Umm, but then you'd end up probably moving to one of those rogue 'Special 301' countries and we'd have to classify you as an enemy combatant. Might as well just head to Gitmo now and save yourself a crapload of travel expense.
We know that the only reason to give something away for free is if it has no value. If you give something of no value to a company, they owe you nothing for it. You only wrote the software, and you gave it away. You've already acknowledged it has no economic value to you by giving it away. If it was worth something, you would have charged for it, right?
The company, however, sees it as something of value, and has built a business around that value they've added to your product. The company adds a value to the product by charging money for it. All you did was the hard work developing it, THEY recognized it as something of value.
Once they do that, your insistence on continuing to give it away for free means you are engaging in unfair competition by devaluing what they are trying to sell.
You can't take food out of the mouths of their babies by giving something worthless away that competes with something of value they offer, could you? Think of the children, man!
All internet content distributors have a legal duty to make sure they have the rights to the content they distribute, before doing so.
No. Internet content originators do. So if you posted a video to Google that turns out to be a copyright violation, you (as the person who posted the video) are open to a lawsuit.
Google will remove the video upon the copyright holder's request, but they didn't create the video. Their liability ends with good-faith efforts to comply with takedown notices, and compliance with court orders to help you track down the offender when you file suit.
And yes, I do expect that someone at Google should watch every video, and file the accompanying paperwork; talent release forms, rights releases for music, photographic releases from the dp etc... Thats how it works with every other form of mass media.
The content originator or their employer is usually held liable. Not their distribution or display channels.
Let's say I'm a music company produce a song and publish it, then sell that song over various channels. Those channels each make a profit by playing it. Then it turns out that four notes were similar enough to a Jimi Hendrix song and Jimi's great granddaughter sues me for $1 billion.
How much liability does the radio station who played my song or local CD shop who resold my CD share? Can Jimi's estate also sue them? I'm the only one who is accused of violating copyright, but others have profited from my violation.
How far does it go? Does the liability stop with the one who broke copyright, or does it extend to everyone who made a profit or was involved? Can they sue the recording studio I rented to make the CD? The manufacturer of the recording equipment? Albert Einstein's estate, since he invented recording media in the first place?
No. It stops with the person who originated the violating content and claimed rights to something they don't have rights to.
I should be able to go to sleep at night knowing that my content is safe wherever it is being distributed, because that distributor has taken the necessary precautions to clear all rights and compensate performers, artists, and creators appropriately;
No. If you want your copyrights enforced, you are responsible for identifying infringements and pursuing them. That's your legal right, and your legal responsibility. Copyright violations are a civil matter, between you and the person who is violating your copyright. No one else is qualified to identify them anyway.
Google offers a platform for publishing material. It is far different than a "common carrier" like the telephone company [...] It is, in fact, much more like a newspaper, with the difference that as it is currently run, no editor reviews the material appearing on the front page.
It's really neither, which is where analogies to either always get sticky.
With a newspaper, the assumption is that the newspaper has verified the content because they are claiming or attributing the rights to it themselves. With something like YouTube, the validity, legality, and rights to a piece of content are verified by the person who posted it. That party is ultimately responsible for any violations that may occur.
Google, in the form of YouTube, is offering a communications channel. It's like a phone line in that no one really has the right to stop you from breaking your local laws on it, but you are held liable for your own actions on it. It's like a newspaper in that more than one person can read it.
Each YouTube video has an editor. The person who posted it. And that editor can (and should) be held accountable for it.
Their closest analogy, as things stand today, would be to say that Google is the press operator that actually prints the papers that someone else writes or edits. They are paid for "ink and paper and fuel", not content per se.
I can see an argument where they should more actively edit the content coming in. I don't agree with it, but I can understand it.
The reason I disagree with it is because copyright or legal violations should be the responsibility of the person who committed the violation.
YouTube tracks information about people who post videos. That's how they were able to help the Italian government find and prosecute the real criminals in this case - the people who posted the video (and hopefully the people who filmed it).
They didn't create the video, they didn't post the video, and they didn't approve it. In a user-initiated web content system, that's not their role.
Maybe it should be. But I honestly don't believe so.
Websites have been "imposing" browser limitations for years, largely because browser interoperability was a huge issue just a few years ago.
Granted, IE6 was a significant contributor to that mess, since IE6 was Microsoft's "extinguish" phase of their attempt to "embrace, extend, extinguish" the Web a decade ago. They provided inexpensive and well-designed web development tools that put out code that only their own web browser could read, then upgraded both the tools and the browser once they realized the whole IE6 debacle was a mistake, but provided no migration path for the code originally created by their own tools. Refactoring code for homebuilt applications to fit web standards is expensive and timeconsuming and really offers no "cost justification" benefits to the CFO, so a lot of companies still have intranets and other homebrew web applications that were built to the IE6 spec and will not function under any other browser.
