those claims were largely dismissed by French authorities when they looked at the actual communications on devices recovered from the group
Response from the NSA/FBI/CIA/etc: "Actual information"? Pfft. Who needs that when we can whip up everyone into a frenzy of fear and then use that to increase the power we have? To keep people safe, of course. (*winks at other NSA/FBI/CIA members*)
The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a magical jet pack is a good guy with a magical jet pack! We need to equip everyone with magical jet packs!
I don't think they need an explicit "little guy can't sue big guy" rule. As it is, they've rigged the system so that lawsuits are expensive and time consuming. This is nothing for a big corporation but can easily be taxing for a small company/individual. Since defending themselves in court is something big companies can do much more effectively, they tend to feel like they can ignore the rights of smaller companies/individuals until sued. (And even then, they offer a token, non-precedent-setting settlement or threaten a protracted, expensive legal battle.)
Don't forget their attempts to pass: "They don't buy our junk so they must be pirating it so everyone must be required to pay $5 a month to us to allow us to recoup our losses." This didn't go through in the US, but if it did it would have instantly made me into a pirate. (I don't pirate stuff, but if I was being forced to pay for being a pirate, I might as well get the content that way.)
Plus, this requires the person who was issued the DMCA to take legal action against the person/comany who issued the DMCA.
If you have an individual who is barely scraping by and who produces YouTube videos as a method of additional income, they aren't going to be able to afford the time and money to sue Mega-Company-X over a take down notice issued because the individual's latest video had the same title as a recent pop song. The legal system is stacked against individuals.
It would take a massive change in copyright law to strip all copyright protections from the works of individuals. Right now, I can take a photo, write and essay, and post them online. They are protected by copyright and if I find that someone (be they an individual or a corporation) has taken my essay or photo and is using them without my permission, I can issue a DMCA cease and desist notice. The person/company then can either take down the content or face a lawsuit. (I have had to do this in the past and the content was promptly removed.)
As much as the deck is stacked in favor of large companies, I can't see them being able to ram through a "copyright is only for big companies, all stuff produced by individuals is fair game for companies to seize for their own use" bill.
Although instant communication across thousands of lightyears would be nice, it's by no means a requirement for further colonization.
We've gotten so used to instant communication that we forget that - for much of human history - moving meant losing all contact with the people you left behind. It might be that this "instant communication with anyone, anywhere" period is a temporary phase of human history and we've simply just made Earth into a global village with other villages (other planets) completely unable to be communicated with on a practical basis.
Also, there may not be enough "room at the top". If you cloned Steve Jobs 1,000 times, that doesn't mean there would be 1,000 Apple Co's. It mostly just means more competition for the "elite" jobs.
There's also the nature vs. nurture factor. If you cloned Steve Jobs 1,000 times, gave those cloned babies to 1,000 random families, and waited 20 years, you'd get a mix of outcomes. Some Jobs-Clones would come out with creativity and drive to rival the original, but many would fall far short of their potential for various reasons. (e.g. Family environment wasn't encouraging, lack of money for educational opportunities, too much money for educational opportunities that resulted in a push to a "conventional" career, etc.)
So you might be able to say "give me a baby with blue eyes and red hair" but you wouldn't be able to say "give me a baby with a 140 IQ who will change the world, become rich, and take care of me in my old age." You might just wind up with a kid who is so bored at school that he drops out, falls in with a bad crowd, and winds up behind bars (all despite a gene-edited high IQ).
Venture Capitalist - aka a rich guy/company who gives money to startup companies in the hopes that said startup with strike it big and they (the Venture Capitalist) will get more money back.
I recently read my boys (12 and 8) Lauren Ipsum: A Story About Computer Science and Other Improbable Things. It's sort of like computer science meets Alice in Wonderland. In one of the chapters, she has to guess a password. She notices that the little old lady working security (who looks the passwords up in a big book) takes longer to deny access as Lauren gets closer to the right word. So when she gives "About", the lady says "A... B... O... No", but if Lauren gave "Abrupt", the lady would say "A... B... R... U... No."
