Why is the former impossible? Geometrically, two objects could be in different (but congruent) elliptical orbits. They would have the same period but follow different paths and approach the star at different times -- or maybe even at the same time. Is there no gravitationally stable configuration of ellipses and orbital phases? I should image that two ellipses centered on opposite sides of the star with planets in opposition would be stable.
Support every type of repeating event: every weekday, every weekend day, every Tuesday, every third Tuesday of the month, every two weeks, every 11 days, every first Wednesday after the 13th, the last Thursday, the last Friday before the 27th, the 3rd of each month, the first Saturday after the first full moon of the month, et cetera. If all else fails, let the user enter a list of future dates for a "repeating" event, and prompt them when the list is getting empty. (To be really fancy and complete, let them enter an algorithm for determining the dates of a repeating event.)
Also support exceptions: If a repeating event falls on a non-workday (defined by user events, not fixed bulit-in holidays), move it backward to the last preceding workday. Or move it backward to the last preceding workday Friday. Or move it forward to the next workday. If it does fall on a workday, move it to the next non-workday.
Notify the user at a configurable time before each event: ten minutes, 90 days, anything they pick. Maybe implement this by allowing events to be scheduled relative to other events: "this event occurs on the last Friday before event X."
I respect Bruce Schneier, but he blew this one. His assertions about how digital signatures are not like signatures are incorrect; the same flaws he posits for digital signatures exist for physical signatures.
For example, he says "a signature serves to indicate agreement to, or at least acknowledgment of, the document signed. When a judge sees a paper
document signed by Alice, he knows that Alice held the document in her hands, and has reason to believe that Alice read and agreed to
the words on the document." That's false. I have seen people sign a document in front of a notary public when the document was almost completely covered by a blank sheet of paper except for the space they were signing. The document was my will, and the signers were witnessing it. Their signatures don't indicate agreement; they are just evidence that that piece of paper is the one I also signed as my will. Their signatures do not acknowledge the document; they would never be able to testify in court that the document is one they saw -- only that the paper is paper they saw. (The document is also the message.)
He also says a digital signature does not authenticate a link between the computer (which he admits is linked to the document) and the purported signer. Well, hey, don't give away your secret key or your passphrase. A judge only knows a signature on a piece of paper means the person indicates agreement to the contract (if that is what it is) because people are taught that that is what signatures mean. There is nothing in the laws of nature that gives signatures that meaning, and people aren't born knowing it. It is a convention; it is taught. So teach people their secret key means the same thing. The analogy holds.
Schneier also says the link between the document and the person may be broken because a rogue version of PGP that looks like the real thing could transmit your secret key. But real world documents can be forged too. It's easier to get people's signatures for copying than it is to write and disseminate a rogue version of PGP, or to obtain their secret keys otherwise. The analogy holds.
Yes, we should be mindful of the foibles of digital signatures. But we should not hold them in less esteem than physical signatures.
It isn't a cop's word against his. He apparently chose not to testify. It's a cop's word against nothing.
"they saw him do isn't a crime"
What the police officer saw him do very well may constitute a crime. The police officer surely did not get on the stand and say only "I saw him talk on a cell phone and point." If that were all, no judge would have convicted. There was undoubtedly more testimony about the context, about how people responded to him pointing, and other information showing a pattern in his conduct, and 2600 didn't report that.
Possibly, by 2600's article didn't tell us anything about the circumstances of the bail. Let's see, a non-native who has little reason to remain the jurisdiction, with some evidence they were engaged in a deliberate, planned, coordinated effort to disrupt public travel, that they traveled to this jurisdiction particularly for that purpose, and, I would not be surprised, have a history of similar behavior, perhaps even other criminal behavior. Circumstances like that warrant a high bail.
The jury decided there was proof, and they did that because there was evidence, and the evidence was credible, and the evidence was not rebutted.
All 2600's article says is that the prosection did not present other evidence which might have been stronger. The article did not say the evidence that was presented (the police officer's testimony) was not good enough or that it was wrong.
"Seems mighty shaky to me."
Well, you've told us your opinion, but why should we value it? A police officer's uncontradicted testimony is fine evidence for a misdemeanor conviction. That's very routine in all sorts of minor court cases, and it is proper. In cases where a police officer is wrong, the defendant is free to get on the stand and say so, and a solid citizen (somebody who shows the jury they are credible and competent) may well be able to outweigh a police officer's testimony in the jury's mind, particularly if they explain a mistake the officer made or how he jumped to a conclusion. McGuckin apparently chose not to do this, and I would wager it is because he is in fact guilty.
