I remember back when I was on another ADSL provider that had pretty strict limits (10 GB a month a few years ago), me and some friends that were on the same provider would push that limit as far as we could. They had a traffic meter that reset at midnight on the first of the month, and if you went over 10 GB (up+down) you were set back to below dialup speeds. The good part was they could only change your speed when you weren't connected, and you could stay online for 36 hours before your connection was broken and your ip renewed.
So around noon on the second-to-last day of the month, when our traffic meter was at 9.9 GB, we'd reconnect so we'd have the entire 36 hours of interwebz remaining, and turn on as many downloads as we could from as many sources as we could (you know, linux distros and other legal stuff). The 3.3Mbit connection allowed for approximately 400kB/s of download traffic, which gave us about 50 GB of traffic in those 36 hours.
My personal record with that provider was over 90 GB, when I started the whole thing 72 hours before the end of the month and they didn't change my speed during the few seconds it took to reconnect (dozens of torrents and download managers hammering the router for some juicy juicy internet). Of course, the next month me and my friends tried this again, and many of us experienced the longest 36 hours of our lives.
It all seems kind of funny now, realizing that last week I downloaded the Orange Box from Steam because I was too lazy to reach, grab the DVD and put it in the drive. I'm glad I don't have a traffic limit anymore, even though the speeds still suck (4 Mbit/s down, 512kbit/s up).
Their traffic meter will almost definitely show more traffic than anything you install on your PC, because they measure on their end and you're measuring on yours. I'm sure some people can explain why better than I can (because I can't think of anything except packet loss), but for some reason there's always more data being transmitted than being received (and most home users do more receiving than transmitting).
Article 30 TFEU prohibits member states from levying any duties on goods crossing a border, both goods produced within the EU and those produced outside. Once a good has been imported into the EU from a third country and the appropriate customs duty paid, Article 29 TFEU dictates that it shall then be considered to be in free circulation between the member states.
It is perfectly legal to circumvent national taxes by buying goods in another European country. Many people in Belgium buy their electronics in Germany because the VAT is lower there.
But I'm sure we'll soon get info how the whole thing works like a charm, after all 7 out of 8 bombs would have been detected...
I don't even think that's the case.
FTFA:
The explosive was one of eight pieces of contraband placed with unsuspecting passengers at Bratislava Airport last weekend, broadcaster RTE reported.
and
Airport security detected seven of the illicit items, but the eighth - 90g of research development explosive - managed to escape detection.
They planted eight pieces of contraband, one of which (the one that got through) was a high-grade explosive. They don't mention what the other seven pieces were, but they could have been steak knives, scissors, nail clippers, forks or drugs. All of which are easily detected with things that don't detect bombs.
Sure I ignored parts of it, it's way too long to read thoroughly. However,
It doesn't say it has to be illegal, it says "as required by law or in special cases;" clearly this was a special case.
A special case of what? They specify in which special cases they reserve the right to disclose personal information. And none of those applied here. There are probably other parts of the privacy agreement that Blizzard can fall back on here, but the part you quoted doesn't cut it for me.
We reserve the right to disclose your personal information as required by law or in special cases when we have reason to believe that disclosing such information is necessary to identify, contact, or bring legal action against you if you are violating the Terms of Service or Use Agreements for a Blizzard site or product, or may be causing injury to or interference (intentionally or unintentionally) with Blizzard's rights or property, other users of a Blizzard site or product, or anyone else who could be harmed by your activities.
Let's analyze.
as required by law
As opposed to "as requested by law". They were not legally required to hand over this guy's information, merely requested.
if you are violating the Terms of Service or Use Agreements
Quite clearly not the case here.
or may be causing injury to or interference (intentionally or unintentionally) with Blizzard's rights or property, other users of a Blizzard site or product
This isn't it either... it must be something in the last part.
or anyone else who could be harmed by your activities.
Surely, this is vague enough that it could include anything. However, it gives me the impression that they assume he's still committing crimes. A quote from the original article:
In this case, online gamers were playing alongside Alfred Hightower, a man wanted on charges of dealing in a schedule III controlled substance and dealing in a schedule IV controlled substance, and two charges of dealing in marijuana. A warrant was issued for his arrest in 2007.
So he was dealing drugs over two years ago. And to be honest, I'm not impressed by the kinds of drugs he was dealing either. Examples are taken from this Wikipedia page:
He was charged with dealing in a schedule III controlled substance, which could be something like anabolic steroids. This is what gets people thrown out of the Olympic Games or the Tour de France, not violently killed. He was also charged with dealing in a schedule IV controlled substance, the list of which includes Valium. And last but not least, two charges of dealing pot.
