This is only "outsmarting" the academics if it works, which it absolutely does not. This approach is what a person ignorant of data mining techniques would come up with. It is ineffective and wastes spammers time, so I approve of it.
Bayesian and other filters do not rely on "spammy" words alone -- they also rely on "unspammy" words, and spammers have no idea what those words are because each person receives different email.
A scenario, with made up (but plausible) numbers: Suppose you're a developer of a Linux driver for the Bozodrive 1000. The majority of your legitimate email comes from Linux driver development mailing lists. A full 50% of those emails contain the word "IRQ." 99% of the emails contain the word "driver," and 15% contain the word "Johannsen" which is in the signature of one of your friends. And precisely 0% of the emails containing any of these terms have ever been found to be spam.
Any decent spam filter will give a huge weight to the presence of these "unspammy" words, because of the extremely high probability of emails containing them to be non-spam. The presence of randomly selected confusion words in empty spams is not going to affect these frequency counts.
In order to defeat a filter by confusing it, the spammer must guess what the SPECIFIC non-spam words for that PARTICULAR email user are, and then produce bogus, spam messages containing those words in the appropriate frequencies. This will cause the classification counts for those words to become more equalized, and the value of those words in determining spammyness to be greatly reduced. However, this is an impossible task unless the spammer has access to the actual emails of the target.
Perhaps the intent of the empty spams is to confuse the filters, but whoever devised the method has no understanding of how these things actually work, whatsoever.
Dude, I've probably had search histories like that on nights I was feeling particularly morbid. It takes a slight mental disturbance to want to read about things like that, but then, aren't we all mentally disturbed to at least some degree?
Plenty of people are intrigued by mystery murder novels, crime investigation shows, explicit dramatizations of violent scenarios, etc. Plenty of people go to rotten.com or other similar sites and look at the most horrific shit imaginable, and while perhaps one or two of these people are violent criminals, the rest are just people who for some reason want to shock themselves. Healthy, maybe not, but it implies nothing.
You have a 3rd option: Leave it alone and do without. Just because the author has not seen fit to release it for that device does *not* entitle someone else to do it for them, nor does it entitle *anyone* to a copy or version that will work on that device.
Like I said, I don't see copyright holders as the ultimate authorities of what can and cannot be done with their works. Legally, this may be the case. But ethically and morally, I think the purpose of copyright law should be to provide incentive for people to create original content, not to elevate them to royalty status. I don't want the author of my favorite digital book telling me I can't listen to it through a voice synthesizer. They may have created it, but it's none of their business.
Is it not the author's right to determine, for a time at least, what is or is not done with their works?
Within certain scopes. If I published photographs of somebody butchering a deer and found that those photos were being used by PETA fanatics to turn childrens' stomachs, I'd be upset. But if somebody who legally purchased my photos in a book chooses to scan them and look at them on their computer, I would have no cause to complain.
1.) You missed the point entirely. If they *were* able to sell your *working* software to others on another format, you'd be pissed, would you not? They just denied you any sales you might have had in that format.
What I was talking about is a (hypothetical) company which, in a black-box manner, takes a binary provided by a customer and transforms it to work on another architecture. I am not talking about a company which purloins my software specifically and sells it as its own. In one case they are selling software, in the other case they are selling a transformation service. Perhaps there is no legal distinction, and perhaps you feel differently, but to me these are very seperate things.
2.) Seriously... How are they going to enhance an iPod movie? Still,. CC is denying them any income they may have derived from selling such a version.
They are denying themselves the income by not providing such a version. As I said, if it were available and reasonably priced I would buy it. But it isn't, which leaves me two options -- rip it from DVD myself, or use the services of a company like CC. These companies seem to be paranoid that if a digital version of their content was available, this would lead to a mass increase in piracy. But the people who are willing to pirate the media in the first place will simply rip it off a DVD instead. By not selling alternative formats, they are simply losing out on a bunch of additional purchases.
Why should malware be able to install itself silently?
Not installing patches?
Why should it have to be done manually? Why is it even allowable NOT to do it?
Visiting shady websites?
Why can't I go where I want on the Web?
Autoclicking "Yes/Allow/Okay" for everything?