Even my 8 year old say the problem with this "password security." Not just giving Lauren clues as to where her given password went wrong, but the ability for Lauren to keep guessing over and over until she got it right. If an 8 year old can spot the hole in your security, maybe it's time to improve your system.
I agree. As a recent example, a woman I know on Twitter was harassed by a group of people. Her "crime"? She adopted two white kids and two black kids and this group of white supremacists couldn't let that stand. I looked through some of their tweets and felt like I needed to bleach my eyes/brain. (The tame tweets called her black children "things" and "pets." I won't repeat what the non-tame ones said.) Many of the people said they went to her website, downloaded all photos of her kids, and planned to use them in malicious ways. When they were reported, they accused her of harassing them for reporting them for harassment. (I've found that bullies often declare you reporting their behavior as "wrong" but see their actions as completely fine. They try to set the rules to be in their favor.)
Now, I'm all for free speech, but if you're harassing someone (not disagreeing with them, but actively harassing), then you shouldn't be surprised if you're booted from the service. Not doing this will make people less likely to post on your service for fear of coming under attack.
You'll also find plenty of blogs posting PR content verbatim. I get requests from PR companies all the time for my blog. They want me to promote their product using their words and I'll get "paid" in high resolution images of their product or to be entered for a chance to win one of the products. I ignore/delete these requests (after all, my credit card company doesn't let me pay off my bill using high resolution images) but too many people jump on board and do whatever the company says. They mistake company-provided content with quality content and hurt their blogs in the process.
It used to be that ExpertsExchange would show the answers but hide them under a "pop-in" window that wouldn't go away unless you paid... Or unless you used developer tools to remove the elements causing the popup. Then you could read the content for free. Sadly, they've caught on to this and now don't even serve up the answer on the page. (Which, to be honest, is the proper way of doing things. Not that I agree with their business model, but if you're going to do that you don't put the content on the page and then hide it since it's trivial to reveal it.)
At their most specific, the scientists might say that Climate Change means we'll be more likely to get stronger storms more often, but the media reports it as "Scientists say Current Storm X is directly caused by Climate Change!!!"
The whole "right to free speech" thing is irrelevant.
People have the right to publish works glorifying child abuse, genocide or Clippy the Office Assistant, it doesn't mean that they're exempt from debate or criticism.
If you decide to exercise your freedom of speech by saying that rape should be legalised, you can expect a strong reaction, and not just from radical feminists.
I'd agree with your overall point but point out that this isn't free speech being irrelevant but instead showing that the right to free speech extends to both sides. If someone posts a "rape should be legal" article, that's their free speech right but it's also my free speech right to disagree with them and argue that rape should be illegal. If one "rape should be legal" author finds themselves drowned out by dozens of people saying "keep rape illegal", that's not infringing on his freedom of speech - it's everyone exercising their freedom of speech as well. (Your right of free speech doesn't mean people have an obligation to listen to you.)
It's funny you should mention a bell curve. The other day, while thinking about this, I pictured society as a bell curve progressing over time. What was "perfectly normal societal behavior" two generations ago winds up being "highly racist comments" nowadays. One of the problems with these fringe groups is that they see the bell curve passing them by and long for the days when they were in the middle of the curve. (Whether they ever actually would have been in the middle or whether they are glamorizing the past and putting themselves in the middle is another story.) The more the bell curve passes them by, the more desperate they get to pull it back and the more they are willing to resort to behavior that shocks the current "normal society."
Sadly, the long tail of the bell curve probably means that these people will be around for quite awhile, getting more and more desperate to get society to conform to their view of what it should be.
Unlike past efforts, our NEW copy protection scheme will totally work. By the way, by any chance, would you happen to be in the market for a bridge?
When the content industry acts like this, I imagine them like they are a little old lady by a slot machine. Sure, the last 200 coins she inserted didn't pay off, but this coin will DEFINITELY win the jackpot. Sure, the last 200 or so DRM schemes broke, but this one will be unhackable. The difference is that the little old lady will eventually hit the jackpot if she plays long enough. The same can't be said of DRM schemes.
