Well, the DeCSS case made a heck of an argument to that end.
Yeah, but the DeCSS case took place in a nation other than the U.S. (which makes it somewhat less relevant relative to discussions of U.S. copyright laws) and it involved encryption protecting digital copyrighted works.
Speaking generally, cracking encryption is not in and of itself an illegal act in the United States. I can't say the same for all other nations.
"Gouging" usually involves taking advantage of a temporary, extreme situation. For example, jacking gas prices after a hurricane (this is illegal to do in Florida).
While the prices for concessions at the movie theater are fucking outrageous, I don't think they qualify as "gouging" because the theaters are not taking advantage of any particular circumstances in order to force people to pay those prices. The fact is, people will pay those prices, and frankly, I think any company which charges any less than its customers are willing to pay is practicing stupid business.
You end up paying $4.00 for a small Coke because everybody who goes to the theater is willing to pay that. This is how the economy works. The very definition of a thing's value is the amount people are willing to buy and sell it at. The price point might be irritating to you, personally, but it's just vanilla economics in action.
You can make some impact by encouraging all of your movie-going friends to avoid the concession stands. In reality that's probably not going to work, because people want popcorn and soda bad enough to pay $10.00 for it.
Out of respect, what if there were things he never wanted them to know? What if he was gay and having an internet relationship with some man, and his parents were anti-gay? They would then be left thinking they never knew their own son, and all of this crap.
Doctor-client privilege terminates after death. After you die, your doctor can tell your parents, the news media, the President, whoever, anything about your medical history.
It's okay for a doctor to spew personal information willy-nilly after you die, but it's not okay to allow a person's own parents access to their email? What the hell?!
Try reading the article. It plunged 17.5%, not 7.5%. Or in your rush to FP did you just read the first couple sentences?
I read the stock charts, which (I thought) were more authoritative than the article. I didn't factor in the change since yesterday. I screwed up, and will report for execution tomorrow at noon.
A rubber stamped warrant can take care of that little problem I'm sure.
I'm sure it would, but it gives the virus that many more hours to spread unimpeded. My point is that if the DMCA hampers the execution of law enforcement, then the DMCA is a fucked up law. (We already knew that, but this is another potential reason why.)
If someone were to ask you, all that you have to do is do a stock screen for companies that lose more than a set percentage in a single day, buy them and wait for the inevitable reversal.
I never said that was my strategy. My strategies actually have very little to do with technicals, but in this case I just have a strong feeling that SCOX is going to recover tomorrow. It's been the pattern in the past. My "gut feeling" is no more or less bullshit than the speculations you see every day on the trading sites.
From what you describe, you're a chart-watching technical trader. And a very bad one at that.
What I described isn't very much to go on, and I think you're being pretty unfair passing judgment on my methods based on one Slashdot post relating to a particularly emotionally charged stock.
Anybody who "bought low" today (around 10:00 AM) and sold at market close made a cool 14%. The price started its correction near the market close, and will probably return to close to its Monday levels.
I mean dude, look at the charts. Notice the volume spike at around 10:00 AM. It was this sudden accumulation move that caused the prices to turn back around. The whole game is purely psychological. Today was certainly a good day to buy SCOX.
I'd hardly call a drop of 7.5% a "plunge." Stock prices always react this way when bad news is accounced, and they usually come back up again. I've made quite a bit of (virtual) money playing this game.
I've seen companies take a 35% hit based on bad news and return to previous prices in less than a week. Considering the apparent magnitude of the announcement and the ensuing PIDDLY 7.5% drop I'm going to wager on the stock price returning to its recent levels.
I'm placing a market open order for (virtual) shares of SCOX right now.
(This is not financial advice, I'd barely even consider it virtual financial advice.)
1) I'd rather be an asshole, than take the fall because I thought the law was a bunch of patsys.
Jeez man, take some comprehension classes. My point was that if the DMCA can be used to interfere with law enforcement, then the DMCA is fucked up -- NOT that I've discovered some cool new way for virus writers to cover their asses. Jesus.
Indeed, these days a large company will typically select the option that will be most profitable in the short term for them. Does the plan doom them in the long run? So what!
You can't hold the CEO 100% responsible for this type of attitude. Many times the corporate management does see the folly in a particular course of action, but takes it anyway. This is because the shareholders are generally stupid creatures and will sue the ass off the board of directors if they do anything that goes against what they think they should be doing.
As we all know here, 99% of people can't be reasoned with. It's easier to just give in and hope you can escape before the shit hits the fan.
So you say if I use ssh to admin my server all the text output of the programs I use and have not written myself can be decrypted by everyone without legal problems because I do not own the copyright?
