That's spot on, the government narrative about this has been pretty predictable, because it's the same narrative they use whenever they get questioned about things like the Patriot Act, "enhanced interrogation", TSA scanners, etc. They jump straight to how useful these things are. No one is screaming that these programs should be dismantled because they are useless, the government is responding to an argument that no one is making. The argument is that they are possibly illegal and certainly in opposition to the constitution. I don't want Obama to tell me how useful these things are, I'm sure that the ability to tap all communications is incredibly useful to any government that wants to conduct surveillance. I want Obama to try and explain how this fits into the constitution, I want him to explain how this does not infringe upon our rights. He should be able to do that, seeing as how he's a constitutional lawyer. If he can't explain that then we have a problem. And I'm not going to accept the finding by a secret court whose decisions are classified, I want a clear explanation about what exactly these programs do, and why our rights are not being violated.
One of the best comments was from John Oliver on the Daily Show.
His best line was something like "we're not accusing you of breaking any laws, we're just surprised you didn't."
He also pointed out how the FISA courts, which are there to oversee any surveillance requests, have literally never denied a request. That's some good rubber-stamping action there.
I specifically declined all attempts to update the system over the network until I had some people over for movies. I was making snacks and my cousin or wife (neither will fess up to it) put the movie we rented in. It said the console required and update and they said ok. By the time I showed up it was too late to do anything about it.
Possibly true, but as long as it doesn't need a network connection *ever*, I'll try to live with that.
The console won't, especially if you don't update it. That new game you really want might in fact require a connection though. And it might also require the OS update that it shipped with. Your tradeoff might be not being able to play some of the games you want to play in order to maintain your autonomy. But at least it's an option with Sony. Sort of like OtherOS was an option. At one point.
I also want to point out how you immediately assume that Slashdot's posting of a story about a current event (the IDF giving an account of a past war) somehow makes all of Slashdot "horribly biased in supporting Israel". Who exactly has the bias here?
Can we have a counter channel with a play-by-play according to the other sides?
I guess "we" can have whatever "we" want as long as "we" are willing to do it. Surely you wouldn't expect the IDF to play characters of the other side and post what they thought would have been said. If "we" can find sources of what was going on in the command centers of the other armies, then I guess "we" could make a Twitter account and start posting that stuff. Or maybe Egypt, Syria, and Jordan can find the time to post that material between dealing with refugees, civil war, protests, etc. Otherwise, shut your hummus hole and don't be surprised that Israel's reporting of a war that they were involved in somehow manages to contain the information as they saw it. It's still historically interesting because it is the account of one party in a war, which is interesting regardless of which war it is, who the parties are, and how much you happen to hate one of them.
Mines from a $5 (shipped) job from Hong Kong, charges quite fast. I assure you it's not licensed, knock off lightning cable and all.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to argue, but it sounds like you're a perfect candidate for a charger that distributes malware. How would you know if your current charger is not sending your data back to China?
The concern with the stated metrics is not that the electric powerplant emissions being included, but that "total footprint" includes all the way back to coal mining techniques while the total footprint of gasoline vehicles stops at the gas tank.
That's exactly what I came to say. If they are going to factor in the total cost of producing the electricity that runs the vehicle, then they need to compare that with a gas vehicle where they also include the environmental cost to extract the oil, transport the oil to a refinery, refine the oil into gasoline, transport the gas to a distributor, and then worry about the emissions of the actual vehicle consuming the fuel. Likewise, if they want to factor in the cost to manufacture the batteries and motors, then they also need to factor in the cost to manufacture the engines. It's not a meaningful comparison otherwise.
So while there is no current case that I know of involving website TOS and browsers so far the courts have ruled pretty consistently in favor of the courts, no matter that in the case of shrink wraps its completely lop sided and thanks to the fact nobody will take back software once its been opened unlike TOS and EULAs you can't escape without penalty. Considering how heavily they have ruled in favor of licenses it really wouldn't surprise me one bit if a website could scream DMCA violation and win, in fact I can't even think of a case where the court ruled against the corp when it comes to DMCA with the exception of fair use such as parodies or background music such as "dancing Prince baby".
