- The simple solution would be to outlaw such questions from being raised
Wait, how is that a "solution"? If you allow people to know their risks of disease, but not let the insurance companies have equal knowledge, you'll end up with a problem where everyone who knows they are at high risk will rush out and get the best insurance available (since they know they're getting a fantastic deal given they'll be drawing so much from the insurer), while people with low risks of disease will choose cheaper options, since they know they'll be paying more than they're likely to draw, but can't get a discount for their good genes.
Because of this, insurers start finding they're paying out more than they're taking in, since it's all the "high-cost" patients that are jumping into the programs with the most expensive benefits. To counter this, they have to raise rates, further squeezing out healthy candidates.
To cut a long story short, you end up with health insurers having no choice but to charge everyone the "high-risk" rate, and low-risk patients simply going without on the basis health insurance is uneconomical. (okay, fear of dying will keep many, even most in, but there will be plenty backing out when the premiums skyrocket cause a massive economic disincentive)
I suggest you read The Market for Lemons for a much better explanation of the economic theories behind why this kind of information assymetry is dangerous, using the example of selling used cars, where only the seller knows the quality of the car (which is basically the same principle as health insurance where only the insured knows their risk profile).
I would add that MS would be buying up a competitor, and it's all too common for companies to buy competitors to leave them to wither and then close them down after they sucked up all valuable assets and clients. As an individual shareholder I'd be primarily worried about that scenario, and I wonder why a fund forgets about it.
That's easy, it's because once the company is bought out, the shareholders don't own any shares any more. They take their cash and ride off into the sunset. Why the hell would they care what happens to the company after then?
The shareholder action here seems quite reasonable, at least on the face of things. On what I'm sure is a very superficial explanation of the facts, it seems that management are spurning an extremely strong offer, valuing the company *way* over market, for the sake of saving their own jobs. The Yahoo management owe their duties to their shareholders that would be selling their shares, not to preserving a company for the sake of the name.
Really, if Yahoo management think Yahoo stocks are worth more than 60% over the current share value, why aren't they borrowing money left right and centre to buy themselves such "undervalued" stocks?
Okay, how about Samuel Slater, who took an apprenticeship in a British factory, memorised the workings of the machines. In evasion of British laws limiting the distribution the details of such inventions, he disguised himself as a farmhand to leave the country with the knowledge, which he used to set up factories in America, earning himself fame and wealth, despite basically being an IP thief. Whatever one thinks of patents and the draconian IP laws applicable to such inventions, he was let in on a trade secret, and used deception to succeed in stealing that secret.
So anyway, there's an example, no need to accuse people of making things up. Can we go back to the US-bashing now we have evidence?
They're claiming 38 songs, but they can only produce 11 of them. (Actually I don't think even the 11 are legitimate).
Why don't you think the 11 songs are legitimate? It's not like it's hard to track down copyright violators online, there's no reason for the RIAA to try to frame someone, and as far as mistaken identities, while there are some rare examples where it appears to have occurred, I don't see any real reason at all to believe it has occurred here.
They may have been intentionally sharing a file they owned copyright to (say a 3 meg picture file of themselves) that they renamed to "stones-gloria.mp3" because they are vehemently against copyright infringement.
Heck, it could be a complete fluke of quantum probability, what with there being a non-zero but impossibly small chance that the file spontaneously formed on the hard drive. However, it's not very probable, just as it's not very probable that it's someone hosting a fake file, doubly so when it's already been established by downloading 11 songs from the person in question that they don't seem to have any problem with copyright infringement. The overwhelmingly probable explanation is that the person who is purporting "Metallica - Enter Sandman.mp3" is in fact hosting that song, and so is infringing on copyright.
Not really. While I know it's trendy to join in on the usual RIAA-bashing, and as a matter of evidence it's really quite sloppy of the RIAA not to have actually downloaded the copies, and I think the misstatement in their filing is even more sloppy (but, honestly, they don't seem to be trying to actually mislead) I'm not really seeing the grounds everyone is going beserk on here. Basically, the difference is between "we searched Kazaa/eDonkey/whatever and this user was offering Metallica's album for download" and "we searched Kazaa/eDonkey/whatever and actually downloaded Metallica's album from this user". The RIAA aren't making evidence up here, it's simply the question of if search results are proof enough.
Now, while I suspect as a matter of pure legalism this motion has a good chance of success, I don't think many people would seriously argue that the person being accused here wasn't illegally sharing files based on this evidence. Of course, "proof" in practice and "proof" in law are often two totally different things, but before going beserk and calling the RIAA a bunch of fraudsters, keep in mind they're presenting what is realistically proof enough if you leave the red-tape of legalism out of the equation. Yes, I do know there have been occasions where the RIAA has come up with some possible false positives, and mislabelled files certainly exist, but it's more the exception than than the rule, so on the balance of probabilities, a person who shows up as having a Metallica album on a p2p program more likely than not does, it's as simple as that.
Anyway, guys, quit the RIAA bashing. Complain they're doing sloppy investigating and it's not really an acceptable standard we should encourage, but don't act like they're a pack of liars when they're almost undeniably correct in their accusations and their only flaw is not doing as air-tight a job as they should have.