Why are there so many pointless dialogs that require the user to click Yes? Almost every dialog I've ever seen is of the form "Would you like to perform the operation you already requested me to perform?"
Windows will never have the reputation of FreeBSD, Linux or Mac. There's just too many idiots running Windows.
When's the last time a Linux system automatically executed an attachment? Installed programs on its own? Bombarded the user with trillions of stupid dialogs with pointless Yes clicks? I don't blame the users one fucking bit.
I use a Mac Mini as my home system. I don't remember the last time I had to click Yes to a dialog. But if I had to do it all the time, I sure as hell would probably give up and just start clicking "Yes" to pretty much anything.
You don't believe they should have any say in how their works are used, displayed, or transformed?
I believe there should be legal incentives for people to create works. That doesn't mean they should be treated as gods with ultimate authority over what they create. It is possible to allow people to profit from their creativity while at the same time allowing society to use those works to enhance itself.
If CC ported your software to AIX before you got a chance to, would any of those folks who bought it from CC buy it from you once you completed your port?
Like I said, there are specific enhancements for the AIX port (and the other ports) which Circuit City would be unable to offer. (Not to mention they would be unable to create the necessary license files to enable the program to actually work, since they wouldn't have our private license keys. They could hack out our license checking, but I *would* consider that a violation because they've *altered* the work instead of merely enabling it to run on something else. But this isn't the point.) They don't have the expertise or the knowledge of the niche. Sure, you could hack the program to make it binary compatible with AIX, but it wouldn't have the bells and whistles that the real AIX version has. That's where the value is, and that's why customers would buy the official version.
Like I said, if Columbia Pictures (for example) offered movies in iPod format with enhancements specific to that format, I'd probably buy them. The potential for profit is sitting right there, but they won't take it because they are afraid of digital piracy. As a result, these third-party providers pop up. Do you really think I'd go through some generic media porting service when I could get a sanctioned version at a reasonable price? I would, but it's not there.
Yes, many users are just stupid and will automatically click "yes" on things, but at that point it's their own damn fault.
Is it really? Perhaps if programs didn't constantly bombard users with a plethora of pointless confirmation dialogs, they wouldn't be so conditioned to automatically click "Yes" to anything that appeared. Here's a hint -- instead of making users confirm operations, make everything UNDOABLE. If you make a mistake, just undo it. Now, you don't have to click "Yes, God Dammit" to every stupid dialog that pops up.
A simple solution is to change the wording of the dialog. "Do you want to prevent this program from executing with administrative privileges?" A user who automatically clicks "Yes" to everything will have their ass covered.
RTFA. "She also admitted that she had to perform the hack in higher privileged administrator mode rather than the lower privileged user account control."
Being an administrator does NOT mean that all your code runs in ring-0. Even administrative accounts don't (or shouldn't) have unfettered access to privileged address spaces. On Linux, even root programs can't perform direct IO to ports, but they ARE allowed to call a kernel function which ENABLES that IO. Being root means you're allowed to ASK for the privileges, not that you are magically capable of doing anything you want.
It comes down to a question of how deeply considered your ethics are. It gets more complicated the deeper you go because it affects more people, but when it comes right down to it, if you wrote a song, performed, produced, and distributed it, you'd probably want sole discretion over what was done with it for a certain period of time.
I don't dispute that authors should have control over the disposition of their works, but transforming a work to another format and/or media is, to me, content-agnostic. The author's contribution to culture and society was the work itself. I do not see how they should be granted a monopoly to profit from mere transformations of already-legally-purchased works to new formats. If I choose to read a book by transferring it to transparencies and projecting it on my living room wall, I do not see how the author can morally expect to profit from that.
I am a software developer and I depend on the protections of copyright in order to make a living. If somebody wanted to transform my software to, for example, run on AIX instead of Linux (via some sort of binary porting), I would probably be upset, but not because I failed to profit from it -- I'd be upset because there is a specific AIX port available with enhancements specific to that platform. If authors want to sell their works for other media formats with enhancements specific to those formats, I would probably buy those works.
The **IA's, and the judges that side with them are unethical. The laws, when applied according to their intent, are not. Unfortunately, certain judges can be blinded as to the intent of a law and tricked into ruling purely based on sensationalism.