But IE6 is certainly not the only issue. As newer, better, faster, or just more convenient tools get integrated into web browsers and the sites that feed them, their older brethren have trouble keeping up. If you want to visit a site that uses newer technology, you have to use a newer browser that supports that technology. Fortunately, IE6 compatibility is really the only "backward incompatible" example, so if you stick to a relatively recent version of {IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, (other)}, you'll be fine. Keep more than one of them around, and you can always experiment to see which browser works best.
There ARE still specific platform-dependent plugins that specific web sites choose to use, such as Silverlight (the major reason why I cannot watch the Olympics this year - Linux Users Need Not Apply). But thankfully they are in the minority. Most recent browsers can support most recent technologies, and HTML5 is only going to make that picture better by eliminating the barriers imposed by platform-specific plugins.
I've seen this same statement a few times in this thread now and I have to say, I'm not sure the right to free speech is the same as the right to use a particular technology to enable that free speech
Agreed, but does that mean that each provider of a medium of communication that might be used for free speech becomes individually responsible for all communications done over that medium?
By that logic ANY website that doesn't allow me to post whatever I damn well like on their pages would be suppressing my right to free speech
No, companies who pay for a medium still have the right to censor things they don't want on a specific medium (free as in speech != free as in beer argument). They also have the obligation to follow local laws which may or may not increase censorship.
The trouble here is that Google DID appear to follow the law. They were informed of a violation in a video, and responded by removing the video AND assisting law enforcement in tracking down the people who posted it, since the violation appears to have included child abuse of a Downs kid.
Now they are being told that they face criminal penalties for allowing someone else to use their medium to communicate.
The following is only a scenario:
I could use my Gmail account to send credible death threats to a member of the Italian government. Google could then use my account details and commonly-used IP addresses to track me down, and I could rightfully be charged with a crime.
What liability does Google have in having allowed me to send the threatening email in the first place? Should the person who was monitoring the Gmail servers that day be held liable because they failed to prevent the delivery of my message?
If I then followed through with that threat and mailed a bomb or some anthrax to that hypothetical government official, what employees of the US or Italian post office are my accomplices for allowing that package to make it to its destination?
Does the mail clerk who works at the Italian government building who carried the package up to the politician's office also get charged as an accomplice?
Or are we saying that Google should be individually screening every message ever submitted to every one of their services in order to make sure it doesn't violate Italian law? Will they also need people who are experts in the laws of every other country as well?
As your Government, I am in some fashion your parent, meaning you are in some fashion my child. I want to come up with new laws so I can fuck up your rights.
Therefore, by extension, ALL wiretaps are related to child sex, and therefore all wiretaps should be allowed without a warrant.
Yes. It also means the postmaster general is liable for trafficking in illegal drugs, assuming the person who pushed the kilo of cocaine through your letterbox affixed postage to it first.
So one person in their customer base posts an objectionable video, they are informed about that video and remove it immediately, they assist the local police in finding who posted the video, and you think their behavior is deserving of criminal charges?
Man, I hope for your sake you never run a phone company in Italy. Imagine being held criminally liable every time one of your customers calls in a bomb threat to someone. Or the post office. Imagine the postmaster general being arrested and tried for murder each time a bomb is successfully mailed in the country.
What do you expect? Someone at Google has to watch and individually approve each and every video ever posted? How is that respecting the rights of the individual? Not only is it impractically expensive, it would be violating the right to free speech that many countries allow.
If Italy has their togas in a twist over people posting videos to public sites, the Italian government should pay for banks of censors and filter videos themselves.
Giving individuals rights means that sometimes some individuals (like the assholes who posted the video referenced above) will abuse those rights. At which point you find those individuals and punish them.
I'm still trying to figure the math on "cheaper to ship".
I just checked UPS.com, and a 30-pound box would cost $38.86 to ship Ground (Brown) from Maine to Texas (just picking two states at random halfway across the country) and would be in transit for 5 days. And I have to drop it off at a UPS store or pay more for pickup.
If I wanted it shipped 3-days, the bag would cost $85.84.
And if I wanted it shipped overnight, it would cost me about half what the airfare itself would cost, over $211 (or $178 next afternoon).
Delta charges $23 if I check the bag in online for the first bag, and it can weigh up to 50 pounds. So I'm paying $15.86 extra, I have to make an extra stop at a UPS store, I have to package and label it in a cardboard box, it gets handled no less gently than the airlines do, there's a greater chance of it being lost, insurance is limited at $100 or I pay extra, and I lose access to my bag for 5 days.
Even if I got my luggage down to 20 pounds, that's still $5 more than checking it, with the same problems. And if I can get my luggage to 20 pounds, I'll put it in a carryon bag and take it with me on the plane (which is how I usually travel - I have a small rolling bag designed to fit in the overhead, and a backpack for my laptop that fits under the seat in front of me, and I can fit enough clothes and gear in that to last a week. With access to a laundry facility, which most hotels have, I have no practical limit on my trip duration with that setup).