Nothing in 2600's report says McGuckin is innocent or that he did not commit the acts alleged or that he even said he did not commit the acts. So, if the police officer testifies that he saw McGuckin pointing and people obeying his apparent direction and blocking an intersection, and McGuckin does not testify that he did not point or was not directing the people, and his defense does not present any evidence that he wasn't, then the jury is right to conclude he did.
From 2600's report, it seems likely to me that McGuckin did in fact direct people to block an intersection and is therefore responsible for obstructing a highway.
If he's innocent, let's hear him say so.
Voting is more difficult
on
eLection '04
·
· Score: 1
The proposal in Slashdot's story has major flaws. The biggest flaw is there's no proof of how people voted. So the machine says it got 739 votes for Mr. Smith. How do voters know that's true? We trust the programmer? Nobody snuck a new PROM into the machine?
Paper ballots can be counted and recounted. You can go at the beginning of the day and see the box starts empty. You can watch during the day and see that only ballots given at the registration desk are put into it. You can watch them open up and count it at the end of the day.
Those machines with the levers are a little more difficult to authenticate, but, because they are mechanical, they are also hard to alter in ways that cannot be detected. They don't have a complicated invisible program that only the engineers understand.
Bottom line: The voting system has to include a method of proving that as many people voted for Mr. Smith as the system says. Touch screens don't do it.
Electronic solutions are still possible. The voter registrar could give each voter a cryptographic token. The cryptographic token can be anonymized without interfering with its authentification. (E.g., Chaum's digital money which can still be authenticated as issued by a particular bank without any sign of which customer it was given to.) That token can then be given, anonymously, not to central machine but to a candidate or their agent. Then the candidate can register the token with the government agent who counts votes.
Because the candidate receives vote tokens from the voters, the candidate knows, and can prove, how many votes they got. The government agent should publish the list of vote tokens, so anybody who wants to can verify each one bears the authentication of the voter registrar, proving there were no extra votes. Every voter knows their vote counted because they gave it to the candidate they chose.
There must still be control of how the registrar gives out tokens. This corresponds not to the voter registration process at the town hall, but to the registration desk at the voting place. Any person who chooses must be allowed to watch all the tokens being given out -- they must be allowed to see each token is given to a person who proves their eligibility to vote (residence, et cetera).
When this is done right, the public will know only people who were entitled to vote voted, that every vote cast was counted, and that no votes not cast by an eligible voter were counted.
I'm sure I'm missing a few points, but that only demonstrates how difficult proper voting is.
"Why is it on Slashdot that many of the same people who think it's okay to break copyright laws in cases of emulation, 'free'
music and abadonware are the same people who would scream the loudest if a company were to run afoul of the GPL?"
Law that promotes contribution to society by rewarding producers is, arguably, good. Law that empowers a license that protects the right to distribute is good. Law that prevents valuable material from being preserved and distributed is bad.
I am open to other solutions, such as statutory licensing fees that would permit the distribution of abandonware for nominal amounts. But, in the absence of any other solution, non-profit distribution by amateurs is good.
"Take it or leave it."
There is no ethical principal that calls for people to obey the unethical dictates of government if they also choose to obey the ethical dictates.
Several years ago, I sent contract offers to several companies, including Microsoft. I sent
their product registration cards with a two-letter
code on my address and a bold red note that said
they could use the code to indicate agreement to
the enclosed contract. The contract stated that I
agreed to give some consideration to any
advertising they sent me, and they agreed to
limit the amount of advertising and keep my
information private.
The contract also stated that they agreed any
of their software I purchased was covered by
copyright law but not by licenses. Most of the
companies I sent the registration cards and
contracts to used the codes on my address.
Microsoft was one of them.
Re:Getting Past the Censorware with Long Ip's
on
Mandated Mediocrity
·
· Score: 1
A number of web servers now use the name sent by the client to select the web pages, so using IP addresses will not work. E.g., an ISP with customers with domain names customer0.com and customer1.com may set the names to resolve to the same IP address. When the server at that address gets a request, it looks to see what name you used (browsers now send that in the HTTP request). If it is customer0.com or customer1.com, the server gives you the appropriate pages under that customer's web page root. If the name is an IP address, the server likely gives you an error message or the ISP's home pages.
"It's important to remember, however, that the NES was
not 'revolutionary for its time.' The Sega Master System, for instance, was a much better system with better
sound and graphics hardware (64 colors!)."