And yet you seem to disagree with my premise, which is that it is not unethical for a user of legally purchased media to transform that media into whatever format is most convenient for them? You seem to imply that this is only ethical if the user performs the transformation themselves. I don't see how the identity of the transforming agent is relevant to the ethics of the situation.
Just because Circuit City derives profit doesn't mean they are skimming from the authors of the copyrighted works, any more than an ISP is guilty of skimming because packets containing copyrighted data happen to pass through their network.
We're not talking about books.
We're talking about movies.
There *is* a difference, ya know.
We're talking about copyrighted works. Any logic you can apply to books you can just as well apply to movies, or photographs of your uncle's toupee. Fair use dictates that I should be able to transform my legally acquired materials to any convenient format and use them how I wish. The fact that the person who aids in this transformation process makes a profit is irrelevant. I could just as well be copying my OWN home videos. They have no reason to know or care what the material is. You might as well claim that ISPs are violating copyright law by profiting whenever somebody sends copyrighted bits over their connections.
While making photocopy of a book for personal "backup" purposes would be legal, transforming it for someone else for purposes other than a "backup" and for profit would not be.
Do you see?
No, I don't. Your argument seems to be that because the user can conceivably now view the DVD on their TV, as well as watch the video on their iPod (or whatever), it doesn't qualify as a "backup." If that's true, then my photocopy of a book page is illegal to use except as a "backup" -- you're saying that I'm not allowed to LOOK at it, only keep it around in case the original is destroyed. I can make a photocopy but it's illegal to look at it -- this idea is insane.
I don't deny that copyright law might be against Circuit City in this instance. Doesn't change the fact that it's fucking crazy and not right.
In your example, you are making a backup for personal use.
In CC's actions, they are a commercial entity making a tranformative derivative of the original for use in another device.
"Transformative derivative?" Now you're just inventing nonsense. So they took a video from a DVD and formatted it for an iPod (or whatever). Big deal. I can take a book written on papyrus with cat's blood and photocopy it onto white letter paper using black toner. Now I've made a "transformative derivative" onto a new media in a new format, and your argument is still bullshit.
Therein lies the problem. If they were doing this for free, it *might* fall under fair use. They aren't. They are making a profit. This comes down to selling a copy in adifferent format without protections, and without any royalties.
No, it comes down to essentially making a dub of a tape, or a photocopy of a page of a book. The Xerox machine at my local library charges 10 cents per copied page. The actual making of a photocopy costs less than that. According to your argument, my library is breaking copyright law by profiting (albeit very little) each time somebody makes a photocopy of a copyrighted work.
While your point may be legally valid, I think it's an unreasonable position to take. I see no purpose in rooting against Circuit City just because I don't happen to like big corporations. The legal ramifications apply to everybody including individual users.
That's great and all, but wait until you're taking a compilers course and are subject to the restriction that your generated code be precisely identical to some reference code, because grading was automatic.
I'd say while taking that course, I spent 20% of my programming time on making the output CORRECT. The remaining 80% of the time was spent making it EXACTLY MATCH the reference. What a pointless waste of time.
And to anybody about to suggest that I gained experience "programming to an exact spec," well, you're right -- but that wasn't exactly the topic of study in this course! I could have spend 80% of my time learning more advanced concepts but instead pulled 10 hour sessions trying to figure out why my temporary variable kept getting assigned the name "t6" when the reference code's variable was called "t8." Puke.
Portals like those shown in the demo couldn't exist in physical reality. They clearly violate conservation of momentum. In order to conserve momentum, they would have to be portals in spaceTIME, not just space, and that would also imply gravitational effects. So you could never create portals like this in the real world.
There's nothing logically impossible about the idea of telepathy. Or the Loch Ness Monster. Or UFOs.
I've gotta object to the inclusion of UFOs as "paranormal" phenomenon. I've seen unexplained lights and objects in the sky several times. They certainly fit the description "Unidentified Flying Object." I do not believe these aerial phenomena are aliens, or a secret government project. But I did see them.
Telepathy and the Loch Ness Monster are deniable. To me, UFOs are undeniable because I've seen them. If you see a frisbee flying through the air but can't identify it, guess what? It's an Unidentified Flying Object. For some reason there is a popular connection that UFO == Aliens. You don't have to believe that to see bizarre things in the sky.