Tell me again why I would want to ship my luggage rather than checking it?
While I agree, to be fair - you could have received continuous coverage by buying into COBRA plan, which would have given you continuous coverage (assuming you were in a state where continuous coverage meant an "automatic out" from pre-existing conditions).
Of course, COBRA is expensive, but it's a good "insurance that you'll be able to get insurance"
About 12 years ago, I was under an HMO. I specifically chose an HMO because the networks were supposed to be clear and understandable, and because it was what I could afford at the time.
I went to the ER one day with severe abdominal pains that I thought might be appendicitis. It was shortly after my PCP's office had closed (4PM), so my PCP referred me to the local ER. I was afraid of the cost of an ambulance, since my HMO didn't cover them, so I asked a coworker to drive me in. I called my HMO on a payphone when I arrived to approve the admittance into the hospital, and verified that the hospital was on the approved list. "Fine", sez I, I've now met the requirements of my HMO - my PCP has a referral on file and the hotline has confirmed it, and the ER visit should now be the pre-arranged $250 for a standard routine ER visit in network, plus 20% of whatever extra services they might need since the hospital was in-network.
What an eye-opener.
First thing they do is call in a doctor (out of network, so not included in the $250) who was off-shift (extra fee for calling him in at 7:00PM, when I got into the ER well before 5:00PM but I had to wait 2 hours in the waiting room) who orders an ultrasound (not covered in the standard ER visit, but the machine was in network) which is operated by an ultrasound tech (out of network, extra fee for call-in). A new doctor then performs a rectal exam (separate procedure not billed as part of the exam, again performed by an out-of-network doctor, different doc from the original one since the oncall shift had changed in the intervening 6 hours, also with the "call in" fee).
Of course, there was a lot of waiting between all the tests, etc.
The doc finally decides that, since the bloodwork (fortunately included in the ER visit, but the interpretation of it was not since it was done by an out of network technician, as was the blood draw) showed no poisons, they'd give me a painkiller (covered under prescription, hospital pharmacy was out of network since it was after 5PM, $40 copay, two pills) and a prescription for more of the same (another $25 copay at my local pharmacy, but for a weeks supply this time) and sent me home around 5AM.
Wait a month, and the bills started rolling in. Total out of pocket was a bit over $900. For an inconclusive diagnosis where I had called and prearranged everything and thought it would be $250 plus a few bucks extra for 20% of the ultrasound.
Then my insurance company decided a month later to deny the $250 because there wasn't a clear diagnosis. So my real total was $1,150.
I was thinking the same thing. This sounds like the DHMO ban.
Sure, you can choke on a hot dog. You can also choke on hamburger, bread, apple, celery, ice, grapes, peas, corn, banana, fish, and, well, almost any other food out there including applesauce and water (although applesauce and especially water are somewhat lower risk, but still quite possible).
Oblig. car analogy: It's not necessary to point out the danger of hot dogs specifically as a choke hazard any more than you need to tell pedestrians that blue cars are a specific hazard at crosswalks and to pay special attention when you see a blue car. ALL cars are a hazard at crosswalks if you don't pay attention.
This will become a new California-style labeling law, where EVERYTHING is:
- A choke hazard when not chewed properly, that
- contains chemicals suspected of causing cancer in greater molluscs and emus, which
- may contain peanut or tree nut oils or have come into contact with machinery that was made of metal that may have reflected the image of a peanut from less than 12 miles away at some point.
At some point, we have to take the obvious as the obvious. Kid puts food in mouth that is large enough that they need to chew it, does not chew it, gets it into throat, it sticks in place. This is an inevitable outcome and there is nothing more or less inherently dangerous about hot dogs that is not also present in the vast majority of foods out there. Label everything and the warning becomes meaningless.
I'm not saying we should ignore unusual dangers to specific foods. Peanut allergies are real, and foods that contain "hidden" peanuts should be labeled. Peanut butter and salted peanuts should not (inherently obvious), but something that contains peanut products that doesn't have the word "peanut" in the name is a valid candidate for a warning label. Same with tree nuts, phenylalanine, and other specific allergies that real people have and which can be triggered by non-obvious ingredients.
But the obvious dangers should be covered by simple observation. Salted roasted peanuts contain peanuts. No warning required.
If a food item is larger than the diameter of a constricted throat (in other words, if it HAS a diameter) then it's a choke hazard unless chewed properly. Feed your kid everything in the form of smoothies, or learn the Heimlich, teach them to eat, and pay attention until they are old enough to learn that "chew" isn't just the sound a train makes.
Suddenly I have this image of a bright yellow smiley face dodging through a hospital pulling plugs on indigent patients while whistling and singing "We're lowering welfare costs all over the place, so put on a happy face." With long Beeeeeeeeeeeeeps in the background.
