Might I humbly suggest that the widespread use of Xerox as a verb makes the following scenario more rather than less likely to occur:
"OK, we need to buy a new photocopier. Who makes such things?"
Hoover and Xerox. Both brands became so pervasive that they became verbs and subsequently lost control over their trademark.
Realy! Are you trying to tell me that I could start making photocopiers and sell them as "Xeroxing machines"? Or that I could buy a big vacuum cleaner and set myself up as "HuskyDog's Hoovering Service"? If I could then I would agree that they have lost control of their trademark, but if I couldn't then they would still seem to have their trademarks protected in the only place where it realy counts which is in product marketing in the business areas where they work.
Re:Trademarks and loss of trademarks
on
Verbing Weirds Google
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Not relevant!
If Google was sueing someone for using the word Google in - for example - a novel or film then your argument might be relevant. But someone who compiles a dictionary isn't using the word, they are reporting the fact that other people do so. They are in effect journalists.
In the same way, it would be illegal to burn down Google's HQ, but they couldn't do anything against journalists who reported that it had happened (assuming their reports were true).
At the end of the day, all we should conclude is that wealth has turned the guys who run Google into the same sort of offensive facists who run most other corporations. Any sane person would welcome the extra free publicity. And BTW, I don't try any of this "If they don't defend their trademark then the will lose it" tripe. You can only lose your trademark if you don't defend it when it is infringed, failure to defend it when it isn't being infringed (as in this case) is irrelevant!
Given that this can already be done now with existing paper-based voting
Yes, it is possible in the UK to determine how each elector voted. But in order to do so you have to tally up two large piles of paper (voting slips & the stubs from the voting slip book) together with a list of voter serial numbers. This would be a substantial undertaking, and it is inconceviable that it could be undertaken without anyone knowing unless an unfeasibly large number of people were corrupted.
These three sets of data are stored in seperate buildings after the election and destroyed once the dealine for objecting to the vote has passed. In order for them to be correlated, a court has to give permission, and given the herculean task involved, they are not going to agree to this lightly.
With internet voting, extracting the same information would be trivial. Only a few people would need to be corrupted and since it doesn't involve a large room full of people trying to sort out bits of paper, there is a good chance that no-one would find out.
Summary: Defeating the secrecy of a conventional ballot is possible, but very difficult. With an internet ballot it will be trivialy easy. My vote is less likely to remain secret if I vote over the internet.
OTOH, Joe Sixpack doesn't care if his vote is secret or not and probably doesn't even know that it is supposed to be.
I fear that I am missing something here. I get the impression that the explicit bits (i.e. the '...' bits) are being left out because they are not included in the version which Project Guttenburg copied.
So what? Presumably they are in the original and since that is 300 years old it must be out of copyright by now. Surely there are more recent editions which include the full unexpurgated text? Why can't the 'naughty bits' just be copied from one of them?
Now, I understand that when someone re-prints an old text they are allocated a new copyright, but only on new work (text formatting and layout, footnotes, updated punctuation and spelling etc). But, we don't need any of that, just the original words. If these were just copied into the blog, how would anyone know whose edition they had come from anyway?
About a year ago I signed up with the Telephone Preference Service. I was a bit skeptical at first, but it works just fine.
You can sign up online for free (they send a letter of acknowledgement in the post) and it is backed by legislation. It isn't perfect, but I reckon that after a few months the number of unwanted calls dropped by more than 90%.
Charities are not excempt, and the only people who can legitimately still call you are companies with whom you have previously done business.
There are similar schemes for snail mail and fax junk which also seem to work well. They also have an email one, but that's a bit pointless since most spam comes from outside the UK.
In summary, I'm very happy with the system and I hope that those of you in more backward countries get a similar system soon;-).
Cable is nice, but you need competition
on
DSL Rising
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· Score: 2
I am in the UK and I have just switched from Cable to ADSL.
From a technical point of view cable is a much better solution than DSL. If you want to send broad band signals then you have to be better with a nice controlled impedance transmission line like coax cable rather than some birds nest of twisted pair. Never mind the lower potential for interference.
However, in most of the UK people don't have any choice about cable supplier. I had to use NTL and they were totally useless. I spent 1 month off line when my cable modem failed (I rented it from them) and the only way to get technical support was to phone after midnight and listen to musak for 45 mins.
With ADSL I have dozens of suppliers to choose from and I can go to someone who provides the services I want (e.g. static IP). They all depend on British Telecom to service the wires, but at least the people I am dealing with have an interest in retaining my custom.
Slashdot Mirror
1) Despite having a lot to lose and plenty of resources, terrorists don't use encryption properly or even at all.
2) The police get to the computer in advance and insert some sort of key logging technology.
3) The terrorist uses the tools OK, but some other flaw in the OS allows the police to extract the key (for example from the swap partition).