I wonder how script kiddies and inside jobs skew the results.
In the case of script kiddies, these are people who are running a program to detect vulnerable points in various systems. They can run this script while doing something else so (as another poster pointed out), they can be working a legitimate job during the day while the script runs and then making money by hacking the vulnerable servers at night. In this case, making $15K isn't a "low wage" but a "nice side income." (Especially if they don't report it on their taxes - hey, what's a little more crime if you're willing to make money via criminal activities?)
In the case of inside jobs, I would think that the person would be a) more likely to make more money off their hack and b) need to spend less time on their hack. Since I work in IT, I have elevated permissions for many systems. If I wanted to, I could use this to gain access to data that would sell for a lot of money on some shady sites. To be clear: I would never actually do this, but someone in a position like mine but with less moral restraint could easily pull it off. They might even go undetected and remain at their day job, making their hacks a side income (like the script kiddies). Or they might move from job to job, waiting until they have high enough access to get sensitive data before moving on.
No, because Amazon isn't your ISP. Your ISP isn't saying that you can upload unlimited photos but have a cap on everything else. Amazon is providing a service for a price. If you subscribe to Prime, you get unlimited Photos cloud backup but only a certain amount of space for all your other data. If you pay them $60 a year, you can get unlimited space for all types of files. This isn't involve Network Neutrality any more than having two products for sale on Amazon but only offering Prime 2 day shipping on one of them.
I was talking to my wife about cloud backup options. Right now, we backup our computers to two external hard drives. In theory, one of these drives would be taken off-site, but in practice that never happens. I was looking at Backblaze and Amazon for backup. (I have about 1TB of files to backup.) My wife was concerned about Amazon because she feared that they would look through our uploaded data or something. Quite honestly, I don't think they would, but I have no proof that they wouldn't (it's impossible to prove a negative).
I know this is somewhat off-topic but has anyone used Amazon's cloud backup service? (The full $60 a year version, not the Prime Photos-Only service.)
Slashdot Mirror
Response from the NSA/FBI/CIA/etc: "Actual information"? Pfft. Who needs that when we can whip up everyone into a frenzy of fear and then use that to increase the power we have? To keep people safe, of course. (*winks at other NSA/FBI/CIA members*)
The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a magical jet pack is a good guy with a magical jet pack! We need to equip everyone with magical jet packs!
I don't think they need an explicit "little guy can't sue big guy" rule. As it is, they've rigged the system so that lawsuits are expensive and time consuming. This is nothing for a big corporation but can easily be taxing for a small company/individual. Since defending themselves in court is something big companies can do much more effectively, they tend to feel like they can ignore the rights of smaller companies/individuals until sued. (And even then, they offer a token, non-precedent-setting settlement or threaten a protracted, expensive legal battle.)
They used the incidious ROT-26 encryption. How are police expected to bypass that?!!!
Don't forget their attempts to pass: "They don't buy our junk so they must be pirating it so everyone must be required to pay $5 a month to us to allow us to recoup our losses." This didn't go through in the US, but if it did it would have instantly made me into a pirate. (I don't pirate stuff, but if I was being forced to pay for being a pirate, I might as well get the content that way.)
Plus, this requires the person who was issued the DMCA to take legal action against the person/comany who issued the DMCA.
If you have an individual who is barely scraping by and who produces YouTube videos as a method of additional income, they aren't going to be able to afford the time and money to sue Mega-Company-X over a take down notice issued because the individual's latest video had the same title as a recent pop song. The legal system is stacked against individuals.
It would take a massive change in copyright law to strip all copyright protections from the works of individuals. Right now, I can take a photo, write and essay, and post them online. They are protected by copyright and if I find that someone (be they an individual or a corporation) has taken my essay or photo and is using them without my permission, I can issue a DMCA cease and desist notice. The person/company then can either take down the content or face a lawsuit. (I have had to do this in the past and the content was promptly removed.)