The ISPs apparently have fully functional networks again, they obviously don't need much help. They're just missing out on some profits that wouldn't be there anyway without the earthquake. It's not like their customers are canceling accounts and switching over to the free NGO network.
Except they don't have fully-functional networks again, and that is due in some part to interference from the unlicensed networks the NGOs established.
The NGOs, however, have caused another set of problems as well. Many began using their wireless and satellite equipment without getting approval to use the required frequencies. That's in part because the Haitian regulatory authority's office had collapsed. "Their ability to license people in 48 hours or so [after the quake] was nonexistent," said Zavazava. "So people came in and started switching on their equipment and operating."
That caused interference with local ISPs who are licensed to use the spectrum, thus degrading the service that they are offering to customers, Zavazava and Bruno said. It continues to be a problem.
"This is causing discomfort on the part of local operators who have invested quite a lot of money in getting licenses and buying the equipment they are using," Zavazava said.
Haiti's regulatory authority has issued a statement asking all visitors to indicate which frequencies they are using in an attempt to harmonize operations, but many have not stepped forward, Zavazava said.
I'm not saying the NGOs necessarily did anything WRONG, they came in, needed communications, and put up a series of networks so they could communicate. The local ISPs, by and large, survived the quake but couldn't come online fast enough for the NGOs and aid organizations to rely on them, so the organizations did what they had to do to feed people and get medical aid where it was needed. This is in no way a criticism of what the aid organizations HAD to do.
However, you're now looking at a situation where the ISP is ready to go back online, but they can't activate their network on their licensed frequencies because someone else has usurped them. For good reason, and with good intentions, but now it's preventing parts of the local economy from starting up again.
Food is more important than Internet access. Agreed. But at some point very soon a lot of the aid organizations have to allow the local ISPs to have their frequencies back so they can resume operations.
First, of course, being that the local ISP wants aid organizations to use them because it's profitable. That part appears to be greedy, vying for profits from someone who is trying to help your country out.
Second, and just as important, is that the aid organization is preventing the ISP from engaging in their normal business, by using equipment that interferes with the ISP's assigned and licensed frequencies. This is not greed on the part of the ISP, but simply a desire to get their business back to normal. Granted food, water, and medical supplies are much higher up on the list than restoring local Internet access, and aid organizations need to be able to coordinate their efforts, but at some point the aid organizations have to allow local businesses to resume operations, and communications are a vital key to that.
I don't have an easy solution. If the aid organization only has equipment that stomps all over the local gear, the aid organization still needs communication. But then so do the locals.
SuSE is great, and I used to love YaST. Mint adds a tool called "Control Center" that, like YaST, consolidates all the important system settings to one "Control Panel"-like central interface. So the playing field between SuSE and the Debian variants has really leveled in that area.
I think many of the Linux distros have come an incredibly long way in ease-of-use in just the last couple of years.
The point there is to have the entire software library available in a local repository rather than having to go out to the Internet all the time. And you can do that in Debian/Ubuntu/Mint as well, if you like.
It's an optional step, but if you are installing it for someone else it makes any software they want to add install a LOT faster, as long as the version on the distribution disc is still current (and there are a lot of packages that just don't get updated all that often, like games and educational software). If a more recent version is available, your package manager (RPM or APT) will automatically select it from the more recent repository.
Remember, the OP asked about installing an easy version for someone else to use. It's a valid assumption that the person doing the actual install can handle such a task, and it offers a marginal improvement to the recipient of the computer because some of their software will install *really fast*.
I'm going to second Mint, and if you want a Windows-like desktop stick to the default Gnome build. It's like Ubuntu with all the stuff you know you're really going to want preinstalled. I don't have anything against KDE, but Gnome is more Windows-like if you're worried about a smaller learning curve.
It builds on the excellent Debian / Ubuntu base, and adds a little extra testing and polish, and of course doesn't stick closely to the purist "no proprietary software" that can frustrate people who don't want to have to add anything to get Flash and MP3 support. It also includes autoinstallers for ATI and nVidia drivers, as well as most wireless cards (Broadcomm), etc.
Yes, but keep in mind that the DHS incorporates almost all of the former federal law enforcement agencies, comprising over 225,000 employees as of last year.
Assuming about half of them are gun carriers, and given that the losses were over a 2-year period, that means that fewer than one tenth of one percent of gun-carrying agents per year lost their weapons.
According to several sources, about 25% of the guns were stolen out of lockboxes or safes - in other words guns that the officers did take reasonable measures to secure. So that leaves about 180 or so of the guns that were actually left behind due to negligence.
Again, the loss of a single gun is not acceptable, and I'm sure each of those officers has to go through a similar review and punishment process as a policeman or FBI agent. I suspect many of them are no longer authorized to carry a firearm.
Slashdot Mirror
Umm, but then you'd end up probably moving to one of those rogue 'Special 301' countries and we'd have to classify you as an enemy combatant. Might as well just head to Gitmo now and save yourself a crapload of travel expense.