Let's take the internet out of this, and look at it as a normal con-job. If someone masquerades as a bank official for the purpose of defrauding money from a bank client (ie, they put on a teller's uniform, call someone out of line at the bank, and say, 'I'll handle your deposit for you, one sec.'), the bank is obligated to prevent such fraud, regardless of the technology used to make the 'pitch.'
However, the massive problem with that analogy is that a person walking around pretending to be a bank teller IN A BANK is something the bank itself can and should notice, and can easily stop, while the customer is in a position where they can fairly expect they're talking to a real bank employee. As a result, it misses the entire point I was trying to get at, which is that the bank has absolutely no power to stop a phisher. A more accurate analogy would be someone masquerading as a bank official and knocking on your door claiming to be from your bank, and wanting to know if you have any deposits you'd like to hand them, and, honestly, would anyone expect a bank to be liable if you coughed up in that case? Or, if that's insufficient money at stake, someone shows up at your door claiming to be from Sony, here to take your plasma TV in for a safety recall, should Sony have to pay?
In the US, we have the FDIC, which insures deposits in banks. It's funded by taxpayers, and heavily regulated. Individuals pay into the system, but there is no such thing as an individual FDIC insurance policy-- it's the banks which are insured, not the bank's clients. The money to replace that lost due to fraud is from the FDIC-- not just out of the bank in question.
Do correct me here if I'm mistaken, since I'm not from the US and don't know all the specifics of the FDIC, but my impression was the FDIC insures banks in the sense that it will guarantee a bank's deposits if the bank goes bankrupt. It wouldn't hand a penny over to a bank in a case like this, and so isn't really applicable.
If an individual is defrauded, what's more *socially just?* For the person to perhaps lose their entire savings, retirement, college fund, etc? Or for the loss to be spread around all of society, costing us all a negligible amount in our income taxes? Naturally, we'd prefer not to pay said taxes. Of course, when it's *your* money which has been stolen, one would be glad to recieve the benefit of that safety net. Which is of greater cost for society as a whole-- millions of people tossing a few bucks a year to a federal fraud insurance program, or millions of homeless vagrants, victims of fraud?
Hey, if you want to support a government funded solution, like the FDIC as you portrayed it above, I'd not have a huge problem with it. I'd personally not think it the best idea, since it's making everyone pay for the mistakes of people not looking out for themselves, and I don't think people deserve indemnification for that sort of thing (but by the same token, if they would be destitute, then I support welfare, I just don't think one's government payout should be greater because the reason you're broke is you were an idiot as opposed to simply unfortunate). I'm however extremely opposed to a specific person or corporation being required to pay for the loss of another they had nothing to do with, it's that kind of "deep pockets" mentality that is so horribly overused these days (lawsuit mania anyone?), and I think it's out of control. While it may seem so easy to say in a sympathetic case "let's take the money from the rich bank to give to the poor old grandma", it's a horrible precedent to set.
Finally, fraud has always been a factor in bank managment. They *plan* for it, because it's a fact of doing business in that industry. I'm sure it's a line item on their budgets. Banks are also in competition with each other-- how many customers would a bank which makes their clients liable be able to attract, compared with tho
As of right now, banks are devising new ways of combatting phising. This is part of their responsibility as a bank. They are in the unique position to implement security policies to avert phishing/key logging and other types of similar schemes. The current situation promote the continual improvement of banking security. What is being suggested would do the opposite. Banks currently with weak security protections in place would not be encourage to adopt better protections.
Okay, so you want to hold the banks liable for not implementing security procedures that don't even exist yet? They'll do research into this sort of thing anyway, since banks don't like having their customers cleaned out, and it's hardly something that impresses customers of said banks, so there's incentive there regardless. But to hold banks liable now just to kick them in the pants is rediuclous. If I own a house and someone gets hit by a meteorite falling from the sky while standing in my front yard, should I be liable "so as to encourage homeowners to develop anti-meteorite protection"?
More to the point, what do you think banks should be doing RIGHT NOW about this? Or are you just going to say "tough, you have to pay for these victims even though at the moment there's nothing you can possibly do to prevent them falling for scams"? Heck, I honestly don't even think there realistically are any practical things that can be developed to stop phishing from being possible, at least not until Trusted Computing comes in, since any passwords, token keys or other confirmations you hand to customers can and will always be possible for a phisher to gain access to, and to hold banks liable for people who are careless (I'm sorry, but "I'm old" doesn't make it someone else's fault, when that person had no influence in you being scammed). Should we hold banks liable for people who get mugged walking down the street carrying money from said bank? I mean, people can't prevent themselves being mugged, and that's even if they do take all due care.
Your grandmother loses her life savings. She sure had it coming because she couldn't tell the difference between bankofamerica.com and bank0famerica.com. Foolish her, she definitely deserves to be forced to go back to work at Wal-Mart for minimum wage so she can live like a college student again. Old bitch totally had it coming-- and it's wrong of her to seek reimbursement for wire fraud.