4) They simply torture the suspect until the tells them the pass phrase (I think that this is the most likely).
5) We only get to hear about the cases where the suspect made a mistake. Meanwhile, the NSA have a room full of media which they can't decrypt yet.
6) The NSA know how to crack all of the common algorithms in a reasonable period of time.
If 6 is true, it could be a long time before we hear about it.
1) Why on earth does Joe User believe that his employer needs to install Linux before he can read his email and log his keystrokes? Surely its easy for a corporate system admin to do this under Windows?
2) These council employees seem to have the bizare view that the computers they use at work are in some way their own property on which they can run any old virus laden game they happen to come across.
Can I conclude that these views are widespread amongst lusers?
In the end I didn't need it since our daughter arrived at night, but I am going to keep it precisely becuase it is untrackable and the UK government are getting cellphone companies to keep records of everyone's movements for at least a year.
BTW, before discovering that it was easy to rent a pager via the internet, I made the mistake of asking in a cellphone shop. They assured me that no-one sold pagers any more and that nearly all of the pager networks had been switched off.
Have such things happened in the USA in recent times?
Actually, come to think of it, if it was possible to stop crime by teaching children in school that it is wrong, then perhaps the government should be doing it already. Sure, it would cost money, but think of the savings in police and prison costs.
Bottom line: If this was going to make any difference then others would already be using it, so its just a waste of the RIAA's time and money.
Sure, such a thing would cost money, but so does the time of firemen and the legal costs of suits bought be people who have been trapped in your elevator. Perhaps any building needing a licence from the fire department should also need power-cut proof elevators!
Perhaps I am being a bit slow, but surely, when you stand up in court at the start of a prosecution case you have to begin by identifying a law passed by Congress which you claim that the other side has broken. The fact that the other side did something which you didn't like isn't sufficient, is it? Surely Congress has to have agreed at some point that that action should be illegal. Having identified the law you then go on to try to prove that the defence broke it. Or am I missing something about US law here?
I used to spend hours fiddling around with the printer config files trying to find the best ghostscript command options, never mind trying to get X working properly. I run Mandrake on systems where folks will complain if it breaks, but on other machines I have hours of amusement tweaking Gentoo. Recently I tried to install it on a 66 MHz 486. It took 6 weeks of almost solid compiling before I could get KDE working on it! Now I'm looking for a 386 and I have a SPARC and Alpha which I am going to try.
I haven't had so much fun with Linux for years!
Anyway, given the vast number of people who are alledged to be sharing music online (more than voted for Bush?). Doesn't that mean that practically every possible juror will either have committed this crime or have a close family member who has done so. Presumably this has the potential to make the jury selection process particularly long winded in these cases?
As I understand it, seven people tried to sue DirecTV and failed and now they have to pay DirecTV's legal bills ($100,000). I also understand that many people who receive these $3500 threats, send in the money because fighting the case would cost more than $3500. If they fight the case and win, doesn't DirecTV have to pay THEIR legal fees, exactly as in the class action above?
Is the problem:
It shouldn't, but it should be kept private from someone who is pretending to be the police by virtue of a simple forged fax.
I suspect that eBay's policy may be illegal in the UK due to our data protection act, but I'm not sure (yes, they would still have to supply data to the police, but if they handed it over in response to a simple forged fax they could be in trouble).
This whole problem is very easy to solve. Newer aircraft are probably immune, so check that this is realy the case and the allow mobiles on those flights. On older aircraft fit cellphone detectors (we have one in the reception where I work and I'm sure it wasn't expensive) or better still, cellphone jammers. A jammer would only need to radiate a tiny amount of power, so it shouldn't cause any interference itself.
How far inland does one have to be to avoid a 400 foot wave?
is not actual law, but more a government condoned guide to preferred conduct. Well, the Highway Code has a bit about this in its introduction. Firstly, it is actually published by the government (Her Majesty's Stationary Office) rather than simply being condoned. The rules themselves are partly prefered conduct and partly simplified explanations of the relevant laws. At the bottom of most rules is a bit in red which is a reference to the relevant piece of actual legislation. Breaking one of the Highway Code rules is not in itself illegal, but can be used to support a prosecution for a more generic offence (e.g. driving without due care and attention).
BTW, I tried to follow the legal references for the rules about in car technology, but it just seemed to lead to laws about paying attention when you are driving. I guess that if there are laws about fitting display screens they wouldn't be referenced by the Highway Code since it describes how to use a car rather than how to build one.
However, a quick look through the Highway Code (2001 edition) (a government book giving a guide to UK traffic law) showed only the following under rule 128: ".....PCs, multi-media, etc. Do not operate, adjust or view any such system if it will distract your attention while you are driving;...", so perhaps the rules have now changed to "You can have a TV provided you don't use it when moving". Can anyone find a link to the relevant legislation?