We know that the only reason to give something away for free is if it has no value. If you give something of no value to a company, they owe you nothing for it. You only wrote the software, and you gave it away. You've already acknowledged it has no economic value to you by giving it away. If it was worth something, you would have charged for it, right?
The company, however, sees it as something of value, and has built a business around that value they've added to your product. The company adds a value to the product by charging money for it. All you did was the hard work developing it, THEY recognized it as something of value.
Once they do that, your insistence on continuing to give it away for free means you are engaging in unfair competition by devaluing what they are trying to sell.
You can't take food out of the mouths of their babies by giving something worthless away that competes with something of value they offer, could you? Think of the children, man!
PS: We need a sarcasm tag.
"Don't Taze me, Bro! I have a 32GB USB stick with all my Linux distros on it, and wiping it would be destroying evidence!"
All internet content distributors have a legal duty to make sure they have the rights to the content they distribute, before doing so.
No. Internet content originators do. So if you posted a video to Google that turns out to be a copyright violation, you (as the person who posted the video) are open to a lawsuit.
Google will remove the video upon the copyright holder's request, but they didn't create the video. Their liability ends with good-faith efforts to comply with takedown notices, and compliance with court orders to help you track down the offender when you file suit.
And yes, I do expect that someone at Google should watch every video, and file the accompanying paperwork; talent release forms, rights releases for music, photographic releases from the dp etc... Thats how it works with every other form of mass media.
The content originator or their employer is usually held liable. Not their distribution or display channels.
Let's say I'm a music company produce a song and publish it, then sell that song over various channels. Those channels each make a profit by playing it. Then it turns out that four notes were similar enough to a Jimi Hendrix song and Jimi's great granddaughter sues me for $1 billion.
How much liability does the radio station who played my song or local CD shop who resold my CD share? Can Jimi's estate also sue them? I'm the only one who is accused of violating copyright, but others have profited from my violation.
How far does it go? Does the liability stop with the one who broke copyright, or does it extend to everyone who made a profit or was involved? Can they sue the recording studio I rented to make the CD? The manufacturer of the recording equipment? Albert Einstein's estate, since he invented recording media in the first place?
No. It stops with the person who originated the violating content and claimed rights to something they don't have rights to.
I should be able to go to sleep at night knowing that my content is safe wherever it is being distributed, because that distributor has taken the necessary precautions to clear all rights and compensate performers, artists, and creators appropriately;
No. If you want your copyrights enforced, you are responsible for identifying infringements and pursuing them. That's your legal right, and your legal responsibility. Copyright violations are a civil matter, between you and the person who is violating your copyright. No one else is qualified to identify them anyway.
Google offers a platform for publishing material. It is far different than a "common carrier" like the telephone company [...]
It is, in fact, much more like a newspaper, with the difference that as it is currently run, no editor reviews the material appearing on the front page.
It's really neither, which is where analogies to either always get sticky.
With a newspaper, the assumption is that the newspaper has verified the content because they are claiming or attributing the rights to it themselves. With something like YouTube, the validity, legality, and rights to a piece of content are verified by the person who posted it. That party is ultimately responsible for any violations that may occur.
Google, in the form of YouTube, is offering a communications channel. It's like a phone line in that no one really has the right to stop you from breaking your local laws on it, but you are held liable for your own actions on it. It's like a newspaper in that more than one person can read it.
Each YouTube video has an editor. The person who posted it. And that editor can (and should) be held accountable for it.
Their closest analogy, as things stand today, would be to say that Google is the press operator that actually prints the papers that someone else writes or edits. They are paid for "ink and paper and fuel", not content per se.
I can see an argument where they should more actively edit the content coming in. I don't agree with it, but I can understand it.
The reason I disagree with it is because copyright or legal violations should be the responsibility of the person who committed the violation.
YouTube tracks information about people who post videos. That's how they were able to help the Italian government find and prosecute the real criminals in this case - the people who posted the video (and hopefully the people who filmed it).
They didn't create the video, they didn't post the video, and they didn't approve it. In a user-initiated web content system, that's not their role.
Maybe it should be. But I honestly don't believe so.
Websites have been "imposing" browser limitations for years, largely because browser interoperability was a huge issue just a few years ago.
Granted, IE6 was a significant contributor to that mess, since IE6 was Microsoft's "extinguish" phase of their attempt to "embrace, extend, extinguish" the Web a decade ago. They provided inexpensive and well-designed web development tools that put out code that only their own web browser could read, then upgraded both the tools and the browser once they realized the whole IE6 debacle was a mistake, but provided no migration path for the code originally created by their own tools. Refactoring code for homebuilt applications to fit web standards is expensive and timeconsuming and really offers no "cost justification" benefits to the CFO, so a lot of companies still have intranets and other homebrew web applications that were built to the IE6 spec and will not function under any other browser.