She certainly should seek reimbursement, and she's entitled to it... from the phisher, not from some innocent third party like the bank. Yes, it's really sad that someone has lost a lot of money, and of course that person is going to be angry and TRY to pass the buck on to other people, but just because they're angry at the bank as the nearest identifiable target for their anger doesn't make that bank liable. This is almost akin to an episode of Judge Judy I saw a while back (yes, I know, trash TV, but give me a break) where a lady was suing her neighbour because her kid hurt himself. The neighbour hadn't done anything to hurt the kid, he'd just been an idiot, and Judge Judy was attempting to explain that the neighbour was therefore not liable, while all the mother could do was scream "but look how bad his injuries were!", completely missing the point that actual liability has to exist in the first place before the amount of damages are even relevant.
So, to get back to the point, why should the bank pay for someone else's loss that it had NOTHING to do with causing, and no ability to stop? People keep talking in general terms about how the banks should "do something" to stop phishing, but the reality is they offer a service via internet banking. Everyone knows how it works, you have your account number and password, and that's the security. If you activate internet banking for your account (my bank at least require it to be activated, I'd assume most others do too, and anyone who falls for phishing must plainly know their password, meaning they use it), you know what you're doing, and you know what you're getting into, so it's hardly fair to blame the bank. If the banks added a new feature where anyone could withdraw from your account without your intervention, then sure, blame the bank, but when it comes to phishing, if a loss must be suffered by either the bank or the customer, the bank has done *nothing* to cause the phishing, and has absolutely no way to reasonably control it, while the customer is the one who has fallen for a scam despite countless clear warnings.
What would the "bank is liable" crowd want the bank to do to verify transactions are really authorised? If I make an internet transaction on my account, I want the damn thing to go through, I don't want to have to call up and confirm I really want it done, fill out forms in triplicate to that effect, and wait a week for a handwriting analysis of my signed forms, that defeats the point. So, really, apart from the "but the grandma who lost the money is so sympathetic, let's give her some money to make it better" factor, with the bank being a set of deep pockets to take the money from, why should the bank pay for an action they had nothing to do with, to indemnify a customer who *did* do something to cause the loss?
This analogy would be better if you said that you printed a book of checks and then fooled the customer to sign them all. If you sign the check, you are liable.
You'd think that, but seriously, in a lot of cases like that (at least here in Australia) the account holder still isn't liable. It does depend on just how stupid they are, and the level of admittedly just leaving a book of signed cheques around is so blatant you'd still be liable, there's a great many cases where people have done stupid things not far off it, like signing cheques to "C.A.S.H." without properly reading them, where the bank has no way to know they're fraudulent, yet has been required to cover the account holder's loss since the transaction wasn't actually authorised.
How about if it just becomes a normal drive once the flash dies?
I imagine this is exactly how they would do it, though perhaps be a bit more advanced about it. It'd be easy enough I hope to have some simple error detection and correction built into the flash. Whenever a particular block is detected to have started to turn bad, it can be recovered (since it's quite fair to assume the vast majority of failures would begin as single-bit ones), then marked as bad from then on. Over time, the amount of flash available reduces, and so the amount that is cached is reduced. It would take a nearly impossibly large time to get every single block of flash to fail (I would expect), but it's a fairly fail-proof way of doing things. Indeed, from my understanding even magnetic disks do much the same thing, with almost all drives having bad blocks which are transparently detected, disabled, and reallocated by the drive firmware these days.
I know that in Australia you cannot concent to assault Sure you can. Otherwise boxing would be illegal. However, you can't necessarily consent to greater degrees of injury (I forget the actual standard, but basically you can't tell your friend "I don't mind if you stab me six times with a knife" and have him do it without someone getting in trouble). IANAL, but I'm speaking from experience studying criminal law at university a couple of years back, this isn't just a "I heard this from a friend and he swears it's the truth" case.
What the? No way. While I'm certainly open to being corrected, and understand Visa will take a higher than normal percentage because it's all small payments, the typical percentage Visa/Mastercard take is in the vicinity of 2% (less for customers who do a lot of business), or a bit more than that if you're dealing with Diners/Amex. 25% is so absurdly far away from that, I find it a bit hard to believe.
Re:Uh, Taiwan IS CHINA !!
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Spam from Taiwan
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· Score: 2, Informative
Welcome to 1999 !! Taiwan is SPECIAL, but it's still CHINA !!
No, that's Hong Kong that became part of China. Taiwan is that island off the coast that the Communists never captured in the civil war. For various political reasons it is rarely referred to as being a different country, but for all practical purposes it's a totally seperate country.
What if some day the Chinese decided that they're not going to produce devices that don't meet their standards? So far it hasn't been a problem but if the government decided all Chinese factories were going to produce routers with China-Fi encryption, that's what they'd produce.
And since they own all our manufacturing capacity, there would be little we could do about it. It would take years to tool up enough manufacturing to replace everything we depend on them to produce.
Not really, what are you basing all that on? While certainly a lot is made in China, let's not pretend they're the only place in the world capable of making electronics, doubly so when wifi gear is really a tiny segment of the electronics market. After all, Taiwan is a perfect example of a country famous for its electronics industry, yet there's no way in hell they have any interest in pushing mainland China's interests.