The Sega Master System is not a counterexample to the revolution of the NES, since the NES came out first, at least in the United States. The home video game market was dead in the United States. Nintendo revived it.
Look, copying old software that is still protected by copyright is illegal, and all the culprits ought to be punished right along with all the jaywalkers and all the people who change lanes without signaling.
"And just what do they get if they win their lawsuit?"
If you start by assuming there is a reason for suing an unknown party, your reasoning is likely to achieve better results than maligning somebody in ignorance.
After one sues an unknown party, the plaintiff then subpoenas documents and deposes witnesses. This may include motions asking the court to compel production and testimony. The purpose is to discover the identity of the defendant. E.g., one might get the court to order various government officials to tell who is running Echelon, or one might order a landlord to identify their tenant or a supplier to identify their customer.
After the plaintiff discovers the defendant's identity, they file a motion to amend the complaint and an amended complaint that names the defendant. Then the suit proceeds as any other, with the possibility for injunctions, compensation, punitive damages, et cetera.
Those replies saying insurance exists to spread risk across a population are missing an important factor. The purpose of insurance is not, and cannot be, to distribute the mean cost of an event (health problems, fire, flood, whatever) over a population. I explained why in another post, but I will do it here with a more mathematical orientation. The purpose of insurance is to reduce the standard deviation of cost of an event in a population without changing the mean cost for each individual.
Suppose two (or more) people are situated with a probability distribution of various costs occurring -- their house might be flood or struct by lightening, or whatever. Their costs in a particular year may be 99.9% of being zero and.1% of being $100,000 (just for illustration). Mean cost: $100. Standard deviation: $3,160. If they form a contract that each will share the costs, then when one house burns down, they each pay half. If both burn down, nothing has been accomplished, but suppose they live in different areas so floods occur simultaneously only by chance. Mean cost: $100. Standard deviation: $2,235. The mean is still the same because the chances of damages have not changed. The standard deviation is lower because they are sharing.
With two people, the standard deviation is 70.7% of its previous value (1/sqrt(2)). Do it with a million people, and the standard deviation drops to.1% of its previous value -- $3 a year. Insurance reduces the standard deviation. It does not alter the mean, except to increase it for the costs of administration and profit.
When you try to spread the risk among differently situation people with different means, the insurance model breaks. If Pat lived inland with a.1% chance of flooding per year and Chris lived on the beach with a 1% chance of flooding per year, and they agree to share the risks, then Pat's mean jumps from $100 to $550. Pat won't take that deal!
Of course, you could fix this by sharing the risk at 1:10 for Pat:Chris -- Pat pays 1/11 of any damages that occur, and Chris pays 10/11. Then Pat's mean stays unchanged -- but so does Chris's. So you haven't saved Chris any money on average. Pat, and people generally, will happily buy insurance if it reduces their standard deviation -- but not if it increases their mean greatly. So you can only sell insurance to people when it does not change their mean cost by more than they value the reduction in standard deviation.
Considering what will happen to consumers if insurers are permitted to discriminate based on genetic testing is only half the issue. Suppose discrimination is prohibited. What happens in the insurance trade then?
First, people who learn they have Huntingdon's Cholera become more likely than average to purchase insurance, because it is a much better deal for them. They know their costs will be high, but they only have to pay the average price, which may be much lower than their costs.
Second, insurance companies raise their rates to make up for their increased costs. Then this is repeated for Alzheimer's, cancer, et cetera. Every disease that can be tested causes another pool of people who learn they have that disease to become more likely to buy insurance at a bargain rate. Every time they do, the price goes up for everybody.
You may think that is fine so far, that everybody will have to pay more to help out the people who were unfortunate. But there is another problem. If all the increases necessitated by people with diseases (present or probable) raise the price of insurance above its value to the average healthy person, then the average healthy person will not buy insurance. In other words, if the price goes above what a healthy person can expect to pay for health care on average, plus some additional money for the value of knowing they are covered in case of catastrophe, then health insurance becomes a bad deal for a healthy person. They will not pay too much for it.
Once that happens, healthy people drop out of the insurance pool. Customers who paid a lot and cost little leave, and the insurers lose money. Prices have to rise again. Then it becomes a cycle that cannot be stopped. People in the pool who have less expensive diseases than others will find they are paying more for insurance than they will have to pay for health care, so they drop out too.
I am not sure there is a solution for that. If insurer and insured agreed upon a price before genetic testing were performed and committed to a permanent contract, this problem wouldn't occur. But you can't bind customers to a permanent contract, because society just wouldn't accept it. Not in a private contract, anyway, although the government form, socialism, hasn't entirely been rejected. But that has its own problems.