So, Google takes the "do no evil" a step further and calls evil out.
Drop the stupid melodrama. Google is a mechanism for searching for strings of bytes inside other strings of bytes, and prioritizing the results according to certain algorithms. "Calling evil out?" You're insane. I suppose the ANSI C function strstr() is also a Wielder Of The Sword Of Righteousness?
Is there some potential badness that Google is indexing binary file content? What might that be?
How about the RIAA using it to locate caches of MP3 files? It's plausible that a person might have personal backups of their music collection (or *shock* music they purchased on iTunes) and accidentally have those files on a public web server. (Or they could be pirates -- the point is, the technology is not "good" nor is it "evil").
Add to this an always-on, all-sides video camera to document that it was the minivan that strayed into your lane, and it'll be even better.
Feh. Insurance companies don't consider things like "evidence." Example: my friend was sideswiped by an SUV who tried to drive around his car on the left side (in the shoulder) on an offramp. He tore a huge gash down the side of my friend's car. Later, the driver claimed that it was my friend who was trying to drive around HIM, and that HE was the one who was sideswiped on the left.
Nevermind the fact that if that were the case, the damage to his vehicle would have been on the OTHER SIDE. The insurance company happily disregarded this unassailable evidence and found my friend to be at fault for the accident.
Read the software license you agreed to when you installed most any software. Almost all of them have a clause in there that says you agree, at your expense, to let the software maker or their appointed agent come in at any time and audit you for license compliance. Note that you get to foot the bill even if they find you're 100% in compliance. If you don't agree to the audit, you're automatically in violation of your license agreement.
Just because it's written in an agreement doesn't mean you have to let them on your property. If you refuse the audit, you simply invalidate your contract and lose the right to use the software. But wait, you weren't using it legally anyway. So who the hell is this really going to stop? You have to be an idiot to let these clowns onto your property.
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This is only "outsmarting" the academics if it works, which it absolutely does not. This approach is what a person ignorant of data mining techniques would come up with. It is ineffective and wastes spammers time, so I approve of it.
Bayesian and other filters do not rely on "spammy" words alone -- they also rely on "unspammy" words, and spammers have no idea what those words are because each person receives different email.
A scenario, with made up (but plausible) numbers: Suppose you're a developer of a Linux driver for the Bozodrive 1000. The majority of your legitimate email comes from Linux driver development mailing lists. A full 50% of those emails contain the word "IRQ." 99% of the emails contain the word "driver," and 15% contain the word "Johannsen" which is in the signature of one of your friends. And precisely 0% of the emails containing any of these terms have ever been found to be spam.
Any decent spam filter will give a huge weight to the presence of these "unspammy" words, because of the extremely high probability of emails containing them to be non-spam. The presence of randomly selected confusion words in empty spams is not going to affect these frequency counts.
In order to defeat a filter by confusing it, the spammer must guess what the SPECIFIC non-spam words for that PARTICULAR email user are, and then produce bogus, spam messages containing those words in the appropriate frequencies. This will cause the classification counts for those words to become more equalized, and the value of those words in determining spammyness to be greatly reduced. However, this is an impossible task unless the spammer has access to the actual emails of the target.
Perhaps the intent of the empty spams is to confuse the filters, but whoever devised the method has no understanding of how these things actually work, whatsoever.
Dude, I've probably had search histories like that on nights I was feeling particularly morbid. It takes a slight mental disturbance to want to read about things like that, but then, aren't we all mentally disturbed to at least some degree?
Plenty of people are intrigued by mystery murder novels, crime investigation shows, explicit dramatizations of violent scenarios, etc. Plenty of people go to rotten.com or other similar sites and look at the most horrific shit imaginable, and while perhaps one or two of these people are violent criminals, the rest are just people who for some reason want to shock themselves. Healthy, maybe not, but it implies nothing.
You have a 3rd option: Leave it alone and do without. Just because the author has not seen fit to release it for that device does *not* entitle someone else to do it for them, nor does it entitle *anyone* to a copy or version that will work on that device.
Like I said, I don't see copyright holders as the ultimate authorities of what can and cannot be done with their works. Legally, this may be the case. But ethically and morally, I think the purpose of copyright law should be to provide incentive for people to create original content, not to elevate them to royalty status. I don't want the author of my favorite digital book telling me I can't listen to it through a voice synthesizer. They may have created it, but it's none of their business.