It takes two to tango, in this case the seller agreed to the selling price. They have a responsibility to refuse transactions that they don't want to accept. Saying that the sale was automated and thus not subjected to sanity checks ought not be a sufficient defense.
Ah, but it is, especially in this case. IANAL (but I've a fair slab of legal training), but I can tell you that, at least in most of the Commonwealth (and so I'd assume the USA too), machines cannot actually consent to anything themselves, it comes down to what the machine's owner consented to, not what you can defraud the machine into working with.
As I recall it, the case which set this law out was one involving an early ATM, which had far worse security than those of today. A person managed to successfully use the keycard to their old, closed, bank account to withdraw money from an ATM, when plainly they should not have been able to, and knew that. It was found that the ATM giving out the money was not a consent of any kind, since the machine merely acted as a tool for facilitating transactions the bank consented to, and they plainly didn't consent to people without accounts taking money from their ATMs. So, by the same logic, fooling an online auction page into selling you online property for far less than the proper price, when you know the page's owners don't consent to this, is not going to hold up.
So, while the guy may have been clever, he's an idiot for trying to sue now that he's been busted for cheating. C'mon, can anyone say sore loser?
Actually, I'd bet that it is in fact 1pt = 1ct, on the side of the content providers. Microsoft are that way selling points at a premium over what they have to pay out on them, and therefore make their profits. The figure seems so close to one cent per point that this strikes me as the most likely explanation.
Well, that's the thing, this law actually isn't really too bad. I've read the bill, something I bet 90% of posters in this thread will not do, and that's why I believe it's actually not a big problem.
IANAL (but I'm due to graduate Law any moment, so I'm not entirely talking out my ass), but if you read the bill you'll notice that it sets out specific criteria that the relevant minister must find met before he can exercise his power to amend laws. For example, one biggie is that he can't take away rights that people may reasonably expect to exercise, though that's hardly the only restriction. I should also point out here, as a matter of administrative law, the courts will not uphold the minister's belief if they find it unreasonable.
What all of this means is, any attempt to use this power for rediculous or abusive things, like abolishing elections, curtailing free speech, bringing in the NWO, or all the other crazy conspiracy theories, is simply impossible, since the courts would overrule it in a second. All this proposed act could do is be used for exactly what the government is claiming, the streamlining and touching up of laws in ways that will not be overly contentious.
In any case, don't forget that as a parliamentary democracy, the government could realistically pass anything anyway. So really, this bill, while admittedly not that great (I don't like bypassing debate, whatever the case), it isn't that great either.
Well, that's why the person seeking to find the anonymous person's details should be (and it would appear is) required to show that there is a falsehood in the first place, to the satisfaction of a judge. This means that only cases of at least some merit will get through at all. From there, the defendant can give evidence in their defence. Of course, the other thing would be to add "loser pays" costs to the system, so that you can't silence critics simply through suing with no prospect of victory.
But the nut of the matter is: Politicians have power. So, the powerless have a right to openly criticize them. The powerfull have the right to live and conduct themselves in such an honerable way that nobody would believe their critics. How does this extend to "blatantly lying about the guy then hiding behind anonymity to get away with it". If it was the truth or a genuine opinion being told, then sure, he has every right to remain discuss it all he wants, and I believe stay anonymous, but I don't really see how that should extend to making stuff up about people. I mean, in what way does the ability to make and spread lies help anyone?
Otherwise, every time Jay Leno or David Letterman makes a wisecrack about the Chief, they'd be liable. Umm... not really, that's a joke, and plainly not an assertion of an actual fact, so it can't really be defamatory. Banning falsehoods doesn't have to affect people joking or whistleblowing. (though by the look of things, this precise case here was one where the statements were found to be opinions, not facts, and so were legitimate, but it doesn't change the basic principle that an actual defamer should be liable)
I mean, if the only reason we have region encoding is because the content manufacturers say "Pretty please," why hasn't there been more uproar or at least dissent?
Actually there has been by hardware makers, but in most countries they can't legally, since it is a condition of their licencing the technology to make DVD players that they incorporate region locking. The plain evidence that the hardware makers don't like region coding is in Australia. I'm not 100% clear on the legal background, but we've managed to get into an absurdly silly situation where all DVD players must be *made* with region coding, and must be advertised as being locked (even phone up and ask and they have to tell you they are). However, it's perfectly legal to remove region coding on a DVD player, and apparently it's been legally decided that there are no restrictions as to when this can be done, it can be pre-sale, even in the original manufacturing facility.
So what happens is a region-locked DVD player is manufactured, then instantly they deactivate the region coding on it, they slap it in a box saying "Region 4 only", and sell it. So 95% of DVD players in Australia are region-free, and the rest are pretty much all unlockable by entering a code using the remote. I do have to say, it's quite a nice thing actually, and hasn't led to any huge importation rings, it just means you can play DVDs if you get them elsewhere.