Yes. Where did you get the idea that it's illegal to crack encryption?
The eavesdropper would probably be guilty of wiretapping or some other type of communications crime, but the fact that he broke the encryption has nothing to do with it.
I doubt it. Have they started letting people trademark simple words now?
Even if "TOR Books" was trademarked, it's not in the same industry or even sector as the Tor sharing system, so trademark protection wouldn't apply anyway.
The DMCA prohibits circumventing a protection on a copyrighted work. Encryption only qualifies as a "protection device" if the person doing the encryption is the holder of the copyright. You can't "protect" what you do not own.
I don't know if the DMCA contains precisely this language, but it's certainly the way it would be interpretted in court.
I'm more interested in the case of using encryption to protect a computer virus. Since the author of the virus actually is the owner of the copyright on the viral code, then the encryption should qualify as a copyright protection device under the DMCA. Law enforcement officials who decrypt the virus to reverse engineer it would be in violation of the DMCA.
I've been saving all of my spam from 4 domains. Figured the more I have for Thunderbird to work on, the better it will do at filtering.
You'd think that would be the case, but you'd be wrong.
The statistics of the source emails change over time (spammers come and go, you take part in different conversations, etc.) This extra data is just noise to the learning algorithm. Naive Bayes is a particularly dumb (but surprisingly effective) algorithm, and it has no way to take advantage of the mass amounts of crap you are dumping on it.
In the world of data mining, "more" is not necessarily "better," and Bayesian learners are certainly no exception to that.
Try restricting the training data to just the last 90 days or so instead of deluging the system with a bunch of irrelevant crap. I think you'll find the performance improves.
There is no way to create a large enough agency to not only collect but also analyze the data that would be collected.
Amazon.com does a pretty fucking good job of offering me other books I "might be interested in."
They have hundreds of thousands of books, and hundreds of thousands of customers, and millions of purchase records, and in a split second it is able to use all that information to produce for me a personalized list of related products. A split second.
Do you seriously think that nobody is working on applications of data mining technology to intelligence gathering? You're nuts.
Especially in a forest. Learn how to pace. Use prominent markers to walk to that aren't too far away and learn to orienteer, not just follow the compass. Learn to read those contour lines and translate them into meaningful features and you'll be ok.
This is all good advice, and I'm fairly good and doing the things you mention. But I never said a GPS was essential to my navigation, just that it is a great help. In my example of finding a trial I was never "lost," but I don't think I could have found the trail had I not had the GPS. I would have just had to turn back.
I don't remember any time where I was ever close to being "hopelessly lost."
The analogy I made in another comment was starting a fire with friction vs. matches vs. a windproof butane lighter. I can fall back to a more primitive method if necessary, but that doesn't mean I won't be upset if you take the lighter or matches away!
Who's fanning the flames of fear here? Just how many people are completely incapable of finding their way around without GPS? Seriously?
Wow, I can't believe this narrow thinking.
There's a reason why GPS units have names like "Summit," "Mountaineer," etc. People use and rely on these devices in backcountry and wilderness areas.
People who need a GPS to navigate their hometown are idiots, but that hardly accounts for all GPS usage everywhere.
I really wouldn't appreciate being 10 miles from anything recognizable and suddenly my GPS won't work, or even worse, starts giving false readings.
(And before anybody makes the comment "just use a map and compass," that's like telling a person with no matches to "just rub two sticks together." Yeah, I could start a fire that way, but I still would rather have my fucking matches for safety purposes.)
I use a GPS often for navigation purposes. I'm talking out in the woods of the Pacific Northwest where you can't see more than 50 feet through the trees at times. I do this a LOT.
People rely on GPS. Yes, I could navigate by map and compass if I needed to (and I do carry them and know how to use them), but it would take longer, and have a higher chance of disaster. It's hard to follow a compass bearing true in the forest. Trees get in your way and you need to make detours. Too big of a detour, and your bearing is no longer the right direction. Ironically, this effect gets more pronounced the closer you actually are to your target.
Just last weekend I relied on GPS to locate a trail. The maps of the particular area are not very accurate, and if I had had to rely solely on a map and compass, I don't think I would have ever found the trail.
I think it is ridiculous that a system like GPS which people depend on could be shut down at any moment. Even worse, what if they decide to just reposition the satellites in order to give everybody false readings? Not having a GPS is bad, but having it tell you you're walking toward a road when you are, in fact, walking toward a cliff is even worse.
When your switching power supply starts breaking motherboards by turning it off and on every goddamn day, tell that to the recycling plant that you will never use.