To me, these drugs seem as harmful or as harmless as many over-the-counter drugs, and most of them are commercially available if you find a doctor that will write you a prescription. I'm not defending drug dealers here, just pointing out the difference between a criminal like this and someone that's actually worth tracking down.
So this warrant was issued two years ago, he fled the country, started a new life, and there is (as far as I can tell) no evidence of him dealing drugs after that. So about the part where people could be harmed by his activities... I don't know. Which re-opens the question about what part of the privacy agreement would cover Blizzard if the guy would sue them.
As this article says, it would be much easier and much cheaper to send scientists to Mars on a one-way trip. Plenty of comments on the subject are already posted there (many of them hilarious), so I'll keep this comment short.
I read the quote, and looked up some info about the Apophis asteroid, but I did not RTFA. Perhaps if I had, I would have known what you were talking about and I could have come up with a reply that wasn't completely beside the point.
But hey, this is Slashdot. You can't blame me for not reading the really relevant articles, right?
"Apophis has been one of those celestial bodies that has captured the public's interest since it was discovered in 2004," said Chesley. "Updated computational techniques and newly available data indicate the probability of an Earth encounter on April 13, 2036, for Apophis has dropped from one-in-45,000 to about four-in-a million."
1 in 250,000 is high enough to have some people study it some more.
While most of your post at least made SOME sense, you made a big mistake here:
I can't go into a restaurant and preview an entire meal and then decide if I want to pay for it. You order you consume you pay for it.
And don't say "well I can send it back.. at the theaters I can't send back a movie!"... actually you can.... within 30 minutes of a film's start time you can tell the box office that you didn't like it and they will give you back your money or venue credit. Got another excuse captain cheapo?
This shows that you don't see the difference between copyright infringement and theft. I could make another post explaining the difference, but I'm sure you could have read thousands of them here on/. if you cared.
I appreciate your lengthy argumentation, but the link you posted is about speed determination, not heading.
It does say something about GPS trackpoints being inaccurate with an irregular error, meaning you can't calculate an accurate speed from this data. This also means you can't calculate a very accurate heading from it, which is true, but doesn't make my previous statement false. I never said anything about accuracy, just that it can be done.
In 2001, the North Magnetic Pole was determined by the Geological Survey of Canada to lie near Ellesmere Island in northern Canada at 8118N 11048W. It was estimated to be at 8242N 11424W in 2005.
I highly doubt a handheld GPS would have an inbuilt gyrocompass. Those things need constant power to keep the gyroscope from slowing down, and if the power fails you have to recalibrate it, for which you need to know your exact heading. Which is why, on ships, they usually have their own backup power source (usually a battery) in case the main and backup power generators are down.
That, and they're pretty big and heavy. They even get their own room (I also linked to this page in another post about gyrocompasses I made a few minutes ago):
Almost every naval vessel and merchant ship today carries at least one master gyrocompass, installed in its own gyro room.
2.5 All ships of 500 gross tonnage and upwards shall, [...] have:
.1 a gyro compass, or other means, to determine and display their heading
by shipborne non-magnetic means [...]
.2 a gyro compass heading repeater, or other means, to supply heading
information visually at the emergency steering position if provided;
.3 a gyro compass bearing repeater, or other means, to take bearings [...]
Gyrocompasses are useful for many other reasons: they point to true north instead of magnetic north, which means you don't have to correct for magnetic declination (the difference between true north and magnetic north) and magnetic deviation (the difference between compass north and magnetic north, an error caused by local magnetic influences such as the steel in a ship's construction). They can also give your heading digitally, which means you can connect repeaters to it, and autopilots etc. can use its output.
Almost every naval vessel and merchant ship today carries at least one master gyrocompass, installed in its own gyro room. A transmission system links the master gyrocompass to "repeaters." These are used on the ship for such purposes as steering, position finding, and course recording.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember back when I was on another ADSL provider that had pretty strict limits (10 GB a month a few years ago), me and some friends that were on the same provider would push that limit as far as we could. They had a traffic meter that reset at midnight on the first of the month, and if you went over 10 GB (up+down) you were set back to below dialup speeds. The good part was they could only change your speed when you weren't connected, and you could stay online for 36 hours before your connection was broken and your ip renewed.
So around noon on the second-to-last day of the month, when our traffic meter was at 9.9 GB, we'd reconnect so we'd have the entire 36 hours of interwebz remaining, and turn on as many downloads as we could from as many sources as we could (you know, linux distros and other legal stuff). The 3.3Mbit connection allowed for approximately 400kB/s of download traffic, which gave us about 50 GB of traffic in those 36 hours.