Actually most people I know with chipped xboxes now mostly use them to run XBMC to stream media from a separate PC. Yeah, I actually do that with mine too, it's bloody fantastic. Though at the same time, to be perfectly honest, what "media" is probably being streamed? My money is *very* solidly on "pirated music/tv/movies". I think that's getting so indirect it's certainly no longer the "blame" of the mod designers, but still a point to remember, even the "legal" use for the xbox is half the time still illegal in the end.
It's not really that big a problem. Just because it's named one thing doesn't mean it can't be changed. Just ask the people of St. Petersburg^W Petrograd^W Leningrad^W St. Petersburg, they've been through four names in the last hundred years (and only to get back where they started too). It's no big deal, names can be set now, and changed later, and if not, hey, it'll be funny to mock people living in "Spongebob!".
Well, at least they're better than the metamoderators. At least when a mod sticks a retarded moderation on a post, other more sane people can mod it the other way. However, I recently got a metamoderation on one post I had modded "flamebait", because all it said was something along the lines of "you should eat flaming shit while smoking a fag pipe and taking it up the ass" (you get the idea). Apparently, that was unfair. Riiiight, my loathing for people who say "I vote all negative moderation unfair" just went up yet another notch. When do we get meta-meta-moderation?
(And yes, I'm making a -1, Offtopic post now, so shoot me, I won't vote your moderation "unfair" for it)
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- The simple solution would be to outlaw such questions from being raised
Wait, how is that a "solution"? If you allow people to know their risks of disease, but not let the insurance companies have equal knowledge, you'll end up with a problem where everyone who knows they are at high risk will rush out and get the best insurance available (since they know they're getting a fantastic deal given they'll be drawing so much from the insurer), while people with low risks of disease will choose cheaper options, since they know they'll be paying more than they're likely to draw, but can't get a discount for their good genes.
Because of this, insurers start finding they're paying out more than they're taking in, since it's all the "high-cost" patients that are jumping into the programs with the most expensive benefits. To counter this, they have to raise rates, further squeezing out healthy candidates.
To cut a long story short, you end up with health insurers having no choice but to charge everyone the "high-risk" rate, and low-risk patients simply going without on the basis health insurance is uneconomical. (okay, fear of dying will keep many, even most in, but there will be plenty backing out when the premiums skyrocket cause a massive economic disincentive)
I suggest you read The Market for Lemons for a much better explanation of the economic theories behind why this kind of information assymetry is dangerous, using the example of selling used cars, where only the seller knows the quality of the car (which is basically the same principle as health insurance where only the insured knows their risk profile).
I would add that MS would be buying up a competitor, and it's all too common for companies to buy competitors to leave them to wither and then close them down after they sucked up all valuable assets and clients.
As an individual shareholder I'd be primarily worried about that scenario, and I wonder why a fund forgets about it.
That's easy, it's because once the company is bought out, the shareholders don't own any shares any more. They take their cash and ride off into the sunset. Why the hell would they care what happens to the company after then?
The shareholder action here seems quite reasonable, at least on the face of things. On what I'm sure is a very superficial explanation of the facts, it seems that management are spurning an extremely strong offer, valuing the company *way* over market, for the sake of saving their own jobs. The Yahoo management owe their duties to their shareholders that would be selling their shares, not to preserving a company for the sake of the name.
Really, if Yahoo management think Yahoo stocks are worth more than 60% over the current share value, why aren't they borrowing money left right and centre to buy themselves such "undervalued" stocks?
Okay, how about Samuel Slater, who took an apprenticeship in a British factory, memorised the workings of the machines. In evasion of British laws limiting the distribution the details of such inventions, he disguised himself as a farmhand to leave the country with the knowledge, which he used to set up factories in America, earning himself fame and wealth, despite basically being an IP thief. Whatever one thinks of patents and the draconian IP laws applicable to such inventions, he was let in on a trade secret, and used deception to succeed in stealing that secret.
So anyway, there's an example, no need to accuse people of making things up. Can we go back to the US-bashing now we have evidence?
They're claiming 38 songs, but they can only produce 11 of them. (Actually I don't think even the 11 are legitimate).
Why don't you think the 11 songs are legitimate? It's not like it's hard to track down copyright violators online, there's no reason for the RIAA to try to frame someone, and as far as mistaken identities, while there are some rare examples where it appears to have occurred, I don't see any real reason at all to believe it has occurred here.
They may have been intentionally sharing a file they owned copyright to (say a 3 meg picture file of themselves) that they renamed to "stones-gloria.mp3" because they are vehemently against copyright infringement.
Heck, it could be a complete fluke of quantum probability, what with there being a non-zero but impossibly small chance that the file spontaneously formed on the hard drive. However, it's not very probable, just as it's not very probable that it's someone hosting a fake file, doubly so when it's already been established by downloading 11 songs from the person in question that they don't seem to have any problem with copyright infringement. The overwhelmingly probable explanation is that the person who is purporting "Metallica - Enter Sandman.mp3" is in fact hosting that song, and so is infringing on copyright.