You can cut your power bill in HALF, just by shutting off your workstation. Christ, what are you running, a PDP11?
It isn't that my computer draws a lot of power -- it's that the rest of my house draws so little.
And my primary motivation is NOT saving money. Yeah, I save a lot on the electric bill, but consider this: I recently plonked down $1252 for a washer/drier (at a hefty discount, retail would have been $2200 but I got a special deal) that averages about 10% of the energy/water usage of a "normal" washer and drier. It'll take me over 8 years to recover that cost in the form of energy savings, but I don't care. I'm interested in saving energy, not money.
My next big project is to install a solar water heater on my roof as a booster for my normal water heater. It's kind of tough this time of year, because I go to work in the dark, and come home in the dark.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but the DeCSS case took place in a nation other than the U.S. (which makes it somewhat less relevant relative to discussions of U.S. copyright laws) and it involved encryption protecting digital copyrighted works.
Speaking generally, cracking encryption is not in and of itself an illegal act in the United States. I can't say the same for all other nations.
While the prices for concessions at the movie theater are fucking outrageous, I don't think they qualify as "gouging" because the theaters are not taking advantage of any particular circumstances in order to force people to pay those prices. The fact is, people will pay those prices, and frankly, I think any company which charges any less than its customers are willing to pay is practicing stupid business.
You end up paying $4.00 for a small Coke because everybody who goes to the theater is willing to pay that. This is how the economy works. The very definition of a thing's value is the amount people are willing to buy and sell it at. The price point might be irritating to you, personally, but it's just vanilla economics in action.
You can make some impact by encouraging all of your movie-going friends to avoid the concession stands. In reality that's probably not going to work, because people want popcorn and soda bad enough to pay $10.00 for it.
What was it you just said about not seeing the future?
If you actually believe that, why aren't you shorting the hell out of SCOX?
Doctor-client privilege terminates after death. After you die, your doctor can tell your parents, the news media, the President, whoever, anything about your medical history.
It's okay for a doctor to spew personal information willy-nilly after you die, but it's not okay to allow a person's own parents access to their email? What the hell?!
I read the stock charts, which (I thought) were more authoritative than the article. I didn't factor in the change since yesterday. I screwed up, and will report for execution tomorrow at noon.
I'm sure it would, but it gives the virus that many more hours to spread unimpeded. My point is that if the DMCA hampers the execution of law enforcement, then the DMCA is a fucked up law. (We already knew that, but this is another potential reason why.)
I never said that was my strategy. My strategies actually have very little to do with technicals, but in this case I just have a strong feeling that SCOX is going to recover tomorrow. It's been the pattern in the past. My "gut feeling" is no more or less bullshit than the speculations you see every day on the trading sites.
From what you describe, you're a chart-watching technical trader. And a very bad one at that.
What I described isn't very much to go on, and I think you're being pretty unfair passing judgment on my methods based on one Slashdot post relating to a particularly emotionally charged stock.
Anybody who "bought low" today (around 10:00 AM) and sold at market close made a cool 14%. The price started its correction near the market close, and will probably return to close to its Monday levels.
I mean dude, look at the charts. Notice the volume spike at around 10:00 AM. It was this sudden accumulation move that caused the prices to turn back around. The whole game is purely psychological. Today was certainly a good day to buy SCOX.
I've seen companies take a 35% hit based on bad news and return to previous prices in less than a week. Considering the apparent magnitude of the announcement and the ensuing PIDDLY 7.5% drop I'm going to wager on the stock price returning to its recent levels.
I'm placing a market open order for (virtual) shares of SCOX right now.
(This is not financial advice, I'd barely even consider it virtual financial advice.)
Yeah! The NDA the perpetrator signed? Pointless! Why enforce contracts?
Hell, this idea is so compelling I think I'll stop paying my mortgage! Contracts mean nothing! Yeeehaw!
So anybody who doesn't operate in the way you think they should is closed minded? I wonder who has the closed mind here...
Jeez man, take some comprehension classes. My point was that if the DMCA can be used to interfere with law enforcement, then the DMCA is fucked up -- NOT that I've discovered some cool new way for virus writers to cover their asses. Jesus.
You can't hold the CEO 100% responsible for this type of attitude. Many times the corporate management does see the folly in a particular course of action, but takes it anyway. This is because the shareholders are generally stupid creatures and will sue the ass off the board of directors if they do anything that goes against what they think they should be doing.
As we all know here, 99% of people can't be reasoned with. It's easier to just give in and hope you can escape before the shit hits the fan.
