If companies were dumping enough oxygen into the air for it to be a threat to our quality of life, then yes.
Afraid the trees and other assorted greenery have that covered...damn things are always trying to blow us up, consuming all that safe, inert CO2 and pumping out all that highly flammable and explosive O2...;)
Perhaps the EPA's real intent is to be able to control all the world's diamonds, then? After all, they're carbon too, just in a different arrangement...;)
The climate WILL change... Better to focus on creating an upwardly mobile society that can more easily adapt to these inevitable changes than to risk making society poorer and therefore less able to adapt.
It's nice to hear a voice of reason on these boards every so often;)
If only we could stop making our kids neurotic about how much carbon daddy's lawn mower is emitting, and get back to making them neurotic about how many starving kids that leftover meatloaf mommy just threw out could have fed...at least the starving kids is a real, tangible (and heartbreaking) issue.
But would you be willing to breath an atmosphere that was 100% carbon dioxide? No? g=
Er, no, however one that was 100% oxygen (or pretty much any gas) would be just as toxic for you and me...should the Clean Air Act cover oxygen emissions as well?
Incompetent business solution #1: Issue a pair of security breeches to every employee.
(one year later)
Incompetent business solution #2: Replace expensive breeches with cost-effective chastity belts...and don't forget to collect a huge bonus for 'saving' the company X dollars this year.
Indeed. When I read that, I wondered "what home medical devices?" DIY catscan and X-Ray machines?
Upon RTFA, I was mildly disappointed to see they meant sensors for blood glucose monitors and to 'monitor their sleep patterns'. *Yawn*
But then I cheered up when I read that they're also working on an app to control an 'exoskeleton' for paraplegics. That. is. cool. Not necessarily something I would be trusting my smartphone to control, however...or any remote interface, for that matter! Although I guess then you could send it down to the store for milk...
Every year we get closer and closer to MechWarrior...
Now... if the photos were taken every 5 minutes, between the hours of 9 and 11pm, you might have a point, but without more facts you can't say it would be considered kiddie porn in a court of law as theres no indication thats what they were trying to do.
Actually, my calculations assumed between the hours of 4pm and 10pm (i.e., after school hours, since why would they want to monitor them while they're sitting at their desks?) and the 8000 photos over six months works out to *roughly* one every five minutes.
True, without information on the actual timing interval and who had access to the photos there's nothing solid to go on, but I would be taking a long hard look at the people who were pushing this 'program'. I hate to pander to stereotypes, but what would you think if it were a priest who gave them the laptops, then collected the pictures/screenshots to check for evidence of sin?
Why do people get so retarded about laws and always think they can be warped around so intent and context have no effect on the system? Are you guys really that fucking ignorant of how the American legal system works?
Two words, man. Hot. Coffee. That incident alone pretty much sporked the reputation of this "American legal system" of which you speak, at least in the eyes of the international community. Of course, that was a civil lawsuit, I'm sure your criminal courts are much more sane...;)
In this case, their stated intent may not have been to capture KP (heh, I'd like to see how they'd word that memo if it was!), but they deliberately set up a situation where it would be highly probable that some would be generated 'unintentionally'. Even aiming your house webcam at the park across the street wouldn't be as likely to get the 'good stuff', since most mothers make sure their kids are fully dressed in the outdoors...not so much when running around the house, or in their own room.
Your electrical tape hack is a violation of the terms of service, its a blatant attack against them in the form of hardware modification. Please report for processing.
For handing a child a camera that secretly allows them to take pictures remotely? Creepy as hell, yes, but I'm not sure there's a law being broken. they should definitely be canned.
Depends on the contents of those photos. If there's even one picture of an underage kid in his/her underwear...maybe finishing that book report before bedtime...
They can't claim that their intention wasn't to capture images of the child, since that explicitly was their stated intention. They may not intend to get indecent photos in with the lot, but IMHO they can't reasonably expect not to get a few of 'those' shots in the mix, what with kids just being kids. Especially with the ridiculous amount they were taking...c'mon, 8,000 photos over the course of six months?
Probably. In this hysterical society anything in regards to foreigners, terrorism, or pedophiles could be prosecuted without regard for the facts of the case. The thing is in this case the thing they were after was money.