Not really. While I know it's trendy to join in on the usual RIAA-bashing, and as a matter of evidence it's really quite sloppy of the RIAA not to have actually downloaded the copies, and I think the misstatement in their filing is even more sloppy (but, honestly, they don't seem to be trying to actually mislead) I'm not really seeing the grounds everyone is going beserk on here. Basically, the difference is between "we searched Kazaa/eDonkey/whatever and this user was offering Metallica's album for download" and "we searched Kazaa/eDonkey/whatever and actually downloaded Metallica's album from this user". The RIAA aren't making evidence up here, it's simply the question of if search results are proof enough.
Now, while I suspect as a matter of pure legalism this motion has a good chance of success, I don't think many people would seriously argue that the person being accused here wasn't illegally sharing files based on this evidence. Of course, "proof" in practice and "proof" in law are often two totally different things, but before going beserk and calling the RIAA a bunch of fraudsters, keep in mind they're presenting what is realistically proof enough if you leave the red-tape of legalism out of the equation. Yes, I do know there have been occasions where the RIAA has come up with some possible false positives, and mislabelled files certainly exist, but it's more the exception than than the rule, so on the balance of probabilities, a person who shows up as having a Metallica album on a p2p program more likely than not does, it's as simple as that.
Anyway, guys, quit the RIAA bashing. Complain they're doing sloppy investigating and it's not really an acceptable standard we should encourage, but don't act like they're a pack of liars when they're almost undeniably correct in their accusations and their only flaw is not doing as air-tight a job as they should have.
However, the massive problem with that analogy is that a person walking around pretending to be a bank teller IN A BANK is something the bank itself can and should notice, and can easily stop, while the customer is in a position where they can fairly expect they're talking to a real bank employee. As a result, it misses the entire point I was trying to get at, which is that the bank has absolutely no power to stop a phisher. A more accurate analogy would be someone masquerading as a bank official and knocking on your door claiming to be from your bank, and wanting to know if you have any deposits you'd like to hand them, and, honestly, would anyone expect a bank to be liable if you coughed up in that case? Or, if that's insufficient money at stake, someone shows up at your door claiming to be from Sony, here to take your plasma TV in for a safety recall, should Sony have to pay?
Do correct me here if I'm mistaken, since I'm not from the US and don't know all the specifics of the FDIC, but my impression was the FDIC insures banks in the sense that it will guarantee a bank's deposits if the bank goes bankrupt. It wouldn't hand a penny over to a bank in a case like this, and so isn't really applicable.
Hey, if you want to support a government funded solution, like the FDIC as you portrayed it above, I'd not have a huge problem with it. I'd personally not think it the best idea, since it's making everyone pay for the mistakes of people not looking out for themselves, and I don't think people deserve indemnification for that sort of thing (but by the same token, if they would be destitute, then I support welfare, I just don't think one's government payout should be greater because the reason you're broke is you were an idiot as opposed to simply unfortunate). I'm however extremely opposed to a specific person or corporation being required to pay for the loss of another they had nothing to do with, it's that kind of "deep pockets" mentality that is so horribly overused these days (lawsuit mania anyone?), and I think it's out of control. While it may seem so easy to say in a sympathetic case "let's take the money from the rich bank to give to the poor old grandma", it's a horrible precedent to set.
Okay, so you want to hold the banks liable for not implementing security procedures that don't even exist yet? They'll do research into this sort of thing anyway, since banks don't like having their customers cleaned out, and it's hardly something that impresses customers of said banks, so there's incentive there regardless. But to hold banks liable now just to kick them in the pants is rediuclous. If I own a house and someone gets hit by a meteorite falling from the sky while standing in my front yard, should I be liable "so as to encourage homeowners to develop anti-meteorite protection"?
More to the point, what do you think banks should be doing RIGHT NOW about this? Or are you just going to say "tough, you have to pay for these victims even though at the moment there's nothing you can possibly do to prevent them falling for scams"? Heck, I honestly don't even think there realistically are any practical things that can be developed to stop phishing from being possible, at least not until Trusted Computing comes in, since any passwords, token keys or other confirmations you hand to customers can and will always be possible for a phisher to gain access to, and to hold banks liable for people who are careless (I'm sorry, but "I'm old" doesn't make it someone else's fault, when that person had no influence in you being scammed). Should we hold banks liable for people who get mugged walking down the street carrying money from said bank? I mean, people can't prevent themselves being mugged, and that's even if they do take all due care.
She certainly should seek reimbursement, and she's entitled to it... from the phisher, not from some innocent third party like the bank. Yes, it's really sad that someone has lost a lot of money, and of course that person is going to be angry and TRY to pass the buck on to other people, but just because they're angry at the bank as the nearest identifiable target for their anger doesn't make that bank liable. This is almost akin to an episode of Judge Judy I saw a while back (yes, I know, trash TV, but give me a break) where a lady was suing her neighbour because her kid hurt himself. The neighbour hadn't done anything to hurt the kid, he'd just been an idiot, and Judge Judy was attempting to explain that the neighbour was therefore not liable, while all the mother could do was scream "but look how bad his injuries were!", completely missing the point that actual liability has to exist in the first place before the amount of damages are even relevant.