Is it not the author's right to determine, for a time at least, what is or is not done with their works?
Within certain scopes. If I published photographs of somebody butchering a deer and found that those photos were being used by PETA fanatics to turn childrens' stomachs, I'd be upset. But if somebody who legally purchased my photos in a book chooses to scan them and look at them on their computer, I would have no cause to complain.
1.) You missed the point entirely. If they *were* able to sell your *working* software to others on another format, you'd be pissed, would you not? They just denied you any sales you might have had in that format.
What I was talking about is a (hypothetical) company which, in a black-box manner, takes a binary provided by a customer and transforms it to work on another architecture. I am not talking about a company which purloins my software specifically and sells it as its own. In one case they are selling software, in the other case they are selling a transformation service. Perhaps there is no legal distinction, and perhaps you feel differently, but to me these are very seperate things.
2.) Seriously... How are they going to enhance an iPod movie? Still,. CC is denying them any income they may have derived from selling such a version.
They are denying themselves the income by not providing such a version. As I said, if it were available and reasonably priced I would buy it. But it isn't, which leaves me two options -- rip it from DVD myself, or use the services of a company like CC. These companies seem to be paranoid that if a digital version of their content was available, this would lead to a mass increase in piracy. But the people who are willing to pirate the media in the first place will simply rip it off a DVD instead. By not selling alternative formats, they are simply losing out on a bunch of additional purchases.
Opening and running attachments from strangers?
Why should that be dangerous?
Downloading "free" software crammed with malware?
Why should malware be able to install itself silently?
Not installing patches?
Why should it have to be done manually? Why is it even allowable NOT to do it?
Visiting shady websites?
Why can't I go where I want on the Web?
Autoclicking "Yes/Allow/Okay" for everything?
Why are there so many pointless dialogs that require the user to click Yes? Almost every dialog I've ever seen is of the form "Would you like to perform the operation you already requested me to perform?"
Windows will never have the reputation of FreeBSD, Linux or Mac. There's just too many idiots running Windows.
When's the last time a Linux system automatically executed an attachment? Installed programs on its own? Bombarded the user with trillions of stupid dialogs with pointless Yes clicks? I don't blame the users one fucking bit.
I use a Mac Mini as my home system. I don't remember the last time I had to click Yes to a dialog. But if I had to do it all the time, I sure as hell would probably give up and just start clicking "Yes" to pretty much anything.
You don't believe they should have any say in how their works are used, displayed, or transformed?
I believe there should be legal incentives for people to create works. That doesn't mean they should be treated as gods with ultimate authority over what they create. It is possible to allow people to profit from their creativity while at the same time allowing society to use those works to enhance itself.
If CC ported your software to AIX before you got a chance to, would any of those folks who bought it from CC buy it from you once you completed your port?
Like I said, there are specific enhancements for the AIX port (and the other ports) which Circuit City would be unable to offer. (Not to mention they would be unable to create the necessary license files to enable the program to actually work, since they wouldn't have our private license keys. They could hack out our license checking, but I *would* consider that a violation because they've *altered* the work instead of merely enabling it to run on something else. But this isn't the point.) They don't have the expertise or the knowledge of the niche. Sure, you could hack the program to make it binary compatible with AIX, but it wouldn't have the bells and whistles that the real AIX version has. That's where the value is, and that's why customers would buy the official version.
Like I said, if Columbia Pictures (for example) offered movies in iPod format with enhancements specific to that format, I'd probably buy them. The potential for profit is sitting right there, but they won't take it because they are afraid of digital piracy. As a result, these third-party providers pop up. Do you really think I'd go through some generic media porting service when I could get a sanctioned version at a reasonable price? I would, but it's not there.
Since when do black hats report their work to their victims? I mean... white hats do... grey hats might... but what kind of black hats would?
Black hats who are CLAIMING to be giving you the right information but are in fact social engineering your ass.Yes, many users are just stupid and will automatically click "yes" on things, but at that point it's their own damn fault.