As much as the deck is stacked in favor of large companies, I can't see them being able to ram through a "copyright is only for big companies, all stuff produced by individuals is fair game for companies to seize for their own use" bill.
We've gotten so used to instant communication that we forget that - for much of human history - moving meant losing all contact with the people you left behind. It might be that this "instant communication with anyone, anywhere" period is a temporary phase of human history and we've simply just made Earth into a global village with other villages (other planets) completely unable to be communicated with on a practical basis.
There's also the nature vs. nurture factor. If you cloned Steve Jobs 1,000 times, gave those cloned babies to 1,000 random families, and waited 20 years, you'd get a mix of outcomes. Some Jobs-Clones would come out with creativity and drive to rival the original, but many would fall far short of their potential for various reasons. (e.g. Family environment wasn't encouraging, lack of money for educational opportunities, too much money for educational opportunities that resulted in a push to a "conventional" career, etc.)
So you might be able to say "give me a baby with blue eyes and red hair" but you wouldn't be able to say "give me a baby with a 140 IQ who will change the world, become rich, and take care of me in my old age." You might just wind up with a kid who is so bored at school that he drops out, falls in with a bad crowd, and winds up behind bars (all despite a gene-edited high IQ).
Or they could obtain your fingerprint from somewhere that your fingers touch a lot. You know, like your phone!
To use a car analogy, this is like thinking your car is secure thanks to needing the key to get in - but then placing the key on the roof of your car.
Oh, great. Now I suddenly want to support the terrorists to help get rid of politicians.
Venture Capitalist - aka a rich guy/company who gives money to startup companies in the hopes that said startup with strike it big and they (the Venture Capitalist) will get more money back.
You can always add "-site:experts-exchange.com" from your search if you get too many of their listings in your browser.
Of course, if they're providing full results to Google, you might be able to spoof being GoogleBot to see their full content.
I recently read my boys (12 and 8) Lauren Ipsum: A Story About Computer Science and Other Improbable Things. It's sort of like computer science meets Alice in Wonderland. In one of the chapters, she has to guess a password. She notices that the little old lady working security (who looks the passwords up in a big book) takes longer to deny access as Lauren gets closer to the right word. So when she gives "About", the lady says "A... B... O... No", but if Lauren gave "Abrupt", the lady would say "A... B... R... U... No."
Even my 8 year old say the problem with this "password security." Not just giving Lauren clues as to where her given password went wrong, but the ability for Lauren to keep guessing over and over until she got it right. If an 8 year old can spot the hole in your security, maybe it's time to improve your system.
I agree. As a recent example, a woman I know on Twitter was harassed by a group of people. Her "crime"? She adopted two white kids and two black kids and this group of white supremacists couldn't let that stand. I looked through some of their tweets and felt like I needed to bleach my eyes/brain. (The tame tweets called her black children "things" and "pets." I won't repeat what the non-tame ones said.) Many of the people said they went to her website, downloaded all photos of her kids, and planned to use them in malicious ways. When they were reported, they accused her of harassing them for reporting them for harassment. (I've found that bullies often declare you reporting their behavior as "wrong" but see their actions as completely fine. They try to set the rules to be in their favor.)
Now, I'm all for free speech, but if you're harassing someone (not disagreeing with them, but actively harassing), then you shouldn't be surprised if you're booted from the service. Not doing this will make people less likely to post on your service for fear of coming under attack.
You'll also find plenty of blogs posting PR content verbatim. I get requests from PR companies all the time for my blog. They want me to promote their product using their words and I'll get "paid" in high resolution images of their product or to be entered for a chance to win one of the products. I ignore/delete these requests (after all, my credit card company doesn't let me pay off my bill using high resolution images) but too many people jump on board and do whatever the company says. They mistake company-provided content with quality content and hurt their blogs in the process.
It used to be that ExpertsExchange would show the answers but hide them under a "pop-in" window that wouldn't go away unless you paid... Or unless you used developer tools to remove the elements causing the popup. Then you could read the content for free. Sadly, they've caught on to this and now don't even serve up the answer on the page. (Which, to be honest, is the proper way of doing things. Not that I agree with their business model, but if you're going to do that you don't put the content on the page and then hide it since it's trivial to reveal it.)