But IE6 is certainly not the only issue. As newer, better, faster, or just more convenient tools get integrated into web browsers and the sites that feed them, their older brethren have trouble keeping up. If you want to visit a site that uses newer technology, you have to use a newer browser that supports that technology. Fortunately, IE6 compatibility is really the only "backward incompatible" example, so if you stick to a relatively recent version of {IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, (other)}, you'll be fine. Keep more than one of them around, and you can always experiment to see which browser works best.
There ARE still specific platform-dependent plugins that specific web sites choose to use, such as Silverlight (the major reason why I cannot watch the Olympics this year - Linux Users Need Not Apply). But thankfully they are in the minority. Most recent browsers can support most recent technologies, and HTML5 is only going to make that picture better by eliminating the barriers imposed by platform-specific plugins.
I've seen this same statement a few times in this thread now and I have to say, I'm not sure the right to free speech is the same as the right to use a particular technology to enable that free speech
Agreed, but does that mean that each provider of a medium of communication that might be used for free speech becomes individually responsible for all communications done over that medium?
By that logic ANY website that doesn't allow me to post whatever I damn well like on their pages would be suppressing my right to free speech
No, companies who pay for a medium still have the right to censor things they don't want on a specific medium (free as in speech != free as in beer argument). They also have the obligation to follow local laws which may or may not increase censorship.
The trouble here is that Google DID appear to follow the law. They were informed of a violation in a video, and responded by removing the video AND assisting law enforcement in tracking down the people who posted it, since the violation appears to have included child abuse of a Downs kid.
Now they are being told that they face criminal penalties for allowing someone else to use their medium to communicate.
The following is only a scenario:
I could use my Gmail account to send credible death threats to a member of the Italian government. Google could then use my account details and commonly-used IP addresses to track me down, and I could rightfully be charged with a crime.
What liability does Google have in having allowed me to send the threatening email in the first place? Should the person who was monitoring the Gmail servers that day be held liable because they failed to prevent the delivery of my message?
If I then followed through with that threat and mailed a bomb or some anthrax to that hypothetical government official, what employees of the US or Italian post office are my accomplices for allowing that package to make it to its destination?
Does the mail clerk who works at the Italian government building who carried the package up to the politician's office also get charged as an accomplice?
Or are we saying that Google should be individually screening every message ever submitted to every one of their services in order to make sure it doesn't violate Italian law? Will they also need people who are experts in the laws of every other country as well?
As your Government, I am in some fashion your parent, meaning you are in some fashion my child. I want to come up with new laws so I can fuck up your rights.
Therefore, by extension, ALL wiretaps are related to child sex, and therefore all wiretaps should be allowed without a warrant.
Think of the CHILDREN!
Yes. It also means the postmaster general is liable for trafficking in illegal drugs, assuming the person who pushed the kilo of cocaine through your letterbox affixed postage to it first.
So one person in their customer base posts an objectionable video, they are informed about that video and remove it immediately, they assist the local police in finding who posted the video, and you think their behavior is deserving of criminal charges?
Man, I hope for your sake you never run a phone company in Italy. Imagine being held criminally liable every time one of your customers calls in a bomb threat to someone. Or the post office. Imagine the postmaster general being arrested and tried for murder each time a bomb is successfully mailed in the country.
What do you expect? Someone at Google has to watch and individually approve each and every video ever posted? How is that respecting the rights of the individual? Not only is it impractically expensive, it would be violating the right to free speech that many countries allow.
If Italy has their togas in a twist over people posting videos to public sites, the Italian government should pay for banks of censors and filter videos themselves.
Giving individuals rights means that sometimes some individuals (like the assholes who posted the video referenced above) will abuse those rights. At which point you find those individuals and punish them.
I'm still trying to figure the math on "cheaper to ship".
I just checked UPS.com, and a 30-pound box would cost $38.86 to ship Ground (Brown) from Maine to Texas (just picking two states at random halfway across the country) and would be in transit for 5 days. And I have to drop it off at a UPS store or pay more for pickup.
If I wanted it shipped 3-days, the bag would cost $85.84.
And if I wanted it shipped overnight, it would cost me about half what the airfare itself would cost, over $211 (or $178 next afternoon).
Delta charges $23 if I check the bag in online for the first bag, and it can weigh up to 50 pounds. So I'm paying $15.86 extra, I have to make an extra stop at a UPS store, I have to package and label it in a cardboard box, it gets handled no less gently than the airlines do, there's a greater chance of it being lost, insurance is limited at $100 or I pay extra, and I lose access to my bag for 5 days.
Even if I got my luggage down to 20 pounds, that's still $5 more than checking it, with the same problems. And if I can get my luggage to 20 pounds, I'll put it in a carryon bag and take it with me on the plane (which is how I usually travel - I have a small rolling bag designed to fit in the overhead, and a backpack for my laptop that fits under the seat in front of me, and I can fit enough clothes and gear in that to last a week. With access to a laundry facility, which most hotels have, I have no practical limit on my trip duration with that setup).