I don't see how it's possible for the situation described by the person I was replying to to happen. A website TOS saying that I am not allowed to run my own Javascript code or a modified version of their Javascript code is about the same as saying that I'm not allowed to play Solitaire or drink a beer while I'm using their site. It doesn't affect them at all, and they are in no position to try and enforce something like that. If I want to write some Javascript, and execute it on my browser while it has their site loaded, then there's no reason I shouldn't be allowed to do that.
And speaking of NYCL, I haven't seen that guy around here in years. We used to get occasional stories from him. It looks like he still updates his blog though.
I'm not a lawyer, I just admire NYCL's work. I'm not sure how binding the various EULAs are considered to be, but I've never heard of anyone brought up on charges for running their own Javascript code in their own browser. With Opera, for example, you can configure it to run your own Javascript (or CSS) files on any or all sites. That's not even a plugin or third-party add-on, it's been an option for as long as I can remember. A EULA might generally be considered a binding agreement, but I don't think they are allowed to remove rights that you have. A EULA that basically says that you waive your first amendment rights I don't think would hold up. I have the right (or privilege) to run whatever code I want to run on my browser, a website EULA should not be able to say that I am not allowed to run whatever arbitrary Javascript code I want to in my browser while I'm looking at their site, even if that code is a modified version of their code.
A place where, by modifying the source in your browser, you can be brought up on hacking charges, wire fraud, violating the DMCA, etc.
That's the stupidest thing I've heard in a while, well done. Find a single case where someone has been brought up on any charge because they asked for code that is publicly available for distribution, they received the code, they changed some of the code, and ran it on their own machine. When you're changing Javascript code you aren't "hacking" shit except for your own computer. You're not even interacting with the server in any way. The DMCA doesn't have shit to say about the issue either.
You ever actually read any of those TOS that you supposedly agree to the moment you navigate to a webpage?
What does that have to do with anything? Case law is what matters, not whatever language someone writes which they pretend that everyone agrees with.
So is it a case of where they start out following the ethics guidelines the classes taught them, but end up pushing the edge and pushing the edge until they go too far, with the process generally taking years, as they slowly become disillusioned and greedy?
You'd hope that they start out ethical. Judge Wright in California said that their porn trolling cases were basically allowed because they found the nexus of outdated copyright laws, a paralyzing social stigma for the defendant, and potentially expensive litigation that people want to avoid. It just seems like the lawyer's version of a get-rich-quick scheme. They can interject into class action suits and extract a payment that way with minimal effort, they can monitor bittorrent and send settlement letters to downloaders for a few thousand with minimal effort, etc.
I'm not an attorney, but Judge Otis Wright in the California case was looking at rule 11 sanctions against Prenda Law. The basis for that was because he was under the impression that the shell companies that the lawyers were representing were in fact owned by the lawyers themselves, but they did not notify the court of that. They would have been allowed to proceed if they had notified the court that they had a monetary interest (their claims and discovery requests simply would have been given more scrutiny in that case), but Judge Wright alleged that they committed fraud on the court by trying to hide that relationship. So it's fine if a lawyer has a monetary stake in the case (as far as I know, again, not a lawyer), but they need to be up front about that from the start. I doubt Hansmeier was trying to hide his relationship with his wife, the goal was simply to extract $20k or $30k from the defendant (Groupon) so that they would withdraw their objection and let the case settle. They file their objection just before the deadline for filing in the hope that the defendant wants a quick settlement. Most of this is just my speculation though, which comes from following Ken's great coverage on Popehat, as well as the coverage on fightcopyrighttrolls.com and dietrolldie.com.
If you've been following the coverage on Popehat or FightCopyrightTrolls, you'll know that the Groupon class-action case is another one of Hansmeier's schemes to make money. He has a few cases where someone in his family files as an objector in a class-action case at the 11th hour (meaning that they are going to hold the case up and not let it settle, unless they get a nice payout of course), and then Hansmeier himself acts as the attorney for the objector. There are theories that he simply files the objections himself under a family member's name, and then proceeds to represent them. The objector in the Groupon case is Padraigin Browne, Hansmeier's wife (and a patent attorney). He's also represented his father, another attorney, in other class-action cases. I like how the judge ordered Hansmeier to provide proof to the court that he notified his client (wife) that he wasn't eligible to represent her.
400, after all, is just an integer with no chemical significance
That's sort of a weird criticism. They aren't saying that their instruments are measuring 400. They aren't out there measuring integers. The measurement is 400 parts of CO2 per million parts of air. That's what the reading is, that's the chemical significance. The significant fact of that measurement is that it's the highest one they've ever recorded. There's plenty to discuss about this without resorting to some sort of weird misdirection tactic that 400 is just an integer.