"The problem is that combining the two ideas in one award is probably not a good idea,
because people may mistake an example of one for another."
There is an advantage in that. Since it is not always clear whether a prize is awarded for pseudoscience or amusing science, sometimes the people who should not show up to receive their awards do, to the delight and stupefaction of the audience.
You should be able to prevent slamming by asking the local phone company to place a PIC freeze on your line. Make sure they freeze both in-state and out-of-state long distance. I say "should" because the last time I removed the freeze, they did not ask for any information that would confirm my identity.
Just the nature of this thing would lead to network congestion as the router has to process and manage queues for every packet.
It doesn't require queues for every packet, and processing power increases faster than bandwidth, so this isn't really a barrier. Even if it were, there are approximations that yield the same general behavior with little processing power. For example, here's an approach that uses only one queue: Send each packet only if it bids at least the current threshold, otherwise leave it in the queue. Once a time slice, change the threshold to the lowest bid sent in the previous time slice. This will send nearly the same packets as computing which ones can be sent in the current time slice, but it doesn't require any sorting by bid. It will require a little smarts to keep the queues from growing indefinitely.
There are good ways to charge for service rendered, and we need them so long as there is network congestion. One proposal I saw years ago (sorry, too long, no pointer) is that each packet carry a bid indicating how much the sender will pay to have it sent. In each time slice, routers transmit the highest-bid packets and bill them all at the rate of the lowest bid transmitted. (Billing is accumulated and done in per-day chunks or something, not with additional packets.)
A user would have some way of adjusting their bids, maybe telling email clients to bid nothing and telling their video streaming to bid 10 cents per megabyte. The email would go through eventually, which is fine, and the video streaming would work without annoying pauses -- or the user would choose to increase their bid to make it so, to suffer with the pauses, or to watch the video later, when network demand is off peak.
There are other details -- packets coming back from servers might be billed to the requestor according to some token, or maybe they would be billed to the server, who would balance the charge by revenue in their own way -- ads, merchandise sold, charges to the web viewer, whatever.
I liked the proposal when I saw it. I'm certainly happy paying a flat rate for unmetered service, and maybe I'd continuing bidding zero for my packets most of the time. But it would be nice to have the means to get some things faster when I wanted to, and it is entirely reasonable that people who want better service should pay for it. If you want to know what you're going to pay, you could set all your bids to zero, or software could help you estimate what to bid to match your budget -- and could adjust those bids as you accumulated charges to ensure that you stayed under budget.
Note that when the network is not congested, packets are transmitted for free, even the highest-bid packets, because the router is able to transmit all requested packets in each time slice. So this system is really asking the people who want extra capacity the most to pay for it.
This is Public Law 106-229, available in text and PDF. It is not clear to me that clicking on a web page's order icon or similar act will constitute an electronic signature. The original legislation defined an electronic signature to be something intended by the person to indicate agreement, but the final law defines it to be something executed with intent to sign a record. It seems to me an electronic signature is not created unless the person specifically intends to create a signature, not just agree to a contract.
So let me rephrase the question like this: if Joe sends Mary an unsolicited Linux CD, this means Mary must no longer comply with the GPL?
Well, I have to rephrase the question, because, as asked, Mary does not have to comply with the GPL. Nobody has to comply with any contract they have not agreed to. Of course, Mary also would not receive the rights granted under the license.
I suspect what you meant was whether Mary would have the right to make and distribute copies of the CD without adhering to the GPL. If the CD were just sent to Mary in some way, I would say no, except as provided by fair use and such. But if the CD were mailed to Mary without her request, I would say that, yes, she could make a reasonable argument that she can copy the CD and distribute copies because of what 39 USC 3009 says.
Just from the wording of the law, it seems the recipient might indeed have the right to release the material. If somebody just gave you a CD, you would not have that right. You would own the CD, and you would have the right to do what you want with the material on it up to the limits of copyright and other law, but you would not be bound by any license with it (except maybe in states that passed the UCITA, et cetera). But 39 USC 3009 goes beyond that; it does say the recipient can use and dispose of the material "in any manner he sees fit." That's a powerful phrase. Maybe the recipient cannot actual place the material in the public domain, but I would argue they can at least make and distribute as many copies as they wish. What does the case law say?
Slashdot Mirror
Why is the former impossible? Geometrically, two objects could be in different (but congruent) elliptical orbits. They would have the same period but follow different paths and approach the star at different times -- or maybe even at the same time. Is there no gravitationally stable configuration of ellipses and orbital phases? I should image that two ellipses centered on opposite sides of the star with planets in opposition would be stable.