Who was after money? The school board? I don't doubt the plaintiffs are after cash, but the school board is the one acting shamefully here, and with a very dodgy set of stated motivations. At the very least, the students and the students' parents should have been notified that the school board was planning to use the laptops in this way, although even that might not be enough to justify their actions.
No, they have a right to monitor kids on school property only. Anything off school property is off limits. And if the laptops and all they survey are to be considered school property, then they should not leave school grounds.
It also doesn't leave any sticky residue on the lens.
Tape a black piece of cloth over it. Or anything else dark.
True that. Or cut a little fabric circle, stick it to the middle of a square of tape, then tape that over the lens...guess I should have been more specific.;)
Stallone's had a couple of gems. First Blood was great. Rocky was great. Copland wasn't bad. It seems to me there was another one, too; I was hoping for something a little different.
*sigh* I remain one of the few fans of Oscar, it appears...
I'm an adult (no really, I am) and even I sometimes use my laptops without being, er, fully ready to meet the public, as it were*.
Unless I miss my guess, a whole lot of these images would probably fall under the 'kiddie porn' category. I didn't RTFA, did they mention that in there? That bumps this issue up to a criminal court at least...even if someone is reviewing the images as they come in and 'deleting' the improper ones (wouldn't PedoBear love that job!), they've still been created, and viewed.
*Of course I also have a little piece of electrical tape over each and every one of my laptop webcams. Try to hack that!
Probably just a refurb that they repacked and sold as new. Happens all the time.
Yeah, could be. Well, it's working fine for us so far! Although to this day I still haven't played that Fallout game, it just doesn't look like my cup of tea...I kinda wish it had been a copy of DragonAge or something instead;)
I'm constantly tempted to replace our legalese sig with that Disclosure from 'DoucheSpeak' (about halfway down the comic). That way we'd find out if people are actually reading those useless things...
Not quite the same. I got a Nintendo Wii delivered to my doorstep from Target. Called them, they wouldn't take it back. Tried to contact the sender - no response. I waited a few months, then fired it up - enjoying it ever since. The whole package would have cost about $400 at retail.
Way OT, but you reminded me of something similar that happened to us. We bought a new Xbox360 from a box store, brought it home and fired it up only to find a game disk already in the drive (one of the Fallouts, I believe). Box was (as far as we could tell) factory sealed, everything was wrapped and packaged up tight.
We brought the game back to the store, to see if the store was missing a copy (and ask if our machine was an open box purchase or something). No game missing, no open box, just a weird fluke. Forgetful random unit testers at the factory? *shrug*
I remember reading about an interesting concept a loong time ago in in Dave Duncan's book "Strings".
Basically, the computer took a sample of your normal talking voice, then a sample of what they called 'command voice' or something. When characters were communicating to the central computer they'd simply use their command voice instead of their regular voice. The computer was able to tell which user was requesting what action based on voice identification, and would ignore regular speech unless instructed not to (e.g., "Start dictation It was a dark and stormy night...")
It seemed a pretty elegant solution to the whole 'how does the device know you're talking to it' issue, as long as the computer is able to a) positively identify your voice when compared against others and b) positively identify the difference between your 'normal' voice and your 'command voice'. I have no idea if such realtime discrimination will ever be possible, I just thought it was a cool idea.
Of course, looking at the current fail rate of simple voice command recognition, I'd suspect that the software has a longer way to go than does the hardware...
Slashdot Mirror
If companies were dumping enough oxygen into the air for it to be a threat to our quality of life, then yes.
Afraid the trees and other assorted greenery have that covered...damn things are always trying to blow us up, consuming all that safe, inert CO2 and pumping out all that highly flammable and explosive O2...;)
It does cover ozone.
Touche.
Perhaps the EPA's real intent is to be able to control all the world's diamonds, then? After all, they're carbon too, just in a different arrangement...;)
The climate WILL change... Better to focus on creating an upwardly mobile society that can more easily adapt to these inevitable changes than to risk making society poorer and therefore less able to adapt.