My personal record with that provider was over 90 GB, when I started the whole thing 72 hours before the end of the month and they didn't change my speed during the few seconds it took to reconnect (dozens of torrents and download managers hammering the router for some juicy juicy internet). Of course, the next month me and my friends tried this again, and many of us experienced the longest 36 hours of our lives.
It all seems kind of funny now, realizing that last week I downloaded the Orange Box from Steam because I was too lazy to reach, grab the DVD and put it in the drive. I'm glad I don't have a traffic limit anymore, even though the speeds still suck (4 Mbit/s down, 512kbit/s up).
Their traffic meter will almost definitely show more traffic than anything you install on your PC, because they measure on their end and you're measuring on yours. I'm sure some people can explain why better than I can (because I can't think of anything except packet loss), but for some reason there's always more data being transmitted than being received (and most home users do more receiving than transmitting).
So the only way to have cheap blank CD in france is to get it from UK or germany. ( without declaring it of course )
There's no need to declare anything.
Wikipedia:
Article 30 TFEU prohibits member states from levying any duties on goods crossing a border, both goods produced within the EU and those produced outside. Once a good has been imported into the EU from a third country and the appropriate customs duty paid, Article 29 TFEU dictates that it shall then be considered to be in free circulation between the member states.
It is perfectly legal to circumvent national taxes by buying goods in another European country. Many people in Belgium buy their electronics in Germany because the VAT is lower there.
You'll also need a microphone and drums-to-speech software (or a website that hosts recordings of your drumrolls).
For being a talk show sidekick though, you'll only need the microphone (the kind that's always on).
Now imagine a drunk person who REALLY wants to fly a helicopter.
But I'm sure we'll soon get info how the whole thing works like a charm, after all 7 out of 8 bombs would have been detected...
I don't even think that's the case.
FTFA:
The explosive was one of eight pieces of contraband placed with unsuspecting passengers at Bratislava Airport last weekend, broadcaster RTE reported.
and
Airport security detected seven of the illicit items, but the eighth - 90g of research development explosive - managed to escape detection.
They planted eight pieces of contraband, one of which (the one that got through) was a high-grade explosive. They don't mention what the other seven pieces were, but they could have been steak knives, scissors, nail clippers, forks or drugs. All of which are easily detected with things that don't detect bombs.
All those Cowards making Anonymous jokes about little people are bigger idiots than the little people I've met.
Get it? Bigger...
2) they're YOUR friends, motherfucker. stop associating with idiots?
Call me a cynic, but that would leave little people to associate with.
It doesn't say it has to be illegal, it says "as required by law or in special cases;" clearly this was a special case.
A special case of what? They specify in which special cases they reserve the right to disclose personal information. And none of those applied here. There are probably other parts of the privacy agreement that Blizzard can fall back on here, but the part you quoted doesn't cut it for me.
It's not a subpoena if you don't have to co-operate with it.
A subpoena is a writ issued by a court that commands the presence of a witness to testify, under a penalty for failure.
From your quote:
We reserve the right to disclose your personal information as required by law or in special cases when we have reason to believe that disclosing such information is necessary to identify, contact, or bring legal action against you if you are violating the Terms of Service or Use Agreements for a Blizzard site or product, or may be causing injury to or interference (intentionally or unintentionally) with Blizzard's rights or property, other users of a Blizzard site or product, or anyone else who could be harmed by your activities.
Let's analyze.
as required by law
As opposed to "as requested by law". They were not legally required to hand over this guy's information, merely requested.
if you are violating the Terms of Service or Use Agreements
Quite clearly not the case here.
or may be causing injury to or interference (intentionally or unintentionally) with Blizzard's rights or property, other users of a Blizzard site or product
This isn't it either... it must be something in the last part.
or anyone else who could be harmed by your activities.
Surely, this is vague enough that it could include anything. However, it gives me the impression that they assume he's still committing crimes. A quote from the original article:
In this case, online gamers were playing alongside Alfred Hightower, a man wanted on charges of dealing in a schedule III controlled substance and dealing in a schedule IV controlled substance, and two charges of dealing in marijuana. A warrant was issued for his arrest in 2007.
So he was dealing drugs over two years ago. And to be honest, I'm not impressed by the kinds of drugs he was dealing either. Examples are taken from this Wikipedia page:
He was charged with dealing in a schedule III controlled substance, which could be something like anabolic steroids. This is what gets people thrown out of the Olympic Games or the Tour de France, not violently killed. He was also charged with dealing in a schedule IV controlled substance, the list of which includes Valium. And last but not least, two charges of dealing pot.