Why? What exactly do you think this system is designed to protect against, an attack from a sophisticated air force? There's a reason they say that they are testing the system on Qassam style rockets. A Qassam rocket isn't supersonic. But you can bet that if they get a few years of good experience with this thing deployed in the field, they'll eventually end up with a bigger version.
I would bet that someone with poor business sense and a high degree of greed got hold of a successful product with 87% market share, and started thinking about how they could make as much money as possible with it.
Fine, you own the data. You can have access to it whenever you want, I'm sure. But you don't own this, the actual paper sheet and the plaque that they mounted it on. It was given to a private individual, who sold it. Now you can buy it. Or perhaps instead you would like a sword, or Buzz's underwear, or this fine handle.
Phone conversations are very small using the right codecs.
The size of a single phone conversation isn't the limiting factor. The problem is volume, the number of phone calls that take place every single day has to be staggering. Maybe a single 1-minute call is only 100kb, but if you have 1 billion conversations every day then that's going to be a storage problem eventually.
I'm fine with vendors trying to add their own DRM, I don't have any problem with that. I'm not necessarily going to use their products, but I don't have a moral objection to some company deciding to try DRM in the marketplace. I just don't think it should be standardized. If that means that certain protected content will only play on certain devices, so be it. If I want the content that badly to use DRM then I'll take that into account. If I don't want to deal with the DRM, then I won't be their customer. See EA for a good example. I'm not going to berate them for the fact that they use DRM, that's their choice. I'm just not going to buy their products because I don't agree with the decisions they've made.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure it's effective That's not the problem.
That's spot on, the government narrative about this has been pretty predictable, because it's the same narrative they use whenever they get questioned about things like the Patriot Act, "enhanced interrogation", TSA scanners, etc. They jump straight to how useful these things are. No one is screaming that these programs should be dismantled because they are useless, the government is responding to an argument that no one is making. The argument is that they are possibly illegal and certainly in opposition to the constitution. I don't want Obama to tell me how useful these things are, I'm sure that the ability to tap all communications is incredibly useful to any government that wants to conduct surveillance. I want Obama to try and explain how this fits into the constitution, I want him to explain how this does not infringe upon our rights. He should be able to do that, seeing as how he's a constitutional lawyer. If he can't explain that then we have a problem. And I'm not going to accept the finding by a secret court whose decisions are classified, I want a clear explanation about what exactly these programs do, and why our rights are not being violated.
Who cares? The xbox one is already dead
Yeah seriously, it's only #2 on Amazon's best seller list for video games and still has 5 months before release. Someone get that thing a bodybag!
Either way, even if they change a month after shipping it, at least it started out better than Xbone.
What? Even if they fool me twice, I'm still not an idiot.
One of the best comments was from John Oliver on the Daily Show.
His best line was something like "we're not accusing you of breaking any laws, we're just surprised you didn't."
He also pointed out how the FISA courts, which are there to oversee any surveillance requests, have literally never denied a request. That's some good rubber-stamping action there.
I specifically declined all attempts to update the system over the network until I had some people over for movies. I was making snacks and my cousin or wife (neither will fess up to it) put the movie we rented in. It said the console required and update and they said ok. By the time I showed up it was too late to do anything about it.
That sounds like an excellent vector for malware.
Possibly true, but as long as it doesn't need a network connection *ever*, I'll try to live with that.
The console won't, especially if you don't update it. That new game you really want might in fact require a connection though. And it might also require the OS update that it shipped with. Your tradeoff might be not being able to play some of the games you want to play in order to maintain your autonomy. But at least it's an option with Sony. Sort of like OtherOS was an option. At one point.
I also want to point out how you immediately assume that Slashdot's posting of a story about a current event (the IDF giving an account of a past war) somehow makes all of Slashdot "horribly biased in supporting Israel". Who exactly has the bias here?
Can we have a counter channel with a play-by-play according to the other sides?