So, to get back to the point, why should the bank pay for someone else's loss that it had NOTHING to do with causing, and no ability to stop? People keep talking in general terms about how the banks should "do something" to stop phishing, but the reality is they offer a service via internet banking. Everyone knows how it works, you have your account number and password, and that's the security. If you activate internet banking for your account (my bank at least require it to be activated, I'd assume most others do too, and anyone who falls for phishing must plainly know their password, meaning they use it), you know what you're doing, and you know what you're getting into, so it's hardly fair to blame the bank. If the banks added a new feature where anyone could withdraw from your account without your intervention, then sure, blame the bank, but when it comes to phishing, if a loss must be suffered by either the bank or the customer, the bank has done *nothing* to cause the phishing, and has absolutely no way to reasonably control it, while the customer is the one who has fallen for a scam despite countless clear warnings.
What would the "bank is liable" crowd want the bank to do to verify transactions are really authorised? If I make an internet transaction on my account, I want the damn thing to go through, I don't want to have to call up and confirm I really want it done, fill out forms in triplicate to that effect, and wait a week for a handwriting analysis of my signed forms, that defeats the point. So, really, apart from the "but the grandma who lost the money is so sympathetic, let's give her some money to make it better" factor, with the bank being a set of deep pockets to take the money from, why should the bank pay for an action they had nothing to do with, to indemnify a customer who *did* do something to cause the loss?
You'd think that, but seriously, in a lot of cases like that (at least here in Australia) the account holder still isn't liable. It does depend on just how stupid they are, and the level of admittedly just leaving a book of signed cheques around is so blatant you'd still be liable, there's a great many cases where people have done stupid things not far off it, like signing cheques to "C.A.S.H." without properly reading them, where the bank has no way to know they're fraudulent, yet has been required to cover the account holder's loss since the transaction wasn't actually authorised.
How about if it just becomes a normal drive once the flash dies?
I imagine this is exactly how they would do it, though perhaps be a bit more advanced about it. It'd be easy enough I hope to have some simple error detection and correction built into the flash. Whenever a particular block is detected to have started to turn bad, it can be recovered (since it's quite fair to assume the vast majority of failures would begin as single-bit ones), then marked as bad from then on. Over time, the amount of flash available reduces, and so the amount that is cached is reduced. It would take a nearly impossibly large time to get every single block of flash to fail (I would expect), but it's a fairly fail-proof way of doing things. Indeed, from my understanding even magnetic disks do much the same thing, with almost all drives having bad blocks which are transparently detected, disabled, and reallocated by the drive firmware these days.
I know that in Australia you cannot concent to assault
Sure you can. Otherwise boxing would be illegal. However, you can't necessarily consent to greater degrees of injury (I forget the actual standard, but basically you can't tell your friend "I don't mind if you stab me six times with a knife" and have him do it without someone getting in trouble). IANAL, but I'm speaking from experience studying criminal law at university a couple of years back, this isn't just a "I heard this from a friend and he swears it's the truth" case.
25c/dollar of that goes to Visa/Mastercard.
What the? No way. While I'm certainly open to being corrected, and understand Visa will take a higher than normal percentage because it's all small payments, the typical percentage Visa/Mastercard take is in the vicinity of 2% (less for customers who do a lot of business), or a bit more than that if you're dealing with Diners/Amex. 25% is so absurdly far away from that, I find it a bit hard to believe.
Welcome to 1999 !! Taiwan is SPECIAL, but it's still CHINA !!
No, that's Hong Kong that became part of China. Taiwan is that island off the coast that the Communists never captured in the civil war. For various political reasons it is rarely referred to as being a different country, but for all practical purposes it's a totally seperate country.
What if some day the Chinese decided that they're not going to produce devices that don't meet their standards? So far it hasn't been a problem but if the government decided all Chinese factories were going to produce routers with China-Fi encryption, that's what they'd produce.
And since they own all our manufacturing capacity, there would be little we could do about it. It would take years to tool up enough manufacturing to replace everything we depend on them to produce.
Not really, what are you basing all that on? While certainly a lot is made in China, let's not pretend they're the only place in the world capable of making electronics, doubly so when wifi gear is really a tiny segment of the electronics market. After all, Taiwan is a perfect example of a country famous for its electronics industry, yet there's no way in hell they have any interest in pushing mainland China's interests.
It takes two to tango, in this case the seller agreed to the selling price. They have a responsibility to refuse transactions that they don't want to accept. Saying that the sale was automated and thus not subjected to sanity checks ought not be a sufficient defense.
Ah, but it is, especially in this case. IANAL (but I've a fair slab of legal training), but I can tell you that, at least in most of the Commonwealth (and so I'd assume the USA too), machines cannot actually consent to anything themselves, it comes down to what the machine's owner consented to, not what you can defraud the machine into working with.
As I recall it, the case which set this law out was one involving an early ATM, which had far worse security than those of today. A person managed to successfully use the keycard to their old, closed, bank account to withdraw money from an ATM, when plainly they should not have been able to, and knew that. It was found that the ATM giving out the money was not a consent of any kind, since the machine merely acted as a tool for facilitating transactions the bank consented to, and they plainly didn't consent to people without accounts taking money from their ATMs. So, by the same logic, fooling an online auction page into selling you online property for far less than the proper price, when you know the page's owners don't consent to this, is not going to hold up.