Is it really? Perhaps if programs didn't constantly bombard users with a plethora of pointless confirmation dialogs, they wouldn't be so conditioned to automatically click "Yes" to anything that appeared. Here's a hint -- instead of making users confirm operations, make everything UNDOABLE. If you make a mistake, just undo it. Now, you don't have to click "Yes, God Dammit" to every stupid dialog that pops up.
A simple solution is to change the wording of the dialog. "Do you want to prevent this program from executing with administrative privileges?" A user who automatically clicks "Yes" to everything will have their ass covered.
RTFA. "She also admitted that she had to perform the hack in higher privileged administrator mode rather than the lower privileged user account control."
Being an administrator does NOT mean that all your code runs in ring-0. Even administrative accounts don't (or shouldn't) have unfettered access to privileged address spaces. On Linux, even root programs can't perform direct IO to ports, but they ARE allowed to call a kernel function which ENABLES that IO. Being root means you're allowed to ASK for the privileges, not that you are magically capable of doing anything you want.It comes down to a question of how deeply considered your ethics are. It gets more complicated the deeper you go because it affects more people, but when it comes right down to it, if you wrote a song, performed, produced, and distributed it, you'd probably want sole discretion over what was done with it for a certain period of time.
I don't dispute that authors should have control over the disposition of their works, but transforming a work to another format and/or media is, to me, content-agnostic. The author's contribution to culture and society was the work itself. I do not see how they should be granted a monopoly to profit from mere transformations of already-legally-purchased works to new formats. If I choose to read a book by transferring it to transparencies and projecting it on my living room wall, I do not see how the author can morally expect to profit from that.
I am a software developer and I depend on the protections of copyright in order to make a living. If somebody wanted to transform my software to, for example, run on AIX instead of Linux (via some sort of binary porting), I would probably be upset, but not because I failed to profit from it -- I'd be upset because there is a specific AIX port available with enhancements specific to that platform. If authors want to sell their works for other media formats with enhancements specific to those formats, I would probably buy those works.
The **IA's, and the judges that side with them are unethical. The laws, when applied according to their intent, are not. Unfortunately, certain judges can be blinded as to the intent of a law and tricked into ruling purely based on sensationalism.
And yet you seem to disagree with my premise, which is that it is not unethical for a user of legally purchased media to transform that media into whatever format is most convenient for them? You seem to imply that this is only ethical if the user performs the transformation themselves. I don't see how the identity of the transforming agent is relevant to the ethics of the situation.
Just because Circuit City derives profit doesn't mean they are skimming from the authors of the copyrighted works, any more than an ISP is guilty of skimming because packets containing copyrighted data happen to pass through their network.
I thought it was clear that we were discussing ethics, not legalities. I'm really not interested in your quotations of copyright law.
We're not talking about books. We're talking about movies. There *is* a difference, ya know.
We're talking about copyrighted works. Any logic you can apply to books you can just as well apply to movies, or photographs of your uncle's toupee. Fair use dictates that I should be able to transform my legally acquired materials to any convenient format and use them how I wish. The fact that the person who aids in this transformation process makes a profit is irrelevant. I could just as well be copying my OWN home videos. They have no reason to know or care what the material is. You might as well claim that ISPs are violating copyright law by profiting whenever somebody sends copyrighted bits over their connections.While making photocopy of a book for personal "backup" purposes would be legal, transforming it for someone else for purposes other than a "backup" and for profit would not be. Do you see?
No, I don't. Your argument seems to be that because the user can conceivably now view the DVD on their TV, as well as watch the video on their iPod (or whatever), it doesn't qualify as a "backup." If that's true, then my photocopy of a book page is illegal to use except as a "backup" -- you're saying that I'm not allowed to LOOK at it, only keep it around in case the original is destroyed. I can make a photocopy but it's illegal to look at it -- this idea is insane.
I don't deny that copyright law might be against Circuit City in this instance. Doesn't change the fact that it's fucking crazy and not right.
In your example, you are making a backup for personal use. In CC's actions, they are a commercial entity making a tranformative derivative of the original for use in another device.
"Transformative derivative?" Now you're just inventing nonsense. So they took a video from a DVD and formatted it for an iPod (or whatever). Big deal. I can take a book written on papyrus with cat's blood and photocopy it onto white letter paper using black toner. Now I've made a "transformative derivative" onto a new media in a new format, and your argument is still bullshit.Therein lies the problem. If they were doing this for free, it *might* fall under fair use. They aren't. They are making a profit. This comes down to selling a copy in adifferent format without protections, and without any royalties.