I guess "we" can have whatever "we" want as long as "we" are willing to do it. Surely you wouldn't expect the IDF to play characters of the other side and post what they thought would have been said. If "we" can find sources of what was going on in the command centers of the other armies, then I guess "we" could make a Twitter account and start posting that stuff. Or maybe Egypt, Syria, and Jordan can find the time to post that material between dealing with refugees, civil war, protests, etc. Otherwise, shut your hummus hole and don't be surprised that Israel's reporting of a war that they were involved in somehow manages to contain the information as they saw it. It's still historically interesting because it is the account of one party in a war, which is interesting regardless of which war it is, who the parties are, and how much you happen to hate one of them.
Mines from a $5 (shipped) job from Hong Kong, charges quite fast. I assure you it's not licensed, knock off lightning cable and all.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to argue, but it sounds like you're a perfect candidate for a charger that distributes malware. How would you know if your current charger is not sending your data back to China?
The concern with the stated metrics is not that the electric powerplant emissions being included, but that "total footprint" includes all the way back to coal mining techniques while the total footprint of gasoline vehicles stops at the gas tank.
That's exactly what I came to say. If they are going to factor in the total cost of producing the electricity that runs the vehicle, then they need to compare that with a gas vehicle where they also include the environmental cost to extract the oil, transport the oil to a refinery, refine the oil into gasoline, transport the gas to a distributor, and then worry about the emissions of the actual vehicle consuming the fuel. Likewise, if they want to factor in the cost to manufacture the batteries and motors, then they also need to factor in the cost to manufacture the engines. It's not a meaningful comparison otherwise.
So while there is no current case that I know of involving website TOS and browsers so far the courts have ruled pretty consistently in favor of the courts, no matter that in the case of shrink wraps its completely lop sided and thanks to the fact nobody will take back software once its been opened unlike TOS and EULAs you can't escape without penalty. Considering how heavily they have ruled in favor of licenses it really wouldn't surprise me one bit if a website could scream DMCA violation and win, in fact I can't even think of a case where the court ruled against the corp when it comes to DMCA with the exception of fair use such as parodies or background music such as "dancing Prince baby".
I don't see how it's possible for the situation described by the person I was replying to to happen. A website TOS saying that I am not allowed to run my own Javascript code or a modified version of their Javascript code is about the same as saying that I'm not allowed to play Solitaire or drink a beer while I'm using their site. It doesn't affect them at all, and they are in no position to try and enforce something like that. If I want to write some Javascript, and execute it on my browser while it has their site loaded, then there's no reason I shouldn't be allowed to do that.
And speaking of NYCL, I haven't seen that guy around here in years. We used to get occasional stories from him. It looks like he still updates his blog though.
I'm not a lawyer, I just admire NYCL's work. I'm not sure how binding the various EULAs are considered to be, but I've never heard of anyone brought up on charges for running their own Javascript code in their own browser. With Opera, for example, you can configure it to run your own Javascript (or CSS) files on any or all sites. That's not even a plugin or third-party add-on, it's been an option for as long as I can remember. A EULA might generally be considered a binding agreement, but I don't think they are allowed to remove rights that you have. A EULA that basically says that you waive your first amendment rights I don't think would hold up. I have the right (or privilege) to run whatever code I want to run on my browser, a website EULA should not be able to say that I am not allowed to run whatever arbitrary Javascript code I want to in my browser while I'm looking at their site, even if that code is a modified version of their code.
A place where, by modifying the source in your browser, you can be brought up on hacking charges, wire fraud, violating the DMCA, etc.
That's the stupidest thing I've heard in a while, well done. Find a single case where someone has been brought up on any charge because they asked for code that is publicly available for distribution, they received the code, they changed some of the code, and ran it on their own machine. When you're changing Javascript code you aren't "hacking" shit except for your own computer. You're not even interacting with the server in any way. The DMCA doesn't have shit to say about the issue either.
You ever actually read any of those TOS that you supposedly agree to the moment you navigate to a webpage?
What does that have to do with anything? Case law is what matters, not whatever language someone writes which they pretend that everyone agrees with.
So is it a case of where they start out following the ethics guidelines the classes taught them, but end up pushing the edge and pushing the edge until they go too far, with the process generally taking years, as they slowly become disillusioned and greedy?
You'd hope that they start out ethical. Judge Wright in California said that their porn trolling cases were basically allowed because they found the nexus of outdated copyright laws, a paralyzing social stigma for the defendant, and potentially expensive litigation that people want to avoid. It just seems like the lawyer's version of a get-rich-quick scheme. They can interject into class action suits and extract a payment that way with minimal effort, they can monitor bittorrent and send settlement letters to downloaders for a few thousand with minimal effort, etc.