To me, these drugs seem as harmful or as harmless as many over-the-counter drugs, and most of them are commercially available if you find a doctor that will write you a prescription. I'm not defending drug dealers here, just pointing out the difference between a criminal like this and someone that's actually worth tracking down.
So this warrant was issued two years ago, he fled the country, started a new life, and there is (as far as I can tell) no evidence of him dealing drugs after that. So about the part where people could be harmed by his activities... I don't know. Which re-opens the question about what part of the privacy agreement would cover Blizzard if the guy would sue them.
As this article says, it would be much easier and much cheaper to send scientists to Mars on a one-way trip. Plenty of comments on the subject are already posted there (many of them hilarious), so I'll keep this comment short.
I read the quote, and looked up some info about the Apophis asteroid, but I did not RTFA. Perhaps if I had, I would have known what you were talking about and I could have come up with a reply that wasn't completely beside the point.
But hey, this is Slashdot. You can't blame me for not reading the really relevant articles, right?
What you're asking for is either:
A) We hit Mars with an asteroid! Hooray for science! (15 years later) MARS AND EARTH WILL COLLIDE IN 100 YEARS"
B) Scientists found proof of intelligent life on Mars - recent underground civilization uncovered by asteroid impact
From NASA:
"Apophis has been one of those celestial bodies that has captured the public's interest since it was discovered in 2004," said Chesley. "Updated computational techniques and newly available data indicate the probability of an Earth encounter on April 13, 2036, for Apophis has dropped from one-in-45,000 to about four-in-a million."
1 in 250,000 is high enough to have some people study it some more.
I can't go into a restaurant and preview an entire meal and then decide if I want to pay for it. You order you consume you pay for it. And don't say "well I can send it back.. at the theaters I can't send back a movie!"... actually you can.... within 30 minutes of a film's start time you can tell the box office that you didn't like it and they will give you back your money or venue credit. Got another excuse captain cheapo?
This shows that you don't see the difference between copyright infringement and theft. I could make another post explaining the difference, but I'm sure you could have read thousands of them here on /. if you cared.
This course is then approximately your heading - although it can include a pretty large error due to drift (when in a ship or an airplane).
Socks in your stocking? There's an Xzibit joke in here somewhere.
Well, yes. If you're one of those types that never leaves the Northern hemisphere.
I appreciate your lengthy argumentation, but the link you posted is about speed determination, not heading.
It does say something about GPS trackpoints being inaccurate with an irregular error, meaning you can't calculate an accurate speed from this data. This also means you can't calculate a very accurate heading from it, which is true, but doesn't make my previous statement false. I never said anything about accuracy, just that it can be done.
In 2001, the North Magnetic Pole was determined by the Geological Survey of Canada to lie near Ellesmere Island in northern Canada at 8118N 11048W. It was estimated to be at 8242N 11424W in 2005.
The problem with astronomical observations is that you need a precise time, though.
I highly doubt a handheld GPS would have an inbuilt gyrocompass. Those things need constant power to keep the gyroscope from slowing down, and if the power fails you have to recalibrate it, for which you need to know your exact heading. Which is why, on ships, they usually have their own backup power source (usually a battery) in case the main and backup power generators are down.
That, and they're pretty big and heavy. They even get their own room (I also linked to this page in another post about gyrocompasses I made a few minutes ago):
Almost every naval vessel and merchant ship today carries at least one master gyrocompass, installed in its own gyro room.
If it works when you're standing still (and you can confuse it with a magnet), it's probably a fluxgate compass.
2.5 All ships of 500 gross tonnage and upwards shall, [...] have:
.1 a gyro compass, or other means, to determine and display their heading by shipborne non-magnetic means [...]
.2 a gyro compass heading repeater, or other means, to supply heading information visually at the emergency steering position if provided;
.3 a gyro compass bearing repeater, or other means, to take bearings [...]
Gyrocompasses are useful for many other reasons: they point to true north instead of magnetic north, which means you don't have to correct for magnetic declination (the difference between true north and magnetic north) and magnetic deviation (the difference between compass north and magnetic north, an error caused by local magnetic influences such as the steel in a ship's construction). They can also give your heading digitally, which means you can connect repeaters to it, and autopilots etc. can use its output.
From
this page:
Almost every naval vessel and merchant ship today carries at least one master gyrocompass, installed in its own gyro room. A transmission system links the master gyrocompass to "repeaters." These are used on the ship for such purposes as steering, position finding, and course recording.