No, it comes down to essentially making a dub of a tape, or a photocopy of a page of a book. The Xerox machine at my local library charges 10 cents per copied page. The actual making of a photocopy costs less than that. According to your argument, my library is breaking copyright law by profiting (albeit very little) each time somebody makes a photocopy of a copyrighted work.
While your point may be legally valid, I think it's an unreasonable position to take. I see no purpose in rooting against Circuit City just because I don't happen to like big corporations. The legal ramifications apply to everybody including individual users.
That's great and all, but wait until you're taking a compilers course and are subject to the restriction that your generated code be precisely identical to some reference code, because grading was automatic.
I'd say while taking that course, I spent 20% of my programming time on making the output CORRECT. The remaining 80% of the time was spent making it EXACTLY MATCH the reference. What a pointless waste of time.
And to anybody about to suggest that I gained experience "programming to an exact spec," well, you're right -- but that wasn't exactly the topic of study in this course! I could have spend 80% of my time learning more advanced concepts but instead pulled 10 hour sessions trying to figure out why my temporary variable kept getting assigned the name "t6" when the reference code's variable was called "t8." Puke.
You waited until age 13?
Portals like those shown in the demo couldn't exist in physical reality. They clearly violate conservation of momentum. In order to conserve momentum, they would have to be portals in spaceTIME, not just space, and that would also imply gravitational effects. So you could never create portals like this in the real world.
There's nothing logically impossible about the idea of telepathy. Or the Loch Ness Monster. Or UFOs.
I've gotta object to the inclusion of UFOs as "paranormal" phenomenon. I've seen unexplained lights and objects in the sky several times. They certainly fit the description "Unidentified Flying Object." I do not believe these aerial phenomena are aliens, or a secret government project. But I did see them.
Telepathy and the Loch Ness Monster are deniable. To me, UFOs are undeniable because I've seen them. If you see a frisbee flying through the air but can't identify it, guess what? It's an Unidentified Flying Object. For some reason there is a popular connection that UFO == Aliens. You don't have to believe that to see bizarre things in the sky.
you're kind of an asshole
Thanks. I try to keep my uncivilized behavior limited to Slashdot.
So, Google takes the "do no evil" a step further and calls evil out.
Drop the stupid melodrama. Google is a mechanism for searching for strings of bytes inside other strings of bytes, and prioritizing the results according to certain algorithms. "Calling evil out?" You're insane. I suppose the ANSI C function strstr() is also a Wielder Of The Sword Of Righteousness?
Is there some potential badness that Google is indexing binary file content? What might that be?
How about the RIAA using it to locate caches of MP3 files? It's plausible that a person might have personal backups of their music collection (or *shock* music they purchased on iTunes) and accidentally have those files on a public web server. (Or they could be pirates -- the point is, the technology is not "good" nor is it "evil").
Add to this an always-on, all-sides video camera to document that it was the minivan that strayed into your lane, and it'll be even better.
Feh. Insurance companies don't consider things like "evidence." Example: my friend was sideswiped by an SUV who tried to drive around his car on the left side (in the shoulder) on an offramp. He tore a huge gash down the side of my friend's car. Later, the driver claimed that it was my friend who was trying to drive around HIM, and that HE was the one who was sideswiped on the left.
Nevermind the fact that if that were the case, the damage to his vehicle would have been on the OTHER SIDE. The insurance company happily disregarded this unassailable evidence and found my friend to be at fault for the accident.
Read the software license you agreed to when you installed most any software. Almost all of them have a clause in there that says you agree, at your expense, to let the software maker or their appointed agent come in at any time and audit you for license compliance. Note that you get to foot the bill even if they find you're 100% in compliance. If you don't agree to the audit, you're automatically in violation of your license agreement.
Just because it's written in an agreement doesn't mean you have to let them on your property. If you refuse the audit, you simply invalidate your contract and lose the right to use the software. But wait, you weren't using it legally anyway. So who the hell is this really going to stop? You have to be an idiot to let these clowns onto your property.