It was speculation. If you have a reason why it wouldn't work, why not tell us?
I know -- it's because you're an asshole.
Yes. Where did you get the idea that it's illegal to crack encryption?
The eavesdropper would probably be guilty of wiretapping or some other type of communications crime, but the fact that he broke the encryption has nothing to do with it.
Even if "TOR Books" was trademarked, it's not in the same industry or even sector as the Tor sharing system, so trademark protection wouldn't apply anyway.
The DMCA prohibits circumventing a protection on a copyrighted work. Encryption only qualifies as a "protection device" if the person doing the encryption is the holder of the copyright. You can't "protect" what you do not own.
I don't know if the DMCA contains precisely this language, but it's certainly the way it would be interpretted in court.
I'm more interested in the case of using encryption to protect a computer virus. Since the author of the virus actually is the owner of the copyright on the viral code, then the encryption should qualify as a copyright protection device under the DMCA. Law enforcement officials who decrypt the virus to reverse engineer it would be in violation of the DMCA.
Get real. Do you actually think a product containing a poison could make it to market? Geez, the FDA may be bad, but not that bad...
You'd think that would be the case, but you'd be wrong.
The statistics of the source emails change over time (spammers come and go, you take part in different conversations, etc.) This extra data is just noise to the learning algorithm. Naive Bayes is a particularly dumb (but surprisingly effective) algorithm, and it has no way to take advantage of the mass amounts of crap you are dumping on it.
In the world of data mining, "more" is not necessarily "better," and Bayesian learners are certainly no exception to that.
Try restricting the training data to just the last 90 days or so instead of deluging the system with a bunch of irrelevant crap. I think you'll find the performance improves.
Amazon.com does a pretty fucking good job of offering me other books I "might be interested in."
They have hundreds of thousands of books, and hundreds of thousands of customers, and millions of purchase records, and in a split second it is able to use all that information to produce for me a personalized list of related products. A split second.
Do you seriously think that nobody is working on applications of data mining technology to intelligence gathering? You're nuts.
This is all good advice, and I'm fairly good and doing the things you mention. But I never said a GPS was essential to my navigation, just that it is a great help. In my example of finding a trial I was never "lost," but I don't think I could have found the trail had I not had the GPS. I would have just had to turn back.
I don't remember any time where I was ever close to being "hopelessly lost."
The analogy I made in another comment was starting a fire with friction vs. matches vs. a windproof butane lighter. I can fall back to a more primitive method if necessary, but that doesn't mean I won't be upset if you take the lighter or matches away!
Wow, I can't believe this narrow thinking.
There's a reason why GPS units have names like "Summit," "Mountaineer," etc. People use and rely on these devices in backcountry and wilderness areas.
People who need a GPS to navigate their hometown are idiots, but that hardly accounts for all GPS usage everywhere.
I really wouldn't appreciate being 10 miles from anything recognizable and suddenly my GPS won't work, or even worse, starts giving false readings.
(And before anybody makes the comment "just use a map and compass," that's like telling a person with no matches to "just rub two sticks together." Yeah, I could start a fire that way, but I still would rather have my fucking matches for safety purposes.)
People rely on GPS. Yes, I could navigate by map and compass if I needed to (and I do carry them and know how to use them), but it would take longer, and have a higher chance of disaster. It's hard to follow a compass bearing true in the forest. Trees get in your way and you need to make detours. Too big of a detour, and your bearing is no longer the right direction. Ironically, this effect gets more pronounced the closer you actually are to your target.
Just last weekend I relied on GPS to locate a trail. The maps of the particular area are not very accurate, and if I had had to rely solely on a map and compass, I don't think I would have ever found the trail.
I think it is ridiculous that a system like GPS which people depend on could be shut down at any moment. Even worse, what if they decide to just reposition the satellites in order to give everybody false readings? Not having a GPS is bad, but having it tell you you're walking toward a road when you are, in fact, walking toward a cliff is even worse.
This is really disturbing.
Quit perpetuating this stupid myth. Read.
It isn't that my computer draws a lot of power -- it's that the rest of my house draws so little.
And my primary motivation is NOT saving money. Yeah, I save a lot on the electric bill, but consider this: I recently plonked down $1252 for a washer/drier (at a hefty discount, retail would have been $2200 but I got a special deal) that averages about 10% of the energy/water usage of a "normal" washer and drier. It'll take me over 8 years to recover that cost in the form of energy savings, but I don't care. I'm interested in saving energy, not money.
My next big project is to install a solar water heater on my roof as a booster for my normal water heater. It's kind of tough this time of year, because I go to work in the dark, and come home in the dark.