I'm not an attorney, but Judge Otis Wright in the California case was looking at rule 11 sanctions against Prenda Law. The basis for that was because he was under the impression that the shell companies that the lawyers were representing were in fact owned by the lawyers themselves, but they did not notify the court of that. They would have been allowed to proceed if they had notified the court that they had a monetary interest (their claims and discovery requests simply would have been given more scrutiny in that case), but Judge Wright alleged that they committed fraud on the court by trying to hide that relationship. So it's fine if a lawyer has a monetary stake in the case (as far as I know, again, not a lawyer), but they need to be up front about that from the start. I doubt Hansmeier was trying to hide his relationship with his wife, the goal was simply to extract $20k or $30k from the defendant (Groupon) so that they would withdraw their objection and let the case settle. They file their objection just before the deadline for filing in the hope that the defendant wants a quick settlement. Most of this is just my speculation though, which comes from following Ken's great coverage on Popehat, as well as the coverage on fightcopyrighttrolls.com and dietrolldie.com.
If you've been following the coverage on Popehat or FightCopyrightTrolls, you'll know that the Groupon class-action case is another one of Hansmeier's schemes to make money. He has a few cases where someone in his family files as an objector in a class-action case at the 11th hour (meaning that they are going to hold the case up and not let it settle, unless they get a nice payout of course), and then Hansmeier himself acts as the attorney for the objector. There are theories that he simply files the objections himself under a family member's name, and then proceeds to represent them. The objector in the Groupon case is Padraigin Browne, Hansmeier's wife (and a patent attorney). He's also represented his father, another attorney, in other class-action cases. I like how the judge ordered Hansmeier to provide proof to the court that he notified his client (wife) that he wasn't eligible to represent her.
and the people in the USA and the most dogmatic assertions will include GOP as the root of evil
I don't think anyone argues that the GOP is the root of all evil so much as they are a successful implementation of the evil specification.
And the reason they measure on top of a spewing volcano?
By "spewing volcano", do you mean the volcano which last erupted in 1984 and which is home to many permanent science installations?
400, after all, is just an integer with no chemical significance
That's sort of a weird criticism. They aren't saying that their instruments are measuring 400. They aren't out there measuring integers. The measurement is 400 parts of CO2 per million parts of air. That's what the reading is, that's the chemical significance. The significant fact of that measurement is that it's the highest one they've ever recorded. There's plenty to discuss about this without resorting to some sort of weird misdirection tactic that 400 is just an integer.
Let's say we have a cruise missile
Why? What exactly do you think this system is designed to protect against, an attack from a sophisticated air force? There's a reason they say that they are testing the system on Qassam style rockets. A Qassam rocket isn't supersonic. But you can bet that if they get a few years of good experience with this thing deployed in the field, they'll eventually end up with a bigger version.
So I wonder what went wrong at McAfee afterwards.
I would bet that someone with poor business sense and a high degree of greed got hold of a successful product with 87% market share, and started thinking about how they could make as much money as possible with it.
http://www.rrauction.com/preview_itemdetail.cfm?IN=405
Fine, you own the data. You can have access to it whenever you want, I'm sure. But you don't own this, the actual paper sheet and the plaque that they mounted it on. It was given to a private individual, who sold it. Now you can buy it. Or perhaps instead you would like a sword, or Buzz's underwear, or this fine handle.
Phone conversations are very small using the right codecs.
The size of a single phone conversation isn't the limiting factor. The problem is volume, the number of phone calls that take place every single day has to be staggering. Maybe a single 1-minute call is only 100kb, but if you have 1 billion conversations every day then that's going to be a storage problem eventually.
I'm fine with vendors trying to add their own DRM, I don't have any problem with that. I'm not necessarily going to use their products, but I don't have a moral objection to some company deciding to try DRM in the marketplace. I just don't think it should be standardized. If that means that certain protected content will only play on certain devices, so be it. If I want the content that badly to use DRM then I'll take that into account. If I don't want to deal with the DRM, then I won't be their customer. See EA for a good example. I'm not going to berate them for the fact that they use DRM, that's their choice. I'm just not going to buy their products because I don't agree with the decisions they've made.