Support every type of repeating event: every weekday, every weekend day, every Tuesday, every third Tuesday of the month, every two weeks, every 11 days, every first Wednesday after the 13th, the last Thursday, the last Friday before the 27th, the 3rd of each month, the first Saturday after the first full moon of the month, et cetera. If all else fails, let the user enter a list of future dates for a "repeating" event, and prompt them when the list is getting empty. (To be really fancy and complete, let them enter an algorithm for determining the dates of a repeating event.)
Also support exceptions: If a repeating event falls on a non-workday (defined by user events, not fixed bulit-in holidays), move it backward to the last preceding workday. Or move it backward to the last preceding workday Friday. Or move it forward to the next workday. If it does fall on a workday, move it to the next non-workday.
Notify the user at a configurable time before each event: ten minutes, 90 days, anything they pick. Maybe implement this by allowing events to be scheduled relative to other events: "this event occurs on the last Friday before event X."
I respect Bruce Schneier, but he blew this one. His assertions about how digital signatures are not like signatures are incorrect; the same flaws he posits for digital signatures exist for physical signatures.
For example, he says "a signature serves to indicate agreement to, or at least acknowledgment of, the document signed. When a judge sees a paper document signed by Alice, he knows that Alice held the document in her hands, and has reason to believe that Alice read and agreed to the words on the document." That's false. I have seen people sign a document in front of a notary public when the document was almost completely covered by a blank sheet of paper except for the space they were signing. The document was my will, and the signers were witnessing it. Their signatures don't indicate agreement; they are just evidence that that piece of paper is the one I also signed as my will. Their signatures do not acknowledge the document; they would never be able to testify in court that the document is one they saw -- only that the paper is paper they saw. (The document is also the message.)
He also says a digital signature does not authenticate a link between the computer (which he admits is linked to the document) and the purported signer. Well, hey, don't give away your secret key or your passphrase. A judge only knows a signature on a piece of paper means the person indicates agreement to the contract (if that is what it is) because people are taught that that is what signatures mean. There is nothing in the laws of nature that gives signatures that meaning, and people aren't born knowing it. It is a convention; it is taught. So teach people their secret key means the same thing. The analogy holds.
Schneier also says the link between the document and the person may be broken because a rogue version of PGP that looks like the real thing could transmit your secret key. But real world documents can be forged too. It's easier to get people's signatures for copying than it is to write and disseminate a rogue version of PGP, or to obtain their secret keys otherwise. The analogy holds.
Yes, we should be mindful of the foibles of digital signatures. But we should not hold them in less esteem than physical signatures.
"basically a cop's word against his"
It isn't a cop's word against his. He apparently chose not to testify. It's a cop's word against nothing.
"they saw him do isn't a crime"
What the police officer saw him do very well may constitute a crime. The police officer surely did not get on the stand and say only "I saw him talk on a cell phone and point." If that were all, no judge would have convicted. There was undoubtedly more testimony about the context, about how people responded to him pointing, and other information showing a pattern in his conduct, and 2600 didn't report that.
"The bail was a little steep for his charges."
Possibly, by 2600's article didn't tell us anything about the circumstances of the bail. Let's see, a non-native who has little reason to remain the jurisdiction, with some evidence they were engaged in a deliberate, planned, coordinated effort to disrupt public travel, that they traveled to this jurisdiction particularly for that purpose, and, I would not be surprised, have a history of similar behavior, perhaps even other criminal behavior. Circumstances like that warrant a high bail.
"there was no proof of any illegal action"
The jury decided there was proof, and they did that because there was evidence, and the evidence was credible, and the evidence was not rebutted.
All 2600's article says is that the prosection did not present other evidence which might have been stronger. The article did not say the evidence that was presented (the police officer's testimony) was not good enough or that it was wrong.
"Seems mighty shaky to me."
Well, you've told us your opinion, but why should we value it? A police officer's uncontradicted testimony is fine evidence for a misdemeanor conviction. That's very routine in all sorts of minor court cases, and it is proper. In cases where a police officer is wrong, the defendant is free to get on the stand and say so, and a solid citizen (somebody who shows the jury they are credible and competent) may well be able to outweigh a police officer's testimony in the jury's mind, particularly if they explain a mistake the officer made or how he jumped to a conclusion. McGuckin apparently chose not to do this, and I would wager it is because he is in fact guilty.
"Pointing and talking on a cell phone is not 'disorderly conduct' ...