Tell me again why I would want to ship my luggage rather than checking it?
Umm... "Dogpile?"
No, that's just wrong.
While I agree, to be fair - you could have received continuous coverage by buying into COBRA plan, which would have given you continuous coverage (assuming you were in a state where continuous coverage meant an "automatic out" from pre-existing conditions).
Of course, COBRA is expensive, but it's a good "insurance that you'll be able to get insurance"
About 12 years ago, I was under an HMO. I specifically chose an HMO because the networks were supposed to be clear and understandable, and because it was what I could afford at the time.
I went to the ER one day with severe abdominal pains that I thought might be appendicitis. It was shortly after my PCP's office had closed (4PM), so my PCP referred me to the local ER. I was afraid of the cost of an ambulance, since my HMO didn't cover them, so I asked a coworker to drive me in. I called my HMO on a payphone when I arrived to approve the admittance into the hospital, and verified that the hospital was on the approved list. "Fine", sez I, I've now met the requirements of my HMO - my PCP has a referral on file and the hotline has confirmed it, and the ER visit should now be the pre-arranged $250 for a standard routine ER visit in network, plus 20% of whatever extra services they might need since the hospital was in-network.
What an eye-opener.
First thing they do is call in a doctor (out of network, so not included in the $250) who was off-shift (extra fee for calling him in at 7:00PM, when I got into the ER well before 5:00PM but I had to wait 2 hours in the waiting room) who orders an ultrasound (not covered in the standard ER visit, but the machine was in network) which is operated by an ultrasound tech (out of network, extra fee for call-in). A new doctor then performs a rectal exam (separate procedure not billed as part of the exam, again performed by an out-of-network doctor, different doc from the original one since the oncall shift had changed in the intervening 6 hours, also with the "call in" fee).
Of course, there was a lot of waiting between all the tests, etc.
The doc finally decides that, since the bloodwork (fortunately included in the ER visit, but the interpretation of it was not since it was done by an out of network technician, as was the blood draw) showed no poisons, they'd give me a painkiller (covered under prescription, hospital pharmacy was out of network since it was after 5PM, $40 copay, two pills) and a prescription for more of the same (another $25 copay at my local pharmacy, but for a weeks supply this time) and sent me home around 5AM.
Wait a month, and the bills started rolling in. Total out of pocket was a bit over $900. For an inconclusive diagnosis where I had called and prearranged everything and thought it would be $250 plus a few bucks extra for 20% of the ultrasound.
Then my insurance company decided a month later to deny the $250 because there wasn't a clear diagnosis. So my real total was $1,150.
I was thinking the same thing. This sounds like the DHMO ban.
Sure, you can choke on a hot dog. You can also choke on hamburger, bread, apple, celery, ice, grapes, peas, corn, banana, fish, and, well, almost any other food out there including applesauce and water (although applesauce and especially water are somewhat lower risk, but still quite possible).
Oblig. car analogy: It's not necessary to point out the danger of hot dogs specifically as a choke hazard any more than you need to tell pedestrians that blue cars are a specific hazard at crosswalks and to pay special attention when you see a blue car. ALL cars are a hazard at crosswalks if you don't pay attention.
This will become a new California-style labeling law, where EVERYTHING is:
- A choke hazard when not chewed properly, that
- contains chemicals suspected of causing cancer in greater molluscs and emus, which
- may contain peanut or tree nut oils or have come into contact with machinery that was made of metal that may have reflected the image of a peanut from less than 12 miles away at some point.
At some point, we have to take the obvious as the obvious. Kid puts food in mouth that is large enough that they need to chew it, does not chew it, gets it into throat, it sticks in place. This is an inevitable outcome and there is nothing more or less inherently dangerous about hot dogs that is not also present in the vast majority of foods out there. Label everything and the warning becomes meaningless.
I'm not saying we should ignore unusual dangers to specific foods. Peanut allergies are real, and foods that contain "hidden" peanuts should be labeled. Peanut butter and salted peanuts should not (inherently obvious), but something that contains peanut products that doesn't have the word "peanut" in the name is a valid candidate for a warning label. Same with tree nuts, phenylalanine, and other specific allergies that real people have and which can be triggered by non-obvious ingredients.
But the obvious dangers should be covered by simple observation. Salted roasted peanuts contain peanuts. No warning required.
If a food item is larger than the diameter of a constricted throat (in other words, if it HAS a diameter) then it's a choke hazard unless chewed properly. Feed your kid everything in the form of smoothies, or learn the Heimlich, teach them to eat, and pay attention until they are old enough to learn that "chew" isn't just the sound a train makes.
Suddenly I have this image of a bright yellow smiley face dodging through a hospital pulling plugs on indigent patients while whistling and singing "We're lowering welfare costs all over the place, so put on a happy face." With long Beeeeeeeeeeeeeps in the background.