So, while the guy may have been clever, he's an idiot for trying to sue now that he's been busted for cheating. C'mon, can anyone say sore loser?
Actually, I'd bet that it is in fact 1pt = 1ct, on the side of the content providers. Microsoft are that way selling points at a premium over what they have to pay out on them, and therefore make their profits. The figure seems so close to one cent per point that this strikes me as the most likely explanation.
IANAL (but I'm due to graduate Law any moment, so I'm not entirely talking out my ass), but if you read the bill you'll notice that it sets out specific criteria that the relevant minister must find met before he can exercise his power to amend laws. For example, one biggie is that he can't take away rights that people may reasonably expect to exercise, though that's hardly the only restriction. I should also point out here, as a matter of administrative law, the courts will not uphold the minister's belief if they find it unreasonable.
What all of this means is, any attempt to use this power for rediculous or abusive things, like abolishing elections, curtailing free speech, bringing in the NWO, or all the other crazy conspiracy theories, is simply impossible, since the courts would overrule it in a second. All this proposed act could do is be used for exactly what the government is claiming, the streamlining and touching up of laws in ways that will not be overly contentious.
In any case, don't forget that as a parliamentary democracy, the government could realistically pass anything anyway. So really, this bill, while admittedly not that great (I don't like bypassing debate, whatever the case), it isn't that great either.
Oh yeah? Let's see you play frisbee or build a suit of shiny armour out of SATA cables...
Well, that's why the person seeking to find the anonymous person's details should be (and it would appear is) required to show that there is a falsehood in the first place, to the satisfaction of a judge. This means that only cases of at least some merit will get through at all. From there, the defendant can give evidence in their defence. Of course, the other thing would be to add "loser pays" costs to the system, so that you can't silence critics simply through suing with no prospect of victory.
How does this extend to "blatantly lying about the guy then hiding behind anonymity to get away with it". If it was the truth or a genuine opinion being told, then sure, he has every right to remain discuss it all he wants, and I believe stay anonymous, but I don't really see how that should extend to making stuff up about people. I mean, in what way does the ability to make and spread lies help anyone?
Otherwise, every time Jay Leno or David Letterman makes a wisecrack about the Chief, they'd be liable.
Umm... not really, that's a joke, and plainly not an assertion of an actual fact, so it can't really be defamatory. Banning falsehoods doesn't have to affect people joking or whistleblowing. (though by the look of things, this precise case here was one where the statements were found to be opinions, not facts, and so were legitimate, but it doesn't change the basic principle that an actual defamer should be liable)
Actually there has been by hardware makers, but in most countries they can't legally, since it is a condition of their licencing the technology to make DVD players that they incorporate region locking. The plain evidence that the hardware makers don't like region coding is in Australia. I'm not 100% clear on the legal background, but we've managed to get into an absurdly silly situation where all DVD players must be *made* with region coding, and must be advertised as being locked (even phone up and ask and they have to tell you they are). However, it's perfectly legal to remove region coding on a DVD player, and apparently it's been legally decided that there are no restrictions as to when this can be done, it can be pre-sale, even in the original manufacturing facility.
So what happens is a region-locked DVD player is manufactured, then instantly they deactivate the region coding on it, they slap it in a box saying "Region 4 only", and sell it. So 95% of DVD players in Australia are region-free, and the rest are pretty much all unlockable by entering a code using the remote. I do have to say, it's quite a nice thing actually, and hasn't led to any huge importation rings, it just means you can play DVDs if you get them elsewhere.
Actually most people I know with chipped xboxes now mostly use them to run XBMC to stream media from a separate PC.
Yeah, I actually do that with mine too, it's bloody fantastic. Though at the same time, to be perfectly honest, what "media" is probably being streamed? My money is *very* solidly on "pirated music/tv/movies". I think that's getting so indirect it's certainly no longer the "blame" of the mod designers, but still a point to remember, even the "legal" use for the xbox is half the time still illegal in the end.
It's not really that big a problem. Just because it's named one thing doesn't mean it can't be changed. Just ask the people of St. Petersburg^W Petrograd^W Leningrad^W St. Petersburg, they've been through four names in the last hundred years (and only to get back where they started too). It's no big deal, names can be set now, and changed later, and if not, hey, it'll be funny to mock people living in "Spongebob!".
Well, at least they're better than the metamoderators. At least when a mod sticks a retarded moderation on a post, other more sane people can mod it the other way. However, I recently got a metamoderation on one post I had modded "flamebait", because all it said was something along the lines of "you should eat flaming shit while smoking a fag pipe and taking it up the ass" (you get the idea). Apparently, that was unfair. Riiiight, my loathing for people who say "I vote all negative moderation unfair" just went up yet another notch. When do we get meta-meta-moderation?
(And yes, I'm making a -1, Offtopic post now, so shoot me, I won't vote your moderation "unfair" for it)