Directing people to obstruct an intersection is disorderly conduct, and there was evidence he did that.
"convicted of, by the way, on no evidence."
Testimony is evidence, and there was testimony he committed certain acts that constituted disorderly conduct and blocking a highway.
Nothing in 2600's report says McGuckin is innocent or that he did not commit the acts alleged or that he even said he did not commit the acts. So, if the police officer testifies that he saw McGuckin pointing and people obeying his apparent direction and blocking an intersection, and McGuckin does not testify that he did not point or was not directing the people, and his defense does not present any evidence that he wasn't, then the jury is right to conclude he did.
From 2600's report, it seems likely to me that McGuckin did in fact direct people to block an intersection and is therefore responsible for obstructing a highway.
If he's innocent, let's hear him say so.
The proposal in Slashdot's story has major flaws. The biggest flaw is there's no proof of how people voted. So the machine says it got 739 votes for Mr. Smith. How do voters know that's true? We trust the programmer? Nobody snuck a new PROM into the machine?
Paper ballots can be counted and recounted. You can go at the beginning of the day and see the box starts empty. You can watch during the day and see that only ballots given at the registration desk are put into it. You can watch them open up and count it at the end of the day.
Those machines with the levers are a little more difficult to authenticate, but, because they are mechanical, they are also hard to alter in ways that cannot be detected. They don't have a complicated invisible program that only the engineers understand.
Bottom line: The voting system has to include a method of proving that as many people voted for Mr. Smith as the system says. Touch screens don't do it.
Electronic solutions are still possible. The voter registrar could give each voter a cryptographic token. The cryptographic token can be anonymized without interfering with its authentification. (E.g., Chaum's digital money which can still be authenticated as issued by a particular bank without any sign of which customer it was given to.) That token can then be given, anonymously, not to central machine but to a candidate or their agent. Then the candidate can register the token with the government agent who counts votes.
Because the candidate receives vote tokens from the voters, the candidate knows, and can prove, how many votes they got. The government agent should publish the list of vote tokens, so anybody who wants to can verify each one bears the authentication of the voter registrar, proving there were no extra votes. Every voter knows their vote counted because they gave it to the candidate they chose.
There must still be control of how the registrar gives out tokens. This corresponds not to the voter registration process at the town hall, but to the registration desk at the voting place. Any person who chooses must be allowed to watch all the tokens being given out -- they must be allowed to see each token is given to a person who proves their eligibility to vote (residence, et cetera).
When this is done right, the public will know only people who were entitled to vote voted, that every vote cast was counted, and that no votes not cast by an eligible voter were counted.
I'm sure I'm missing a few points, but that only demonstrates how difficult proper voting is.
"Why is it on Slashdot that many of the same people who think it's okay to break copyright laws in cases of emulation, 'free' music and abadonware are the same people who would scream the loudest if a company were to run afoul of the GPL?"
Law that promotes contribution to society by rewarding producers is, arguably, good. Law that empowers a license that protects the right to distribute is good. Law that prevents valuable material from being preserved and distributed is bad.
I am open to other solutions, such as statutory licensing fees that would permit the distribution of abandonware for nominal amounts. But, in the absence of any other solution, non-profit distribution by amateurs is good.
"Take it or leave it."
There is no ethical principal that calls for people to obey the unethical dictates of government if they also choose to obey the ethical dictates.
Several years ago, I sent contract offers to several companies, including Microsoft. I sent their product registration cards with a two-letter code on my address and a bold red note that said they could use the code to indicate agreement to the enclosed contract. The contract stated that I agreed to give some consideration to any advertising they sent me, and they agreed to limit the amount of advertising and keep my information private.
The contract also stated that they agreed any of their software I purchased was covered by copyright law but not by licenses. Most of the companies I sent the registration cards and contracts to used the codes on my address. Microsoft was one of them.
A number of web servers now use the name sent by the client to select the web pages, so using IP addresses will not work. E.g., an ISP with customers with domain names customer0.com and customer1.com may set the names to resolve to the same IP address. When the server at that address gets a request, it looks to see what name you used (browsers now send that in the HTTP request). If it is customer0.com or customer1.com, the server gives you the appropriate pages under that customer's web page root. If the name is an IP address, the server likely gives you an error message or the ISP's home pages.
"What would a mint-condition NES with ROB and games be worth these days?"
What about one with a low serial number? I think mine is around 23,000. I got it before the NES was generally available in retail stores.