The ISPs apparently have fully functional networks again, they obviously don't need much help. They're just missing out on some profits that wouldn't be there anyway without the earthquake. It's not like their customers are canceling accounts and switching over to the free NGO network.
Except they don't have fully-functional networks again, and that is due in some part to interference from the unlicensed networks the NGOs established.
The NGOs, however, have caused another set of problems as well. Many began using their wireless and satellite equipment without getting approval to use the required frequencies. That's in part because the Haitian regulatory authority's office had collapsed. "Their ability to license people in 48 hours or so [after the quake] was nonexistent," said Zavazava. "So people came in and started switching on their equipment and operating."
That caused interference with local ISPs who are licensed to use the spectrum, thus degrading the service that they are offering to customers, Zavazava and Bruno said. It continues to be a problem.
"This is causing discomfort on the part of local operators who have invested quite a lot of money in getting licenses and buying the equipment they are using," Zavazava said.
Haiti's regulatory authority has issued a statement asking all visitors to indicate which frequencies they are using in an attempt to harmonize operations, but many have not stepped forward, Zavazava said.
I'm not saying the NGOs necessarily did anything WRONG, they came in, needed communications, and put up a series of networks so they could communicate. The local ISPs, by and large, survived the quake but couldn't come online fast enough for the NGOs and aid organizations to rely on them, so the organizations did what they had to do to feed people and get medical aid where it was needed. This is in no way a criticism of what the aid organizations HAD to do.
However, you're now looking at a situation where the ISP is ready to go back online, but they can't activate their network on their licensed frequencies because someone else has usurped them. For good reason, and with good intentions, but now it's preventing parts of the local economy from starting up again.
Food is more important than Internet access. Agreed. But at some point very soon a lot of the aid organizations have to allow the local ISPs to have their frequencies back so they can resume operations.
I think there are two factors at work.
First, of course, being that the local ISP wants aid organizations to use them because it's profitable. That part appears to be greedy, vying for profits from someone who is trying to help your country out.
Second, and just as important, is that the aid organization is preventing the ISP from engaging in their normal business, by using equipment that interferes with the ISP's assigned and licensed frequencies. This is not greed on the part of the ISP, but simply a desire to get their business back to normal. Granted food, water, and medical supplies are much higher up on the list than restoring local Internet access, and aid organizations need to be able to coordinate their efforts, but at some point the aid organizations have to allow local businesses to resume operations, and communications are a vital key to that.
I don't have an easy solution. If the aid organization only has equipment that stomps all over the local gear, the aid organization still needs communication. But then so do the locals.
SuSE is great, and I used to love YaST. Mint adds a tool called "Control Center" that, like YaST, consolidates all the important system settings to one "Control Panel"-like central interface. So the playing field between SuSE and the Debian variants has really leveled in that area.
I think many of the Linux distros have come an incredibly long way in ease-of-use in just the last couple of years.
The point there is to have the entire software library available in a local repository rather than having to go out to the Internet all the time. And you can do that in Debian/Ubuntu/Mint as well, if you like.
It's an optional step, but if you are installing it for someone else it makes any software they want to add install a LOT faster, as long as the version on the distribution disc is still current (and there are a lot of packages that just don't get updated all that often, like games and educational software). If a more recent version is available, your package manager (RPM or APT) will automatically select it from the more recent repository.
Remember, the OP asked about installing an easy version for someone else to use. It's a valid assumption that the person doing the actual install can handle such a task, and it offers a marginal improvement to the recipient of the computer because some of their software will install *really fast*.
I'm going to second Mint, and if you want a Windows-like desktop stick to the default Gnome build. It's like Ubuntu with all the stuff you know you're really going to want preinstalled. I don't have anything against KDE, but Gnome is more Windows-like if you're worried about a smaller learning curve.
It builds on the excellent Debian / Ubuntu base, and adds a little extra testing and polish, and of course doesn't stick closely to the purist "no proprietary software" that can frustrate people who don't want to have to add anything to get Flash and MP3 support. It also includes autoinstallers for ATI and nVidia drivers, as well as most wireless cards (Broadcomm), etc.
Yes, but keep in mind that the DHS incorporates almost all of the former federal law enforcement agencies, comprising over 225,000 employees as of last year.
Assuming about half of them are gun carriers, and given that the losses were over a 2-year period, that means that fewer than one tenth of one percent of gun-carrying agents per year lost their weapons.
According to several sources, about 25% of the guns were stolen out of lockboxes or safes - in other words guns that the officers did take reasonable measures to secure. So that leaves about 180 or so of the guns that were actually left behind due to negligence.
Again, the loss of a single gun is not acceptable, and I'm sure each of those officers has to go through a similar review and punishment process as a policeman or FBI agent. I suspect many of them are no longer authorized to carry a firearm.
No, a VENDOR who wants to sell you lockdown software is complaining that it can be made to work.
Glad to be one of the thousand points of light.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be consequences. I'm just saying it's going to happen.