Obligatory PHD Comics: The Science News Cycle.
At their most specific, the scientists might say that Climate Change means we'll be more likely to get stronger storms more often, but the media reports it as "Scientists say Current Storm X is directly caused by Climate Change!!!"
I'd agree with your overall point but point out that this isn't free speech being irrelevant but instead showing that the right to free speech extends to both sides. If someone posts a "rape should be legal" article, that's their free speech right but it's also my free speech right to disagree with them and argue that rape should be illegal. If one "rape should be legal" author finds themselves drowned out by dozens of people saying "keep rape illegal", that's not infringing on his freedom of speech - it's everyone exercising their freedom of speech as well. (Your right of free speech doesn't mean people have an obligation to listen to you.)
It's funny you should mention a bell curve. The other day, while thinking about this, I pictured society as a bell curve progressing over time. What was "perfectly normal societal behavior" two generations ago winds up being "highly racist comments" nowadays. One of the problems with these fringe groups is that they see the bell curve passing them by and long for the days when they were in the middle of the curve. (Whether they ever actually would have been in the middle or whether they are glamorizing the past and putting themselves in the middle is another story.) The more the bell curve passes them by, the more desperate they get to pull it back and the more they are willing to resort to behavior that shocks the current "normal society."
Sadly, the long tail of the bell curve probably means that these people will be around for quite awhile, getting more and more desperate to get society to conform to their view of what it should be.
Can't find the right moderation. Where's "+1 Shaking My Head Sadly At The State Of The Tech World"?
When the content industry acts like this, I imagine them like they are a little old lady by a slot machine. Sure, the last 200 coins she inserted didn't pay off, but this coin will DEFINITELY win the jackpot. Sure, the last 200 or so DRM schemes broke, but this one will be unhackable. The difference is that the little old lady will eventually hit the jackpot if she plays long enough. The same can't be said of DRM schemes.
I wonder how script kiddies and inside jobs skew the results.
In the case of script kiddies, these are people who are running a program to detect vulnerable points in various systems. They can run this script while doing something else so (as another poster pointed out), they can be working a legitimate job during the day while the script runs and then making money by hacking the vulnerable servers at night. In this case, making $15K isn't a "low wage" but a "nice side income." (Especially if they don't report it on their taxes - hey, what's a little more crime if you're willing to make money via criminal activities?)
In the case of inside jobs, I would think that the person would be a) more likely to make more money off their hack and b) need to spend less time on their hack. Since I work in IT, I have elevated permissions for many systems. If I wanted to, I could use this to gain access to data that would sell for a lot of money on some shady sites. To be clear: I would never actually do this, but someone in a position like mine but with less moral restraint could easily pull it off. They might even go undetected and remain at their day job, making their hacks a side income (like the script kiddies). Or they might move from job to job, waiting until they have high enough access to get sensitive data before moving on.
No, because Amazon isn't your ISP. Your ISP isn't saying that you can upload unlimited photos but have a cap on everything else. Amazon is providing a service for a price. If you subscribe to Prime, you get unlimited Photos cloud backup but only a certain amount of space for all your other data. If you pay them $60 a year, you can get unlimited space for all types of files. This isn't involve Network Neutrality any more than having two products for sale on Amazon but only offering Prime 2 day shipping on one of them.
I was talking to my wife about cloud backup options. Right now, we backup our computers to two external hard drives. In theory, one of these drives would be taken off-site, but in practice that never happens. I was looking at Backblaze and Amazon for backup. (I have about 1TB of files to backup.) My wife was concerned about Amazon because she feared that they would look through our uploaded data or something. Quite honestly, I don't think they would, but I have no proof that they wouldn't (it's impossible to prove a negative).
I know this is somewhat off-topic but has anyone used Amazon's cloud backup service? (The full $60 a year version, not the Prime Photos-Only service.)