"It's important to remember, however, that the NES was not 'revolutionary for its time.' The Sega Master System, for instance, was a much better system with better sound and graphics hardware (64 colors!)."
The Sega Master System is not a counterexample to the revolution of the NES, since the NES came out first, at least in the United States. The home video game market was dead in the United States. Nintendo revived it.
Look, copying old software that is still protected by copyright is illegal, and all the culprits ought to be punished right along with all the jaywalkers and all the people who change lanes without signaling.
"And just what do they get if they win their lawsuit?"
If you start by assuming there is a reason for suing an unknown party, your reasoning is likely to achieve better results than maligning somebody in ignorance.
After one sues an unknown party, the plaintiff then subpoenas documents and deposes witnesses. This may include motions asking the court to compel production and testimony. The purpose is to discover the identity of the defendant. E.g., one might get the court to order various government officials to tell who is running Echelon, or one might order a landlord to identify their tenant or a supplier to identify their customer.
After the plaintiff discovers the defendant's identity, they file a motion to amend the complaint and an amended complaint that names the defendant. Then the suit proceeds as any other, with the possibility for injunctions, compensation, punitive damages, et cetera.
Those replies saying insurance exists to spread risk across a population are missing an important factor. The purpose of insurance is not, and cannot be, to distribute the mean cost of an event (health problems, fire, flood, whatever) over a population. I explained why in another post, but I will do it here with a more mathematical orientation. The purpose of insurance is to reduce the standard deviation of cost of an event in a population without changing the mean cost for each individual.
Suppose two (or more) people are situated with a probability distribution of various costs occurring -- their house might be flood or struct by lightening, or whatever. Their costs in a particular year may be 99.9% of being zero and .1% of being $100,000 (just for illustration). Mean cost: $100. Standard deviation: $3,160. If they form a contract that each will share the costs, then when one house burns down, they each pay half. If both burn down, nothing has been accomplished, but suppose they live in different areas so floods occur simultaneously only by chance. Mean cost: $100. Standard deviation: $2,235. The mean is still the same because the chances of damages have not changed. The standard deviation is lower because they are sharing.
With two people, the standard deviation is 70.7% of its previous value (1/sqrt(2)). Do it with a million people, and the standard deviation drops to .1% of its previous value -- $3 a year. Insurance reduces the standard deviation. It does not alter the mean, except to increase it for the costs of administration and profit.
When you try to spread the risk among differently situation people with different means, the insurance model breaks. If Pat lived inland with a .1% chance of flooding per year and Chris lived on the beach with a 1% chance of flooding per year, and they agree to share the risks, then Pat's mean jumps from $100 to $550. Pat won't take that deal!
Of course, you could fix this by sharing the risk at 1:10 for Pat:Chris -- Pat pays 1/11 of any damages that occur, and Chris pays 10/11. Then Pat's mean stays unchanged -- but so does Chris's. So you haven't saved Chris any money on average. Pat, and people generally, will happily buy insurance if it reduces their standard deviation -- but not if it increases their mean greatly. So you can only sell insurance to people when it does not change their mean cost by more than they value the reduction in standard deviation.
Considering what will happen to consumers if insurers are permitted to discriminate based on genetic testing is only half the issue. Suppose discrimination is prohibited. What happens in the insurance trade then?
First, people who learn they have Huntingdon's Cholera become more likely than average to purchase insurance, because it is a much better deal for them. They know their costs will be high, but they only have to pay the average price, which may be much lower than their costs.
Second, insurance companies raise their rates to make up for their increased costs. Then this is repeated for Alzheimer's, cancer, et cetera. Every disease that can be tested causes another pool of people who learn they have that disease to become more likely to buy insurance at a bargain rate. Every time they do, the price goes up for everybody.
You may think that is fine so far, that everybody will have to pay more to help out the people who were unfortunate. But there is another problem. If all the increases necessitated by people with diseases (present or probable) raise the price of insurance above its value to the average healthy person, then the average healthy person will not buy insurance. In other words, if the price goes above what a healthy person can expect to pay for health care on average, plus some additional money for the value of knowing they are covered in case of catastrophe, then health insurance becomes a bad deal for a healthy person. They will not pay too much for it.
Once that happens, healthy people drop out of the insurance pool. Customers who paid a lot and cost little leave, and the insurers lose money. Prices have to rise again. Then it becomes a cycle that cannot be stopped. People in the pool who have less expensive diseases than others will find they are paying more for insurance than they will have to pay for health care, so they drop out too.