Most people are greedy, selfish and stupid. And in other news.....
1) Are the RIAA committing a crime? I.e. is it an offence to submit documents of this sort which you know to be factually inacurate. I must say that it sounds like perjury to me.
2) Assuming several unlikely scenarious (e.g. a sane and unbribed judge, a rich benefactor to pay the legal fees) is it possible that this would be enough to have the case dismissed?
3) Assuming the same unlikely scenarious, would it be technically possible for the RIAA to be counter sued or face criminal sanctions?
Could someone please explain to a stupid Englishman why you have a special department whose responsibilities are taxation, underground storage tanks and child support?
I can sort of understand putting taxation and benefits together, but why only child support? Who does the other types of support or don't you have any others in Massachusetts? And as for the storage tanks, huh? And why only underground ones? What do they do with these tanks? Inspect them? Tax them? And what about above ground storage tanks? Presumably they come under some completely different department such as Education or Veteran Affairs!!!!!
"OK, we need to buy a new photocopier. Who makes such things?"
"Well, I guess that Xerox must."
"Yes, OK, who else can we get quotes from?"
"Err, umm, well there's thingys, errr....."
Realy! Are you trying to tell me that I could start making photocopiers and sell them as "Xeroxing machines"? Or that I could buy a big vacuum cleaner and set myself up as "HuskyDog's Hoovering Service"? If I could then I would agree that they have lost control of their trademark, but if I couldn't then they would still seem to have their trademarks protected in the only place where it realy counts which is in product marketing in the business areas where they work.
If Google was sueing someone for using the word Google in - for example - a novel or film then your argument might be relevant. But someone who compiles a dictionary isn't using the word, they are reporting the fact that other people do so. They are in effect journalists.
In the same way, it would be illegal to burn down Google's HQ, but they couldn't do anything against journalists who reported that it had happened (assuming their reports were true).
At the end of the day, all we should conclude is that wealth has turned the guys who run Google into the same sort of offensive facists who run most other corporations. Any sane person would welcome the extra free publicity. And BTW, I don't try any of this "If they don't defend their trademark then the will lose it" tripe. You can only lose your trademark if you don't defend it when it is infringed, failure to defend it when it isn't being infringed (as in this case) is irrelevant!
Yes, it is possible in the UK to determine how each elector voted. But in order to do so you have to tally up two large piles of paper (voting slips & the stubs from the voting slip book) together with a list of voter serial numbers. This would be a substantial undertaking, and it is inconceviable that it could be undertaken without anyone knowing unless an unfeasibly large number of people were corrupted.
These three sets of data are stored in seperate buildings after the election and destroyed once the dealine for objecting to the vote has passed. In order for them to be correlated, a court has to give permission, and given the herculean task involved, they are not going to agree to this lightly.
With internet voting, extracting the same information would be trivial. Only a few people would need to be corrupted and since it doesn't involve a large room full of people trying to sort out bits of paper, there is a good chance that no-one would find out.
Summary: Defeating the secrecy of a conventional ballot is possible, but very difficult. With an internet ballot it will be trivialy easy. My vote is less likely to remain secret if I vote over the internet.
OTOH, Joe Sixpack doesn't care if his vote is secret or not and probably doesn't even know that it is supposed to be.
So what? Presumably they are in the original and since that is 300 years old it must be out of copyright by now. Surely there are more recent editions which include the full unexpurgated text? Why can't the 'naughty bits' just be copied from one of them?
Now, I understand that when someone re-prints an old text they are allocated a new copyright, but only on new work (text formatting and layout, footnotes, updated punctuation and spelling etc). But, we don't need any of that, just the original words. If these were just copied into the blog, how would anyone know whose edition they had come from anyway?
You can sign up online for free (they send a letter of acknowledgement in the post) and it is backed by legislation. It isn't perfect, but I reckon that after a few months the number of unwanted calls dropped by more than 90%.
Charities are not excempt, and the only people who can legitimately still call you are companies with whom you have previously done business.
There are similar schemes for snail mail and fax junk which also seem to work well. They also have an email one, but that's a bit pointless since most spam comes from outside the UK.
In summary, I'm very happy with the system and I hope that those of you in more backward countries get a similar system soon ;-).
From a technical point of view cable is a much better solution than DSL. If you want to send broad band signals then you have to be better with a nice controlled impedance transmission line like coax cable rather than some birds nest of twisted pair. Never mind the lower potential for interference.
However, in most of the UK people don't have any choice about cable supplier. I had to use NTL and they were totally useless. I spent 1 month off line when my cable modem failed (I rented it from them) and the only way to get technical support was to phone after midnight and listen to musak for 45 mins.
With ADSL I have dozens of suppliers to choose from and I can go to someone who provides the services I want (e.g. static IP). They all depend on British Telecom to service the wires, but at least the people I am dealing with have an interest in retaining my custom.