It's nice to hear a voice of reason on these boards every so often ;)
If only we could stop making our kids neurotic about how much carbon daddy's lawn mower is emitting, and get back to making them neurotic about how many starving kids that leftover meatloaf mommy just threw out could have fed...at least the starving kids is a real, tangible (and heartbreaking) issue.
But would you be willing to breath an atmosphere that was 100% carbon dioxide? No?
g=
Er, no, however one that was 100% oxygen (or pretty much any gas) would be just as toxic for you and me...should the Clean Air Act cover oxygen emissions as well?
...sometimes they actually get it right. Sort of.
Go figure.
Now if they could only figure out that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and therefore does not fall under the Clean Air Act either...
incompetent business management
held to account for security breeches
Incompetent business solution #1: Issue a pair of security breeches to every employee.
(one year later)
Incompetent business solution #2: Replace expensive breeches with cost-effective chastity belts...and don't forget to collect a huge bonus for 'saving' the company X dollars this year.
I doubt anyone is going to use brandname.brandname URLs
How about boing.boing and pizza.pizza?
Heh, I can't wait to see how this messes up form input validation. "dave@hal really is my email address, goddammit!"
Although I suppose the startup costs will keep a lot of them away. Or have them fighting over abandoned TLD domains...
Still, this seems like a 'clarification' that will only muddy the waters further for most people.
Indeed. When I read that, I wondered "what home medical devices?" DIY catscan and X-Ray machines?
Upon RTFA, I was mildly disappointed to see they meant sensors for blood glucose monitors and to 'monitor their sleep patterns'. *Yawn*
But then I cheered up when I read that they're also working on an app to control an 'exoskeleton' for paraplegics. That. is. cool. Not necessarily something I would be trusting my smartphone to control, however...or any remote interface, for that matter! Although I guess then you could send it down to the store for milk...
Every year we get closer and closer to MechWarrior...
...although the manned ones would probably still get you.
I don't know how they'd catch you, though...
Now ... if the photos were taken every 5 minutes, between the hours of 9 and 11pm, you might have a point, but without more facts you can't say it would be considered kiddie porn in a court of law as theres no indication thats what they were trying to do.
Actually, my calculations assumed between the hours of 4pm and 10pm (i.e., after school hours, since why would they want to monitor them while they're sitting at their desks?) and the 8000 photos over six months works out to *roughly* one every five minutes.
True, without information on the actual timing interval and who had access to the photos there's nothing solid to go on, but I would be taking a long hard look at the people who were pushing this 'program'. I hate to pander to stereotypes, but what would you think if it were a priest who gave them the laptops, then collected the pictures/screenshots to check for evidence of sin?
Why do people get so retarded about laws and always think they can be warped around so intent and context have no effect on the system? Are you guys really that fucking ignorant of how the American legal system works?
Two words, man. Hot. Coffee. ;)
That incident alone pretty much sporked the reputation of this "American legal system" of which you speak, at least in the eyes of the international community. Of course, that was a civil lawsuit, I'm sure your criminal courts are much more sane...
In this case, their stated intent may not have been to capture KP (heh, I'd like to see how they'd word that memo if it was!), but they deliberately set up a situation where it would be highly probable that some would be generated 'unintentionally'. Even aiming your house webcam at the park across the street wouldn't be as likely to get the 'good stuff', since most mothers make sure their kids are fully dressed in the outdoors...not so much when running around the house, or in their own room.
Your electrical tape hack is a violation of the terms of service, its a blatant attack against them in the form of hardware modification. Please report for processing.
And I reply with a patented gesture...
For handing a child a camera that secretly allows them to take pictures remotely? Creepy as hell, yes, but I'm not sure there's a law being broken. they should definitely be canned.
Depends on the contents of those photos. If there's even one picture of an underage kid in his/her underwear...maybe finishing that book report before bedtime...
They can't claim that their intention wasn't to capture images of the child, since that explicitly was their stated intention. They may not intend to get indecent photos in with the lot, but IMHO they can't reasonably expect not to get a few of 'those' shots in the mix, what with kids just being kids. Especially with the ridiculous amount they were taking...c'mon, 8,000 photos over the course of six months?
Probably. In this hysterical society anything in regards to foreigners, terrorism, or pedophiles could be prosecuted without regard for the facts of the case. The thing is in this case the thing they were after was money.