I am not sure there is a solution for that. If insurer and insured agreed upon a price before genetic testing were performed and committed to a permanent contract, this problem wouldn't occur. But you can't bind customers to a permanent contract, because society just wouldn't accept it. Not in a private contract, anyway, although the government form, socialism, hasn't entirely been rejected. But that has its own problems.
"The problem is that combining the two ideas in one award is probably not a good idea, because people may mistake an example of one for another."
There is an advantage in that. Since it is not always clear whether a prize is awarded for pseudoscience or amusing science, sometimes the people who should not show up to receive their awards do, to the delight and stupefaction of the audience.
You should be able to prevent slamming by asking the local phone company to place a PIC freeze on your line. Make sure they freeze both in-state and out-of-state long distance. I say "should" because the last time I removed the freeze, they did not ask for any information that would confirm my identity.
Telling business not to call you, as an earlier respondent mentioned, is covered by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.
Just the nature of this thing would lead to network congestion as the router has to process and manage queues for every packet.
It doesn't require queues for every packet, and processing power increases faster than bandwidth, so this isn't really a barrier. Even if it were, there are approximations that yield the same general behavior with little processing power. For example, here's an approach that uses only one queue: Send each packet only if it bids at least the current threshold, otherwise leave it in the queue. Once a time slice, change the threshold to the lowest bid sent in the previous time slice. This will send nearly the same packets as computing which ones can be sent in the current time slice, but it doesn't require any sorting by bid. It will require a little smarts to keep the queues from growing indefinitely.
There are good ways to charge for service rendered, and we need them so long as there is network congestion. One proposal I saw years ago (sorry, too long, no pointer) is that each packet carry a bid indicating how much the sender will pay to have it sent. In each time slice, routers transmit the highest-bid packets and bill them all at the rate of the lowest bid transmitted. (Billing is accumulated and done in per-day chunks or something, not with additional packets.)
A user would have some way of adjusting their bids, maybe telling email clients to bid nothing and telling their video streaming to bid 10 cents per megabyte. The email would go through eventually, which is fine, and the video streaming would work without annoying pauses -- or the user would choose to increase their bid to make it so, to suffer with the pauses, or to watch the video later, when network demand is off peak.
There are other details -- packets coming back from servers might be billed to the requestor according to some token, or maybe they would be billed to the server, who would balance the charge by revenue in their own way -- ads, merchandise sold, charges to the web viewer, whatever.
I liked the proposal when I saw it. I'm certainly happy paying a flat rate for unmetered service, and maybe I'd continuing bidding zero for my packets most of the time. But it would be nice to have the means to get some things faster when I wanted to, and it is entirely reasonable that people who want better service should pay for it. If you want to know what you're going to pay, you could set all your bids to zero, or software could help you estimate what to bid to match your budget -- and could adjust those bids as you accumulated charges to ensure that you stayed under budget.
Note that when the network is not congested, packets are transmitted for free, even the highest-bid packets, because the router is able to transmit all requested packets in each time slice. So this system is really asking the people who want extra capacity the most to pay for it.
This is Public Law 106-229, available in text and PDF. It is not clear to me that clicking on a web page's order icon or similar act will constitute an electronic signature. The original legislation defined an electronic signature to be something intended by the person to indicate agreement, but the final law defines it to be something executed with intent to sign a record. It seems to me an electronic signature is not created unless the person specifically intends to create a signature, not just agree to a contract.
So let me rephrase the question like this: if Joe sends Mary an unsolicited Linux CD, this means Mary must no longer comply with the GPL?
Well, I have to rephrase the question, because, as asked, Mary does not have to comply with the GPL. Nobody has to comply with any contract they have not agreed to. Of course, Mary also would not receive the rights granted under the license.
I suspect what you meant was whether Mary would have the right to make and distribute copies of the CD without adhering to the GPL. If the CD were just sent to Mary in some way, I would say no, except as provided by fair use and such. But if the CD were mailed to Mary without her request, I would say that, yes, she could make a reasonable argument that she can copy the CD and distribute copies because of what 39 USC 3009 says.
Just from the wording of the law, it seems the recipient might indeed have the right to release the material. If somebody just gave you a CD, you would not have that right. You would own the CD, and you would have the right to do what you want with the material on it up to the limits of copyright and other law, but you would not be bound by any license with it (except maybe in states that passed the UCITA, et cetera). But 39 USC 3009 goes beyond that; it does say the recipient can use and dispose of the material "in any manner he sees fit." That's a powerful phrase. Maybe the recipient cannot actual place the material in the public domain, but I would argue they can at least make and distribute as many copies as they wish. What does the case law say?