Who was after money? The school board?
I don't doubt the plaintiffs are after cash, but the school board is the one acting shamefully here, and with a very dodgy set of stated motivations. At the very least, the students and the students' parents should have been notified that the school board was planning to use the laptops in this way, although even that might not be enough to justify their actions.
No, they have a right to monitor kids on school property only. Anything off school property is off limits. And if the laptops and all they survey are to be considered school property, then they should not leave school grounds.
It also doesn't leave any sticky residue on the lens.
Tape a black piece of cloth over it. Or anything else dark.
True that. Or cut a little fabric circle, stick it to the middle of a square of tape, then tape that over the lens...guess I should have been more specific. ;)
The webcam switch on my Asus laptop also actuates a little mechanical shutter built in to the webcam housing.
Very cool! I will watch out for that feature for my next laptop purchase...Asus you say?
Stallone's had a couple of gems. First Blood was great. Rocky was great. Copland wasn't bad. It seems to me there was another one, too; I was hoping for something a little different.
*sigh* I remain one of the few fans of Oscar, it appears...
You're not alone...
Imagine how many bucks the MPAA could have made if it were not for these people.
I thought you need Does to make Bucks?
It certainly seems like that's their replacement business model...
Canada had plans to invade and capture North Dakota up until a decade or so ago.
Take Minot? Why not!
I'm an adult (no really, I am) and even I sometimes use my laptops without being, er, fully ready to meet the public, as it were*.
Unless I miss my guess, a whole lot of these images would probably fall under the 'kiddie porn' category. I didn't RTFA, did they mention that in there? That bumps this issue up to a criminal court at least...even if someone is reviewing the images as they come in and 'deleting' the improper ones (wouldn't PedoBear love that job!), they've still been created, and viewed.
*Of course I also have a little piece of electrical tape over each and every one of my laptop webcams. Try to hack that!
Probably just a refurb that they repacked and sold as new. Happens all the time.
Yeah, could be. Well, it's working fine for us so far! Although to this day I still haven't played that Fallout game, it just doesn't look like my cup of tea...I kinda wish it had been a copy of DragonAge or something instead ;)
Makes me think about those comapny signatures with some legal blabla in it telling me what to do if mail is send to me by accident.
And that makes me think about the oatmeal.
I'm constantly tempted to replace our legalese sig with that Disclosure from 'DoucheSpeak' (about halfway down the comic). That way we'd find out if people are actually reading those useless things...
Not quite the same. I got a Nintendo Wii delivered to my doorstep from Target. Called them, they wouldn't take it back. Tried to contact the sender - no response. I waited a few months, then fired it up - enjoying it ever since. The whole package would have cost about $400 at retail.
Way OT, but you reminded me of something similar that happened to us. We bought a new Xbox360 from a box store, brought it home and fired it up only to find a game disk already in the drive (one of the Fallouts, I believe). Box was (as far as we could tell) factory sealed, everything was wrapped and packaged up tight.
We brought the game back to the store, to see if the store was missing a copy (and ask if our machine was an open box purchase or something). No game missing, no open box, just a weird fluke. Forgetful random unit testers at the factory? *shrug*
there is a lot of willful turning of blind eyes
Congrats on being chosen for the MMOTD*!
*Mixed Metaphor Of The Day ;)
I remember reading about an interesting concept a loong time ago in in Dave Duncan's book "Strings".
Basically, the computer took a sample of your normal talking voice, then a sample of what they called 'command voice' or something. When characters were communicating to the central computer they'd simply use their command voice instead of their regular voice. The computer was able to tell which user was requesting what action based on voice identification, and would ignore regular speech unless instructed not to (e.g., "Start dictation It was a dark and stormy night...")
It seemed a pretty elegant solution to the whole 'how does the device know you're talking to it' issue, as long as the computer is able to a) positively identify your voice when compared against others and b) positively identify the difference between your 'normal' voice and your 'command voice'. I have no idea if such realtime discrimination will ever be possible, I just thought it was a cool idea.
Of course, looking at the current fail rate of simple voice command recognition, I'd suspect that the software has a longer way to go than does the hardware...